Title: The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell
Author: Hume, David
Language: English
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THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND

FROM THE INVASION OF JULIUS CÆSAR

TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND,


BY DAVID HUME, ESQ.

1688



London: James S. Virtue, City Road and Ivy Lane
New York: 26 John Street
1860

And

Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott & Co.
March 17, 1901



In Three Volumes:

VOLUME ONE: The History Of England From The Invasion Of Julius Cæsar To
The End Of The Reign Of James The Second............ By David Hume, Esq.

VOLUME TWO: Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of
George II........................................... by Tobias Smollett.

VOLUME THREE: From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year
of the Reign of Queen Victoria............... by E. Farr and E.H. Nolan.



VOLUME ONE

Part E.

From Charles I. to Cromwell



CHAPTER L.

[Illustration: 1-597-charles1a.jpg  CHARLES I.]



CHARLES I.

{1625.} No sooner had Charles taken into his hands the reins of
government, than he showed an impatience to assemble the great council
of the nation; and he would gladly, for the sake of despatch, have
called together the same parliament which had sitten under his father,
and which lay at that time under prorogation. But being told that
this measure would appear unusual, he issued writs for summoning a new
parliament on the seventh of May; and it was not without regret that
the arrival of the princess Henrietta, whom he had espoused by proxy,
obliged him to delay, by repeated prorogations, their meeting till the
eighteenth of June, when they assembled at Westminster for the despatch
of business. The young prince, unexperienced and impolitic, regarded as
sincere all the praises and caresses with which he had been loaded while
active in procuring the rupture with the house of Austria. And besides
that he labored under great necessities, he hastened with alacrity to a
period when he might receive the most undoubted testimony of the dutiful
attachment of his subjects. His discourse to the parliament was full of
simplicity and cordiality. He lightly mentioned the occasion which he
had for supply.[*] He employed no intrigue to influence the suffrages of
the members. He would not even allow the officers of the crown, who
had seats in the house, to mention any particular sum which might be
expected by him Secure of the affections of the commons, he was
resolved that their bounty should be entirely their own deed; unasked,
unsolicited; the genuine fruit of sincere confidence and regard.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 171. Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 346.
     Franklyn, p. 108.

The house of commons accordingly took into consideration the business of
supply. They knew that all the money granted by the last parliament
had been expended on naval and military armaments; and that great
anticipations were likewise made on the revenues of the crown. They were
not ignorant that Charles was loaded with a large debt, contracted by
his father, who had borrowed money both from his own subjects and from
foreign princes. They had learned by experience, that the public revenue
could with difficulty maintain the dignity of the crown, even under the
ordinary charges of government. They were sensible, that the present
war was very lately the result of their own importunate applications
and entreaties, and that they had solemnly engaged to support their
sovereign in the management of it. They were acquainted with the
difficulty of military enterprises directed against the whole house of
Austria; against the king of Spain, possessed of the greatest riches and
most extensive dominions of any prince in Europe; against the emperor
Ferdinand, hitherto the most fortunate monarch of his age, who had
subdued and astonished Germany by the rapidity of his victories. Deep
impressions they saw must be made by the English sword, and a vigorous
offensive war be waged against these mighty potentates, ere they would
resign a principality which they had now fully subdued, and which they
held in secure possession, by its being surrounded with all their other
territories.

To answer, therefore, all these great and important ends; to satisfy
their young king in the first request which he made them; to prove
their sense of the many royal virtues, particularly economy, with which
Charles was endued; the house of Commons, conducted by the wisest and
ablest senators that had ever flourished in England, thought proper to
confer on the king a supply of two subsidies, amounting to one hundred
and twelve thousand pounds.[*]

     * A subsidy was now fallen to about fifty-six thousand
     pounds Cabala, p. 224, 1st edit.

This measure, which discovers rather a cruel mockery of Charles, than
any serious design of supporting him, appears so extraordinary, when
considered in all its circumstances, that it naturally summons up our
attention, and raises an inquiry concerning the causes of a conduct
unprecedented in an English parliament. So numerous an assembly,
composed of persons of various dispositions, was not, it is probable,
wholly influenced by the same motives; and few declared openly their
true reason. We shall, therefore, approach nearer to the truth, if we
mention all the views which the present conjuncture could suggest to
them.

It is not to be doubted, but spleen and ill will against the duke of
Buckingham had an influence with many. So vast and rapid a fortune, so
little merited, could not fail to excite public envy; and however men’s
hatred might have been suspended for a moment, while the duke’s conduct
seemed to gratify their passions and their prejudices, it was impossible
for him long to preserve the affections of the people. His influence
over the modesty of Charles exceeded even that which he had acquired
over the weakness of James; nor was any public measure conducted but
by his counsel and direction. His vehement temper prompted him to raise
suddenly, to the highest elevation, his flatterers and dependants; and
upon the least occasion of displeasure, he threw them down with equal
impetuosity and violence. Implacable in his hatred, fickle in his
friendships, all men were either regarded as his enemies, or dreaded
soon to become such. The whole power of the kingdom was grasped by his
insatiable hand; while he both engrossed the entire confidence of his
master, and held invested in his single person the most considerable
offices of the crown.

However the ill humor of the commons might have been increased by these
considerations, we are not to suppose them the sole motives. The last
parliament of James, amidst all their joy and festivity, had given him
a supply very disproportioned to his demand, and to the occasion. And as
every house of commons which was elected during forty years, succeeded
to all the passions and principles of their predecessors, we ought
rather to account for this obstinacy from the general situation of the
kingdom during that whole period, than from any circumstances which
attended this particular conjuncture.

The nation was very little accustomed at that time to the burden of
taxes, and had never opened their purses in any degree for supporting
their sovereign. Even Elizabeth, notwithstanding her vigor and
frugality, and the necessary wars in which she was engaged, had reason
to complain of the commons in this particular; nor could the authority
of that princess, which was otherwise almost absolute, ever extort from
them the requisite supplies. Habits, more than reason, we find in every
thing to be the governing principle of mankind. In this view, likewise,
the sinking of the value of subsidies must be considered as a loss to
the king. The parliament, swayed by custom, would not augment their
number in the same proportion.

The Puritanical party, though disguised, had a great authority over the
kingdom; and many of the leaders among the commons had secretly embraced
the rigid tenets of that sect. All these were disgusted with the court,
both by the prevalence of the principles of civil liberty essential to
their party, and on account of the restraint under which they were held
by the established hierarchy. In order to fortify himself against the
resentment of James, Buckingham had affected popularity, and entered
into the cabals of the Puritans: but, being secure of the confidence of
Charles, he had since abandoned this party; and on that account was
the more exposed to their hatred and resentment. Though the religious
schemes of many of the Puritans, when explained, appear pretty
frivolous, we are not thence to imagine that they were pursued by none
but persons of weak understandings. Some men of the greatest parts and
most extensive knowledge that the nation at this time produced, could
not enjoy any peace of mind, because obliged to hear prayers offered up
to the Divinity by a priest covered with a white linen vestment.

The match with France, and the articles in favor of Catholics which were
suspected to be in the treaty, were likewise causes of disgust to this
whole party: though it must be remarked, that the connections with that
crown were much less obnoxious to the Protestants, and less agreeable to
the Catholics, than the alliance formerly projected with Spain, and were
therefore received rather with pleasure than dissatisfaction.

To all these causes we must yet add another, of considerable moment. The
house of commons, we may observe, was almost entirely governed by a set
of men of the most uncommon capacity and the largest views; men who were
now formed into a regular party, and united, as well by fixed aims
and projects, as by the hardships which some of them had undergone in
prosecution of them. Among these we may mention the names of Sir Edward
Coke, Sir Edwin Sandys, Sir Robert Philips, Sir Francis Seymour, Sir
Dudley Digges, Sir John Elliot, Sir Thomas Wentworth, Mr. Selden, and
Mr. Pym. Animated with a warm regard to liberty, these generous patriots
saw with regret an unbounded power exercised by the crown, and were
resolved to seize the opportunity which the king’s necessities offered
them, of reducing the prerogative within more reasonable compass.
Though their ancestors had blindly given way to practices and precedents
favorable to kingly power, and had been able, notwithstanding, to
preserve some small remains of liberty, it would be impossible, they
thought, when all these pretensions were methodised, and prosecuted by
the increasing knowledge of the age, to maintain any shadow of popular
government, in opposition to such unlimited authority in the sovereign.
It was necessary to fix a choice; either to abandon entirely the
privileges of the people, or to secure them by firmer and more precise
barriers than the constitution had hitherto provided for them. In this
dilemma, men of such aspiring geniuses, and such independent fortunes,
could not long deliberate: they boldly embraced the side of freedom,
and resolved to grant no supplies to their necessitous prince, without
extorting concessions in favor of civil liberty. The end they esteemed
beneficent and noble; the means, regular and constitutional. To grant or
refuse supplies was the undoubted privilege of the commons. And as all
human governments, particularly those of a mixed frame, are in continual
fluctuation, it was as natural, in their opinion, and allowable, for
popular assemblies to take advantage of favorable incidents, in order
to secure the subject, as for monarchs, in order to extend their own
authority. With pleasure they beheld the king involved in a foreign war,
which rendered him every day more dependent on the parliament; while at
the same time the situation of the kingdom, even without any military
preparations, gave it sufficient security against all invasion from
foreigners. Perhaps, too, it had partly proceeded from expectations of
this nature, that the popular leaders had been so urgent for a rupture
with Spain; nor is it credible, that religious zeal could so far have
blinded all of them, as to make them discover, in such a measure, any
appearance of necessity, or any hopes of success.

But, however natural all these sentiments might appear to the country
party, it is not to be imagined that Charles would entertain the same
ideas. Strongly prejudiced in favor of the duke, whom he had heard so
highly extolled in parliament, he could not conjecture the cause of
so sudden an alteration in their opinions. And when the war which
they themselves had so earnestly solicited, was at last commenced,
the immediate desertion of their sovereign could not but seem very
unaccountable. Even though no further motive had been suspected, the
refusal of supply in such circumstances would naturally to him appear
cruel and deceitful: but when he perceived that this measure proceeded
from an intention of encroaching on his authority, he failed not to
regard these aims as highly criminal and traitorous. Those lofty ideas
of monarchical power which were very commonly adopted during that age,
and to which the ambiguous nature of the English constitution gave so
plausible an appearance, were firmly rivetted in Charles; and however
moderate his temper, the natural and unavoidable prepossessions
of self-love, joined to the late uniform precedents in favor of
prerogative, had made him regard his political tenets as certain
and uncontroverted. Taught to consider even the ancient laws and
constitution more as lines to direct his conduct, than barriers to
withstand his power; a conspiracy to erect new ramparts, in order
to straiten his authority, appeared but one degree removed from open
sedition and rebellion. So atrocious in his eyes was such a design, that
he seems even unwilling to impute it to the commons; and though he was
constrained to adjourn the parliament by reason of the plague, which at
that time raged in London, he immediately reassembled them at Oxford,
and made a new attempt to gain from them some supplies in such an urgent
necessity.

Charles now found himself obliged to depart from that delicacy which he
had formerly maintained. By himself or his ministers he entered into a
particular detail, both of the alliances which he had formed, and of the
military operations which he had projected.[*]

     * Dugdale, p. 25, 26.

He told the parliament, that, by a promise of subsidies, he had engaged
the king of Denmark to take part in the war; that this monarch intended
to enter Germany by the north, and to rouse to arms those princes who
impatiently longed for an opportunity of asserting the liberty of the
empire; that Mansfeldt had undertaken to penetrate with an English army
into the Palatinate, and by that quarter to excite the members of the
evangelical unions that the states must be supported in the unequal
warfare which they maintained with Spain; that no less a sum than seven
hundred thousand pounds a year had been found, by computation, requisite
for all these purposes; that the maintenance of the fleet, and the
defence of Ireland, demanded an annual expense of four hundred thousand
pounds; that he himself had already exhausted and anticipated, in the
public service, his whole revenue, and had scarcely left sufficient
for the daily subsistence of himself and his family;[*] that on his
accession to the crown, he found a debt of above three hundred thousand
pounds, contracted by his father in support of the palatine; and that
while prince of Wales, he had himself contracted debts, notwithstanding
his great frugality, to the amount of seventy thousand pounds, which he
had expended entirely on naval and military armaments. After mentioning
all these facts, the king even condescended to use entreaties. He said,
that this request was the first that he had ever made them: that he was
young, and in the commencement of his reign; and if he now met with kind
and dutiful usage, it would endear to him the use of parliaments, and
would forever preserve an entire harmony between him and his people.[**]

To these reasons the commons remained inexorable. Notwithstanding that
the king’s measures, on the supposition of a foreign war, which they had
constantly demanded, were altogether unexceptionable, they obstinately
refused any further aid. Some members, favorable to the court, having
insisted on an addition of two fifteenths to the former supply, even
this pittance was refused;[***] though it was known that a fleet and
army were lying at Portsmouth, in great want of pay and provisions;
and that Buckingham, the admiral, and the treasurer of the navy, had
advanced on their own credit near a hundred thousand pounds for the sea
service.[****]

     * Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 396.

     ** Rush, vol. i. p. 177, 178, etc. Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p.
     399. Franklyn, p. 108, 109. Journ. 10th Aug. 1625.

     *** Rush, vol. i. p. 190.

     **** Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 390.

Besides all their other motives, the house of commons had made a
discovery, which, as they wanted but a pretence for their refusal,
inflamed them against the court and against the duke of Buckingham. When
James deserted the Spanish alliance, and courted that of France, he had
promised to furnish Lewis, who was entirely destitute of naval force,
with one ship of war, together with seven armed vessels hired from
the merchants. These the French court had pretended they would employ
against the Genoese, who, being firm and useful allies to the Spanish
monarchy, were naturally regarded with an evil eye, both by the king of
France and of England. When these vessels, by Charles’s orders, arrived
at Dieppe, there arose a strong suspicion that they were to serve
against Rochelle. The sailors were inflamed. That race of men, who are
at present both careless and ignorant in all matters of religion, were
at that time only ignorant. They drew up a remonstrance to Pennington,
their commander, and signing all their names in a circle, lest he should
discover the ringleaders, they laid it under his prayer-book. Pennington
declared that he would rather be hanged in England for disobedience,
than fight against his brother Protestants in France. The whole squadron
sailed immediately to the Downs. There they received new orders from
Buckingham, lord admiral, to return to Dieppe. As the duke knew that
authority alone would not suffice, he employed much art and many
subtleties to engage them to obedience; and a rumor which was spread,
that peace had been concluded between the French king and the Hugonots,
assisted him in his purpose. When they arrived at Dieppe, they found
that they had been deceived. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who commanded one of
the vessels, broke through and returned to England. All the officers and
sailors of all the other ships, notwithstanding great offers made them
by the French, immediately deserted. One gunner alone preferred duty
towards his king to the cause of religion; and he was afterwards killed
in charging a cannon before Rochelle.[*] The care which historians have
taken to record this frivolous event, proves with what pleasure the news
was received by the nation.

     * Franklyn, p. 09. Rush. vol. i. p. 175, 176, etc., 325,
     326, etc.

The house of commons, when informed of these transactions, showed the
same attachment with the sailors for the Protestant religion; nor was
their zeal much better guided by reason and sound policy. It was not
considered that it was highly probable the king and the duke themselves
had here been deceived by the artifices of France, nor had they any
hostile intention against the Hugonots; that, were it otherwise yet
might their measures be justified by the most obvious and most received
maxims of civil policy; that, if the force of Spain were really so
exorbitant as the commons imagined, the French monarch was the only
prince that could oppose its progress, and preserve the balance of
Europe; that his power was at present fettered by the Hugonots, who,
being possessed of many privileges, and even of fortified towns, formed
an empire within his empire, and kept him in perpetual jealousy and
inquietude; that an insurrection had been at that time wantonly and
voluntarily formed by their leaders, who, being disgusted in some court
intrigue, took advantage of the never failing pretence of religion,
in order to cover their rebellion, that the Dutch, influenced by these
views, had ordered a squadron of twenty ships to join the French fleet
employed against the inhabitants of Rochelle;[*] that the Spanish
monarch, sensible of the same consequences, secretly supported the
Protestants in France; and that all princes had ever sacrificed to
reasons of state the interests of their religion in foreign countries.
All these obvious considerations had no influence. Great murmurs and
discontents still prevailed in parliament. The Hugonots, though they had
no ground of complaint against the French court, were thought to be as
much entitled to assistance from England, as if they had taken arms in
defence of their liberties and religion against the persecuting rage
of the Catholics. And it plainly appears from this incident, as well
as from many others, that, of all European nations, the British were
at that time, and till long after, the most under the influence of that
religious spirit which tends rather to inflame bigotry than increase
peace and mutual charity.

On this occasion, the commons renewed their eternal complaints against
the growth of Popery, which was ever the chief of their grievances, and
now their only one.[**] They demanded a strict execution of the penal
laws against the Catholics, and remonstrated against some late pardons
granted to priests.[***] They attacked Montague, one of the king’s
chaplains, on account of a moderate book which he had lately published,
and which, to their great disgust, saved virtuous Catholics, as well as
other Christians, from eternal torments.[****]

     * Journ. 18th April, 1626.

     ** Franklyn, p. 3, etc.

     *** Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 374. Journ. 1st Aug. 1625.

     **** Parl. Hist. vol. vi. p. 353 Journ. 7th July 1625.

Charles gave them a gracious and a compliant answer to all their
remonstrances. He was, however, in his heart, extremely averse to these
furious measures. Though a determined Protestant, by principle as well
as inclination, he had entertained no violent horror against Popery: and
a little humanity, he thought, was due by the nation to the religion
of their ancestors. That degree of liberty which is now indulged to
Catholics, though a party much more obnoxious than during the reign of
the Stuarts, it suited neither with Charles’s sentiments nor the humor
of the age to allow them. An abatement of the more rigorous laws was all
he intended; and his engagements with France, notwithstanding that their
regular execution had never been promised or expected, required of him
some indulgence. But so unfortunate was this prince, that no measure
embraced during his whole reign, was ever attended with more unhappy and
more fatal consequences.

The extreme rage against Popery was a sure characteristic of Puritanism.
The house of commons discovered other infallible symptoms of the
prevalence of that party. They petitioned the king for replacing
such able clergy as had been silenced for want of conformity to the
ceremonies.[*] They also enacted laws for the strict observance of
Sunday, which the Puritans affected to call the Sabbath, and which they
sanctified by the most melancholy indolence.[**] It is to be remarked,
that the different appellations of this festival were at that time known
symbols of the different parties.

The king, finding that the parliament was resolved to grant him no
supply, and would furnish him with nothing but empty protestations of
duty,[***] or disagreeable complaints of grievances, took advantage of
the plague,[****] which began to appear at Oxford, and on that pretence
immediately dissolved them. By finishing the session with a dissolution,
instead of a prorogation, he sufficiently expressed his displeasure at
their conduct.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 281.

     ** 1 Car. I. cap. 1. Journ. 21st June, 1625.

     *** Franklyn, p. 113. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 190.

     **** The plague was really so violent, that it had been
     moved in the house, at the beginning of the session, to
     petition the king to adjourn them. (Journ. 21st June, 1625.)
     So it was impossible to enter upon grievances, even if there
     had been any. The only business of the parliament was to
     give supply, which was so much wanted by the king, in order
     to carry on the war in which they had engaged him.

To supply the want of parliamentary aids, Charles issued privy seals
for borrowing money from his subjects.[*] The advantage reaped by this
expedient was a small compensation for the disgust which it occasioned.
By means, however, of that supply, and by other expedients, he was,
though with difficulty, enabled to equip his fleet. It consisted of
eighty vessels, great and small; and carried an board an army of ten
thousand men. Sir Edward Cecil, lately created Viscount Wimbleton, was
intrusted with the command. He sailed immediately for Cadiz, and found
the bay full of Spanish ships of great value. He either neglected to
attack these ships or attempted it preposterously. The army was landed,
and a fort taken; but the undisciplined soldiers, finding store of wine,
could not be restrained from the utmost excesses. Further stay appearing
fruitless, they were reëmbarked; and the fleet put to sea with an
intention of intercepting the Spanish galleons. But the plague having
seized the seamen and soldiers, they were obliged to abandon all hopes
of this prize, and return to England. Loud complaints were made against
the court for intrusting so important a command to a man like Cecil,
whom, though he possessed great experience, the people, judging by the
event, esteemed of slender capacity,[**]

{1626.} Charles, having failed of so rich a prize, was obliged again to
have recourse to a parliament. Though the ill success of his enterprises
diminished his authority, and showed every day more plainly the
imprudence of the Spanish war; though the increase of his necessities
rendered him more dependent, and more exposed to the encroachments
of the commons, he was resolved to try once more that regular and
constitutional expedient for supply. Perhaps, too, a little political
art, which at that time he practised, was much trusted to. He had named
four popular leaders, sheriffs of counties; Sir Edward Coke, Sir Robert
Philips, Sir Thomas Wentworth, and Sir Francis Seymour; and, though the
question had been formerly much contested,[***] he thought that he had
by that means incapacitated them from being elected members. But his
intention, being so evident, rather put the commons more upon their
guard. Enow of patriots still remained to keep up the ill humor of the
house; and men needed but little instruction or rhetoric to recommend to
them practices which increased their own importance and consideration.
The weakness of the court, also, could not more evidently appear, than
by its being reduced to use so ineffectual an expedient, in order to
obtain an influence over the commons.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 192. Parl. Hist, vol. vi. p. 407.

     ** Franklyn, p. 113. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 196.

     *** It is always an express clause in the writ of summons,
     that no sheriff shall be chosen; but the contrary practice
     had often prevailed D’Ewes, p. 38. Yet still great doubts
     were entertained on this head. See Journ. 9th April, 1614.

The views, therefore, of the last parliament were immediately adopted;
as if the same men had been every where elected, and no time had
intervened since their meeting. When the king laid before the house
his necessities, and asked for supply, they immediately voted him three
subsidies and three fifteenths; and though they afterwards added one
subsidy more, the sum was little proportioned to the greatness of the
occasion, and ill fitted to promote those views of success and glory,
for which the young prince, in his first enterprise, so ardently longed.
But this circumstance was not the most disagreeable one. The supply
was only voted by the commons. The passing of that vote into a law was
reserved till the end of the session.[*] A condition was thereby made,
in a very undisguised manner, with their sovereign. Under color of
redressing grievances, which during this short reign could not be very
numerous, they were to proceed in regulating and controlling every part
of government which displeased them; and if the king either cut them
short in this undertaking, or refused compliance with their demands, he
must not expect any supply from the commons. Great dissatisfaction
was expressed by Charles at a treatment which he deemed so harsh and
undutiful.[**] But his urgent necessities obliged him to submit; and he
waited with patience, observing to what side they would turn themselves.

The duke of Buckingham, formerly obnoxious to the public, became every
day more unpopular, by the symptoms which appeared both of his want
of temper and prudence, and of the uncontrolled ascendant which he had
acquired over his master.[***]

     * Journ. 27th March, 1626.

     ** Parliamentary History, vol. vi. p. 449. Rushworth, vol. i.
     p. 224.

     *** His credit with the king had given him such influence,
     that he had no less than twenty proxies granted him this
     parliament by so many peers; which occasioned a vote, that
     no peer should have above two proxies. The earl of
     Leicester, in 1585, had once ten proxies D’Ewes, p. 314.

Two violent attacks he was obliged this session to sustain, one from the
earl of Bristol, another from the house of commons.

As long as James lived, Bristol, secure of the concealed favor of that
monarch, had expressed all duty and obedience; in expectation that an
opportunity would offer of reinstating himself in his former credit and
authority. Even after Charles’s accession he despaired not. He submitted
to the king’s commands of remaining at his country seat, and of
absenting himself from parliament. Many trials he made to regain
the good opinion of his master; but finding them all fruitless, and
observing Charles to be entirely governed by Buckingham, his implacable
enemy, he resolved no longer to keep any measures with the court. A new
spirit he saw, and a new power arising in the nation; and to these he
was determined for the future to trust for his security and protection.

When the parliament was summoned, Charles, by a stretch of prerogative,
had given orders that no writ, as is customary, should be sent to
Bristol.[*] That nobleman applied to the house of lords by petition; and
craved their good offices with the king for obtaining what was his due
as a peer of the realm. His writ was sent him, but accompanied with
a letter from the lord keeper Coventry, commanding him, in the king’s
name, to absent himself from parliament. This letter Bristol conveyed
to the lords, and asked advice how to proceed in so delicate a
situation.[**] The king’s prohibition was withdrawn, and Bristol took
his seat. Provoked at these repeated instances of vigor, which the court
denominated contumacy, Charles ordered his attorney-general to enter an
accusation of high treason against him. By way of recrimination, Bristol
accused Buckingham of high treason. Both the earl’s defence of himself
and accusation of the duke remain;[***] and, together with some original
letters still extant, contain the fullest and most authentic account
of all the negotiations with the house of Austria. From the whole, the
great imprudence of the duke evidently appears, and the sway of his
ungovernable passions; but it would be difficult to collect thence any
action which, in the eye of the law, could be deemed a crime, much less
could subject him to the penalty of treason.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 236.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 237. Franklyn, p. 120, etc.

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p.[**inserted ‘.’] 256, 262, 263,
     etc. Franklyn, p. 123, etc

The impeachment of the commons was still less dangerous to the duke,
were it estimated by the standard of law and equity. The house, after
having voted, upon some queries of Dr. Turner’s, “that common fame was
a sufficient ground of accusation by the commons,”[*] proceeded to frame
regular articles against Buckingham. They accused him of having united
many offices in his person; of having bought two of them; of neglecting
to guard the seas, insomuch that many merchant ships had fallen into the
hands of the enemy; of delivering ships to the French king in order to
serve against the Hugonots; of being employed in the sale of honors and
offices; of accepting extensive grants from the crown; of procuring many
titles of honor for his kindred; and of administering physic to the late
king without acquainting his physicians. All these articles appear, from
comparing the accusation and reply, to be either frivolous or false,
or both.[**] The only charge which could be regarded as important, was,
that he had extorted a sum of ten thousand pounds from the East India
company, and that he had confiscated some goods belonging to French
merchants, on pretence of their being the property of Spanish. The
impeachment never came to a full determination; so that it is difficult
for us to give a decisive opinion with regard to these articles: but it
must be confessed that the duke’s answer in these particulars, as in all
the rest, is so clear and satisfactory, that it is impossible to refuse
our assent to it.[***] His faults and blemishes were, in many respects,
very great; but rapacity and avarice were vices with which he was
entirely unacquainted.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 217. Whitloeke, p. 5.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 306, etc., 375, etc. Journ. 25th
     March, 1626.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 7.

It is remarkable that the commons, though so much at a loss to
find articles of charge against Buckingham, never adopted Bristol’s
accusation, or impeached the duke for his conduct in the Spanish treaty,
the most blamable circumstance in his whole life. He had reason to
believe the Spaniards sincere in their professions; yet, in order to
gratify his private passions, he had hurried his master and his
country into a war pernicious to the interests of both. But so rivetted
throughout the nation were the prejudices with regard to Spanish deceit
and falsehood, that very few of the commons seem as yet to have been
convinced that they had been seduced by Buckingham’s narrative: a
certain proof that a discovery of this nature was not, as is imagined by
several historians, the cause of so sudden and surprising a variation in
the measures of the parliament.[*] [1]

While the commons were thus warmly engaged against Buckingham, the king
seemed desirous of embracing every opportunity by which he could express
a contempt and disregard for them. No one was at that time sufficiently
sensible of the great weight which the commons bore in the balance of
the constitution. The history of England had never hitherto afforded one
instance where any great movement or revolution had proceeded from
the lower house. And as their rank, both considered in a body and as
individuals, was but the second in the kingdom, nothing less than fatal
experience could engage the English princes to pay a due regard to the
inclinations of that formidable assembly.

The earl of Suffolk, chancellor of the university of Cambridge, dying
about this time, Buckingham, though lying under impeachment was yet, by
means of court interest, chosen in his place. The commons resented and
loudly complained of this affront; and the more to enrage them, the king
himself wrote a letter to the university, extolling the duke, and giving
them thanks for his election.[**]

The lord keeper, in the king’s name, expressly commanded the house not
to meddle with his minister and servant, Buckingham; and ordered them to
finish, in a few days, the bill which they had begun for the subsidies,
and to make some addition to them; otherwise they must not expect to sit
any longer.[***] And though these harsh commands were endeavored to
be explained and mollified, a few days after, by a speech of
Buckingham’s,[****] they failed not to leave a disagreeable impression
behind them.

     * See note A, at the end of the volume.

     ** Rush worth, vol. i. p. 371.

     *** Parliament. Hist. vol. vi. p. 444.

     **** Parliament. Hist. vol. vi. p 451. Rushworth. vol. i. p.
     225. Franklyn, p. 118.

Besides a more stately style which Charles in general affected to
this parliament than to the last, he went so far, in a message, as to
threaten the commons that, if they did not furnish him with supplies, he
should be obliged to try new “counsels.” This language was sufficiently
clear: yet lest any ambiguity should remain, Sir Dudley Carleton,
vice-chamberlain, took care to explain it. “I pray you, consider,” said
he, “what these new counsels are, or may be. I fear to declare those
that I conceive. In all Christian kingdoms, you know that parliaments
were in use anciently, by which those kingdoms were governed in a most
flourishing manner; until the monarchs began to know their own strength,
and seeing the turbulent spirit of their parliaments, at length they,
by little and little, began to stand on their prerogatives, and at last
overthrew the parliaments, throughout Christendom, except here only
with us. Let us be careful then to preserve the king’s good opinion of
parliaments, which bringeth such happiness to this nation, and makes us
envied of all others, while there is this sweetness between his majesty
and the commons; lest we lose the repute of a free people by our
turbulency in parliament.”[*] These imprudent suggestions rather gave
warning than struck terror. A precarious liberty, the commons thought,
which was to be preserved by unlimited complaisance, was no liberty
at all. And it was necessary, while yet in their power, to secure the
constitution by such invincible barriers, that no king or minister
should ever, for the future, dare to speak such a language to any
parliament, or even entertain such a project against them.

Two members of the house, Sir Dudley Digges and Sir John Elliot, who
had been employed as managers of the impeachment against the duke, were
thrown into prison.[**] The commons immediately declared, that they
would proceed no further upon business till they had satisfaction
in their privileges. Charles alleged, as the reason of this measure,
certain seditious expressions, which, he said, had, in their accusation
of the duke, dropped from these members. Upon inquiry, it appeared that
no such expressions had been used.[***] The members were released; and
the king reaped no other benefit from this attempt than to exasperate
the house still, and to show some degree of precipitancy and
indiscretion.

Moved by this example, the house of peers were roused from their
inactivity; and claimed liberty for the earl of Arundel, who had been
lately confined in the Tower. After many fruitless evasions, the king,
though somewhat ungracefully, was at last obliged to comply.[****] And
in this incident it sufficiently appeared, that the lords, how little
soever inclined to popular courses, were not wanting in a just sense of
their own dignity.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 359. Whitlocke, p. 6.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 356.

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 358, 361. Franklyn, p. 180.

     **** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 363, 364, etc. Franklyn, p. 181.

The ill humor of the commons, thus wantonly irritated by the court, and
finding no gratification in the legal impeachment of Buckingham, sought
other objects on which it might exert itself. The never-failing cry of
Popery here served them in stead. They again claimed the execution of
the penal laws against Catholics; and they presented to the king a list
of persons intrusted with offices, most of them insignificant who were
either convicted or suspected recusants.[*] In this particular they had,
perhaps, some reason to blame the king’s conduct. He had promised to the
last house of commons a redress of this religious grievance: but he was
apt, in imitation of his father, to imagine that the parliament, when
they failed of supplying his necessities, had, on their part, freed him
from the obligation of a strict performance. A new odium, likewise, by
these representations, was attempted to be thrown upon Buckingham. His
mother, who had great influence over him, was a professed Catholic; his
wife was not free from suspicion: and the indulgence given to Catholics
was of course supposed to proceed entirely from his credit and
authority. So violent was the bigotry of the times, that it was thought
a sufficient reason for disqualifying any one from holding an office,
that his wife, or relations, or companions were Papists, though he
himself were a conformist.[**]

It is remarkable, that persecution was here chiefly pushed on by laymen;
and that the church was willing to have granted more liberty than would
be allowed by the commons. The reconciling doctrines, likewise, of
Montague failed not anew to meet with severe censures from that zealous
assembly.[***]

     * Franklyn, p. 195. Rushworth.

     ** See the list in Franklyn and Rushworth.

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 209.

The next attack made by the commons, had it prevailed, would have proved
decisive. They were preparing a remonstranace against the levying
of tonnage and poundage without consent of parliament. This article,
together with the new impositions laid on merchandise by James,
constituted near half of the crown revenues; and by depriving the king
of these resources, they would have reduced him to total subjection
and dependence. While they retained such a pledge, besides the supply
already promised, they were sure that nothing could be refused them.
Though, after canvassing the matter near three ninths, they found
themselves utterly incapable of fixing any legal crime upon the duke,
they regarded him as an unable, and perhaps a dangerous minister;
and they intended to present a petition, which would then have been
equivalent to a command, for removing him from his majesty’s person and
councils.[*]

The king was alarmed at the yoke which he saw prepared for him.
Buckingham’s sole guilt, he thought, was the being his friend and
favorite.[**]

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 400 Franklyn, p. 199.

     ** Franklyn, p. 178.

All the other complaints against him were mere pretences. A little
before, he was the idol of the people. No new crime had since been
discovered. After the most diligent inquiry, prompted by the greatest
malice, the smallest appearance of guilt could not be fixed upon him.
What idea, he asked, must all mankind entertain of his honor, should he
sacrifice his innocent friend to pecuniary considerations? What further
authority should he retain in the nation, were he capable, in the
beginning of his reign, to give, in so signal an instance, such matter
of triumph to his enemies, and discouragement to his adherents? To-day
the commons pretend to wrest his minister from him: to-morrow they
will attack some branch of his prerogative. By their remonstrances, and
promises, and protestations, they had engaged the crown in a war.
As soon as they saw a retreat impossible, without waiting for new
incidents, without covering themselves with new pretences, they
immediately deserted him, and refused him all reasonable supply. It
was evident, that they desired nothing so much as to see him plunged in
inextricable difficulties, of which they intended to take advantage. To
such deep perfidy, to such unbounded usurpations, it was necessary to
oppose a proper firmness and resolution. All encroachments on supreme
power could only be resisted successfully on the first attempt. The
sovereign authority was, with some difficulty, reduced from its ancient
and legal height, but when once pushed downwards, it soon became
contemptible, and would easily, by the continuance of the same effort,
now encouraged by success, be carried to the lowest extremity.

Prompted by these plausible motives, Charles was determined immediately
to dissolve the parliament. When this resolution was known, the house
of peers, whose compliant behavior entitled them to some authority with
him, endeavored to interpose;[*] and they petitioned him, that he would
allow the parliament to sit some time longer. “Not a moment longer,”
 cried the king hastily;[**] and he soon after ended the session by a
dissolution.

As this measure was foreseen, the commons took care to finish and
disperse their remonstrance, which they intended as a justification of
their conduct to the people. The king likewise, on his part, published
a declaration, in which he gave the reasons of his disagreement with
the parliament, and of their sudden dissolution, before they had time to
conclude any one act.[***] These papers furnished the partisans on
both sides with ample matter of apology or of recrimination. But all
impartial men judged, “that the commons, though they had not as yet
violated any law, yet, by their unpliableness and independence, were
insensibly changing, perhaps improving, the spirit and genius, while
they preserved the form of the constitution and that the king was acting
altogether without any plan; running on in a road surrounded on all
sides with the most dangerous precipices, and concerting no proper
measures, either for submitting to the obstinacy of the commons, or for
subduing it.”

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 398.

     ** Sanderson’s Life of Charles I., p. 58.

     *** Franklyn, p. 203, etc Parliament. Hist. vol. vii p. 300

After a breach with the parliament, which seemed so difficult to repair,
the only rational counsel which Charles could pursue, was immediately to
conclude a peace with Spain, and to render himself, as far as possible,
independent of his people, who discovered so little inclination to
support him, or rather who seemed to have formed a determined resolution
to abridge his authority. Nothing could be more easy in the execution
than this measure, nor more agreeable to his own and to national
interest. But, besides the treaties and engagements which he had entered
into with Holland and Denmark, the king’s thoughts were at this time
averse to pacific counsels. There are two circumstances in Charles’s
character, seemingly incompatible, which attended him during the whole
course of his reign, and were in part the cause of his misfortunes: he
was very steady, and even obstinate in his purpose; and he was easily
governed, by reason of his facility, and of his deference to men much
inferior to himself both in morals and understanding. His great ends
he inflexibly maintained; but the means of attaining them he readily
received from his ministers and favorites, though not always fortunate
in his choice. The violent, impetuous Buckingham, inflamed with a desire
of revenge for injuries which he himself had committed, and animated
with a love of glory which he had not talents to merit, had at
this time, notwithstanding his profuse licentious life, acquired an
invincible ascendant over the virtuous and gentle temper of the king.

The “new counsels,” which Charles had mentioned to the parliament, were
now to be tried, in order to supply his necessities. Had he possessed
any military force on which he could rely, it is not improbable, that
he had at once taken off the mask, and governed without any regard to
parliamentary privileges: so high an idea had he received of kingly
prerogative, and so contemptible a notion of the rights of those popular
assemblies, from which, he very naturally thought, he had met with such
ill usage. But his army was new levied, ill paid, and worse disciplined;
nowise superior to the militia, who were much more numerous, and who
were in a great measure under the influence of the country gentlemen.
It behoved him, therefore, to proceed cautiously, and to cover his
enterprises under the pretence of ancient precedents, which, considering
the great authority commonly enjoyed by his predecessors, could not be
wanting to him.

A commission was openly granted to compound with the Catholics, and
agree for dispensing with the penal laws enacted against them.[*] By
this expedient, the king both filled his coffers, and gratified his
inclination of giving indulgence to these religionists; but he could
not have employed any branch of prerogative which would have been
more disagreeable, or would have appeared more exceptionable to his
Protestant subjects.

From the nobility he desired assistance: from the city he required a
loan of one hundred thousand pounds. The former contributed slowly; but
the latter, covering themselves under many pretences and excuses, gave
him at last a flat refusal.[**]

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 413. Whitlocke, p. 7.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 415. Franklyn, p. 206.

In order to equip a fleet, a distribution, by order of council, was
made to all the maritime towns; and each of them was required, with
the assistance of the adjacent counties, to arm so many vessels as were
appointed them.[*] The city of London was rated at twenty ships. This
is the first appearance, in Charles’s reign, of ship-money; a taxation
which had once been imposed by Elizabeth, but which afterwards, when
carried some steps further by Charles, created such violent discontents.

Of some, loans were required:[**] to others the way of benevolence was
proposed: methods supported by precedent, but always invidious, even in
times more submissive and compliant. In the most absolute governments,
such expedients would be regarded as irregular and unequal.

These counsels for supply were conducted with some moderation; till news
arrived, that a great battle was fought between the king of Denmark
and Count Tilly, the imperial general; in which the former was totally
defeated. Money now more than ever, became necessary, in order to repair
so great a breach in the alliance, and to support a prince who was so
nearly allied to Charles, and who had been engaged in the war chiefly by
the intrigues, solicitations, and promises of the English monarch. After
some deliberation, an act of council was passed, importing, that as the
urgency of affairs admitted not the way of parliament, the most speedy,
equal, and convenient method of supply was by a “general loan” from the
subject, according as every man was assessed in the rolls of the last
subsidy. That precise sum was required which each would have paid, had
the vote of four subsidies passed into a law: but care was taken
to inform the people, that the sums exacted were not to be called
subsidies, but loans.[***] Had any doubt remained, whether forced loans,
however authorized by precedent, and even by statute, were a violation
of liberty, and must, by necessary consequence, render all parliaments
superfluous, this was the proper expedient for opening the eyes of the
whole nation. The example of Henry VIII., who had once, in his arbitrary
reign, practiced a like method of levying a regular supply, was
generally deemed a very insufficient authority.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 415.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 416.

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 418. Whitlocke, p. 8.

The commissioners appointed to levy these loans, among other articles
of secret instruction, were enjoined, “If any shall refuse to lend, and
shall make delays or excuses, and persist in his obstinacy, that they
examine him upon oath, whether he has been dealt with to deny or refuse
to lend, or make an [excuse] for not lending? Who has dealt with him,
and what speeches or persuasions were used to that purpose? And that
they also shall charge every such person, in his majesty’s name, upon
his allegiance, not to disclose to any one what his answer was.”[*] So
violent an inquisitorial power, so impracticable an attempt at secrecy,
were the objects of indignation, and even, in some degree, of ridicule.

That religious prejudices might support civil authority, sermons were
preached by Sibthorpe and Manwaring, in favor of the general loan; and
the court industriously spread them over the kingdom. Passive obedience
was there recommended in its full extent, the whole authority of
the state was represented as belonging to the king alone, and all
limitations of law and a constitution were rejected as seditious and
impious.[**] So openly was this doctrine espoused by the court, that
Archbishop Abbot, a popular and virtuous prelate, was, because he
refused to license Sibthorpe’s sermon, suspended from the exercise of
his office, banished from London, and confined to one of his country
seats.[***] Abbot’s principles of liberty, and his opposition to
Buckingham, had always rendered him very ungracious at court, and had
acquired him the character of a Puritan. For it is remarkable, that
this party made the privileges of the nation as much a part of their
religion, as the church party did the prerogatives of the crown: and
nothing tended further to recommend among the people, who always take
opinions in the lump, the whole system and all the principles of the
former sect. The king soon found by fatal experience, that this
engine of religion, which with so little necessity was introduced into
politics, falling under more fortunate management, was played with the
most terrible success against him.

While the king, instigated by anger and necessity, thus employed the
whole extent of his prerogative, the spirit of the people was far from
being subdued. Throughout England, many refused these loans; some were
even active in encouraging their neighbors to insist upon their common
rights and privileges. By warrant of the council, these were thrown into
prison.[****]

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 419. Franklyn, p. 207.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 422. Franklyn, p. 208.

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 431.

     **** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 429. Franklyn, p. 210.

Most of them with patience submitted to confinement, or applied by
petition to the king, who commonly released them. Five gentlemen
alone, Sir Thomas Darnel, Sir John Corbet, Sir Walter Earl, Sir John
Heveningham, and Sir Edmond Hambden, had spirit enough, at their own
hazard and expense, to defend the public liberties, and to demand
releasement, not as a favor from the court, but as their due, by the
laws of their country.[*] No particular cause was assigned of their
commitment. The special command alone of the king and council was
pleaded. And it was asserted, that, by law, this was not sufficient
reason for refusing bail or releasement to the prisoners.

[Illustration: 1-623-hampden.jpg Sir Edmond Hambden]

This question was brought to a solemn trial, before the king’s bench;
and the whole kingdom was attentive to the issue of a cause which was of
much greater consequence than the event of many battles.

By the debates on this subject, it appeared, beyond controversy, to the
nation, that their ancestors had been so jealous of personal liberty,
as to secure it against arbitrary power in the crown, by six[**] several
statutes, and by an article[***] of the Great Charter itself, the
most sacred foundation of the laws and constitution. But the kings of
England, who had not been able to prevent the enacting of these laws,
had sufficient authority, when the tide of liberty was spent, to
obstruct their regular execution; and they deemed it superfluous
to attempt the formal repeal of statutes which they found so many
expedients and pretences to elude.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 458. Franklyn, p. 224. Whitlocke, p.
     8.

     ** 25 Edw. III. cap. 4. 28 Edw. III. cap, 3. 37 Edw. III.
     cap. 18 88 Edw. III. cap. 9 42 Edw. III. cap. 3. 1 Richard
     II. cap. 12.

     *** Chap. 29

Turbulent and seditious times frequently occurred, when the safety of
the people absolutely required the confinement of factious leaders;
and by the genius of the old constitution, the prince, of himself,
was accustomed to assume every branch of prerogative which was found
necessary for the preservation of public peace and of his own authority.
Expediency, at other times, would cover itself under the appearance of
necessity; and, in proportion as precedents multiplied, the will alone
of the sovereign was sufficient to supply the place of expediency, of
which he constituted himself the sole judge. In an age and nation where
the power of a turbulent nobility prevailed, and where the king had no
settled military force, the only means that could maintain public peace,
was the exertion of such prompt and discretionary powers in the crown;
and the public itself had become so sensible of the necessity, that
those ancient laws in favor of personal liberty, while often violated,
had never been challenged or revived during the course of near three
centuries. Though rebellious subjects had frequently, in the open field,
resisted the king’s authority, no person had been found so bold, while
confined and at mercy, as to set himself in opposition to regal power,
and to claim the protection of the constitution against the will of
the sovereign. It was not till this age, when the spirit of liberty
was universally diffused, when the principles of government were nearly
reduced to a system, when the tempers of men, more civilized, seemed
less to require those violent exertions of prerogative, that these five
gentlemen above mentioned, by a noble effort, ventured, in this national
cause, to bring the question to a final determination. And the king was
astonished to observe, that a power exercised by his predecessors almost
without interruption, was found, upon trial, to be directly opposite to
the clearest laws, and supported by few undoubted precedents in courts
of judicature. These had scarcely in any instance refused bail upon
commitments by special command of the king, because the persons
committed had seldom or never dared to demand it, at least to insist on
their demand.

{1627.} Sir Randolf Crew, chief justice, had been displaced, as
unfit for the purposes of the court: Sir Nicholas Hyde, esteemed more
obsequious, had obtained that high office: yet the judges, by his
direction, went no further than to remand the gentlemen to prison, and
refuse the bail which was offered.[*] Heathe, the attorney-general,
insisted that the court, in imitation of the judges in the thirty-fourth
of Elizabeth,[**] should enter a general judgment, that no bail could
be granted upon a commitment by the king or council.[***] But the judges
wisely declined complying. The nation, they saw, was already to the last
degree exasperated. In the present disposition of men’s minds, universal
complaints prevailed, as if the kingdom were reduced to slavery. And
the most invidious prerogative of the crown, it was said, that of
imprisoning the subject, is here openly, and solemnly, and in numerous
instances, exercised for the most invidious purpose; in order to extort
loans, or rather subsidies, without consent of parliament.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 462.

     ** State Trials, vol. vii. p. 147.

     *** State Trials, vol. vii. p. 161.

But this was not the only hardship of which the nation thought they had
reason to complain. The army which had made the fruitless expedition to
Cadiz, was dispersed throughout the kingdom; and money was levied upon
the counties for the payment of their quarters.[*]

The soldiers were billeted upon private houses, contrary to custom,
which required that, in all ordinary cases, they should be quartered in
inns and public houses.[**]

Those who had refused or delayed the loan, were sure to be loaded with a
great number of these dangerous and disorderly guests.

Many too, of low condition, who had shown a refractory disposition, were
pressed into the service, and enlisted in the fleet or army,[***] Sir
Peter Hayman, for the same reason, was despatched on an errand to the
Palatinate.[****] Glanville, an eminent lawyer, had been obliged,
during the former interval of parliament, to accept of an office in the
navy.[v]

The soldiers, ill paid and undisciplined, committed many crimes and
outrages, and much increased the public discontents. To prevent these
disorders, martial law, so requisite to the support of discipline, was
exercised upon the soldiers. By a contradiction which is natural when
the people are exasperated, the outrages of the army were complained
of; the remedy was thought still more intolerable.[v*] Though the
expediency, if we are not rather to say the necessity, of martial law
had formerly been deemed of itself a sufficient ground for establishing
it, men, now become more jealous of liberty, and more refined reasoners
in questions of government, regarded as illegal and arbitrary every
exercise of authority which was not supported by express statute or
uninterrupted precedent.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 419.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 419.

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 422.

     **** Rushworth, vol i. p. 481.

     v    Parl. Hist. vol. vii. p. 310.

     v**  Rushworth, vol. i. p. 419. Whitlocke, p. 7.

It may safely be affirmed, that, except a few courtiers or
ecclesiastics, all men were displeased with this high exertion of
prerogative, and this new spirit of administration. Though ancient
precedents were pleaded in favor of the king’s measures, a considerable
difference, upon comparison, was observed between the cases. Acts of
power, however irregular, might casually, and at intervals, be exercised
by a prince, for the sake of despatch or expediency, and yet liberty
still subsist in some tolerable degree under his administration.
But where all these were reduced into a system, were exerted without
interruption, were studiously sought for, in order to supply the
place of laws, and subdue the refractory spirit of the nation, it was
necessary to find some speedy remedy, or finally to abandon all hopes of
preserving the freedom of the constitution. Nor did moderate men esteem
the provocation which the king had received, though great, sufficient
to warrant all these violent measures. The commons as yet had nowise
invaded his authority: they had only exercised, as best pleased them,
their own privileges. Was he justifiable, because from one house of
parliament he had met with harsh and unkind treatment, to make, in
revenge, an invasion on the rights and liberties of the whole nation?

But great was at this time the surprise of all men, when Charles,
baffled in every attempt against the Austrian dominions, embroiled with
his own subjects, unsupplied with any treasure but what he extorted
by the most invidious and most dangerous measures; as if the half of
Europe, now his enemy, were not sufficient for the exercise of military
prowess; wantonly attacked France, the other great kingdom in his
neighborhood, and engaged at once in war against these two powers, whose
interests were hitherto deemed so incompatible that they could never,
it was thought, agree either in the same friendships or enmities. All
authentic memoirs, both foreign and domestic, ascribe to Buckingham’s
counsels this war with France, and represent him as actuated by motives
which would appear incredible, were we not acquainted with the violence
and temerity of his character.

The three great monarchies of Europe were at this time ruled by young
princes, Philip, Louis, and Charles, who were nearly of the same
age, and who had resigned the government of themselves, and of their
kingdoms, to their creatures and ministers, Olivarez, Richelieu, and
Buckingham. The people, whom the moderate temper or narrow genius of
their princes would have allowed to remain forever in tranquillity, were
strongly agitated by the emulation and jealousy of the ministers. Above
all, the towering spirit of Richelieu, incapable of rest, promised an
active age, and gave indications of great revolutions throughout all
Europe.

This man had no sooner, by suppleness and intrigue, gotten possession of
the reins of government, than he formed at once three mighty projects;
to subdue the turbulent spirits of the great, to reduce the rebellious
Hugonots, and to curb the encroaching power of the house of Austria.
Undaunted and implacable, prudent and active, he braved all the
opposition of the French princes and nobles in the prosecution of his
vengeance; he discovered and dissipated all their secret cabals and
conspiracies. His sovereign himself he held in subjection, while
he exalted the throne. The people, while they lost their liberties,
acquired, by means of his administration, learning, order, discipline,
and renown. That confused and inaccurate genius of government, of which
France partook in common with other European kingdoms, he changed into
a simple monarchy; at the very time when the incapacity of Buckingham
encouraged the free spirit of the commons to establish in England a
regular system of liberty.

However unequal the comparison between these ministers, Buckingham had
entertained a mighty jealousy against Richelieu; a jealousy not founded
on rivalship of power and politics, but of love and gallantry; where the
duke was as much superior to the cardinal, as he was inferior in every
other particular.

At the time when Charles married by proxy the princess Henrietta,
the duke of Buckingham had been sent to France, in order to grace the
nuptials, and conduct the new queen into England. The eyes of the French
court were directed by curiosity towards that man who had enjoyed the
unlimited favor of two successive monarchs, and who, from a private
station, had mounted, in the earliest youth, to the absolute government
of three kingdoms. The beauty of his person, the gracefulness of his
air, the splendor of his equipage, his fine taste in dress, festivals,
and carousals, corresponded to the prepossessions entertained in his
favor: the affability of his behavior, the gayety of his manners,
the magnificence of his expense, increased still further the general
admiration which was paid him. All business being already concerted, the
time was entirely spent in mirth and entertainments; and during those
splendid scenes among that gay people, the duke found himself in a
situation where he was perfectly qualified to excel.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 38.

But his great success at Paris proved as fatal as his former failure
at Madrid. Encouraged by the smiles of the court, he dared to carry
his ambitious addresses to the queen herself; and he failed not to
make impression on a heart not undisposed to the tender passions. That
attachment at least of the mind, which appears so delicious, and is so
dangerous, seems to have been encouraged by the princess; and the
duke presumed so far on her good graces, that, after his departure, he
secretly returned upon some pretence, and, paying a visit to the queen,
was dismissed with a reproof which savored more of kindness than of
anger.[*]

Information of this correspondence was soon carried to Richelieu. The
vigilance of that minister was here further roused by jealousy. He, too,
either from vanity or politics, had ventured to pay his addresses to
the queen. But a priest, past middle age, of a severe character, and
occupied in the most extensive plans of ambition or vengeance, was
but an unequal match, in that contest, for a young courtier, entirely
disposed to gayety and gallantry. The cardinal’s disappointment strongly
inclined him to counterwork the amorous projects of his rival. When the
duke was making preparations for a new embassy to Paris, a message was
sent him from Louis, that he must not think of such a journey. In a
romantic passion he swore, “That he would see the queen, in spite of
all the power of France;” and, from that moment, he determined to engage
England in a war with that kingdom.[**]

He first took advantage of some quarrels excited by the queen of
England’s attendants; and he persuaded Charles to dismiss at once
all her French servants, contrary to the articles of the marriage
treaty.[***] He encouraged the English ships of war and privateers to
seize vessels belonging to French merchants; and these he forthwith
condemned as prizes, by a sentence of the court of admiralty. But
finding that all these injuries produced only remonstrances and
embassies, or at most reprisals, on the part of France, he resolved to
second the intrigues of the duke of Soubize, and to undertake at once a
military expedition against that kingdom.

     * Mémoires de Mad. de Motteville.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 38

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 423, 424.

Soubize, who, with his brother, the duke of Rohan, was the leader of
the Hugonot faction, was at that time in London, and strongly solicited
Charles to embrace the protection of these distressed religionists. He
represented, that after the inhabitants of Rochelle had been repressed
by the combined squadrons of England and Holland, after peace was
concluded with the French king under Charles’s mediation, the ambitious
cardinal was still meditating the destruction of the Hugonots: that
preparations were silently making in every province of France for the
suppression of their religion; that forts were erected in order to
bridle Rochelle, the most considerable bulwark of the Protestants; that
the reformed in France cast their eyes on Charles as the head of their
faith, and considered him as a prince engaged by interest, as well as
inclination, to support them; that so long as their party subsisted,
Charles might rely on their attachment as much as on that of his own
subjects; but if their liberties were once ravished from them, the power
of France, freed from this impediment, would soon become formidable to
England, and to all the neighboring nations.

Though Charles probably bore but small favor to the Hugonots, who so
much resembled the Puritans in discipline and worship, in religion
and politics, he yet allowed himself to be gained by these arguments,
enforced by the solicitations of Buckingham. A fleet of a hundred sail,
and an army of seven thousand men, were fitted out for the invasion of
France, and both of them intrusted to the command of the duke, who
was altogether unacquainted both with land and sea service. The fleet
appeared before Rochelle; but so ill concerted were Buckingham’s
measures, that the inhabitants of that city shut their gates and refused
to admit allies of whose coming they were not previously informed.[*]
All his military operations showed equal incapacity and inexperience.
Instead of attacking Oleron, a fertile island, and defenceless, he bent
his course to the Isle of Rhé, which was well garrisoned and fortified:
having landed his men, though with some loss, he followed not the blow,
but allowed Toiras, the French governor, five days’ respite, during
which St. Martin was victualled and provided for a siege.[**]

     * Rushworth, vol i. p. 426.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 8. Sir Philip Warwick, p. 25.

He left behind him the small fort of Prie, which could at first have
made no manner of resistance: though resolved to starve St. Martin, he
guarded the sea negligently, and allowed provisions and ammunition to
be thrown into it: despairing to reduce it by famine, he attacked it
without having made any breach, and rashly threw away the lives of
the soldiers: having found that a French army had stolen over in small
divisions, and had landed at Prie, the fort which he had at first
overlooked, he began to think of a retreat; but made it so unskilfully,
that it was equivalent to a total rout; he was the last of the army that
embarked; and he returned to England, having lost two thirds of his
land forces; totally discredited both as an admiral and a general; and
bringing no praise with him, but the vulgar one of courage and personal
bravery.

The duke of Rohan, who had taken arms as soon as Buckingham appeared
upon the coast, discovered the dangerous spirit of the sect, without
being able to do any mischief; the inhabitants of Rochelle, who had at
last been induced to join the English, hastened the vengeance of their
master, exhausted their provisions in supplying their allies, and were
threatened with an immediate siege. Such were the fruits of Buckingham’s
expedition against France.



CHAPTER LI.



CHARLES I.

{1628.} There was reason to apprehend some disorder or insurrection
from the discontents which prevailed among the people in England.
Their liberties, they believed, were ravished from them; illegal taxes
extorted; their commerce which had met with a severe check from the
Spanish, was totally annihilated by the French war; those military
honors transmitted to them from their ancestors, had received a grievous
stain by two unsuccessful and ill-conducted expeditions; scarce an
illustrious family but mourned, from the last of them, the loss of a
son or brother; greater calamities were dreaded from the war with these
powerful monarchies, concurring with the internal disorders under which
the nation labored. And these ills were ascribed, not to the refractory
disposition of the two former parliaments, to which they were partly
owing, but solely to Charles’s obstinacy in adhering to the counsels of
Buckingham, a man nowise entitled by his birth, age, services, or merit,
to that unlimited confidence reposed in him. To be sacrificed to the
interest, policy, and ambition of the great, is so much the common lot
of the people, that they may appear unreasonable who would pretend to
complain of it: but to be the victim of the frivolous gallantry of a
favorite, and of his boyish caprices, seemed the object of peculiar
indignation.

In this situation, it may be imagined the king and the duke dreaded,
above all things, the assembling of a parliament; but so little
foresight had they possessed in their enterprising schemes, that
they found themselves under an absolute necessity of embracing that
expedient. The money levied, or rather extorted, under color of
prerogative, had come in very slowly, and had left such ill humor in the
nation, that it appeared dangerous to renew the experiment. The absolute
necessity of supply, it was hoped, would engage the commons to forget
all past injuries; and, having experienced the ill effects of former
obstinacy, they would probably assemble with a resolution of making some
reasonable compliances. The more to soften them, it was concerted,
by Sir Robert Cotton’s advice,[*] that Buckingham should be the first
person that proposed in council the calling of a new parliament.
Having laid in this stock of merit, he expected that all his former
misdemeanors would be overlooked and forgiven; and that, instead of a
tyrant and oppressor, he should be regarded as the first patriot in the
nation.

The views of the popular leaders were much more judicious and profound.
When the commons assembled, they appeared to be men of the same
independent spirit with their predecessors, and possessed of such
riches, that their property was computed to surpass three times that
of the house of peers;[**] they were deputed by boroughs and counties,
inflamed all of them by the late violations of liberty; many of the
members themselves had been cast into prison, and had suffered by the
measures of the court; yet, notwithstanding these circumstances, which
might prompt them to embrace violent resolutions, they entered upon
business with perfect temper and decorum. They considered that the king,
disgusted at these popular assemblies, and little prepossessed in favor
of their privileges, wanted but a fair pretence for breaking with them,
and would seize the first opportunity offered by any incident, or any
undutiful behavior of the members. He fairly told them in his first
speech, that, “If they should not do their duties in contributing to the
necessities of the state, he must, in discharge of his conscience, use
those other means which God had put into his hands, in order to save
that which the follies of some particular men may otherwise put in
danger. Take not this for a threatening,” added the king, “for I scorn
to threaten any but my equals; but as an admonition from him who,
by nature and duty, has most care of your preservation and
prosperity.”[***] The lord keeper, by the king’s direction, subjoined,
“This way of parliamentary supplies as his majesty told you, he hath
chosen, not as the only way, but as the fittest; not because he is
destitute of others, but because it is most agreeable to the goodness
of his own most gracious disposition, and to the desire and weal of his
people. If this be deferred, necessity and the sword of the enemy make
way for the others. Remember his majesty’s admonition. I say, remember
it.”[****]

     * Franklyn, p. 230.

     ** Sanderson, p. 106. Walker, p. 339

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 477. Franklyn, p. 233.

     **** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 479. Franklyn, p. 234

From these avowed maxims, the commons foresaw that, if the least handle
were afforded, the king would immediately dissolve them, and would
thenceforward deem himself justified for violating, in a manner still
more open, all the ancient forms of the constitution. No remedy could
then be looked for but from insurrections and civil war, of which the
issue would be extremely uncertain, and which must, in all events,
prove calamitous to the nation. To correct the late disorders in the
administration required some new laws, which would, no doubt, appear
harsh to a prince so enamored of his prerogative; and it was requisite
to temper, by the decency and moderation of their debates, the rigor
which must necessarily attend their determinations. Nothing can give us
a higher idea of the capacity of those men who now guided the commons,
and of the great authority which they had acquired, than the forming and
executing of so judicious and so difficult a plan of operations.

The decency, however, which the popular leaders had prescribed to
themselves, and recommended to others, hindered them not from making the
loudest and most vigorous complaints against the grievances under which
the nation had lately labored. Sir Francis Seymour said, “This is the
great council of the kingdom; and here with certainty, if not here only,
his majesty may see, as in a true glass, the state of the kingdom. We
are called hither by his writs, in order to give him faithful counsel;
such as may stand with his honor: and this we must do without flattery.
We are also sent hither by the people, in order to deliver their just
grievances: and this we must do without fear. Let us not act like
Cambyses’s judges, who, when their approbation was demanded by the
prince to some illegal measure, said, that ‘Though there was a written
law, the Persian kings might follow their own will and pleasure.’ This
was base flattery, fitter for our reproof than our imitation; and as
fear, so flattery, taketh away the judgment. For my part, I shall shun
both; and speak my mind with as much duty as any man to his majesty,
without neglecting the public.

“But how can we express our affections while we retain our fears; or
speak of giving, till we know whether we have any thing to give? For if
his majesty may be persuaded to take what he will, what need we give?

“That this hath been done, appeareth by the billeting of soldiers, a
thing nowise advantageous to the king’s service, and a burden to the
commonwealth: by the imprisonment of gentlemen for refusing the loan,
who, if they had done the contrary for fear, had been as blamable as the
projector of that oppressive measure. To countenance these proceedings,
hath it not been preached in the pulpit, or rather prated, that ‘All we
have is the king’s by divine right’? But when preachers forsake their
own calling, and turn ignorant statesmen, we see how willing they are to
exchange a good conscience for a bishopric.

“He, I must confess, is no good subject, who would not willingly and
cheerfully lay down his life, when that sacrifice may promote the
interests of his sovereign, and the good of the commonwealth. But he is
not a good subject, he is a slave, who will allow his goods to be taken
from him against his will, and his liberty against the laws of the
kingdom. By opposing these practices, we shall but tread in the steps
of our forefathers, who still preferred the public before their private
interest, nay, before their very lives. It will in us be a wrong done
to ourselves, to our posterities, to our consciences, if we forego this
claim and pretension.”[*]

     * Franklyn p. 243. Rushworth, vol. i, p. 499.

“I read of a custom,” said Sir Robert Philips, “among the old Romans,
that once every year they held a solemn festival, in which their slaves
had liberty, without exception, to speak what they pleased, in order to
ease their afflicted minds; and, on the conclusion of the festival, the
slaves severally returned to their former servitudes.

“This institution may, with some distinction, well set forth our present
state and condition. After the revolution of some time, and the grievous
sufferance of many violent oppressions, we have now at last, as those
slaves, obtained, for a day, some liberty of speech; but shall not, I
trust, be hereafter slaves: for we are born free. Yet what new illegal
burdens our estates and persons have groaned under, my heart yearns to
think of, my tongue falters to utter.----

“The grievances by which we are oppressed, I draw under two heads; acts
of power against law, and the judgments of lawyers against our liberty.”

Having mentioned three illegal judgments passed within his memory; that
by which the Scots, born after James’s accession, were admitted to all
the privileges of English subjects;[** semi-colon inserted, not in scan]
that by which the new impositions had been warranted; and the late one,
by which arbitrary imprisonments were authorized; he thus proceeded:--

“I can live, though another, who has no right, be put to live along with
me; nay, I can live, though burdened with impositions beyond what at
present I labor under: but to have my liberty, which is the soul of
my life, ravished from me to have my person pent up in a jail, without
relief by law, and to be so adjudged,--O, improvident ancestors!
O, unwise forefathers! to be so curious in providing for the quiet
possession of our lands, and the liberties of parliament; and at the
same time to neglect our personal liberty, and let us lie in prison, and
that during pleasure, without redress or remedy! If this be law, why
do we talk of liberties? why trouble ourselves with disputes about a
constitution, franchises, property of goods, and the like? What may any
man call his own, if not the liberty of his person?

“I am weary of treading these ways; and therefore conclude to have
a select committee, in order to frame a petition to his majesty for
redress of these grievances. And this petition, being read, examined,
and approved, may be delivered to the king; of whose gracious answer we
have no cause to doubt, our desires being so reasonable, our intentions
so loyal, and the manner so dutiful. Neither need we fear that this is
the critical parliament, as has been insinuated; or that this is the way
to distraction: but assure ourselves of a happy issue. Then shall the
king, as he calls us his great council, find us his true council, and
own us his good council.”[*]

     * Franklyn, p. 245. Parl. Hist. vol. vii. p. 363. Rushworth,
     vol i. p. 502.

The same topics were enforced by Sir Thomas Wentworth. After mentioning
projectors and ill ministers of state, “These,” said he, “have
introduced a privy council, ravishing at once the spheres of all ancient
government; destroying all liberty; imprisoning us without bail or bond.
They have taken from us--What shall I say? Indeed, what have they left
us? By tearing up the roots of all property, they have taken from us
every means of supplying the king, and of ingratiating ourselves by
voluntary proofs of our duty and attachment towards him.

“To the making whole all these breaches I shall apply myself, and to all
these diseases shall propound a remedy. By one and the same thing have
the king and the people been hurt, and by the same must they be cured.
We must vindicate--what? New things? No: our ancient, legal, and vital
liberties; by reënforcing the laws enacted by our ancestors; by setting
such a stamp upon them, that no licentious spirit shall dare henceforth
to invade them. And shall we think this a way to break a parliament? No:
our desires are modest and just. I speak both for the interest of king
and people. If we enjoy not these rights, it will be impossible for us
to relieve him. Let us never, therefore, doubt of a favorable reception
from his goodness.”[*]

These sentiments were unanimously embraced by the whole house. Even the
court party pretended not to plead, in defence of the late measures,
any thing but the necessity to which the king had been reduced by the
obstinacy of the two former parliaments. A vote, therefore, was
passed, without opposition, against arbitrary imprisonments and forced
loans.[**] And the spirit of liberty having obtained some contentment
by this exertion, the reiterated messages of the king, who pressed for
supply, were attended to with more temper. Five subsidies were voted
him; with which, though much inferior to his wants, he declared himself
well satisfied; and even tears of affection started in his eye when
he was informed of this concession. The duke’s approbation too was
mentioned by Secretary Coke; but the conjunction of a subject with the
sovereign was ill received by the house.[***] Though disgusted with the
king, the jealousy which they felt for his honor was more sensible than
that which his unbounded confidence in the duke would allow even himself
to entertain.

     * Franklyn, p 243. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 500.

     ** Franklyn, p. 251. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 513. Whitlocke,
     p. 9

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 526, Whitlocke, p. 9.

The supply, though voted, was not as yet passed into a law; and the
commons resolved to employ the interval in providing some barriers to
their rights and liberties so lately violated. They knew that their
own vote, declaring the illegality of the former measures, had not, of
itself, sufficient authority to secure the constitution against future
invasion. Some act to that purpose must receive the sanction of the
whole legislature; and they appointed a committee to prepare the model
of so important a law. By collecting into one effort all the dangerous
and oppressive claims of his prerogative, Charles had exposed them to
the hazard of one assault and had further, by presenting a nearer view
of the consequences attending them, roused the independent genius of
the commons. Forced loans, benevolences, taxes without consent of
parliament, arbitrary imprisonments, the billeting of soldiers, martial
law; these were the grievances complained of, and against these an
eternal remedy was to be provided. The commons pretended not, as they
affirmed, to any unusual powers or privileges: they aimed only at
securing those which had been transmitted them from their ancestors: and
their law they resolved to call a Petition of Right; as implying that
it contained a corroboration or explanation of the ancient constitution,
not any infringement of royal prerogative, or acquisition of new
liberties.

While the committee was employed in framing the petition of right, the
favorers of each party, both in parliament and throughout the nation,
were engaged in disputes about this bill, which, in all likelihood, was
to form a memorable era in the English government.

That the statutes, said the partisans of the commons, which secure
English liberty, are not become obsolete, appears hence, that the
English have ever been free, and have ever been governed by law and a
limited constitution. Privileges in particular, which are founded on
the Great Charter, must always remain in force, because derived from
a source of never-failing authority, regarded in all ages as the most
sacred contract between king and people. Such attention was paid to this
charter by our generous ancestors, that they got the confirmation of it
reiterated thirty several times; and even secured it by a rule which,
though vulgarly received, seems in the execution impracticable. They
have established it as a maxim “That even a statute which should be
enacted in contradiction to any article of that charter, cannot have
force or validity.” But with regard to that important article which
secures personal liberty, so far from attempting at any time any legal
infringement of it, they have corroborated it by six statutes, and put
it out of all doubt and controversy. If in practice it has often been
violated, abuses can never come in the place of rules; nor can any
rights or legal powers be derived from injury and injustice. But the
title of the subject to personal liberty not only is founded on ancient,
and, therefore, the most sacred laws; it is confirmed by the whole
analogy of the government and constitution. A free monarchy in which
every individual is a slave, is a glaring contradiction: and it is
requisite, where the laws assign privileges to the different orders of
the state, that it likewise secure the independence of the members.
If any difference could be made in this particular, it were better to
abandon even life or property to the arbitrary will of the prince; nor
would such immediate danger ensue, from that concession, to the laws
and to the privileges of the people. To bereave of his life a man not
condemned by any legal trial, is so egregious an exercise of tyranny,
that it must at once shock the natural humanity of princes, and convey
an alarm throughout the whole commonwealth. To confiscate a man’s
fortune, besides its being a most atrocious act of violence, exposes the
monarch so much to the imputation of avarice and rapacity, that it will
seldom be attempted in any civilized government. But confinement, though
a less striking, is no less severe a punishment; nor is there any spirit
so erect and independent, as not to be broken by the long continuance
of the silent and inglorious sufferings of a jail. The power of
imprisonment, therefore, being the most natural and potent engine of
arbitrary government, it is absolutely necessary to remove it from a
government which is free and legal.

The partisans of the court reasoned after a different manner. The true
rule of government, said they, during any period, is that to which the
people, from time immemorial, have been accustomed, and to which they
naturally pay a prompt obedience. A practice which has ever struck their
senses, and of which they have seen and heard innumerable precedents,
has an authority with them much superior to that which attends maxims
derived from antiquated statutes and mouldy records. In vain do the
lawyers establish it as a principle, that a statute can never be
abrogated by opposite custom; but requires to be expressly repealed by
a contrary statute: while they pretend to inculcate an axiom peculiar to
English jurisprudence, they violate the most established principles of
human nature; and even by necessary consequence reason in contradiction
to law itself, which they would represent as so sacred and inviolable. A
law, to have any authority must be derived from a legislature which has
right. And whence do all legislatures derive their right, but from long
custom and established practice? If a statute contrary to public good
has at any time been rashly voted and assented to, either from the
violence of faction or the inexperience of senates and princes, it
cannot be more effectually abrogated by a train of contrary precedents,
which prove, that by common consent it has been tacitly set aside, as
inconvenient and impracticable. Such has been the case with all those
statutes enacted during turbulent times, in order to limit royal
prerogative, and cramp the sovereign in his protection of the public,
and his execution of the laws. But above all branches of prerogative,
that which is most necessary to be preserved, is the power of
imprisonment. Faction and discontent, like diseases, frequently arise in
every political body; and during these disorders, it is by the salutary
exercise alone of this discretionary power, that rebellions and civil
wars can be prevented. To circumscribe this power, is to destroy its
nature: entirely to abrogate it, is impracticable; and the attempt
itself must prove dangerous, if not pernicious to the public. The
supreme magistrate, in critical and turbulent times, will never,
agreeably either to prudence or duty, allow the state to perish, while
there remains a remedy which, how irregular soever, it is still in his
power to apply. And if, moved by a regard to public good, he employs any
exercise of power condemned by recent and express statute, how greedily,
in such dangerous times, will factious leaders seize this pretence of
throwing on his government the imputation of tyranny and despotism! Were
the alternative quite necessary, it were surely much better for human
society to be deprived of liberty than to be destitute of government.

Impartial reasoners will confess that this subject is not, on both
sides, without its difficulties. Where a general and rigid law is
enacted against arbitrary imprisonment, it would appear that government
cannot, in times of sedition and faction, be conducted but by temporary
suspensions of the law; and such an expedient was never thought of
during the age of Charles.[**period inserted] The meetings of parliament
were too precarious, and their determinations might be too dilatory, to
serve in cases of urgent necessity. Nor was it then conceived, that the
king did not possess of himself sufficient power for the security
and protection of his people, or that the authority of these popular
assemblies was ever to become so absolute, that the prince must always
conform himself to it, and could never have any occasion to guard
against their practices, as well as against those of his other subjects.

Though the house of lords was not insensible to the reasons urged in
favor of the pretensions of the commons, they deemed the arguments
pleaded in favor of the crown still more cogent and convincing. That
assembly seems, during this whole period, to have acted, in the main, a
reasonable and a moderate part; and if their bias inclined a little
too much, as is natural, to the side of monarchy, they were far from
entertaining any design of sacrificing to arbitrary will the liberties
and privileges of the nation. Ashley, the king’s serjeant, having
asserted, in pleading before the peers, that the king must sometimes
govern by acts of state as well as by law, this position gave such
offence, that he was immediately committed to prison, and was not
released but upon his recantation and submission.[*] Being, however,
afraid lest the commons should go too far in their projected petition,
the peers proposed a plan of one more moderate, which they recommended
to the consideration of the other house. It consisted merely in a
general declaration, that the Great Charter, and the six statutes
conceived to be explanations of it, stand still in force, to all intents
and purposes; that, in consequence of the charter and the statutes, and
by the tenor of the ancient customs and laws of the realm, every subject
has a fundamental property in his goods, and a fundamental liberty of
his person; that this property and liberty are as entire at present as
during any former period of the English government; that in all common
cases, the common law ought to be the standard of proceedings: “And in
case that, for the security of his majesty’s person, the general safety
of his people, or the peaceable government of the kingdom, the king
shall find just cause, for reasons of state, to imprison or restrain
any man’s person, he was petitioned graciously to declare that, within
a convenient time, he shall and will express the cause of the commitment
or restraint, either general or special, and, upon a cause so expressed,
will leave the prisoner immediately to be tried according to the common
law of the land.”[**]

     * Whitlocke, p. 10.

     ** State Trials, vol. vii. p. 187. Rushworth, vol. i. p.
     548.

Archbishop Abbot was employed by the lords to recommend, in a
conference, this plan of a petition to the house of commons. The
prelate, as was no doubt foreseen, from his known principles, was not
extremely urgent in his applications; and the lower house was fully
convinced that the general declarations signified nothing, and that
the latter clause left their liberties rather in a worse condition than
before. They proceeded, therefore, with great zeal, in framing, the
model of a petition which should contain expressions more precise, and
more favorable to public freedom.

The king could easily see the consequence of these proceedings. Though
he had offered, at the beginning of the session, to give his consent to
any law for the security of the rights and liberties of the people, he
had not expected that such inroads would be made on his prerogative. In
order, therefore, to divert the commons from their intention, he sent
a message, wherein he acknowledged past errors, and promised that
hereafter there should be no just cause of complaint. And he added,
“That the affairs of the kingdom press him so, that he could not
continue the session above a week or two longer: and if the house be not
ready by that time to do what is fit for themselves, it shall be their
own fault.”[*] On a subsequent occasion, he asked them, “Why demand
explanations, if you doubt not the performance of the statutes according
to their true meaning? Explanations will hazard an encroachment upon the
prerogative; and it may well be said, What need a new law to confirm an
old, if you repose confidence in the declarations which his majesty
made to both houses?”[**] The truth is, the Great Charter and the old
statutes were sufficiently clear in favor of personal liberty: but as
all kings of England had ever, in cases of necessity or expediency, been
accustomed at intervals to elude them; and as Charles, in a complication
of instances, had lately violated them; the commons judged it requisite
to enact a new law, which might not be eluded or violated by any
interpretation, construction, or contrary precedent. Nor was it
sufficient, they thought, that the king promised to return into the way
of his predecessors. His predecessors in all times had enjoyed too much
discretionary power; and by his recent abuse of it, the whole world had
reason to see the necessity of entirely retrenching it.

The king still persevered in his endeavors to elude the petition. He
sent a letter to the house of lords, in which he went so far as to make
a particular declaration, “That neither he nor his privy council
shall or will, at any time hereafter, commit or command to prison, or
otherwise restrain, any man for not lending money, or for any other
cause which, in his conscience,[**joined-up though no hyphen] he thought
not to concern the public good, and the safety of king and people.” And
he further declared, “That he never would be guilty of so base an action
as to pretend any cause of whose truth he was not fully satisfied.”[***]
But this promise, though enforced to the commons by the recommendation
of the upper house, made no more impression than all the former
messages.

     * State Trials, vol. vii. p. 193.

     ** State Trials, vol. vii. p. 196. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 556


     *** State Trials, vol. vii. p. 198. Rushworth, vol. i. p.
     560, Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 111.

Among the other evasions of the king, we may reckon the proposal of
the house of peers, to subjoin to the intended petition of right the
following clause: “We humbly present this petition to your majesty, not
only with a care of preserving our own liberties, but with due regard to
leave entire that sovereign power with which your majesty is intrusted
for the protection, safety, and happiness of your people.”[*] Less
penetration than was possessed by the leaders of the house of commons,
could easily discover how captious this clause was, and how much it was
calculated to elude the whole force of the petition.

These obstacles, therefore, being surmounted, the petition of right
passed the commons, and was sent to the upper house.[**] [2] The peers,
who were probably well pleased in secret that all their solicitations
had been eluded by the commons, quickly passed the petition without any
material alteration; and nothing but the royal assent was wanting to
give it the force of a law. The king accordingly came to the house of
peers; sent for the commons; and, being seated in his chair of state,
the petition was read to him. Great was now the astonishment of all men,
when, instead of the usual concise and clear form by which a bill is
either confirmed or rejected Charles said, in answer to the petition,
“The king willeth, that right be done according to the laws and customs
of the realm, and that the statutes be put into execution; that his
subjects may have no cause to complain of any wrong or oppression,
contrary to their just rights and liberties, to the preservation whereof
he holds himself in conscience as much obliged as of his own
prerogative.”[***]

     * State Trials, vol. vii. p. 199. Ruskworth, vol. i. p. 561.
     Parl Hist. vol. viii. p. 116. Whitlocke, p. 10.

     ** See note B, at the end of the volume.

     *** State Trials, vol. vii. p. 212. Rushworth, vol. i. p.
     500.

It is surprising that Charles, who had seen so many instances of the
jealousy of the commons, who had himself so much roused that jealousy
by his frequent evasive messages during this session, could imagine that
they would rest satisfied with an answer so vague and undeterminate. It
was evident, that the unusual form alone of the answer must excite their
attention; that the disappointment must inflame their anger; and that
therefore it was necessary, as the petition seemed to bear hard on royal
prerogative, to come early to some fixed resolution, either gracefully
to comply with it, or courageously to reject it.

It happened as might have been foreseen. The commons returned in very
ill humor. Usually, when in that disposition, their zeal for religion,
and their enmity against the unfortunate Catholics, ran extremely high.
But they had already, in the beginning of the session, presented their
petition of religion and had received a satisfactory answer; though they
expected that the execution of the laws against Papists would, for the
future, be no more exact and rigid than they had hitherto found it.
To give vent to their present indignation, they fell with their utmost
force on Dr. Manwaring.

There is nothing which tends more to excuse, if not to justify,
the extreme rigor of the commons towards Charles, than his open
encouragement and avowal of such general principles as were altogether
incompatible with a limited government. Manwaring had preached a sermon
which the commons found, upon inquiry, to be printed by special command
of the king;[*] and when this sermon was looked into, it contained
doctrines subversive of all civil liberty. It taught, that, though
property was commonly lodged in the subject, yet, whenever any exigency
required supply, all property was transferred to the sovereign; that the
consent of parliament was not necessary for the imposition of taxes;
and that the divine laws required compliance with every demand, how
irregular soever, which the prince should make upon his subjects[**] For
these doctrines the commons impeached Manwaring. The sentence pronounced
upon him by the peers was, that he should be imprisoned during the
pleasure of the house, be fined a thousand pounds to the king, make
submission and acknowledgment of his offence, be suspended during three
years, be incapable of holding any ecclesiastical dignity or secular
office, and that his book be called in and burnt.[***]

     * Parliament. Hist. vol. viii. p. 206.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 585, 594. Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p.
     168, 169, 170, etc. Welwood, p. 44.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 65. Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 212.

It may be worthy of notice, that no sooner was the session ended, than
this man, so justly obnoxious to both houses received a pardon, and was
promoted to a living of considerable value.[*] Some years after, he was
raised to the see of St. Asaph. If the republican spirit of the commons
increased beyond all reasonable bounds, the monarchical spirit of the
court, this latter, carried to so high a pitch, tended still further to
augment the former. And thus extremes were every where affected, and the
just medium was gradually deserted by all men.

From Manwaring, the house of commons proceeded to censure the conduct
of Buckingham, whose name hitherto they had cautiously forborne to
mention.[**] In vain did the king send them a message, in which he told
them that the session was drawing near to a conclusion; and desired that
they would not enter upon new business, nor cast any aspersions on his
government and ministry.[***] Though the court endeavored to explain and
soften this message by a subsequent message,[****] as Charles was apt
hastily to correct any hasty step which he had taken, it served
rather to inflame than appease the commons; as if the method of their
proceedings had here been prescribed to them. It was foreseen that a
great tempest was ready to burst on the duke; and in order to divert
it, the king thought proper, upon a joint application of the lords and
commons,[v] to endeavor giving them satisfaction with regard to the
petition of right. He came, therefore, to the house of peers, and
pronouncing the usual form of words, “Let it be law, as is desired,”
 gave full sanction and authority to the petition. The acclamations
with which the house resounded, and the universal joy diffused over the
nation, showed how much this petition had been the object of all men’s
vows and expectations[v*]

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 635. Whitlocke, p. 11.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 607.

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 605.

     **** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 610. Parl. Hist vol. viii. p.
     197.

     v    Rushworth, vol. i. p. 613, Journ. 7th June, 1628. Parl.
     Hist. vol. viii. p. 201.

     v*   Rushworth, vol. i. p. 613.

It may be affirmed, without any exaggeration, that the king’s assent to
the petition of right produced such a change in the government, as was
almost equivalent to a revolution; and by circumscribing, in so
many articles, the royal prerogative gave additional security to the
liberties of the subject. Yet were the commons far from being satisfied
with this important concession. Their ill humor had been so much
irritated by the king’s frequent evasions and delays, that it could not
be presently appeased by an assent which he allowed to be so reluctantly
extorted from him. Perhaps, too, the popular leaders, implacable and
artful, saw the opportunity favorable; and, turning against the king
those very weapons with which he had furnished them, resolved to pursue
the victory. The bill, however, for five subsidies, which had been
formerly voted, immediately passed the house; because the granting of
that supply was, in a manner, tacitly contracted for, upon the royal
assent to the petition; and had faith been here violated, no further
confidence could have subsisted between king and parliament. Having
made this concession, the commons continued to carry their scrutiny
into every part of government. In some particulars, their industry was
laudable; in some, it may be liable to censure.

A little after writs were issued for summoning this parliament, a
commission had been granted to Sir Thomas Coventry, lord keeper, the
earl of Marlborough, treasurer, the earl of Manchester, president of the
council, the earl of Worcester, privy seal, the duke of Buckingham, high
admiral, and all the considerable officers of the crown; in the whole,
thirty-three. By this commission, which, from the number of persons
named in it, could be no secret, the commissioners were empowered to
meet, and to concert among themselves the methods of levying money by
impositions, or otherwise; “Where form and circumstance,” as expressed
in the commission, “must be dispensed with, rather than the substance
be lost or hazarded.”[*] In other words, this was a scheme for finding
expedients which might raise the prerogative to the greatest height, and
render parliaments entirely useless. The commons applied for cancelling
the commission;[**] and were, no doubt, desirous that all the world
should conclude the king’s principles to be extremely arbitrary,
and should observe what little regard he was disposed to pay to the
liberties and privileges of his people.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 614. Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 214.

     ** Journ. 13th June, 1628.

A commission had likewise been granted, and some money remitted, in
order to raise a thousand German horse, and transport them into England.
These were supposed to be levied in order to support the projected
impositions or excises, though the number seems insufficient for such a
purpose,[*] The house took notice of this design in severe terms: and no
measure, surely, could be projected more generally odious to the whole
nation. It must, however, be confessed, that the king was so far
right, that he had now at last fallen on the only effectual method for
supporting his prerogative. But at the same time, he should have been
sensible that, till provided with a sufficient military force, all his
attempts in opposition to the rising spirit of the nation, must in
the end prove wholly fruitless; and that the higher he screwed up the
springs of government, while he had so little real power to retain them
in that forced situation, with more fatal violence must they fly out,
when any accident occurred to restore them to their natural action.

The commons next resumed their censure of Buckingham’s conduct and
behavior, against whom they were implacable. They agreed to present
a remonstrance to the king, in which they recapitulated all national
grievances and misfortunes, and omitted no circumstance which could
render the whole administration despicable and odious. The compositions
with Catholics, they said, amounted to no less than a toleration,
hateful to God, full of dishonor and disprofit to his majesty, and of
extreme scandal and grief to his good people: they took notice of the
violations of liberty above mentioned, against which the petition of
right seems to have provided a sufficient remedy: they mentioned the
decay of trade, the unsuccessful expeditions to Cadiz and the Isle
of Rhé, the encouragement given to Arminians, the commission for
transporting German horse, that for levying illegal impositions; and all
these grievances they ascribed solely to the ill conduct of the duke of
Buckingham.[**] This remonstrance was, perhaps, not the less provoking
to Charles, because, joined to the extreme acrimony of the subject,
there were preserved in it, as in most of the remonstrances of that age,
an affected civility and submission in the language. And as it was the
first return which he met with for his late beneficial concessions, and
for his sacrifices of prerogative,--the greatest by far ever made by an
English sovereign,--nothing could be more the object of just and natural
indignation.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 612.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 619. Parl. Hist. vol viii. p. 219,
     220, etc.

It was not without good grounds that the commons were so fierce and
assuming. Though they had already granted the king the supply of five
subsidies, they still retained a pledge in their hands, which they
thought insured them success in all their applications. Tonnage and
poundage had not yet been granted by parliament; and the commons had
artfully, this session, concealed their intention of invading that
branch of revenue, till the royal assent had been obtained to the
petition of right, which they justly deemed of such importance. They
then openly asserted, that the levying of tonnage and poundage without
consent of parliament, was a palpable violation of the ancient liberties
of the people, and an open infringement of the petition of right, so
lately granted.[*] The king, in order to prevent the finishing and
presenting this remonstrance, came suddenly to the parliament, and ended
this session by a prorogation.[**]

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 628. Journ. 18th 20th June, 1628.

     ** Journ, 26th June, 1628.

Being freed for some time from the embarrassment of this assembly,
Charles began to look towards foreign wars, where all his efforts were
equally unsuccessful as in his domestic government. The earl of Denbigh,
brother-in-law to Buckingham, was despatched to the relief of Rochelle,
now closely besieged by land, and threatened with a blockade by sea: but
he returned without effecting any thing; and having declined to attack
the enemy’s fleet, he brought on the English arms the imputation either
of cowardice or ill conduct. In order to repair this dishonor, the duke
went to Portsmouth, where he had prepared a considerable fleet and army,
on which all the subsidies given by parliament had been expended. This
supply had very much disappointed the king’s expectations. The same
mutinous spirit which prevailed in the house of commons had diffused
itself over the nation; and the commissioners appointed for making the
assessments had connived at all frauds which might diminish the supply,
and reduce the crown to still greater necessities. This national
discontent, communicated to a desperate enthusiast, soon broke out in an
event which may be considered as remarkable.

There was one Felton, of a good family, but of an ardent, melancholic
temper, who had served under the duke in the station of lieutenant.
His captain being killed in the retreat at the Isle of Rhé, Felton
had applied for the company; and when disappointed, he threw up his
commission, and retired in discontent from the army. While private
resentment was boiling in his sullen, unsociable mind, he heard the
nation resound with complaints against the duke; and he met with the
remonstrance of the commons, in which his enemy was represented as the
cause of every national grievance, and as the great enemy of the public.
Religious fanaticism further inflamed these vindictive reflections; and
he fancied that he should do Heaven acceptable service, if at one blow
he despatched this dangerous foe to religion and to his country.[*] Full
of these dark views, he secretly arrived at Portsmouth at the same time
with the duke, and watched for an opportunity of effecting his bloody
purpose.

     * May’s Hist. of the Parliament, p. 12.

Buckingham had been engaged in conversation with Soubize and other
French gentlemen; and a difference of sentiment having arisen, the
dispute, though conducted with temper and decency, had produced some of
those vehement gesticulations and lively exertions of voice, in which
that nation, more than the English, are apt to indulge themselves. The
conversation being finished, the duke drew towards the door; and in that
passage, turning himself to speak to Sir Thomas Friar, a colonel in the
army, he was on the sudden, over Sir Thomas’s shoulder, struck upon the
breast with a knife. Without uttering other words than, “The villain has
killed me,” in the same moment pulling out the knife, he breathed his
last.

No man had seen the blow, nor the person who gave it, but in the
confusion every one made his own conjecture; and all agreed that the
murder had been committed by the French gentlemen whose angry tone of
voice had been heard, while their words had not been understood by the
bystanders. In the hurry of revenge, they had instantly been put to
death, had they not been saved by some of more temper and judgment,
who, though they had the same opinion of their guilt, thought proper to
reserve them for a judicial trial and examination.

Near the door there was found a hat, in the inside of which was sewed a
paper, containing four or five lines of that remonstrance of the commons
which declared Buckingham an enemy to the kingdom; and under these lines
was a short ejaculation, or attempt towards a prayer. It was easily
concluded that this hat belonged to the assassin: but the difficulty
still remained, who that person should be; for the writing discovered
not the same; and whoever he was, it was natural to believe that he had
already fled far enough not to be found without a hat.

In this hurry, a man without a hat was seen walking very composedly
before the door. One crying out, “Here is the fellow who killed the
duke;” every body ran to ask, “Which is he?” The man very sedately
answered, “I am he.” The more furious immediately rushed upon him with
drawn swords: others, more deliberate, defended and protected him: he
himself, with open arms, calmly and cheerfully exposed his breast to the
swords of the most enraged; being willing to fall a sudden sacrifice to
their anger, rather than be reserved for that public justice which he
knew must be executed upon him.

He was now known to be that Felton who had served in the army. Being
carried into a private room, it was thought proper so far to dissemble
as to tell him, that Buckingham was only grievously wounded, but not
without hopes of recovery. Felton smiled, and told them, that the duke,
he knew full well, had received a blow which had terminated all their
hopes. When asked at whose instigation he had performed the horrid deed,
he replied, that they needed not to trouble themselves in that inquiry;
that no man living had credit enough with him to have disposed him to
such an action; that he had not even intrusted his purpose to any one;
that the resolution proceeded only from himself, and the impulse of
his own conscience; and that his motives would appear, if his hat were
found; for that, believing he should perish in the attempt, he had there
taken care to explain them.[*]

When the king was informed of this assassination, he received the
news in public with an unmoved and undisturbed countenance; and the
courtiers, who studied his looks, concluded, that secretly he was
not displeased to be rid of a minister so generally odious to the
nation.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 27, 20.

     ** Warwick, p. 34.

But Charles’s command of himself proceeded entirely from the gravity and
composure of his temper. He was still as much as ever attached to
his favorite; and during his whole life he retained an affection for
Buckingham’s friends, and a prejudice against his enemies. He urged too,
that Felton should be put to the question, in order to extort from him a
discovery of his accomplices; but the judges declared, that though that
practice had formerly been very usual, it was altogether illegal: so
much reasoners, with regard to law, had they become from the jealous
scruples of the house of commons.

Meanwhile the distress of Rochelle had risen to the utmost extremity.
That vast genius of Richelieu, which made him form the greatest
enterprises, led him to attempt their execution by means equally great
and extraordinary. In order to deprive Rochelle of all succor, he had
dared to project the throwing across the harbor a mole of a mile’s
extent in that boisterous ocean; and having executed his project, he now
held the town closely blockaded on all sides. The inhabitants, though
pressed with the greatest rigors of famine, still refused to submit;
being supported, partly by the lectures of their zealous preachers,
partly by the daily hopes of relief from England. After Buckingham’s
death, the command of the fleet and army was conferred on the earl of
Lindesey; who, arriving before Rochelle, made some attempts to break
through the mole, and force his way into the harbor: but by the delays
of the English, that work was now fully finished and fortified; and
the Rochellers, finding their last hopes to fail them, were reduced
to surrender at discretion, even in sight of the English admiral.
Of fifteen thousand persons shut up in the city, four thousand alone
survived the fatigues and famine which they had undergone.[*]

     * Rushworth, vol. 1. p. 636.

This was the first necessary step towards the prosperity of France.
Foreign enemies, as well as domestic factions, being deprived of this
resource, that kingdom began now to shine forth in its full splendor. By
a steady prosecution of wise plans, both of war and policy, it gradually
gained an ascendant over the rival power of Spain; and every order of
the state, and every sect, were reduced to pay submission to the lawful
authority of the sovereign. The victory, however, over the Hugonots, was
at first pushed by the French king with great moderation. A toleration
was still continued to them; the only avowed and open toleration which
at that time was granted in any European kingdom.

{1629.} The failure of an enterprise in which the English nation,
from religious sympathy, so much interested themselves, could not but
diminish the king’s authority in the parliament during the approaching
session: but the commons, when assembled, found many other causes of
complaint. Buckingham’s conduct and character with some had afforded a
reason, with others a pretence, for discontent against public measures
but after his death there wanted not new reasons and new pretences for
general dissatisfaction. Manwaring’s pardon and promotion were taken
notice of: Sibthorpe and Cosins, two clergymen, who, for like reasons,
were no less obnoxious to the commons, had met with like favor from
the king: Montague, who had been censured for moderation towards
the Catholics, the greatest of crimes, had been created bishop of
Chichester. They found likewise, upon inquiry, that all the copies of
the petition of right which were dispersed, had, by the king’s orders,
annexed to them the first answer, which had given so little satisfaction
to the commons;[*] an expedient by which Charles endeavored to persuade
the people that he had nowise receded from his former claims and
pretensions, particularly with regard to the levying of tonnage and
poundage. Selden also complained in the house, that one Savage, contrary
to the petition of right, had been punished with the loss of his ears,
by a discretionary or arbitrary sentence of the star chamber:[**] so apt
were they, on their part, to stretch the petition into such consequences
as might deprive the crown of powers which, from immemorial custom, were
supposed inherent in it.

But the great article on which the house of commons broke with the king,
and which finally created in Charles a disgust to all parliaments,
was their claim with regard to tonnage and poundage. On this occasion,
therefore, it is necessary to give an account of the controversy.

The duty of tonnage and poundage, in more ancient times, had been
commonly a temporary grant of parliament; but it had been conferred
on Henry V., and all the succeeding princes, during life, in order to
enable them to maintain a naval force for the defence of the kingdom.
The necessity of levying this duty had been so apparent, that each king
had ever claimed it from the moment of his accession; and the first
parliament of each reign had usually by vote conferred on the prince
what they found him already in possession of. Agreeably to the
inaccurate genius of the old constitution, this abuse, however
considerable, had never been perceived nor remedied; though nothing
could have been easier than for the parliament to have prevented
it.[***]

     * State Trials, vol. vii. p. 216. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 643.

     ** State Trials, vol. vii. p. 216. Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p.
     246.

     *** Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 339, 343.

By granting this duty to each prince during his own life, and for a
year after his demise to the successor, all inconveniencies had been
obviated; and yet the duty had never for a moment been levied without
proper authority. But contrivances of that nature were not thought of
during those rude ages; and as so complicated and jealous a government
as the English cannot subsist without many such refinements, it is easy
to see how favorable every inaccuracy must formerly have proved to
royal authority, which, on all emergencies, was obliged to supply, by
discretionary power, the great deficiency of the laws.

The parliament did not grant the duty of tonnage and poundage to Henry
VIII. till the sixth of his reign: yet this prince, who had not then
raised his power to its greatest height, continued during that whole
time to levy the imposition; the parliament, in their very grant, blame
the merchants who had neglected to make payment to the crown; and though
one expression of that bill may seem ambiguous, they employ the plainest
terms in calling tonnage and poundage the king’s due, even before that
duty was conferred on him by parliamentary authority.[*] Four reigns,
and above a whole century, had since elapsed; and this revenue had
still been levied before it was voted by parliament: so long had the
inaccuracy continued, without being remarked or corrected.

During that short interval which passed between Charles’s accession and
his first parliament, he had followed the example of his predecessors;
and no fault was found with his conduct in this particular. But what was
most remarkable in the proceedings of that house of commons, and what
proved beyond controversy that they had seriously formed a plan for
reducing their prince to subjection, was, that instead of granting this
supply during the king’s lifetime, as it had been enjoyed by all his
immediate predecessors, they voted it only for a year; and, after that
should be elapsed, reserved to themselves the power of renewing or
refusing the same concession.[**] But the house of peers, who saw that
this duty was now become more necessary than ever to supply the growing
necessities of the crown, and who did not approve of this encroaching
spirit in the commons, rejected the bill; and the dissolution of that
parliament followed so soon after, that no attempt seems to have been
made for obtaining tonnage and poundage in any other form.[***] [3]

     * 6 Henry VIII. cap. 14.

     ** Journ. 5th July, 1625.

     *** See note C, at the end of the volume.

Charles, meanwhile, continued still to levy this duty by his own
authority, and the nation was so accustomed to that exertion of royal
power, that no scruple was at first entertained of submitting to it. But
the succeeding parliament excited doubts in every one. The commons
took there some steps towards declaring it illegal to levy tonnage and
poundage without consent of parliament; and they openly showed their
intention of employing this engine, in order to extort from the crown
concessions of the most important nature. But Charles was not yet
sufficiently tamed to compliance; and the abrupt dissolution of that
parliament, as above related, put an end, for the time, to their further
pretensions.

The following interval between the second and third parliament, was
distinguished by so many exertions of prerogative, that men had little
leisure to attend to the affair of tonnage and poundage, where the abuse
of power in the crown might seem to be of a more disputable nature. But
after the commons, during the precedent session, had remedied all these
grievances by means of their petition of right, which they deemed
so necessary, they afterwards proceeded to take the matter into
consideration, and they showed the same intention as formerly,
of exacting, in return for the grant of this revenue, very large
compliances on the part of the crown. Their sudden profulgation
prevented them from bringing their pretensions to a full conclusion.

When Charles opened this session, he had foreseen that the same
controversy would arise; and he therefore took care very early, among
many mild and reconciling expressions, to inform the commons, “That
he had not taken these duties as appertaining to his hereditary
prerogative; but that it ever was, and still is, his meaning to enjoy
them as a gift of his people: and that, if he had hitherto levied
tonnage and poundage he pretended to justify himself only by the
necessity of so doing, not by any right which he assumed.”[*]

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 644 Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 256,
     346.

This concession, which probably arose from the king’s moderate temper,
now freed from the impulse of Buckingham’s violent counsels, might have
satisfied the commons, had they entertained no other view than that of
ascertaining their own powers and privileges. But they carried their
pretensions much higher. They insisted, as a necessary preliminary, that
the king should once entirely desist from levying these duties; after
which they were to take it into consideration, how far they would
restore, him to the possession of a revenue of which he had clearly
divested himself. But, besides that this extreme rigor had never
been exercised towards any of his predecessors, and many obvious
inconveniencies must follow from the intermission of the customs, there
were other reasons which deterred Charles from complying with so hard
a condition. It was probable, that the commons might renew their former
project of making this revenue only temporary, and thereby reducing
their prince to perpetual dependence; they certainly would cut off the
new impositions which Mary and Elizabeth, but especially James, had
levied, and which formed no despicable part of the public revenue:
and they openly declared, that they had at present many important
pretensions, chiefly with regard to religion; and if compliance were
refused, no supply must be expected from the commons.

It is easy to see in what an inextricable labyrinth Charles was now
involved. By his own concessions, by the general principles of the
English government, and by the form of every bill which had granted this
duty, tonnage and poundage was derived entirely from the free gift of
the people; and, consequently, might be withdrawn at their pleasure. If
unreasonable in their refusal, they still refused nothing but what was
their own. If public necessity required this supply, it might be thought
also to require the king’s compliance with those conditions which were
the price of obtaining it. Though the motive for granting it had been
the enabling of the king to guard the seas, it did not follow, that
because he guarded the seas, he was therefore entitled to this revenue
without further formality: since the people had still reserved to
themselves the right of judging how far that service merited such a
supply. But Charles, notwithstanding his public declaration, was
far from assenting to this conclusion in its full extent. The plain
consequence, he saw, of all these rigors, and refinements, and
inferences, was, that he, without any public necessity, and without any
fault of his own, must of a sudden, even from his accession, become a
magistrate of a very different nature from any of his predecessors, and
must fall into a total dependence on subjects over whom former kings,
especially those immediately preceding, had exercised an authority
almost unlimited. Entangled in a chain of consequences which he could
not easily break, he was inclined to go higher, and rather deny the
first principle, than admit of conclusions which to him appeared so
absurd and unreasonable. Agree-* to the ideas hitherto entertained both
by natives and foreigners, the monarch he esteemed the essence and
soul of the English government: and whatever other power pretended to
annihilate or even abridge, the royal authority, must necessarily, he
thought, either in its nature or exercise, be deemed no better than a
usurpation. Willing to preserve the ancient harmony of the constitution,
he had ever intended to comply as far as he easily could, with the
ancient forms of administration; but when these forms appeared to him,
by the inveterate obstinacy of the commons, to have no other tendency
than to disturb that harmony, and to introduce a new constitution, he
concluded that, in this violent situation, what was subordinate must
necessarily yield to what was principal, and the privileges of the
people, for a time, give place to royal prerogative. From the rank of
a monarch, to be degraded into a slave of his insolent, ungrateful
subjects, seemed of all indignities the greatest; and nothing, in his
judgment, could exceed the humiliation attending such a state, but the
meanness of tamely submitting to it, without making some efforts to
preserve the authority transmitted to him by his predecessors.

Though these were the king’s reflections and resolutions before the
parliament assembled, he did not immediately break with them upon their
delay in voting him this supply. He thought that he could better justify
any strong measure which he might afterwards be obliged to take, if he
allowed them to carry to the utmost extremities their attacks upon his
government and prerogative.[*] He contented himself, for the present,
with soliciting the house by messages and speeches. But the commons,
instead of hearkening to his solicitations proceeded to carry their
scrutiny into his management of religion,[**] which was the only
grievance to which, in their opinion, they had not as yet, by their
petition of right, applied a sufficient remedy.

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 642.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 651. Whitlocke, p. 12.

It was not possible that this century, so fertile in religious sects
and disputes, could escape the controversy concerning fatalism and free
will, which, being strongly interwoven both with philosophy and theology
had, in all ages, thrown every school and every church into such
inextricable doubt and perplexity. The first reformers in England, as
in other European countries, had embraced the most rigid tenets of
predestination and absolute decrees, and had composed upon that, system
all the articles of their religious creed. But these principles having
met with opposition from Arminius and his sectaries, the controversy
was soon brought into this island and began here to diffuse itself. The
Arminians, finding more encouragement from the superstitious spirit
of the church than from the fanaticism of the Puritans, gradually
incorporated themselves with the former; and some of that sect, by the
indulgence of James and Charles, had attained the highest preferments in
the hierarchy. But their success with the public had not been altogether
answerable to that which they met with in the church and the court.
Throughout the nation, they still lay under the reproach of innovation
and heresy. The commons now levelled against them their formidable
censures, and made them the objects of daily invective and declamation.
Their protectors were stigmatized; their tenets canvassed; their views
represented as dangerous and pernicious. To impartial spectators surely,
if any such had been at that time in England, it must have given great
entertainment to see a popular assembly, inflamed with faction
and enthusiasm, pretend to discuss questions to which the greatest
philosophers, in the tranquillity of retreat, had never hitherto been
able to find any satisfactory solution.

Amidst that complication of disputes in which men were then involved,
we may observe, that the appellation “Puritan” stood for three parties,
which, though commonly united, were yet actuated by very different
views and motives. There were the political Puritans, who maintained
the highest principles of civil liberty; the Puritans in discipline, who
were averse to the ceremonies and Episcopal government of the church;
and the doctrinal Puritans, who rigidly defended the speculative system
of the first reformers. In opposition to all these stood the court
party, the hierarchy, and the Arminians; only with this distinction,
that the latter sect, being introduced a few years before, did not
as yet comprehend all those who were favorable to the church and to
monarchy. But, as the controversies on every subject grew daily warmer,
men united themselves more intimately with their friends, and separated
themselves wider from their antagonists; and the distinction gradually
became quite uniform and regular.

This house of commons, which, like all the preceding, during the reigns
of James and Charles, and even of Elizabeth, was much governed by the
Puritanical party, thought that they could not better serve their cause
than by branding and punishing the Arminian sect, which, introducing an
innovation in the church, were the least favored and least powerful of
all their antagonists. From this measure, it was easily foreseen, that,
besides gratifying the animosity of the doctrinal Puritans, both the
Puritans in discipline and those in politics would reap considerable
advantages. Laud, Neile, Montague, and other bishops, who were the chief
supporters of Episcopal government, and the most zealous partisans of
the discipline and ceremonies of the church, were all supposed to be
tainted with Arminianism. The same men and their disciples were the
strenuous preachers of passive obedience, and of entire submission to
princes; and if these could once be censured, and be expelled the church
and court, it was concluded, that the hierarchy would receive a mortal
blow, the ceremonies be less rigidly insisted on, and the king, deprived
of his most faithful friends, be obliged to abate those high claims of
prerogative on which at present he insisted.

But Charles, besides a view of the political consequences which must
result from a compliance with such pretensions, was strongly determined,
from principles of piety and conscience, to oppose them. Neither the
dissipation incident to youth, nor the pleasures attending a high
fortune, had been able to prevent this virtuous prince from embracing
the most sincere sentiments of religion: and that character, which in
that religious age should have been of infinite advantage to him, proved
in the end the chief cause of his ruin; merely because the religion
adopted by him was not of that precise mode and sect which began to
prevail among his subjects. His piety, though remote from Popery, had a
tincture of superstition in it; and, being averse to the gloomy
spirit of the Puritans, was represented by them as tending towards the
abominations of Antichrist. Laud also had unfortunately acquired a great
ascendant over him; and as all those prelates obnoxious to the commons,
were regarded as his chief friends and most favored courtiers, he was
resolved not to disarm and dishonor himself by abandoning them to the
resentment of his enemies. Being totally unprovided with military
force, and finding a refractory, independent spirit to prevail among the
people, the most solid basis of his authority, he thought consisted in
the support which he received from the hierarchy.

In the debates of the commons, which are transmitted to us, it is
easy to discern so early some sparks of that enthusiastic fire which
afterwards set the whole nation in combustion. One Rouse made use of
an allusion which, though familiar seems to have been borrowed from the
writings of Lord Bacon.[*] “If a man meet a dog alone,” said he, “the
dog is fearful, though ever so fierce by nature: but if the dog have
his master with him, he will set upon that man from whom he fled before.
This shows, that lower natures, being backed by higher, increase in
courage and strength; and certainly man, being backed with Omnipotency,
is a kind of omnipotent creature. All things are possible to him
that believes; and where all things are possible, there is a kind of
omnipotency. Wherefore, let it be the unanimous consent and resolution
of us all, to make a vow and covenant henceforth to hold fast our God
and our religion; and then shall we henceforth expect with certainty
happiness in this world.”[**]

Oliver Cromwell, at that time a young man of no account in the nation,
is mentioned in these debates, as complaining of one who, he was told,
preached flat Popery.[***] It is amusing to observe the first words of
this fanatical hypocrite correspond so exactly to his character.

The inquiries and debates concerning tonnage and poundage went hand in
hand with these theological or metaphysical controversies. The officers
of the custom-house were summoned before the commons, to give an account
by what authority they had seized the goods of merchants who had
refused to pay these duties: the barons of the exchequer were questioned
concerning their decrees on that head.[****] One of the sheriffs of
London was committed to the Tower for his activity in supporting the
officers of the custom-house: the goods of Rolles, a merchant, and
member of the house, being seized for his refusal to pay the duties,
complaints were made of this violence as if it were a breach of
privilege:[v] Charles supported his officers in all these measures;
and the quarrel grew every day higher between him and the commons.[v*]
Mention was made in the house of impeaching Sir Richard Weston the
treasurer;[v**] and the king began to entertain thoughts of finishing
the session by a dissolution.

     * Essay of Atheism.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 646. Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 260.

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 655. Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p.
     289.

     **** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 654. Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p.
     301.

     v    Rushworth, vol. i. p. 653.

     v*   Rushworth, vol. i. p. 659.

     v**  Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 326.

Sir John Elliot framed a remonstrance against levying tonnage and
poundage without consent of parliament, and offered it to the clerk to
read. It was refused. He read it himself. The question being then called
for, the speaker, Sir John Finch, said, “That he had a command from the
king to adjourn, and to put no question;”[*] upon which he rose and left
the chair. The whole house was in an uproar. The speaker was pushed back
into the chair, and forcibly held in it by Hollis and Valentine, till a
short remonstrance was framed, and was passed by acclamation rather than
by vote. Papists and Arminians were there declared capital enemies to
the commonwealth. Those who levied tonnage and poundage were branded
with the same epithet. And even the merchant who should voluntarily pay
these duties, were denominated betrayers of English liberty, and public
enemies. The doom, being locked, the gentleman usher of the house of
lords, who was sent by the king, could not get admittance till this
remonstrance was finished. By the king’s order, he took the mace from
the table, which ended their proceedings,[**] and a few days after the
parliament was dissolved.

The discontents of the nation ran high, on account of this violent
rupture between the king and parliament. These discontents Charles
inflamed by his affectation of a severity which he had not power, nor
probably inclination, to carry to extremities. Sir Miles Hobart, Sir
Peter Heyman, Selden, Coriton, Long, Strode, were committed to prison on
account of the last tumult in the house, which was called sedition.[***]

     * The king’s power of adjourning, as well as proroguing the
     parliament, was and is never questioned. In the nineteenth
     of the late king, the judges determined, that the
     adjournment by the king kept the parliament in statu quo
     until the next sitting, but that then no committees were to
     meet; but if the adjournment be by the house then the
     committees and other matters do continue. Parl. Hist, vol v.
     p. 466.

     ** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 660. Whitlocke, p. 12.

     *** Rushworth, vol. i. p. 661, 681. Parl. Hist. vol. viii.
     p. 354 May, p. 13

With great difficulty, and after several delays, they were released; and
the law was generally supposed to be wrested in order to prolong their
imprisonment. Sir John Elliot, Hollis, and Valentine, were summoned to
their trial in the king’s bench, for seditious speeches and behavior in
parliament; but refusing to answer before an inferior court for their
conduct as members of a superior, they were condemned to be imprisoned
during the king’s pleasure, to find sureties for their good behavior,
and to be fined, the two former a thousand pounds apiece, the latter
five hundred.[*] This sentence, procured by the influence of the
crown, served only to show the king’s disregard to the privileges
of parliament, and to acquire an immense stock of popularity to the
sufferers who had so bravely, in opposition to arbitrary power, defended
the liberties of their native country. The commons of England, though
an immense body, and possessed of the greater part of national property,
were naturally somewhat defenceless, because of their personal
equality, and their want of leaders: but the king’s severity, if these
prosecutions deserve the name, here pointed out leaders to them, whose
resentment was inflamed, and whose courage was nowise daunted, by the
hardships which they had undergone in so honorable a cause.

So much did these prisoners glory in their sufferings, that, though they
were promised liberty on that condition, they would not condescend even
to present a petition to the king, expressing their sorrow for having
offended him.[**] They unanimously refused to find sureties for their
good behavior, and disdained to accept of deliverance on such easy
terms. Nay, Hollis was so industrious to continue his meritorious
distress, that when one offered to bail him, he would not yield to the
rule of court, and be himself bound with his friend. Even Long, who
had actually found sureties in the chief justice’s chamber, declared in
court that his sureties should no longer continue.[***] Yet because Sir
John Elliot Happened to die while in custody, a great clamor was raised
against the administration; and he was universally regarded as a martyr
to the liberties of England.[****]

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 684, 691.

     ** Whitlocke, p. *13.

     *** Kennet vol. iii. p. 49.

     **** Rushworth, vol. v. p. 440.



CHAPTER LII



CHARLES I.

{1629.} There now opens to us a new scene. Charles naturally disgusted
with parliaments, who, he found, were determined to proceed against him
with unmitigated rigor, both in invading his prerogative and refusing
him all supply, resolved not to call any more, till he should see
greater indications of a compliant disposition in the nation. Having
lost his great favorite, Buckingham, he became his own minister and
never afterwards reposed in any one such unlimited confidence. As
he chiefly follows his own genius and disposition, his measures
are henceforth less rash and hasty; though the general tenor of his
administration still wants somewhat of being entirely legal, and perhaps
more of being entirely prudent.

We shall endeavor to exhibit a just idea of the events which followed
for some years, so far as they regard foreign affairs, the state of
the court, and the government of the nation. The incidents are neither
numerous nor illustrious; but the knowledge of them is necessary for
understanding the subsequent transactions which are so memorable.

Charles, destitute of all supply, was necessarily reduced to embrace a
measure which ought to have been the result of reason and sound policy:
he made peace with the two crowns against which he had hitherto waged
a war, entered into without necessity, and conducted without glory.
Notwithstanding the distracted and helpless condition of England, no
attempt was made either by France or Spain to invade their enemy nor did
they entertain any further project than to defend themselves against the
feeble and ill-concerted expeditions of that kingdom. Pleased that the
jealousies and quarrels, between king and parliament had disarmed so
formidable a power, they carefully avoided any enterprise which might
rouse either the terror or anger of the English, and dispose them to
domestic union and submission. The endeavors to regain the good will of
the nation were carried so far by the king of Spain, that he generously
released and sent home all the English prisoners taken in the expedition
against Cadiz. The example was imitated by France after the retreat of
the English from the Isle of Rhé. When princes were in such
dispositions, and had so few pretensions on each other, it could not be
difficult to conclude a peace. The treaty was first signed with
France.[*] The situation of the king’s affairs did not entitle him to
demand any conditions for the Hugonots, and they were abandoned to the
will of their sovereign.

{1630.} Peace was afterwards
concluded with Spain, where no conditions were made in favor of the
palatine, except that Spain promised in general to use their good
offices for his restoration.[**] The influence of these two wars on
domestic affairs, and on the dispositions of king and people, was of the
utmost consequence; but no alteration was made by them on the foreign
interests of the kingdom.

     * Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 23, 24.

     ** Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 75. Whitlocke, p. 14.

Nothing more happy can be imagined than the situation in which England
then stood with regard to foreign affairs. Europe was divided between
the rival families of Bourbon and Austria, whose opposite interests, and
still more, their mutual jealousies, secured the tranquillity of this
island. Their forces were so nearly counterpoised, that no apprehensions
were entertained of any event which could suddenly disturb the balance
of power between them. The Spanish monarch, deemed the most powerful,
lay at greatest distance; and the English, by that means, possessed the
advantage of being engaged by political motives into a more intimate
union and confederacy with the neighboring potentate. The dispersed
situation of the Spanish dominions rendered the naval power of England
formidable to them, and kept that empire in continual dependence. France,
more vigorous and more compact, was every day rising in policy and
discipline; and reached at last an equality of power with the house of
Austria; but her progress, slow and gradual, left it still in the power
of England, by a timely interposition, to check her superiority.
And thus Charles, could he have avoided all dissensions with his own
subjects, was in a situation to make himself be courted and respected by
every power in Europe; and, what has scarcely ever since been attained
by the princes of this island, he could either be active with dignity,
or neutral with security.

A neutrality was embraced by the king; and during the rest of his reign,
he seems to have little regarded foreign affairs, except so far as he
was engaged by honor and by friendship for his sister and the palatine,
to endeavor the procuring of some relief for that unhappy family. He
joined his good offices to those of France, and mediated a peace between
the kings of Sweden and Poland, in hopes of engaging the former to
embrace the protection of the oppressed Protestants in the empire. This
was the famed Gustavus, whose heroic genius, seconded by the wisest
policy, made him in a little time the most distinguished monarch of the
age, and rendered his country, formerly unknown and neglected, of great
weight in the balance of Europe. To encourage and assist him in his
projected invasion of Germany, Charles agreed to furnish him with six
thousand men; but, that he might preserve the appearance of neutrality,
he made use of the marquis of Hamilton’s name.[*]

     * Rushworth, vol. i. p. 46, 53, 62. 83.

That nobleman entered into an engagement with Gustavus; and enlisting
these troops in England and Scotland, at Charles’s expense, he landed
them in the Elbe. The decisive battle of Leipsic was fought soon after,
where the conduct of Tilly and the valor of the imperialists were
overcome by the superior conduct of Gustavus and the superior valor of
the Swedes. What remained of this hero’s life was one continued series
of victory, for which he was less beholden to fortune than to those
personal endowments which he derived from nature and from industry. That
rapid progress of conquest which we so much admire in ancient history,
was here renewed in modern annals; and without that cause to which,
in former ages, it had ever been owing. Military nations were not now
engaged against an undisciplined and unwarlike people; nor heroes set in
opposition to cowards. The veteran troops of Ferdinand, conducted by the
most celebrated generals of the age, were foiled in every encounter; and
all Germany was overrun in an instant by the victorious Swede. But by
this extraordinary and unexpected success of his ally, Charles failed
of the purpose for which he framed the alliance. Gustavus, elated by
prosperity, began to form more extensive plans of ambition; and in
freeing Germany from the yoke of Ferdinand, he intended to reduce it
to subjection under his own. He refused to restore the palatine to his
principality, except on conditions which would have kept him in total
dependence.[*] And thus the negotiation was protracted, till the battle
of Lutzen, where the Swedish monarch perished in the midst of a complete
victory which he obtained over his enemies.

We have carried on these transactions a few years beyond the present
period, that we might not be obliged to return to them, nor be
henceforth interrupted in our account of Charles’s court and kingdoms.

     * Franklyn, vol. i. p. 415.

When we consider Charles as presiding in his court, as associating
with his family, it is difficult to imagine a character at once more
respectable and more amiable. A kind husband, an indulgent father, a
gentle master, a steadfast friend; to all these eulogies his conduct
in private life fully entitled him. As a monarch too, in the exterior
qualities, he excelled; in the essential, he was not defective.
His address and manner, though perhaps inclining a little towards
stateliness and formality, in the main corresponded to his high rank,
and gave grace to that reserve and gravity which were natural to him.
The moderation and equity which shone forth in his temper seemed to
secure him against rash and dangerous enterprises: the good sense which
he displayed in his discourse and conversation, seemed to warrant his
success in every reasonable undertaking. Other endowments likewise he
had attained, which, in a private gentleman, would have been highly
ornamental, and which, in a great monarch, might have proved extremely
useful to his people. He was possessed of an excellent taste in all
the fine arts; and the love of painting was in some degree his favorite
passion. Learned beyond what is common in princes, he was a good judge
of writing in others, and enjoyed himself no mean talent in composition.
In any other age or nation, this monarch had been secure of a prosperous
and a happy reign. But the high idea of his own authority which he had
imbibed, made him incapable of giving way to the spirit of liberty which
began to prevail among his subjects. His politics were not supported
by such vigor and foresight as might enable him to subdue their
pretensions, and maintain his prerogative at the high pitch to which
it had been raised by his predecessors. And, above all, the spirit of
enthusiasm, being universally diffused, disappointed all the views
of human prudence, and disturbed the operation of every motive which
usually influences society.

 But the misfortunes arising from these
causes were yet remote. Charles now enjoyed himself in the full
exercise of his authority, in a social intercourse with his friends
and courtiers, and in a moderate use of those pleasures which he most
affected.

After the death of Buckingham, who had somewhat alienated Charles from
the queen, she is to be considered as his chief friend and favorite.
That rustic contempt of the fair sex which James affected, and which,
banishing them from his court, made it resemble more a fair or
an exchange than the seat of a great prince, was very wide of the
disposition of this monarch. But though full of complaisance to the
whole sex, Charles reserved all his passion for his consort, to whom he
attached himself with unshaken fidelity and confidence. By her sense
and spirit, as well as by her beauty, she justified the fondness of
her husband; though it is allowed that, being somewhat of a passionate
temper, she precipitated him into hasty and imprudent measures. Her
religion likewise, to which she was much addicted, must be regarded as
a great misfortune; since it augmented the jealousy which prevailed
against the court, and engaged her to procure for the Catholics some
indulgences which were generally distasteful to the nation.[*]

In the former situation of the English government, when the sovereign
was in a great measure independent of his subjects, the king chose
his ministers either from personal favor, or from an opinion of their
abilities, without any regard to their parliamentary interest or
talents. It has since been the maxim of princes, wherever popular
leaders encroach too much on royal authority, to confer offices on them,
in expectation that they will afterwards become more careful not to
diminish that power which has become their own. These politics were now
embraced by Charles; a sure proof that a secret revolution had happened
in the constitution, and had necessitated the prince to adopt new maxims
of government.[**]

     * May, p 21.

     ** Sir Edw. Walker, p. 328.

But the views of the king were at this time so repugnant to those of
the Puritans, that the leaders whom he gained, lost from that moment
all interest with their party, and were even pursued as traitors with
implacable hatred and resentment. This was the case with Sir Thomas
Wentworth, whom the king created, first a baron, then a viscount, and
afterwards earl of Strafford; made him president of the council of
York, and deputy of Ireland; and regarded him as his chief minister and
counsellor. By his eminent talents and abilities, Strafford merited
all the confidence which his master reposed in him: his character
was stately and austere; more fitted to procure esteem than love:
his fidelity to the king was unshaken; but as he now employed all his
counsels to support the prerogative, which he had formerly bent all his
endeavors to diminish his virtue seems not to have been entirely pure,
but to have been susceptible of strong impressions from private interest
and ambition. Sir Dudley Digges was about the same time created master
of the rolls; Noy, attorney-general; Littleton, solicitor-general. All
these had likewise been parliamentary leaders, and were men eminent in
their profession.[*]

     * Whitlocke, p. 13. May, p. 20.

[Illustration: 1-647-strafford.jpg EARL OF STRAFFORD]

In all ecclesiastical affairs, and even in many civil, Laud, bishop of
London, had great influence over the king. This man was virtuous, if
severity of manners alone, and abstinence from pleasure, could deserve
that name. He was learned, if polemical knowledge could entitle him
to that praise. He was disinterested; but with unceasing industry he
studied to exalt the priestly and prelatical character, which was his
own. His zeal was unrelenting in the cause of religion; that is, in
imposing by rigorous measures his own tenets and pious ceremonies on
the obstinate Puritans, who had profanely dared to oppose him.
In prosecution of his holy purposes, he overlooked every human
consideration; or, in other words, the heat and indiscretion of his
temper made him neglect the views of prudence and rules of good manners.
He was in this respect happy, that all his enemies were also imagined
by him the declared enemies to loyalty and true piety, and that every
exercise of his anger by that means became in his eyes a merit and
a virtue. This was the man who acquired so great an ascendant over
Charles, and who led him, by the facility of his temper, into a conduct
which proved so fatal to himself and to his kingdoms.

The humor of the nation ran at that time into the extreme opposite to
superstition; and it was with difficulty that the ancient ceremonies
to which men had been accustomed, and which had been sanctified by the
practice of the first reformers, could be retained in divine service:
yet was this the time which Laud chose for the introduction of new
ceremonies and observances. Besides that these were sure to displease
as innovations, there lay, in the opinion of the public, another very
forcible objection against them. Laud, and the other prelates who
embraced his measures, were generally well instructed in sacred
antiquity, and had adopted many of those religious sentiments which
prevailed during the fourth and fifth centuries; when the Christian
church, as is well known, was already sunk into those superstitions
which were afterwards continued and augmented by the policy of Rome. The
revival, therefore, of the ideas and practices of that age, could not
fail of giving the English faith and liturgy some resemblance to the
Catholic superstition, which the kingdom in general, and the Puritans in
particular, held in the greatest horror and detestation. Men also were
apt to think, that, without some secret purpose, such insignificant
observances would not be imposed with such unrelenting zeal on the
refractory nation; and that Laud’s scheme was, to lead back the English
by gradual steps to the religion of their ancestors. They considered
not, that the very insignificancy of these ceremonies recommended them
to the superstitious prelate, and made them appear the more peculiarly
sacred and religious, as they could serve to no other purpose. Nor was
the resemblance to the Romish ritual any objection, but rather a merit
with Laud and his brethren; who bore a much greater kindness to
the mother church, as they called her, than to the sectaries and
Presbyterians, and frequently recommended her as a true Christian
church; an appellation which they refused, or at least scrupled to give
to the others.[*] So openly were these tenets espoused, that not only
the discontented Puritans believed the church of England to be relapsing
fast into Romish superstition: the court of Rome itself entertained
hopes of regaining its authority in this island; and, in order to
forward Laud’s supposed good intentions, an offer was twice made him in
private of a cardinal’s hat, which he declined accepting.[**] His answer
was, as he says himself, “That something dwelt within him, which would
not suffer his compliance, till Rome were other than it is.”[***]

     * May, p. 25.

     ** Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 190. Welwood, p. 61.

     *** Rushworth, vol. iii. p. 1327. Whitlocke, p. 97.

A court lady, daughter of the earl of Devonshire, having turned
Catholic, was asked by Laud the reason of her conversion: “‘Tis
chiefly,” said she, “because I hate to travel in a crowd.” The meaning
of this expression being demanded, she replied, “I perceive your grace
and many others are making haste to Rome; and therefore, in order to
prevent my being crowded, I have gone before you.” It must be confessed,
that though Laud deserved not the appellation of Papist, the genius of
his religion was, though in a less degree, the same with that of
the Romish: the same profound respect was exacted to the sacerdotal
character, the same submission required to the creeds and decrees of
synods and councils; the same pomp and ceremony was affected in
worship; and the same superstitious regard to days, postures, meats, and
vestments. No wonder, therefore, that this prelate was every where among
the Puritans regarded with horror, as the forerunner of Antichrist.

As a specimen of the new ceremonies to which Laud sacrificed his own
quiet and that of the nation, it may not be amiss to relate those which
he was accused of employing in the consecration of St. Catharine’s
church, and which were the object of such general scandal and offence.

On the bishop’s approach to the west door of the church, a loud voice
cried, “Open, open, ye everlasting doors, that the king of glory may
enter in!” Immediately the doors of the church flew open, and the bishop
entered. Falling upon his knees, with eyes elevated and arms expanded,
he uttered these words: “This place is holy; the ground is holy: in the
name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, I pronounce it holy.”

Going towards the chancel, he several times took up from the floor
some of the dust, and threw it in the air. When he approached, with his
attendants, near to the communion table, he bowed frequently towards
it; and on their return, they went round the church, repeating, as they
marched along, some of the psalms; and then said a form of prayer, which
concluded with these words: “We consecrate this church, and separate it
unto thee as holy ground, not to be profaned any more to common uses.”

After this, the bishop, standing near the communion table solemnly
pronounced many imprecations upon such as should afterwards pollute that
holy place by musters of soldiers, or keeping in it profane law-courts,
or carrying burdens through it. On the conclusion of every curse, he
bowed towards the east, and cried, “Let all the people say, Amen.”

The imprecations being all so piously finished, there were poured out
a number of blessings upon such as had any hand in framing and building
that sacred and beautiful edifice, and on such as had given, or should
hereafter give to it, any chalices, plate, ornaments, or utensils. At
every benediction he in like manner bowed towards the east, and cried,
“Let all the people say, Amen.”

The sermon followed; after which the bishop consecrated and administered
the sacrament in the following manner.

As he approached the communion table, he made many lowly reverences;
and coming up to that part of the table where the bread and wine lay, he
bowed seven times. After the reading of many prayers, he approached the
sacramental elements, and gently lifted up the corner of the napkin in
which the bread was placed. When he beheld the bread, he suddenly let
fall the napkin, flew back a step or two, bowed three several times
towards the bread; then he drew nigh again, opened the napkin, and bowed
as before.

Next he laid his hand on the cup, which had a cover upon it, and was
filled with wine. He let go the cup, fell back, and bowed thrice towards
it. He approached again; and lifting op the cover, peeped into the
cup. Seeing the wine, he let fall the cover, started back, and bowed as
before. Then he received the sacrament, and gave it to others. And many
prayers being said, the solemnity of the consecration ended. The walls,
and floor, and roof of the fabric were then supposed to be sufficiently
holy.[*]

Orders were given, and rigorously insisted on, that the communion table
should be removed from the middle of the area where it hitherto stood in
all churches, except in cathedrals.[**] It was placed at the east end,
railed in, and denominated an “altar;” as the clergyman who officiated
received commonly the appellation of “priest.” It is not easy to imagine
the discontents excited by this innovation, and the suspicions which it
gave rise to.

     * Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 76, 77. Welwood, p. 275. Franklyn,
     p. 386.

     ** Rushworth, vol ii. p. 207. Whitlocke, p. 24.

The kneeling at the altar, and the using of copes, a species of
embroidered vestment, in administering the sacrament, were also known
to be great objects of scandal, as being Popish practices; but the
opposition rather increased than abated the zeal of the prelate for the
introduction of these habits and ceremonies.

All kinds of ornament, especially pictures, were necessary for
supporting that mechanical devotion which was purposed to be raised in
this model of religion: but as these had been so much employed by the
church of Rome, and had given rise to so much superstition, or what
the Puritans called idolatry it was impossible to introduce them into
English churches without exciting general murmurs and complaints. But
Laud possessed of present authority, persisted in his purpose, and made
several attempts towards acquiring these ornaments. Some of the pictures
introduced by him were also found, upon inquiry, to be the very same
that might be met with in the mass-book. The crucifix too, that eternal
consolation of all pious Catholics, and terror to all sound Protestants,
was not forgotten on this occasion.[*]

It was much remarked, that Sheffield, the recorder of Salisbury, was
tried in the star chamber, for having broken, contrary to the bishop of
Salisbury’s express injunctions, a painted window of St. Edmond’s
church in that city. He boasted that he had destroyed these monuments
of idolatry: but for this effort of his zeal, he was fined five
hundred pounds, removed from his office, condemned to make a public
acknowledgment, and be bound to his good behavior.[**]

Not only such of the clergy as neglected to observe every ceremony were
suspended and deprived by the high commission court: oaths were, by many
of the bishops, imposed or the churchwardens; and they were sworn
to inform against any one who acted contrary to the ecclesiastical
canons.[***] Such a measure, though practised during the reign of
Elizabeth, gave much offence, as resembling too nearly the practice of
the Romish inquisition.

To show the greater alienation from the churches reformed after the
Presbyterian model, Laud advised that the discipline and worship of the
church should be imposed on the English regiments and trading companies
abroad.[****] All foreigners of the Dutch and Walloon congregations were
commanded to attend the established church; and indulgence was granted
to none after the children of the first denizens.[v]

     * Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 272, 273.

     ** Rushworth, Vol. ii. p. 152. State Trials, vol. v. p 46.
     Franklyn, p. 410, 411, 412.

     *** Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 186.

     **** Rushworth, vol, ii. p. 249. Franklyn, p. 451.

     v    Rushworth, vol. ii. p. 272

Scudamore, too, the king’s ambassador at Paris, had orders to withdraw
himself from the communion of the Hugonots. Even men of sense were apt
to blame this conduct, not only because it gave offence in England, but
because, in foreign countries, it lost the crown the advantage of being
considered as the head and support of the reformation.[*]

On pretence of pacifying disputes, orders were issued from the council,
forbidding on both sides all preaching and printing with regard to
the controverted points of predestination and free will. But it was
complained of, and probably with reason that the impartiality was
altogether confined to the orders, and that the execution of them was
only meant against the Calvinists.

In return for Charles’s indulgence towards the church, Laud and his
followers took care to magnify, on every occasion, the regal authority,
and to treat with the utmost disdain or detestation all Puritanical
pretensions to a free and independent constitution. But while these
prelates were so liberal in raising the crown at the expense of public
liberty, they made no scruple of encroaching, themselves, on the royal
rights the most incontestable, in order to exalt the hierarchy, and
procure to their own order dominion and independence. All the doctrines
which the Romish church had borrowed from some of the fathers, and which
freed the spiritual from subordination to the civil power, were now
adopted by the church of England, and interwoven with her political
and religious tenets. A divine and apostolical charter was insisted on,
preferably to a legal and parliamentary one.[**]

     * State Papers collected by the earl of Clarendon, p 338.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 22.

The sacerdotal character was magnified as sacred and indefeasible: all
right to spiritual authority, or even to private judgment in spiritual
subjects, was refused to profane laymen: ecclesiastical courts were held
by the bishops in their own name, without any notice taken of the king’s
authority: and Charles, though extremely jealous of every claim in
popular assemblies, seemed rather to encourage than repress those
encroachments of his clergy. Having felt many sensible inconveniencies
from the independent spirit of parliaments, he attached himself entirely
to those who professed a devoted obedience to his crown and person;
nor did he foresee, that the ecclesiastical power which he exalted, not
admitting of any precise boundary, might in time become more dangerous
to public peace, and no less fatal to royal prerogative, than the other.

So early as the coronation, Laud was the person, according to general
opinion, that introduced a novelty which, though overlooked by Charles,
made a deep impression on many of the bystanders. After the usual
ceremonies, these words were recited to the king: “Stand and hold fast,
from henceforth the place to which you have been heir by the succession
of your forefathers, being now delivered to you by the authority of
Almighty God, and by the hands of us and all the bishops and servants of
God. And, as you see the clergy to come nearer the altar than others,
so remember that, in all places convenient, you give them greater honor;
that the Mediator of God and man may establish you on the kingly throne,
to be a mediator betwixt the clergy and the laity; and that you may
reign forever with Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords.”
 [*]

The principles which exalted prerogative, were not entertained by the
king merely as soft and agreeable to his royal ears; they were also put
in practice during the time that he ruled without parliaments. Though
frugal and regular in his expense, he wanted money for the support of
government; and he levied it, either by the revival of obsolete laws, or
by violations, some more open, some more disguised, of the privileges of
the nation. Though humane and gentle in his temper, he gave way to a
few severities in the star chamber and high commission, which seemed
necessary in order to support the present mode of administration, and
repress the rising spirit of liberty throughout the kingdom. Under these
two heads may be reduced all the remarkable transactions of this reign
during some years; for, in peaceable and prosperous times, where
a neutrality in foreign affairs is observed, scarcely any thing is
remarkable, but what is in some degree blamed or blamable. And, lest the
hope of relief or protection from parliament might encourage opposition,
Charles issued a proclamation, in which he declared, “That whereas, for
several ill ends, the calling again of a parliament is divulged; though
his majesty has shown, by frequent meetings with his people, his love to
the use of parliaments: yet the late abuse having for the present driven
him unwillingly out of that course; he will account it presumption
for anyone to prescribe to him any time for the calling of that
assembly.”[**]

     * Franklyn, p. 114. Rushworth, vol. i. p. 201.

     ** Parl. Hist. vol. viii. p. 389. Rush. vol. ii. p. 3.

This was generally construed as a declaration, that during this reign no
more parliaments were intended to be summoned.[*] And every measure of
the king’s confirmed a suspicion so disagreeable to the generality of
the people.

Tonnage and poundage continued to be levied by the royal authority
alone. The former additional impositions were still exacted. Even new
impositions were laid on several kinds of merchandise.[**]

The custom-house officers received orders from the council to enter into
any house, warehouse, or cellar; to search any trunk or chest; and to
break any bulk whatever; in default of the payment of customs.[***]

In order to exercise the militia, and to keep them in good order, each
county, by an edict of the council, was assessed in a certain sum, for
maintaining a muster-master, appointed for that service.[****]

Compositions were openly made with recusants, and the Popish religion
became a regular part of the revenue. This was all the persecution which
it underwent during the reign of Charles.[v]

A commission was granted for compounding with such as were possessed of
crown lands upon defective titles; and on this pretence some money was
exacted from the people.[v*]

There was a law of Edward II.,[v**] that whoever was possessed of twenty
pounds a year in land, should be obliged, when summoned, to appear and
to receive the order of knighthood. Twenty pounds at that time, partly
by the change of denomination, partly by that in the value of money,
were equivalent to two hundred in the seventeenth century; and it seemed
just that the king should not strictly insist on the letter of the law,
and oblige people of so small revenue to accept of that expensive honor.
Edward VI,[v***] and Queen Elizabeth,[v****] who had both of them made
use of this expedient for raising money, had summoned only those who
were possessed of forty pounds a year and upwards to receive knighthood,
or compound for their neglect; and Charles imitated their example, in
granting the same indulgence.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 4. May, p. 14.

     ** Rush. vol. ii. p. 8. May, p. 16.

     *** Rush. vol. ii. p. 9.

     **** Rush. vol. ii. p. 10.

     v     Rush. vol. ii. p. 11, 12, 13, 247.

     v*    Rush. vol. ii: p. 49.

     v**   Statutum de militibus.

     v***  Rymer, tom. xv. p. 124.

     v**** Rymer, tom. xv. p. 493, 504.

Commissioners were appointed for fixing the rates of composition; and
instructions were given to these commissioners not to accept of a less
sum than would have been due by the party upon a tax of three subsidies
and a half.[*] Nothing proves more plainly how ill disposed the people
were to the measures of the crown, than to observe that they loudly
complained of an expedient founded on positive statute, and warranted
by such recent precedents. The law was pretended to be obsolete; though
only one reign had intervened since the last execution of it.

Barnard, lecturer of St. Sepulchre’s, London, used this expression in
his prayer before sermon: “Lord, open the eyes of the queen’s majesty,
that she may see Jesus Christ, whom she has pierced with her infidelity,
superstition, and idolatry.” He was questioned in the high commission
court for this insult on the queen; but, upon his submission,
dismissed.[**] Leighton, who had written libels against the king, the
queen, the bishops, and the whole administration, was condemned by
a very severe, if not a cruel sentence; but the execution of it was
suspended for some time, in expectation of his submission.[***] All
the severities, indeed, of this reign were exercised against those
who triumphed in their sufferings, who courted persecution, and braved
authority; and on that account their punishment may be deemed the more
just, but the less prudent. To have neglected them entirely, had it been
consistent with order and public safety, had been the wisest measure
that could have been embraced; as perhaps it had been the most severe
punishment that could have been inflicted on these zealots.

{1631.} In order to gratify the clergy with a magnificent fabric,
subscriptions were set on foot for repairing and rebuilding St. Paul’s;
and the king, by his countenance and example, encouraged this laudable
undertaking.[****] By order of the privy council, St. Gregory’s
church was removed, as an impediment to the project of extending and
beautifying the cathedral. Some houses and shops likewise were pulled
down, and compensation was made to the owners.[v]

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 70, 71, 72. May, p. 16.

     ** Rush vol. ii. p. 32.

     *** Kennets Complete Hist. vol. iii. p. 60. Whitlocke, p.
     15.

     **** Whitlocke, p. 17.

     v    Rush. vol. ii. p. 88, 89, 90, 207, 462 718.

As there was no immediate prospect of assembling a parliament, such acts
of power in the king became necessary; and in no former age would the
people have entertained any scruple with regard to them. It must be
remarked, that the Puritans were extremely averse to the raising of
this ornament to the capital. It savored, as they pretended, of Popish
superstition.

A stamp duty was imposed on cards; a new tax, which of itself was liable
to no objection, but appeared of dangerous consequence when considered
as arbitrary and illegal.[*]

Monopolies were revived; an oppressive method of levying money, being
unlimited, as well as destructive of industry. The last parliament of
James, which abolished monopolies, had left an equitable exception in
favor of new inventions; and on pretence of these, and of erecting
new companies and corporations, was this grievance now renewed. The
manufacture of soap was given to a company who paid a sum for their
patent.[**] Leather, salt, and many other commodities, even down to
linen rags, were likewise put under restrictions.

It is affirmed by Clarendon, that so little benefit was reaped from
these projects, that of two hundred thousand pounds thereby levied on
the people, scarcely one thousand five hundred came into the king’s
coffers. Though we ought not to suspect the noble historian of
exaggerations to the disadvantage of Charles’s measures, this fact, it
must be owned, appears somewhat incredible. The same author adds, that
the king’s intention was to teach his subjects how unthrifty a thing it
was to refuse reasonable supplies to the crown: an imprudent project:
to offend a whole nation under the view of punishment: and to hope
by acts of violence to break their refractory spirits, without being
possessed of any force to prevent resistance.

{1632.} The council of York had been first erected, after a rebellion,
by a patent from Henry VIII., without any authority of parliament; and
this exercise cf power, like many others, was indulged to that arbitrary
monarch. This council had long acted chiefly as a criminal court; but,
besides some innovations introduced by James, Charles thought proper
some time after Wentworth was made president, to extend its powers,
and to give it a large civil jurisdiction, and that in some respects
discretionary.[***]

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 103.

     ** Rush. vol. ii. p. 136, 142, 189, 252.

     *** Rush. vol. ii. p, 158, 159, etc. Franklyn, p. 412.

It is not improbable, that the king’s intention was only to prevent
inconveniencies, which arose from the bringing of every cause, from
the most distant parts of the kingdom, into Westminster Hall: but the
consequence, in the mean time, of this measure, was the putting of
all the northern counties out of the protection of ordinary law, and
subjecting them to an authority somewhat arbitrary. Some irregular acts
of that council were this year complained of.[*]

{1633.} The court of star chamber extended its authority; and it was
matter of complaint that it encroached upon the jurisdiction of the
other courts; imposing heavy fines and inflicting severe punishment,
beyond the usual course of justice. Sir David Foulis was fined
five thousand pounds, chiefly because he had dissuaded a friend
from compounding with the commissioners of knighthood.[**]

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 202, 203.

     ** Rush, vol. ii. p. 215, 216, etc.

Prynne, a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, had written an enormous quarto of
a thousand pages, which he called Histrio-Mastyx. Its professed purpose
was to decry stage-plays, comedies, interludes, music, dancing; but
the author likewise took occasion to declaim against hunting, public
festivals, Christmas-keeping, bonfires, and may-poles. His zeal against
all these levities, he says, was first moved by observing that plays
sold better than the choicest sermons, and that they were frequently
printed on finer paper than the Bible itself. Besides, that the players
were often Papists, and desperately wicked; the play-houses, he affirms,
are Satan’s chapels; the play-haunters little better than incarnate
devils; and so many steps in a dance, so many paces to hell. The chief
crime of Nero, he represents to have been his frequenting and acting of
plays; and those who nobly conspired his death, were principally moved
to it, as he affirms, by their indignation at that enormity. The rest of
his thousand pages is of a like strain. He had obtained a license from
Archbishop Abbot’s chaplain; yet was he indicted in the star chamber as
a libeller. It was thought somewhat hard that general invectives against
plays should be interpreted into satires against the king and queen,
merely because they frequented these amusements, and because the
queen sometimes acted a part in pastorals and interludes which were
represented at court. The author, it must be owned, had, in plainer
terms, blamed the hierarchy, the ceremonies, the innovations in
religious worship, and the new superstitions introduced by Laud;[*]
and this, probably, together with the obstinacy and petulance of his
behavior before the star chamber, was the reason why his sentence was so
severe. He was condemned to be put from the bar; to stand on the pillory
in two places, Westminster and Cheapside; to lose both his ears, one
in each place; to pay five thousand pounds’ fine to the king; and to be
imprisoned during life.[**]

This same Prynne was a great hero among the Puritans; and it was
chiefly with a view of mortifying that sect, that though of an honorable
profession, he was condemned by the star chamber to so ignominious a
punishment. The thorough-paced Puritans were distinguishable by the
sourness and austerity of their manners, and by their aversion to
all pleasure and society.[***] To inspire them with better humor was
certainly, both for their own sake and that of the public, a laudable
intention in the court; but whether pillories, fines and prisons were
proper expedients for that purpose, may admit of some question.

Another expedient which the king tried, in order to infuse cheerfulness
into the national devotion, was not much more successful. He renewed his
father’s edict for allowing sports and recreations on Sunday to such
as attended public worship; and he ordered his proclamation for that
purpose to be publicly read by the clergy after divine service.[****]
Those who were Puritanically affected refused obedience, and were
punished by suspension or deprivation. The differences between the
sects were before sufficiently great; nor was it necessary to widen them
further by these inventions.

Some encouragement and protection which the king and the bishops gave
to wakes, church ales, bride ales, and other cheerful festivals of the
common people, were the objects of like scandal to the Puritans.[v]

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 223.

     ** Rush. vol. ii. p. 220, 221, etc.

     *** Dugdale, p. 2.

     **** Rush, vol. ii. p. 193, 459. Whitlocke, p. 16, 17.
     Franklyn, p. 431*.

     v    Rush. vol. ii. p. 191, 192. May, p. 2.

The music in the churches he affirmed not to be the noise of men, but a
bleating of brute beasts; choristers bellow the tenor, as it were oxen;
bark a counterpart, as it were a kennel of dogs; roar out a treble, as
it were a sort of bulls; and grunt out a bass, as it were a number of
hogs: Christmas, as it is kept, is the devil’s Christmas: and Prynne
employed a great number of pages to persuade men to affect the name
of “Puritan,” as if Christ had been a Puritan; and so he saith in his
index.

This year, Charles made a journey to Scotland, attended by the court,
in order to hold a parliament there, and to pass through the ceremony of
his coronation. The nobility and gentry of both kingdoms rivalled each
other in expressing all duty and respect to the king, and in showing
mutual friendship and regard to each other. No one could have suspected,
from exterior appearances, that such dreadful scenes were approaching.

One chief article of business, (for it deserves the name,) which the
king transacted in this parliament, was, besides obtaining some supply,
to procure authority for ordering the habits of clergymen.[*] The act
did not pass without opposition and difficulty. The dreadful surplice
was before men’s eyes, and they apprehended, with some reason, that
under sanction of this law, it would soon be introduced among them.
Though the king believed that his prerogative entitled him to a power,
in general, of directing whatever belonged to the exterior government
of the church, this was deemed a matter of too great importance to be
ordered without the sanction of a particular statute.

Immediately after the king’s return to England, he heard of Archbishop
Abbot’s death; and, without delay, he conferred that dignity on his
favorite, Laud; who, by this accession of authority, was now enabled to
maintain ecclesiastical discipline with greater rigor, and to aggravate
the general discontent of the nation.

Laud obtained the bishopric of London for his friend Juxon: and, about
a year after the death of Sir Richard Weston, created earl of Portland,
had interest enough to engage the king to make that prelate high
treasurer. Juxon was a person of great integrity, mildness, and
humanity, and endued with a good understanding.[**] Yet did this last
promotion give general offence. His birth and character were deemed too
obscure for a man raised to one of the highest offices of the crown.
And the clergy, it was thought, were already too much elated by former
instances of the king’s attachment to them, and needed not this further
encouragement to assume dominion over the laity.[***] The Puritans,
likewise, were much dissatisfied with Juxon, notwithstanding his eminent
virtues, because he was a lover of profane field sports and hunting.

     * Bushworth, vol. ii. p. 183.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 23. Clarendon, vol. i. p. 99.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 97. May, p. 23.

{1634.} Ship money was now introduced. The first writs of this kind had
been directed to seaport towns only: but ship money was at this time
levied on the whole kingdom; and each county was rated at a particular
sum, which was after wards assessed upon individuals.[*] The amount of
the whole tax was very moderate, little exceeding two hundred thousand
pounds: it was levied upon the people with equality: the money was
entirely expended on the navy, to the great honor and advantage of the
kingdom: as England had no military force, while all the other powers of
Europe were strongly armed, a fleet seemed absolutely necessary for her
security; and it was obvious, that a navy must be built and equipped at
leisure, during peace; nor could it possibly be fitted out on a sudden
emergence, when the danger became urgent; yet all these considerations
could not reconcile the people to the imposition. It was entirely
arbitrary: by the same right any other tax might be imposed: and men
thought a powerful fleet, though very desirable both for the credit and
safety of the kingdom, but an unequal recompense for their liberties,
which, they apprehended, were thus sacrificed to the obtaining of it.

England, it must be owned, was in this respect unhappy in its present
situation, that the king had entertained a very different idea of the
constitution, from that which began in general to prevail among his
subjects. He did not regard national privileges as so sacred and
inviolable, that nothing but the most extreme necessity could justify an
infringement of them. He considered himself as the supreme magistrate,
to whose care Heaven, by his birthright, had committed his people; whose
duty it was to provide for their security and happiness, and who was
vested with ample discretionary powers for that salutary purpose. If the
observance of ancient laws and customs was consistent with the present
convenience of government, he thought himself obliged to comply with
that rule, as the easiest, the safest, and what procured the most prompt
and willing obedience. But when a change of circumstances, especially
if derived from the obstinacy of the people, required a new plan of
administration, national privileges, he thought, must yield to supreme
power; nor could any order of the state oppose any right to the will of
the sovereign, directed to the good of the public.[**]

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 257, 258, etc.

     ** Rush. vol. iv p 535, 542.

That these principles of government were derived from the uniform tenor
of the English laws, it would be rash to affirm. The fluctuating nature
of the constitution, the impatient humor of the people, and the variety
of events, had, no doubt, in different ages, produced exceptions and
contradictions. These observations alone may be established on both
sides, that the appearances were sufficiently strong in favor of the
king to apologize for his following such maxims; and that public liberty
must be so precarious under this exorbitant prerogative, as to render an
opposition not only excusable, but laudable in the people.[*] [4]

Some laws had been enacted, during the reign of Henry VII., against
depopulation, or the converting of arable lands into pasture. By a
decree of the star chamber, Sir Anthony Roper was fined four thousand
pounds for an offence of that nature.[**] This severe sentence was
intended to terrify others into composition; and above thirty thousand
pounds were levied by that expedient.[***] Like compositions, or, in
default of them, heavy fines, were required for encroachments on the
king’s forests, whose bounds, by decrees deemed arbitrary, were extended
much beyond what was usual.[****] The bounds of one forest, that
of Rockingham, were increased from six miles to sixty.[v] The same
refractory humor which made the people refuse to the king voluntary
supplies, disposed them, with better reason, to murmur against these
irregular methods of taxation.

Morley was fined ten thousand pounds for reviling, challenging, and
striking, in the court of Whitehall, Sir George Theobald, one of the
king’s servants.[v*] This fine was thought exorbitant; but whether it
was compounded, as was usual in fines imposed by the star chamber, we
are not informed.

     * See note D, at the end of the volume.

     ** Rush. vol. ii. p. 270; vol. iii. App. p. 106.

     *** Rush. vol. iii. p. 333. Franklyn, p. 478.

     **** May, p. 16.

     v Strafford’s Letters and Despatches, vol. ii. p. 117.

     v* Rush. vol. ii. p. 270.

Allison had reported, that the archbishop of York had incurred the
king’s displeasure, by asking a limited toleration for the Catholics,
and an allowance to build some churches for the exercise of their
religion. For this slander against the archbishop, he was condemned in
the star chamber to be fined one thousand pounds, to be committed to
prison, to be bound to his good behavior during life, to be whipped,
and to be set on the pillory at Westminster, and in three other towns in
England. Robins, who had been an accomplice in the guilt, was condemned
by a sentence equally severe.[*] Such events are rather to be considered
as rare and detached incidents, collected by the severe scrutiny of
historians, than as proofs of the prevailing genius of the king’s
administration which seems to have been more gentle and equitable than,
that of most of his predecessors: there were, on the whole, only five
or six such instances of rigor during the course of fifteen years,
which elapsed before the meeting of the long parliament. And it is also
certain, that scandal against the great, though seldom prosecuted at
present, is, however, in the eye of the law, a great crime, and subjects
the offender to very heavy penalties.

There are other instances of the high respect paid to the nobility and
to the great in that age, when the powers of monarchy, though disputed,
still maintained themselves in their pristine vigor. Clarendon[**] tells
us a pleasant incident to this purpose: a waterman, belonging to a man
of quality, having a squabble with a citizen about his fare, showed his
badge, the crest of his master, which happened to be a swan; and thence
insisted on better treatment from the citizen. But the other replied
carelessly, that he did not trouble his head about that goose. For
this offence, he was summoned before the marshal’s court; was fined, as
having opprobriously defamed the nobleman’s crest, by calling the swan a
goose; and was in effect reduced to beggary.

Sir Richard Granville had thought himself ill used by the earl of Suffolk
in a lawsuit; and he was accused before the star chamber of having said
of that nobleman, that he was a base lord. The evidence against him was
somewhat lame; yet for this slight offence, insufficiently proved, he
was condemned to pay a fine of eight thousand pounds; one half to the
earl, the other to the king.[***]

     * Bush. vol. u. p, 269.

     ** Life of Clarendon, vol. i. p. 72.

     *** Lord Lansdown, p. 514.

Sir George Markham, following a chase where Lord Darcy’s huntsman was
exercising his hounds, kept closer to the dogs than was thought proper
by the huntsman, who, besides other rudeness, gave him foul language,
which Sir George returned with a stroke of his whip. The fellow
threatened to complain to his master: the knight replied, “If his master
should justify such insolence, he would serve him in the same manner;” or
words to that effect. Sir George was summoned before the Star chamber,
and fined ten thousand pounds: “So fine a thing was it in those days to
be a lord!”--a natural reflection of Lord Lansdown’s in relating
this incident.[*] The people, in vindicating their liberties from the
authority of the crown, threw off also the yoke of the nobility. It is
proper to remark that this last incident happened early in the reign of
James. The present practice of the star chamber was far from being an
innovation; though the present dispositions of the people made them
repine more at this servitude.

{1635.} Charles had imitated the example of Elizabeth and James, and had
issued proclamations forbidding the landed gentlemen and the nobility
to live idly in London, and ordering them to retire to their country
seats.[**] For disobedience to this edict, many were indicted by
the attorney-general, and were fined in the star chamber.[***] This
occasioned discontents; and the sentences were complained of as illegal.
But if proclamations had authority, of which nobody pretended to doubt,
must they not be put in execution? In no instance I must confess, does
it more evidently appear, what confused and uncertain ideas were during
that age entertained concerning the English constitution.

Ray, having exported fuller’s earth, contrary to the king’s
proclamation, was, besides the pillory, condemned in the star chamber
to a fine of two thousand pounds.[****] Like fines were levied on
Terry, Eman, and others, for disobeying a proclamation which forbade
the exportation of gold.[v] In order to account for the subsequent
convulsions, even these incidents are not to be overlooked as frivolous
or contemptible. Such severities were afterwards magnified into the
greatest enormities.

There remains a proclamation of this year, prohibiting hackney coaches
from standing in the street.[v*] We are told, that there were not above
twenty coaches of that kind in London. There are at present near eight
hundred.

     * Lord Lansdown, p. 515. This story is told differently in
     Hobart’s Reports, p. 120. It there appears, that Markham was
     fined only five hundred pounds, and very deservedly; for he
     gave the lie and wrote a challenge to Lord Darcy. James was
     anxious to discourage the practice of duelling, which was
     then very prevalent.

     ** Rush. vol. ii. p. 144.

     *** Rush. vol. ii, p. 288.

     **** Rush. vol. ii. p. 348.

     v    Rush. vol. ii. p. 360.

     v*   Rush. vol. ii. p. 316.

{1636.} The effects of ship money began now to appear. A formidable
fleet of sixty sail, the greatest that England had ever known, was
equipped under the earl of Northumberland, who had orders to attack
the herring busses of the Dutch, which fished in what were called the
British seas. The Dutch were content to pay thirty thousand pounds for
a license during this year. They openly denied, however, the claim of
dominion in the seas beyond the friths, bays, and shores; and it may be
questioned whether the laws of nations warrant any further pretensions.

This year, the king sent a squadron against Sallee; and, with the
assistance of the emperor of Morocco, destroyed that receptacle of
pirates, by whom the English commerce, and even the English coasts, had
long been infested.

{1637.} Burton, a divine, and Bastwick, a physician, were tried in the
star chamber for seditious and schismatical libels, and were condemned
to the same punishment that had been inflicted on Prynne. Prynne himself
was tried for a new offence; and, together with another fine of five
thousand pounds, was condemned to lose what remained of his ears.
Besides that these writers had attacked with great severity, and even an
intemperate zeal, the ceremonies, rites, and government of the church,
the very answers which they gave in to the court were so full of
contumacy and of invectives against the prelates, that no lawyer
could be prevailed on to sign them.[*] The rigors, however, which they
underwent, being so unworthy men of their profession, gave general
offence; and the patience, or rather alacrity, with which they suffered,
increased still further the indignation of the public.[**]

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 381, 382, etc. State Trials, vol. v. p.
     66.

     ** State Trials, vol. v. p. 80.

The severity of the star chamber, which was generally ascribed to Laud’s
passionate disposition, was, perhaps, in itself somewhat blamable;
but will naturally, to us, appear enormous, who enjoy, in the utmost
latitude, that liberty of the press, which is esteemed so necessary
in every monarchy, confined by strict legal limitations. But as these
limitations were not regularly fixed during the age of Charles, nor at
any time before, so was this liberty totally unknown, and was generally
deemed, as well as religious toleration, incompatible with all good
government. No age or nation among the moderns had ever set an example
of such an indulgence; and it seems unreasonable to judge of the
measures embraced during one period by the maxims which prevail in
another.

Burton, in his book where he complained of innovations mentioned, among
others, that a certain Wednesday had been appointed for a fast, and
that the fast was ordered to be celebrated without any sermons.[*] The
intention, as he pretended, of that novelty was, by the example of
a fast without sermons, to suppress all the Wednesday’s lectures in
London. It is observable, that the church of Rome and that of England,
being both of them lovers of form, and ceremony, and order, are more
friends to prayer than preaching; while the Puritanical sectaries, who
find that the latter method of address, being directed to a numerous
audience present and visible, is more inflaming and animating,
have always regarded it as the chief part of divine service. Such
circumstances, though minute, it may not be improper to transmit to
posterity; and those who are curious of tracing the history of the human
mind, may remark how far its several singularities coincide in different
ages.

Certain zealots had erected themselves into a society for buying in of
impropriations, and transferring them to the church; and great sums of
money had been bequeathed to the society for these purposes. But it was
soon observed, that the only use which they made of their funds was to
establish lecturers in all the considerable churches; men who, without
being subjected to Episcopal authority, employed themselves entirely
in preaching and spreading the fire of Puritanism. Laud took care, by
a decree which was passed in the court of exchequer, and which was much
complained of, to abolish this society, and to stop their progress.[**]
It was, however, still observed, that throughout England the lecturers
were all of them Puritanically affected; and from them the clergymen,
who contented themselves with reading prayers and homilies to the
people, commonly received the reproachful appellation of “dumb dogs.”

     * State Trials, vol. v. p. 74. Franklyn, p. 839.

     ** Rush. vol. ii. p. 150, 151. Whitlocke, p. 15. History of
     the Life Sufferings of Laud, p. 211, 212.

The Puritans, restrained in England, shipped themselves off for America,
and laid there the foundations of a government which possessed all
the liberty, both civil and religious, of which they found themselves
bereaved in their native country.

 But their enemies, unwilling that they
should any where enjoy ease and contentment, and dreading, perhaps, the
dangerous consequences of so disaffected a colony, prevailed on the king
to issue a proclamation, debarring these devotees access even into those
inhospitable deserts.[*] Eight ships, lying in the Thames, and ready to
sail, were detained by order of the council; and in these were embarked
Sir Arthur Hazelrig, John Hambden, John Pym, and Oliver Cromwell,[**]
who had resolved forever to abandon their native country, and fly to
the other extremity of the globe; where they might enjoy lectures
and discourses of any length or form which pleased them. The king had
afterwards full leisure to repent this exercise of his authority.

The bishop of Norwich, by rigorously insisting on uniformity, had
banished many industrious tradesmen from that city, and chased them
into Holland.[***] The Dutch began to be more intent on commerce than on
orthodoxy; and thought that the knowledge of useful arts and obedience
to the laws formed a good citizen; though attended with errors in
subjects where it is not allowable for human nature to expect any
positive truth or certainty.

Complaints about this time were made, that the petition of right was
in some instances violated; and that, upon a commitment by the king and
council, bail or releasement had been refused to Jennings, Pargiter, and
Danvers.[****]

Williams, bishop of Lincoln, a man of spirit and learning, a popular
prelate, and who had been lord keeper, was fined ten thousand pounds by
the star chamber, committed to the Tower during the king’s pleasure, and
suspended from his office. This severe sentence was founded on frivolous
pretences, and was more ascribed to Laud’s vengeance, than to any guilt
of the bishop.[v] Laud, however, had owed his first promotion to the
good offices of that prelate with King James. But so implacable was the
haughty primate, that he raised up a new prosecution against Williams,
on the strangest pretence imaginable.

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 409, 418.

     ** Mather’s History of New England, book i. Dugdale. Bates
     Hutchinson’s History of Massachusetts Bay, vol. i. p. 42.
     This last quoted author puts the fact beyond controversy.
     And it is a curious fact, as well with regard to the
     characters of the men, as of the times. Can any one doubt
     that the ensuing quarrel was almost entirety theological,
     not political? What might be expected of the populace when
     such was the character of the most enlightened Readers?

     *** May, p. 82.

     **** Rush. vol. ii. p. 414.

     v Rush. vol. ii. p. 416, etc.

In order to levy the fine above mentioned, some officers had been sent
to seize all the furniture and books of his episcopal palace of Lincoln;
and in rummaging the house, they found in a corner some neglected
letters, which had been thrown by as useless. These letters were written
by one Osbaldistone, a schoolmaster, and were directed to Williams.
Mention was there made of “a little great man;” and in another passage,
the same person was denominated “a little urchin.” By inferences and
constructions, these epithets were applied to Laud; and on no better
foundation was Williams tried anew, as having received scandalous
letters, and not discovering that private correspondence. For this
offence, another fine of eight thousand pounds was levied on him:
Osbaldistone was likewise brought to trial, and condemned to pay a fine
of five thousand pounds, and to have his ears nailed to the pillory
before his own school. He saved himself by flight; and left a note in
his study, wherein he said, “that he was gone beyond Canterbury.”[*]

These prosecutions of Williams seem to have been the most iniquitous
measure pursued by the court during the time that the use of parliaments
was suspended. Williams had been indebted for all his fortune to the
favor of James; but having quarrelled, first with Buckingham, then with
Laud, he threw himself into the country party; and with great firmness
and vigor opposed all the measures of the king. A creature of the court
to become its obstinate enemy, a bishop to countenance Puritans; these
circumstances excited indignation, and engaged the ministers in those
severe measures. Not to mention, what some writers relate, that, before
the sentence was pronounced against him, Williams was offered a pardon
upon his submission, which he refused to make; the court was apt to
think, that so refractory a spirit must by any expedient be broken and
subdued.

In a former trial which Williams underwent,[**] (for these were not the
first,) there was mentioned in court a story, which, as it discovers the
genius of parties, may be worth relating. Sir John Lambe urging him to
prosecute the Puritans, the prelate asked what sort of people these same
Puritans were. Sir John replied, “that to the world they seemed to be
such as would not swear, whore, or be drunk; out they would lie, cozen,
and deceive; that they would frequently hear two sermons a day, and
repeat them too, and that some, times they would fast all day long.”
 This character must be conceived to be satirical; yet it may be allowed,
that that sect was more averse to such irregularities as proceed from
the excess of gayety and pleasure, than to those enormities which are
the most destructive of society, The former were opposite to the
very genius and spirit of their religion; the latter were only a
transgression of its precepts: and it was not difficult for a gloomy
enthusiast to convince himself, that a strict observance of the one
would atone for any violation of the other.

     * Rush. voL ii. p. 803, etc. Whittocke, p. 25.

     ** Rush. vol. ii. p. 416.

In 1632, the treasurer Portland had insisted with the vintners, that
they should submit to a tax of a penny a quart upon all the wine which
they retailed; but they rejected the demand, In order to punish them, a
decree suddenly, without much inquiry or examination, passed in the star
chamber, prohibiting them to sell or dress victuals in their houses.[*]
Two years after, they were questioned for the breach of this decree; and
in order to avoid punishment, they agreed to lend the king six thousand
pounds. Being threatened, during the subsequent years, with fines and
prosecutions, they at last compounded the matter, and submitted to pay
half of that duty which was at first demanded of them.[**] It required
little foresight to perceive, that the king’s right of issuing
proclamations must, if prosecuted, draw on a power of taxation.

     * Rash. vol. ii p. 197.

     ** Rush. vol. ii, p. 45.

Lilburne was accused before the star chamber of publishing and
dispersing seditious pamphlets. He was ordered to be examined; but
refused to take the oath usual in that court that he would answer
interrogatories, even though they might lead him to accuse himself. For
this contempt, as it was interpreted, he was condemned to be whipped,
pilloried, and imprisoned. While he was whipped at the cart, and stood
on the pillory, he harangued the populace, and declaimed violently
against the tyranny of bishops. From his pockets also he scattered
pamphlets, said to be seditious, because they attacked the hierarchy.
The star chamber, which was sitting at that very time, ordered him
immediately to be gagged. He ceased not, however, though both gagged and
pilloried, to stamp with his foot and gesticulate, in order to show the
people that, if he had it in his power, he would still harangue them.
This behavior gave fresh provocation to the star chamber; and they
condemned him to be imprisoned in a dungeon, and to be loaded with
irons.[*] It was found difficult to break the spirits of men who placed
both their honor and their conscience in suffering.

The jealousy of the church appeared in another instance less tragical.
Archy, the king’s fool, who by his office had the privilege of jesting
on his master and the whole court, happened unluckily to try his wit
upon Laud, who was too sacred a person to be played with. News having
arrived from Scotland of the first commotions excited by the liturgy,
Archy, seeing the primate pass by, called to him, “Who’s fool now, my
lord?” For this offence Archy was ordered, by sentence of the council,
to have his coat pulled over his head and to be dismissed the king’s
service.[**]

Here is another instance of that rigorous subjection in which all men
were held by Laud. Some young gentlemen of Lincoln’s Inn, heated by
their cups, having drunk confusion to the archbishop, were at his
instigation cited before the star chamber. They applied to the earl of
Dorset for protection. “Who bears witness against you?” said Dorset.
“One of the drawers,” they said. “Where did he stand when you were
supposed to drink this health?” subjoined the earl, “He was at the
door,” they replied, “going out of the room.” “Tush!” cried he, “the
drawer must be mistaken: you drank confusion to the archbishop of
Canterbury’s enemies and the fellow was gone before you pronounced the
last word.” This hint supplied the young gentlemen with a new method of
defence: and being advised by Dorset to behave with great humility and
great submission to the primate, the modesty of their carriage, the
ingenuity of their apology, with the patronage of that noble lord, saved
them from any severer punishment than a reproof and admonition, with
which they were dismissed.[***]

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 465, 466, 467.

     ** Rush. voL ii. p. 470. Welwood, p. 278.

     *** Rush. vol. iii. p. 180.

This year, John Hambden acquired, by his spirit and courage, universal
popularity throughout the nation, and has merited great renown with
posterity, for the bold stand which he made in defence of the laws and
liberties of his country. After the imposing of ship money, Charles, in
order to discourage all opposition, had proposed this question to
the judges: “Whether, in a case of necessity, for the defence of the
kingdom, he might not impose this taxation; and whether he were not sole
judge of the necessity.” These guardians of law and liberty replied,
with great complaisance, “that in a case of necessity he might impose
that taxation, and that he was sole judge of the necessity.”[*] Hambden
had been rated at twenty shillings for an estate which he possessed in
the county of Buckingham: yet, notwithstanding this declared opinion
of the judges, notwithstanding the great power and sometimes rigorous
maxims of the crown, notwithstanding the small prospect of relief from
parliament, he resolved, rather than tamely submit to so illegal an
imposition, to stand a legal prosecution, and expose himself to all the
indignation of the court. The case was argued during twelve days, in
the exchequer chamber, before all the judges of England; and the nation
regarded, with the utmost anxiety, every circumstance of this
celebrated trial. The event was easily foreseen: but the principles, and
reasonings, and behavior of the parties engaged in the trial, were much
canvassed and inquired into; and nothing could equal the favor paid to
the one side, except the hatred which attended the other.

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 355. Whitlocke, p. 24.

It was urged by Hambden’s counsel, and by his partisans in the nation,
that the plea of necessity was in vain introduced into a trial of
law; since it was the nature of necessity to abolish all law, and, by
irresistible violence, to dissolve all the weaker and more artificial
ties of human society. Not only the prince, in cases of extreme
distress, is exempted from the ordinary rules of administration: all
orders of men are then levelled; and any individual may consult the
public safety by any expedient which his situation enables him to
employ. But to produce so violent an effect, and so hazardous to every
community, an ordinary danger or difficulty is not sufficient; much less
a necessity which is merely fictitious and pretended. Where the peril is
urgent and extreme, it will be palpable to every member of the society;
and though all ancient rules of government are in that case abrogated,
men will readily, of themselves, submit to that irregular authority
which is exerted for their preservation. But what is there in common
between such suppositions and the present condition of the nation?
England enjoys a profound peace with al her neighbors; and what is
more, all her neighbors are engaged in furious and bloody wars
among themselves, and by their mutual enmities further insure their
tranquillity. The very writs themselves, which are issued for the
levying of ship money, contradict the supposition of necessity, and
pretend only that the seas are infested with pirates; a slight and
temporary inconvenience, which may well await a legal supply from
parliament. The writs likewise allow several months for equipping the
ships; which proves a very calm and deliberate species of necessity,
and one that admits of delay much beyond the forty days requisite for
summoning that assembly. It is strange, too, that an extreme necessity,
which is always apparent, and usually comes to a sudden crisis, should
now have continued without interruption for near four years, and should
have remained during so long a time invisible to the whole kingdom. And
as to the pretension, that the king is sole judge of the necessity, what
is this but to subject all the privileges of the nation to his arbitrary
will and pleasure? To expect that the public will be convinced by such
reasoning, must aggravate the general indignation, by adding to violence
against men’s persons, and their property, so cruel a mockery of their
understanding.

In vain are precedents of ancient writs produced: these writs, when
examined, are only found to require the seaports, sometimes at their own
charge, sometimes at the charge of the counties, to send their ships
for the defence of the nation. Even the prerogative which empowered the
crown to issue such writs is abolished, and its exercise almost entirely
discontinued from the time of Edward III.;[*] and all the authority
which remained, or was afterwards exercised, was to press ships into the
public service, to be paid for by the public.

     * State Trials, vol. v. p. 245, 255.

How wide are these precedents from a power of obliging the people, at
their own charge, to build new ships, to victual and pay them, for
the public; nay, to furnish money to the crown for that purpose? What
security either against the further extension of this claim, or against
diverting to other purposes the public money so levied? The plea of
necessity would warrant any other taxation as well as that of ship
money; wherever any difficulty shall occur, the administration, instead
of endeavoring to elude or overcome it by gentle and prudent measures,
will instantly represent it as a reason for infringing all ancient laws
and institutions: and if such maxims and such practices prevail, what
has become of national liberty? What authority is left to the Great
Charter, to the statutes, and to the very petition of right, which in
the present reign had been so solemnly enacted by the concurrence of the
whole legislature?

The defenceless condition of the kingdom while unprovided with a navy;
the inability of the king, from his established revenues, with the
utmost care and frugality, to equip and maintain one; the impossibility
of obtaining, on reasonable terms, any voluntary supply from parliament;
all these are reasons of state, not topics of law. If these reasons
appear to the king so urgent as to dispense with the legal rules of
government, let him enforce his edicts by his court of star chamber, the
proper instrument of irregular and absolute power, not prostitute the
character of his judges by a decree which is not, and cannot possibly
be legal. By this means, the boundaries, at least, will be kept
more distinct between ordinary law and extraordinary exertions of
prerogative; and men will know, that the national constitution is only
suspended during a present and difficult emergence, but has not under
gone a total and fundamental alteration.

Notwithstanding these reasons, the prejudiced judges, four[*] excepted,
gave sentence in favor of the crown. Hambden, however, obtained by the
trial the end for which he had so generously sacrificed his safety
and his quiet: the people were roused from their lethargy, and became
sensible of the danger to which their liberties were exposed.

     * See State Trials, article, Ship Money, which contains the
     speeches of four judges in favor of Hambden.

These national questions were canvassed in every company; and the more
they were examined, the more evidently did it appear to many, that
liberty was totally subverted, and an unusual and arbitrary authority
exercised over the kingdom. Slavish principles they said, concur with
illegal practices; ecclesiastical tyranny gives aid to civil usurpation;
iniquitous taxes are supported by arbitrary punishments; and all the
privileges of the nation, transmitted through so many ages, secured by
so many laws and purchased by the blood of so many heroes and patriots,
now lie prostrate at the feet of the monarch. What though public
peace and national industry increased the commerce and opulence of
the kingdom? This advantage was temporary, and due alone, not to any
encouragement given by the crown, but to the spirit of the English, the
remains of their ancient freedom. What though the personal character of
the king amidst all his misguided counsels, might merit indulgence, or
even praise? He was but one man; and the privileges of the people,
the inheritance of millions, were too valuable to be sacrificed to
his prejudices and mistakes. Such, or more severe, were the sentiments
promoted by a great party in the nation: no excuse on the king’s
part, or alleviation, how reasonable soever, could be hearkened to or
admitted: and to redress these grievances, a parliament was impatiently
longed for; or any other incident, however calamitous, that might secure
the people against these oppressions which they felt, or the greater
ills which they apprehended from the combined encroachments of church
and state.



CHAPTER LIII



CHARLES I.


{1637.} The grievances under which the English labored when considered
in themselves, without regard to the constitution, scarcely deserve the
name; nor were they either burdensome on the people’s properties, or
anywise shocking to the natural humanity of mankind. Even the imposition
of ship money, independent of the consequences, was a great and evident
advantage to the public, by the judicious use which the king made of the
money levied by that expedient. And though it was justly apprehended,
that such precedents, if patiently submitted to, would end in a total
disuse of parliaments, and in the establishment of arbitrary authority,
Charles dreaded no opposition from the people, who are not commonly much
affected with consequences, and require some striking motive to engage
them in a resistance of established government. All ecclesiastical
affairs were settled by law and uninterrupted precedent; and the church
was become a considerable barrier to the power, both legal and illegal,
of the crown. Peace too, industry, commerce, opulence; nay, even justice
and lenity of administration, notwithstanding some very few exceptions;
all these were enjoyed by the people; and every other blessing of
government, except liberty, or rather the present exercise of liberty
and its proper security.[*] It seemed probable, therefore, that affairs
might long have continued on the same footing in England, had it not
been for the neighborhood of Scotland; a country more turbulent, and
less disposed to submission and obedience. It was thence the commotions
first arose; and is therefore time for us to return thither, and to give
an account of the state of affairs in that kingdom.

     * Clarendon, p. 74, 75. May, p. 18. Warwick, p. 62.

Though the pacific, and not unskilful government of James, and the great
authority which he had acquired, had much allayed the feuds among
the great families, and had established law and order throughout the
kingdom, the Scottish nobility were still possessed of the chief power
and influence over the people. Their property was extensive; their
hereditary jurisdictions and the feudal tenures increased their
authority; and the attachment of the gentry to the heads of families
established a kind of voluntary servitude under the chieftains. Besides
that long absence had much loosened the King’s connections with the
nobility, who resided chiefly at their country seats, they were in
general, at this time, though from slight causes, much disgusted with
the court. Charles, from the natural piety or superstition of his
temper, was extremely attached to the ecclesiastics; and as it is
natural for men to persuade themselves that their interest coincides
with their inclination, he had established it as a fixed maxim of
policy, to increase the power and authority of that order. The prelates,
he thought, established regularity and discipline among the clergy; the
clergy inculcated obedience and loyalty among the people; and as that
rank of men had no separate authority and no dependence but on the
crown, the royal power, it would seem, might with the greater safety be
intrusted in their hands. Many of the prelates, therefore, were raised
to the chief dignities of the state;[*] Spotswood, archbishop of
St. Andrews, was created chancellor: nine of the bishops were privy
councillors: the bishop of Ross aspired to the office of treasurer:
some of the prelates possessed places in the exchequer: and it was even
endeavored to revive the first institution of the college of justice,
and to share equally between the clergy and laity the whole judicial
authority.[**]

     * Rush. vol. ii. p. 386. May, p. 29.

     ** Guthry’s Memoirs, p. 14 Burnet’s Mem. p. 29, 30.

These advantages, possessed by the church, and which the bishops did not
always enjoy with suitable modesty, disgusted the haughty nobility, who,
deeming themselves much superior in rank and quality to this new
order of men, were displeased to find themselves inferior in power and
influence. Interest joined itself to ambition, and begat a jealousy lest
the episcopal sees, which at the reformation had been pillaged by the
nobles, should again be enriched at the expense of that order. By a most
useful and beneficial law, the impropriations had already been ravished
from the great men: competent salaries had been assigned to the
impoverished clergy from the tithes of each parish: and what remained,
the proprietor of the land was empowered to purchase at a low
valuation.[*] The king likewise, warranted by ancient law and practice,
had declared for a general resumption of all crown lands alienated by
his predecessors; and though he took no step towards the execution of
this project, the very pretension to such power had excited jealousy and
discontent.[**]

Notwithstanding the tender regard which Charles bore to the whole
church, he had been able in Scotland to acquire only the affection of
the superior rank among the clergy. The ministers in general equalled,
if not exceeded, the nobility in their prejudices against the court,
against the prelates, and against episcopal authority.[***] Though the
establishment of the hierarchy might seem advantageous to the inferior
clergy, both as it erected dignities to which all of them might aspire,
and as it bestowed a lustre on the whole body, and allured men of family
into it, these views had no influence on the Scottish ecclesiastics. In
the present disposition of men’s minds, there was another circumstance
which drew consideration, and counterbalanced power and riches, the
usual foundations of distinction among men; and that was the fervor of
piety, and the rhetoric, however barbarous, of religious lectures and
discourses. Checked by the prelates in the license of preaching,
the clergy regarded episcopal jurisdiction both as a tyranny and a
usurpation, and maintained a parity among ecclesiastics to be a divine
privilege, which no human law could alter or infringe. While such ideas
prevailed, the most moderate exercise of authority would have given
disgust; much more, that extensive power which the king’s indulgence
encouraged the prelates to assume. The jurisdiction of presbyteries,
synods, and other democratical courts, was in a manner abolished by
the bishops; and the general assembly itself had not been summoned for
several years.[****] A new oath was arbitrarily imposed on intrants,
by which they swore to observe the articles of Perth, and submit to
the liturgy and canons. And in a word, the whole system of church
government, during a course of thirty years, had been changed by means
of the innovations introduced by James and Charles.

     * King’s Declaration, p. 7. Franklyn, p, 611.

     ** King’s Declaration, p. 6.

     *** Burnet’s Mem., p. 29, 30.

     **** May, p. 29.

The people, under the influence of the nobility and clergy, could not
fail to partake of the discontents which prevailed among these two
orders; and where real grounds of complaint were wanting, they greedily
laid hold of imaginary ones. The same horror against Popery with which
the English Puritans were possessed, was observable among the
populace in Scotland; and among these, as being more uncultivated
and uncivilized, seemed rather to be inflamed into a higher degree of
ferocity. The genius of religion which prevailed in the court and among
the prelates, was of an opposite nature; and having some affinity to the
Romish worship, led them to mollify, as much as possible, these severe
prejudices, and to speak of the Catholics in more charitable language,
and with more reconciling expressions. From this foundation a panic
fear of Popery was easily raised; and every new ceremony or ornament
introduced into divine service, was part of that great mystery of
iniquity, which, from the encouragement of the king and the bishops, was
to overspread the nation.[*] The few innovations which James had made,
were considered as preparatives to this grand design; and the
further alterations attempted by Charles, were represented as a plain
declaration of his intentions. Through the whole course of this reign,
nothing had more fatal influence, in both kingdoms, than this groundless
apprehension, which with so much industry was propagated, and with so
much credulity was embraced, by all ranks of men.

     * Burnet’s Mem. p. 29, 30, 31.

Amidst these dangerous complaints and terrors of religious innovation,
the civil and ecclesiastical liberties of the nation were imagined, and
with some reason, not to be altogether free from invasion.

The establishment of the high commission by James, without any authority
of law, seemed a considerable encroachment of the crown, and erected
the most dangerous and arbitrary of all courts, by a method equally
dangerous and arbitrary. All the steps towards the settlement of
Episcopacy had indeed been taken with consent of parliament: the
articles of Perth were confirmed in 1621: in 1633, the king had obtained
a general ratification of every ecclesiastical establishment: but these
laws had less authority with the nation, as they were known to have
passed contrary to the sentiments even of those who voted for them,
and were in reality extorted by the authority and importunity of
the sovereign. The means, however, which both James and Charles had
employed, in order to influence the parliament, were entirely regular,
and no reasonable pretence had been afforded for representing these laws
as null or invalid.

But there prevailed among the greater part of the nation another
principle, of the most important and most dangerous nature; and which,
if admitted, destroyed entirely the validity of all such statutes. The
ecclesiastical authority was supposed totally independent of the civil;
and no act of parliament, nothing but the consent of the church itself,
was represented as sufficient ground for the introduction of any change
in religious worship or discipline. And though James had obtained the
vote of assemblies for receiving Episcopacy and his new rites; it must
be confessed, that such irregularities had prevailed in constituting
these ecclesiastical courts, and such violence in conducting them, that
there were some grounds for denying the authority of all their acts.
Charles, sensible that an extorted consent, attended with such invidious
circumstances, would rather be prejudicial to his measures, had wholly
laid aside the use of assemblies, and was resolved, in conjunction with
the bishops, to govern the church by an authority to which he thought
himself fully entitled, and which he believed inherent in the crown.

The king’s great aim was to complete the work so happily begun by his
father; to establish discipline upon a regular system of canons,
to introduce a liturgy into public worship, and to render the
ecclesiastical government of all his kingdoms regular and uniform.
Some views of policy might move him to this undertaking; but his chief
motives were derived from principles of zeal and conscience.

The canons for establishing ecclesiastical jurisdiction were promulgated
in 1635; and were received by the nation, though without much appearing
opposition, yet with great inward apprehension and discontent. Men felt
displeasure at seeing the royal authority highly exalted by them, and
represented as absolute and uncontrollable. They saw these speculative
principles reduced to practice, and a whole body of ecclesiastical laws
established without any previous consent either of church or state.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 106.

They dreaded lest, by a parity of reason, like arbitrary authority, from
like pretences and principles, would be assumed in civil matters: they
remarked, that the delicate boundaries which separate church and state
were already passed, and many civil ordinances established by the
canons, under color of ecclesiastical institutions: and they were apt
to deride the negligence with which these important edicts had been
compiled, when they found that the new liturgy or service-book was every
where, under severe penalties, enjoined by them, though it had not yet
been composed or published.[*] It was, however, soon expected; and in
the reception of it, as the people are always most affected by what is
external and exposed to the senses, it was apprehended that the chief
difficulty would consist.

The liturgy which the king, from his own authority, imposed on Scotland,
was copied from that of England: but, lest a servile imitation might
shock the pride of his ancient kingdom, a few alterations, in order to
save appearances, were made in it; and in that shape it was transmitted
to the bishops at Edinburgh.[**] But the Scots had universally
entertained a notion, that, though riches and worldly glory had been
shared out to them with a sparing hand, they could boast of spiritual
treasures more abundant and more genuine than were enjoyed by any
nation under heaven. Even their southern neighbors, they thought, though
separated from Rome, still retained a great tincture of the primitive
pollution; and their liturgy was represented as a species of mass,
though with some less show and embroidery.[***] Great prejudices,
therefore, were entertained against it, even considered in itself; much
more when regarded as a preparative, which was soon to introduce into
Scotland all the abominations of Popery. And as the very few alterations
which distinguished the new liturgy from the English, seemed to approach
nearer to the doctrine of the real presence, this circumstance was
deemed an undoubted confirmation of every suspicion with which the
people were possessed.[****]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 105.

     ** King’s Decl. p. 18. May, p. 32.

     *** King’s Decl. p. 20.

     **** Burnet’s Mem. p. *8*1. Rush. vol. ii. p. 396. May, p.
     31.

Easter-day was, by proclamation, appointed for the first reading of
the service in Edinburgh: but in order to judge more surely of men’s
dispositions, the council delayed the matter till the twenty-third of
July; and they even gave notice, the Sunday before, of their intention
to commence the use of the new liturgy. As no considerable symptoms
of discontent appeared, they thought that they might safely proceed in
their purpose; and accordingly, in the cathedral church of St. Giles,
the dean of Edinburgh, arrayed in his surplice, began the service;
the bishop himself and many of the privy council being present. But
no sooner had the dean opened the book than a multitude of the meanest
sort, most of them women, clapping their hands, cursing, and crying out,
“A pope, a pope! Antichrist! stone him!” raised such a tumult that it
was impossible to proceed with the service. The bishop, mounting the
pulpit in order to appease the populace, had a stool thrown at him; the
council was insulted: and it was with difficulty that the magistrates
were able, partly by authority, partly by force, to expel the rabble,
and to shut the doors against them. The tumult, however, still continued
without: stones were thrown at the doors and windows: and when the
service was ended, the bishop, going home, was attacked, and narrowly
escaped from the hands of the enraged multitude. In the afternoon, the
privy seal, because he carried the bishop in his coach, was so pelted
with stones, and hooted at with execrations, and pressed upon by the
eager populace, that if his servants with drawn swords had not kept them
off, the bishop’s life had been exposed to the utmost danger.[*]

Though it was violently suspected that the low populace, who alone
appeared, had been instigated by some of higher condition, yet no proof
of it could be produced; and every one spake with disapprobation of
the licentiousness of the giddy multitude.[**] It was not thought safe,
however, to hazard a new insult by any new attempt to read the liturgy;
and the people seemed for the time to be appeased and satisfied. But it
being known that the king still persevered in his intentions of imposing
that mode of worship, men fortified themselves still further in their
prejudices against it; and great multitudes resorted to Edinburgh, in
order to oppose the introduction of so hated a novelty.[***]

     * King’s Decl. p. 22. Clarendon, vol. i. p. 108. Rush, vol.
     ii. p. 387.

     ** King’s Decl. p. 23, 24, 25. Rush. vol. ii. p. 388.

     *** King’s Decl. p. 26, 30. Clarendon, vol. i. p. 109.

It was not long before they broke, out in the most violent disorder.
The bishop of Galloway was attacked in the streets, and chased into
the chamber where the privy council was sitting. The council itself
was besieged and violently attacked: the town council met with the same
fate: and nothing could have saved the lives of all of them, but their
application to some popular lords, who protected them, and dispersed the
multitude. In this sedition, the actors were of some better condition
than in the former; though nobody of rank seemed as yet to countenance
them.[*]

All men, however, began to unice and to encourage each other in
opposition to the religious innovations introduced into the kingdom.
Petitions to the council were signed and presented by persons of the
highest quality: the women took part, and, as was usual, with violence:
the clergy every where loudly declaimed against Popery and the liturgy,
which they represented as the same: the pulpits resounded with vehement
invectives against Antichrist: and the populace, who first opposed the
service, was often compared to Balaam’s ass, an animal in itself stupid
and senseless, but whose mouth had been opened by the Lord, to the
admiration of the whole world. In short, fanaticism mingling with
faction, private interest with the spirit of liberty, symptoms appeared
on all hands of the most dangerous insurrection and disorder.

     * King’s Decl. p. 35, 36 etc. Rush. vol. ii. p. 404.

The primate, a man of wisdom and prudence, who was all along averse to
the introduction of the liturgy, represented to the king the state of
the nation: the earl of Traquaire, the treasurer, set out for London,
in order to lay the matter more fully before him: every circumstance,
whether the condition of England or of Scotland were considered, should
have engaged him to desist from so hazardous an attempt: yet was Charles
inflexible. In his whole conduct of this affair, there appear no marks
of the good sense with which he was endowed: a lively instance of that
species of character so frequently to be met with; where there are found
parts and judgment in every discourse and opinion; in many actions,
indiscretion and imprudence. Men’s views of things are the result
of their understanding alone: their conduct is regulated by their
understanding, their temper, and their passions.

{1638.} To so violent a combination of a whole kingdom, Charles had
nothing to oppose but a proclamation; in which he pardoned all past
offences, and exhorted the people to be more obedient for the future,
and to submit peaceably to the use of the liturgy. This proclamation was
instantly encountered with a public protestation, presented by the earl
of Hume and Lindesey: and this was the first time that men of quality
had appeared in any violent act of opposition.[*] But this proved a
crisis. The insurrection, which had been advancing by a gradual and slow
progress, now blazed up at once. No disorder, however, attended it. On
the contrary, a new order immediately took place. Four “tables,” as
they were called, were formed in Edinburgh. One consisted of nobility,
another of gentry, a third of ministers, a fourth of burgesses. The
table of gentry was divided into many subordinate tables, according
to their different counties. In the hands of the four tables the whole
authority of the kingdom was placed. Orders were issued by them, and
every where obeyed with the utmost regularity.[**] And among the first
acts of their government was the production of the “Covenant.”

This famous covenant consisted first of a renunciation of Popery,
formerly signed by James in his youth, and composed of many invectives,
fitted to inflame the minds of men against their fellow-creatures, whom
Heaven has enjoined them to cherish and to love. There followed a
bond of union, by which the subscribers obliged themselves to resist
religious innovations, and to defend each other against all opposition
whatsoever: and all this, for the greater glory of God, and the greater
honor and advantage of their king and country.[***] The people,
without distinction of rank or condition, of age or sex, flocked to the
subscription of this covenant: few in their judgment disapproved of
it; and still fewer durst openly condemn it. The king’s ministers
and counsellors themselves were most of them seized by the general
contagion. And none but rebels to God, and traitors to their country, it
was thought, would withdraw themselves from so salutary and so pious a
combination.

     * King’s Decl. p. 47, 48, etc. Guthry, p. 28. May, p. 37.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 111. Rush. vol. ii. p. 734.

     *** King’s Decl. p. 57, 58. Rush. vol. ii. p. 734. May, p.
     38.

The treacherous, the cruel, the unrelenting Philip, accompanied with all
the terrors of a Spanish inquisition, was scarcely, during the preceding
century, opposed in the Low Countries with more determined fury, than
was now, by the Scots, the mild, the humane Charles, attended with his
inoffensive liturgy.

The king began to apprehend the consequences. He sent the marquis of
Hamilton, as commissioner, with authority to treat with the Covenanters.
He required the covenant to be renounced and recalled: and he thought,
that on his part he had made very satisfactory concessions, when he
offered to suspend the canons and the liturgy, till in a fair and legal
way they could be received; and so to model the high commission, that
it should no longer give offence to his subjects.[*] Such general
declarations could not well give content to any, much less to those
who carried so much higher their pretensions. The Covenanters found
themselves seconded by the zeal of the whole nation. Above sixty
thousand people were assembled in a tumultuous manner in Edinburgh and
the neighborhood. Charles possessed no regular forces in either of his
kingdoms. And the discontents in England, though secret, were believed
so violent, that the king, it was thought, would find it very difficult
to employ in such a cause the power of that kingdom. The more,
therefore, the popular leaders in Scotland considered their situation,
the less apprehension did they entertain of royal power, and the
more rigorously did they insist on entire satisfaction. In answer to
Hamilton’s demand of renouncing the covenant, they plainly told him that
they would sooner renounce their baptism.[**] And the clergy invited the
commissioner himself to subscribe it, by informing him “with what
peace and comfort it had filled the hearts of all God’s people; what
resolutions and beginnings of reformation of manners were sensibly
perceived in all parts of the nation, above any measure they had ever
before found or could have expected; how great glory the Lord had
received thereby; and what confidence they had that God would make
Scotland a blessed kingdom.”[***]

Hamilton returned to London; made another fruitless journey, with new
concessions, to Edinburgh; returned again to London; and was immediately
sent back with still more satisfactory concessions. The king was now
willing entirely to abolish the canons, the liturgy, and the high
commission court. He was even resolved to limit extremely the power of
the bishops, and was content if on any terms he could retain that
order in the church of Scotland.[****] And to insure all these gracious
offers, he gave Hamilton authority to summon first an assembly, then
a parliament, where every national grievance might be redressed and
remedied.

     * Rush, vol. ii. p. 137, etc.

     ** King’s Decl. p. 87.

     *** King’s Decl. p. 88. Rush, vol. ii. p. 751.

     **** King’s Decl. p. 137. Rush, vol. ii. p. 762.

These successive concessions of the king, which yet came still short
of the rising demands of the malecontents, discovered his own weakness,
encouraged their insolence, and gave no satisfaction. The offer,
however, of an assembly and a parliament, in which they expected to be
entirely masters, was willingly embraced by the Covenanters.

Charles, perceiving what advantage his enemies had reaped from their
covenant, resolved to have a covenant on his side; and he ordered one
to be drawn up for that purpose. It consisted of the same violent
renunciation of Popery above mentioned; which, though the king did not
approve of it, he thought it safest to adopt, in order to remove all the
suspicions entertained against him. As the Covenanters, in their bond
of mutual defence against all opposition, had been careful not to
except the king, Charles had formed a bond, which was annexed to
this renunciation, and which expressed the duty and loyalty of the
subscribers to his majesty.[*] But the Covenanters, perceiving that this
new covenant was only meant to weaken and divide them, received it with
the utmost scorn and detestation. And without delay they proceeded
to model the future assembly, from which such great achievments were
expected.[**]

The genius of that religion which prevailed in Scotland, and which every
day was secretly gaining ground in England, was far front inculcating
deference and submission to the ecclesiastics, merely as such; or
rather, by nourishing in every individual the highest raptures and
ecstasies of devotion, it consecrated, in a manner, every individual,
and in his own eyes bestowed a character on him much superior to what
forms and ceremonious institutions could alone confer. The clergy of
Scotland, though such tumult was excited about religious worship and
discipline, were both poor and in small numbers; nor are they in general
to be considered, at least in the beginning, as the ringleaders of the
sedition which was raised on their account. On the contrary, the
laity, apprehending, from several instances which occurred, a spirit of
moderation in that order, resolved to domineer entirely in the assembly
which was summoned, and to hurry on the ecclesiastics by the same
furious zeal with which they were themselves transported.[***]

     * King’s Decl. p. 140, etc.

     ** Rush. vol. ii. p. 772.

     *** King’s Decl. p. 188, 189. Rush. voL ii. p. 761.

It had been usual, before the establishment of prelacy, for each
presbytery to send to the assembly, besides two or three ministers,
one lay commissioner;[*] and, as all the boroughs and universities sent
likewise commissioners, the lay members in that ecclesiastical court
nearly equalled the ecclesiastics. Not only this institution, which
James, apprehensive of zeal in the laity, had abolished, was now revived
by the Covenanters; they also introduced an innovation, which served
still further to reduce the clergy to subjection. By an edict of the
tables, whose authority was supreme, an elder from each parish was
ordered to attend the presbytery, and to give his vote in the choice
both of the commissioners and ministers who should be deputed to the
assembly. As it is not usual for the ministers, who are put in the list
of candidates, to claim a vote, all the elections by that means fell
into the hands of the laity: the most furious of all ranks were chosen:
and the more to overawe the clergy, a new device was fallen upon, of
choosing to every commissioner four or five lay assessors, who, though
they could have no vote, might yet interpose with their advice and
authority in the assembly.[**]

The assembly met at Glasgow; and, besides a great concourse of the
people, all the nobility and gentry of any family or interest were
present, either as members, assessors, or spectators; and it was
apparent that the resolutions taken by the Covenanters could here meet
with no manner of opposition. A firm determination had been entered into
of utterly abolishing episcopacy; and as a preparative to it, there was
laid before the presbytery of Edinburgh, and solemnly read in all the
churches of the kingdom, an accusation against the bishops, as guilty,
all of them, of heresy, simony, bribery, perjury, cheating, incest,
adultery, fornication, common swearing, drunkenness, gaming, breach
of the Sabbath, and every other crime that had occurred to the
accusers.[***] The bishops sent a protest, declining the authority of
the assembly: the commissioner, too, protested against the court, as
illegally constituted and elected; and, in his majesty’s name, dissolved
it. This measure was foreseen, and little regarded. The court still
continued to sit, and to finish their business.[****]

     * A presbytery in Scotland is an inferior ecclesiastical
     court, the same that was afterwards called a classis in
     England, and is composed of the clergy of the neighboring
     parishes, to the number commonly of between twelve and
     twenty.

     ** King’s Decl. p. 190, 191, 290. Guthry, p. 39, etc.

     *** King’s Decl. p. 218. Rush. vol. ii p. 787.

     **** May, p. 44.

All the acts of assembly, since the accession of James to the crown
of England, were, upon pretty reasonable grounds, declared null and
invalid. The acts of parliament which affected ecclesiastical affairs
were supposed, on that very account, to have no manner of authority. And
thus episcopacy, the high commission, the articles of Perth, the canons,
and the liturgy, were abolished and declared unlawful; and the whole
fabric which Jamas and Charles, in a long course of years, had been
rearing with so much care and policy, fell at once to the ground.

{1639.} The covenant, likewise, was ordered to be signed by every one,
under pain of excommunication.[*]

The independency of the ecclesiastical upon the civil power, was the
old Presbyterian principle, which had been zealously adopted at the
reformation, and which, though James and Charles had obliged the church
publicly to disclaim it, had secretly been adhered to by all ranks of
people. It was commonly asked whether Christ or the king were superior;
and as the answer seemed obvious, it was inferred, that the assembly,
being Christ’s council, was superior in all spiritual matters to the
parliament, which was only the king’s. But as the Covenanters were
sensible that this consequence, though it seemed to them irrefragable,
would not be assented to by the king, it became necessary to maintain
their religious tenets by military force, and not to trust entirely to
supernatural assistance, of which, however, they held themselves well
assured. They cast their eyes on all sides, abroad and at home, whence
ever they could expect any aid or support.

After France and Holland had entered into a league against Spain, and
framed a treaty of partition, by which they were to conquer and to
divide between them the Low Country provinces, England was invited to
preserve a neutrality between the contending parties, while the French
and Dutch should attack the maritime towns of Flanders. But the king
replied to D’Estrades, the French ambassador, who opened the proposal,
that he had a squadron ready, and would cross the seas, if necessary,
with an army of fifteen thousand men, in order to prevent these
projected conquests.[**] This answer, which proves that Charles though
he expressed his mind with an imprudent candor, had at last acquired
a just idea of national interest irritated Cardinal Richelieu; and, in
revenge, that politic and enterprising minister carefully fomented the
first commotions in Scotland, and secretly supplied the Covenanters with
money and arms, in order to encourage them in their opposition against
their sovereign.

     * King’s Decl. p. 317.

     ** Mem. D’Estrades, vol. i.

But the chief resource of the Scottish malecontents was in themselves,
and in their own vigor and abilities. No regular established
commonwealth could take juster measures, or execute them with greater
promptitude, than did this tumultuous combination, inflamed with bigotry
for religious trifles, and faction without a reasonable object. The
whole kingdom was in a manner engaged, and the men of greatest abilities
soon acquired the ascendant, which their family interest enabled them to
maintain. The earl of Argyle, though he long seemed to temporize, had
at last embraced the covenant; and he became the chief leader of that
party; a man equally supple and inflexible, cautious and determined,
and entirely qualified to make a figure during a factious and turbulent
period. The earls of Rothes, Cassils, Montrose, Lothian, the lords
Lindesey, Louden, Yester, Balmerino, distinguished themselves in that
party. Many Scotch officers had acquired reputation in the German wars,
particularly under Gustavus; and these were invited over to assist their
country in her present necessity. The command was intrusted to Lesley, a
soldier of experience and abilities. Forces were regularly enlisted and
disciplined. Arms were commissioned and imported from foreign countries.
A few castles which belonged to the king, being unprovided with
victuals, ammunition, and garrisons, were soon seized. And the whole
country, except a small part, where the marquis of Huntley still adhered
to the king, being in the hands of the Covenanters, was in a very little
time put in a tolerable posture of defence.[*]

The fortifications of Leith were begun and carried on with great
rapidity. Besides the inferior sort, and those who labored for pay,
incredible numbers of volunteers, even noblemen and gentlemen, put their
hand to the work, and deemed the most abject employment to be dignified
by the sanctity of the cause. Women, too, of rank and condition,
forgetting the delicacy of their sex and the decorum of their character
were intermingled with the lowest rabble, and carried on their shoulders
the rubbish requisite for completing the fortifications.[**]

     * May, p. 49.

     ** Guthry’s Memoirs, p. 46.

We must not omit another auxiliary of the Covenanters and no
inconsiderable one; a prophetess, who was much followed and admired by
all ranks of people. Her name Michelson, a woman full of whimseys partly
hysterical, partly religious; and inflamed with a zealous concern for
the ecclesiastical discipline of the Presbyterians. She spoke at certain
times only, and had often interruptions of days and weeks: but when she
began to renew her ecstasies, warning of the happy event was conveyed
over the whole country; thousands crowded about her house; and every
word which she uttered was received with veneration, as the most
sacred oracles. The covenant was her perpetual theme. The true, genuine
covenant, she said, was ratified in heaven: the king’s covenant was an
invention of Satan: when she spoke of Christ, she usually gave him the
name of the Covenanting Jesus. Rollo, a popular preacher, and zealous
Covenanter, was her great favorite, and paid her, on his part, no less
veneration. Being desired by the spectators to pray with her, and
speak to her, he answered, “that he durst not; and that it would be
ill manners in him to speak while his master, Christ, was speaking in
her.”[*]

     * King’s Declaration at large, p. 227. Burnet’s Memoirs of
     Hamilton.

Charles had agreed to reduce episcopal authority so much, that it
would no longer have been of any service to support the crown; and
this sacrifice of his own interests he was willing to make, in order to
attain public peace and tranquillity. But he could not consent entirely
to abolish an order which he thought as essential to the being of a
Christian church, as his Scottish subjects deemed it incompatible
with that sacred institution. This narrowness of mind, if we would be
impartial, we must either blame or excuse equally on both sides; and
thereby anticipate, by a little reflection, that judgment which time, by
introducing new subjects of controversy, will undoubtedly render quite
familiar to posterity.

So great was Charles’s aversion to violent and sanguinary measures, and
so strong his affection to his native kingdom that it is probable the
contest in his breast would be nearly equal between these laudable
passions and his attachment to the hierarchy. The latter affection,
however, prevailed for the time, and made him hasten those military
preparations which he had projected for subduing the refractory spirit
of the Scottish nation. By regular economy, he had not only paid all the
debts contracted during the Spanish and French wars, but had amassed
a sum of two hundred thousand pounds, which he reserved for any sudden
exigency. The queen had great interest with the Catholics, both from the
sympathy of religion, and from the favors and indulgences which she had
been able to procure to them. She now employed her credit, and persuaded
them that it was reasonable to give large contributions, as a mark of
their duty to the king, during this urgent necessity.[*] A considerable
supply was obtained by this means; to the great scandal of the Puritans,
who were offended at seeing the king on such good terms with the
Papists, and repined that others should give what they themselves were
disposed to refuse him.

Charles’s fleet was formidable and well supplied. Having put five
thousand land forces on board, he intrusted it to the marquis of
Hamilton, who had orders to sail to the Frith of Forth, and to cause a
diversion in the forces of the malecontents. An army was levied of near
twenty thousand foot, and above three thousand horse; and was put under
the command of the earl of Arundel, a nobleman of great family, but
celebrated neither for military nor political abilities. The earl of
Essex, a man of strict honor, and extremely popular, especially among
the soldiery, was appointed lieutenant-general: the earl of Holland was
general of the horse. The king himself joined the army, and he summoned
all the peers of England to attend him. The whole had the appearance
of a splendid court, rather than of a military armament; and in this
situation, carrying more show than real force with it, the camp arrived
at Berwick.[**]

The Scottish army was as numerous as that of the king, but inferior
in cavalry. The officers had more reputation and experience; and the
soldiers, though undisciplined and ill armed, were animated, as well by
the national aversion to England, and the dread of becoming a province
to their old enemy, as by an unsurmountable fervor of religion. The
pulpits had extremely assisted the officers in levying recruits, and had
thundered out anathemas against all those “who went not out to assist
the Lord against the mighty.”[***] Yet so prudent were the leaders of
the malecontents, that they immediately sent submissive messages to the
king, and craved to be admitted to a treaty.

     * Rush. vol. iii. p. 1329. Franklyn, p. 767.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i p. 115, 116, 117.

     *** Burnet’s Memoirs of Hamilton.

Charles knew that the force of the Covenanters was considerable, their
spirits high, their zeal furious; and that, as they were not yet daunted
by any ill success, no reasonable terms could be expected from them.
With regard therefore to a treaty, great difficulties occurred on both
sides. Should he submit to the pretensions of the malecontents, (besides
that the prelacy must be sacrificed to their religious prejudices,) such
a check would be given to royal authority, which had very lately, and
with much difficulty, been thoroughly established in Scotland, that
he must expect ever after to retain in that kingdom no more than the
appearance of majesty. The great men, having proved by so sensible a
trial the impotence of law and prerogative, would return to their former
licentiousness: the preachers would retain their innate arrogance: and
the people, unprotected by justice, would recognize no other authority
than that which they found to domineer over them. England also, it was
much to be feared, would imitate so bad an example; and having already
a strong propensity towards republican and Puritanical factions, would
expect, by the same seditious practices, to attain the same indulgence.
To advance so far, without bringing the rebels to a total submission,
at least to reasonable concessions, was to promise them, in all future
time, an impunity for rebellion.

On the other hand, Charles considered that Scotland was never before,
under any of his ancestors, so united and so animated in its own
defence; yet had often been able to foil or elude the force of England,
combined heartily in one cause, and inured by long practice to the use
of arms. How much greater difficulty should he find, at present, to
subdue by violence a people inflamed with religious prejudices; while he
could only oppose to them a nation enervated by long peace, and lukewarm
in his service; or, what was more to be dreaded, many of them engaged in
the same party with the rebels?[*]

     * Rush. vol. iii. p. 936.

Should the war be only protracted beyond a campaign, (and who could
expect to finish it in that period?) his treasures would fail him; and
for supply he must have recourse to an English parliament, which,
by fatal experience, he had ever found more ready to encroach on the
prerogatives, than to supply the necessities of the crown. And what if
he receive a defeat from the rebel army? This misfortune was far from
being impossible. They were engaged in a national cause, and strongly
actuated by mistaken principles. His army was retained entirely by pay,
and looked on the quarrel with the same indifference which naturally
belongs to mercenary troops without possessing the discipline by which
such troops are commonly distinguished. And the consequences of a
defeat, while Scotland was enraged and England discontented, were so
dreadful, that no motive should persuade him to hazard it.

It is evident, that Charles had fallen into such a situation, that
whichever side he embraced, his errors must be dangerous. No wonder,
therefore, he was in great perplexity. But he did worse than embrace
the worst side; for, properly speaking, he embraced no side at all. He
concluded a sudden pacification, in which it was stipulated, that he
should withdraw his fleet and army; that within eight and forty hours
the Scots should dismiss their forces; that the king’s forts should be
restored to him; his authority be acknowledged; and a general assembly
and a parliament be immediately summoned, in order to compose all
differences.[*] What were the reasons which engaged the king to admit
such strange articles of peace, it is in vain to inquire; for there
scarcely could be any. The causes of that event may admit of a more easy
explication.

     * Rush vol. iii. p. 945.

The malecontents had been very industrious in representing to the
English the grievances under which Scotland labored, and the ill
counsels which had been suggested to their sovereign. Their liberties,
they said, were invaded; the prerogatives of the crown extended beyond
all former precedent; illegal courts erected; the hierarchy exalted
at the expense of national privileges; and so many new superstitions
introduced by the haughty, tyrannical prelates, as begat a just
suspicion that a project was seriously formed for the restoration of
Popery. The king’s conduct, surely, in Scotland, had been in every
thing, except in establishing the ecclesiastical canons, more legal than
in England; yet was there such a general resemblance in the complaints
of both kingdoms, that the English readily assented to all the
representations of the Scottish malecontents, and believed that nation
to have been driven by oppression into the violent counsels which they
had embraced. So far, therefore, from being willing to second the
king in subduing the free spirit of the Scots, they rather pitied that
unhappy people, who had been pushed to those extremities; and
they thought, that the example of such neighbors, as well as their
assistance, might some time be advantageous to England, and encourage
her to recover, by a vigorous effort, her violated laws and liberties.
The gentry and nobility, who, without attachment to the court, without
command in the army, attended in great numbers the English camp,
greedily seized, and propagated, and gave authority to these sentiments:
a retreat, very little honorable, which the earl of Holland, with
a considerable detachment of the English forces, had made before a
detachment of the Scottish, caused all these humors to blaze up at once:
and the king, whose character was not sufficiently vigorous or decisive,
and who was apt from facility to embrace hasty counsels, suddenly
assented to a measure which was recommended by all about him, and which
favored his natural propension towards the misguided subjects of his
native kingdom.[*]

Charles, having so far advanced in pacific measures, ought, with a
steady resolution, to have prosecuted them, and have submitted to every
tolerable condition demanded by the assembly and parliament; nor should
he have recommenced hostilities, but on account of such enormous and
unexpected pretensions as would have justified his cause, if possible,
to the whole English nation. So far, indeed, he adopted this plan, that
he agreed, not only to confirm his former concessions, of abrogating the
canons, the liturgy, the high commission, and the articles of Perth,
but also to abolish the order itself of bishops, for which he had so
zealously contended.[**] But this concession was gained by the utmost
violence which he could impose on his disposition and prejudices: he
even secretly retained an intention of seizing favorable opportunities,
in order to: recover the ground which he had lost.[***] And one step
farther he could not prevail with himself to advance. The assembly, when
it met, paid no deference to the king’s prepossessions, but gave full
indulgence to their own. They voted episcopacy to be unlawful in
the church of Scotland: he was willing to allow it contrary to the
constitutions of that church. They stigmatized the liturgy and canons
as Popish: he agreed simply to abolish them. They denominated the high
commission, tyranny: he was content to set it aside.[****]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 122, 123. May, p. 46.

     ** Rush. vol. iii. p. 946.

     *** Burnet’s Memoirs, p. 154 Rush. vol. iii. p. 951.

     **** Rush. vol. iii. p. 958, etc.

The parliament, which sat after the assembly, advanced pretensions which
tended to diminish the civil power of the monarch; and, what probably
affected Charles still more, they were proceeding to ratify the acts
of assembly, when, by the king’s instructions,[*] Traquaire, the
commissioner, prorogued them. And on account of these claims, which
might have been foreseen, was the war renewed; with great advantages on
the side of the Covenanters and disadvantages on that of the king.

No sooner had Charles concluded the pacification without conditions
than the necessity of his affairs and his want of money obliged him to
disband his army; and as the soldiers had been held together solely
by mercenary views, it was not possible, without great trouble, and
expense, and loss of time, again to assemble them. The more prudent
Covenanters had concluded, that their pretensions being so contrary to
the interests, and still more to the inclinations, of the king, it was
likely that they should again be obliged to support their cause by arms;
and they were therefore careful, in dismissing their troops, to preserve
nothing but the appearance of a pacific disposition. The officers had
orders to be ready on the first summons: the soldiers were warned not to
think the nation secure from an English invasion: and the religious
zeal which animated all ranks of men, made them immediately fly to their
standards as soon as the trumpet was sounded by their spiritual and
temporal leaders. The credit which in their last expedition they
had acquired, by obliging their sovereign to depart from all his
pretensions, gave courage to every one in undertaking this new
enterprise.[**]

     * Rush vol. iii. p. 955.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 125. Rush vol. iii. p. 1023.

{1640.} The king, with great difficulty, found means to draw together an
army; but soon discovered that all savings being gone, and great debts
contracted, his revenue would be insufficient to support them. An
English parliament, therefore, formerly so unkind and intractable, must
now, after above eleven years’ intermission, after the king had tried
many irregular methods of taxation, after multiplied disgusts given to
the Puritanical party, be summoned to assemble, amidst the must pressing
necessities of the crown.

As the king resolved to try whether this house of commons would be
more compliant than their predecessors, and grant him supply on any
reasonable terms, the time appointed for the meeting of parliament was
late, and very near the time allotted for opening the campaign against
the Scots. After the past experience of their ill humor, and of their
encroaching disposition, he thought that he could not in prudence trust
them with a long session, till he had seen some better proofs of their
good intentions: the urgency of the occasion, and the little time
allowed for debate, were reasons which he reserved against the
malecontents in the house; and an incident had happened, which, he
believed, had now furnished him with still more cogent arguments.

The earl of Traquaire had intercepted a letter written to the king of
France by the Scottish malecontents, and had conveyed this letter to
the king. Charles, partly repenting of the large concessions made to the
Scots, partly disgusted at their fresh insolence and pretensions, seized
this opportunity of breaking with them. He had thrown into the Tower
Lord Loudon, commissioner from the Covenanters, one of the persons who
had signed the treasonable letter.[*] And he now laid the matter before
the parliament, whom he hoped to inflame by the resentment, and alarm by
the danger, of this application to a foreign power.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 129. Rush. vol. iii. p 956. May, p.
     56.

By the mouth of the lord keeper Finch, he discovered his wants, and
informed them, that he had been able to assemble his army, and to
subsist them, not by any revenue which he possessed, but by means of
a large debt of above three hundred thousand pounds, which he had
contracted, and for which he had given security upon the crown lands. He
represented, that it was necessary to grant supplies for the immediate
and urgent demands of his military armaments: that the season was
far advanced, the time precious, and none of it must be lost in
deliberation; that though his coffers were empty, they had not been
exhausted by unnecessary pomp, or sumptuous buildings, or any other kind
of magnificence: that whatever supplies had been levied on his subjects,
had been employed for their advantage and preservation; and, like vapors
rising out of the earth, and gathered into a cloud, had fallen in sweet
and refreshing showers on the same fields from which they had at first
been exhaled: that though he desired such immediate assistance as might
prevent for the time a total disorder in the government he was far from
any intention of precluding them from their right to inquire into the
state of the kingdom, and to offer his petitions for the redress of
their grievances: that as much as was possible of this season should
afterwards be allowed them for that purpose: that as he expected only
such supply at present as the current service necessarily required, it
would be requisite to assemble them again next winter, when they should
have full leisure to conclude whatever business had this session been
left imperfect and unfinished: that the parliament of Ireland had twice
put such trust in his good intentions as to grant him, in the beginning
of the session, a large supply, and had ever experienced good effects
from the confidence reposed in him: and that; in every circumstance, his
people should find his conduct suitable to a just, pious, and gracious
king; and such as was calculated to promote an entire harmony between
prince and parliament.[*]

     * Rush. vol. iii. p. 1114.

However plausible these topics, they made small impression on the house
of commons. By some illegal, and several suspicious measures of the
crown, and by the courageous opposition which particular persons, amidst
dangers and hardships, had made to them, the minds of men, throughout
the nation, had taken such a turn, as to ascribe every honor to the
refractory opposers of the king and the ministers. These were the
only patriots, the only lovers of their country, the only heroes, and
perhaps, too, the only true Christians. A reasonable compliance with the
court was slavish dependence; a regard to the king, servile flattery; a
confidence in his promises, shameful prostitution. This general cast
of thought, which has more or less prevailed in England during near a
century and a half, and which has been the cause of much good and much
ill in public affairs, never predominated more than during the reign
of Charles. The present house of commons, being entirely composed
of country gentlemen, who came into parliament with all their native
prejudices about them, and whom the crown had no means of influencing,
could not fail to contain a majority of these stubborn patriots.

Affairs likewise, by means of the Scottish insurrection and the general
discontents in England, were drawing so near to a crisis, that the
leaders of the house, sagacious and penetrating, began to foresee the
consequences, and to hope that the time so long wished for was now come,
when royal authority must fall into a total subordination under popular
assemblies, and when public liberty must acquire a full ascendant. By
reducing the crown to necessities, they had hitherto found that the king
had been pushed into violent counsels, which had served extremely the
purposes of his adversaries: and by multiplying these necessities, it
was foreseen that his prerogative, undermined on all sides, must at
last be overthrown, and be no longer dangerous to the privileges of the
people. Whatever, therefore, tended to compose the differences between
king and parliament, and to preserve the government uniformly in its
present channel, was zealously opposed by these popular leaders; and
their past conduct and sufferings gave them credit sufficient to effect
all their purposes.

The house of commons, moved by these and many other obvious reasons,
instead of taking notice of the king’s complaints against his Scottish
subjects, or his applications for supply, entered immediately upon
grievances; and a speech which Pym made them on that subject was much
more hearkened to, than that which the lord keeper had delivered to them
in the name of their sovereign. The subject of Pym’s harangue has
been sufficiently explained above; where we gave an account of all the
grievances, imaginary in the church, more real in the state, of which
the nation at that time so loudly complained.[*] The house began
with examining the behavior of the speaker the last day of the former
parliament; when he refused, on account of the king’s command, to put
the question: and they declared it a breach of privilege. They proceeded
next to inquire into the imprisonment and prosecution of Sir John
Elliot, Hollis, and Valentine:[**] the affair of ship money was
canvassed: and plentiful subject of inquiry was suggested on all hands.
Grievances were regularly classed under three heads; those with regard
to privileges of parliament, to the property of the subject, and to
religion.[***]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 133. Rush. vol. iii. p. 1131. May,
     p. 60.

     ** Rush. vol. iii p. 1136.

     *** Rush. vol. iii. p. 1147.

The king, seeing a large and inexhaustible field opened, pressed them
again for supply; and finding his message ineffectual, he came to the
house of peers, and desired their good offices with the commons. The
peers were sensible of the king’s urgent necessities; and thought that
supply on this occasion ought, both in reason and in decency, to go
before grievances. They ventured to represent their sense of the matter
to the commons; but their intercession did harm. The commons had always
claimed, as their peculiar province the granting of supplies; and,
though the peers had here gone no further than offering advice, the
lower house immediately thought proper to vote so unprecedented an
interposition to be a breach of privilege.[*] Charles, in order to bring
the matter of supply to some issue, solicited the house by new messages:
and finding that ship money gave great alarm and disgust; besides
informing them, that he never intended to make a constant revenue of
it, that all the money levied had been regularly, with other great sums,
expended on equipping the navy; he now went so far as to offer them a
total abolition of that obnoxious claim, by any law which the commons
should think proper to present to him. In return, he only asked for his
necessities a supply of twelve subsidies,--about six hundred thousand
pounds,--and that payable in three years; but at the same time he let
them know, that, considering the situation of his affairs, a delay would
be equivalent to a denial.[**] The king though the majority was against
him, never had more friends in any house of commons; and the debate was
carried on for two days, with great zeal and warmth on both sides.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 134.

     ** Clarendon, vol. 1. p. 135. Rush. vol. iii p. 1154.

It was urged by the partisans of the court, that the happiest occasion
which the fondest wishes could suggest, was now presented for removing
all disgusts and jealousies between king and people, and for reconciling
their sovereign forever to the use of parliaments: that if they, on
their part, laid aside all enormous claims and pretensions, and provided
in a reasonable manner for the public necessities, they needed entertain
no suspicion of any insatiable ambition or illegal usurpation in the
crown: that though due regard had not always been paid, during this
reign, to the rights of the people, yet no invasion of them had been
altogether deliberate and voluntary; much less the result of wanton
tyranny and injustice; and still less of a formal design to subvert the
constitution. That to repose a reasonable confidence in the king, and
generously to supply his present wants, which proceeded neither from
prodigality nor misconduct, would be the true means of gaining on his
generous nature, and extorting, by a gentle violence, such concessions
as were requisite for the establishment of public liberty: that he
had promised, not only on the word of a prince, but also on that of
a gentleman, (the expression which he had been pleased to use,) that,
after the supply was granted the parliament should still have liberty
to continue their deliberations: could it be suspected that any man, any
prince much less such a one, whose word was as yet sacred and inviolate,
would, for so small a motive forfeit his honor, and, with it, all future
trust and confidence, by breaking a promise so public and so solemn?
that even if the parliament should be deceived in reposing this
confidence in him, they neither lost any thing, nor incurred any danger;
since it was evidently necessary, for the security of public peace, to
supply him with money, in order to suppress the Scottish rebellion: that
he had so far suited his first demands to their prejudices, that he only
asked a supply for a few months, and was willing, after so short a trust
from them, to fall again into dependence, and to trust them for his
further support and subsistence: that if he now seemed to desire
something further, he also made them, in return, a considerable offer,
and was willing, for the future, to depend on them for a revenue which
was quite necessary for public honor and security: that the nature of
the English constitution supposed a mutual confidence between king and
parliament: and if they should refuse it on their part, especially with
circumstances of such outrage and indignity, what could be expected but
a total dissolution of government, and violent factions, followed by the
most dangerous convulsions and intestine disorders?

In opposition to these arguments, it was urged by the malecontent party,
that the court had discovered, on their part, but few symptoms of that
mutual confidence to which they now so kindly invited the commons: that
eleven years’ intermission of parliaments--the longest that was to be
found in the English annals--was a sufficient indication of the jealousy
entertained against the people; or rather of designs formed for the
suppression of all their liberties and privileges: that the ministers
might well plead necessity, nor could any thing, indeed, be a stronger
proof of some invincible necessity, than their embracing a measure for
which they had conceived so violent an aversion, as the assembling of
an English parliament: that this necessity, however, was purely
ministerial, not national; and if the same grievances, ecclesiastical
and civil, under which this nation itself labored, had pushed the Scots
to extremities, was it requisite that the English should forge their own
chains, by imposing chains on their unhappy neighbors? that the ancient
practice of parliament was to give grievances the precedency of supply;
and this order, so carefully observed by their ancestors, was founded
on a jealousy inherent in the constitution, and was never interpreted as
any peculiar diffidence of the present sovereign: that a practice which
had been upheld during times the most favorable to liberty, could not,
in common prudence, be departed from, where such undeniable reasons
for suspicion had been afforded: that it was ridiculous to plead the
advanced season, and the urgent occasion for supply; when it plainly
appeared that, in order to afford a pretence for this topic, and to
seduce the commons, great political contrivance had been employed: that
the writs for elections were issued early in the winter; and if the
meeting of parliament had not purposely been delayed till so near the
commencement of military operations, there had been leisure sufficient
to have redressed all national grievances, and to have proceeded
afterwards to an examination of the king’s occasion for supply: that
the intention of so gross an artifice was to engage the commons, under
pretence of necessity, to violate the regular order of parliament; and
a precedent of that kind being once established, no inquiry into public
measures would afterwards be permitted: that scarcely any argument more
unfavorable could be pleaded for supply, than an offer to abolish ship
money; a taxation the most illegal and the most dangerous that had ever,
in any reign, been imposed upon the nation: and that, by bargaining for
the remission of that duty, the commons would in a manner ratify the
authority by which it had been levied; at least give encouragement for
advancing new pretensions of a like nature, in hopes of resigning them
on like advantageous conditions.

These reasons, joined to so many occasions of ill humor, seemed to sway
with the greater number: but, to make the matter worse, Sir Harry Vane,
the secretary, told the commons, without any authority from the
king, that nothing less than twelve subsidies would be accepted as a
compensation for the abolition of ship money. This assertion, proceeding
from the indiscretion, if we are not rather to call it the treachery of
Vane, displeased the house, by showing a stiffness and rigidity in the
king, which, in a claim so ill grounded, was deemed inexcusable.[*] We
are informed likewise, that some men, who were thought to understand the
state of the nation, affirmed in the house, that the amount of twelve
subsidies was a greater sum than could be found in all England: such
were the happy ignorance and inexperience of those times with regard to
taxes.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 138.

     ** Clarendon, vol. *i. p. 136.

The king was in great doubt and perplexity. He saw that his friends in
the house were outnumbered by his enemies, and that the same
counsels were still prevalent which had ever bred such opposition and
disturbance. Instead of hoping that any supply would be granted him to
carry on war against the Scots, whom the majority of the house regarded
as their best friends and firmest allies; he expected every day that
they would present him an address for making peace with those rebels.
And if the house met again, a vote, he was informed, would certainly
pass, to blast his revenue of ship money; and thereby renew all the
opposition which, with so much difficulty, he had surmounted in levying
that taxation. Where great evils lie on all sides, it is difficult
to follow the best counsel; nor is it any wonder that the king, whose
capacity was not equal to situations of such extreme delicacy, should
hastily have formed and executed the resolution of dissolving this
parliament: a measure, however, of which he soon after repented, and
which the subsequent events, more than any convincing reason, inclined
every one to condemn. The last parliament, which ended with such rigor
and violence, had yet at first covered their intentions with greater
appearance of moderation than this parliament had hitherto assumed.

An abrupt and violent dissolution naturally excites discontents among
the people, who usually put entire confidence in their representatives,
and expect from them the redress of all grievances. As if there were not
already sufficient grounds of complaint, the king persevered still in
those counsels which, from experience, he might have been sensible were
so dangerous and unpopular. Bellasis and Sir John Hotham were summoned
before the council; and, refusing to give any account of their
conduct in parliament, were committed to prison. All the petitions
and complaints which had been sent to the committee of religion, were
demanded from Crew, chairman of that committee; and on his refusal
to deliver them, he was sent to the Tower. The studies, and even the
pockets of the earl of Warwick and Lord Broke, before the expiration of
privilege, were searched, in expectation of finding treasonable papers.
These acts of authority were interpreted, with some appearance of
reason, to be invasions on the right of national assemblies.[*] But the
king, after the first provocation which he met with, never sufficiently
respected the privileges of parliament; and, by his example, he further
confirmed their resolution, when they should acquire power, to pay like
disregard to the prerogatives of the crown.

     * Rush. vol. iii. p. 1167. May, p. 61.

Though the parliament was dissolved, the convocation was still allowed
to sit; a practice of which, since the reformation, there were but
few instances,[*] and which was for that reason supposed by many to be
irregular. Besides granting to the king a supply from the spirituality,
and framing many canons, the convocation, jealous of like innovations
with those which had taken place in Scotland, imposed an oath on the
clergy and the graduates in the universities, by which every one swore
to maintain the established government of the church by archbishops,
bishops, deans, chapters, etc.[**] These steps, in the present
discontented humor of the nation, were commonly deemed illegal; because
not ratified by consent of parliament, in whom all authority was now
supposed to be centred. And nothing, besides, could afford more subject
of ridicule, than an oath which contained an “et cætera,” in the midst
of it.

The people, who generally abhorred the convocation as much as they
revered the parliament, could scarcely be restrained from insulting and
abusing this assembly; and the king was obliged to give them guards, in
order to protect them.[***] An attack too was made during the night upon
Laud, in his palace of Lambeth, by above five hundred persons; and
he found it necessary to fortify himself for his defence.[****] A
multitude, consisting of two thousand secretaries, entered St. Paul’s,
where the high commission then sat, tore down the benches, and cried
out, “No bishop; no high commission.”[v] All these instances of
discontent were presages of some great revolution, had the court
possessed sufficient skill to discern the danger, or sufficient power to
provide against it.

In this disposition of men’s minds, it was in vain that the king issued
a declaration, in order to convince his people of the necessity which he
lay under of dissolving the last parliament.[v*]

     * There was one in 1586: see History of Archbishop Laud, p.
     80. The authority of the convocation was, indeed, in most
     respects, independent of the parliament: and there was no
     reason which required the one to be dissolved upon the
     dissolution of the other.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 33.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 33.

     **** Dugdale, p. 62. Clarendon, vol. i. p. 143.

     v    Dugdale, p. 65.

     V*   Rush. vol. iii. p. 1165.

The chief topic on which he insisted was, that the commons imitated the
bad example of all then predecessors of late years, in making continual
encroachments on his authority, in censuring his whole administration
and conduct, in discussing every circumstance of public government, and
in their indirect bargaining and contracting with their king for supply;
as if nothing ought to be given him but what he should purchase, either
by quitting somewhat of his royal prerogative, or by diminishing and
lessening his standing revenue. These practices, he said, were contrary
to the maxims of their ancestors; and these practices were totally
incompatible with monarchy.[*] [5]

The king, disappointed of parliamentary subsidies, was obliged to have
recourse to other expedients, in order to supply his urgent necessities.
The ecclesiastical subsidies served him in some stead; and it seemed
but just that the clergy should contribute to a war which was in a great
measure of their own raising.[**] He borrowed money from his ministers
and courtiers; and so much was he beloved among them, that above three
hundred thousand pounds were subscribed in a few days; though nothing
surely could be more disagreeable to a prince full of dignity, than
to be a burden on his friends instead of being a support to them. Some
attempts were made towards forcing a loan from the citizens; but
still repelled by the spirit of liberty, which was now become
unconquerable.[***] A loan of forty thousand pounds was extorted from
the Spanish merchants, who had bullion in the Tower exposed to the
attempts of the king. Coat and conduct money for the soldiery was levied
on the counties; an ancient practice,[****] but supposed to be abolished
by the petition of right. All the pepper was bought from the East India
Company upon trust, and sold at a great discount for ready money.[v] A
scheme was proposed for coining two or three hundred thousand pounds of
base money:[v*] such were the extremities to which Charles was reduced.
The fresh difficulties which, amidst the present distresses, were every
day raised with regard to the payment of ship money, obliged him to
exert continual acts of authority, augmented the discontents of the
people, and increased his indigence and necessities.[v**]

     * See note E, at the end of the volume.

     ** May, p. 48.

     *** Rush. vol. iii. p. 1181.

     **** Rush. vol. i. p. 168.

     v May, p. 63.

     v* Rush. vol. iii. p. 1216. May, p. 63.

     v** Rush. vol. iii. p. 1173, 1182, 1184, 1199, 1200, 1203,
     1204.

The present expedients, however, enabled the king, though with great
difficulty, to march his army, consisting of nineteen thousand foot and
two thousand horse.[*] The earl of Northumberland was appointed
general; the earl of Strafford, who was called over from Ireland,
lieutenant-general; Lord Conway, general of the horse. A small fleet was
thought sufficient to serve the purposes of this expedition.

So great are the effects of zeal and unanimity, that the Scottish army,
though somewhat superior, were sooner ready than the king’s; and they
marched to the borders of England. To engage them to proceed, besides
their general knowledge of the secret discontents of that kingdom,
Lord Saville had forged a letter, in the name of six noblemen the most
considerable of England, by which the Scots were invited to assist their
neighbors in procuring a redress of grievances.[**] Notwithstanding
these warlike preparations and hostile attempts, the Covenanters still
preserved the most pathetic and most submissive language; and entered
England, they said, with no other view than to obtain access to the
king’s presence, and lay their humble petition at his royal feet. At
Newburn upon Tyne, they were opposed by a detachment of four thousand
five hundred men under Conway, who seemed resolute to dispute with them
the passage of the river. The Scots first entreated them, with great
civility, not to stop them in their march to their gracious sovereign;
and then attacked them with great bravery, killed several, and chased
the rest from their ground. Such a panic seized the whole English army,
that the forces at Newcastle fled immediately to Durham; and not yet
thinking themselves safe, they deserted that town, end retreated into
Yorkshire.[***]

The Scots took possession of Newcastle; and though sufficiently elated
with their victory, they preserved exact discipline, and persevered in
their resolution of paying for every thing, in order still to maintain
the appearance of an amicable correspondence with England. They also
despatched messengers to the king, who was arrived at York; and they
took care, after the advantage which they had obtained, to redouble
their expressions of loyalty, duty, and submission to his person; and
they even made apologies, full of sorrow and contrition for their late
victory.[****]

     * Rush. vol. iii. p. 1279.

     ** Nalson, vol. ii. p. 427.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 143.

     **** Rush. vol. iii. p. 1255.

Charles was in a very distressed condition. The nation was universally
and highly discontented. The army was discouraged, and began likewise to
be discontented, both from the contagion of general disgust, and as an
excuse for their misbehavior, which they were desirous of representing
rather as want of will than of courage to fight. The treasury too was
quite exhausted, and every expedient for supply had been tried to the
uttermost. No event had happened, but what might have been foreseen as
necessary, at least as very probable; yet such was the king’s situation,
that no provision could be made, nor was even any resolution taken
against such an exigency.

In order to prevent the advance of the Scots upon him, the king agreed
to a treaty, and named sixteen English noblemen, who met with eleven
Scottish commissioners at Rippon. The earls of Hertford, Bedford,
Salisbury, Warwick, Essex, Holland, Bristol, and Berkshire, the lords
Kimbolton, Wharton. Dunsmore, Paget, Broke Saville, Paulet, and
Howard of Escric, were chosen by the king; all of them popular men
and consequently supposed nowise averse to the Scottish invasion, or
unacceptable to that nation.[*]

An address arrived from the city of London, petitioning for a
parliament; the great point to which all men’s projects at this
time tended.[**] Twelve noblemen presented a petition to the same
purpose.[***] But the king contented himself with summoning a great
council of the peers at York; a measure which had formerly been taken
in cases of sudden emergency, but which at present could serve to little
purpose. Perhaps the king, who dreaded above all things the house of
commons, and who expected no supply from them on any reasonable terms,
thought that, in his present distresses, he might be enabled to levy
supplies by the authority of the peers alone. But the employing so long
the plea of a necessity which appeared distant and doubtful, rendered it
impossible for him to avail himself of a necessity which was now at last
become real, urgent, and inevitable.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 155.

     ** Rush. vol. iii. p. 1263.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p, 146. Rush. vol. iii. p. 1260. May,
     p. 66. Warwick, p. 151.

By Northumberland’s sickness, the command of the army had devolved on
Strafford. This nobleman possessed more vigor of mind than the king or
any of the council. He advised Charles rather to put all to hazard, than
submit to unworthy terms as were likely to be imposed upon him.

The loss sustained at Newburn, he said, was inconsiderable and though a
panic had for the time seized the army, that event was nothing strange
among new levied troops and the Scots, being in the same condition,
would no doubt be liable in their turn to a like accident. His opinion
therefore was, that the king should push forward and attack the Scots,
and bring the affair to a quick decision; and, if he were ever so
unsuccessful, nothing worse could befall him than what from his
inactivity he would certainly be exposed to.[*] To show how easy it
would be to execute this project, he ordered an assault to be made on
some quarters of the Scots, and he gained an advantage over them. No
cessation of arms had as yet been agreed to during the treaty at Rippon;
yet great clamor prevailed on account of this act of hostility. And when
it was known that the officer who conducted the attack was a Papist, a
violent outcry was raised against the king for employing that hated sect
in the murder of his Protestant subjects.[**]

It may be worthy of remark, that several mutinies had arisen among the
English troops when marching to join the army; and some officers had
been murdered merely on suspicion of their being Papists.[***] The
petition of right had abolished all martial law; and by an inconvenience
which naturally attended the plan, as yet new and unformed, of regular
and rigid liberty, it was found absolutely impossible for the generals
to govern the army by all the authority which the king could legally
confer upon them. The lawyers had declared, that martial law could not
be exercised, except in the very presence of an enemy; and because it
had been found necessary to execute a mutineer, the generals thought it
advisable, for their own safety, to apply for a pardon from the crown.
This weakness, however, was carefully concealed from the army, and Lord
Conway said, that if any lawyer were so imprudent as to discover the
secret to the soldiers, it would be necessary instantly to refute it,
and to hang the lawyer himself by sentence of a court martial.[****]

     * Nalson, vol. ii. p. 5.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 159.

     *** Rush. vol. iii. 1190, 1191, 1192, etc. May, p. 64.

     **** Rush. vol. iii. p 1199.

An army new levied, undisciplined, frightened, seditious, ill paid,
and governed by no proper authority, was very unfit for withstanding
a victorious and high-spirited enemy, and retaining in subjection a
discontented and zealous nation.

Charles, in despair of being able to stem the torrent, at last
determined to yield to it: and as he foresaw that the great council of
the peers would advise him to call a parliament, he told them, in his
first speech, that he had already taken this resolution. He informed
them likewise, that the queen, in a letter which she had written to him,
had very earnestly recommended that measure. This good prince, who was
extremely attached to his consort, and who passionately wished to render
her popular in the nation, forgot not, amidst all his distress, the
interests of his domestic tenderness.[*]

In order to subsist both armies, (for the king was obliged, in order to
save the northern counties, to pay his enemies,) Charles wrote to the
city, desiring a loan of two hundred thousand pounds. And the peers at
York, whose authority was now much greater than that of their sovereign,
joined in the same request:[**] so low was this prince already fallen in
the eyes of his own subjects.

As many difficulties occurred in the negotiation with the Scots, it
was proposed to transfer the treaty from Rippon to London; a proposal
willingly embraced by that nation, who were now sure of treating with
advantage in a place where the king, they foresaw, would be in a manner
a prisoner, in the midst of his implacable enemies, and their determined
friends.[***]

     * Clarendon, vol. 1. p. 154. Bush. vol. iii. p. 1275.

     ** Rush. vol. iii. p 1279.

     *** Rush, vol. iii. p 1805.



CHAPTER LIV.



CHARLES I

{1640.} The causes of disgust which for above thirty years had daily
been multiplying in England, were now come to full maturity, and
threatened the kingdom with some great revolution or convulsion. The
uncertain and undefined limits of prerogative and privilege had been
eagerly disputed during that whole period; and in every controversy
between prince and people, the question, however doubtful, had always
been decided by each party in favor of its own pretensions. Too lightly,
perhaps, moved by the appearance of necessity, the king had even assumed
powers incompatible with the principles of limited government, and
had rendered it impossible for his most zealous partisans entirely to
justify his conduct, except by topics so unpopular, that they were
more fitted, in the present disposition of men’s minds, to inflame
than appease the general discontent. Those great supports of public
authority, law and religion, had likewise, by the unbounded compliance
of judges and prelates, lost much of their influence over the people;
or rather had, in a great measure, gone over to the side of faction, and
authorized the spirit of opposition and rebellion. The nobility, also,
whom the king had no means of retaining by offices and preferments
suitable to their rank, had been seized with the general discontent, and
unwarily threw themselves into the scale which already began too much
to preponderate. Sensible of some encroachments which had been made
by royal authority, men entertained no jealousy of the commons, whose
enterprises for the acquisition of power had ever been covered with the
appearance of public good, and had hitherto gone no further than
some disappointed efforts and endeavors. The progress of the Scottish
malecontents reduced the crown to an entire dependence for supply:
their union with the popular party in England brought great accession of
authority to the latter: the near prospect of success roused all latent
murmurs and pretensions, which had hitherto been held in such violent
constraint; and the torrent of general inclination and opinion ran so
strongly against the court, that the king was in no situation to refuse
any reasonable demands of the popular leaders either for defining or
limiting the powers of his prerogative. Even many exorbitant claims, in
his present situation, would probably be made, and must necessarily be
complied with.

The triumph of the malecontents over the church was not yet so immediate
or certain. Though the political and religious Puritans mutually lent
assistance to each other, there were many who joined the former,
yet declined all connection with the latter. The hierarchy had been
established in England ever since the reformation: the Romish church,
in all ages, had carefully maintained that form of ecclesiastical
government: the ancient fathers too bore testimony to episcopal
jurisdiction; and though parity may seem at first to have had place
among Christian pastors, the period during which it prevailed was so
short, that few undisputed traces of it remained in history. The
bishops and their more zealous partisans inferred, thence the divine,
indefeasible right of prelacy: others regarded that institution as
venerable and useful; and if the love of novelty led some to adopt the
new rites and discipline of the Puritans, the reverence to antiquity
retained many in their attachment to the liturgy and government of the
church. It behoved, therefore, the zealous innovators in parliament to
proceed with some caution and reserve. By promoting all measures which
reduced the powers of the crown, they hoped to disarm the king, whom
they justly regarded, from principle, inclination, and policy, to be the
determined patron of the hierarchy. By declaiming against the supposed
encroachments and tyranny of the prelates, they endeavored to carry the
nation, from a hatred of their persons, to an opposition against their
office and character. And when men were enlisted in party, it would not
be difficult, they thought, to lead them by degrees into many measures
for which they formerly entertained the greatest aversion. Though the
new sectaries composed not at first the majority of the nation, they
were inflamed, as is usual among innovators, with extreme zeal for their
opinions. Their unsurmountable passion, disguised to themselves as well
as to others under the appearance of holy fervors, was well qualified to
make proselytes, and to seize the minds of the ignorant multitude. And
one furious enthusiast was able, by his active industry, to surmount the
indolent efforts of many sober and reasonable antagonists.

When the nation, therefore, was so generally discontented and little
suspicion was entertained of any design to subvert the church and
monarchy, no wonder that almost all elections ran in favor of those who,
by their high pretensions to piety and patriotism, had encouraged the
national prejudices. It is a usual compliment to regard the king’s
inclination in the choice of a speaker; and Charles had intended to
advance Gardiner, recorder of London, to that important trust; but so
little interest did the crown at that time possess in the nation, that
Gardiner was disappointed of his election, not only in London, but in
every other place where it was attempted; and the king was obliged to
make the choice of speaker fail on Lenthal, a lawyer of some character,
but not sufficiently qualified for so high and difficult an office.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 169.

The eager expectations of men with regard to a parliament, summoned
at so critical a juncture, and during such general discontents; a
parliament which, from the situation of public affairs, could not be
abruptly dissolved, and which was to execute every thing left unfinished
by former parliaments; these motives, so important and interesting,
engaged the attendance of all the members; and the house of commons was
never observed to be from the beginning so full and numerous. Without
any interval, therefore, they entered upon business, and by unanimous
consent they immediately struck a blow which may in a manner be regarded
as decisive.

The earl of Strafford was considered as chief minister, both on account
of the credit which he possessed with his master, and of his own great
and uncommon vigor and capacity. By a concurrence of accidents, this man
labored under the severe hatred of all the three nations which composed
the British monarchy. The Scots, whose authority now ran extremely
high, looked on him as the capital enemy of their country and one whose
counsels and influence they had most reason to apprehend. He had engaged
the parliament of Ireland to advance large subsidies, in order to
support a war against them: he had levied an army of nine thousand men,
with which he had menaced all their western coast: he had obliged the
Scots who lived under his government, to renounce the Covenant, their
national idol: he had in Ireland proclaimed the Scottish Covenanters
rebels and traitors, even before the king had issued any such
declaration against them in England, and he had ever dissuaded his
master against the late treaty and suspension of arms, which he regarded
as dangerous and dishonorable. So avowed and violent were the Scots in
their resentment of all these measures, that they had refused to send
commissioners to treat at York, as was at first proposed; because, they
said, the lieutenant of Ireland, their capital enemy, being general of
the king’s forces, had there the chief command and authority.

Strafford, first as deputy, then as lord lieutenant, had governed
Ireland during eight years with great vigilance, activity, and prudence,
but with very little popularity. In a nation so averse to the English
government and religion, these very virtues were sufficient to draw on
him the public hatred. The manners too and character of this great man,
though to all full of courtesy, and to his friends full of affection,
were at bottom haughty, rigid, and severe. His authority and influence
during the time of his government had been unlimited; but no sooner did
adversity seize him, than the concealed aversion of the nation blazed up
at once, and the Irish parliament used every expedient to aggravate the
charge against him.

The universal discontent which prevailed in England against the court,
was all pointed towards the earl of Strafford; though without any
particular reason, but because he was the minister of state whom the
king most favored and most trusted. His extraction was honorable, his
paternal fortune considerable, yet envy attended his sudden and great
elevation. And his former associates in popular counsels, finding that
he owed his advancement to the desertion of their cause, represented
him as the great apostate of the commonwealth, whom it behoved them to
sacrifice as a victim to public justice.

Strafford, sensible of the load of popular prejudices under which he
labored, would gladly have declined attendance in parliament; and he
begged the king’s permission to withdraw himself to his government of
Ireland, at least to remain at the head of the army in Yorkshire; where
many opportunities, he hoped, would offer, by reason of his distance, to
elude the attacks of his enemies. But Charles, who had entire confidence
in the earl’s capacity, thought that his counsels would be extremely
useful during the critical session which approached. And when Strafford
still insisted on the danger of his appearing amidst so many enraged
enemies, the king, little apprehensive that his own authority was so
suddenly to expire, promised him protection, and assured him that not a
hair of his head should be touched by the parliament.[*]

No sooner was Strafford’s arrival known, than a concerted attack was
made upon him in the house of commons. Pym, in a long studied discourse,
divided into many heads, after his manner, enumerated all the grievances
under which the nation labored; and, from a complication of such
oppressions, inferred that a deliberate plan had been formed of changing
entirely the frame of government, and subverting the ancient laws and
liberties of the kingdom.[**] Could any thing, he said, increase our
indignation against so enormous and criminal a project, it would be to
find that, during the reign of the best of princes, the constitution had
been endangered by the worst of ministers, and that the virtues of the
king had been seduced by wicked and pernicious counsel. We must inquire,
added he, from what fountain these waters of bitterness flow; and though
doubtless many evil counsellors will be found to have contributed their
endeavors, yet there is one who challenges the infamous preeminence, and
who, by his courage, enterprise, and capacity, is entitled to the
first place among these betrayers of their country. He is the earl of
Strafford, lieutenant of Ireland, and president of the council of
York, who, in both places, and in all other provinces where he has been
intrusted with authority, has raised ample monuments of tyranny, and
will appear, from a survey of his actions, to be the chief promoter of
every arbitrary counsel. Some instances of imperious expressions, as
well as actions, were given by Pym; who afterwards entered into a more
personal attack of that minister, and endeavored to expose his whole
character and manners. The austere genius of Strafford, occupied in
the pursuits of ambition, had not rendered his breast altogether
inaccessible to the tender passions, or secured him from the dominion
of the fair; and in that sullen age, when the irregularities of pleasure
were more reproachful than the most odious crimes, these weaknesses were
thought worthy of being mentioned, together with his treasons, before
so great an assembly. And, upon the whole, the orator concluded, that it
belonged to the house to provide a remedy proportionable to the disease,
and to prevent the further mischiefs justly to be apprehended from the
influence which this man had acquired over the measures and counsels of
their sovereign.[***]

     * Whitlocke, p. 36.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 36

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 172.

Sir John Clotworthy, an Irish gentleman, Sir John Hotham of Yorkshire,
and many others, entered into the same topics, and after several hours
spent in bitter invective, when the doors were locked, in order to
prevent all discovery of their purpose, it was moved, in consequence
of the resolution secretly taken, that Strafford should immediately
be impeached of high treason. This motion was received with universal
approbation; nor was there, in all the debate, one person who offered
to stop the torrent by any testimony in favor of the earls conduct. Lord
Falkland alone, though known to be his enemy, modestly desired the
house to consider whether it would not better suit the gravity of their
proceedings, first to digest by a committee many of those particulars
which had been mentioned, before they sent up an accusation against him.
It was ingeniously answered by Pym, that such a delay might probably
blast all their hopes, and put it out of their power to proceed any
further in the prosecution: that when Strafford should learn that so
many of his enormities were discovered, his conscience would dictate
his condemnation; and so great was his power and credit, he would
immediately procure the dissolution of the parliament, or attempt some
other desperate measure for his own preservation: that the commons
were only accusers, not judges; and it was the province of the peers to
determine whether such a complication of enormous crimes in one person,
did not amount to the highest crime known by the law.[*] Without further
debate, the impeachment was voted: Pym was chosen to carry it up to the
lords: most of the house accompanied him on so agreeable an errand;
and Strafford, who had just entered the house of peers, and who little
expected so speedy a prosecution was immediately, upon this general
charge, ordered into custody, with several symptoms of violent prejudice
in his judges as well as in his prosecutors.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 174.

In the inquiry concerning grievances, and in the censure of past
measures, Laud could not long escape the severe scrutiny of the commons;
who were led too, in their accusation of that prelate, as well by their
prejudices against his whole order, as by the extreme antipathy which
his intemperate zeal had drawn upon him. After a deliberation which
scarcely lasted half an hour, an impeachment of high treason was voted
against this subject, the first both in rank and in favor throughout the
kingdom. Though this incident, considering the example of Stratford’s
impeachment, and the present disposition of the nation and parliament,
needed be no surprise to him, yet was he betrayed into some passion when
the accusation was presented. “The commons themselves,” he said, “though
his accusers, did not believe him guilty of the crimes with which
they charged him;” an indiscretion which, next day, upon more mature
deliberation, he desired leave to retract; but so little favorable were
the peers, that they refused him this advantage or indulgence. Laud also
was immediately, upon this general charge, sequestered from parliament,
and committed to custody.[*]

The capital article insisted on against these two great men, was the
design which the commons supposed to have been formed of subverting
the laws and constitution of England, and introducing arbitrary and
unlimited authority into the kingdom. Of all the king’s ministers, no
one was so obnoxious in this respect as the lord keeper Finch. He it was
who, being speaker in the king’s third parliament, had left the
chair, and refused to put the question when ordered by the house. The
extrajudicial opinion of the judges in the case of ship money had
been procured by his intrigues, persuasions, and even menaces. In all
unpopular and illegal measures, he was ever most active; and he was even
believed to have declared publicly, that, while he was keeper, an order
of council should always with him be equivalent to a law. To appease the
rising displeasure of the commons, he desired to be heard at their bar.
He prostrated himself with all humility before them; but this submission
availed him nothing. An impeachment was resolved on; and in order to
escape their fury, he thought proper secretly to withdraw, and retire
into Holland. As he was not esteemed equal to Stratford, or even to
Laud, either in capacity or in fidelity to his master, it was
generally believed that his escape had been connived at by the popular
leaders.[**] His impeachment, however, in his absence, was carried up to
the house of peers.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 177. Whitlocke, p. 38, Rush. vol.
     iii. p. 1365.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 177. Whitlocke, p. 38. Rush. vol.
     i. p 129.

Sir Francis Windebank, the secretary, was a creature of Laud’s; a
sufficient reason for his being extremely obnoxious to the commons.
He was secretly suspected too of the crime of Popery; and it was known
that, from complaisance to the queen, and indeed in compliance with
the king’s maxims of government, he had granted many indulgences to
Catholics, and had signed warrants for the pardon of priests, and their
delivery from confinement. Grimstone, a popular member, called him,
in the house, the very pander and broker to the whore of Babylon.[*]
Finding that the scrutiny of the commons was pointing towards him, and
being sensible that England was no longer a place of safety for men of
his character, he suddenly made his escape into France.[**]

Thus in a few weeks this house of commons, not opposed, or rather
seconded by the peers, had produced such a revolution in the government,
that the two most powerful and most favored ministers of the king were
thrown into the Tower, and daily expected to be tried for their life:
two other ministers had, by flight alone, saved themselves from a like
fate: all the king’s servants saw that no protection could be given
them by their master: a new jurisdiction was erected in the nation; and
before that tribunal all those trembled who had before exulted most in
their credit and authority.

     * Rush, vol. v. p. 122.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 178. Whitlocke, p. 37.

What rendered the power of the commons more formidable was, the extreme
prudence with which it was conducted. Not content with the authority
which they had acquired by attacking these great ministers, they were
resolved to render the most considerable bodies of the nation obnoxious
to them. Though the idol of the people, they determined to fortify
themselves likewise with terrors, and to overawe those who might still
be inclined to support the falling ruins of monarchy.

During the late military operations, several powers had been exercised
by the lieutenants and deputy lieutenants of counties; and these powers,
though necessary for the defence of the nation, and even warranted by
all former precedent yet not being authorized by statute, were now
voted to be illegal, and the persons who had assumed them declared
delinquents. This term was newly come into vogue, and expressed a degree
and species of guilt not exactly known or ascertained. In consequence of
that determination, many of the nobility and prime gentry of the
nation, while only exerting as they justly thought, the legal powers
of magistracy unexpectedly found themselves involved in the crime of
delinquency. And the commons reaped this multiplied advantage by their
vote: they disarmed the crown; they established the maxims of rigid law
and liberty; and they spread the terror of their own authority.[*]

The writs for ship money had been directed to the sheriffs, who were
required, and even obliged, under severe penalties, to assess the sums
upon individuals, and to levy them by their authority: yet were all the
sheriffs, and all those who had been employed in that illegal service,
voted, by a very rigorous sentence, to be delinquents. The king, by
the maxims of law, could do no wrong: his ministers and servants, of
whatever degree, in case cf any violation of the constitution, were
alone culpable.[**]

All the farmers and officers of the customs, who had been employed
during so many years in levying tonnage and poundage and the new
impositions, were likewise declared criminals, and were afterwards
glad to compound for a pardon by paying a fine of one hundred and fifty
thousand pounds.

Every discretionary or arbitrary sentence of the star chamber and high
commission, courts which, from their very constitution, were arbitrary,
underwent a severe scrutiny; and all those who had concurred in such
sentences were voted to be liable to the penalties of law.[***] No
minister of the king, no member of the council, but found himself
exposed by this decision.

The judges who had given their vote against Hambden in the trial of ship
money, were accused before the peers, and obliged to find surety for
their appearance. Berkeley, a judge of the king’s bench, was seized by
order of the house, even when sitting in his tribunal; and all men
saw with astonishment the irresistible authority of their
jurisdiction.[****]

The sanction of the lords and commons, as well as that of the king, was
declared necessary for the confirmation of ecclesiastical canons.[v]
And this judgment, it must be confessed, however reasonable, at least
useful, it would have been difficult to justify by any precedent.[v*]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 176.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 176.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 177.

     **** Whitlocke, p. 39.

     v    Nalson, vol. i. p. 673.

     v*   An act of parliament, 25th Henry VIII., cap. 19,
     allowed the convocation with the king’s consent to make
     canons. By the famous act of submission to that prince, the
     clergy bound themselves to enact no canons without the
     king’s consent. The parliament was never mentioned nor
     thought of. Such pretensions as the commons advanced at
     present, would in any former age have been deemed strange
     usurpations.

But the present was no time for question or dispute. That decision which
abolished all legislative power except that of parliament, was requisite
for completing the new plan of liberty, and rendering it quite uniform
and systematical. Almost all the bench of bishops, and the most
considerable of the inferior clergy, who had voted in the late
convocation, found themselves exposed by these new principles to the
imputation of delinquency.[*]

The most unpopular of all Charles’s measures, and the least justifiable,
was the revival of monopolies, so solemnly abolished, after reiterated
endeavors, by a recent act of parliament. Sensible of this unhappy
measure, the king had of himself recalled, during the time of his first
expedition against Scotland, many of these oppressive patents; and the
rest were now annulled by authority of parliament, and every one who was
concerned in them declared delinquents. The commons carried so far their
detestation of this odious measure, that they assumed a power which had
formerly been seldom practised,[**] and they expelled all their members
who were monopolists or projectors; an artifice by which, besides
increasing their own privileges, they weakened still further the very
small party which the king secretly retained in the house. Mildmay,
a notorious monopolist, yet having associated himself with the ruling
party, was still allowed to keep his seat. In all questions, indeed, of
elections, no steady rule of decision was observed; and nothing further
was regarded than the affections and attachments of the parties.[***]
Men’s passions were too much heated to be shocked with any instance of
injustice, which served ends so popular as those which were pursued by
this house of commons.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 206. Whitlocke, p. 37. Rush. vol. v.
     p. 235, 359. Nalson, vol. i. p. 807.

     ** Lord Clarendon says it was entirely new; but there are
     instances of it in the reign of Elizabeth. D’Ewes, p. 296,
     352. There are also instances in the reign of James.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 176.

The whole sovereign power being thus in a manner transferred to the
commons, and the government, without any seeming violence or disorder,
being changed in a moment from a monarchy almost absolute to a pure
democracy, the popular leaders seemed willing for some time to suspend
their active vigor, and to consolidate their authority, ere they
proceeded to any violent exercise of it. Every day produced some new
harangue on past grievances. The detestation of former usurpations was
further enlivened; the jealousy of liberty roused; and, agreeably to the
spirit of free government, no less indignation was excited by the view
of a violated constitution, than by the ravages of the most enormous
tyranny.

This was the time when genius and capacity of all kinds, freed from the
restraint of authority, and nourished by unbounded hopes and projects,
began to exert themselves, and be distinguished by the public. Then
was celebrated the sagacity of Pym, more fitted for use than ornament;
matured, not chilled, by his advanced age and long experience: then
was displayed the mighty ambition of Hambden, taught disguise, not
moderation, from former constraint; supported by courage, conducted by
prudence, embellished by modesty; but whether founded in a love of power
or zeal for liberty, is still, from his untimely end, left doubtful and
uncertain: then too were known the dark, ardent, and dangerous character
of St. John; the impetuous spirit of Hollis, violent and sincere, open
and entire in his enmities and in his friendships; the enthusiastic
genius of young Vane, extravagant in the ends which he pursued,
sagacious and profound in the means which he employed; incited by the
appearances of religion, negligent of the duties of morality.

So little apology would be received for past measures, so contagious
the general spirit of discontent, that even men of the most moderate
tempers, and the most attached to the church and monarchy, exerted
themselves with the utmost vigor in the redress of grievances, and in
prosecuting the authors of them. The lively and animated Digby displayed
his eloquence on this occasion; the firm and undaunted Capel, the modest
and candid Palmer. In this list too of patriot royalists are found the
virtuous names of Hyde and Falkland. Though in their ultimate views and
intentions these men differed widely from the former, in their present
actions and discourses an entire concurrence and unanimity was observed.

By the daily harangues and invectives against illegal usurpations, not
only the house of commons inflamed themselves with the highest animosity
against the court: the nation caught new fire from the popular leaders,
and seemed now to have made the first discovery of the many supposed
disorders in the government. While the law in several instances seemed
to be violated, they went no further than some secret and calm murmurs;
but mounted up into rage and fury as soon as the constitution was
thought to be restored to its former integrity and vigor. The capital
especially, being the seat of parliament, was highly animated with the
spirit of mutiny and disaffection. Tumults were daily raised; seditious
assemblies encouraged; and every man, neglecting his own business,
was wholly intent on the defence of liberty and religion. By stronger
contagion, the popular affections were communicated from breast to
breast in this place of general rendezvous and society.

The harangues of members, now first published and dispersed, kept
alive the discontents against the king’s administration. The pulpits,
delivered over to Puritanical preachers and lecturers, whom the commons
arbitrarily settled in all the considerable churches, resounded with
faction and fanaticism. Vengeance was fully taken for the long
silence and constraint in which, by the authority of Laud and the high
commission, these preachers had been retained. The press, freed from all
fear or reserve, swarmed with productions, dangerous by their seditious
zeal and calumny, more than by any art or eloquence of composition.
Noise and fury, cant and hypocrisy, formed the sole rhetoric which,
during this tumult of various prejudices and passions, could be heard or
attended to.

The sentence which had been executed against Prynne, Bastwic, and
Burton, now suffered a revisal from parliament. These libellers, far
from being tamed by the rigorous punishments which they had undergone,
showed still a disposition of repeating their offence; and the ministers
were afraid lest new satires should issue from their prisons, and still
further inflame the prevailing discontents. By an order, therefore, of
council, they had been carried to remote prisons; Bastwic to Scilly,
Prynne to Jersey, Burton to Guernsey; all access to them was denied;
and the use of books, and of pen, ink and paper, was refused them. The
sentence for these additional punishments was immediately reversed,
in an arbitrary manner, by the commons: even the first sentence, upon
examination, was declared illegal; and the judges who passed it were
ordered to make reparation to the sufferers.[*]

     * Nalson, vol. i. p 783. May, p. 79.

When the prisoners landed in England, they were received and entertained
with the highest demonstrations of affection; were attended by a mighty
confluence of company, their charges were borne with great magnificence,
and liberal presents bestowed on them. On their approach to any
town, all the inhabitants crowded to receive them, and welcomed their
reception with shouts and acclamations. Their train still increased as
they drew nigh to London. Some miles from the city, the zealots of
their party met them in great multitudes, and attended their triumphant
entrance: boughs were carried in this tumultuous procession; the roads
were strewed with flowers; and amidst the highest exultations of joy,
were intermingled loud and virulent invectives against the prelates,
who had so cruelly persecuted such godly personages.[*] The more ignoble
these men were, the more sensible was the insult upon royal authority,
and the more dangerous was the spirit of disaffection and mutiny which
it discovered among the people.

Lilburne, Leighton, and every one that had been punished for seditious
libels during the preceding administration, now recovered their liberty,
and were decreed damages from the judges and ministers of justice.[**]

Not only the present disposition of the nation insured impunity to all
libellers: a new method of framing and dispersing libels was invented by
the leaders of popular discontent. Petitions to parliament were drawn,
craving redress against particular grievances; and when a sufficient
number of subscriptions was procured, the petitions were presented to
the commons, and immediately published. These petitions became secret
bonds of association among the subscribers, and seemed to give undoubted
sanction and authority to the complaints which they contained.

It is pretended by historians favorable to the royal cause,[***] and is
even asserted by the king himself in a declaration,[****] that a most
disingenuous, or rather criminal, practice prevailed in conducting many
of these addresses. A petition was first framed; moderate, reasonable,
such as men of character willingly subscribed. The names were afterwards
torn off and affixed to another petition which served better the
purposes of the popular faction. We may judge of the wild fury which
prevailed throughout the nation, when so scandalous an imposture, which
affected such numbers of people, could be openly practised without
drawing infamy and ruin upon the managers.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 199, 200, etc. Nalson, vol. i. p.
     570. May p. 80.

     ** Rushworth, vol. v. p 228. Nalson, vol. i. p. 800.

     *** Dugdale. Clarendon, vol i. p. 203.

     **** Husb. Col. p. 536.

So many grievances were offered, both by the members and by petitions
without doors, that the house was divided into above forty committees,
charged each of them with the examination of some particular violation
of law and liberty which had been complained of. Besides the general
committees of religion, trade, privileges, laws, many subdivisions of
these were framed, and a strict scrutiny was every where carried on. It
is to be remarked that, before the beginning of this century, when the
commons assumed less influence and authority, complaints of grievances
were usually presented to the house by any members who had had
particular opportunity of observing them. These general committees,
which were a kind of inquisitorial courts, had not then been
established; and we find that the king, in a former declaration.[*]
complains loudly of this innovation, so little favorable to royal
authority. But never was so much multiplied, as at present, the use
of these committees; and the commons, though themselves the greatest
innovators, employed the usual artifice of complaining against
innovations, and pretending to recover the ancient and established
government.

     * Published on dissolving the third parliament. See Parl.
     Hist, vol. viii. p. 347.

From the reports of their committees, the house daily passed votes
which mortified and astonished the court, and inflamed and animated
the nation. Ship money was declared illegal and arbitrary; the sentence
against Hambden cancelled; the court of York abolished; compositions
for knighthood stigmatized; the enlargement of the forests
condemned; patents for monopolies annulled; and every late measure of
administration treated with reproach and obloquy. To-day a sentence of
the star chamber was exclaimed against; to-morrow a decree of the
high commission. Every discretionary act of council was represented
as arbitrary and tyrannical; and the general inference was still
inculcated, that a formed design had been laid to subvert the laws and
constitution of the kingdom.

From necessity the king remained entirely passive during all these
violent operations. The few servants who continued faithful to him, were
seized with astonishment at the rapid progress made by the commons in
power and popularity, and were glad, by their inactive and inoffensive
behavior, to compound for impunity. The torrent rising to so dreadful
and unexpected a height, despair seized all those who from interest or
habit were most attached to monarchy. And as for those who maintained
their duty to the king merely from their regard to the constitution,
they seemed by their concurrence to swell that inundation which began
already to deluge every thing. “You have taken the whole machine of
government in pieces,” said Charles, in a discourse to the parliament;
“a practice frequent with skilful artists, when they desire to clear
the wheels from any rust which may have grown upon them. The engine,”
 continued he, “may again be restored to its former use and motions,
provided it be put up entire, so as not a pin of it be wanting.” But
this was far from the intention of the commons. The machine, they
thought, with some reason, was encumbered with many wheels and springs
which retarded and crossed its operations, and destroyed its utility.
Happy! had they proceeded with moderation, and been contented, in their
present plenitude of power, to remove such parts only as might justly be
deemed superfluous and incongruous.

In order to maintain that high authority which they had acquired, the
commons, besides confounding and overawing their opponents, judged
it requisite to inspire courage into their friends and adherents;
particularly into the Scots, and the religious Puritans, to whose
assistance and good offices they were already so much beholden.

No sooner were the Scots masters of the northern counties, than they
laid aside their first professions, which they had not indeed means
to support, of paying for every thing; and in order to prevent the
destructive expedient of plunder and free quarters, the country
consented to give them a regular contribution of eight hundred and fifty
pounds a day, in full of their subsistence.[*]

     * Rush. vol. iii. p. 1295.

The parliament, that they might relieve the northern counties from so
grievous a burden, agreed to remit pay to the Scottish as well as to the
English army; and because subsidies would be levied too slowly for
so urgent an occasion, money was borrowed from the citizens upon the
security of particular members. Two subsidies, a very small sum,[*] were
at first voted; and as the intention of this supply was to indemnify the
members who by their private had supported public credit, this pretence
was immediately laid hold of, and the money was ordered to be paid,
not into the treasury, but to commissioners appointed by parliament;
a practice which as it diminished the authority of the crown, was
willingly embraced, and was afterwards continued by the commons with
regard to every branch of revenue which they granted to the king. The
invasion of the Scots had evidently been the cause of assembling the
parliament: the presence of their army reduced the king to that total
subjection in which he was now held: the commons, for this reason,
openly professed their intention of retaining these invaders, till all
their own enemies should be suppressed, and all their purposes effected.
“We cannot yet spare the Scots,” said Strode plainly in the house,
“the sons of Zeruiah are still too strong for us;”[**] an allusion to a
passage of Scripture, according to the mode of that age. Eighty thousand
pounds a month were requisite for the subsistence of the two armies; a
sum much greater than the subject had ever been accustomed in any former
period to pay to the public. And though several subsidies, together
with a poll-tax, were from time to time voted to answer the charge,
the commons still took care to be in debt, in order to render the
continuance of the session the more necessary.

     * It appears that a subsidy was now fallen to fifty thousand
     pounds.

     ** Dugdale, p. 71.

The Scots being such useful allies to the malecontent party in England,
no wonder they were courted with the most unlimited complaisance and
the most important services. The king, having in his first speech called
them rebels, observed that he had given great offence to the parliament;
and he was immediately obliged to soften, and even retract the
expression.

The Scottish commissioners, of whom the most considerable were the earl
of Rothes and Lord Loudon, found every advantage in conducting their
treaty; yet made no haste in bringing it to an issue. They were lodged
in the city, and kept an intimate correspondence, as well with the
magistrates who were extremely disaffected, as with the popular leaders
in both houses. St. Antholine’s church was assigned them for their
devotions; and their chaplains here began openly to practise the
Presbyterian form of worship, which, except in foreign languages, had
never hitherto been allowed any indulgence or toleration. So violent was
the general propensity towards this new religion, that multitudes of all
ranks crowded to the church. Those who were so happy as to find access
early in the morning, kept their places the whole day, those who were
excluded clung to the doors or windows, in hopes of catching at least
some distant murmur or broken phrases of the holy rhetoric.[*] All the
eloquence of parliament, now well refined from pedantry, animated with
the spirit of liberty and employed in the most important interests, was
not attended to with such insatiable avidity, as were these lectures,
delivered with ridiculous cant and a provincial accent, full of
barbarism and of ignorance.

The most effectual expedient for paying court to the zealous Scots, was
to promote the Presbyterian discipline and worship throughout England;
and to this innovation the popular leaders among the commons, as well as
their more devoted partisans, were of themselves sufficiently inclined.
The Puritanical party, whose progress, though secret, had hitherto been
gradual in the kingdom, taking advantage of the present disorders,
began openly to profess their tenets, and to make furious attacks on
the established religion. The prevalence of that sect in the parliament
discovered itself, from the beginning, by insensible but decisive
symptoms. Marshall and Burgess, two Puritanical clergymen, were chosen
to preach before them, and entertained them with discourses seven hours
in length.[**] It being the custom of the house always to take the
sacrament before they enter upon business, they ordered, as a necessary
preliminary, that the communion table should be removed from the east
end of St. Margaret’s into the middle of the area.[***] The name of the
“spiritual lords” was commonly left out in acts of parliament; and the
laws ran in the name of king, lords, and commons. The clerk of the upper
house, in reading bills, turned his back on the bench of bishops; nor
was his insolence ever taken notice of.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 189.

     ** Nalson, vol. i. p. 530, 533.

     *** Nalson, voL i. p. 537

On a day appointed for a solemn fast and humiliation, all the orders
of temporal peers, contrary to former practice, in going to church took
place of the spiritual; and Lord Spencer remarked that the humiliation
that day seemed confined alone to the prelates.

Every meeting of the commons produced some vehement harangue against
the usurpations of the bishops, against the high commission, against the
late convocation, against the new canons. So disgusted were all lovers
of civil liberty at the doctrines promoted by the clergy, that these
invectives were received without control; and no distinction at first
appeared between such as desired only to repress the exorbitancies of
the hierarchy, and such as pretended totally to annihilate episcopal
jurisdiction. Encouraged by these favorable appearances, petitions
against the church were framed in different parts of the kingdom. The
epithet of the ignorant and vicious priesthood was commonly applied to
all churchmen addicted to the established discipline and worship; though
the episcopal clergy in England, during that age, seem to have been,
as they are at present, sufficiently learned and exemplary. An address
against episcopacy was presented by twelve clergymen to the committee of
religion, and pretended to be signed by many hundreds of the Puritanical
persuasion. But what made most noise was, the city petition for a total
alteration of church government; a petition to which fifteen thousand
subscriptions were annexed, and which was presented by Alderman
Pennington, the city member.[*] It is remarkable that, among the many
ecclesiastical abuses there complained of, an allowance given by the
licensers of books to publish a translation of Ovid’s Art of Love, is
not forgotten by these rustic censors.[**]

Notwithstanding the favorable disposition of the people, the leaders in
the house resolved to proceed with caution. They introduced a bill
for prohibiting all clergymen the exercise of any civil office. As a
consequence, the bishops were to be deprived of their seats in the house
of peers; a measure not unacceptable to the zealous friends of liberty,
who observed with regret the devoted attachment of that order to the
will of the monarch. But when this bill was presented to the peers, it
was rejected by a great majority;[***] the first check which the commons
had received in their popular career, and a prognostic of what they
might afterwards expect from the upper house, whose inclinations and
interests could never be totally separated from the throne.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 203. Whitlocke, p. 37. Nalson, vol.
     i. p. 666.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 171.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 237.

But to show how little they were discouraged, the Puritans immediately
brought in another bill for the total abolition of episcopacy; though
they thought proper to let that bill sleep at present, in expectation of
a more favorable opportunity of reviving it.[*]

Among other acts of regal executive power which the commons were every
day assuming, they issued orders for demolishing all images, altars,
crucifixes. The zealous Sir Robert Harley, to whom the execution of
these orders was committed, removed all crosses even out of streets and
markets; and, from his abhorrence of that superstitious figure, would
not any where allow one piece of wood or stone to lie over another at
right angles.[**]

The bishop of Ely and other clergymen were attacked on account of
innovations.[***] Cozens, who had long been obnoxious, was exposed
to new censures. This clergyman, who was dean of Peterborough, was
extremely zealous for ecclesiastical ceremonies: and so far from
permitting the communicants to break the sacramental bread with their
fingers, a privilege on which the Puritans strenuously insisted, he
would not so much as allow it to be cut with an ordinary household
instrument. A consecrated knife must perform that sacred office, and
must never afterwards be profaned by any vulgar service.[****]

Cozens likewise was accused of having said, “The king has no more
authority in ecclesiastical matters, than the boy who rubs my horse’s
heels.”[v] The expression was violent: but it is certain that all
those high churchmen, who were so industrious in reducing the laity
to submission, were extremely fond of their own privileges and
independency, and were desirous of exempting the mitre from all
subjection to the crown.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 237.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 45.

     *** Rush. vol. v. p. 351.

     **** Rush. vol. v. p. 203.

     v Parl. Hist. vol. vii. p. 282. Rush. vol. v. p. 209.

A committee was elected by the lower house as a court of inquisition
upon the clergy, and was commonly denominated the committee of
“scandalous ministers.” The politicians among the commons were apprised
of the great importance of the pulpit for guiding the people; the bigots
were enraged against the prelatical clergy; and both of them knew that
no established government could be overthrown by strictly observing the
principles of justice, equity, or clemency. The proceedings, therefore,
of this famous committee, which continued for several years, were
cruel and arbitrary, and made great havoc both on the church and the
universities. They began with harassing, imprisoning, and molesting the
clergy; and ended with sequestrating and ejecting them. In order to
join contumely to cruelty, they gave the sufferers the epithet of
“scandalous,” and endeavored to render them as odious as they were
miserable.[*] The greatest vices, however, which they could reproach
to a great part of them, were, bowing at the name of Jesus, placing the
communion table in the east, reading the king’s orders for sports on
Sunday, and other practices which the established government, both in
church and state, had strictly enjoined them.

It may be worth observing, that all historians who lived near that age,
or, what perhaps is more decisive, all authors who have casually
made mention of those public transactions, still represent the civil
disorders and convulsions as proceeding from religious controversy,
and consider the political disputes about power and liberty as entirely
subordinate to the other. It is true, had the king been able to support
government, and at the same time to abstain from all invasion of
national privileges, it seems not probable that the Puritans ever could
have acquired such authority as to overturn the whole constitution: yet
so entire was the subjection into which Charles was now fallen, that,
had not the wound been poisoned by the infusion of theological hatred,
it must have admitted of an easy remedy. Disuse of parliaments,
imprisonments and prosecution of members, ship money, an arbitrary
administration; these were loudly complained of; but the grievances
which tended chiefly to inflame the parliament and nation, especially
the latter, were the surplice, the rails placed about the altar, the
bows exacted on approaching it, the liturgy, the breach of the Sabbath,
embroidered copes, lawn sleeves, the use of the ring in marriage, and
of the cross in baptism. On account of these were the popular leaders
content to throw the government into such violent convulsions; and, to
the disgrace of that age and of this island, it must be acknowledged,
that the disorders in Scotland entirely, and those in England mostly
proceeded from so mean and contemptible an origin.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 199. Whitlocke, p. 122. May, p. 81.

     ** Lord Clarendon (vol. i. p. 233) says, that the
     parliamentary party were not agreed about the entire
     abolition of episcopacy: they were only the root and branch
     men, as they were called, who insisted on that measure. But
     those who were willing to retain bishops, insisted on
     reducing their authority to a low ebb, as well as on
     abolishing the ceremonies of worship and vestments of the
     clergy. The controversy therefore, between the parties was
     almost wholly theological, and that of the most frivolous
     and ridiculous kind.

Some persons, partial to the patriots of this age, have ventured to put
them in a balance with the most illustrious characters of antiquity; and
mentioned the names of Pym, Hambden, Vane, as a just parallel to those
of Cato, Brutus, Cassius. Profound capacity, indeed, undaunted courage,
extensive enterprise; in these particulars, perhaps, the Roman do not
much surpass the English worthies: but what a difference, when the
discourse, conduct, conversation, and private as well as public behavior
of both are inspected! Compare only one circumstance, and consider its
consequences. The leisure of those noble ancients was totally employed
in the study of Grecian eloquence and philosophy; in the cultivation of
polite letters and civilized society: the whole discourse and language
of the moderns were polluted with mysterious jargon, and full of the
lowest and most vulgar hypocrisy.

The laws, as they stood at present, protected the church but they
exposed the Catholics to the utmost rage of the Puritans; and these
unhappy religionists, so obnoxious to the prevailing sect, could not
hope to remain long unmolested. The voluntary contribution, which they
had made, in order to assist the king in his war against the Scottish
Covenanters, was inquired into, and represented as the greatest
enormity.[*] By an address from the commons, all officers of that
religion were removed from the army, and application was made to the
king for seizing two thirds of the lands of recusants; a proportion to
which by law he was entitled, but which he had always allowed them to
possess upon easy compositions. The execution of the severe and bloody
laws against priests was insisted on; and one Goodman, a Jesuit, who
was found in prison, was condemned to a capital punishment. Charles,
however, agreeably to his usual principles, scrupled to sign the warrant
for his execution; and the commons expressed great resentment on the
occasion.[**] There remains a singular petition of Goodman, begging to
be hanged, rather than prove a source of contention between the king and
his people.[***]

     * Rush, vol. v. p. 160.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 158, 159. Nalson, vol. i. p. 739.

     *** Rush. vol. v. p. 166. Nalson, vol. i. p. 749.

He escaped with his life; but it seems more probable, that he was
overlooked amidst affairs of greater consequence, than that such
unrelenting hatred would be softened by any consideration of his courage
and generosity.

For some years Con, a Scotchman, afterwards Rosetti, an Italian, had
openly resided at London, and frequented the court, as vested with a
commission from the pope. The queen’s zeal, and her authority with her
husband, had been the cause of this imprudence, so offensive to the
nation.[*] But the spirit of bigotry now rose too high to permit any
longer such indulgences.[**]

Hayward, a justice of peace, having been wounded, when employed in the
exercise of his office, by one James, a Catholic madman, this enormity
was ascribed to the Popery, not to the frenzy of the assassin; and great
alarms seized the nation and parliament.[***] A universal conspiracy
of the Papists was supposed to have taken place; and every man for some
days imagined that he had a sword at his throat. Though some persons of
family and distinction were still attached to the Catholic superstition,
it is certain that the numbers of that sect did not amount to the
fortieth part of the nation: and the frequent panics to which men,
during this period, were so subject on account of the Catholics, were
less the effects of fear, than of extreme rage and aversion entertained
against them.

     * It is now known from the Clarendon papers, that the king
     had also an authorized agent who resided at Rome. His name
     was Bret, and his chief business was to negotiate with the
     pope concerning indulgences to the Catholics, and to engage
     the Catholics, in return, to be good and loyal subjects. But
     this whole matter, though very innocent, was most carefully
     kept secret. The king says, that he believed Bret to be as
     much his as any Papist could be. See p. 348, 354.

     ** Bush. vol. v. p. 301.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 249 Rush. vol. v. p. 57.

The queen mother of France, having been forced into banishment by some
court intrigues, had retired into England; and expected shelter, amidst
her present distresses, in the dominions of her daughter and son-in-law,
But though she behaved in the most inoffensive manner, she was insulted
by the populace on account of her religion, and was even threatened
with worse treatment. The earl of Holland, lieutenant of Middlesex, had
ordered a hundred musketeers to guard her; but finding that they had
imbibed the same prejudices with the rest of their countrymen, and were
unwillingly employed in such a service, he laid the case before the
house of peers, for the king’s authority was now entirely annihilated.
He represented the indignity of the action, that so great a princess,
mother to the king of France and to the queens of Spain and England,
should be affronted by the multitude. He observed the indelible reproach
which would fall upon the nation, if that unfortunate queen should
suffer any violence from the misguided zeal of the people. He urged the
sacred rights of hospitality, due to every one, much more to a person
in distress, of so high a rank, with whom the nation was so nearly
connected. The peers thought proper to communicate the matter to the
commons, whose authority over the people was absolute. The commons
agreed to the necessity of protecting the queen mother; but at the same
time prayed that she might be desired to depart the kingdom, “for the
quieting those jealousies in the hearts of his majesty’s well-affected
subjects, occasioned by some ill instruments about that queen’s person,
by the flowing of priests and Papists to her house, and by the use
and practice of the idolatry of the mass, and exercise of other
superstitious services of the Romish church, to the great scandal of
true religion.”[*]

Charles, in the former part of his reign, had endeavored to overcome the
intractable and encroaching spirit of the commons, by a perseverance in
his own measures, by a stately dignity of behavior, and by maintaining
at their utmost height, and even perhaps stretching beyond former
precedent, the rights of his prerogative. Finding, by experience, how
unsuccessful those measures had proved, and observing the low condition
to which he was now reduced, he resolved to alter his whole conduct, and
to regain the confidence of his people by pliableness, by concessions,
and by a total conformity to their inclinations and prejudices. It may
safely be averred, that this new extreme into which the king, for want
of proper counsel or support, was fallen, became no less dangerous to
the constitution, and pernicious to public peace, than the other, in
which he had so long and so unfortunately persevered.

The pretensions with regard to tonnage and poundage were revived, and
with certain assurance of success, by the commons.[**]

     * Rush, vol. v. p. 267.

     * It appears not that the commons, though now entirely
     masters, abolished the new impositions of James, against
     which they had formerly so loudly complained; a certain
     proof that the rates of customs settled by that prince, were
     in most instances just, and proportioned to the new price of
     commodities. They seem rather to have been low. See Journ.
     10th Aug. 1625.

The levying of these duties as formerly, without consent of parliament,
and even increasing them at pleasure, was such an incongruity in a free
constitution, where the people by their fundamental privileges cannot be
taxed but by their own consent, as could no longer be endured by these
jealous patrons of liberty. In the preamble, therefore, to the bill by
which the commons granted these duties to the king, they took care,
in the strongest and most positive terms, to assert their own right of
bestowing this gift, and to divest the crown of all independent title
of assuming it. And that they might increase, or rather finally fix, the
entire dependence and subjection of the king, they voted these duties
only for two months; and afterwards, from time to time, renewed their
grant for very short periods.[*] Charles, in order to show that he
entertained no intention ever again to separate himself from his
parliament, passed this important bill without any scruple or
hesitation.[**]

     * It was an instruction given by the house to the committee
     which framed one of these bills, to take care that the rates
     upon exportation may be as light as possible, and upon
     importation as heavy as trade will bear; a proof that the
     nature of commerce began now to be understood. Journ. 1st
     June, 1641

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 208.

With regard to the bill for triennial parliaments, he made a little
difficulty. By an old statute, passed during the reign of Edward III.,
it had been enacted, that parliaments should be held once every year, or
more frequently if necessary: but as no provision had been made in
case of failure, and no precise method pointed out for execution, this
statute had been considered merely as a general declaration, and was
dispensed with at pleasure. The defect was supplied by those vigilant
patriots who now assumed the reins of government. It was enacted, that
if the chancellor, who was first bound under severe penalties, failed to
issue writs by the third of September in every third year, any twelve
or more of the peers should be empowered to exert this authority; in
default of the peers, that the sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, etc., should
summon the voters; and in their default, that the voters themselves
should meet and proceed to the election of members, in the same manner
as if writs had been regularly issued from the crown. Nor could
the parliament, after it was assembled, be adjourned, prorogued, or
dissolved, without their own consent, during the space of fifty days.
By this bill, some of the noblest and most valuable prerogatives of
the crown were retrenched; but at the same time nothing could be more
necessary than such a statute, for completing a regular plan of law and
liberty. A great reluctance to assemble parliaments must be expected in
the king, where these assemblies, as of late, establish it as a maxim
to carry their scrutiny into every part of government. During long
intermissions of parliament, grievances and abuses, as was found by
recent experience, would naturally creep in; and it would even become
necessary for the king and council to exert a great discretionary
authority, and by acts of state to supply, in every emergence, the
legislative power, whose meeting was so uncertain and precarious.
Charles, finding that nothing less would satisfy his parliament and
people, at last gave his assent to this bill which produced so great an
innovation in the constitution.[*] Solemn thanks were presented him
by both houses. Great rejoicings were expressed both in the city and
throughout the nation. And mighty professions were every where made of
gratitude and mutual returns of supply and confidence. This concession
of the king, it must be owned, was not entirely voluntary: it was of
a nature too important to be voluntary. The sole inference which his
partisans were entitled to draw from the submissions so frankly made
to present necessity was, that he had certainly adopted a new plan of
government, and for the future was resolved, by every indulgence, to
acquire the confidence and affections of his people.

Charles thought, that what concessions were made to the public were of
little consequence, if no gratifications were bestowed on individuals
who had acquired the direction of public counsels and determinations. A
change of ministers, as well as of measures, was therefore resolved
on. In one day, several new privy counsellors were sworn; the earls of
Hertford Bedford, Essex, Bristol; the lords Say, Saville, Kimbolton.
within a few days after was admitted the earl of Warwick.[**] All these
noblemen were of the popular party; and some of them afterwards, when
matters were pushed to extremities by the commons, proved the greatest
support of monarchy.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 209. Whitlocke, p. 39. Rush. vol. v.
     p, 189.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 195.

Juxon, bishop of London, who had never desired the treasurer’s staff,
now earnestly solicited for leave to resign it, and retire to the care
of that turbulent diocese committed to him. The king gave his consent;
and it is remarkable that, during all the severe inquiries carried on
against the conduct of ministers and prelates, the mild and prudent
virtues of this man who bore both these invidious characters, remained
unmolested.[*] It was intended that Bedford, a popular man, of great
authority, as well as wisdom and moderation, should succeed Juxon; but
that nobleman, unfortunately both for king and people, died about this
very time. By some promotions, place was made for St. John, who was
created solicitor-general. Hollis was to be made secretary of state, in
the room of Windebank, who had fled: Pym, chancellor of the exchequer,
in the room of Lord Cottington, who had resigned: Lord Say, master
of the wards, in the room of the same nobleman: the earl of Essex,
governor, and Hambden, tutor to the prince.[**]

     * Warwick, p, 95.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 210, 211.

What retarded the execution of these projected changes, was the
difficulty of satisfying all those who, from their activity and
authority in parliament, had pretensions for offices, and who still had
it in their power to embarrass and distress the public measures. Their
associates too in popularity, whom the king intended to distinguish by
his favor, were unwilling to undergo the reproach of having driven a
separate bargain, and of sacrificing to their own ambitious views the
cause of the nation. And as they were sensible that they must owe their
preferment entirely to their weight and consideration in parliament,
they were most of them resolved still to adhere to that assembly, and
both to promote its authority, and to preserve their own credit in it.
On all occasions, they had no other advice to give the king, than to
allow himself to be directed by his great council; or, in other words,
to resign himself passively to their guidance and government. And
Charles found, that instead of acquiring friends by the honors and
offices which he should bestow, he should only arm his enemies with more
power to hurt him.

The end on which the king was most intent in changing ministers was,
to save the life of the earl of Strafford, and to mollify, by these
indulgences, the rage of his most furious prosecutors. But so high was
that nobleman’s reputation for experience and capacity, that all the new
counsellors and intended ministers plainly saw, that if he escaped their
vengeance, he must return into favor and authority; and they regarded
his death as the only security which they could have, both for the
establishment of their present power, and for success in their future
enterprises. His impeachment, therefore, was pushed on with the utmost
vigor; and, after long and solemn preparations, was brought to a final
issue.

Immediately after Strafford was sequestered from parliament, and
confined in the Tower, a committee of thirteen was chosen by the lower
house, and intrusted with the office of preparing a charge against him.
These, joined to a small committee of lords, were vested with authority
to examine all witnesses, to call for every paper, and to use any
means of scrutiny, with regard to any part of the earl’s behavior and
conduct.[*] After so general and unbounded an inquisition, exercised by
such powerful and implacable enemies, a man must have been very cautious
or very innocent, not to afford, during the whole course of his life,
some matter of accusation against him.

This committee, by direction from both houses, took an oath of
secrecy; a practice very unusual, and which gave them the appearance of
conspirators, more than ministers of justice.[**] But the intention of
this strictness was, to render it more difficult for the earl to elude
their search, or prepare for his justification.

Application was made to the king, that he would allow this committee
to examine privy counsellors with regard to opinions delivered at the
board: a concession which Charles unwarily made, and which thenceforth
banished all mutual confidence from the deliberations of council; where
every man is supposed to have entire freedom, without fear of future
punishment or inquiry, of proposing any expedient, questioning any
opinion, or supporting any argument.[***]

Sir George Ratcliffe, the earl’s intimate friend and confidant, was
accused of high treason, sent for from Ireland, and committed to close
custody. As no charge ever appeared or was prosecuted against him, it
is impossible to give a more charitable interpretation to this measure,
than that the commons thereby intended to deprive Strafford, in his
present distress, of the assistance of his best friend, who was most
enabled, by his testimony, to justify the innocence of his patron’s
conduct and behavior.[****]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 192.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 37.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 193.

     **** Clarendon, vol. i. p 214.

When intelligence arrived in Ireland of the plans laid for Stafford’s
ruin, the Irish house of commons, though they had very lately bestowed
ample praises on his administration, entered into all the violent
counsels against him, and prepared a representation of the miserable
state into which, by his misconduct, they supposed the kingdom to
be fallen. They sent over a committee to London, to assist in the
prosecution of their unfortunate governor; and by intimations from this
committee, who entered into close confederacy with the popular leaders
in England, was every measure of the Irish parliament governed and
directed. Impeachments, which were never prosecuted, were carried up
against Sir Richard Bolton, the chancellor, Sir Gerard Louther, chief
justice, and Bramhall, bishop of Derry.[*] This step, which was an
exact counterpart to the proceedings in England, served also the same
purposes: it deprived the king of the ministers whom he most trusted; it
discouraged and terrified all the other ministers and it prevented those
persons who were best acquainted with Strafford’s counsels from giving
evidence in his favor before the English parliament.

{1641.} The bishops, being forbidden by the ancient canons to assist in
trials for life, and being unwilling by any opposition to irritate the
commons, who were already much prejudiced against them, thought
proper of themselves to withdraw.[**] The commons also voted, that the
new-created peers ought to have no voice in this trial; because the
accusation being agreed to while they were commoners, their consent to
it was implied with that of all the commons of England. Notwithstanding
this decision, which was meant only to deprive Strafford of so many
friends, Lord Seymour and some others still continued to keep their
seat; nor was their right to it any further questioned.[***]

To bestow the greater solemnity on this important trial scaffolds were
erected in Westminster Hall; where both houses sat, the one as accusers,
the other as judges. Besides the chair of state, a close gallery
was prepared for the king and queen, who attended during the whole
trial.[****]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 214.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p 216.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 216.

     ****Whitlocke, p. 40. Rush. vol. iv. p. 11., May. p. 90.

An accusation carried on by the united effort of three kingdoms against
one man, unprotected by power, unassisted by counsel, discountenanced by
authority, was likely to prove a very unequal contest; yet such were
the capacity, genius presence of mind, displayed by this magnanimous
statesman, that, while argument, and reason, and law had any place, he
obtained an undisputed victory. And *he perished at last, overwhelmed,
and still unsubdued, by the open violence of his fierce and unrelenting
antagonists.

The articles of impeachment against Strafford are twenty-eight in
number; and regard his conduct, as president of the council of York,
as deputy or lieutenant of Ireland, and as counsellor or commander in
England. But though four months were employed by the managers in framing
the accusation, and all Strafford’s answers were extemporary, it appears
from comparison, not only that he was free from the crime of treason,
of which there is not the least appearance, but that his conduct, making
allowance for human infirmities, exposed to such severe scrutiny, was
innocent, and even laudable.

The powers of the northern council, while he was president, had been
extended by the king’s instructions beyond what formerly had been
practised: but that court being at first instituted by a stretch
of royal prerogative, it had been usual for the prince to vary his
instructions; and the largest authority committed to it was altogether
as legal as the most moderate and most limited. Nor was it reasonable
to conclude, that Strafford had used any art to procure those extensive
powers; since he never once sat as president, or exercised one act
of jurisdiction, after he was invested with the authority so much
complained of.[*]

In the government of Ireland, his administration had been equally
promotive of his master’s interest, and that of the subjects committed
to his care. A large debt he had paid off: he had left a considerable
sum in the exchequer: the revenue, which never before answered the
charges of government, was now raised to be equal to them.[**] A
small standing army, formerly kept in no order, was augmented, and was
governed by exact discipline; and a great force was there raised and
paid for the support of the king’s authority against the Scottish
covenanters.

     * Bush. vol. iv, p. 145.

     ** Bush. vol. v. p. 120, 247. Warwick, p. 115.

Industry and all the arts of peace were introduced among that rude
people; the shipping of the kingdom augmented a hundred fold;[*] the
customs tripled upon the same rates: the exports double in value to
the imports; manufactures, particularly that of linen, introduced
and promoted;[**] agriculture, by means of the English and Scottish
plantations, gradually advancing; the Protestant religion encouraged,
without the persecution or discontent of the Catholics.

     * Nelson, vol. ii. p. 45.

     ** Rush. vol. iv. p. 124., Warwick, p. 115.

The springs of authority he had enforced without overstraining them.
Discretionary acts of jurisdiction, indeed, he had often exerted, by
holding courts martial, billetting soldiers, deciding causes upon paper
petitions before the council, issuing proclamations, and punishing their
infraction. But discretionary authority during that age was usually
exercised even in England. In Ireland, it was still more requisite,
among a rude people, not yet thoroughly subdued, averse to the religion
and manners of their conquerors, ready on all occasions to relapse into
rebellion and disorder. While the managers of the commons demanded every
moment, that the deputy’s conduct should be examined by the line of
rigid law and severe principles, he appealed still to the practice
of all former deputies, and to the uncontrollable necessity of his
situation.

So great was his art of managing elections and balancing parties, that
he had engaged the Irish parliament to vote whatever was necessary, both
for the payment of former debts, and for support of the new-levied army;
nor had he ever been reduced to the illegal expedients practised in
England for the supply of public necessities. No imputation of rapacity
could justly lie against his administration. Some instances of imperious
expressions, and even actions, may be met with. The case of Lord
Mountnorris, of all those which were collected with so much industry, is
the most flagrant and the least excusable.

It had been reported at the table of Lord Chancellor Loftus, that
Annesley, one of the deputy’s attendants, in moving a stool, had sorely
hurt his master’s foot, who was at that time afflicted with the gout.
“Perhaps,” said Mountnorris, who was present at table, “it was done in
revenge of that public affront which my lord deputy formerly put upon
him: but he has a brother who would not have taken such a revenge.”
 This casual, and seemingly innocent, at least ambiguous expression,
was reported to Stafford; who, on pretence that such a suggestion
might prompt Annesley to avenge himself in another manner, ordered
Mountnorris, who was an officer to be tried by a court martial for
mutiny and sedition against his general. The court, which consisted
of the chief officers of the army, found the crime to be capital, and
condemned that nobleman to lose his head.[*]

In vain did Strafford plead in his own defence against this article of
impeachment, that the sentence of Mountnorris was the deed, and that too
unanimous, of the court, not the act of the deputy; that he spake not
to a member of the court, nor voted in the cause, but sat uncovered as
a party, and then immediately withdrew, to leave them to their freedom;
that, sensible of the iniquity of the sentence, he procured his
majesty’s free pardon to Mountnorris; and that he did not even keep that
nobleman a moment in suspense with regard to his fate, but instantly
told him, that he himself would sooner lose his right hand than execute
such a sentence, nor was his lordship’s life in any danger. In vain did
Strafford’s friends add, as a further apology, that Mountnorris was a
man of an infamous character, who paid court by the lowest adulation to
all deputies while present, and blackened their character by the vilest
calumnies when recalled; and that Strafford, expecting like treatment,
had used this expedient for no other purpose than to subdue the petulant
spirit of the man. These excuses alleviate the guilt; but there still
remains enough to prove, that the mind of the deputy, though great and
firm, had been not a little debauched by the riot of absolute power and
uncontrolled authority.

When Strafford was called over to England, he found every thing falling
into such confusion, by the open rebellion of the Scots, and the secret
discontents of the English, that, if he had counselled or executed any
violent measure, he might perhaps have been able to apologize for his
conduct from the great law of necessity, which admits not, while the
necessity is extreme, of any scruple, ceremony, or delay.[**] But, in
fact, no illegal advice or action was proved against him; and the whole
amount of his guilt, during this period, was some peevish, or at most
imperious expressions, which, amidst such desperate extremities, and
during a bad state of health, had unhappily fallen from him.

     * Rush. vol. iv. p. 187.

     ** Rush. vol. iv. p. 559.

If Strafford’s apology was in the main so satisfactory when he pleaded
to each particular article of the charge, his victory was still more
decisive when he brought the whole together, and repelled the imputation
of treason; the crime which the commons would infer from the full view
of his conduct and behavior. Of all species of guilt, the law of England
had with the most scrupulous exactness defined that of treason; because
on that side it was found most necessary to protect the subject against
the violence of the king and of his ministers. In the famous statute of
Edward III., all the kinds of treason are enumerated; and every other
crime, besides such as are there expressly mentioned, is carefully
excluded from that appellation. But with regard to this guilt, “an
endeavor to subvert the fundamental laws,” the statute of treasons
is totally silent: and arbitrarily to introduce it into the fatal
catalogue, is itself a subversion of all law; and under color of
defending liberty, reverses a statute the best calculated for the
security of liberty that had ever been enacted by an English parliament.

As this species of treason, discovered by the commons, is entirely
new and unknown to the laws, so is the species of proof by which they
pretend to fix that guilt upon the prisoner. They have invented a kind
of accumulative or constructive evidence, by which many actions either
totally innocent in themselves, or criminal in a much inferior degree,
shall, when united, amount to treason, and subject the person to the
highest penalties inflicted by the law. A hasty and unguarded word,
a rash and passionate action, assisted by the malevolent fancy of the
accuser, and tortured by doubtful constructions, is transmuted into the
deepest guilt; and the lives and fortunes of the whole nation, no longer
protected by justice, are subjected to arbitrary will and pleasure.

“Where has this species of guilt lain so long concealed?” said Strafford
in conclusion. “Where has this fire been so long buried during so many
centuries, that no smoke should appear till it burst out at once to
consume me and my children? Better it were to live under no law at all,
and by the maxims of cautious prudence to conform ourselves the best we
can to the arbitrary will of a master, than fancy we have a law on which
we can rely, and find at last, that this law shall inflict a punishment
precedent to the promulgation, and try us by maxims unheard of till the
very moment of the prosecution. If I sail on the Thames, and split my
vessel on an anchor, in case there be no buoy to give warning, the
party shall pay me damages: but if the anchor be marked out, then is the
striking on it at my own peril. Where is the mark set upon this crime?
where the token by which I should discover it? It has lain concealed
under water; and no human prudence, no human innocence, could save me
from the destruction with which I am at present threatened.

“It is now full two hundred and forty years since treasons were defined;
and so long has it been since any man was touched to this extent upon
this crime before myself. We have lived, my lords, happily to ourselves
at home: we have lived gloriously abroad to the world: let us be content
with what our fathers have left us.*let not our ambition carry us to be
more learned than they were in these killing and destructive arts. Great
wisdom it will be in your lordships, and just providence for yourselves,
for your posterities, for the whole kingdom, to cast from you into the
fire these bloody and mysterious volumes of arbitrary and constructive
treasons, as the primitive Christians did their books of curious arts,
and betake yourselves to the plain letter of the statute, which tells
you where the crime is, and points out to you the path by which you may
avoid it.

“Let us not, to our own destruction, awake those sleeping lions, by
rattling up a company of old records which have lain for so many ages by
the wall, forgotten and neglected. To all my afflictions, add not this,
my lords, the most severe of any; that I, for my other sins, not for my
treasons, be the means of introducing a precedent so pernicious to the
laws and liberties of my native country.

“However, these gentlemen at the bar say they speak for the
commonwealth, and they believe so; yet, under favor, it is I who, in
this particular, speak for the commonwealth. Precedents like those
which are endeavored to be established against me, must draw along such
inconveniencies and miseries, that in a few years the kingdom will be in
the condition expressed in a statute of Henry IV.; and no man shall know
by what rule to govern his words and actions.

“Impose not, my lords, difficulties insurmountable upon ministers of
state, nor disable them from serving with cheerfulness their king and
country. If you examine them, and under such severe penalties, by every
grain, by every little weight, the scrutiny will be intolerable. The
public affairs of the kingdom must be left waste; and no wise man,
who has any honor or fortune to lose, will ever engage himself in such
dreadful, such unknown perils.

“My lords, I have now troubled your lordships a great deal longer than I
should have done. Were it not for the interest of these pledges, which
a saint in heaven left me, I should be loath--” (Here he pointed to his
children, and his weeping stopped him.) “What I forfeit for myself,
it is nothing: but, I confess, that my indiscretion should forfeit
for them, it wounds me very deeply. You will be pleased to pardon my
infirmity: something I should have said; but I see I shall not be able,
and therefore I shall leave it.

“And now, my lords, I thank God, I have been by his blessing
sufficiently instructed in the extreme vanity of all temporary
enjoyments, compared to the importance of our eternal duration. And so,
my lords, even so, with all humility, and with all tranquillity of
mind, I submit, clearly and freely, to your judgments: and whether that
righteous doom shall be to life or death, I shall repose myself, full
of gratitude and confidence, in the arms of the great Author of my
existence.”[*]

“Certainly,” says Whitlocke,[**] with his usual candor, “never any man
acted such a part, on such a theatre, with more wisdom, constancy, and
eloquence, with greater reason, judgment, and temper, and with a better
grace in all his words and actions, than did this great and excellent
person; and he moved the hearts of all his auditors, some few excepted,
to remorse and pity.” It is remarkable, that the historian who expresses
himself in these terms, was himself chairman of that committee which
conducted the impeachment against this unfortunate statesman. The
accusation and defence lasted eighteen days. The managers divided the
several articles among them, and attacked the prisoner with all the
weight of authority, with all the vehemence of rhetoric, with all
the accuracy of long preparation. Strafford was obliged to speak with
deference and reserve towards his most inveterate enemies, the commons,
the Scottish nation, and the Irish parliament. He took only a very
short time on each article to recollect himself: yet he alone, without
assistance, mixing modesty and humility with firmness and vigor,
made such a defence that the commons saw it impossible, by a legal
prosecution, ever to obtain a sentence against him.

     * Rush. vol. iv. p *59, etc.

     ** Page 41.

But the death of Stafford was too important a stroke of party to be left
unattempted by any expedient, however extraordinary. Besides the great
genius and authority of that minister, he had threatened some of the
popular leaders with an impeachment; and, had he not himself been
suddenly prevented by the impeachment of the commons, he had that very
day, it was thought, charged Pym, Hambden, and others with treason,
for having invited the Scots to invade England. A bill of attainder was
therefore brought into the lower house immediately after finishing these
pleadings; and, preparatory to it, a new proof of the earl’s guilt was
produced, in order to remove such scruples as might be entertained with
regard to a method of proceeding so unusual and irregular.

Sir Henry Vane, secretary, had taken some notes of a debate in council,
after the dissolution of the last parliament; and being at a distance,
he had sent the keys of his cabinet, as was pretended, to his son Sir
Henry, in order to search for some papers which were necessary for
completing a marriage settlement. Young Vane, falling upon this paper
of notes, deemed the matter of the utmost importance; and immediately
communicated it to Pym, who now produced the paper before the house of
commons. The question before the council was, “Offensive or defensive
war with the Scots.” The king proposes this difficulty, “But how can I
undertake offensive war, if I have no more money?” The answer ascribed
to Strafford was in these words: “Borrow of the city a hundred thousand
pounds: go on vigorously to levy ship money. Your majesty having tried
the affections of your people, you are absolved and loose from all rules
of government, and may do what power will admit. Your majesty, having
tried all ways, shall be acquitted before God and man. And you have
an army in Ireland, which you may employ to reduce this kingdom to
obedience: for I am confident the Scots cannot hold out five months.”
 There followed some counsels of Laud and Cottington, equally
violent with regard to the king’s being absolved from all rules of
government.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 223, 229, 230, etc. Whitlocke, p.
     41. May p. 93.


This paper, with all the circumstances of its discovery and
communication, was pretended to be equivalent to two witnesses, and to
be an unanswerable proof of those pernicious counsels of Strafford which
tended to the subversion of the laws and constitution. It was replied
by Strafford and his friends, that old Vane was his most inveterate
and declared enemy; and if the secretary himself, as was by far most
probable, had willingly delivered to his son this paper of notes, to be
communicated to Pym, this implied such a breach of oaths and of trust
as rendered him totally unworthy of all credit: that the secretary’s
deposition was at first exceedingly dubious: upon two examinations, he
could not remember any such words: even the third time, his testimony
was not positive, but imported only, that Strafford had spoken such or
suchlike words; and words may be very like in sound, and differ much in
sense; nor ought the lives of men to depend upon grammatical criticisms
of any expressions, much less of those which had been delivered by the
speaker without premeditation, and committed by the hearer for any time
however short, to the uncertain record of memory: that, in the present
case, changing this kingdom into that kingdom a very slight alteration,
the earl’s discourse could regard nothing but Scotland, and implies
no advice unworthy of an English counsellor: that even retaining
the expression, this kingdom, the words may fairly be understood of
Scotland, which alone was the kingdom that the debate regarded,
and which alone had thrown off allegiance, and could be reduced to
obedience: that it could be proved, as well by the evidence of all the
king’s ministers, as by the known disposition of the forces, that the
intention never was to land the Irish army in England, but in Scotland:
that of six other counsellors present, Laud and Windebank could give
no evidence; Northumberland, Hamilton, Cottington, and Juxon, could
recollect no such expression; and the advice was too remarkable to be
easily forgotten: that it was nowise probable such a desperate counsel
would be openly delivered at the board, and before Northumberland, a
person of that high rank, and whose attachments to the court were
so much weaker than his connections with the country. That though
Northumberland, and he alone, had recollected some such expression
as that of “being absolved from rules of government,” yet, in such
desperate extremities as those into which the king and kingdom were
then fallen, a maxim of that nature, allowing it to be delivered by
Strafford, may be defended upon principles the most favorable to law
and liberty and that nothing could be more iniquitous than to extract
an accusation of treason from an opinion simply proposed at the council
table; where all freedom of debate ought to be permitted, and where it
was not unusual for the members, in order to draw forth the sentiments
of others, to propose counsels very remote from their own secret advice
and judgment.[*]

The evidence of Secretary Vane, though exposed to such unsurmountable
objections, was the real cause of Strafford’ unhappy fate; and made the
bill of attainder pass the commons with no greater opposition than that
of fifty-nine dissenting votes. But there remained two other branches of
the legislature, the king and the lords, whose assent was requisite;
and these, if left to their free judgment, it was easily foreseen,
would reject the bill without scruple or deliberation. To overcome this
difficulty, the popular leaders employed expedients for which they were
beholden partly to their own industry, partly to the indiscretion of
their adversaries.

Next Sunday, after the bill passed the commons, the Puritanical pulpits
resounded with declamations concerning the necessity of executing
justice upon great delinquents.[**] The populace took the alarm. About
six thousand men, armed with swords and cudgels, flocked from the
city, and surrounded the houses of parliament.[***] The names of the
fifty-nine commoners who had voted against the bill of attainder, were
posted up under the title of “Straffordians, and betrayers of their
country.” These were exposed to all the insults of the ungovernable
multitude. When any of the lords passed, the cry for justice against
Strafford resounded in their ears; and such as were suspected of
friendship to that obnoxious minister, were sure to meet with menaces,
not unaccompanied with symptoms of the most desperate resolutions in the
furious populace.[****]

Complaints in the house of commons being made against these violences,
as the most flagrant breach of privilege, the ruling members, by their
affected coolness and indifference, showed plainly, that the popular
tumults were not disagreeable to them.[v] But a new discovery, made
about this time, served to throw every thing into still greater flame
and combustion.

     * Rush. vol. iv. p. 560.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 43.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 43.

     **** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 232, 256. Rush. vol. v. p. 248,
     1279.

     v    Whitlocke, ut supra.

Some principal officers, Piercy, Jermyn, O’Neale, Goring, Wilmot,
Pollard, Ashburnham, partly attached to the court, partly disgusted with
the parliament, had formed a plan of engaging into the king’s service
the English army, whom they observed to be displeased at some marks of
preference given by the commons to the Scots. For this purpose, they
entered into an association, took an oath of secrecy, and kept a close
correspondence with some of the king’s servants. The form of a petition
to the king and parliament was concerted; and it was intended to get
this petition subscribed by the army. The petitioners there represent
the great and unexampled concessions made by the king for the security
of public peace and liberty; the endless demands of certain insatiable
and turbulent spirits, whom nothing less will content than a total
subversion of the ancient constitution; the frequent tumults which these
factious malecontents had excited, and which endangered the liberty of
parliament. To prevent these mischiefs, the army offered to come up and
guard that assembly, “So shall the nation,” as they express themselves
in the conclusion, “not only be vindicated from preceding innovations,
but be secured from the future, which are threatened, and which are
likely to produce more dangerous effects than the former.”[*] The
draught of this petition being conveyed to the king, he was prevailed
on, somewhat imprudently, to countersign it himself, as a mark of his
approbation. But as several difficulties occurred, the project was laid
aside two months before any public discovery was made of it.

It was Goring who betrayed the secret to the popular leaders. The alarm
may easily be imagined which this intelligence conveyed. Petitions from
the military to the civil power are always looked on as disguised or
rather undisguised commands, and are of a nature widely different from
petitions presented by any other rank of men. Pym opened the matter in
the house.[**] On the first intimation of a discovery, Piercy concealed
himself, and Jermyn withdrew beyond sea. This further confirmed the
suspicion of a dangerous conspiracy. Goring delivered his evidence
before the house: Piercy wrote a letter to his brother, Northumberland,
confessing most of the particulars.[***] Both their testimonies agree
with regard to the oath of secrecy; and as this circumstance had been
denied by Pollard, Ashburnham, and Wilmot, in all their examinations, it
was regarded as a new proof of some desperate resolutions which had been
taken.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 247. Whitlocke, p. 43.

     ** Rush, vol v. p. 240.

     *** Rush. vol. v. p. 255.

To convey more quickly the terror and indignation at this plot, the
commons voted that a protestation should be signed by all the members.
It was sent up to the lords, and signed by all of them, except
Southampton and Robarts. Orders were given by the commons alone, without
other authority that it should be subscribed by the whole nation. The
protestation was in itself very inoffensive, even insignificant; and
contained nothing but general declarations, that the subscribers would
defend their religion and liberties.[*] But it tended to increase the
popular panic, and intimated, what was more expressly declared in the
preamble, that these blessings were now exposed to the utmost peril.

Alarms were every day given of new conspiracies.[**] In Lancashire,
great multitudes of Papists were assembling: secret meetings were held
by them in caves and under ground in Surrey: they had entered into
a plot to blow up the river with gunpowder, in order to drown the
city:[***] provisions of arms were making beyond sea: sometimes France,
sometimes Denmark, was forming designs against the kingdom; and the
populace, who are always terrified with present, and enraged with
distant dangers, were still further animated in their demands of justice
against the unfortunate Strafford.

The king came to the house of lords: and though he expressed his
resolution, for which he offered them any security, never again to
employ Strafford in any branch of public business, he professed himself
totally dissatisfied with regard to the circumstance of treason, and on
that account declared his difficulty in giving his assent to the bill
of attainder.[****] The commons took fire, and voted it a breach of
privilege for the king to take notice of any bill depending before the
houses, Charles did not perceive that his attachment to Strafford was
the chief motive for the bill; and that the greater proofs he gave of
anxious concern for this minister, the more inevitable did he render his
destruction.

About eighty peers had constantly attended Strafford’s trial; but such
apprehensions were entertained on account of the popular tumults, that
only forty-five were present when the bill of attainder was brought into
the house. Yet of these nineteen had the courage to vote against it;[v]
a certain proof that if entire freedom had been allowed, the bill had
been rejected by a great majority.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 252. Rush. vol. v. p. 241. Warwick,
     p. 180.

     ** Dugdale, p. 69. Franklyn, p. 901.

     *** Sir Edward Walker p. 349.

     **** Rush. vol. v. p. 239.

     v Whitlocke, p. 43.

In carrying up the bill to the lords, St. John, the solicitor-general,
advanced two topics well suited to the fury of the times; that though
the testimony against Strafford were not clear, yet, in this way of
bill, private satisfaction to each man’s conscience was sufficient, even
should no evidence at all be produced; and that the earl had no title to
plead law, because he had broken the law. It is true, added he, we give
law to hares and deer, for they are beasts of chase: but it was never
accounted either cruel or unfair to destroy foxes or wolves wherever
they can be found, for they are beasts of prey.[*]

After popular violence had prevailed over the lords, the same battery
was next applied to force the king’s assent. The populace flocked about
Whitehall, and accompanied their demand of justice with the loudest
clamors and most open menaces. Rumors of conspiracies against the
parliament were anew spread abroad; invasions and insurrections talked
of; and the whole nation was raised into such a ferment, as threatened
some great and imminent convulsion. On whichever side the king cast his
eyes, he saw no resource or security. All his servants, consulting their
own safety, rather than their master’s honor, declined interposing with
their advice between him and his parliament. The queen, terrified with
the appearance of so mighty a danger, and bearing formerly no good will
to Strafford, was in tears, and pressed him to satisfy his people in
this demand, which, it was hoped, would finally content them. Juxon,
alone, whose courage was not inferior to his other virtues, ventured to
advise him, if in his conscience he did not approve of the bill, by no
means to assent to it.[**]

Strafford, hearing of Charles’s irresolution and anxiety, took a very
extraordinary step: he wrote a letter, in which he entreated the king,
for the sake of public peace, to put an end to his unfortunate, however
innocent life, and to quiet the tumultuous people by granting them the
request for which they were so importunate.[***]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 232.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 257. Warwick, p. 160.

     *** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 258. Rush. vol. v. p. 251.

“In this,” added he, “my consent will more acquit you to God than all
the world can do besides. To a willing man there is no injury. And as,
by God’s grace, I forgive all the world, with a calmness and meekness of
infinite contentment to my dislodging soul, so, sir, to you I can resign
the life of this world with all imaginable cheerfulness, in the just
acknowledgment of your exceeding favors.” Perhaps Strafford hoped, that
this unusual instance of generosity would engage the king still more
strenuously to protect him: perhaps he gave his life for lost; and
finding himself in the hands of his enemies, and observing that Balfour,
the lieutenant of the Tower, was devoted to the popular party,[*] he
absolutely despaired of ever escaping the multiplied dangers with which
he was every way environed. We might ascribe this step to a noble effort
of disinterestedness, not unworthy the great mind of Strafford, if the
measure which he advised had not been, in the event, as pernicious to
his master, as it was immediately fatal to himself.[**] [6]

     * Whitlocke, p. 44. Franklyn, p. 896.

     ** See note F, at the end of the volume.

After the most violent anxiety and doubt, Charles at last granted a
commission to four noblemen to give the royal assent in his name to the
bill; flattering himself probably, in this extremity of distress, that
as neither his will consented to the deed, nor was his hand immediately
engaged in it, he was the more free from all the guilt which attended
it. These commissioners he empowered, at the same time, to give his
assent to the bill which rendered the parliament perpetual.

The commons, from policy rather than necessity, had embraced the
expedient of paying the two armies by borrowing money from the city; and
these loans they had repaid afterwards by taxes levied upon the people.
The citizens, either of themselves or by suggestion, began to start
difficulties with regard to a further loan, which was demanded. We make
no scruple of trusting the parliament, said they, were we certain that
the parliament were to continue till our repayment. But in the present
precarious situation of affairs, what security can be given us for our
money? In pretence of obviating this objection, a bill was suddenly
brought into the house, and passed with great unanimity and rapidity,
that the parliament should not be dissolved, prorogued, or adjourned,
without their own consent. It was hurried in like manner through the
house of peers, and was instantly carried to the king for his assent.
Charles, in the agony of grief, shame, and remorse for Strafford’s doom,
perceived not that this other bill was of still more fatal consequence
to his authority, and rendered the power of his enemies perpetual, as it
was already uncontrollable.[*] In comparison of the bill of attainder,
by which he deemed himself an accomplice in his friend’s murder, this
concession made no figure in his eyes;[**] [7] a circumstance which, if
it lessen our idea of his resolution or penetration serves to prove the
integrity of his heart, and the goodness of his disposition. It is
indeed certain, that strong compunction for his consent to Strafford’s
execution attended this unfortunate prince during the remainder of his
life; and even at his own fatal end, the memory of this guilt, with
great sorrow and remorse, recurred upon him. All men were so sensible of
the extreme violence which was done him, that he suffered the less, both
in character and interest, from this unhappy measure; and though he
abandoned his best friend, yet was he still able to preserve, in some
degree, the attachment of all his adherents.

Secretary Carleton was sent by the king to inform Strafford of the
final resolution which necessity had extorted from him. The earl seemed
surprised, and starting up, exclaimed, in the words of Scripture, “Put
not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, for in them there is
no salvation.”[***] He was soon able, however, to collect his courage;
and he prepared himself to suffer the fatal sentence. Only three days’
interval was allowed him. The king, who made a new effort in his behalf,
and sent by the hands of the young prince a letter addressed to the
peers, in which he entreated them to confer with the commons about a
mitigation of Strafford’s sentence, and begged at least for some delay,
was refused in both requests.[****]

Strafford, in passing from his apartment to Tower Hill, where the
scaffold was erected, stopped under Laud’s windows, with whom he had
long lived in intimate friendship, and entreated the assistance of his
prayers in those awful moments which were approaching. The aged primate
dissolved in tears; and having pronounced, with a broken voice, a
tender blessing on his departing friend, sunk into the arms of his
attendants.[v] Stafford, still superior to his fate, moved on with an
elated countenance, and with an air even of greater dignity than what
usually attended him.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 261, 262. Rush. vol. v. p. 264.

     ** See note G, at the end of the volume

     *** Whitlocke, p. 44.

     **** Rush. vol. v. p. 265.

     v Nalson, vol. ii. p. 198.

He wanted that consolation which commonly supports those who perish by
the stroke of injustice and oppression: he was not buoyed up by glory,
nor by the affectionate compassion of the spectators; yet his mind,
erect and undaunted, found resources within itself, and maintained its
unbroken resolution amidst the terrors of death, and the triumphant
exultations of his misguided enemies. His discourse on the scaffold was
full of decency and courage. “He feared,” he said, “that the omen was
bad for the intended reformation of the state, that it commenced with
the shedding of innocent blood.” Having bid a last adieu to his brother
and friends who attended him, and having sent a blessing to his nearer
relations who were absent, “And now,” said he, “I have nigh done! One
stroke will make my wife a widow, my dear children fatherless, deprive
my poor servants of their indulgent master, and separate me from my
affectionate brother and all my friends! But let God be to you and them
all in all!” Going to disrobe and prepare himself for the block, “I
thank God,” said he, “that I am nowise afraid of death, nor am daunted
with any terrors; but do as cheerfully lay down my head at this time as
ever I did when going to repose!” With one blow was a period put to his
life by the executioner.[*]

Thus perished, in the forty-ninth year of his age, the earl of
Strafford, one of the most eminent personages that has appeared in
England. Though his death was loudly demanded as a satisfaction to
justice, and an atonement for the many violations of the constitution,
it may safely be affirmed, that the sentence by which he fell was an
enormity greater than the worst of those which his implacable enemies
prosecuted with so much cruel industry. The people, in their rage,
had totally mistaken the proper object of their resentment. All the
necessities, or, more properly speaking, the difficulties by which the
king had been induced to use violent expedients for raising supply, were
the result of measures previous to Strafford’s favor; and if they arose
from ill conduct, he at least was entirely innocent. Even those
violent expedients themselves, which occasioned the complaint that the
constitution was subverted, had been, all of them, conducted, so far as
appeared, without his counsel or assistance. And whatever his private
advice might be,[**] this salutary maxim he failed not often and
publicly to inculcate in the king’s presence, that, if any inevitable
necessity ever obliged the sovereign to violate the laws, this license
ought to be practised with extreme reserve, and, as soon as possible, a
just atonement be made to the constitution for any injury which it might
sustain from such dangerous precedents.[***] The first parliament after
the restoration reversed the bill of attainder; and even a few weeks
after Strafford’s execution, this very parliament remitted to his
children the more severe consequences of his sentence; as if conscious
of the violence with which the prosecution had been conducted.

     * Rush, vol, v. p. 267.

     ** That Strafford was secretly no enemy to arbitrary
     counsels, appears from some of his letters and despatches,
     particularly vol. ii. p. 60, where he seems to wish that a
     standing army were established.

     *** Rush. vol. iv. p. 567, 568, 569, 570.

In vain did Charles expect, as a return for so many instances of
unbounded compliance, that the parliament would at last show him some
indulgence, and would cordially fall into that unanimity to which, at
the expense of his own power and of his friend’s life, he so earnestly
courted them. All his concessions were poisoned by their suspicion of
his want of cordiality; and the supposed attempt to engage the army
against them, served with many as a confirmation of this jealousy. It
was natural for the king to seek some resource, while all the world
seemed to desert him, or combine against him; and this probably was the
utmost of that embryo scheme which was formed with regard to the army.
But the popular leaders still insisted, that a desperate plot was
laid to bring up the forces immediately, and offer violence to the
parliament; a design of which Piercy’s evidence acquits the king,
and which the near neighborhood of the Scottish army seems to render
absolutely impracticable.[*] By means, however, of these suspicions, was
the same implacable spirit still kept alive; and the commons, without
giving the king any satisfaction in the settlement of his revenue,
proceeded to carry their inroads with great vigor into his now
defenceless prerogative.[**]

     * The project of bringing up the army to London, according
     to Piercy, was proposed to the king: but he rejected it as
     foolish; because the Scots, who were in arms, and lying in
     their neighborhood, must be at London as soon as the English
     army. This reason is so solid and convincing, that it leaves
     no room to doubt of the veracity of Piercy’s evidence; and
     consequently acquits the king of this terrible plot of
     bringing up the army, which made such a noise at the time,
     and was a pretence for so many violences.

     ** Clarendon, vol. i. p. 266.

The two ruling passions of this parliament were, zeal for liberty, and
an aversion to the church; and to both of these, nothing could appear
more exceptionable than the court of high commission, whose institution
rendered it entirely arbitrary, and assigned to it the defence of the
ecclesiastical establishment. The star chamber also was a court which
exerted high discretionary powers and had no precise rule or limit,
either with regard to the causes which came under its jurisdiction, or
the decisions which it formed. A bill unanimously passed the houses to
abolish these two courts; and in them to annihilate the principal and
most dangerous articles of the king’s prerogative. By the same bill,
the jurisdiction of the council was regulated, and its authority
abridged.[*] Charles hesitated before he gave his assent. But finding
that he had gone too far to retreat, and that he possessed no resource
in case of a rupture, he at last affixed the royal sanction to this
excellent bill. But to show the parliament that he was sufficiently
apprised of the importance of his grant, he observed to them, that this
statute altered in a great measure the fundamental laws, ecclesiastical
and civil, which many of his predecessors had established.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 283, 284. Whitlocke, p. 47. Rush.
     vol. iii. p. 1383, 1384.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 30.

By removing the star chamber, the king’s power of binding the people by
his proclamations was indirectly abolished; and that important branch of
prerogative, the strong symbol of arbitrary power, and unintelligible
in a limited constitution, being at last removed, left the system of
government more consistent and uniform. The star chamber alone was
accustomed to punish infractions of the king’s edicts: but as no courts
of judicature now remained except those in Westminster Hall, which take
cognizance only of common and statute law, the king may thenceforth
issue proclamations, but no man is bound to obey them, It must, however,
be confessed, that the experiment here made by the parliament was not a
little rash and adventurous. No government at that time appeared in the
world, nor is perhaps to be found in the records of any history, which
subsisted without the mixture of some arbitrary authority committed to
some magistrate; and it might reasonably, beforehand, appear doubtful,
whether human society could ever reach that state of perfection, as to
support itself with no other control than the general and rigid maxims
of law and equity. But the parliament justly thought, that the king was
too eminent a magistrate to be trusted with discretionary power, which
he might so easily turn to the destruction of liberty. And in the event,
it has hitherto been found, that, though some sensible inconveniencies
arise from the maxim of adhering strictly to law, yet the advantages
overbalance them, and should render the English grateful to the memory
of their ancestors, who, after repeated contests, at last established
that noble, though dangerous principle.

At the request of the parliament, Charles, instead of the patents during
pleasure, gave all the judges patents during their good behavior;[*] a
circumstance of the greatest moment towards securing their independency,
and barring the entrance of arbitrary power into the ordinary courts of
judicature.

The marshal’s court, which took cognizance of offensive, words, and
was not thought sufficiently limited by law, was also for that reason
abolished.[**] The stannary courts, which exercised jurisdiction over
the miners, being liable to a like objection, underwent a like fate. The
abolition of the council of the north and the council of Wales followed
from the same principles. The authority of the clerk of the market, who
had a general inspection over the weights and measures throughout
the kingdom, was transferred to the mayors, sheriffs, and ordinary
magistrates.

     * May, p. 107.

     ** Nalson, vol. i p. 778.

In short, if we take a survey of the transactions of this memorable
parliament during the first period of its operations, we shall find
that, excepting Strafford’s attainder, which was a complication of
cruel iniquity, their merits in other respects so much outweigh their
mistakes, as to entitle them to praise, from all lovers of liberty.
Not only were former abuses remedied, and grievances redressed; great
provision for the future was made by law against the return of like
complaints. And if the means by which they obtained such advantages
savor often of artifice, sometimes of violence, it is to be considered,
that revolutions of government cannot be effected by the mere force of
argument and reasoning; and that factions being once excited, men can
neither so firmly regulate the tempers of others, nor their own, as to
insure themselves against all exorbitances.

The parliament now came to a pause. The king had promised his Scottish
subjects that he would this summer pay them a visit, in order to settle
their government; and though the English parliament was very importunate
with him, that he should lay aside that journey, they could not prevail
with him so much as to delay it. As he must necessarily, in his journey,
have passed through the troops of both nations, the commons seem to have
entertained great jealousy on that account, and to have now hurried
on, as much as they formerly delayed, the disbanding of the armies. The
arrears, therefore, of the Scots were fully paid them; and those of the
English in part. The Scots returned home, and the English were separated
into their several counties, and dismissed.

After this, the parliament adjourned to the twentieth of October; and
a committee of both houses--a thing unprecedented--was appointed to sit
during the recess, with very ample powers.[*] Pym was elected chairman
of the committee of the lower house. Further attempts were made by the
parliament while it sat, and even by the commons alone for assuming
sovereign executive powers, and publishing their ordinances, as they
called them, instead of laws. The committee too, on their part, was
ready to imitate the example.

A small committee of both houses was appointed to attend the king
into Scotland, in order, as was pretended, to see that the articles of
pacification were executed; but really to be spies upon him, and extend
still further the ideas of parliamentary authority, as well as eclipse
the majesty of the king. The earl of Bedford, Lord Howard, Sir Philip
Stapleton, Sir William Armyne, Fiennes, and Hambden, were the persons
chosen.[**]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 387.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 376

Endeavors were used, before Charles’s departure, to have a protector of
the kingdom appointed, with a power to pass laws without having recourse
to the king: so little regard was now paid to royal authority, or to the
established constitution of the kingdom.

Amidst the great variety of affairs which occurred during this busy
period, we have almost overlooked the marriage of the princess Mary with
William, prince of Orange. The king concluded not this alliance without
communicating his intentions to the parliament, who received the
proposal with satisfaction.[*] This was the commencement of the
connections with the family of Orange; connections which were afterwards
attended with the most important consequences, both to the kingdom and
to the house of Stuart.

     * Whitlocke, p. 38.



CHAPTER LV.



CHARLES I.

{1641.} THE Scots, who began these fatal commotions, thought that
they had finished a very perilous undertaking much to their profit and
reputation. Besides the large pay voted them for lying in good quarters
during a twelvemonth, the English parliament had conferred on them
a present of three hundred thousand pounds for their brotherly
assistance.[*] In the articles of pacification, they were declared
to have ever been good subjects; and their military expeditions were
approved of, as enterprises calculated and intended for his majesty’s
honor and advantage. To carry further the triumph over their sovereign,
these terms, so ignominious to him, were ordered by a vote of parliament
to be read in all churches, upon a day of thanksgiving appointed for
the national pacification;[**] all their claims for the restriction of
prerogative were agreed to be ratified; and, what they more valued
than all these advantages, they had a near prospect of spreading the
Presbyterian discipline in England and Ireland, from the seeds which
they had scattered of their religious principles. Never did refined
Athens so exult in diffusing the sciences and liberal arts over a savage
world, never did generous Rome so please herself in the view of law and
order established by her victorious arms, as the Scots now rejoiced
in communicating their barbarous zeal and theological fervor to the
neighboring nations.

     * Nalson, vol. i. p. 747. May, p. 104.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 365. Clarendon, vol. ii p. 293.

Charles, despoiled in England of a considerable part of his authority,
and dreading still further encroachments upon him, arrived in Scotland,
with an intention of abdicating almost entirely the small share of
power which there remained to him, and of giving full satisfaction, if
possible, to his restless subjects in that kingdom.

The lords of articles were an ancient institution in the Scottish
parliament. They were constituted after this manner: The temporal lords
chose eight bishops: the bishops elected eight temporal lords: these
sixteen named eight commissioners of counties, and eight burgesses, and
without the previous consent of the thirty-two, who were denominated
lords of articles, no motion could be made in parliament. As the bishops
were entirely devoted to the court, it is evident, that all the lords of
articles, by necessary consequence, depended on the king’s nomination;
and the prince, besides one negative after the bills had passed through
parliament, possessed indirectly another before their introduction; a
prerogative of much greater consequence than the former. The bench
of bishops being now abolished, the parliament laid hold of the
opportunity, and totally set aside the lords of articles: and till this
important point was obtained, the nation, properly speaking, could not
be said to enjoy any regular freedom.[*]

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding this institution, to which there
is no parallel in England, the royal authority was always deemed much
lower in Scotland than in the former kingdom. Bacon represents it as
one advantage to be expected from the union, that the too extensive
prerogative of England would be abridged by the example of Scotland, and
the too narrow prerogative of Scotland be enlarged from the imitation of
England. The English were at that time a civilized people, and obedient
to the laws; but among the Scots it was of little consequence how the
laws were framed, or by whom voted, while the exorbitant aristocracy had
it so much in their power to prevent their regular execution.

The peers and commons formed only one house in the Scottish parliament:
and as it had been the practice of James, continued by Charles, to
grace English gentlemen with Scottish titles, all the determinations of
parliament, it was to be feared, would in time depend upon the prince,
by means of these votes of foreigners, who had no interest or property
in the nation. It was therefore a law deserving approbation, that no man
should be created a Scotch peer, who possessed not ten thousand marks
(above five hundred pounds) of annual rent in the kingdom.[**]

A law for triennial parliaments was likewise passed; and it was
ordained, that the last act of every parliament should be to appoint the
time and place for holding the parliament next ensuing.[***]

     * Burnet, Mem.

     ** Burnet, Mem.

     *** Burnet, Mem.

The king was deprived of that power formerly exercised of issuing
proclamations which enjoined obedience under the penalty of treason;
a prerogative which invested him with the whole legislative authority,
even in matters of the highest importance.[*]

So far was laudable: but the most fatal blow given to royal authority,
and what in a manner dethroned the prince, was the article, that no
member of the privy council, in whose hands during the king’s absence
the whole administration lay, no officer of state, none of the judges,
should be appointed but by advice and approbation of parliament. Charles
even agreed to deprive of their seats four judges who had adhered to his
interests; and their place was supplied by others more agreeable to the
ruling party. Several of the Covenanters were also sworn of the privy
council. And all the ministers of state, counsellors, and judges, were
by law to hold their places during life or good behavior.[**]

The king while in Scotland conformed himself entirely to the established
church, and assisted with great gravity at the long prayers and longer
sermons with which the Presbyterians endeavored to regale him. He
bestowed pensions and preferments on Henderson, Gillespy, and other
popular preachers, and practised every art to soften, if not to gain,
his greatest enemies. The earl of Argyle was created a marquis,
Lord Loudon an earl, Lesley was dignified with the title of earl of
Leven.[***] His friends he was obliged for the present to neglect
and overlook: some of them were disgusted; and his enemies were not
reconciled, but ascribed all his caresses and favors to artifice and
necessity.

     * Burnet, Mem.

     ** Burnet, Mem.

     *** Clarendon, vol. ii p. 309.

Argyle and Hamilton, being seized with an apprehension, real or
pretended, that the earl of Crawfurd and others meant to assassinate
them, left the parliament suddenly, and retired into the country; but
upon invitation and assurances, returned in a few days. This event,
which had neither cause nor effect that was visible, nor purpose, nor
consequence, was commonly denominated the incident. But though the
incident had no effect In Scotland; what was not expected, it was
attended with consequences in England. The English parliament, which
was now assembled, being willing to awaken the people’s tenderness
by exciting their fears, immediately took the alarm; as if the
malignants--so they called the king’s party--had had laid a plot at
once to murder them and all the godly in both kingdoms. They applied
therefore to Essex, whom the king had left general in the south of
England; and he ordered a guard to attend them.[*]

But while the king was employed in pacifying the commotions in Scotland,
and was preparing to return to England, in order to apply himself to
the same salutary work in that kingdom, he received intelligence of a
dangerous rebellion broken but in Ireland, with circumstances of
the utmost horror, bloodshed, and devastation. On every side this
unfortunate prince was pursued with murmurs, discontent, faction, and
civil wars, and the fire from all quarters, even by the most independent
accidents, at once blazed up about him.

The great plan of James in the administration of Ireland, continued by
Charles, was, by justice and peace to reconcile that turbulent people to
the authority of laws; and, introducing art and industry among them,
to cure them of that sloth and barbarism to which they had ever been
subject. In order to serve both these purposes, and at the same time
secure the dominion of Ireland to the English crown, great colonies of
British had been carried over, and, being intermixed with the Irish, had
every where introduced a new face of things into that country. During a
peace of near forty years, the inveterate quarrels between the nations
seemed, in a great measure, to be obliterated; and though much of the
landed property forfeited by rebellion had been conferred on the new
planters, a more than equal return had been made, by their instructing
the natives in tillage, building, manufactures, and all the civilized
arts of life.[**] This had been the course of things during the
successive administrations of Chichester, Grandison, Falkland, and,
above all, of Strafford. Under the government of this latter nobleman,
the pacific plans, now come to great maturity, and forwarded by his
vigor and industry, seemed to have operated with full success, and to
have bestowed at last on that savage country the face of a European
settlement.

     * Whitlocke, p. 40. Dugdale, p. 72. Burnet’s Memoirs of the
     House of Hamilton, p. 184, 185. Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 299.

     ** Sir John Temple’s Irish Rebellion, p. 12.

After Strafford fell a victim to popular rage, the humors excited
in Ireland by that great event could not suddenly be composed, but
continued to produce the greatest innovations in the government.

The British Protestants transplanted into Ireland, having every moment
before their eyes all the horrors of Popery, had naturally been carried
into the opposite extreme, and had universally adopted the highest
principles and practices of the Puritans. Monarchy, as well as the
hierarchy, was become odious to them; and every method of limiting
the authority of the crown, and detaching themselves from the king of
England, was greedily adopted and pursued. They considered not, that
as they scarcely formed the sixth part of the people, and were secretly
obnoxious to the ancient inhabitants, their only method of supporting
themselves was by maintaining royal authority, and preserving a great
dependence on their mother country. The English commons, likewise, in
their furious persecution of Strafford, had overlooked the most
obvious consequences; and, while they imputed to him as a crime every
discretionary act of authority, they despoiled all succeeding governors
of that power by which alone the Irish could be retained in subjection.
And so strong was the current for popular government in all the three
kingdoms, that the most established maxims of policy were every where
abandoned, in order to gratify this ruling passion.

Charles, unable to resist, had been obliged to yield to the Irish, as
to the Scottish and English parliaments; and found, too, that their
encroachments still rose in proportion to his concessions. Those
subsidies which themselves had voted, they reduced, by a subsequent
vote, to a fourth part; the court of high commission was determined to
be a grievance; martial law abolished; the jurisdiction of the council
annihilated; proclamations and acts of state declared of no authority;
every order or institution which depended on monarchy was invaded;
and the prince was despoiled of all his prerogative, without the least
pretext of any violence or illegality in his administration.

The standing army of Ireland was usually about three thousand men; but,
in order to assist the king in suppressing the Scottish Covenanters,
Strafford had raised eight thousand more, and had incorporated with
them a thousand men drawn from the old army; a necessary expedient for
bestowing older and discipline on the new-levied soldiers. The private
men in this army were all Catholics; but the officers, both commission
and non-commission, were Protestants, and could entirely be depended on
by Charles. The English commons entertained the greatest apprehensions
on account of this army, and never ceased soliciting the king till he
agreed to break it. Nor they consent to any proposal for augmenting
the standing army to five thousand men; a number which the king deemed
necessary for retaining Ireland in obedience.

Charles, thinking it dangerous that eight thousand men accustomed to
idleness, and trained to the use of arms, should be dispersed among a
nation so turbulent and unsettled, agreed with the Spanish ambassador
to have them transported into Flanders, and enlisted in his master’s
service. The English commons, pretending apprehensions, lest regular
bodies of troops, disciplined in the Low Countries, should prove still
more dangerous, showed some aversion to this expedient; and the king
reduced his allowance to four thousand men. But when the Spaniards had
hired ships for transporting these troops, and the men were ready to
embark, the commons, willing to show their power, and not displeased
with an opportunity of curbing and affronting the king, prohibited
every one from furnishing vessels for that service. And thus the
project formed by Charles, of freeing the country from these men was
unfortunately disappointed.[*]

The old Irish remarked all these false steps of the English, and
resolved to take advantage of them. Though their animosity against
that nation, for want of an occasion to exert itself, seemed to be
extinguished, it was only composed into a temporary and deceitful
tranquillity.[**] Their interests, both with regard to property and
religion, secretly stimulated them to a revolt. No individual of
any sept, according to the ancient customs, had the property of
any particular estate; but as the whole sept had a title to a whole
territory, they ignorantly preferred this barbarous community before the
more secure and narrower possessions assigned them by the English. An
indulgence, amounting almost to a toleration, had been given to the
Catholic religion: but so long as the churches and the ecclesiastical
revenues were kept from the priests, and they were obliged to endure the
neighborhood of profane heretics, being themselves discontented, they
continually endeavored to retard any cordial reconciliation between the
English and the Irish nations.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 281. Rush. vol. v. p, 381. Dugdale,
     p. 78 May, book ii. p. 3.

     ** Temple, p. 14

There was a gentleman called Roger More, who, though of a narrow
fortune, was descended from an ancient Irish family and was much
celebrated among his countrymen for valor and capacity. This man
first formed the project of expelling the English, and asserting the
independency of his native country.[*]

     * Nalson, vol. iii. p. 543.

He secretly went from chieftain to chieftain, and roused up every latent
principle of discontent. He maintained a close correspondence with Lord
Maguire and Sir Phelim O’Neale, the most powerful of the old Irish.
By conversation, by letters, by his emissaries, he represented to his
countrymen the motives of a revolt. He observed to them, that, by
the rebellion of the Scots, and factions of the English, the king’s
authority in Britain was reduced to so low a condition, that he never
could exert himself with any vigor in maintaining the English dominion
over Ireland: that the Catholics in the Irish house of commons, assisted
by the Protestants, had so diminished the royal prerogative and the
power of the lieutenant, as would much facilitate the conducting to its
desired effect any conspiracy or combination which could be formed: that
the Scots, having so successfully thrown off dependence on the crown
of England, and assumed the government into their own hands, had set an
example to the Irish, who had so much greater oppressions to complain
of: that the English planters, who had expelled them their possessions,
suppressed their religion, and bereaved them of their liberties were
but a handful in comparison of the natives: that they lived in the most
supine security, interspersed with their numerous enemies, trusting
to the protection of a small army, which was itself scattered in
inconsiderable divisions through out the whole kingdom: that a great
body of men, disciplined by the government, were now thrown loose,
and were ready for any daring or desperate enterprise: that though the
Catholics had hitherto enjoyed, in some tolerable measure, the exercise
of their religion, from the moderation of their indulgent prince, they
must henceforth expect that the government will be conducted by other
maxims and other principles: that the Puritanical parliament, having
at length subdued their sovereign, would no doubt, as soon as they had
consolidated their authority, extend their ambitious enterprises to
Ireland, and make the Catholics in that kingdom feel the same furious
persecution, to which their brethren in England were at present exposed:
and that a revolt in the Irish, tending only to vindicate their native
liberty against the violence of foreign invaders, could never at any
time be deemed rebellion, much less during the present confusions, when
their prince was in a manner a prisoner, and obedience must be paid,
not to him, but to those who had traitorously usurped his lawful
authority.[*]

By these considerations, More engaged all the heads of the native Irish
into the conspiracy. The English of the pale, as they were called,
or the old English planters, being all Catholics, it was hoped would
afterwards join the party which restored their religion to its ancient
splendor and authority. The intention was, that Sir Phelim O’Neale
and the other conspirators should begin an insurrection on one day
throughout the provinces, and should attack all the English settlements;
and that, on the same day, Lord Maguire and Roger More should surprise
the Castle of Dublin. The commencement of the revolt was fixed on the
approach of winter, that there might be more difficulty in transporting
forces from England. Succors to themselves and supplies of arms they
expected from France, in consequence of a promise made them by Cardinal
Richelieu. And many Irish officers, who served in the Spanish troops,
had engaged to join them, as soon as they saw an insurrection entered
upon by their Catholic brethren. News, which every day arrived from
England, of the fury expressed by the commons against all Papists,
struck fresh terror into the Irish nation, and both stimulated the
conspirators to execute their fatal purpose, and gave them assured hopes
of the concurrence of all their country men.[**]

Such propensity to a revolt was discovered in all the Irish, that it was
deemed unnecessary, as it was dangerous to intrust the secret to many
hands; and the appointed day drew nigh, nor had any discovery been yet
made to the government. The king, indeed, had received information from
his ambassadors, that something was in agitation among the Irish in
foreign parts; but though he gave warning to the administration in
Ireland, the intelligence was entirely neglected.[***]

     * Temple, p. 72, 73, 78. Dugdale, p. 73.

     ** Dugdale, p. 74.

     *** Bush vol. v. p. 408. Nalson, vol ii. p. 565.

Secret rumors likewise were heard of some approaching conspiracy; but
no attention was paid to them. The earl of Leicester, whom the king had
appointed lieutenant, remained in London, The two justices, Sir William
Parsons and Sir John Borlace, were men of small abilities; and, by an
inconvenience common to all factious times, owed their advancement
to nothing but their zeal for the party by whom every thing was now
governed. Tranquil from their ignorance and inexperience, these men
indulged themselves in the most profound repose, on the very brink of
destruction.

But they were awakened from their security on the very day before that
which was appointed for the commencement of hostilities. The Castle
of Dublin, by which the capital was commanded, contained arms for ten
thousand men, with thirty-five pieces of cannon, and a proportionable
quantity of ammunition; yet was this important place guarded, and that
too without any care, by no greater force than fifty men. Maguire and
More were already in town with a numerous band of their partisans;
others were expected that night and next morning they were to enter upon
what they esteemed the easiest of all enterprises, the surprisal of
the castle. O’Conolly, an Irishman, but a Protestant, betrayed the
conspiracy to Parsons.[*] The justices and council fled immediately
for safety into the castle, and reënforced the guards. The alarm was
conveyed to the city, and all the Protestants prepared for defence. More
escaped; Maguire was taken; and Mahone, one of the conspirators, being
likewise seized, first discovered to the justices the project of a
general insurrection, and redoubled the apprehensions which already were
universally diffused throughout Dublin.[**]

But though O’Conolly’s discovery saved the castle from a surprise, the
confession extorted from Mahone came too late to prevent the intended
insurrection. O’Neale and his Confederates had already taken arms in
Ulster. The Irish, every where intermingled with the English, needed
but a hint from their leaders and priests to begin hostilities against
a people whom they hated on account of their religion, and envied for
their riches and prosperity.[***]

     * Rush, vol. v. p. 399. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 520. May, book
     ii p. 6

     ** Temple p 17, 18, 19, 20. Rush. vol. v p. 400.

     *** Ten ple, p. 39, 40, 79.

The houses, cattle, goods, of the unwary English were first seized.
Those who heard of the commotions in their neighborhood, instead of
deserting their habitations, and assembling for mutual protection,
remained at home in hopes of defending their property, and fell thus
separately into the hands of their enemies.[*] After rapacity had
fully exerted itself, cruelty, and the most barbarous that ever in any
nation was known or heard of, began its operations. A universal massacre
commenced of the English, now defenceless, and passively resigned to
their inhuman foes. No age, no sex, no condition was spared. The wife
weeping for her butchered husband, and embracing her helpless children,
was pierced with them, and perished by the same stroke.[**] The old,
the young, the vigorous, the infirm, underwent a like fate, and were
confounded in one common ruin. In vain did flight save from the first
assault: destruction was every where let loose, and met the hunted
victims at every turn. In vain was recourse had to relations, to
companions, to friends: all connections were dissolved, and death was
dealt by that hand from which protection was implored and expected.
Without provocation, without opposition, the astonished English, living
in profound peace and full security were massacred by their nearest
neighbors, with whom they had long upheld a continued intercourse of
kindness and good offices.[***]

But death was the lightest punishment inflicted by those rebels. All the
tortures which wanton cruelty could devise all the lingering pains of
body, the anguish of mind, the agonies of despair, could not satiate
revenge excited without injury, and cruelty derived from no cause. To
enter into particulars would shock the least delicate humanity. Such
enormities, though attested by undoubted evidence, appear almost
incredible. Depraved nature, even perverted religion encouraged by the
utmost license, reach not to such a pitch of ferocity, unless the pity
inherent in human breasts be destroyed by that contagion of example
which transports men beyond all the usual motives of conduct and
behavior.

The weaker sex themselves, naturally tender to their own sufferings,
and compassionate to those of others, here emulated their more robust
companions in the practice of every cruelty.[****] Even children, taught
by the example and encouraged by the exhortation of their parents,
essayed their feeble blows on the dead carcasses or defenceless children
of the English.[v]

     * Temple, p. 42.

     ** Temple, p. 40.

     *** Temple, p. 39, 40

     **** Temple, p. 96, 101. Rush. vol. v. p. 415.

     v    Temple, p. 100

The very avarice of the Irish was not a sufficient restraint to their
cruelty. Such was their frenzy, that the cattle which they had seized,
and by rapine made their own, yet, because they bore the name of
English, were wantonly slaughtered, or, when covered with wounds, turned
loose into the woods or deserts.[*]

The stately buildings or commodious habitations of the planters, as if
upbraiding the sloth and ignorance of the natives, were consumed with
fire, or laid level with the ground. And where the miserable owners,
shut up in their houses, and preparing for defence, perished in the
flames, together with their wives and children, a double triumph was
afforded to their insulting foes.[**]

If any where a number assembled together, and, assuming courage from
despair, were resolved to sweeten death by revenge on their assassins,
they were disarmed by capitulations and promises of safety, confirmed
by the most solemn oaths. But no sooner had they surrendered, than the
rebels, with perfidy equal to their cruelty, made them share the fate of
their unhappy countrymen.[***]

Others, more ingenious still in their barbarity, tempted their
prisoners, by the fond love of life, to imbrue their hands in the blood
of friends, brothers, parents; and having thus rendered them accomplices
in guilt, gave them that death which they sought to shun by deserving
it.[****]

Amidst all these enormities, the sacred name of religion resounded on
every side; not to stop the hands of these murderers, but to enforce
their blows, and to steel their hearts against every movement of human
or social sympathy. The English, as heretics, abhorred of God and
detestable to all holy men, were marked out by the priests for
slaughter; and of all actions, to rid the world of these declared
enemies to Catholic faith and piety, was represented as the most
meritorious.[v] Nature, which in that rude people was sufficiently
inclined to atrocious deeds, was further stimulated by precept: and
national prejudices empoisoned by those aversions, more deadly and
incurable, which arose from an enraged superstition. While death
finished the sufferings of each victim, the bigoted assassins, with joy
and exultation, still echoed in his expiring ears, that these agonies
were but the commencement of torments infinite and eternal.[v*]

     * Temple, p. 84.

     ** Temple, p. 99, 106. Rash. vol. v. p. 414

     *** Whitlocke, p. 47. Rush. vol. v. p. 416.

     **** Temple, p 100.

     v Temple, p. 85, 106.

     v* Temple, p 94, 107, 108. Rush. vol. v. p. 407.

Such were the barbarities by which Sir Phelim O’Neale and the Irish in
Ulster signalized their rebellion; an event memorable in the annals
of human kind, and worthy to be held in perpetual detestation and
abhorrence. The generous nature of More was shocked at the recital of
such enormous cruelties. He flew to O’Neale’s camp; but found that his
authority, which was sufficient to excite the Irish to an insurrection,
was too feeble to restrain their inhumanity. Soon after, he abandoned
a cause polluted by so many crimes; and he retired into Flanders. Sir
Phelim, recommended by the greatness of his family, and perhaps too by
the unrestrained brutality of his nature, though without any courage or
capacity, acquired the entire ascendent over the northern rebels.[*] The
English colonies were totally annihilated in the open country of Ulster:
the Scots at first met with more favorable treatment. In order to engage
them to a passive neutrality, the Irish pretended to distinguish between
the British nations; and, claiming friendship and consanguinity with the
Scots, extended not over them the fury of their massacres. Many of them
found an opportunity to fly the country; others retired into places of
security, and prepared themselves for defence; and by this means the
Scottish planters, most of them at least, escaped with their lives.[**]

From Ulster the flames of rebellion diffused themselves in an instant
over the other three provinces of Ireland. In all places, death and
slaughter were not uncommon; though the Irish in these other provinces
pretended to act with moderation and humanity. But cruel and barbarous
was their humanity! Not content with expelling the English their
houses, with despoiling them of their goodly manors, with wasting their
cultivated fields, they stripped them of their very clothes, and
turned them out, naked and defenceless, to all the severities of the
season.[***] The heavens themselves, as if conspiring against that
unhappy people, were armed with cold and tempest unusual to the climate,
and executed what the merciless sword had left unfinished.[****] The
roads were covered with crowds of naked English, hastening towards
Dublin and the other cities which yet remained in the hands of their
countrymen. The feeble age of children, the tender sex of women, soon
sunk under the multiplied rigors of cold and hunger.

     * Temple, p. 44.

     ** Temple, p. 41 Rush, i. p. 416.

     *** Temple, p. 42.

     **** Temple, p. 64

Here the husband, bidding a final adieu to his expiring family, envied
them that fate which, he himself expected so soon to share: there the
son, having long supported his aged parent, with reluctance obeyed his
last commands, and, abandoning him in this uttermost distress, reserved
himself to the hopes of avenging that death which all his efforts
could not prevent nor delay. The astonishing greatness of the calamity
deprived the sufferers of any relief from the view of companions in
affliction. With silent tears, or lamentable cries, they hurried on
through the hostile territories, and found every heart which was not
steeled by native barbarity, guarded by the more implacable furies of
mistaken piety and religion.[*]

The saving of Dublin preserved in Ireland the remains of the English
name. The gates of that city, though timorously opened, received the
wretched supplicants, and presented to the view a scene of human misery
beyond what any eye had ever before beheld.[**] Compassion seized the
amazed inhabitants, aggravated with the fear of like calamities; while
they observed the numerous foes, without and within, which every where
environed them, and reflected on the weak resources by which they were
themselves supported. The more vigorous of the unhappy fugitives, to the
number of three thousand, were enlisted into three regiments; the rest
were distributed into the houses; and all care was taken, by diet and
warmth, to recruit their feeble and torpid limbs. Diseases of unknown
name and species, derived from these multiplied distresses, seized many
of them, and put a speedy period to their lives: others, having now
leisure to reflect on their mighty loss of friends and fortune, cursed
that being which they had saved. Abandoning themselves to despair,
refusing all succor, they expired; without other consolation than that
of receiving among their countrymen the honors of a grave, which,
to their slaughtered companions, had been denied by the inhuman
barbarians.[***]

     * Temple, p. 88.

     ** Temple, p. 62.

     **** Temple, p. 43, 62.

By some computations, those who perished by all these cruelties are
supposed to be a hundred and fifty or two hundred thousand: by the most
moderate, and probably the most reasonable account, they are made to
amount to forty thousand; if this estimation itself be not, as is usual
in such cases, somewhat exaggerated.

The justices ordered to Dublin all the bodies of the army which were
not surrounded by the rebels; and they assembled a force of one thousand
five hundred veterans. They soon enlisted and armed from the magazines
above four thousand men more. They despatched a body of six hundred men
to throw relief into Tredah, besieged by the Irish. But these troops,
attacked by the enemy, were seized with a panic, and were most of them
put to the sword. Their arms, falling into the hands of the Irish,
supplied them with what they most wanted.[*] The justices, willing
to foment the rebel lion in a view of profiting by the multiplied
forfeitures, henceforth thought of nothing more than providing for their
own present security and that of the capital. The earl of Ormond, their
general, remonstrated against such timid, not to say base and interested
counsels; but was obliged to submit to authority.

The English of the pale, who probably were not at first in the secret,
pretended to blame the insurrection, and to detest the barbarity with
which it was accompanied.[**] By their protestations and declarations,
they engaged the justices to supply them with arms, which they promised
to employ in defence of the government.[***] But in a little time, the
interests of religion were found more prevalent over them than regard
and duty to their mother country. They chose Lord Gormanstone their
leader; and, joining the old Irish, rivalled them in every act of
violence towards the English Protestants. Besides many smaller bodies
dispersed over the kingdom, the principal army of the rebels amounted
to twenty thousand men, and threatened Dublin with an immediate
siege.[****]

Both the English and Irish rebels conspired in one imposture, with which
they seduced many of their deluded countrymen: they pretended authority
from the king and queen, but chiefly from the latter, for their
insurrection; and they affirmed, that the cause of their taking arms
was to vindicate royal prerogative, now invaded by the Puritanical
parliament.[v] Sir Phelim O’Neale, having found a royal patent in Lord
Caulfield’s house, whom he had murdered, tore off the seal, and affixed
it to a commission which he had forged for himself.[v*]

     * Nalson, vol. ii. p. 905.

     ** Temple, p. 33. Rush. vol. v. p. 402.

     *** Temple, p. 60. Borlase, Hist. p. 28.

     **** Whitlocke, p. 49.

     v    Rush. vol. v. p. 400, 401.

     v*   Rush. vol. v. p. 402.

The king received an account of this insurrection by a messenger
despatched from the north of Ireland. He immediately communicated his
intelligence to the Scottish parliament. He expected that the mighty
zeal expressed by the Scots for the Protestant religion, would
immediately engage them to fly to its defence where it was so violently
invaded; he hoped that their horror against Popery, a religion which now
appeared in its most horrible aspect, would second all his exhortations:
he had observed with what alacrity they had twice run to arms, and
assembled troops in opposition to the rights of their sovereign: he saw
with how much greater facility they could now collect forces which
had been very lately disbanded, and which had been so long inured
to military discipline. The cries of their affrighted and distressed
brethren in Ireland, he promised himself, would powerfully incite them
to send over succors, which could arrive so quickly, and aid them with
such promptitude in this uttermost distress. But the zeal of the Scots,
as is usual among religious sects, was very feeble when not stimulated
either by faction or by interest. They now considered themselves
entirely as a republic, and made no account of the authority of their
prince, which they had utterly annihilated. Conceiving hopes from the
present distresses of Ireland, they resolved to make an advantageous
bargain for the succors with which they should supply their neighboring
nation. And they cast their eye towards the English parliament, with
whom they were already so closely connected, and who could alone fulfil
any articles which might be agreed on. Except despatching a small body
to support the Scottish colonies in Ulster, they would therefore go
no further at present than sending commissioners to London in order to
treat with that power to whom the sovereign authority was now in reality
transferred.[*]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 407.

The king, too, sensible of his utter inability to subdue the Irish
rebels, found himself obliged, in this exigency, to have recourse to
the English parliament, and depend on their assistance for supply.
After communicating to them the intelligence which he had received, he
informed them, that the insurrection was not, in his opinion, the result
of any rash enterprise, but of a formed conspiracy against the crown of
England. To their care and wisdom, therefore, he said, he committed the
conduct and prosecution of the war, which, in a cause so important
to national and religious interests, must of necessity be immediately
entered upon, and vigorously pursued.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 301.

The English parliament was now assembled, and discovered in every vote
the same dispositions in which they had separated. The exalting of their
own authority, the diminishing of the king’s, were still the objects
pursued by the majority. Every attempt which had been made to gain the
popular leaders, and by offices to attach them to the crown, had failed
of success, either for want of skill in conducting it, or by reason of
the slender preferments which it was then in the king’s power to confer.
The ambitious and enterprising patriots disdained to accept, in detail,
of a precarious power, while they deemed it so easy, by one bold
and vigorous assault, to possess themselves forever of the entire
sovereignty. Sensible that the measures which they had hitherto pursued
rendered them extremely obnoxious to the king; were many of them in
themselves exceptionable; some of them, strictly speaking, illegal; they
resolved to seek their own security, as well as greatness, by enlarging
popular authority in England. The great necessities to which the king
was reduced; the violent prejudices which generally, throughout the
nation, prevailed against him; his facility in making the most important
concessions; the example of the Scots, whose encroachments had totally
subverted monarchy; all these circumstances further instigated the
commons in their invasion of royal prerogative. And the danger to which
the constitution seemed to have been so lately exposed, persuaded many
that it never could be sufficiently secured, but by the entire abolition
of that authority which had invaded it.

But this project it had not been in the power, scarcely in the intention
of the popular leaders to execute, had it not been for the passion
which seized the nation for Presbyterian discipline, and for the wild
enthusiasm which at that time accompanied it. The license which the
parliament had bestowed on this spirit, by checking ecclesiastical
authority; the countenance and encouragement with which they had honored
it; had already diffused its influence to a wonderful degree; and
all orders of men had drunk deep of the intoxicating poison. In every
discourse or conversation this mode of religion entered; in all
business it had a share; every elegant pleasure or amusement it utterly
annihilated; many vices or corruptions of mind it promoted: even
diseases and bodily distempers were not totally exempted from it; and
it became requisite, we are told, for all physicians to be expert in the
spiritual profession, and by theological considerations to allay those
religious terrors with which their patients were so generally haunted.
Learning itself, which tends so much to enlarge the mind and humanize
the temper, rather served on this occasion to exalt that epidemical
frenzy which prevailed. Rude as yet, and imperfect, it supplied the
dismal fanaticism with a variety of views, founded it on some coherency
of system, enriched it with different figures of elocution; advantages
with which a people totally ignorant and barbarous had been happily
unacquainted.

From policy, at first, and inclination, now from necessity the king
attached himself extremely to the hierarchy: for like reasons, his
enemies were determined, by one and the same effort, to overpower the
church and monarchy.

While the commons were in this disposition, the Irish rebellion was the
event which tended most to promote the views in which all their measures
terminated. A horror against the Papists, however innocent, they had
constantly encouraged, a terror from the conspiracies of that sect,
however improbable, they had at all times endeavored to excite. Here
was broken out a rebellion, dreadful and unexpected; accompanied with
circumstances the most detestable of which there ever was any record;
and what was the peculiar guilt of the Irish Catholics, it was no
difficult matter, in the present disposition of men’s minds, to
attribute to that whole sect, who were already so much the object of
general abhorrence. Accustomed in all invectives to join the
prelatical party with the Papists, the people immediately supposed this
insurrection to be the result of their united counsels. And when they
heard that the Irish rebels pleaded the king’s commission for all
their acts of violence, bigotry, ever credulous and malignant, assented
without scruple to that gross imposture, and loaded the unhappy prince
with the whole enormity of a contrivance so barbarous and inhuman.[*]
[8]

     * See note H. at the end of the volume

By the difficulties and distresses of the crown, the commons, who
possessed alone the power of supply, had aggrandized themselves; and it
seemed a peculiar happiness, that the Irish rebellion had succeeded at
so critical a juncture to the pacification of Scotland. That expression
of the king’s, by which he committed to them the care of Ireland, they
immediately laid hold of, and interpreted in the most, unlimited sense.
They had on other occasions been gradually encroaching on the executive
power of the crown, which forms its principal and most natural branch
of authority; but with regard to Ireland, they at once assumed it,
fully and entirely, as if delivered over to them by a regular gift or
assignment. And to this usurpation the king was obliged passively to
submit; both because of his inability to resist, and lest he should
still more expose himself to the reproach of favoring the progress of
that odious rebellion.

The project of introducing further innovations in England being
once formed by the leaders among the commons, it became a necessary
consequence, that their operations with regard to Ireland should, all of
them, be considered as subordinate to the former, on whose success,
when once undertaken, their own grandeur, security, and even being, must
entirely depend. While they pretended the utmost zeal against the Irish
insurrection, they took no steps towards its suppression, but such as
likewise tended to give them the superiority in those commotions which,
they foresaw, must so soon be excited in England.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. ii. p, 435. Sir Ed. Walker p 6.

The extreme contempt entertained for the natives in Ireland, made the
popular leaders believe that it would be easy at any time to suppress
their rebellion, and recover that kingdom: nor were they willing to
lose, by too hasty success, the advantage which that rebellion would
afford them in their projected encroachments on the prerogative. By
assuming the total management of the war, they acquired the courtship
and dependence of every one who had any connection with Ireland, or who
was desirous of enlisting in these military enterprises: they levied
money under pretence of the Irish expedition; but reserved it for
purposes which concerned them more nearly: they took arms from the
king’s magazines; but still kept them with a secret intention of
employing them against himself: whatever law they deemed necessary for
aggrandizing themselves, was voted, under color of enabling them to
recover Ireland; and if Charles withheld the royal assent, his refusal
was imputed to those pernicious counsels which had at first excited the
Popish rebellion, and which still threatened total destruction to the
Protestant interest throughout all his dominions.[*] And though no
forces were for a long time sent over to Ireland, and very little money
remitted during the extreme distress of that kingdom, so strong was the
people’s attachment to the commons, that the fault was never imputed
to those pious zealots, whose votes breathed nothing but death and
destruction to the Irish rebels.

     * Nalson, vol. ii. p 318. Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 590.

To make the attack on royal authority by regular approaches, it was
thought proper to frame a general remonstrance of the state of the
nation; and accordingly the committee, which at the first meeting of
parliament had been chosen for that purpose, and which had hitherto made
no progress in their work, received fresh injunctions to finish that
undertaking.

The committee brought into the house that remonstrance which has become
so memorable, and which was soon afterwards attended with such important
consequences. It was not addressed to the king; but was openly declared
to be an appeal to the people. The harshness of the matter was equalled
by the severity of the language. It consists of many gross falsehoods,
intermingled with some evident truths: malignant insinuations are
joined to open invectives; loud complaints of the past, accompanied with
jealous prognostications of the future. Whatever unfortunate, whatever
invidious, whatever suspicious measure had been embraced by the king,
from the commencement of his reign, is insisted on and aggravated with
merciless rhetoric: the unsuccessful expeditions to Cadiz and the Isle
of Rhé are mentioned; the sending of ships to France for the suppression
of the Hugonots; the forced loans; the illegal confinement of men
for not obeying illegal commands; the violent dissolution of four
parliaments; the arbitrary government which always succeeded; the
questioning, fining, and imprisoning of members for their conduct in
the house; the levying of taxes without consent of the commons; the
introducing of superstitious innovations into the church, without
authority of law: in short, every thing which, either with or without
reason, had given offence during the course of fifteen years, from the
accession of the king to the calling of the present parliament. And
though all these grievances had been already redressed, and even laws
enacted for future security against their return, the praise of these
advantages was ascribed, not to the king, but to the parliament, who had
extorted his consent to such salutary statutes. Their own merits too,
they asserted, towards the king, were no less eminent than towards the
people. Though they had seized his whole revenue, rendered it totally
precarious, and made even their temporary supplies be paid to their own
commissioners, who were independent of him, they pretended that they
had liberally supported him in his necessities. By an insult still more
egregious, the very giving of money to the Scots for levying war against
their sovereign, they represented as an instance of their duty towards
him. And all their grievances, they said, which amounted to no less
than a total subversion of the constitution, proceeded entirely from the
formed combination of a Popish faction, who had ever swayed the king’s
counsels, who had endeavored, by an uninterrupted effort, to introduce
their superstition into England and Scotland, and who had now at last
excited an open and bloody rebellion in Ireland.[*]

This remonstrance, so full of acrimony and violence, was a plain
signal for some further attacks intended on royal prerogative, and a
declaration, that the concessions already made, however important, were
not to be regarded as satisfactory. What pretensions would be advanced,
how unprecedented, how unlimited, were easily imagined; and nothing
less was foreseen, whatever ancient names might be preserved, than an
abolition, almost total, of the monarchical government of England. The
opposition, therefore, which the remonstrance met with in the house
of commons was great. For above fourteen hours the debate was warmly
managed; and from the weariness of the king’s party, which probably
consisted chiefly of the elderly people, and men of cool spirits, the
vote was at last carried by a small majority of eleven.[**] Some time
after, the remonstrance was ordered to be printed and published, without
being carried up to the house of peers for their assent and concurrence.

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 438. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 694.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 49. Dugdale, p. 71. Nalson, vol. ii. p.
     668.

When this remonstrance was dispersed, it excited every where the same
violent controversy which attended it when introduced into the house of
commons. This parliament, said the partisans of that assembly, have
at length profited by the fatal example of their predecessors; and are
resolved, that the fabric which they have generously undertaken to wear
for the protection of liberty, shall not be left to future ages insecure
and imperfect. At the time when the petition of right, that requisite
vindication of a violated constitution, was extorted from the unwilling
prince, who but imagined that liberty was at last secured, and that the
laws would thenceforth maintain themselves in opposition to arbitrary
authority? But what was the event? A right was indeed acquired to the
people, or rather their ancient right was more exactly defined; but as
the power of invading it still remained in the prince, no sooner did an
opportunity offer, than he totally disregarded all laws and preceding
engagements, and made his will and pleasure the sole rule of government.
Those lofty ideas of monarchical authority, which he has derived from
his early education, which are united in his mind with the irresistible
illusions of self-love, which are corroborated by his mistaken
principles of religion, it is in vain to hope that, in his more advanced
age, he will sincerely renounce from any subsequent reflection or
experience. Such conversions, if ever they happen, are extremely
rare; but to expect that they will be derived from necessity, from the
jealousy and resentment of antagonists, from blame, from reproach, from
opposition, must be the result of the fondest and most blind credulity.
These violences, however necessary, are sure to irritate a prince
against limitations so cruelly imposed upon him; and each concession
which he is constrained to make, is regarded as a temporary tribute paid
to faction and sedition, and is secretly attended with a resolution of
seizing every favorable opportunity to retract it. Nor should we imagine
that opportunities of that kind will not offer in the course of human
affairs. Governments, especially those of a mixed kind, are in continual
fluctuation: the humors of the people change perpetually from one
extreme to another: and no resolution can be more wise, as well as more
just, than that of employing the present advantages against the
king, who had formerly pushed much less tempting ones to the utmost
extremities against, his people and his parliament. It is to be feared,
that if the religious rage which has seized the multitude be allowed
to evaporate, they will quickly return to the ancient ecclesiastical
establishment; and with it embrace those principles of slavery which it
inculcates with such zeal on its submissive proselytes. Those patriots
who are now the public idols, may then become the objects of general
detestation; and equal shouts of joy attend their ignominious execution,
with those which second their present advantages and triumphs. Nor ought
the apprehension of such an event to be regarded in them as a selfish
consideration: in their safety is involved the security of the laws. The
patrons of the constitution cannot suffer without a fatal blow to the
constitution: and it is but justice in the public to protect, at any
hazard, those who have so generously exposed themselves to the utmost
hazard for the public interest. What though monarchy, the ancient
government of England, be impaired, during these contests, in many of
its former prerogatives: the laws will flourish the more by its decay;
and it is happy, allowing that matters are really carried beyond the
bounds of moderation, that the current at least runs towards liberty,
and that the error is on that side which is safest for the general
interests of mankind and society.

The best arguments of the royalists against a further attack on the
prerogative, were founded more on opposite ideas which they had formed
of the past events of this reign, than on opposite principles of
government. Some invasions, they said, and those too of moment, had
undoubtedly been made on national privileges: but were we to look for
the cause of these violences, we should never find it to consist in the
wanton tyranny and injustice of the prince, not even in his ambition or
immoderate appetite for authority. The hostilities with Spain, in which
the king on his accession found himself engaged, however imprudent and
unnecessary, had proceeded from the advice, and even importunity of the
parliament; who deserted him immediately after they had embarked him in
those warlike measures. A young prince, jealous of honor, was naturally
afraid of being foiled in his first enterprise, and had not as yet
attained such maturity of counsel, as to perceive that his greatest
honor lay in preserving the laws inviolate, and gaining the full
confidence of his people. The rigor of the subsequent parliaments had
been extreme with regard to many articles, particularly tonnage and
poundage; and had reduced the king to an absolute necessity, if he would
preserve entire the royal prerogative, of levying those duties by his
own authority, and of breaking through the forms, in order to maintain
the spirit of the constitution. Having once made so perilous a step, he
was naturally induced to continue, and to consult the public interest
by imposing ship money, and other moderate though irregular burdens and
taxations. A sure proof that he had formed no system for enslaving his
people is, that the chief object of his government has been to raise
a naval, not a military force; a project useful, honorable, nay,
indispensably requisite, and, in spite of his great necessities, brought
almost to a happy conclusion. It is now full time to free him from all
these necessities, and to apply cordials and lenitives, after those
severities which have already had their full course against him. Never
was sovereign blessed with more moderation of temper, with more justice,
more humanity, more honor, or a more gentle disposition. What pity that
such a prince should so long have been harassed with rigors, suspicions,
calumnies, complaints, encroachments; and been forced from that path,
in which the rectitude of his principles would have inclined him to have
constantly trod! If some few instances are found of violations made on
the petition of right, which he himself had granted, there is an easier
and more natural way for preventing the return of like inconveniencies,
than by a total abolition of royal authority. Let the revenue be
settled, suitably to the ancient dignity and splendor of the crown; let
the public necessities be fully supplied; let the remaining articles of
prerogative be left untouched; and the king, as he has already lost the
power, will lay aside the will, of invading the constitution. From what
quarter can jealousies now arise? What further security can be desired
or expected? The king’s preceding concessions, so far from being
insufficient for public security, have rather erred on the other
extreme; and, by depriving him of all power of self-defence, are the
real cause why the commons are emboldened to raise pretensions hitherto
unheard of in the kingdom, and to subvert the whole system of the
constitution. But would they be content with moderate advantages, is
it not evident that, besides other important concessions, the present
parliament may be continued, till the government be accustomed to the
new track, and every part be restored to full harmony and concord? By
the triennial act, a perpetual succession of parliaments is established,
as everlasting guardians to the laws, while the king possesses no
independent power or military force by which he can be supported in his
invasion of them. No danger remains but what is inseparable from all
free constitutions, and what forms the very essence of their freedom;
the danger of a change in the people’s disposition, and of general
disgust contracted against popular privileges To prevent such an evil,
no expedient is more proper than to contain ourselves within the
bounds of moderation, and to consider, that all extremes naturally and
infallibly beget each other. In the same manner as the past usurpations
of the crown, however excusable on account of the necessity or
provocations whence they arose, have excited an immeasurable appetite
for liberty; let us beware, lest our encroachments, by introducing
anarchy, make the people seek shelter under the peaceable and despotic
rule of a monarch. Authority, as well as liberty, is requisite to
government; and is even requisite to the support of liberty itself,
by maintaining the laws, which can alone regulate and protect it. What
madness, while every thing is so happily settled under ancient forms and
institutions, now more exactly poised and adjusted, to try the hazardous
experiment of a new constitution, and renounce the mature wisdom of our
ancestors for the crude whimseys of turbulent innovators! Besides the
certain and inconceivable mischiefs of civil war, are not the perils
apparent, which the delicate frame of liberty must inevitably sustain
amidst the furious shock of arms? Whichever side prevails, she can
scarcely hope to remain inviolate, and may suffer no less, or rather
greater injuries from the boundless pretensions of forces engaged in her
cause, than from the invasion of enraged troops enlisted on the side of
monarchy.

The king, upon his return from Scotland, was received in London with the
shouts and acclamations of the people, and with every demonstration
of regard and affection.[*] Sir Richard Gournay, lord mayor, a man of
moderation and authority, had promoted these favorable dispositions, and
had engaged the populace, who so lately insulted the king, and who so
soon after made furious war upon him, to give him these marks of their
dutiful attachment. But all the pleasure which Charles reaped from this
joyous reception, was soon damped by the remonstrance of the commons,
which was presented him, together with a petition of a like strain. The
bad counsels which he followed are there complained of; his concurrence
in the Irish rebellion plainly insinuated; the scheme laid for the
introduction of Popery and superstition inveighed against; and, as a
remedy for all these evils, he is desired to intrust every office
and command to persons in whom his parliament should have cause to
confide.[**]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 429.

     ** Bush. vol. v. p. 437. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 692.

By this phrase, which is so often repeated in all the memorials
and addresses of that time, the commons meant themselves and their
adherents.

As soon as the remonstrance of the commons was published the king
dispersed an answer to it. In this contest, he lay under great
disadvantages. Not only the ears of the people were extremely prejudiced
against him; the best topics upon which he could justify, at least
apologize for his former conduct, were such as it was not safe or
prudent for him at this time to employ. So high was the national
idolatry towards parliaments, that to blame the past conduct of these
assemblies would have been very ill received by the generality of the
people. So loud were the complaints against regal usurpations, that had
the king asserted the prerogative of supplying, by his own authority,
the deficiencies in government arising from the obstinacy of the
commons, he would have increased the clamors with which the whole nation
already resounded. Charles, therefore, contented himself with observing
in general, that even during that period so much complained of, the
people enjoyed a great measure of happiness, not only comparatively,
in respect of their neighbors, but even in respect of those times which
were justly accounted the most fortunate. He made warm protestations
of sincerity in the reformed religion; he promised indulgence to tender
consciences with regard to the ceremonies of the church; he mentioned
his great concessions to national liberty; he blamed the infamous libels
every where dispersed against his person and the national religion; he
complained of the general reproaches thrown out in the remonstrance
with regard to ill counsels, though he had protected no minister from
parliamentary justice, retained no unpopular servant, and conferred
offices on no one who enjoyed not a high character and estimation in the
public. “If, notwithstanding this,” he adds, “any malignant party shall
take heart, and be willing to sacrifice the peace and happiness of their
country to their own sinister ends and ambition, under whatever
pretence of religion and conscience; if they shall endeavor to lessen my
reputation and interest, and to weaken my lawful power and authority; if
they shall attempt, by discountenancing the present laws, to loosen the
bands of government, that all disorder and confusion may break in upon
us; I doubt not but God in his good time will discover them to me, and
that the wisdom and courage of my high court of parliament will join
with me in their suppression and punishment.”[*] Nothing shows more
evidently the hard situation in which Charles was placed, than to
observe that he was obliged to confine himself within the limits of
civility towards subjects who had transgressed all bounds of regard, and
even of good manners, in the treatment of their sovereign.

The first instance of those parliamentary encroachments which Charles
was now to look for, was the bill for pressing soldiers to the service
of Ireland. This bill quickly passed the lower house. In the preamble,
the king’s power of pressing, a power exercised during all former times,
was declared illegal, and contrary to the liberty of the subject. By
a necessary consequence, the prerogative, which the crown had ever
assumed, of obliging men to accept of any branch of public service, was
abolished and annihilated; a prerogative, it must be owned, not very
compatible with a limited monarchy. In order to elude this law, the king
offered to raise ten thousand volunteers for the Irish service: but
the commons were afraid lest such an army should be too much at his
devotion. Charles, still unwilling to submit to so considerable a
diminution of power, came to the house of peers, and offered to pass
the law without the preamble; by which means, he said, that ill-timed
question with regard to the prerogative would for the present be
avoided, and the pretensions of each party be left entire. Both houses
took fire at this measure, which, from a similar instance, while the
bill of attainder against Strafford was in dependence, Charles might
foresee would be received with resentment. The lords, as well as
commons, passed a vote, declaring it to be a high breach of privilege
for the king to take notice of any bill which was in agitation in either
of the houses, or to express his sentiments with regard to it, before it
be presented to him for his assent in a parliamentary manner. The king
was obliged to compose all matters by an apology.[**]

     * Nalson, vol. ii. p. 748.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 457, 458, etc. Clarendon, vol. ii. p.
     327. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 738, 750, 751, etc.

The general question, we may observe, with regard to privileges of
parliament, has always been, and still continues, one of of the
greatest mysteries in the English constitution; and in some respects,
notwithstanding the accurate genius of that government, these privileges
are at present as undetermined as were formerly the prerogatives of
the crown. Such privileges as are founded on long precedent cannot be
controverted: but though it were certain, that former kings had not in
any instance taken notice of bills lying before the houses, (which yet
appears to have been very common,) it follows not, merely from their
never exerting such a power, that they had renounced it, or never were
possessed of it. Such privileges also as are essential to all free
assemblies which deliberate, they may be allowed to assume, whatever
precedents may prevail: but though the king’s interposition, by an offer
or advice, does in some degree overawe or restrain liberty; it may
be doubted whether it imposes such evident violence as to entitle the
parliament, without any other authority or concession, to claim the
privilege of excluding it. But this was the favorable time for
extending privileges; and had none more exorbitant or unreasonable been
challenged, few bad consequences had followed. The establishment of this
rule, it is certain, contributes to the order and regularity, as well as
freedom, of parliamentary proceedings.

The interposition of peers in the election of commoners was likewise
about this time declared a breach of privilege, and continues ever
since to be condemned by votes of the commons, and universally practised
throughout the nation.

Every measure pursued by the commons, and, still more, every attempt
made by their partisans, were full of the most inveterate hatred against
the hierarchy, and showed a determined resolution of subverting the
whole ecclesiastical establishment. Besides numberless vexations and
persecutions which the clergy underwent from the arbitrary power of the
lower house, the peers, while the king was in Scotland, having passed an
order for the observance of the laws with regard to public worship, the
commons assumed such authority, that, by a vote alone of their house,
they suspended those laws, though enacted by the whole legislature: and
they particularly forbade bowing at the name of Jesus; a practice
which gave them the highest scandal, and which was one of their capital
objections against the established religion.[*] They complained of the
king’s filling five vacant sees, and considered it as an insult upon
them, that he should complete and strengthen an order which they
intended soon entirely to abolish.[**] They had accused thirteen bishops
of high treason, for enacting canons without consent of parliament,[***]
though, from the foundation of the monarchy, no other method had ever
been practised: and they now insisted that the peers, upon this
general accusation, should sequester those bishops from their seats in
parliament, and commit them to prison.

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 385, 386. Nalson, vol. ii. p. 482.

     ** Nalson, vol. ii. p 511.

     *** Rush. vol. v. p. 359

Their bill for taking away the bishops’ votes had last winter been
rejected by the peers: but they again introduced the same bill, though
no prorogation had intervened; and they endeavored, by some minute
alterations, to elude that rule of parliament which opposed them. And
when they sent up this bill to the lords, they made a demand, the most
absurd in the world, that the bishops, being all of them parties, should
be refused a vote with regard to that question.[*] After the resolution
was once formed by the commons, of invading the established government
of church and state, it could not be expected that their proceedings,
in such a violent attempt, would thenceforth be altogether regular
and equitable: but it must be confessed that, in their attack on the
hierarchy, they still more openly passed all bounds of moderation; as
supposing, no doubt, that the sacredness of the cause would sufficiently
atone for employing means the most irregular and unprecedented. This
principle, which prevails so much among zealots, never displayed itself
so openly as during the transactions of this whole period.

     * Clarendon. vol. ii. p. 304.

But, notwithstanding these efforts of the commons, they could not expect
the concurrence of the upper house either to this law, or to any
other which they should introduce for the further limitation of royal
authority. The majority of the peers adhered to the king, and plainly
foresaw the depression of nobility, as a necessary consequence of
popular usurpations on the crown. The insolence, indeed, of the commons,
and their haughty treatment of the lords, had already risen to a great
height, and gave sufficient warning of their future attempts upon
that order. They muttered somewhat of their regret that they should be
obliged to save the kingdom alone, and that the house of peers would
have no part in the honor. Nay, they went so far as openly to tell the
lords, “That they themselves were the representative body of the whole
kingdom, and that the peers were nothing but individuals who held their
seats in a particular capacity; and therefore, if their lordships will
not consent to the passing of acts necessary for the preservation of
the people, the commons, together with such of the lords as are more
sensible of the danger, must join together, and represent the matter
to his majesty.”[*] So violent was the democratical, enthusiastic spirit
diffused throughout the nation, that a total confusion of all rank and
order was justly to be apprehended; and the wonder was, not that the
majority of the nobles should seek shelter under the throne, but that
any of them should venture to desert it. But the tide of popularity
seized many, and carried them wide of the most established maxims of
civil policy. Among the opponents of the king are ranked the earl of
Northumberland, lord admiral, a man of the first family and fortune,
and endowed with that dignified pride which so well became his rank and
station: the earl of Essex, who inherited all his father’s popularity,
and having from his early youth sought renown in arms, united to a
middling capacity that rigid inflexibility of honor which forms the
proper ornament of a nobleman and a soldier: Lord Kimbolton, soon after
earl of Manchester, a person distinguished by humanity, generosity,
affability, and every amiable virtue. These men, finding that their
credit ran high with the nation, ventured to encourage those popular
disorders, which, they vainly imagined, they possessed authority
sufficient to regulate and control.

In order to obtain a majority in the upper house, the commons had
recourse to the populace, who on other occasions had done them such
important service. Amidst the greatest security, they affected continual
fears of destruction to themselves and the nation, and seemed to quake
at every breath or rumor of danger. They again excited the people by
never-ceasing inquiries after conspiracies, by reports of insurrections,
by feigned intelligence of invasions from abroad, by discoveries of
dangerous combinations at home among Papists and their adherents. When
Charles dismissed the guard which they had ordered during his absence,
they complained; and upon his promising them a new guard, under the
command of the earl of Lindesey, they absolutely refused the offer, an
were well pleased to insinuate, by this instance of jealousy, that their
danger chiefly arose from the king himself.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 415.

     ** Journ. 30th Nov. 1641 Nalson, vol ii. y 688.

They ordered halberts to be brought into the hall where they assembled,
and thus armed themselves against those conspiracies with which, they
pretended, they were hourly threatened. As stories of plots, however
ridiculous, were willingly attended to, and were dispersed among the
multitude, to whose capacity they were well adapted. Beale, a tailor,
informed the commons that, walking in the fields, he had hearkened to
the discourse of certain persons unknown to him, and had heard them
talk of a most dangerous conspiracy. A hundred and eight ruffians, as
he learned, had been appointed to murder a hundred and eight lords
and commoners, and were promised rewards for these assassinations,
ten pounds for each lord, forty shillings for each commoner. Upon
this notable intelligence, orders were issued for seizing priests
and Jesuits, a conference was desired with the lords, and the deputy
lieutenants of some suspected counties were ordered to put the people in
a posture of defence.[*]

The pulpits likewise were called in aid, and resounded with the dangers
which threatened religion from the desperate attempts of Papists and
malignants. Multitudes flocked towards Westminster, and insulted the
prelates and such of the lords as adhered to the crown. The peers voted
a declaration against those tumults, and sent it to the lower house; but
these refused their concurrence.[**] Some seditious apprentices, being
seized and committed to prison, immediately received their liberty, by
an order of the commons.[***] The sheriffs and justices having appointed
constables with strong watches to guard the parliament, the commons sent
for the constables, and required them to discharge the watches, convened
the justices, voted their orders a breach of privilege, and sent one of
them to the Tower.[****]

     * Nalson, vol. ii. p. 646. Journ. 16th Nov. 1641. Dugdale,
     p. 79.

     ** Rush. part. iii. vol. i. p. 710.

     *** Nalson, vol ii. p 784, 792.

     **** Nalson, vol. ii. p. 792. Journ. 27th, 28th, and 29th of
     Dec. 1641.

Encouraged by these intimations of their pleasure, the populace crowded
about Whitehall, and threw out insolent menaces against Charles himself.
Several seduced officers and young gentlemen of the inns of court,
during this time of disorder and danger, offered their service to the
king. Between them and the populace there passed frequent skirmishes,
which ended not without bloodshed. By way of reproach, these gentlemen
gave the rabble the appellation of Roundheads, on account of the short
cropped hair which they wore: these called the others Cavaliers. And
thus the nation, which was before sufficiently provided with religious
as well as civil causes of quarrel, was also supplied with party names,
under which the factions might rendezvous and signalize their mutual
hatred.[*]

Meanwhile the tumults still continued, and even increased about
Westminster and Whitehall. The cry incessantly resounded against
“bishops and rotten-hearted lords.”[**] The former especially, being
distinguishable by their habit, and being the object of violent hatred
to all the sectaries, were exposed to the most dangerous insults.[***]
Williams, now created archbishop of York, having been abused by the
populace, hastily called a meeting of his brethren. By his advice, a
protestation was drawn and addressed to the king and the house of lords.
The bishops there set forth, that though they had an undoubted right
to sit and vote in parliament, yet in coming thither, they had been
menaced, assaulted, affronted, by the unruly multitude, and could no
longer with safety attend their duty in the house. For this reason they
protested against all laws, votes, and resolutions, as null and invalid,
which should pass during the time of their constrained absence. This
protestation, which, though just and legal, was certainly ill-timed,
was signed by twelve bishops, and communicated to the king, who hastily
approved of it. As soon as it was presented to the lords, that house
desired a conference with the commons, whom they informed of this
unexpected protestation. The opportunity was seized with joy and
triumph. An impeachment of high treason was immediately sent up against
the bishops, as endeavoring to subvert the fundamental laws, and to
invalidate the authority of the legislature.[****] They were, on the
first demand, sequestered from parliament, and committed to custody. No
man in either house ventured to speak a word in their vindication; so
much displeased was every one at the egregious imprudence of which they
had been guilty. One person alone said, that he did not believe them
guilty of high treason; but that they were stark mad, and therefore
desired they might be sent to bedlam.[v]

     * Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 339.

     ** Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 336.

     *** Dugdale, p. 78.

     **** Whitlocke, p. 51. Rush. vol. v. p. 466. Nalson, vol.
     ii. p, 794.

     v Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 355.

{1642.} A few days after, the king was betrayed into another
indiscretion, much more fatal; an indiscretion to which all the ensuing
disorders and civil wars ought immediately and directly to be ascribed;
this was the impeachment of Lord Kimbolton and the five members.

When the commons employed in their remonstrance language so severe and
indecent, they had not been actuated entirely by insolence and passion;
their views were more solid and profound. They considered that in a
violent attempt, such as an invasion of the ancient constitution, the
more leisure was afforded the people to reflect, the less would they be
inclined to second that rash and dangerous enterprise: that the peers
would certainly refuse their concurrence; nor were there any hopes
of prevailing on them, but by instigating the populace to tumult and
disorder: that the employing of such odious means for so invidious an
end would, at long-run, lose them all their popularity, and turn* the
tide of favor to the contrary party; and that, if the king only remained
in tranquillity, and cautiously eluded the first violence of the tempest
he would in the end certainly prevail, and be able at least to preserve
the ancient laws and constitution. They were therefore resolved, if
possible, to excite him to some violent passion, in hopes that he would
commit indiscretions of which they might make advantage.

It was not long before they succeeded beyond their fondest wishes.
Charles was enraged to find that all his concessions but increased their
demands; that the people who were returning to a sense of duty towards
him, were again roused to sedition and tumults; that the blackest
calumnies were propagated against him, and even the Irish massacre
ascribed to his counsels and machinations; and that a method of address
was adopted not only unsuitable towards so great a prince, but which no
private gentleman could bear without resentment. When he considered all
these increasing acts of insolence in the commons, he was apt to ascribe
them in a great measure to his own indolence and facility. The queen and
the ladies of the court further stimulated his passion, and represented
that, if he exerted the vigor and displayed the majesty of a monarch,
the daring usurpations of his subjects would shrink before him. Lord
Digby, a man of fine parts but full of levity, and hurried on by
precipitate passions, suggested like counsels; and Charles, who, though
commonly moderate in his temper, was ever disposed to hasty resolutions,
gave way to the fatal importunity of his friends and servants.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 360.

Herbert, attorney-general, appeared in the house of peers and in his
majesty’s name entered an accusation of high treason against Lord
Kimbolton and five commoners, Hollis, Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Hambden, Pym,
and Strode. The articles were, that they had traitorously endeavored to
subvert the fundamental laws and government of the kingdom, to deprive
the king of his regal power, and to impose on his subjects an arbitrary
and tyrannical authority: that they had endeavored, by many foul
aspersions on his majesty and his government, to alienate the affections
of his people, and make him odious to them: that they had attempted to
draw his late army to disobedience of his royal commands, and to
side with them in their traitorous designs: that they had invited and
encouraged a foreign power to invade the kingdom: that they had aimed
at subverting the rights and very being of parliament: that, in order
to complete their traitorous designs, they had endeavored, as far as
in them lay, by force and terror to compel the parliament to join with
them; and to that end had actually raised and countenanced tumults
against the king and parliament: and that they had traitorously
conspired to levy, and actually had levied war against the king.[*]

     * Whitlocke, p. 50. Rush. vol. v. p. 473. Nalson, vol. ii.
     p. 811. Franklyn, p. 906.

The whole world stood amazed at this important accusation, so suddenly
entered upon without concert, deliberation, or reflection. Some of these
articles of accusation, men said, to judge by appearance, seem to be
common between the impeached members and the parliament; nor did these
persons appear any further active in the enterprises of which they were
accused, than so far as they concurred with the majority in their votes
and speeches. Though proofs might perhaps be produced of their privately
inviting the Scots to invade England, how could such an attempt be
considered as treason, after the act of oblivion which had passed, and
after that both houses, with the king’s concurrence, had voted that
nation three hundred thousand pounds for their brotherly assistance?
While, the house of peers are scarcely able to maintain their
independency, or to reject the bills sent them by the commons, will they
ever be permitted by the populace, supposing them inclined, to pass a
sentence which must totally subdue the lower house, and put an end to
their ambitious undertakings? These five members, at least Pym, Hambden
and Hollis, are the very heads of the popular party; and if these be
taken off, what fate must be expected by their followers, who are, many
of them, accomplices in the same treason? The punishment of leaders is
ever the last triumph over a broken and routed party; but surely was
never before attempted, in opposition to a faction, during the full tide
of its power and success.

But men had not leisure to wonder at the indiscretion of this measure:
their astonishment was excited by new attempts, still more precipitate
and imprudent. A serjeant at arms, in the king’s name, demanded of the
house the five members: and was sent back without any positive answer.
Messengers were employed to search for them, and arrest them. Their
trunks, chambers, and studies were sealed and locked. The house voted
all these acts of violence to be breaches of privilege, and commanded
every one to defend the liberty of the members.[*] The king, irritated
by all this opposition, resolved next day to come in person to the
house, with an intention to demand, perhaps seize in their presence, the
persons whom he had accused.

This resolution was discovered to the countess of Carlisle, sister to
Northumberland, a lady of spirit, wit, and intrigue.[**] She privately
sent intelligence to the five members; and they had time to withdraw,
a moment before the king entered. He was accompanied by his ordinary
retinue, to the number of above two hundred, armed as usual, some with
halberts, some with walking swords. The king left them at the door, and
he himself advanced alone through the hall, while all the members rose
to receive him.

     * Whitlocke, p. 50 Rush. vol. v. p. 474, 475.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 51. Warwick, p. 204.

The speaker withdrew from his chair, and the king took possession of it.
The speech which he made was as follows: “Gentlemen, I am sorry for this
occasion of coming to you. Yesterday I sent a serjeant at arms to
demand some who, by my order, were accused of high treason. Instead of
obedience, I received a message. I must here declare to you, that
though no king that ever was in England could be more careful of your
privileges than I shall be, yet in cases of treason no person has
privilege. Therefore am I come to tell you, that I must have these men
wheresoever I can find them. Well, since I see all the birds are flown,
I do expect that you will send them to me as soon as they return. But
I assure you, on the word of a king, I never did intend any force, but
shall proceed against them in a fair and legal way; for I never meant
any other. And now, since I see I cannot do what I came for, I think
this is no unfit occasion to repeat what I have said formerly, that
whatever I have done in favor and to the good of my subjects, I do
intend to maintain it.”[*]

When the king was looking around for the accused members, he asked
the speaker, who stood below, whether any of these persons were in the
house. The speaker, falling on his knee, prudently replied, “I have,
sir, neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the
house is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am. And I humbly ask
pardon, that I cannot give any other answer to what your majesty is
pleased to demand of me.”[**]

The commons were in the utmost disorder; and when the king was
departing, some members cried aloud, so as he might hear them,
“Privilege! privilege!” And the house immediately adjourned till next
day.[***]

     * Whitloeke, p. 50.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 50. May, book ii. p. 20.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 51.

That evening the accused members, to show the greater apprehension,
removed into the city, which was their fortress. The citizens were the
whole night in arms. Some people, who were appointed for that purpose,
or perhaps actuated by their own terrors, ran from gate to gate, crying
out that the cavaliers were coming to burn the city, and that the king
himself was at their head.

Next morning, Charles sent to the mayor, and ordered him to call a
common council immediately. About ten o’clock, he himself, attended only
by three or four lords, went to Guildhall. He told the common council,
that he was sorry to hear of the apprehensions entertained of him; that
he was come to them without any guard, in order to show how much he
relied on their affections; and that he had accused certain men of high
treason, against whom he would proceed in a legal way, and therefore
presumed that they would not meet with protection in the city. After
many other gracious expressions, he told one of the sheriffs, who of the
two was thought the least inclined to his service, that he would dine
with him. He departed the hall without receiving the applause which he
expected. In passing through the streets, he heard the cry, “Privilege
of parliament! privilege of parliament!” resounding from all quarters.
One of the populace, more insolent than the rest drew nigh to his coach,
and called out with a loud voice, “To your tents, O Israel!” the words
employed by the mutinous Israelites when they abandoned Rehoboam, their
rash and ill-counselled sovereign,[*]

When the house of commons met, they affected the greatest dismay; and
adjourning themselves for some days, ordered a committee to sit in
Merchant Tailors Hall in the city. The committee made an exact inquiry
into all circumstances attending the king’s entry into the house: every
passionate speech, every menacing gesture of any, even the meanest of
his attendants, was recorded and aggravated. An intention of offering
violence to the parliament, of seizing the accused members in the very
house, and of murdering all who should make resistance, was inferred.
And that unparalleled breach of privilege--so it was called--was still
ascribed to the counsel of Papists and their adherents. This expression,
which then recurred every moment in speeches and memorials, and which at
present is so apt to excite laughter in the reader, begat at that time
the deepest and most real consternation throughout the kingdom.

A letter was pretended to be intercepted, and was communicated to the
committee, who pretended to lay great stress upon it. One Catholic there
congratulates another on the accusation of the members; and represents
that incident as a branch of the same pious contrivance which had
excited the Irish insurrection, and by which the profane heretics would
soon be exterminated in England.[**]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 479. Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 301.

     ** Nalson, vol. ii. p. 836.

The house again met; and, after confirming the votes of their committee,
instantly adjourned, as if exposed to the most imminent perils from the
violence of their enemies. This practice they continued for some
time. When the people, by these affected panics, were wrought up to a
sufficient degree of rage and terror, it was thought proper that the
accused members should, with a triumphant and military procession, take
their seats in the house. The river was covered with boats and other
vessels, laden with small pieces of ordnance, and prepared for fight.
Skippon, whom the parliament had appointed, by their own authority,
major-general of the city militia,[*] conducted the members, at the head
of this tumultuary army, to Westminster Hall. And when the populace, by
land and by water, passed Whitehall, they still asked, with insulting
shouts, “What has become of the king and his cavaliers? And whither are
they fled?”[**]

     * Nalson, vol. ii. p 833.

     ** Whitlocke. p. 52 Dugdale, p. 82. Clarendon, vol ii p.
     380.

The king, apprehensive of danger from the enraged multitude, had retired
to Hampton Court, deserted by all the world, and overwhelmed with
grief, shame, and remorse, for the fatal measures into which he had
been hurried. His distressed situation he could no longer ascribe to the
rigors of destiny, or the malignity of enemies: his own precipitancy and
indiscretion must bear the blame of whatever disasters should henceforth
befall him. The most faithful of his adherents, between sorrow and
indignation, were confounded with reflections on what had happened,
and what was likely to follow. Seeing every prospect blasted, faction
triumphant, the discontented populace inflamed to a degree of fury,
they utterly despaired of success in a cause to whose ruin friends and
enemies seemed equally to conspire.

The prudence of the king, in his conduct of this affair, nobody
pretended to justify. The legality of his proceedings met with many and
just apologies, though generally offered to unwilling ears. No maxim of
law, it was said, is more established, or more universally allowed, than
that privilege of parliament extends not to treason, felony, or breach
of peace; nor has either house, during former ages, ever pretended, in
any of those cases, to interpose in behalf of its members. Though some
inconveniencies should result from the observance of this maxim, that
would not be sufficient, without other authority, to abolish a principle
established by uninterrupted precedent, and founded on the tacit consent
of the whole legislature. But what are the inconveniencies so much
dreaded? The king, on pretence of treason, may seize any members of the
opposite faction, and for a time gain to his partisans the majority of
voices. But if he seize only a few, will he not lose more friends by
such a gross artifice than he confines enemies? If he seize a great
number, is not this expedient force, open and barefaced? And what remedy
at all times against such force, but to oppose to it a force which is
superior? Even allowing that the king intended to employ violence,
not authority, for seizing the members; though at that time, and ever
afterwards, he positively asserted the contrary; yet will his conduct
admit of excuse. That the hall where the parliament assembles is an
inviolable sanctuary, was never yet pretended. And if the commons
complain of the affront offered them, by an attempt to arrest their
members in their very presence, the blame must lie entirely on
themselves! who had formerly refused compliance with the king’s message,
when he peaceably demanded these members. The sovereign is the great
executor of the laws; and his presence was here legally employed, both
in order to prevent opposition, and to protect the house against those
insults which their disobedience had so well merited.

Charles knew to how little purpose he should urge these reasons against
the present fury of the commons. He proposed, therefore, by a message,
that they would agree upon a legal method by which he might carry on his
prosecution against the members, lest further misunderstandings happen
with regard to privilege. They desired him to lay the grounds of
accusation before the house; and pretended that they must first judge
whether it were proper to give up their members, to a legal trial.
The king then informed them, that he would waive, for the present, all
prosecution: by successive messages he afterwards offered a pardon to
the members; offered to concur in any law that should acquit or secure
them; offered any reparation to the house for the beach of privilege,
of which, he acknowledged, they had reason to complain.[*] They were
resolved to accept of no satisfaction, unless he would discover his
advisers in that illegal measure; a condition to which, they knew that,
without rendering himself forever vile and contemptible, he could
not possibly submit. Meanwhile, they continued to thunder against the
violation of parliamentary privileges, and by their violent outcries
to inflame the whole nation. The secret reason of their displeasure,
however obvious, they carefully concealed. In the king’s accusation
of the members, they plainly saw his judgment of late parliamentary
proceedings; and every adherent of the ruling faction dreaded the same
fate, should royal authority be reëstablished in its ancient lustre. By
the most unhappy conduct, Charles, while he extremely augmented in his
opponents the will, had also increased the ability of hurting him.

     * Dugdale, p. 84. Rush, vol v. p. 484, 488, 492, etc.

The more to excite the people, whose dispositions were already very
seditious, the expedient of petitioning was renewed. A petition from
the county of Buckingham was presented to the house by six thousand
subscribers, who promised to live and die in defence of the privileges
of parliament.[*] The city of London, the county of Essex, that of
Hertford, Surrey, Berks, imitated the example. A petition from the
apprentices was graciously received.[**] Nay, one was encouraged
from the porters, whose numbers amounted, as they said, to fifteen
thousand.[***] The address of that great body contained the same
articles with all the others; the privileges of parliament, the danger
of religion, the rebellion of Ireland, the decay of trade. The porters
further desired, that justice might be done upon offenders, as the
atrociousness of their crimes had deserved. And they added, “That
if such remedies were any longer suspended, they should be forced
to extremities not fit to be named, and make good the saying, that
‘Necessity has no law.’”[****]

Another petition was presented by several poor people, or beggars, in
the name of many thousands more; in which the petitioners proposed as a
remedy for the public miseries “That those noble worthies of the house
of peers, who concur with the happy votes of the commons, may separate
themselves from the rest, and sit and vote as one entire body.” The
commons gave thanks for this petition.[v]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 487.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 462.

     *** Dugdale, p. 87.

     **** Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 412.

     v Clarendon, vol. li. p. 413.

The very women were seized with the same rage. A brewer’s wife, followed
by many thousands of her sex, brought a petition to the house, in which
the petitioners expressed their terror of the Papists and prelates, and
their dread of like massacres, rapes, and outrages, with those which had
been committed upon their sex in Ireland. They had been necessitated,
they said, to imitate the example of the women of Tekoah: and they
claimed equal right with the men, of declaring by petition their sense
of the public cause; because Christ had purchased them at as dear a
rate, and in the free enjoyment of Christ consists equally the happiness
of both sexes. Pym came to the door of the house; and having told the
female zealots that their petition was thankfully accepted and was
presented in a seasonable time, he begged that their prayers for the
success of the commons might follow their petition. Such low arts of
popularity were affected, and by such illiberal cant were the unhappy
people incited to civil discord and convulsions.

In the mean time, not only all petitions which favored the church
or monarchy, from whatever hand they came, were discouraged, but the
petitioners were sent for, imprisoned, and prosecuted as delinquents;
and this unequal conduct was openly avowed and justified. Whoever desire
a change, it was said, must express their sentiments; for how otherwise
shall they be known? But those who favor the established government in
church or state, should not petition; because they already enjoy what
they wish for.[*]

The king had possessed a great party in the lower house, as appeared in
the vote for the remonstrance; and this party, had every new cause of
disgust been carefully avoided, would soon have become the majority,
from the odium attending the violent measures embraced by the popular
leaders. A great majority he always possessed in the house of peers,
even after the bishops were confined or chased away; and this majority
could not have been overcome but by outrages which, in the end, would
have drawn disgrace and ruin on those who incited them. By the present
fury of the people, as by an inundation, were all these obstacles swept
away, and every rampart of royal authority laid level with the ground.
The victory was pursued with impetuosity by the sagacious commons, who
knew the importance of a favorable moment in all popular commotions. The
terror of their authority they extended over the whole nation; and all
opposition, and even all blame vented in private conversation, were
treated as the most atrocious crimes by these severe inquisitors.
Scarcely was it permitted to find fault with the conduct of any
particular member, if he made a figure in the house; and reflections
thrown out on Pym were at this time treated as breaches of privilege.
The populace without doors were ready to execute, from the least hint,
the will of their leaders; nor was it safe for any member to approach
either house, who pretended to control or oppose the general torrent.
After so undisguised a manner was this violence conducted, that Hollis,
in a speech to the peers, desired to know the names of such members as
should vote contrary to the sentiments of the commons:[**] and Pym
said in the lower house, that the people must not be restrained in the
expressions of their just desires.[***]

     * Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 449.

     ** King’s Declaration of 12th of August, 1642

     *** King’s Declaration of 12th August, 1642.

By the flight, or terror, or despondency of the king’s party, an
undisputed majority remained everywhere to their opponents; and the
bills sent up by the commons, which had hitherto stopped with the peers,
and would certainly have been rejected, now passed, and were presented
for the royal assent. These were, the pressing bill with its preamble,
and the bill against the votes of the bishops in parliament. The king’s
authority was at that time reduced to the lowest ebb. The queen too,
being secretly threatened with an impeachment, and finding no resource
in her husband’s protection, was preparing to retire into Holland.
The rage of the people was, on account of her religion, as well as her
spirit and activity, universally levelled against her. Usage the
most contumelious she had hitherto borne with silent indignation. The
commons, in their fury against priests, had seized her very confessor,
nor would they release him upon her repeated applications. Even a
visit of the prince to his mother had been openly complained of, and
remonstrances against it had been presented to her.[*] Apprehensive of
attacks still more violent, she was desirous of facilitating her
escape; and she prevailed with the king to pass these bills, in hopes of
appeasing for a time the rage of the multitude.[**]

These new concessions, however important, the king immediately found to
have no other effect than had all the preceding ones: they were made the
foundation of demands still more exorbitant. From the facility of his
disposition, from the weakness of his situation, the commons believed
that he could now refuse them nothing. And they regarded the least
moment of relaxation in their invasion of royal authority as highly
impolitic, during the uninterrupted torrent of their successes. The very
moment they were informed of these last acquisitions, they affronted the
queen by opening some intercepted letters written to her by Lord Digby:
they carried up an impeachment against Herbert, attorney-general, for
obeying his master’s commands in accusing their members.[***] And they
prosecuted with fresh vigor their plan of the militia, on which they
rested all future hopes of an uncontrolled authority.

     * Nalson, vol. ii. p. 512.

     ** Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 428.

     *** Rush. vol. v. p. 489. Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 385.

The commons were sensible that monarchical government, which during so
many ages had been established in England, would soon regain some degree
of its former dignity, after the present tempest was overblown; nor
would all their new invented limitations be able totally to suppress an
authority to which the nation had ever been accustomed. The sword alone,
to which all human ordinances must submit, could guard their acquired
power, and fully insure to them personal safety against the rising
indignation of their sovereign. This point, therefore, became the chief
object of their aims. A large magazine of arms being placed in the
town of Hull, they despatched thither Sir John Hotham, a gentleman of
considerable fortune in the neighborhood, and of an ancient family, and
they gave him the authority of governor. They sent orders to Goring,
governor of Portsmouth, to obey no commands but such as he should
receive from the parliament. Not content with having obliged the king to
displace Lunsford, whom he had appointed governor of the Tower,[*] they
never ceased soliciting him till he had also displaced Sir John Biron,
a man of unexceptionable character, and had bestowed that command on Sir
John Conyers, in whom alone, they said, they could repose confidence.
After making a fruitless attempt, in which the peers refused their
concurrence, to give public warning, that the people should put
themselves in a posture of defence against the enterprises of “Papists
and other ill-affected persons,”[**] they now resolved, by a bold and
decisive stroke, to seize at once the whole power of the sword, and to
confer it entirely on their own creatures and adherents.

     * Rush. voL v. p. 459.

     ** Nalson, vol. ii. p. 850.

The severe votes passed in the beginning of this parliament against
lieutenants and their deputies, for exercising powers assumed by all
their predecessors, had totally disarmed the crown, and had not left
in any magistrate military authority sufficient for the defence and
security of the nation. To remedy this inconvenience now appeared
necessary. A bill was introduced, and passed the two houses, which
restored to lieutenants and deputies the same powers of which the votes
of the commons had bereaved them; but at the same time the names of all
the lieutenants were inserted in the bill; and these consisted entirely
of men in whom the parliament could confide. And for their conduct they
were accountable, by the express terms of the bill, not to the king, but
to the parliament.

The policy pursued by the commons, and which had hitherto succeeded
to admiration, was, to astonish the king by the boldness of their
enterprises, to intermingle no sweetness with their severity, to employ
expressions no less violent than their pretensions, and to make him
sensible in what little estimation they held both his person and his
dignity. To a bill so destructive of royal authority, they prefixed,
with an insolence seemingly wanton, a preamble equally dishonorable to
the personal character of the king. These are the words: “Whereas there
has been of late a most dangerous and desperate design upon the house
of commons, which we have just cause to believe an effect of the bloody
counsels of Papists and other ill-affected persons who have already
raised a rebellion in the kingdom of Ireland. And whereas, by reason of
many discoveries, we cannot but fear they will proceed, not only to stir
up the like rebellions and insurrections in this kingdom of England, but
also to back them with forces from abroad,” etc.[*]

Here Charles first ventured to put a stop to his concessions, and that
not by a refusal, but a delay. When this demand was made,--a demand,
which, if granted, the commons justly regarded as the last they should
ever have occasion to make,--he was at Dover, attending the queen and
the princess of Orange in their embarkation. He replied, that he had
not now leisure to consider a matter of so great importance, and
must therefore respite his answer till his return.[**] The parliament
instantly despatched another message to him, with solicitations still
more importunate. They expressed their great grief on account of his
majesty’s answer to their just and necessary petition. They represented,
that any delay during dangers and distractions so great and pressing,
was not less unsatisfactory and destructive than an absolute denial.
They insisted, that it was their duty to see put in execution a measure
so necessary for public safety. And they affirmed, that the people in
many counties had applied to them for that purpose, and in some places
were, of themselves and by their own authority, providing against those
urgent dangers with which they were threatened.[***]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 519.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 521.

     *** Rush, vol. v. p. 521.

Even after this insolence, the king durst not venture upon a flat
denial. Besides excepting to the preamble, which such dishonor upon him,
and protesting the innocence of his intentions when he entered the house
of commons, he only desired that the military authority, if it were
defective, should first be conferred upon the crown; and he promised to
bestow commissions, but such as should be revocable at pleasure, on the
same persons whom the parliament had named in the bill.[*] By a former
message, he had expressed his wishes that they would lay before him,
in one view, all the concessions which they deemed requisite for the
settlement of the nation. They pretended, that they were exposed to
perils so dreadful and imminent, that they had not leisure for such a
work.[**] The expedient proposed by the king seemed a sufficient remedy
during this emergence, and yet maintained the prerogatives of the crown
entire and unbroken.

But the intentions of the commons were wide of this purpose, and their
panics could be cured by one remedy alone. They instantly replied, that
the dangers and distempers of the nation were such as could endure no
longer delay; and unless the king speedily complied with their demands,
they should be constrained, for the safety of prince and people,
to dispose of the militia by the authority of both houses, and were
resolved to do it accordingly. They asserted, that those parts of the
kingdom which had, from their own authority, put themselves in a posture
of defence during these prevailing fears and jealousies, had acted
suitably to the declarations and directions of both houses, and
conformably to the laws of the kingdom. And while they thus menaced the
king with their power they invited him to fix his residence at London,
where they knew he would be entirely at mercy.[***]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 521.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 516, 517.

     *** Rush, part iii. vol. i. chap. iv. p. 523.

“I am so much amazed at this message,” said the king in his prompt
reply, “that I know not what to answer. You speak of jealousies and
fears. Lay your hands on your hearts, and ask yourselves whether I may
not likewise be disturbed with fears and jealousies, and if so, I assure
you that this message has nothing lessened them.

“As to the militia, I thought so much of it before I gave that answer,
and am so much assured that the answer is agreeable to what in justice
or reason you can ask, or I in honor grant, that I shall not alter it in
any point.

“For my residence near you, I wish it might be safe and honorable, and
that I had no cause to absent myself from Whitehall: ask yourselves
whether I have not.[*]

“What would you have? Have I violated your laws? Have I denied to pass
any bill for the ease and security of my subjects? I do not ask what you
have done for me.

“Have any of my people been transported with fears and apprehensions?
I offer as free and general a pardon as yourselves can devise. All this
considered, there is a judgment of Heaven upon this nation if these
distractions continue.

“God so deal with me and mine as all my thoughts and intentions are
upright for the maintenance of the true Protestant profession, and for
the observance and preservation of the laws; and I hope God will bless
and assist those laws for my preservation.”[**]

No sooner did the commons despair of obtaining the king’s consent
to their bill, than they instantly voted, that those who advised his
majesty’s answer were enemies to the state, and mischievous projectors
against the safety of the nation; that this denial is of such dangerous
consequence, that, if his majesty persist in it, it will hazard the
peace and tranquillity of all his kingdoms, unless some speedy remedy be
applied by the wisdom and authority of both houses; and that such of
the subjects as have put themselves in a posture of defence against the
common danger, have done nothing but what is justifiable, and approved
by the house.[***]

Lest the people might be averse to the seconding of all these
usurpations, they were plied anew with rumors of danger, with the
terrors of invasion, with the dread of English and Irish Papists; and
the most unaccountable panics were spread throughout the nation. Lord
Digby having entered Kingston in a coach and six, attended by a few
livery servants, the intelligence was conveyed to London; and it was
immediately voted, that he had appeared in a hostile manner, to the
terror and affright of his majesty’s subjects, and had levied war
against the king and kingdom.[****] Petitions from all quarters loudly
demanded of the parliament to put the nation in a posture of defence;
and the county of Stafford in particular expressed such dread of
an insurrection among the Papists, that every man, they said, was
constrained to stand upon his guard, not even daring to go to church
unarmed.[v]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 524.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 532.

     *** Rush. part. iii. vol. i. chap. iv. p. 524.

     **** Clarendon. Rush., part. iii. vol. i. chap, ii p. 495.

     v    Dugdale, p. 80.

That the same violence by which he had so long been oppressed might not
still reach him, and extort his consent to the militia bill, Charles
had resolved to remove farther from London; and accordingly, taking the
prince of Wales and the duke of York along with him, he arrived by slow
journeys at York, which he determined for some time to make the place of
his residence. The distant parts of the kingdom, being removed from that
furious vortex of new principles and opinions which had transported the
capital, still retained a sincere regard for the church and monarchy;
and the king here found marks of attachment beyond what he had before
expected.[*]

     * Warwick, p. 203.

From all quarters of England, the prime nobility and gentry, either
personally or by messages and letters, expressed their duty towards him;
and exhorted him to save himself and them from that ignominious slavery
with which they were threatened. The small interval of time which had
passed since the fatal accusation of the members, had been sufficient
to open the eyes of many, and to recover them from the astonishment with
which at first they had been seized. One rash and passionate attempt
of the king’s seemed but a small counterbalance to so many acts of
deliberate violence which had been offered to him and every branch of
the legislature; and, however sweet the sound of liberty, many
resolved to adhere to that moderate freedom transmitted them from their
ancestors, and now better secured by such important concessions, rather
than, by engaging in a giddy search after more independence, run a
manifest risk either of incurring a cruel subjection, or abandoning all
law and order.

Charles, finding himself supported by a considerable party in the
kingdom, began to speak in a firmer tone, and to retort the accusations
of the commons with a vigor which he had not before exerted.
Notwithstanding their remonstrances, and menaces, and insults, he
still persisted in refusing their bill; and they proceeded to frame an
ordinance, in which, by the authority of the two houses, without
the king’s consent, they named lieutenants for all the counties, and
conferred on them the command of the whole military force, of all the
guards, garrisons, and forts of the kingdom. He issued proclamations
against this manifest usurpation; and, as he professed a resolution
strictly to observe the law himself, so was he determined, he said, to
oblige every other person to pay it a like obedience The name of the
king was so essential to all laws, and so familiar in all acts of
executive authority, that the parliament was afraid, had they totally
omitted it, that the innovation would be too sensible to the people. In
all commands, therefore, which they conferred, they bound the persons to
obey the orders of his majesty signified by both houses of parliament.
And inventing a distinction, hitherto unheard of, between the office and
the person of the king, those very forces which they employed against
him they levied in his name and by his authority.[*]

It is remarkable how much the topics of argument were now reversed
between the parties. The king, while he acknowledged his former error,
of employing a plea of necessity in order to infringe the laws and
constitution, warned the parliament not to imitate an example on which
they threw such violent blame; and the parliament, while they clothed
their personal fears or ambition under the appearance of national and
imminent danger, made unknowingly an apology for the most exceptionable
part of the king’s conduct. That the liberties of the people were
no longer exposed to any peril from royal authority, so narrowly
circumscribed, so exactly defined, so much unsupported by revenue and by
military power, might be maintained upon very plausible topics: but that
the danger, allowing it to have any existence, was not of that kind,
great, urgent, inevitable, which dissolves all law and levels
all limitations, seems apparent from the simplest view of these
transactions. So obvious indeed was the king’s present inability to
invade the constitution, that the fears and jealousies which operated on
the people, and pushed them so furiously to arms, were undoubtedly not
of a civil, but of a religious nature. The distempered imaginations
of men were agitated with a continual dread of Popery, with a horror
against prelacy, with an antipathy to ceremonies and the liturgy, and
with a violent affection for whatever was most opposite to these objects
of aversion. The fanatical spirit, let loose, confounded all regard
to ease, safety, interest; and dissolved every moral and civil
obligation.[**] [9]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 526.

     ** See note I, at the end of the volume.

Each party was now willing to throw on its antagonist the odium of
commencing a civil war; but both of them prepared for an event which
they deemed inevitable. To gain the people’s favor and good opinion was
the chief point on both sides. Never was there a people less corrupted
by vice, and more actuated by principle, than the English during that
period: never were there individuals who possessed more capacity, more
courage, more public spirit, more disinterested zeal. The infusion of
one ingredient in too large a proportion had corrupted all these
noble principles, and converted them into the most virulent poison. To
determine his choice in the approaching contests, every man hearkened
with avidity to the reasons proposed on both sides. The war of the
pen preceded that of the sword, and daily sharpened the humors of the
opposite parties. Besides private adventurers without number, the
king and parliament themselves carried on the controversy by messages,
remonstrances, and declarations; where the nation was really the
party to whom all arguments were addressed. Charles had here a double
advantage. Not only his cause was more favorable, as supporting
the ancient government in church and state against the most illegal
pretensions; it was also defended with more art and eloquence. Lord
Falkland had accepted the office of secretary; a man who adorned the
purest virtue, with the richest gifts of nature, and the most valuable
acquisitions of learning. By him, assisted by the king himself, were the
memorials of the royal party chiefly composed. So sensible was Charles
of his superiority in this particular, that he took care to disperse
every where the papers of the parliament together with his own, that
the people might be the more enabled, by comparison, to form a judgment
between them: the parliament, while they distributed copies of their
own, were anxious to suppress all the king’s compositions.[*]

To clear up the principles of the constitution, to mark the boundaries
of the powers intrusted by law to the several members, to show what
great improvements the whole political system had received from the
king’s late concessions, to demonstrate his entire confidence in
his people, and his reliance on their affections, to point out
the ungrateful returns which had been made him, and the enormous
encroachments, insults, and indignities to which he had been exposed;
these were the topics which, with so much justness of reasoning and
propriety of expression, were insisted on in the king’s declarations and
remonstrances.[**] [11]

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 751.

     ** See note K, at the end of the volume.

Though these writings were of consequence, and tended much to reconcile
the nation to Charles, it was evident that they would not be decisive,
and that keener weapons must determine the controversy. To the
ordinance of the parliament concerning the militia, the king opposed
his commissions of array. The counties obeyed the one or the other,
according as they stood affected. And in many counties, where the people
were divided, mobbish combats and skirmishes ensued.[*] The parliament
on this occasion went so far as to vote, “That when the lords and
commons in parliament, which is the supreme court of judicature, shall
declare what the law of the land is, to have this not only questioned,
but contradicted, is a high breach of their privileges.”[**] This was
a plain assuming of the whole legislative authority, and exerting it in
the most material article, the government of the militia. Upon the same
principles they pretended, by a verbal criticism on the tense of a
Latin verb, to ravish from the king his negative voice in the
legislature.[***]

The magazine of Hull contained the arms of all the forces levied against
the Scots; and Sir John Hotham, the governor, though he had accepted of
a commission from the parliament, was not thought to be much disaffected
to the church and monarchy. Charles therefore entertained hopes that
if he presented himself at Hull before the commencement of hostilities,
Hotham, overawed by his presence, would admit him with his retinue;
after which he might easily render himself master of the place. But the
governor was on his guard. He shut the gates, and refused to receive
the king, who desired leave to enter with twenty persons only. Charles
immediately proclaimed him traitor, and complained to the parliament of
his disobedience. The parliament avowed and justified the action.[****]

     * May, book ii. p. 99.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 534.

     *** The king, by his coronation oath, promises that he would
     maintain the laws and customs which the people had chosen,
     “quas vulgus elegerit:” the parliament pretended, that
     elegerit meant shall choose; and, consequently, that the
     king had no right to refuse any bills which should be
     presented him. See Rush. vol. v. p. 580.

     **** Whitlocke, p. 55. Rush. vol. v. p. 565 etc. May, book
     ii p. 51.

The county of York levied a guard for the king of six hundred men;
for the kings of England had hitherto lived among their subjects like
fathers among their children, and had derived all their security from
the dignity of their character, and from the protection of the laws. The
two houses, though they had already levied a guard for themselves, had
attempted to seize all the military power, all the navy, and all the
forts of the kingdom, and had openly employed their authority in every
kind of warlike preparations, yet immediately voted, “That the king,
seduced by wicked counsel, intended to make war against his parliament,
who, in all their consultations and actions, had proposed no other
end but the care of his kingdoms, and the performance of all duty and
loyalty to his person; that this attempt was a breach of the trust
reposed in him by his people, contrary to his oath, and tending to a
dissolution of the government; and that whoever should assist him in
such a war, were traitors to the fundamental laws of the kingdom.”[*]

The armies which had been everywhere raised on pretence of the service
in Ireland, were henceforth more openly enlisted by the parliament for
their own purposes, and the command of them was given to the earl
of Essex. In London, no less than four thousand men enlisted in one
day.[**] And the parliament voted a declaration, which they required
every member to subscribe, that they would live and die with their
general.

They issued orders for bringing in loans of money and plate, in order
to maintain forces which should defend the king and both houses of
parliament; for this style they still preserved. Within ten days, vast
quantities of plate were brought to their treasurers. Hardly were there
men enough to receive it, or room sufficient to stow it; and many with
regret were obliged to carry back their offerings, and wait till the
treasurers could find leisure to receive them; such zeal animated the
pious partisans of the parliament, especially in the city. The women
gave up all the plate and ornaments of their houses, and even their
silver thimbles and bodkins, “in order to support the good cause against
the malignants.”[***]

     * Whitlocke, p. 57. Rush. vol. v. p. 717. Dugdale, p. 93.
     May, book 11. p. 54.

     ** Vicar’s God in the Mount.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 58. Dugdale, p. 96, 99.

Meanwhile the splendor of the nobility with which the king was environed
much eclipsed the appearance at Westminster. Lord Keeper Littleton,
after sending the great seal before him, had fled to York. Above forty
peers of the first rank attended the king,[*] whilst the house of lords
seldom consisted of more than sixteen members. Near the moiety, too, of
the lower house absented themselves from counsels which they deemed so
full of danger. The commons sent up an impeachment against nine peers,
for deserting their duty in parliament. Their own members, also, who
should return to them, they voted not to admit till satisfied concerning
the reason of their absence.

Charles made a declaration to the peers who attended him, that he
expected from them no obedience to any commands which were not warranted
by the laws of the land. The peers answered this declaration by a
protest, in which they declared their resolution to obey no commands
but such as were warranted by that authority.[**] By these deliberate
engagements, so worthy of an English prince and English nobility, they
meant to confound the furious and tumultuary resolutions taken by the
parliament.

     * May, book ii. p. 59.

     ** Rush vol. v. p. 626, 627. May, book ii. p. 86. Warwick,
     p. 210.

The queen, disposing of the crown jewels in Holland, had been enabled to
purchase a cargo of arms and ammunition. Part of these, after escaping
many perils, arrived safely to the king. His preparations were not near
so forward as those of the parliament. In order to remove all jealousy,
he had resolved that their usurpations and illegal pretensions should be
apparent to the whole world; and thought that to recover the confidence
of the people was a point much more material to his interest, than
the collecting of any magazines, stores, or armies which might breed
apprehensions of violent or illegal counsels. But the urgent necessity
of his situation no longer admitted of delay. He now prepared himself
for defence. With a spirit, activity, and address, which neither the one
party apprehended nor the other expected, he employed all the advantages
which remained to him, and roused up his adherents to arms. The
resources of this prince’s genius increased in proportion to his
difficulties, and he never appeared greater than when plunged into the
deepest perils and distresses. From the mixed character, indeed, of
Charles, arose in part the misfortunes in which England was at this time
involved. His political errors, or rather weaknesses, had raised him
inveterate enemies: his eminent moral virtues had procured him zealous
partisans; and between the hatred of the one, and the affections of the
other, was the nation agitated with the most violent convulsions.

That the king might despair of all composition, the parliament sent him
the conditions on which they were willing to some to an agreement.
Their demands, contained in nineteen propositions, amounted to a total
abolition of monarchical authority. They required that no man should
remain in the council who was not agreeable to parliament; that no deed
of the king’s should have validity unless it passed the council, and was
attested under their hand; that all the officers of state and principal
judges should be chosen with consent of parliament, and enjoy their
offices for life; that none of the royal family should marry without
consent of parliament or council; that the laws should be executed
against Catholics; that the votes of Popish lords should be excluded;
that the reformation of the liturgy and church government should, have
place according to advice of parliament; that the ordinance with regard
to the militia be submitted to; that the justice of parliament pass upon
all delinquents; that a general pardon be granted, with such exceptions
as should be advised by parliament that the forts and castles be
disposed of by consent of parliament; and that no peer be made but with
consent of both houses.[*]

“Should I grant these demands,” said the king in reply, “I may be waited
on bareheaded; I may have my hand kissed; the title of majesty may be
continued to me; and ‘the king’s authority, signified by both houses,’
may still be the style of your commands; I may have swords and maces
carried before me, and please myself with the sight of a crown and
sceptre, (though even these twigs would not long flourish when the stock
upon which they grew was dead;) but as to true and real power, I should
remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king.”[**]
War on any terms was esteemed, by the king and all the counsellors,
preferable to so ignominious a peace. Charles accordingly resolved to
support his authority by arms. “His towns,” he said, “were taken from
him, his ships, his arms, his money; but there still remained to him
a good cause, and the hearts of his loyal subjects, which, with God’s
blessing, he doubted not would recover all the rest.” Collecting,
therefore, some forces, he advanced southwards; and at Nottingham he
erected his royal standard, the open signal of discord and civil war
throughout the kingdom.

     * Rush. vol. v. p. 722. May, book ii. p. 54.

     ** Rush. vol. v, p. 728. Warwick, p, 189.



CHAPTER LVI.



CHARLES I.

{1642.} When two names so sacred in the English constitution as those of
king and parliament were placed in opposition, no wonder the people
were divided in their choice, and were agitated with the most violent
animosities and factions.

The nobility and more considerable gentry, dreading a total confusion
of rank from the fury of the populace, enlisted themselves in defence of
the monarch, from whom they received and to whom they communicated their
lustre. Animated with the spirit of loyalty derived from their ancestors
they adhered to the ancient principles of the constitution, and valued
themselves on exerting the maxims, as well as inheriting the possessions
of the old English families. And while they passed their time mostly at
their country seats, they were surprised to hear of opinions prevailing
with which they had ever been unacquainted, and which implied not a
limitation, but an abolition almost total of monarchical authority.

The city of London, on the other hand, and most of the great
corporations, took part with the parliament, and adopted with zeal those
democratical principles, on which the pretensions of that assembly were
founded. The government of cities, which even under absolute monarchies
is commonly republican, inclined them to this party: the small
hereditary influence which can be retained over the industrious
inhabitants of towns, the natural independence of citizens, and the
force of popular currents over those more numerous associations of
mankind; all these causes gave their authority to the new principles
propagated throughout the nation. Many families, too, which had lately
been enriched by commerce, saw with indignation that, notwithstanding
their opulence, they could not raise themselves to a level with the
ancient gentry: they therefore adhered to a power by whose success they
hoped to acquire rank and consideration.[*] And the new splendor and
glory of the Dutch commonwealth, where liberty so happily supported
industry, made the commercial part af the nation desire to see a like
form of government established in England.

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 4.

The genius of the two religions, so closely at this time interwoven
with politics, corresponded exactly to these divisions. The Presbyterian
religion was new, republican, and suited to the genius of the populace:
the other had an air of greater show and ornament, was established on
ancient authority, and bore an affinity to the kingly and aristocratical
parts of the constitution. The devotees of Presbytery became of course
zealous partisans of the parliament: the friends of the Episcopal church
valued themselves on defending the rights of monarchy.

Some men also there were of liberal education, who, being either
careless or ignorant of those disputes bandied about by the clergy of
both sides, aspired to nothing but an easy enjoyment of life, amidst
the jovial entertainment and social intercourse of their companions. All
these flocked to the king’s standard, where they breathed a freer air,
and were exempted from that rigid preciseness and melancholy austerity
which reigned among the parliamentary party.

Never was a quarrel more unreal than seemed at first than between the
contending parties: almost every advantage lay against the royal cause.
The king’s revenue had been seized from the beginning by the parliament,
who issued out to him from time to time small sums for his present
subsistence; and as soon as he withdrew to York, they totally stopped
all payments. London, and all the seaports, except Newcastle, being in
their hands, the customs yielded them a certain and considerable supply
of money; and all contributions, loans, and impositions were more easily
raised from the cities, which possessed the ready money, and where men
lived under their inspection, than they could be levied by the king in
those open countries which after some time declared for him.

The seamen naturally followed the disposition of the sea ports to which
they belonged: and the earl of Northumberland, lord admiral, having
embraced the party of the parliament, had appointed, at their desire,
the earl of Warwick to be his lieutenant; who at once established his
authority in the fleet, and kept the entire dominion of the sea in the
hands of that assembly.

All the magazines of arms and amunition were from the first seized by
the parliament; and their fleet intercepted the greater part of those
which were sent by the queen from Holland. The king was obliged, in
order to arm his followers, to borrow the weapons of the train bands,
under promise of restoring them as soon as peace should be settled in
the kingdom.

The veneration for parliaments was at this time extreme throughout the
nation.[*] The custom of reviling those assemblies for corruption, as
it had no pretence, so was it unknown during all former ages. Few or no
instances of their encroaching ambition or selfish claims had hitherto
been observed. Men considered the house of commons in no other light
than as the representatives of the nation, whose interest was the same
with that of the public, who were the eternal guardians of law and
liberty, and whom no motive, but the necessary defence of the people,
could ever engage in an opposition to the crown. The torrent, therefore,
of general affection ran to the parliament. What is the great advantage
of popularity, the privilege of affixing epithets fell of course to that
party. The king’s adherents were the wicked and the malignant: their
adversaries were the godly and the well-affected. And as the force of
the cities was more united than that of the country, and at once gave
shelter and protection to the parliamentary party, who could easily
suppress the royalists in their neighborhood, almost the whole kingdom,
at the commencement of the war, seemed to be in the hands of the
parliament.[**]

     * Walker p 336.

     ** Warwick, p. 318.

What alone gave the king some compensation for all the advantages
possessed by his adversaries was, the nature and qualities of his
adherents. More bravery and activity were hoped for from the generous
spirit of the nobles and gentry, than from the base disposition of the
multitude. And as the men of estates, at their own expense, levied and
armed their tenants, besides an attachment to their masters, greater
force and courage were to be expected in these rustic troops, than in
the vicious and enervated populace of cities.

The neighboring states of Europe, being engaged in violent wars, little
interested themselves in these civil commotions; and this island enjoyed
the singular advantage (for such it surely was) of fighting out its own
quarrels without the interposition of foreigners. France, from policy,
had fomented the first disorders in Scotland, had sent over arms to
the Irish rebels, and continued to give countenance to the English
parliament; Spain, from bigotry, furnished the Irish with some supplies
of money and arms. The prince of Orange, closely allied to the crown,
encouraged English officers who served in the Low Countries to enlist in
the king’s army: the Scottish officers, who had been formed in Germany
and in the late commotions, chiefly took part with the parliament.

The contempt entertained by the parliament for the king’s party was
so great, that it was the chief cause of pushing matters to such
extremities against him; and many believed that he never would attempt
resistance, but must soon yield to the pretensions, however enormous,
of the two houses. Even after his standard was erected, men could not be
brought to apprehend the danger of a civil war; nor was it imagined
that he would have the imprudence to enrage his implacable enemies, and
render his own condition more desperate, by opposing a force which was
so much superior. The low condition in which he appeared at Nottingham
confirmed all these hopes. His artillery, though far from numerous,
had been left at York for want of horses to transport it. Besides the
trained bands of the county, raised by Sir John Digby, the sheriff, he
had not gotten together above three hundred infantry. His cavalry, in
which consisted his chief strength, exceeded not eight hundred, and
were very ill provided with arms. The forces of the parliament lay at
Northampton, within a few days’ march of him, and consisted of above six
thousand men, well armed and well appointed. Had these troops advanced
upon him, they must soon have dissipated the small force which he had
assembled. By pursuing him in his retreat, they had so discredited his
cause and discouraged his adherents, as to have forever prevented his
collecting an army able to make head against them. But the earl of
Essex, the parliamentary general, had not yet received any orders from
his masters.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 1, 2.

What rendered them so backward, after such precipitate steps as they
had formerly taken, is not easily explained. It is probable, that in the
extreme distress of his party consisted the present safety of the
king. The parliament hoped that the royalists, sensible of their feeble
condition, and convinced of their slender resources, would disperse
of themselves, and leave their adversaries a victory so much the more
complete and secure, as it would be gained without the appearance of
force, and without bloodshed. Perhaps, too, when it became necessary
to make the concluding step, and offer barefaced violence to their
sovereign, their scruples and apprehensions, though not sufficient
to overcome their resolutions, were able to retard the execution of
them.[*]

Sir Jacob Astley, whom the king had appointed major-general of his
intended army, told him, that he could not give him assurance but he
might be taken out of his bed, if the rebels should make a brisk attempt
to that purpose. All the king’s attendants were full of well-grounded
apprehensions. Some of the lords having desired that a message might
be sent to the parliament with overtures to a treaty, Charles, who well
knew that an accommodation in his present condition meant nothing but a
total submission, hastily broke up the council lest this proposal should
be further insisted on. But next day the earl of Southampton, whom no
one could suspect of base or timid sentiments, having offered the
same advice in council it was hearkened to with more coolness and
deliberation. He urged, that though such a step would probably
increase the insolence of the parliament, this was so far from being an
objection, that such dispositions must necessarily turn to the advantage
of the royal cause: that if they refused to treat, which was more
probable, the very sound of peace was so popular, that nothing could
more disgust the nation than such haughty severity: that if they
admitted of a treaty, their proposals, considering their present
situation, would be so exorbitant, as to open the eyes of their most
partial adherents, and turn the general favor to the king’s party: and
that, at worst, time might be gained by this expedient, and a delay of
the imminent danger with which the king was at present threatened.[**]

Charles, on assembling the council, had declared against all advances
towards an accommodation; and had said that, having now nothing left
him but his honor, this last possession he was resolved steadily to
preserve, and rather to perish than yield any further to the pretensions
of his enemies:[***] but, by the unanimous desire of the counsellors,
he was prevailed on to embrace Southampton’s advice. That nobleman,
therefore, with Sir John Colepeper and Sir William Uvedale, was
despatched to London with offers of a treaty.[****]

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 18.

     ** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 7.

     *** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 7.

     **** Rush. vol. v. p. 784.

The manner in which they were received gave little hopes of success.
Southampton was not allowed by the peers to take his seat; but was
ordered to deliver his message to the usher, and immediately to depart
the city: the commons showed little better disposition towards Colepeper
and Uvedale.[*] Both houses replied, that they could admit of no
treaty with the king till he took down his standard, and recalled
his proclamations, in which the parliament supposed themselves to
be declared traitors. The king, by a second message, denied any
such intention against the two houses; but offered to recall these
proclamations, provided the parliament agreed to recall theirs, in which
his adherents were declared traitors. They desired him, in return,
to dismiss his forces, to reside with his parliament, and to give up
delinquents to their justice; that is abandon himself and his friends to
the mercy of his enemies.[**] Both parties flattered themselves that,
by these messages and replies, they had gained the ends which they
proposed.[***] The king believed that the people were made sufficiently
sensible of the parliament’s insolence and aversion to peace: the
parliament intended, by this vigor in their resolutions, to support the
vigor of their military operations.

The courage of the parliament was increased, besides their great
superiority of force, by two recent events which had happened in their
favor. Goring was governor of Portsmouth, the best fortified town in the
kingdom, and by its situation of great importance. This man seemed to
have rendered himself an implacable enemy to the king, by betraying,
probably magnifying, the secret cabals of the army; and the parliament
thought that his fidelity to them might on that account be entirely
depended on. But the same levity of mind still attended him, and the
same disregard to engagements and professions. He took underhand his
measures with the court, and declared against the parliament. But though
he had been sufficiently supplied with money, and long before knew his
danger, so small was his foresight, that he had left the place entirely
destitute of provisions, and in a few days he was obliged to surrender
to the parliamentary forces.[****]

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 10.

     ** Rush. vol. v. p. 786. Dugdale, p. 102.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 59.

     **** Rush, vol. v. p. 683. Whitlocke, p. 60. Clarendon, vol.
     iii. p. 19.

The marquis of Hertford was a nobleman of the greatest quality and
character in the kingdom, and, equally with the king, descended by a
female from Henry VII. During the reign of James, he had attempted,
without having obtained the consent of that monarch, to marry Arabella
Stuart, a lady nearly related to the crown; and, upon discovery of his
intentions, had been obliged for some time to fly the kingdom. Ever
after, he was looked on with an evil eye at court, from which in a great
measure he withdrew; and living in an independent manner, he addicted
himself entirely to literary occupations and amusements. In proportion
as the king declined in popularity, Hertford’s character flourished with
the people; and when this parliament assembled, no nobleman possessed
more general favor and authority. By his sagacity he soon perceived that
the commons, not content with correcting the abuses of government,
were carried, by the natural current of power and popularity, into the
opposite extreme, and were committing violations, no less dangerous
than the former, upon the English constitution. Immediately he devoted
himself to the support of the king’s falling authority, and was
prevailed with to be governor to the young prince and reside at court;
to which, in the eyes of all men, he gave by his presence a new lustre
and authority. So high was his character for mildness and humanity, that
he still preserved, by means of these popular virtues, the public
favor; and every one was sensible of the true motive of his change.
Notwithstanding his habits of ease and study, he now exerted himself
in raising an army for the king; and being named general of the western
counties, where his interest chiefly lay, he began to assemble forces
in Somersetshire. By the assistance of Lord Seymour, Lord Paulet, John
Digby, son of the earl of Bristol, Sir Francis Hawley, and others, he
had drawn together some appearance of an army; when the parliament,
apprehensive of the danger, sent the earl of Bedford with a considerable
force against him. On his approach Hertford was obliged to retire into
Sherborne Castle; and finding that place untenable, he himself passed
over into Wales, leaving Sir Ralph Hopton, Sir John Berkeley, Digby
and other officers, with their horse, consisting of about a hundred and
twenty, to march into Cornwall, in hopes of finding that county better
prepared for their reception.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. vi. p. 2, 3, etc.

All the dispersed bodies of the parliamentary army were now ordered to
march to Northampton; and the earl of Essex who had joined them, found
the whole amount to fifteen thousand men.[*] The king, though his camp
had been gradually reënforced from all quarters, was sensible that he
had no army which could cope with so formidable a force, and he thought
it prudent, by slow marches, to retire to Derby, thence to Shrewsbury,
in order to countenance the levies which his friends were making in
those parts. At Wellington, a day’s march from Shrewsbury, he made a
rendezvous of all his forces, and caused his military orders to be read
at the head of every regiment. That he might bind himself by reciprocal
ties, he solemnly made the following declaration before his whole army.

“I do promise, in the presence of Almighty God, and as I hope for his
blessing and protection, that I will, to the utmost of my power, defend
and maintain the true reformed Protestant religion established in the
church of England, and, by the grace of God, in the same will live and
die.

“I desire that the laws may ever be the measure of my government, and
that the liberty and property of the subject may be preserved by them
with the same care as my own just rights. And if it please God, by his
blessing on this army raised for my necessary defence, to preserve me
from the present rebellion, I do solemnly and faithfully promise, in the
sight of God, to maintain the just privileges and freedom of parliament,
and to govern, to the utmost of my power, by the known statutes and
customs of the kingdom; and particularly to observe inviolably the laws
to which I have given my consent this parliament. Meanwhile, if this
emergence, and the great necessity to which I am driven, beget any
violation of law, I hope it shall be imputed by God and man to the
authors of this war; not to me, who have so earnestly labored to
preserve the peace of the kingdom.

“When I willingly fail in these particulars, I shall expect no aid or
relief from man, nor any protection from above: but in this resolution
I hope for the cheerful assistance of all good men, and am confident of
the blessing of Heaven.”[*]

     * Whitlocke, p. 60., Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 15, 17.
     Dugdale, p. 104.

Though the concurrence of the church undoubtedly increased the king’s
adherents, it may safely be affirmed, that the high monarchical
doctrines, so much inculcated by the clergy, had never done him any real
service. The bulk of that generous train of nobility and gentry who now
attended the king in his distresses, breathed the spirit of liberty as
well as of loyalty; and in the hopes alone of his submitting to a legal
and limited government, were they willing in his defence to sacrifice
their lives and fortunes.

While the king’s army lay at Shrewsbury, and he was employing himself in
collecting money, which he received, though in no great quantities, by
voluntary contributions, and by the plate of the universities, which was
sent him, the news arrived of an action, the first which had happened in
these wars, and where he was successful.

On the appearance of commotions in England, the princes Rupert and
Maurice, sons of the unfortunate palatine, had offered their service to
the king; and the former at that time commanded a body of horse, which
had been sent to Worcester in order to watch the motions of Essex, who
was marching towards that city. No sooner had the prince arrived, than
he saw some cavalry of the enemy approaching the gates. Without delay,
he briskly attacked them, as they were defiling from a lane, and forming
themselves. Colonel Sandys, who led them, and who fought with valor,
being mortally wounded, fell from his horse. The whole party was routed,
and was pursued above a mile. The prince, hearing of Essex’s approach,
retired to the main body.[*] This rencounter, though in itself of
small importance, mightily raised the reputation of the royalists, and
acquired to Prince Rupert the character of promptitude and courage;
qualities which he eminently displayed during the whole course of the
war.

The king, on mustering his army, found it amount to ten thousand men.
The earl of Lindesey, who in his youth had sought experience of military
service in the Low Countries,[**] was general; Prince Rupert commanded
the horse; Sir Jacob Astley, the foot; Sir Arthur Aston, the dragoons;
Sir John Heydon, the artillery. Lord Bernard Stuart was at the head of a
troop of guards. The estates and revenue of this single troop, according
to Lord Clarendon’s computation, were at least equal-to those of all
the members who at the commencement of war voted in both houses. Their
servants, under the command of Sir William Killigrew, made another
troop, and always marched with their masters.[***]

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 25. May. book iii. p. 10.

     ** He was then Lord Willoughby.

     *** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 41. Warwick, p. 231.

With this army the king left Shrewsbury, resolving to give battle as
soon as possible to the army of the parliament, which he heard was
continually augmenting by supplies from London. In order to bring on
an action, he directed his march towards the capital, which he knew the
enemy would not abandon to him. Essex had now received his instructions.
The import of them was, to present a most humble petition to the king,
and to rescue him and the royal family from those desperate malignants
who had seized their persons.[*] Two days after the departure of the
royalists from Shrewsbury, he left Worcester. Though it be commonly easy
in civil wars to get intelligence, the armies were within six miles of
each other ere either of the generals was acquainted with the approach of
his enemy. Shrewsbury and Worcester, the places from which they set out,
are not above twenty miles distant; yet had the two armies marched ten
days in this mutual ignorance: so much had military skill, during a long
peace, decayed in England.[**]

     * Whitlocke, p. 59. Clarendon, vol. iii, p. 27, 28, etc.

     ** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 44.

The royal army lay near Banbury; that of the parliament, at Keinton, in
the county of Warwick. Prince Rupert sent intelligence of the enemy’s
approach. Though the day was far advanced, the king resolved upon the
attack: Essex drew up his men to receive him. Sir Faithful Fortescue,
who had levied a troop for the Irish wars, had been obliged to serve in
the parliamentary army, and was now posted on the left wing, commanded
by Ramsay, a Scotchman. No sooner did the king’s army approach, than
Fortescue, ordering his troop to discharge their pistols in the ground,
put himself under the command of Prince Rupert. Partly from this
incident, partly from the furious shock made upon them by the prince,
that whole wing of cavalry immediately fled, and were pursued for two
miles. The right wing of the parliament’s army had no better success.
Chased from their ground by Wilmot and Sir Arthur Aston, they also took
to flight. The king’s body of reserve, commanded by Sir John Biron,
judging, like raw soldiers, that all was over, and impatient to have
some share in the action, heedlessly followed the chase which their
left wing had precipitately led them. Sir William Balfour, who commanded
Essex’s reserve, perceived the advantage: he wheeled about upon the
king’s infantry, now quite unfurnished of horse; and he made great
havoc among them. Lindesey, the general, was mortally wounded, and
taken prisoner. His son, endeavoring his rescue, fell likewise into the
enemy’s hands. Sir Edmund Verney, who carried the king’s standard, was
killed, and the standard taken; but it was afterwards recovered. In this
situation, Prince Rupert, on his return, found affairs. Every thing
bore the appearance of a defeat, instead of a victory, with which he had
hastily flattered himself. Some advised the king to leave the field; but
that prince rejected such pusillanimous counsel. The two armies
faced each other for some time, and neither of them retained courage
sufficient for a new attack. All night they lay under arms; and next
morning found themselves in sight of each other. General, as well as
soldier, on both sides, seemed averse to renew the battle. Essex first
drew off, and retired to Warwick. The king returned to his former
quarters. Five thousand men are said to have been found dead on the
field of battle, and the loss of the two armies, as far as we can judge
by the opposite accounts, was nearly equal. Such was the event of this
first battle fought at Keinton, or Edge Hill.[*]

Some of Essex’s horse, who had been driven off the field in the
beginning of the action, flying to a great distance, carried news of a
total defeat, and struck a mighty terror into the city and parliament.
After a few days, a more just account arrived; and then the parliament
pretended to a complete victory.[**] The king also, on his part, was not
wanting to display his advantages; though, except the taking of Banbury
a few days after, he had few marks of victory to boast of. He continued
his march, and took possession of Oxford, the only town in his dominions
which was altogether at his devotion.

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 44, etc. May, book iii. p. 16,
     etc.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 61. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 59.

After the royal army was recruited and refreshed, as the weather still
continued favorable, it was again put in motion, A party of horse
approached to Reading, of which Martin was appointed governor by the
parliament. Both governor and garrison were seized with a panic, and
fled with precipitation to London. The king, hoping that every thing
would yield before him, advanced with his whole army to Reading. The
parliament, who, instead of their fond expectations that Charles would
never be able to collect an army, had now the prospect of a civil
war, bloody, and of uncertain event; were further alarmed at the near
approach of the royal army, while their own forces lay at a distance.
They voted an address for a treaty. The king’s nearer approach to
Colebroke quickened their advances for peace. Northumberland and
Pembroke, with three commoners, presented the address of both houses; in
which they besought his majesty to appoint some convenient place where
he might reside, till committees could attend him with proposals. The
king named Windsor, and desired that their garrison might be removed,
and his own troops admitted into that castle.[*]

Meanwhile Essex, advancing by hasty marches, had arrived at London. But
neither the presence of his army, nor the precarious hopes of a treaty,
retarded the king’s approaches. Charles attacked at Brentford two
regiments quartered there, and after a sharp action beat them from that
village, and took, about five hundred prisoners. The parliament had sent
orders to forbear all hostilities, and had expected the same from the
king; though no stipulations to that purpose had been mentioned by their
commissioners. Loud complaints were raised against this attack, as if
it had been the most apparent perfidy and breach of treaty.[**] Inflamed
with resentment, as well as anxious for its own safety, the city marched
its trained bands in excellent order, and joined the army under Essex.
The parliamentary army now amounted to above twenty-four thousand men,
and was much superior to that of the king.[***] After both armies had
faced each other for some time, Charles drew off and retired to Reading,
thence to Oxford.

While the principal armies on both sides were kept in inaction by
the winter season, the king and parliament were employed in real
preparations for war, and in seeming advances towards peace. By means of
contributions or assessments levied by the horse, Charles maintained his
cavalry; by loans and voluntary presents sent him from all parts of the
kingdom, he supported his infantry: but the supplies were still very
unequal to the necessities under which he labored.[****]

     * Whitlocke, p. 62. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 73.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 62. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 75.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 62.

     **** Clarendon, vol. iii p. 87.

The parliament had much greater resources for money; and had by
consequence every military preparation in much greater order and
abundance. Besides an imposition levied in London, amounting to the
five-and-twentieth part of every one’s substance, they established on
that city a weekly assessment of ten thousand pounds, and another of
twenty-three thousand five hundred and eighteen on the rest of the
kingdom.[*] And as their authority was at present established in most
counties, they levied these taxes with regularity; though they amounted
to sums much greater than the nation had formerly paid to the public.

{1643.} The king and parliament sent reciprocally their demands; and a
treaty commenced, but without any cessation of hostilities, as had at
first been proposed. The earl of Northumberland and four members of the
lower house came to Oxford, as commissioners.[**] In this treaty, the
king perpetually insisted on the reëstablishment of the crown in
its legal powers, and on the restoration of his constitutional
prerogative:[***] the parliament still required new concessions, and
a further abridgment of regal authority, as a more effectual remedy to
their fears and jealousies. Finding the king supported by more forces
and a greater party than they had ever looked for, they seemingly
abated somewhat of those extravagant conditions which they had formerly
claimed; but their demands were still too high for an equal treaty.
Besides other articles, to which a complete victory alone could entitle
them, they required the king, in express terms, utterly to abolish
Episcopacy; a demand which before they had only insinuated; and
they required, that all other ecclesiastical controversies should be
determined by their assembly of divines; that is, in the manner the most
repugnant to the inclinations of the king and all his partisans. They
insisted, that he should submit to the punishment of his most faithful
adherents. And they desired him to acquiesce in their settlement of the
militia, and to confer on their adherents the entire power of the sword.
In answer to the king’s proposal, that his magazines, towns, forts,
and ships should be restored to him, the parliament required that
they should be put into such hands as they could confide in:[****] the
nineteen propositions which they formerly sent to the king, showed their
inclination to abolish monarchy: they only asked at present the power of
doing it.

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 171.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 6*.

     *** Rush, vol. vi. p. 202.

     **** Rush, vol. vi. p. 166. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 119.

And having now in the eye of the law been guilty of treason, by
levying war against their sovereign, it is evident that their fears
and jealousies must on that account have multiplied extremely, and have
rendered their personal safety, which they interwove with the safety of
the nation, still more incompatible with the authority of the monarch.
Though the gentleness and lenity of the king’s temper might have insured
them against schemes of future vengeance, they preferred, as is no doubt
natural, an independent security, accompanied too with sovereign power,
to the station of subjects, and that not entirely guarded from all
apprehensions of danger.[*] [12]

The conferences went no further than the first demand on each side.
The parliament, finding that there was no likelihood of coming to any
agreement, suddenly recalled their commissioners.

A military enterprise, which they had concerted early in the spring, was
immediately undertaken. Reading, the garrison of the king’s which lay
nearest to London, was esteemed a place of considerable strength in that
age, when the art of attacking towns was not well understood in Europe,
and was totally unknown in England. The earl of Essex sat down before
this place with an army of eighteen thousand men, and carried on the
siege by regular approaches. Sir Arthur Aston, the governor, being
wounded, Colonel Fielding succeeded to the command. In a little time,
the town was found to be no longer in a condition of defence; and though
the king approached with an intention of obliging Essex to raise the
siege, the disposition of the parliamentary army was so strong as
rendered the design impracticable. Fielding, therefore, was contented to
yield the town, on condition that he should bring off all the garrison
with the honors of war, and deliver up deserters. This last article was
thought so ignominious and so prejudicial to the king’s interests, that
the governor was tried by a council of war, and condemned to lose his
life for consenting to it. His sentence was afterwards remitted by the
king.[**]

     * See note L, at the end of the volume.

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 265, etc. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 237,
     238, etc.

Essex’s army had been fully supplied with all necessaries from London;
even many superfluities and luxuries were sent them by the care of the
zealous citizens; yet the hardships which they suffered from the siege
during so early a season had weakened them to such a degree, that they
were no longer fit for any new enterprise. And the two armies for some
time encamped in the neighborhood of each other, without attempting on
either side any action of moment.

Besides the military operations between the principal armies which lay
in the centre of England, each county, each town, each family almost,
was divided within itself; and the most violent convulsions shook the
whole kingdom. Throughout the winter, continual efforts had every where
been made by each party to surmount its antagonist; and the English,
roused from the lethargy of peace, with eager though unskilful hands
employed against their fellow-citizens their long-neglected weapons. The
furious zeal for liberty and Presbyterian discipline, which had hitherto
run uncontrolled throughout the nation, now at last excited an equal
ardor for monarchy and Episcopacy, when the intention of abolishing
these ancient modes of government was openly avowed by the parliament.
Conventions for neutrality, though in several counties they had been
entered into and confirmed by the most solemn oaths, yet being voted
illegal by the two houses, were immediately broken;[*] and the fire of
discord was spread into every quarter. The altercation of discourse, the
controversies of the pen, but above all the declamations of the pulpit,
indisposed the minds of men towards each other, and propagated the
blind rage of party.[**] Fierce, however, and inflamed as were the
dispositions of the English, by a war both civil and religious, that
great destroyer of humanity, all the events of this period are less
distinguished by atrocious deeds either of treachery or cruelty, than
were ever any intestine discords which had so long a continuance; a
circumstance which will be found to reflect great praise on the national
character of that people now so unhappily roused to arms.

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 137, 139.

     ** Dugdale, p. 95.

In the north, Lord Fairfax commanded for the parliament, the earl of
Newcastle for the king. The latter nobleman began those associations
which were afterwards so much practised in other parts of the kingdom.
He united in a league for the king the counties of Northumberland,
Cumberland, Westmoreland, and the bishopric, and engaged some time after
other counties in the same association. Finding that Fairfax, assisted
by Hotham and the garrison of Hull, was making progress in the southern
parts of Yorkshire, he advanced with a body of four thousand men, and
took possession of York. At Tadcaster, he attacked the forces of the
parliament, and dislodged them: but his victory was not decisive. In
other rencounters, he obtained some inconsiderable advantages. But the
chief benefit which resulted from his enterprises was, the establishing
of the king’s authority in all the northern provinces.

In another part of the kingdom, Lord Broke was killed by a shot while he
was taking possession of Lichfield for the parliament.[*] After a sharp
combat near Stafford, between the earl of Northampton and Sir John Gell,
the former, who commanded the king’s forces, was killed while he fought
with great valor; and his forces, discouraged by his death, though they
had obtained the advantage in the action, retreated into the town of
Stafford.[**]

Sir William Waller began to distinguish himself among the generals of
the parliament. Active and indefatigable in his operations, rapid and
enterprising, he was fitted by his genius to the nature of the
war; which, being managed by raw troops, conducted by unexperienced
commanders, afforded success to every bold and sudden undertaking. After
taking Winchester and Chichester, he advanced towards Gloucester, which
was in a manner blockaded by Lord Herbert, who had levied considerable
forces in Wales for the royal party.[***] While he attacked the Welsh on
one side, a sally from Gloucester made impression on the other. Herbert
was defeated; five hundred of his men killed on the spot; a thousand
taken prisoners; and he himself escaped with some difficulty to Oxford.
Hereford, esteemed a strong town, defended by a considerable garrison,
was surrendered to Waller, from the cowardice of Colonel Price, the
governor. Tewkesbury underwent the same fate. Worcester refused him
admittance; and Waller, without placing any garrisons in his new
conquests, retired to Gloucester, and he thence joined the army under
the earl of Essex.[****]

     * He had taken possession of Lichfield, and was viewing from
     a window St. Chad’s cathedral, in which a party of the
     royalists had fortified themselves. He was cased in complete
     armor, but was shot through the eye by a random ball. Lord
     Broke was a zealous Puritan; and had formerly said, that he
     hoped to see with his eyes the ruin of all the cathedrals of
     England. It was a superstitious remark of the royalists,
     that he was killed on St. Chad’s day by a shot from St.
     Chad’s cathedral, which pierced that very eye by which he
     hoped to see the ruin of all cathedrals. Dugdale, p. 118.
     Clarendon, etc.

     * Whitlocke, p. 66. Rush. vol. vi. p. 152. Clarendon, vol.
     iii. p. 151.

     * Rush. vol. vi. D. 92, 100.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 262.

[Illustration: 1-671-gloucester.jpg GLOUCESTER]

But the most memorable actions of valor during this winter season were
performed in the west. When Sir Ralph Hopton with his small troop,
retired into Cornwall before the earl of Bedford, that nobleman,
despising so inconsiderable a force, abandoned the pursuit, and
committed the care of suppressing the royal party to the sheriffs of the
county. But the affections of Cornwall were much inclined to the
king’s service. While Sir Richard Duller and Sir Alexander Carew lay
at Launceston, and employed themselves in executing the parliament’s
ordinance for the militia, a meeting of the county was assembled
at Truro; and after Hopton produced his commission from the earl of
Hertford, the king’s general, it was agreed to execute the laws, and
to expel these invaders of the county. The train bands were accordingly
levied, Launceston taken, and all Cornwall reduced to peace and to
obedience under the king.

It had been usual for the royal party, on the commencement of these
disorders, to claim on all occasions the strict execution of the laws,
which, they knew, were favorable to them; and the parliament, rather
than have recourse to the plea of necessity, and avow the transgression
of any statute, had also been accustomed to warp the laws, and by forced
constructions to interpret them in their own favor.[*]

     * Clarerdon, vol. iii. p. 130.

But though the king was naturally the gainer by such a method of
conducting war, and it was by favor of law that the train, bands were
raised in Cornwall, it appeared that those maxims were now prejudicial
to the royal party. These troops could not legally, without their
own consent, be carried out of the county; and consequently it was
impossible to push into Devonshire the advantage which they had
obtained. The Cornish royalists, therefore, bethought themselves of
levying a force which might be more serviceable. Sir Bevil Granville,
the most beloved man of that country, Sir Ralph Hopton, Sir Nicholas
Slanning, Arundel, and Trevannion undertook as their own charges to
raise an army for the king; and their great interest in Cornwall soon
enabled them to effect their purpose. The parliament, alarmed at this
appearance of the royalists, gave a commission to Ruthven, a Scotchman,
governor of Plymouth, to march with all the forces to Dorset. Somerset,
and Devon, and make an entire conquest of Cornwall. The earl of Stamford
followed him at some distance With a considerable supply. Ruthven,
having entered Cornwall by bridges thrown over the Tamar, hastened to
an action, lest Stamwood should join him, and obtain the honor of that
victory which he looked for with assurance. The royalists in like manner
were impatient to bring the affair to a decision before Ruthven’s army
should receive so considerable a reënforcement. The battle was fought
on Bradoc Down; and the king’s forces, though inferior in number, gave
a total defeat to their enemies. Ruthven, with a few broken troops,
fled to Saltash; and when that town was taken, he escaped with some
difficulty, and almost alone, into Plymouth. Stamford retired, and
distributed his forces into Plymouth and Exeter.

Notwithstanding these advantages, the extreme want both of money and
ammunition under which the Cornish royalists labored, obliged them to
enter into a convention of neutrality with the parliamentary party
in Devonshire; and this neutrality held all the winter season. In
the spring, it was broken by the authority of the two houses; but war
recommenced with great appearance of disadvantage to the king’s party.
Stamford, having assembled a strong body of near seven thousand men,
well supplied with money, provisions, and ammunition, advanced upon the
royalists, who were not half his number, and were oppressed by every
kind of necessity. Despair, joined to the natural gallantry of these
troops, commanded by the prime gentry of the county, made them resolve
by one vigorous effort, to overcome all these disadvantages. Stamford
being encamped on the top of a high hill near Stratum, they attacked him
in four divisions, at five in the morning, having lain all night under
arms. One division was commanded by Lord Mohun and Sir Ralph Hopton,
another by Sir Bevil Granville and Sir John Berkeley, a third by
Slanning and Trevannion, a fourth by Basset and Godolphin. In this
manner the action began; the king’s forces pressing with vigor
those four ways up the hill, and their enemies obstinately defending
themselves. The fight continued with doubtful success, till word was
brought to the chief officers of the Cornish, that their ammunition
was spent to less than four barrels of powder. This defect, which they
concealed from the soldiers, they resolved to supply by their valor.
They agreed to advance without firing till they should reach the top of
the hill, and could be on equal ground with the enemy. The courage of
the officers was so well seconded by the soldiers, that the royalists
began on all sides to gain ground. Major-General Chidley, who commanded
the parliamentary army, (for Stamford kept at a distance,) failed not
in his duty; and when he saw his men recoil, he himself advanced with a
good stand of pikes, and piercing into the thickest of the enemy, was
at last overpowered by numbers, and taken prisoner. His army, upon
this disaster, gave ground apace; insomuch that the four parties of the
royalists, growing nearer and nearer as they ascended, at length met
together upon the plain at the top; where they embraced with great
joy, and signalized their victory with loud shouts and mutual
congratulations.[*]

After this success, the attention both of king and parliament was turned
towards the west, as to a very important scene of action. The king sent
thither the marquis of Hertford and Prince Maurice, with a reënforcement
of cavalry; who, having joined the Cornish army, soon overran the county
of Devon; and advancing into that of Somerset, began to reduce it
to obedience. On the other hand, the parliament, having supplied
Sir William Waller, in whom they much trusted, with a complete army,
despatched him westwards, in order to check the progress of the
royalists. After some skirmishes, the two armies met at Lansdown, near
Bath, and fought a pitched battle, with great loss on both sides, but
without any decisive event.[**] The gallant Granville was there killed;
and Hopton, by the blowing up of some powder, was dangerously hurt.

     * Rush, vol. vi. p. 267, 273. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 269,
     279.

     ** Rush, vol. vi. p. 284. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 282.

The royalists next attempted to march eastwards, and to join their
forces to the king’s at Oxford: but Waller hung on their rear, and
infested their march till they reached the Devizes. Reënforced by
additional troops, which flocked to him from all quarters, he so much
surpassed the royalists in number, that they durst no longer continue
their march, or expose themselves to the hazard of an action. It was
resolved that Hertford and Prince Maurice should proceed with the
cavalry; and, having procured a reënforcement from the king, should
hasten back to the relief of their friends. Waller was so confident of
taking this body of infantry, now abandoned by the horse, that he wrote
to the parliament that their work was done, and that by the next post
he would inform them of the number and quality of the prisoners. But the
king, even before Hertford’s arrival, hearing of the great difficulties
to which his western army was reduced, had prepared a considerable body
of cavalry, which he immediately despatched to their succor under the
command of Lord Wilmot. Waller drew up on Roundway Down, about two miles
from the Devizes, and advancing with his cavalry to fight Wilmot, and
prevent his conjunction with the Cornish infantry, was received with
equal valor by the royalists. After a sharp action, he was totally
routed, and flying with a few horse, escaped to Bristol. Wilmot, seizing
the enemy’s cannon, and having joined his friends whom he came to
relieve, attacked Waller’s infantry with redoubled courage, drove them
off the field, and routed and dispersed the whole army.[*]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 285. Clarendoo. vol. iii. p. 29l.

This important victory, following so quick after many other successes,
struck great dismay into the parliament, and gave an alarm to their
principal army, commanded by Essex. Waller exclaimed loudly against
that general, for allowing Wilmot to pass him, and proceed without any
interruption to the succor of the distressed infantry at the Devizes.
But Essex, finding that his army fell continually to decay after the
siege of Reading, was resolved to remain upon the defensive; and the
weakness of the king, and his want of all military stores, had also
restrained the activity of the royal army. No action had happened in
that part of England, except one skirmish, which of itself was of no
great consequence, and was rendered memorable by the death alone of the
famous Hambden.

Colonel Urrey, a Scotchman, who served in the parliamentary army, having
received some disgust, came to Oxford and offered his services to the
king. In order to prove the sincerity of his conversion, he informed
Prince Rupert of the loose disposition of the enemy’s quarters, and
exhorted him to form some attempt upon them. The prince, who was
entirely fitted for that kind of service, falling suddenly upon the
dispersed bodies of Essex’s army, routed two regiments of cavalry
and one of infantry, and carried his ravages within two miles of
the general’s quarters. The alarm being given, every one mounted on
horseback, in order to pursue the prince, to recover the prisoners,
and to repair the disgrace which the army had sustained. Among the rest
Hambden, who had a regiment of infantry that lay at a distance, joined
the horse as a volunteer; and overtaking the royalists on Chalgrave
field, entered into the thickest of the battle. By the bravery and
activity of Rupert, the king’s troops were brought off, and a great
booty, together with two hundred prisoners, was conveyed to Oxford. But
what most pleased the royalists was the expectation that some disaster
had happened to Hambden their capital and much dreaded enemy. One of the
prisoners taken in the action, said, that he was confident Mr. Hambden
was hurt: for he saw him, contrary to his usual custom, ride off the
field before the action was finished; his head hanging down, and his
hands leaning upon his horse’s neck. Next day the news arrived, that he
was shot in the shoulder with a brace of bullets, and the bone broken.
Some days after, he died, in exquisite pain, of his wound; nor could his
whole party, had their army met with a total overthrow, have been thrown
into greater consternation. The king himself so highly valued him, that,
either from generosity or policy, he intended to have sent him his own
surgeon to assist at his cure.[*] [13]

     * See note M, at the end of the volume.

Many were the virtues and talents of this eminent personage; and his
valor during the war had shone out with a lustre equal to that of
the other accomplishments by which he had ever been distinguished.
Affability in conversation; temper, art, and eloquence in debate;
penetration and discernment in counsel; industry, vigilance, and
enterprise in action; all these praises are unanimously ascribed to
him by historians of the most opposite parties. His virtue, too, and
integrity in all the duties of private life, are allowed to have been
beyond exception: we must only be cautious, notwithstanding his generous
zeal for liberty, not hastily to ascribe to him the praises of a good
citizen. Through all the horrors of civil war, he sought the abolition
of monarchy, and subversion of the constitution; an end which, had
it been attainable by peaceful measures, ought carefully to have been
avoided by every lover of his country. But whether, in the pursuit
of this violent enterprise, he was actuated by private ambition or by
honest prejudices, derived from the former exorbitant powers of royalty,
it belongs not to an historian of this age, scarcely even to an intimate
friend, positively to determine.

Essex, discouraged by this event, dismayed by the total rout of Waller,
was further informed, that the queen, who landed at Burlington Bay, had
arrived at Oxford, and had brought from the north a reënforcement of
three thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse. Dislodging from Thame
and Aylesbury, where he had hitherto lain, he thought proper to
retreat nearer to London; and he showed to his friends his broken and
disheartened forces, which a few months before he had led into the field
in so flourishing a condition. The king, freed from this enemy, sent his
army westward under Prince Rupert; and, by their conjunction with the
Cornish troops, a formidable force, for numbers as well as reputation
and valor, was composed. That an enterprise correspondent to men’s
expectations might be undertaken, the prince resolved to lay siege
to Bristol, the second town for riches and greatness in the kingdom.
Nathaniel Fiennes, son of Lord Say he himself, as well as his father, a
great parliamentary leader was governor, and commanded a garrison of two
thousand five hundred foot, and two regiments, one of horse, another
of dragoons. The fortifications not being complete or regular, it was
resolved by Prince Rupert to storm the city, and next morning, with
little other provisions suitable to such a work besides the courage of
the troops, the assault began. The Cornish in three divisions attacked
the west side, with a resolution which nothing could control; but though
the middle division had already mounted the wall, so great was the
disadvantage of the ground, and so brave the defence of the garrison,
that in the end the assailants were repulsed with a considerable loss
both of officers and soldiers. On the prince’s side, the assault was
conducted with equal courage, and almost with equal loss, but with
better success. One party, led by Lord Grandison, was indeed beaten
off, and the commander himself mortally wounded: another, conducted
by Colonel Bellasis, met with a like fate: but Washington, with a less
party, finding a place in the curtain weaker than the rest, broke
in, and quickly made room for the horse to follow. By this irruption,
however, nothing but the suburbs was yet gained: the entrance into the
town was still more difficult: and by the loss already sustained, as
well as by the prospect of further danger, every one was extremely
discouraged; when, to the great joy of the army, the city beat a parley.
The garrison was allowed to march out with their arms and baggage,
leaving their cannon, ammunition, and colors. For this instance
of cowardice, Fiennes was afterwards tried by a court martial, and
condemned to lose his head; but the sentence was remitted by the
general.[*]

     * Rush. vol. vi p. 284. Clarendon, vol. iii. p 293, 294,
     etc.

Great complaints were made of violences exercised on the garrison,
contrary to the capitulation. An apology was made by the royalists,
as if these were a retaliation for some violences committed on their
friends at the surrender of Reading. And under pretence of like
retaliations, but really from the extreme animosity of the parties, were
such irregularities continued during the whole course of the war.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 297

The loss sustained by the royalists in the assault of Bristol was
considerable. Five hundred excellent soldiers perished. Among those of
condition were Grandison, Slanning, Trevannion, and Moyle; Bellasis,
Ashley, and Sir John Owen were wounded; yet was the success upon the
whole so considerable, as mightily raised the courage of the one party
and depressed that of the other. The king, to show that he was not
intoxicated with good fortune, nor aspired to a total victory over the
parliament, published a manifesto, in which he renewed the protestation
formerly taken, with great solemnity, at the head of his army, and
expressed his firm intention of making peace upon the reestablishment
of the constitution. Having joined the camp at Bristol, and sent Prince
Maurice with a detachment into Devonshire, he deliberated how to employ
the remaining forces in an enterprise of moment. Some proposed, and
seemingly with reason, to march directly to London, where every
thing was in confusion, where the army of the parliament was baffled,
weakened, and dismayed, and where, it was hoped, either by an
insurrection of the citizens, by victory, or by treaty, a speedy end
might be put to the civil disorders. But this undertaking, by reason of
the great number and force of the London militia, was thought by many
to be attended with considerable difficulties. Gloucester, lying within
twenty miles, presented an easier, yet a very important conquest. It was
the only remaining garrison possessed by the parliament in those parts.
Could that city be reduced, the king held the whole course of the Severn
under his command; the rich and malecontent counties of the west, having
lost all protection from their friends, might be forced to pay
high contributions as an atonement for their disaffection; an open
communication could be preserved between Wales and these new conquests;
and half of the kingdom being entirely freed from the enemy, and thus
united into one firm body, might be employed in reestablishing the
king’s authority throughout the remainder. These were the reasons for
embracing that resolution, fatal, as it was ever esteemed to the royal
party.[*]

The governor of Gloucester was one Massey, a soldier of fortune, who,
before he engaged with the parliament, had offered his service to the
king; and as he was free from the fumes of enthusiasm, by which most of
the officers on that side were intoxicated, he would lend an ear, it
was presumed, to proposals for accommodation. But Massey was resolute
to preserve an entire fidelity to his masters; and though no enthusiast
himself, he well knew how to employ to advantage that enthusiastic
spirit so prevalent in his city and garrison. The summons to surrender
allowed two hours for an answer; but before that time expired, there
appeared before the king two citizens, with lean, pale, sharp, and
dismal visages; faces so strange and uncouth, according to Clarendon,
figures so habited and accoutred, as at once moved the most severe
countenance to mirth, and the most cheerful heart to sadness; it seemed
impossible that such messengers could bring less than a defiance.
The men, without any circumstance of duty or good manners, in a pert,
shrill, undismayed accent, said that they brought an answer from the
godly city of Gloucester; and extremely ready were they, according to
the historian, to give insolent and seditious replies to any question;
as if their business were chiefly, by provoking the king, to make him
violate his own safe-conduct. The answer from the city was in these
words: “We, the inhabitants, magistrates, officers, and soldiers within
the garrison of Gloucester, unto his majesty’s gracious message, return
this humble answer: that we do keep this city, according to our
oaths and allegiance, to and for the use of his majesty and his royal
posterity; and do accordingly conceive ourselves wholly bound to obey
the commands of his majesty, signified by both houses of parliament, and
are resolved, by God’s help, to keep this city accordingly.”[**] After
these preliminaries, the siege was resolutely undertaken by the army,
and as resolutely sustained by the citizens and garrison.

     * Whitlocke, p. 69. May, book iii. p. 91.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 287. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 315. May,
     book iii. p. 96.

When intelligence of the siege of Gloucester arrived in London, the
consternation among the inhabitants was as great as if the enemy were
already at their gates. The rapid progress of the royalists threatened
the parliament with immediate subjection: the factions and discontents
among themselves in the city, and throughout the neighboring counties,
prognosticated some dangerous division or insurrection. Those
parliamentary leaders, it must be owned, who had introduced such mighty
innovations into the English constitution, and who had projected so much
greater, had not engaged in an enterprise which exceeded their courage
and capacity. Great vigor, from the beginning, as well as wisdom, they
had displayed in all their counsels; and a furious, headstrong body,
broken loose from the restraint of law, had hitherto been retained in
subjection under their authority, and firmly united by zeal and passion,
as by the most legal and established government. A small committee,
on whom the two houses devolved their power, had directed all their
military operations, and had preserved a secrecy in deliberation, and
a promptitude in execution, beyond what the king, notwithstanding the
advantages possessed by a single leader, had ever been able to attain.
Sensible that no jealousy was by their partisans entertained against
them, they had on all occasions exerted an authority much more despotic
than the royalists, even during the pressing exigencies of war,
could with patience endure in their sovereign. Whoever incurred their
displeasure, or was exposed to their suspicions, was committed to
prison, and prosecuted under the notion of delinquency: after all the
old jails were full, many new ones were erected; and even the ships were
crowded with the royalists, both gentry and clergy, who anguished below
decks, and perished in those unhealthy confinements: they imposed taxes,
the heaviest and of the most unusual nature, by an ordinance of the two
houses; they voted a commission for sequestrations; and they seized,
wherever they had power, the revenues of all the king’s party;[*] and
knowing that themselves, and all their adherents, were, by resisting
the prince, exposed to the penalties of law, they resolved, by a severe
administration, to overcome those terrors, and to retain the people in
obedience by penalties of a more immediate execution. In the beginning
of this summer, a combination, formed against them in London, had
obliged them to exert the plenitude of their authority.

     * The king afterwards copied from this example; but, as the
     far greater part of the nobility and landed gentry were his
     friends, he reaped much less profit from this measure.

Edward Waller, the first refiner of English versification, was a
member of the lower house; a man of considerable fortune, and not more
distinguished by his poetical genius than by his parliamentary talents,
and by the politeness and elegance of his manners. As full of keen
satire and invective in his eloquence, as of tenderness and panegyric
in his poetry, he caught the attention of his hearers, and exerted the
utmost boldness in blaming those violent counsels by which the commons
were governed. Finding all opposition within doors to be fruitless, he
endeavored to form a party without, which might oblige the parliament
to accept of reasonable conditions, and restore peace to the nation.
The charms of his conversation, joined to his character of courage and
integrity, had procured him the entire confidence of Northumberland,
Conway, and every eminent person of either sex who resided in London.
They opened their breasts to him without reserve, and expressed their
disapprobation of the furious measures pursued by the commons, and their
wishes that some expedient could be found for stopping so impetuous a
career. Tomkins, Waller’s brother-in-law, and Chaloner, the intimate
friend of Tomkins, had entertained like sentiments: and as the
connections of these two gentlemen lay chiefly in the city, they
informed Waller that the same abhorrence of war prevailed there among
all men of reason and moderation. Upon reflection, it seemed not
impracticable that a combination might be formed between the lords and
citizens; and, by mutual concert, the illegal taxes be refused, which
the parliament, without the royal assent, imposed on the people. While
this affair was in agitation, and lists were making of such as they
conceived to be well affected to their design, a servant of Tomkins, who
had overheard their discourse, immediately carried intelligence to
Pym. Waller, Tomkins, and Chaloner were seized, and tried by a court
martial.[*]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 326. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 249, 250,
     etc.

They were all three condemned, and the two latter executed on gibbets
erected before their own doors. A covenant, as a test, was taken by
the lords and commons, and imposed on their army, and on all who lived
within their quarters. Besides resolving to amend and reform their
lives, the covenanters their vow, that they will never lay down their
arms so long as the Papists, now in open war against the parliament,
shall by force of arms be protected from justice; they express their
abhorrence of the late conspiracy; and they promise to assist to the
utmost the forces raised by both houses, against the forces levied by
the king.[*]

Waller, as soon as imprisoned, sensible of the great danger into which
he had fallen, was so seized with the dread of death, that all his
former spirit deserted him; and he confessed whatever he knew, without
sparing his most intimate friends, without regard to the confidence
reposed in him, without distinguishing between the negligence of
familiar conversation and the schemes of a regular conspiracy. With
the most profound dissimulation, he counterfeited such remorse of
conscience, that his execution was put off, out of mere Christian
compassion, till he might recover the use of his understanding. He
invited visits from the ruling clergy of all sects; and while he
expressed his own penitence, he received their devout exhortations with
humility and reverence, as conveying clearer conviction and information
than in his life he had ever before attained. Presents too, of which,
as well as of flattery, these holy men were not insensible, were
distributed among them, as a small retribution for their prayers and
ghostly counsel. And by all these artifices, more than from any regard
to the beauty of his genius, of which, during that time of furious cant
and faction, small account would be made, he prevailed so far as to have
his life spared, and a fine of ten thousand pounds accepted in lieu of
it.[**]

The severity exercised against the conspiracy, or rather project of
Waller, increased the authority of the parliament, and seemed to insure
them against like attempts for the future. But by the progress of the
king’s arms, the defeat of Sir William Waller, the taking of Bristol,
the siege of Gloucester, a cry for peace was renewed, and with more
violence than ever. Crowds of women, with a petition for that purpose,
flocked about the house, and were so clamorous and, importunate, that
orders were given for dispersing them; and some of the females were
killed in the fray.[***] Bedford, Holland, and Conway had deserted the
parliament, and had gone to Oxford; Clare and Lovelace had followed
them.[****] Northumberland had retired to his country seat: Essex
himself showed extreme dissatisfaction, and exhorted the parliament to
make peace.[v]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 325. Clarendon, vol. ii. p. 255.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 66. Rush. vol. vi. p. 330. Clarendon, vol.
     iii p. 253, 254, etc.

     *** Rush. vol. vi. p. 357.

     **** Whitlocke, p. 67.

     v Rush. vol. vi. p. 290.

The upper house sent down terms of accommodation, more moderate than
had hitherto been insisted on. It even passed by a majority among the
commons, that these proposals should be transmitted to the King. The
zealots took the alarm. A petition against peace was framed in the city,
and presented by Pennington, the factious mayor. Multitudes attended
him, and renewed all the former menaces against the moderate party.[*]
The pulpits thundered; and rumors were spread of twenty thousand Irish
who had landed, and were to cut the throat of every Protestant.[**]
The majority was again turned to the other side, and all thoughts of
pacification being dropped, every preparation was made for resistance,
and for the immediate relief of Gloucester, on which the parliament was
sensible all their hopes of success in the war did so much depend.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 356.

     ** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 320. Rush, vol. vi. p. 588.

Massey, resolute to make a vigorous defence, and having under his
command a city and garrison ambitious of the crown of martyrdom, had
hitherto maintained the siege with courage and abilities, and had
much retarded the advances of the king’s army. By continual sallies he
infested them in their trenches, and gained sudden advantages over them:
by disputing every inch of ground, he repressed the vigor and alacrity
of their courage, elated by former successes. His garrison, however, was
reduced to the last extremity; and he failed not from time to time
to inform the parliament that, unless speedily relieved, he should be
necessitated, from the extreme want of provisions and ammunition, to
open his gates to the enemy.

The parliament, in order to repair their broken condition, and put
themselves in a posture of defence, now exerted to the utmost their
power and authority. They voted that an army should be levied under Sir
William Waller, whom, notwithstanding his misfortunes, they loaded with
extraordinary caresses. Having associated in their cause the counties of
Hertford, Essex, Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincoln, and Huntingdon,
they gave the earl of Manchester a commission to be general of the
association, and appointed an army to be levied under his command. But,
above all, they were intent that Essex’s army, on which their whole
fortune depended, should be put in a condition of marching against
the king. They excited afresh their preachers to furious declamations
against the royal cause. They even employed the expedient of pressing,
though abolished by a late law, for which they had strenuously
contended.[*] And they engaged the city to send four regiments of its
militia to the relief of Gloucester. All shops, meanwhile, were ordered
to be shut; and every man expected, with the utmost anxiety, the event
of that important enterprise.[**]

Essex, carrying with him a well-appointed army of fourteen thousand men,
took the road of Bedford and Leicester: and though inferior in cavalry,
yet, by the mere force of conduct and discipline, he passed over those
open champaign country, and defended himself from the enemy’s horse, who
had advanced to meet him, and who infested him during his whole march.
As he approached to Gloucester, the king was obliged to raise the siege,
and open the way for Essex to enter that city. The necessities of the
garrison were extreme. One barrel of powder was their whole stock
of ammunition remaining; and their other provisions were in the
same proportion. Essex had brought with him military stores; and the
neighboring country abundantly supplied him with victuals of every kind.
The inhabitants had carefully concealed all provisions from the king’s
army, and, pretending to be quite exhausted, had reserved their stores
for that cause which they so much favored.[***]

The chief difficulty still remained. Essex dreaded a battle with the
king’s army, on account of its great superiority in cavalry; and he
resolved to return, if possible, without running that hazard. He
lay five days at Tewkesbury, which was his first stage after leaving
Gloucester; and he feigned, by some preparations, to point towards
Worcester. By a forced march during the night, he reached Cirencester,
and obtained the double advantage of passing unmolested an open country,
and of surprising a convoy of provisions which lay in that town.[****]
Without delay he proceeded towards London; but when he reached Newbury,
he was surprised to find that the king, by hasty marches, had arrived
before him, and was already possessed of the place.

     * Rush, vol. vi. p. 292.

     ** Rush, vol. vi. p. 292.

     *** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 344.

     **** Rush, vol. vi. p 292.

An action was now unavoidable; and Essex prepared for it with presence
of mind, and not without military conduct. On both sides the battle was
fought with desperate valor and a steady bravery. Essex’s horse
were several times broken by the king’s, but his infantry maintained
themselves in firm array; and, besides giving a continued fire, they
presented an invincible rampart of pikes against the furious shock of
Prince Rupert, and those gallant troops of gentry of which the royal
cavalry was chiefly composed. The militia of London especially, though
utterly unacquainted with action, though drawn hut a few days before
from their ordinary occupations, yet having learned all military
exercises, and being animated with unconquerable zeal for the cause
in which they were engaged, equalled on this occasion what could be
expected from the most veteran forces. While the armies were engaged
with the utmost ardor, night put an end to the action and left the
victory undecided. Next morning, Essex proceeded on his march; and
though his rear was once put in some disorder by an incursion of the
king’s horse, he reached London in safety, and received applause for his
conduct and success in the whole enterprise. The king followed him on
his march; and having taken possession of Reading after the earl left
it, he there established a garrison, and straitened by that means London
and the quarters of the enemy.[*]

     * Rush, vol. vi. p. 293. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 347.

In the battle of Newbury, on the part of the king, besides the earls
of Sunderland and Carnarvon, two noblemen of promising hopes, was
unfortunately slain, to the regret of every lover of ingenuity and
virtue throughout the kingdom, Lucius Gary, Viscount Falkland, secretary
of state. Before assembling the present parliament, this man, devoted
to the pursuits of learning and to the society of all the polite and
elegant, had enjoyed himself in every pleasure which a fine genius, a
generous disposition, and an opulent fortune could afford. Called into
public life, he stood foremost in all attacks on the high prerogatives
of the crown; and displayed that masculine eloquence and undaunted
love of liberty, which, from his intimate acquaintance with the sublime
spirits of antiquity, he had greedily imbibed. When civil convulsions
proceeded to extremities, and it became requisite for him to choose his
side, he tempered the ardor of his zeal, and embraced the defence of
those limited powers which remained to monarchy, and which he deemed
necessary for the support of the English constitution. Still anxious,
however, for his country, he seems to have dreaded the too prosperous
success of his own party as much as of the enemy; and among his intimate
friends often after a deep silence and frequent sighs, he would with a
sad accent reiterate the word peace. In excuse for the too free exposing
of his person, which seemed unsuitable in a secretary of state, he
alleged, that it became him to be more active than other men in all
hazardous enterprises, lest his impatience for peace might bear the
imputation of cowardice or pusillanimity. From the commencement of the
war, his natural cheerfulness and vivacity became clouded; and even his
usual attention to dress, required by his birth and station gave way to
a negligence which was easily observable. On the morning of the battle
in which he fell, he had shown some care of adorning his person; and
gave for a reason, that the enemy should not find his body in any
slovenly, indecent situation. “I am weary,” subjoined he, “of the times,
and foresee much misery to my country; but believe that I shall be out
of it ere night.”[*] This excellent person was but thirty-four years of
age when a period was thus put to his life.

     * Whitlocke, p. 70. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 350, 351, etc.

The loss sustained on both sides in the battle of Newbury, and the
advanced season, obliged the armies to retire into winter quarters.

In the north, during this summer, the great interest and popularity of
the earl, now created marquis of Newcastle, had raised a considerable
force for the king; and great hopes of success were entertained from
that quarter. There appeared, however, in opposition to him, two men
on whom the event of the war finally depended, and who began about this
time to be remarked for their valor and military conduct. These were Sir
Thomas Fairfax, son of the lord of that name, and Oliver Cromwell. The
former gained a considerable advantage at Wakefield over a detachment
of royalists, and took General Goring prisoner: the latter obtained a
victory at Gainsborough over a party commanded by the gallant Cavendish,
who perished in the action. But both these defeats of the royalists were
more than sufficiently compensated by the total rout of Lord Fairfax
at Atherton Moor, and the dispersion of his army. After this victory,
Newcastle, with an army of fifteen thousand men, sat down before Hull.
Hotham was no longer governor of this place. That gentleman and his son
partly from a jealousy entertained of Lord Fairfax, partly repenting of
their engagements against the king, had entered into a correspondence
with Newcastle, and had expressed an intention of delivering Hull into
his hands. But their conspiracy being detected, they were arrested and
sent prisoners to London; where, without any regard to their former
services, they fell, both of them, victims to the severity of the
parliament.[*]

Newcastle, having carried on the attack of Hull for some time, was beat
off by a sally of the garrison, and suffered so much that he thought
proper to raise the siege. About the same time, Manchester, who advanced
from the eastern associated counties, having joined Cromwell and
young Fairfax, obtained a considerable victory over the royalists at
Horncastle; where the two officers last mentioned gained renown by their
conduct and gallantry. And though fortune had thus balanced her favors,
the king’s party still remained much superior in those parts of England;
and had it not been for the garrison of Hull, which kept Yorkshire in
awe, a conjunction of the northern forces with the army in the south
might have been made, and had probably enabled the king, instead
of entering on the unfortunate, perhaps imprudent, enterprise of
Gloucester, to march directly to London, and put an end to the war.[**]

     * Rush, vol. vi. p. 275.

     ** Warwick, p. 261. Walker, p. 278. laudable.

While the military enterprises were carried on with vigor in England,
and the event became every day more doubtful, both parties cast their
eye towards the neighboring kingdoms, and sought assistance for the
finishing of that enterprise in which their own forces experienced such
furious opposition. The parliament had recourse to Scotland; the king to
Ireland.

When the Scottish Covenanters obtained that end for which they so
earnestly contended, the establishment of Presbyterian discipline in
their own country, they were not satisfied, but indulged still in an
ardent passion for propagating, by all methods, that mode of religion in
the neighboring kingdoms. Having flattered themselves, in the fervor of
their zeal, that by supernatural assistances they should be enabled to
carry their triumphant covenant to the gates of Rome itself, it behoved
them first to render it prevalent in England, which already showed so
great a disposition to receive it. Even in the articles of pacification,
they expressed a desire of uniformity in worship with England; and the
king, employing general expressions, had approved of this inclination as
pious and no sooner was there an appearance of a rupture, than the English
parliament, in order to allure that nation into a close confederacy,
openly declared their wishes of ecclesiastical reformation, and of
imitating the example of their northern brethren.[*] When war was
actually commenced, the same artifices were used, and the Scots beheld,
with the utmost impatience, a scene of action of which they could not
deem themselves indifferent spectators. Should the king, they said, be
able by force of arms to prevail over the parliament of England, and
reestablish his authority in that powerful kingdom, he will undoubtedly
retract all those concessions which, with so many circumstances of
violence and indignity, the Scots have extorted from him. Besides a
sense of his own interest, and a regard to royal power, which has been
entirely annihilated in this country, his very passion for prelacy and
for religious ceremonies must lead him to invade a church which he has
ever been taught to regard as anti-Christian and unlawful. Let us but
consider who the persons are that compose the factions now so furiously
engaged in arms. Does not the parliament consist of those very men who
have ever opposed all war with Scotland, who have punished the authors
of our oppressions, who have obtained us the redress of every grievance,
and who, with many honorable expressions, have conferred on us an
ample reward for our brotherly assistance? And is not the court full
of Papists, prelates, malignants; all of them zealous enemies to
our religious model, and resolute to sacrifice their lives for their
idolatrous establishments? Not to mention our own necessary security can
we better express our gratitude to Heaven for that pure light with which
we are, above all nations, so eminently distinguished, than by conveying
the same divine knowledge to our unhappy neighbors, who are wading
through a sea of blood in order to attain it? These were in Scotland the
topics of every conversation: with these doctrines the pulpits echoed:
and the famous curse of Meroz, that curse so solemnly denounced and
reiterated against neutrality and moderation, resounded from all
quarters.[**]

     * Rush, vol. vi. p. 390. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 68.

     ** Curse ye Meroz, said the angel of the Lord; curse ye
     bitterly the inhabitants thereof: because they came not to
     the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the
     mighty. Judges, chap. v ver. 23.

The parliament of England had ever invited the Scots, from the
commencement of the civil dissensions, to interpose their mediation,
which they knew would be so little favorable to the king: and the king
for that very reason had ever endeavored, with the least offensive
expressions, to decline it.[*] Early this spring, the earl of Loudon,
the chancellor, with other commissioners, and attended by Henderson,
a popular and intriguing preacher, was sent to the king at Oxford, and
renewed the offer of mediation; but with the same success as before. The
commissioners were also empowered to press the king on the article of
religion, and to recommend to him the Scottish model of ecclesiastic
worship and discipline. This was touching Charles in a very tender
point: his honor his conscience, as well as his interest, he believed to
be intimately concerned in supporting prelacy and the liturgy.[**] [14]
He begged the commissioners, therefore, to remain satisfied with the
concessions which he had made to Scotland; and having modelled their own
church according to their own principles, to leave their neighbors in
the like liberty, and not to intermeddle with affairs of which they
could not be supposed competent judges.[***]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 398.

     ** See note N, at the end of the volume.

     *** Bush. vol. vi. p. 462.

The divines of Oxford, secure, as they imagined, of a victory, by means
of their authorities from church history, their quotations from the
fathers, and their spiritual arguments, desired a conference with
Henderson, and undertook by dint of reasoning to convert that great
apostle of the north: but Henderson, who had ever regarded as impious
the least doubt with regard to his own principles, and who knew of a
much better way to reduce opponents than by employing any theological
topics, absolutely refused all disputation or controversy. The English
divines went away full of admiration at the blind assurance and bigoted
prejudices of the man: he on his part was moved with equal wonder at
their obstinate attachment to such palpable errors and delusions.

By the concessions which the king had granted to Scotland, it became
necessary for him to summon a parliament once in three years; and in
June of the subsequent year was fixed the period for the meeting of that
assembly. Before that time elapsed, Charles flattered himself that
he should be able, by some decisive advantage, to reduce the English
parliament to a reasonable submission, and might then expect with
security the meeting of a Scottish parliament. Though earnestly
solicited by Loudon to summon presently that great council of the
nation, he absolutely refused to give authority to men who had already
excited such dangerous commotions, and who showed still the same
disposition to resist and invade his authority. The commissioners,
therefore, not being able to prevail in any of their demands, desired
the king’s passport for London, where they purposed to confer with the
English parliament;[*] and being likewise denied this request, they
returned with extreme dissatisfaction to Edinburgh.

The office of conservators of the peace was newly erected in Scotland,
in order to maintain the confederacy between the two kingdoms; and
these, instigated by the clergy, were resolved, since they could not
obtain the king’s consent, to summon in his name, but by their own
authority, a convention of states; and to bereave their sovereign of
this article, the only one which remained, of his prerogative. Under
color of providing for national peace, endangered by the neighborhood
of English armies, was a convention called; an assembly which though
it meets with less solemnity, has the same authority as a parliament in
raising money and levying forces. Hamilton, and his brother the earl
of Laneric, who had been sent into Scotland in order to oppose, these
measures, wanted either authority or sincerity; and passively yielded
to the torrent. The general assembly of the church met at the same time
with the convention; and exercising an authority almost absolute over
the whole civil power, made every political consideration yield to their
theological zeal and prejudices.

The English parliament was at that time fallen into great distress
by the progress of the royal arms; and they gladly sent to Edinburgh
commissioners, with ample powers to treat of a nearer union and
confederacy with the Scottish nation. The persons employed were the
earl of Rutland, Sir William Armyne, Sir Henry Vane the younger, Thomas
Hatcher, and Henry Dailey, attended by Marshall and Nye, two clergymen
of signal authority.[**]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 406.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 73. Rush. vol. vi. p. 466. Clarendon, vol.
     iii. p.300

In this negotiation, the man chiefly trusted was Vane, who, in
eloquence, address, capacity, as well as in art and dissimulation, was
not surpassed by any one even during that age, so famous for active
talents. By his persuasion was framed, at Edinburgh, that Solemn League
and Covenant, which effaced all former protestations and vows taken in
both kingdoms, and long maintained its credit and authority. In this
covenant, the subscribers, besides engaging mutually to defend each
other against all opponents bound themselves to endeavor, without
respect of persons the extirpation of Popery and prelacy, superstition,
heresy, schism, and profaneness; to maintain the rights and privileges
of parliaments, together with the king’s authority, and to discover and
bring to justice all incendiaries and malignants.[*]

     * Rush vol. vi. p. 478. Clarendon, vol iii. p. 373.

The subscribers of the covenant vowed also to preserve the reformed
religion established in the church of Scotland; but, by the artifice of
Vane, no declaration more explicit was made with regard to England and
Ireland, than that these kingdoms should be reformed according to
the word of God and the example of the purest churches. The Scottish
zealots, when prelacy was abjured, deemed this expression quite free
from ambiguity, and regarded their own model as the only one which
corresponded in any degree to such a description: but that able
politician had other views; and while he employed his great talents
in overreaching the Presbyterians, and secretly laughed at their
simplicity, he had blindly devoted himself to the maintenance of systems
still more absurd and more dangerous.

In the English parliament there remained some members who, though
they had been induced, either by private ambition or by zeal for civil
liberty, to concur with the majority, still retained an attachment to
the hierarchy, and to the ancient modes of worship. But in the present
danger which threatened their cause, all scruples were laid aside;
and the covenant, by whose means alone they could expect to obtain so
considerable a reënforcement as the accession of the Scottish nation,
was received without opposition. The parliament, therefore, having first
subscribed it themselves, ordered it to be received by all who lived
under their authority.

Great were the rejoicings among the Scots, that they should be the happy
instruments of extending their mode of religion, and dissipating that
profound darkness in which the neighboring nations were involved.
The general assembly applauded this glorious imitation of the piety
displayed by their ancestors who, they said, in three different
applications, during the reign of Elizabeth, had endeavored to engage
the English, by persuasion, to lay aside the use of the surplice,
tippet, and corner-cap.[*] The convention, too, in the height of their
zeal, ordered every one to swear to this covenant, under the penalty
of confiscation; besides what further punishment it should please the
ensuing parliament to inflict on the refusers, as enemies to God, to
the king, and to the kingdom. And being determined that the sword should
carry conviction to all refractory minds, they prepared themselves, with
great vigilance and activity, for their military enterprises. By means
of a hundred thousand pounds, which they received from England; by the
hopes of good pay and warm quarters; not to mention men’s favorable
disposition towards the cause; they soon completed their levies. And
having added to their other forces the troops which they had recalled
from Ireland, they were ready, about the end of the year, to enter
England, under the command of their old general, the earl of Leven, with
an army of above twenty thousand men.[**]

     * Rush., vol. vi. p 388.

     ** Clarendon, vol. iii. p 383.

The king, foreseeing this tempest which was gathering upon him,
endeavored to secure himself by every expedient; and he cast his eye
towards Ireland, in hopes that this kingdom, from which his cause had
already received so much prejudice, might at length contribute somewhat
towards his protection and security.

After the commencement of the Irish insurrection, the English
parliament, though they undertook the suppression of it, had ever been
too much engaged, either in military projects or expeditions at home,
to take any effectual step towards finishing that enterprise. They had
entered, indeed, into a contract with the Scots, for sending over an
army of ten thousand men into Ireland; and in order to engage that
nation in this undertaking, besides giving a promise of pay, they agreed
to put Caricfergus into their hands, and to invest their general with an
authority quite independent of the English government. These troops, so
long as they were allowed to remain, were useful, by diverting the force
of the Irish rebels, and protecting in the north the small remnants of
the British planters. But except this contract with the Scottish nation,
all the other measures of the parliament either were hitherto absolutely
insignificant, or tended rather to the prejudice of the Protestant cause
in Ireland. By continuing their violent persecution, and still more
violent menaces against priests and Papists, they confirmed the Irish
Catholics in their rebellion, and cut off all hopes of indulgence and
toleration. By disposing beforehand of all the Irish forfeitures to
subscribers or adventurers, they rendered all men of property desperate,
and seemed to threaten a total extirpation of the natives.[*] And while
they thus infused zeal and animosity into the enemy, no measure was
pursued which could tend to support or encourage the Protestants, now
reduced to the last extremities.

So great is the ascendant which, from a long course of successes, the
English has acquired over the Irish nation, that though the latter, when
they receive military discipline among foreigners, are not surpassed by
any troops, they have never, in their own country, been able to make any
vigorous effort for the defence or recovery of their liberties. In many
rencounters, the English, under Lord More, Sir William St. Leger, Sir
Frederic Hamilton, and others, had, though under great disadvantages of
situation and numbers, put the Irish to rout, and returned in triumph
to Dublin. The rebels raised the siege of Tredah, after an obstinate
defence made by the garrison.[**] Ormond had obtained two complete
victories at Kilrush and Ross; and had brought relief to all the forts
which were besieged or blockaded in different parts of the kingdom.[***]

     * A thousand acres in Ulster were given to every one that
     subscribed two hundred pounds, in Connaught to the
     subscribers of three hundred and fifty, in Munster for four
     hundred and fifty, in Leinster for six hundred.

     * Rush vol. vi. p. 506.

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 512.

But notwithstanding these successes, even the most common necessaries
of life were wanting to the victorious armies. The Irish, in their wild
rage against the British planters, had laid waste the whole kingdom, and
were themselves totally unfit, from their habitual sloth and ignorance,
to raise any convenience of human life. During the course of six months,
no supplies had come from England, except the fourth part of one small
vessel’s lading. Dublin, to save itself from starving, had been obliged
to send the greater part of its inhabitants to England. The army had
little ammunition, scarcely exceeding forty barrels of gunpowder; not
even shoes or clothes; and for want of food, the soldiers had been
obliged to eat their own horses. And though the distress of the Irish
was not much inferior,[*] besides that they were more hardened against
such extremities, it was but a melancholy reflection, that the two
nations, while they continued their furious animosities, should make
desolate that fertile island, which might serve to the subsistence and
happiness, of both.

The justices and council of Ireland had been engaged, chiefly by the
interest and authority of Ormond, to fall into an entire dependence
on the king. Parsons, Temple, Loftus, and Meredith, who favored the
opposite party, had been removed; and Charles had supplied their place
by others better affected to his service. A committee of the English
house of commons, which had been sent over to Ireland in order to
conduct the affairs of that kingdom, had been excluded the council,
in obedience to orders transmitted from the king.[**] And these were
reasons sufficient, besides the great difficulties under which they
themselves labored, why the parliament was unwilling to send supplies
to an army which, though engaged in a cause much favored by them, was
commanded by their declared enemies. They even intercepted some small
succors sent thither by the king.

The king, as he had neither money, arms, ammunition, nor provisions to
spare from his own urgent wants, resolved to embrace an expedient which
might at once relieve the necessities of the Irish Protestants, and
contribute to the advancement of his affairs in England. A truce with
the rebels, he thought, would enable his subjects in Ireland to provide
for their own support, and would procure him the assistance of the army
against the English parliament. But as a treaty with a people so odious
for their barbarities, and still more for their religion, might be
represented in invidious colors, and renew all those calumnies with
which he had been loaded, it was necessary to proceed with great caution
in conducting that measure. A remonstrance from the army was made to the
Irish council, representing their intolerable necessities, and craving
permission to leave the kingdom: and if that were refused, “We must have
recourse,” they said, “to that first and primary law with which God has
endowed all men; we mean the law of nature, which teaches every creature
to preserve itself.”[***]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 555.

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p 530. Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 167.

     *** Rush. vol. vi. p. 537.

Memorials both to the king and parliament were transmitted by the
justices and council, in which then wants and dangers are strongly set
forth;[*] and though the general expressions in these memorials might
perhaps be suspected of exaggeration, yet from the particular facts
mentioned, from the confession of the English parliament itself,[**]
and from the very nature of things, it is apparent that the Irish
Protestants were reduced to great extremities;[***] and it became
prudent in the king, if not absolutely necessary, to embrace some
expedient which might secure them for a time from the ruin and misery
with which they were threatened.

Accordingly the king gave orders[****] to Ormond and the justices to
conclude, for a year, a cessation of arms with the council of Kilkenny,
by whom the Irish were governed, and to leave both sides in possession
of their present advantages. The parliament, whose business it was to
find fault with every measure adopted by the opposite party, and who
would not lose so fair an opportunity of reproaching the king with his
favor to the Irish Papists, exclaimed loudly against this cessation.
Among other reasons, they insisted upon the divine vengeance, which
England might justly dread for tolerating anti-Christian idolatry,
on pretence of civil contracts and political agreements.[v] Religion,
though every day employed as the engine of their own ambitious purposes,
was supposed too sacred to be yielded up to the temporal interests or
safety of kingdoms.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 538.

     ** Rush, vol. vi. p. 540.

     *** See further, Carte’s Ormond, (vol. iii. No. 113, 127,
     128, 129 134, 136, 141, 144, 149, 158, 159.) All these
     papers put it past doubt, that the necessities of the
     English army in Ireland were extreme. See further, Rush.
     vol. vi. p. 537. and Dugdale, p. *53 *54.

     **** Rush. vol. vi p. 537, 544, 547

     v    Rush, vol. vi. p. 557.

After the cessation, there was little necessity, as well as no means
of subsisting the army in Ireland. The king ordered Ormond, who was
entirely devoted to him, to send over considerable bodies of it to
England. Most of them continued in his service; but a small part, having
imbibed in Ireland a strong animosity against the Catholics, and hearing
the king’s party universally reproached with Popery, soon after deserted
to the Parliament.

Some Irish Catholics came over with these troops, and joined the royal
army, where they continued the same cruelties and disorders to which
they had been accustomed.[*] The parliament voted, that no quarter in
any action should ever be given them; but Prince Rupert, by making some
reprisals, soon repressed this inhumanity.[**]

     * Whitlocke, p 78, 103.

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 680, 788.



CHAPTER LVII



CHARLES I.

{1644.} The king had hitherto, during the course of the war, obtained
many advantages over the parliament, and had raised himself from that
low condition into which he had at first fallen, to be nearly upon an
equal footing with his adversaries. Yorkshire, and all the northern
counties, were reduced by the marquis of Newcastle; and, excepting Hull,
the parliament was master of no garrison in these quarters. In the west,
Plymouth alone, having been in vain besieged by Prince Maurice, resisted
the king’s authority; and had it not been for the disappointment in
the enterprise of Gloucester, the royal garrisons had reached, without
interruption, from one end of the kingdom to the other, and had occupied
a greater extent of ground than those of the parliament. Many of the
royalists flattered themselves, that the same vigorous spirit which had
elevated them to the present height of power would still favor their
progress, and obtain them a final victory over their enemies: but those
who judged more soundly, observed, that, besides the accession of the
whole Scottish nation to the side of the parliament, the very principle
on which the royal successes had been founded, was every day acquired
more and more by the opposite party. The king’s troops, full of gentry
and nobility, had exerted a valor superior to their enemies, and had
hitherto been successful in almost every rencounter; but in proportion
as the whole nation became warlike by the continuance of civil discords,
this advantage was more equally shared; and superior numbers, it was
expected, must at length obtain the victory..The king’s troops, also,
ill paid, and destitute of every necessary, could not possibly be
retained in equal discipline with the parliamentary forces, to whom all
supplies were furnished from unexhausted stores and treasures.[*]

     * Rush, vol vi. p, 560.

The severity of manners, so much affected by these zealous religionists,
assisted their military institutions and the rigid inflexibility of
character by which the austere reformers of church and state were
distinguished, enabled the parliamentary chiefs to restrain their
soldiers within stricter rules and more exact order. And while the
king’s officers indulged themselves even in greater licenses than those
to which during times of peace they had been accustomed, they were apt
both to neglect their military duty, and to set a pernicious example of
disorder to the soldiers under their command.

At the commencement of the civil war, all Englishmen who served abroad
were invited over, and treated with extraordinary respect; and most of
them, being descended of good families, and by reason of their absence
unacquainted with the new principles which depressed the dignity of the
crown, had enlisted under the royal standard. But it is observable, that
though the military profession requires great genius and long experience
in the principal commanders, all its subordinate duties may be
discharged by ordinary talents and from superficial practice. Citizens
and country gentlemen soon became excellent officers; and the generals
of greatest fame and capacity happened, all of them, to spring up on the
side of the parliament. The courtiers and great nobility, in the
other party, checked the growth of any extraordinary genius among the
subordinate officers; and every man there, as in a regular established
government, was confined to the station in which his birth had placed
him.

The king, that he might make preparations during winter for the ensuing
campaign, summoned to Oxford all the members of either house who
adhered to his interests; and endeavored to avail himself of the name
of parliament, so passionately cherished by the English nation.[*] The
house of peers was pretty full; and, beside the nobility employed in
different parts of the kingdom, it contained twice as many members as
commonly voted at Westminster. The house of commons consisted of about
one hundred and forty; which amounted not to above half of the other
house of commons.[**]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 559.

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 566, 574, 575.

So extremely light had government hitherto lain upon the people that
the very name of excise was unknown to them; and among the other evils
arising from these domestic wars was the introduction of that impost
into England. The parliament at Westminster having voted an excise on
beer, wine, and other commodities, those at Oxford imitated the example,
and conferred that revenue on the king. And, in order to enable him
the better to recruit his army, they granted him the sum of one hundred
thousand pounds, to be levied by way of loan upon the subject. The king
circulated privy seals, countersigned by the speakers of both houses,
requiring the loan of particular sums from such persons as lived within
his quarters.[*] Neither party had as yet got above the pedantry of
reproaching their antagonists with these illegal measures.

The Westminster parliament passed a whimsical ordinance, commanding
all the inhabitants of London and the neighborhood to retrench a meal
a week, and to pay the value of it for the support of the public
cause.[**] It is easily imagined that, provided the money were paid,
they troubled themselves but little about the execution of their
ordinance.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 590.

     ** Dugdale, p. 119. Rush. vol. vi. p. 748.

Such was the king’s situation, that, in order to restore peace to the
nation, he had no occasion to demand any other terms than the restoring
of the laws and constitution; the replacing him in the same rights which
had ever been enjoyed by his predecessors; and the reëstablishing on
its ancient basis the whole frame of government, civil as well as
ecclesiastical. And that he might facilitate an end seemingly so
desirable, he offered to employ means equally popular, a universal
act of oblivion, and a toleration or indulgence to tender consciences.
Nothing therefore could contribute more to his interests than every
discourse of peace, and every discussion of the conditions upon which
that blessing could be obtained. For this reason, he solicited a treaty
on all occasions, and desired a conference and mutual examination of
pretensions, even when he entertained no hopes that any conclusion could
possibly result from it.

For like reasons, the parliament prudently avoided, as much as possible,
all advances towards negotiation, and were cautious not to expose too
easily to censure those high terms which their apprehensions or their
ambition made them previously demand of the king. Though their partisans
were blinded with the thickest veil of religious prejudices, they
dreaded to bring their pretensions to the test, or lay them open before
the whole nation. In opposition to the sacred authority of the laws, to
the venerable precedents of many ages, the popular leaders were ashamed
to plead nothing but fears and jealousies, which were not avowed by the
constitution, and for which neither the personal character of Charles,
so full of virtue, nor his situation, so deprived of all independent
authority, seemed to afford any reasonable foundation. Grievances which
had been fully redressed; powers, either legal or illegal, which
had been entirely renounced; it seemed unpopular, and invidious, and
ungrateful, any further to insist on.

The king, that he might abate the universal veneration paid to the name
of parliament, had issued a declaration, in which he set forth all
the tumults by which himself and his partisans in both houses had
been driven from London; and he thence inferred, that the assembly at
Westminster was no longer a free parliament, and, till its liberty
were restored, was entitled to no authority. As this declaration was an
obstacle to all treaty, some contrivance seemed requisite in order to
elude it.

A letter was written in the foregoing spring to the earl of Essex, and
subscribed by the prince, the duke of York, and forty-three noblemen.[*]
They there exhort him to be an instrument of restoring peace, and to
promote that happy end with those by whom he was employed. Essex,
though much disgusted with the parliament, though apprehensive of
the extremities to which they were driving, though desirous of any
reasonable accommodation, yet was still more resolute to preserve an
honorable fidelity to the trust reposed in him. He replied, that as
the paper sent him neither contained any address to the two houses of
parliament, nor any acknowledgment of their authority, he could not
communicate it to them. Like proposals had been reiterated by the king
during the ensuing campaign, and still met with a like answer from
Essex.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 442. Rush, vol vi. p. 566.
     Whitlocke, p. 77.

     ** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 444. Rush. vol. vi. p. 569, 570.
     Whitlocke, p. 94.

In order to make a new trial for a treaty, the king this spring
sent another letter, directed to the lords and commons of parliament
assembled at Westminster: but as he also mentioned in the letter the
lords and commons of parliament assembled at Oxford, and declared, that
his scope and intention was to make provision that all the members
of both houses might securely meet in a full and free assembly, the
parliament, perceiving the conclusion implied, refused all treaty upon
such terms.[*] And the king, who knew what small hopes there were of
accommodation, would not abandon the pretensions which he had assumed;
nor acknowledge the two houses, more expressly, for a free parliament.

This winter the famous Pym died; a man as much hated by one party as
respected by the other. At London, he was considered as the victim to
national liberty, who had abridged his life by incessant labors for the
interests of his country:[**] at Oxford, he was believed to have been
struck with an uncommon disease, and to have been consumed with vermin,
as a mark of divine vengeance, for his multiplied crimes and treasons.
He had been so little studious of improving his private fortune in
those civil wars, of which he had been one principal author, that the
parliament thought themselves obliged from gratitude to pay the debts
which he had contracted.[***] We now return to the military operations,
which, during the winter, were carried on with vigor in several places,
notwithstanding the severity of the season.

The forces brought from Ireland were landed at Mostyne, in North Wales;
and being put under the command of Lord Biron, they besieged and took
the Castles of Hawarden, Beeston, Acton, and Deddington House.[****]
No place in Cheshire or the neighborhood now adhered to the parliament,
except Nantwich; and to this town Biron laid siege during the depth of
winter. Sir Thomas Fairfax, alarmed at so considerable a progress of
the royalists, assembled an army of four thousand men in Yorkshire, and
having joined Sir William Brereton, was approaching to the camp of
the enemy. Biron and his soldiers, elated with successes obtained
in Ireland, had entertained the most profound contempt for the
parliamentary forces; a disposition which, if confined to the army,
may be regarded as a good presage of victory; but if it extend to the
general, is the most probable forerunner of a defeat. Fairfax suddenly
attacked the camp of the royalists. The swelling of the river by a
thaw divided one part of the army from the other. That part exposed to
Fairfax, being beaten from their post, retired into the church of Acton,
and were all taken prisoners; the other retreated with precipitation.[v]

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 449. Whitlocke, p. 79.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 66.

     *** Journ. 13th of February, 1645.

     **** Rush. vol. vi. p. 299.

     v    Rush. vol. vi. p. 301.

And thus was dissipated or rendered useless that body of forces which
had been drawn from Ireland; and the parliamentary party revived in
those north-west counties of England.

The invasion from Scotland was attended with consequences of much
greater importance. The Scots, having summoned in vain the town of
Newcastle, which was fortified by the vigilance of Sir Thomas Glenham,
passed the Tyne, and faced the marquis of Newcastle, who lay at
Durham with an army of fourteen thousand men.[*] After some military
operations, in which that nobleman reduced the enemy to difficulties
for forage and provisions, he received intelligence of a great disaster
which had befallen his forces in Yorkshire. Colonel Bellasis, whom he
had left with a considerable body of troops, was totally routed at
Selby by Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had returned from Cheshire with his
victorious forces.[**] Afraid of being enclosed between two armies,
Newcastle retreated; and Leven having joined Lord Fairfax, they sat down
before York, to which the army of the royalists had retired. But as the
parliamentary and Scottish forces were not numerous enough to invest
so large a town, divided by a river, they contented themselves with
incommoding it by a loose blockade; and affairs remained for some time
in suspense between these opposite armies.[***]

During this winter and spring, other parts of the kingdom had also been
infested with war. Hopton, having assembled an army of fourteen
thousand men, endeavored to break into Sussex, Kent, and the southern
association, which seemed well disposed to receive him. Waller fell upon
him at Cherington, and gave him a defeat of considerable importance. In
another quarter, siege being laid to Newark by the parliamentary forces,
Prince Rupert prepared himself for relieving a town of such consequence,
which alone preserved the communication open between the king’s southern
and northern quarters.[****] With a small force, but that animated by
his active courage, he broke through the enemy, relieved the town, and
totally dissipated that army of the parliament.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 615.

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 618.

     *** Rush. vol. vi. p. 620.

     *** Rush. vol. vi. p. 806.

But though fortune seemed to have divided her favors between the
parties, the king found himself, in the main, a considerable loser by
this winter campaign; and he prognosticated a still worse event from the
ensuing summer. The preparations of the parliament were great, and much
exceeded the slender resources of which he was possessed. In the
eastern association they levied fourteen thousand men, under the earl of
Manchester, seconded by Cromwell.[*] An army of ten thousand men, under
Essex; another of nearly the same force, under Waller, were assembled in
the neighborhood of London. The former was destined to oppose the king:
the latter was appointed to march into the west, where Prince Maurice,
with a small army which went continually to decay, was spending his
time in vain before Lyme, an inconsiderable town upon the sea-coast.
The utmost efforts of the king could not raise above ten thousand men at
Oxford; and on their sword chiefly, during the campaign, were these to
depend for subsistence.

The queen, terrified with the dangers which every way environed her, and
afraid of being enclosed in Oxford, in the middle of the kingdom, fled
to Exeter, where she hoped to be delivered unmolested of the child with
which she was now pregnant, and whence she had the means of an easy
escape into France, if pressed by the forces of the enemy. She knew the
implacable hatred which the parliament, on account of her religion and
her credit with the king, had all along borne her. Last summer, the
commons had sent up to the peers an impeachment of high treason against
her; because, in his utmost distresses, she had assisted her husband
with arms and ammunition which she had bought in Holland.[**] And
had she fallen into their hands, neither her sex, she knew, nor high
station, could protect her against insults at least, if not danger, from
those haughty republicans, who so little affected to conduct themselves
by the maxims of gallantry and politeness.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 621.

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 321.

From the beginning of these dissensions, the parliament, it is
remarkable, had in all things assumed an extreme ascendant over their
sovereign, and had displayed a violence, and arrogated an authority,
which, on his side, would not have been compatible either with his
temper or his situation. While he spoke perpetually of pardoning all
rebels, they talked of nothing but the punishment of delinquents and
malignants: while he offered a toleration and indulgence to tender
consciences, they threatened the utter extirpation of prelacy: to his
professions of lenity they opposed declarations of rigor; and the more
the ancient tenor of the laws inculcated a respectful subordination to
the crown, the more careful were they, by their lofty pretensions, to
cover that defect under which they labored.

Their great advantages in the north seemed to second their ambition,
and finally to promise them success in their unwarrantable enterprises.
Manchester, having taken Lincoln, had united his army to that of Leven
and Fairfax; and York was now closely besieged by their combined forces.
That town, though vigorously defended by Newcastle, was reduced to
extremity; and the parliamentary generals, after enduring great losses
and fatigues, flattered themselves that all their labors would at last
be crowned by this important conquest. On a sudden, they were alarmed by
the approach of Prince Rupert. This gallant commander, having vigorously
exerted himself in Lancashire and Cheshire, had collected a considerable
army; and joining Sir Charles Lucas, who commanded Newcastle’s horse,
hastened to the relief of York with an army of twenty thousand men. The
Scottish and parliamentary generals raised the siege, and drawing up on
Marston Moor, purposed to give battle to the royalists. Prince Rupert
approached the town by another quarter, and, interposing the River
Ouse between him and the enemy, safely joined his forces to those of
Newcastle. The marquis endeavored to persuade him, that, having so
successfully effected his purpose, he ought to be content with the
present advantages, and leave the enemy, now much diminished by their
losses, and discouraged by their ill success, to dissolve by those
mutual dissensions which had begun to take place among them.[*] The
prince, whose martial disposition was not sufficiently tempered with
prudence, nor softened by complaisance, pretending positive orders from
the king, without deigning to consult with Newcastle, whose merits
and services deserved better treatment, immediately issued orders
for battle, and led out the army to Marston Moor.[**] This action was
obstinately disputed between the most numerous armies that were engaged
during the course of these wars; nor were the forces on each side much
different in number. Fifty thousand British troops were led to mutual
slaughter; and the victory seemed long undecided between them. Prince
Rupert, who commanded the right wing of the royalists, was opposed to
Cromwell,[***] who conducted the choice troops of the parliament, inured
to danger under that determined leader, animated by zeal, and confirmed
by the most rigid discipline.

     * Life of the Duke of Newcastle, p. 40.

     ** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 506.

     *** Rush, part iii. vol. ii. p. 633.

After a short combat, the cavalry of the royalists gave way; and such
of the infantry as stood next them were likewise borne down and put to
flight. Newcastle’s regiment alone, resolute to conquer or to perish,
obstinately kept their ground, and maintained, by their dead bodies, the
same order in which they had at first been ranged. In the other wing,
Sir Thomas Fairfax and Colonel Lambert, with some troops, broke through
the royalists; and, transported by the ardor of pursuit, soon reached
their victorious friends, engaged also in pursuit of the enemy. But
after that tempest was past, Lucas, who commanded the royalists in this
wing, restoring order to his broken forces, made a furious attack on the
parliamentary cavalry, threw them into disorder, pushed them upon their
own infantry, and put that whole wing to rout. When ready to seize on
their carriages and baggage, he perceived Cromwell, who was now returned
from pursuit of the other wing. Both sides were not a little surprised
to find that they must again renew the combat for that victory which
each of them thought they had already obtained. The front of the battle
was now exactly counterchanged; and each army occupied the ground which
had been possessed by the enemy at the beginning of the day. This second
battle was equally furious and desperate with the first: but after the
utmost efforts of courage by both parties, victory wholly turned to the
side of the parliament. The prince’s train of artillery was taken; and
his whole army pushed off the field of battle.[*]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 632. Whitlocke, p. 89.

This event was in itself a mighty blow to the king; but proved more
fatal in its consequences. The marquis of Newcastle was entirely lost
to the royal cause. That nobleman the ornament of the court and of
his order, had been engaged, contrary to the natural bent of his
disposition, into these military operations merely by a high sense
of honor and a personal regard to his master. The dangers of war were
disregarded by his valor; but its fatigues were oppressive to his
natural indolence. Munificent and generous in his expense; polite and
elegant in his taste; courteous and humane in his behavior; he brought a
great accession of friends and of credit to the party which he embraced.
But amidst all the hurry of action, his inclinations were secretly drawn
to the soft arts of peace, in which he took delight; and the charms
of poetry music, and conversation often stole him from his rougher
occupations. He chose Sir William Devenant, an ingenious poet, for his
lieutenant-general: the other persons in whom he placed confidence were
more the instruments of his refined pleasures, than qualified for
the business which they undertook; and the severity and application
requisite to the support of discipline, were qualities in which he was
entirely wanting.[*]

When Prince Rupert, contrary to his advice, resolved on this battle, and
issued all orders without communicating his intentions to him, he took
the field, but, he said, merely as a volunteer; and, except by his
personal courage, which shone out with lustre, he had no share in the
action. Enraged to find that all his successful labors were rendered
abortive by one act of fatal temerity, terrified with the prospect of
renewing his pains and fatigue, he resolved no longer to maintain the
few resources which remained to a desperate cause, and thought, that the
same regard to honor which had at first called him to arms, now required
him to abandon a party where he met with such unworthy treatment. Next
morning early, he sent word to the prince, that he was instantly to
leave the kingdom; and without delay, he went to Scarborough, where he
found a vessel, which carried him beyond sea. During the ensuing years,
till the restoration, he lived abroad in great necessity, and saw with
indifference his opulent fortune sequestered by those who assumed the
government of England. He disdained, by submission or composition,
to show obeisance to their usurped authority; and the least favorable
censors of his merit allowed, that the fidelity and services of a whole
life had sufficiently atoned for one rash action, into which his passion
had betrayed him.[**]

Prince Rupert, with equal precipitation, drew off the remains of his
army, and retired into Lancashire. Glenham, in a few days, was obliged
to surrender York; and he marched out his garrison with all the honors
of war.[***] Lord Fairfax, remaining in the city, established his
government in that whole county, and sent a thousand horse into
Lancashire, to join with the parliamentary forces in that quarter, and
attend the motions of the Scottish army marched northwards, in order
to join the earl of Calender, who was advancing with ten thousand
additional forces;[****] and to reduce the town of Newcastle, which they
took by storm: the earl of Manchester, with Cromwell, to whom the fame
of this great victory was chiefly ascribed, and who was wounded in the
action, returned to the eastern association, in order to recruit his
army.[v]

     * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 507, 508. See Warwick.

     ** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 511.

     *** Rush. vol. vi. p. 638. Prince Rupert:

     **** Whitlocke, p. 88

     v Rush. vol. vi. p. 641.

While these events passed in the north, the king’s affairs in the south
were conducted with more success and greater abilities. Ruthven, a
Scotchman, who had been created earl of Brentford, acted under the king
as general.

The parliament soon completed their two armies commanded by Essex and
Waller. The great zeal of the city facilitated this undertaking. Many
speeches were made to the citizens by the parliamentary leaders, in
order to excite their ardor. Hollis, in particular, exhorted them not to
spare, on this important occasion, either their purses, their persons,
or their prayers;[*] and, in general, it must be confessed, they were
sufficiently liberal in all these contributions.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 662.

The two generals had orders to march with their combined armies towards
Oxford; and, if the king retired into that city, to lay siege to it, and
by one enterprise put a period to the war. The king, leaving a numerous
garrison in Oxford, passed with dexterity between the two armies, which
had taken Abingdon, and had enclosed him on both sides. He marched
towards Worcester; and Waller received orders from Essex to follow him
and watch his motions, while he himself marched into the west, in quest
of Prince Maurice. Waller had approached within two miles of the royal
camp, and was only separated from it by the Severn, when he received
intelligence that the king was advanced to Bewdly, and had directed his
course towards Shrewsbury. In order to prevent him, Waller presently
dislodged, and hastened by quick marches to that town while the king,
suddenly returning upon his own footsteps reached Oxford; and having
reënforced his army from that garrison, now in his turn marched out in
quest of Waller. The two armies faced each other at Cropredy Bridge,
near Banbury; but the Charwell ran between them. Next day, the king
decamped, and marched towards Daventry. Waller ordered a considerable
detachment to pass the bridge, with an intention of falling on the rear
of the royalists. He was repulsed, routed, and pursued with considerable
loss.[*] Stunned and disheartened with this blow, his army decayed and
melted away by desertion; and the king thought he might safely leave it,
and march westward against Essex. That general, having obliged Prince
Maurice to raise the siege of Lyme, having taken Weymouth and Taunton,
advanced still in his conquests, and met with no equal opposition. The
king followed him, and having reënforced his army from all quarters,
appeared in the field with an army superior to the enemy. Essex,
retreating into Cornwall, informed the parliament of his danger, and
desired them to send an army which might fall on the king’s rear.
General Middleton received a commission to execute that service; but
came too late. Essex’s army, cooped up in a narrow corner at Lestithiel,
deprived of all forage and provisions, and seeing no prospect of succor,
was reduced to the last extremity. The king pressed them on one side;
Prince Maurice on another; Sir Richard Granville on a third. Essex,
Robarts, and some of the principal officers escaped in a boat to
Plymouth; Balfour with his horse passed the king’s outposts in a thick
mist, and got safely to the garrisons of his own party. The foot under
Skippon were obliged to surrender their arms, artillery, baggage, and
ammunition; and being conducted to the parliament’s quarters, were
dismissed. By this advantage, which was much boasted of, the king,
besides the honor of the enterprise, obtained what he stood extremely in
need of: the parliament, having preserved the men, lost what they could
easily repair.[**]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 676. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 497. Sir Ed.
     Walker, p. 31.

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 699, etc. Whitloeke, p. 98. Clarendon,
     vol. v p. 524, 525. Sir Edward Walker, p. 69, 70, etc.

No sooner did this intelligence reach London, than the committee of
the two kingdoms voted thanks to Essex for his fidelity, courage,
and conduct; and this method of proceeding, no less politic than
magnanimous, was preserved by the parliament throughout the whole course
of the war. Equally indulgent to their friends and rigorous to their
enemies, they employed with success these two powerful engines of reward
and punishment, in confirmation of their authority.

That the king might have less reason to exult in the advantages which
he had obtained in the west, the parliament opposed to him very numerous
forces. Having armed anew Essex’s subdued but not disheartened troops,
they ordered Manchester and Cromwell to march with their recruited
forces from the eastern association; and, joining their armies to those
of Waller and Middleton, as well as of Essex, offer battle to the king.
Charles chose his post at Newbury, where the parliamentary armies, under
the earl of Manchester, attacked him with great vigor; and that town
was a second time the scene of the bloody animosities of the English.
Essex’s soldiers, exhorting one another to repair their broken honor,
and revenge the disgrace of Lestithiel, made an impetuous assault on the
royalists; and having recovered some of their cannon lost in Cornwall,
could not forbear embracing them with tears of joy. Though the king’s
troops defended themselves with valor, they were overpowered by numbers;
and the night came very seasonably to their relief, and prevented a
total overthrow. Charles, leaving his baggage and cannon in Dennington
Castle, near Newbury, forthwith retreated to Wallingford, and thence to
Oxford. There Prince Rupert and the earl of Northampton joined him, with
considerable bodies of cavalry. Strengthened by this reënforcement, he
ventured to advance towards the enemy, now employed before Dennington
Castle.[*] Essex, detained by sickness, had not joined the army since
his misfortune in Cornwall. Manchester, who commanded, though his forces
were much superior to those of the king, declined an engagement, and
rejected Cromwell’s advice, who earnestly pressed him not to neglect
so favorable an opportunity of finishing the war. The king’s army, by
bringing off their cannon from Dennington Castle in the face of the
enemy, seemed to have sufficiently repaired the honor which they had
lost at Newbury; and Charles, having the satisfaction to excite between
Manchester and Cromwell equal animosities with those which formerly
took place between Essex and Waller,[*] distributed his army into winter
quarters.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p, 721, etc.

     ** Rush. vol. vii. p. 1.

Those contests among the parliamentary generals, which had disturbed
their military operations, were renewed in London during the winter
season; and each being supported by his own faction, their mutual
reproaches and accusations agitated the whole city and parliament. There
had long prevailed in that party a secret distinction, which, though the
dread of the king’s power had hitherto suppressed it, yet, in proportion
as the hopes of success became nearer and more immediate, began to
discover itself with high contest and animosity. The Independents, who
had at first taken shelter and concealed themselves under the wings of
the Presbyterians, now evidently appeared a distinct party, and betrayed
very different views and pretensions. We must here endeavor to explain
the genius of this party, and of its leaders, who henceforth occupy the
scene of action.

During those times, when the enthusiastic spirit met with such honor
and encouragement, and was the immediate means of distinction and
preferment, it was impossible to set bounds to these holy fervors, or
confine within any natural limits what was directed towards an infinite
and a supernatural object. Every man, as prompted by the warmth of his
temper, excited by emulation, or supported by his habits of hypocrisy,
endeavored to distinguish himself beyond his fellows, and to arrive at a
higher pitch of saintship and perfection. In proportion to its degree
of fanaticism, each sect became dangerous and destructive; and as the
Independents went a note higher than the Presbyterians, they could less
be restrained within any bounds of temper and moderation. From this
distinction, as from a first principle, were derived, by a necessary
consequence, all the other differences of these two sects.

The Independents rejected all ecclesiastical establishments, and
would admit of no spiritual courts, no government among pastors,
no interposition of the magistrate in religious concerns, no fixed
encouragement annexed to any system of doctrines or opinions. According
to their principles, each congregation, united voluntarily and by
spiritual ties, composed within itself a separate church, and exercised
a jurisdiction, but one destitute of temporal sanctions, over its own
pastor and its own members. The election alone of the congregation was
sufficient to bestow the sacerdotal character; and as all essential
distinction was denied between the laity and the clergy, no ceremony,
no institution, no vocation, no imposition of hands was, as in all
other churches, supposed requisite to convey a right to holy orders.
The enthusiasm of the Presbyterians led them to reject the authority
of prelates, to throw off the restraint of liturgies, to retrench
ceremonies, to limit the riches and authority of the priestly office:
the fanaticism of the Independents, exalted to a higher pitch, abolished
ecclesiastical government, disdained creeds and systems, neglected every
ceremony, and confounded all ranks and orders. The soldier, the
merchant, the mechanic, indulging the fervors of zeal, and guided by the
illapses of the spirit, resigned himself to an inward and superior
direction, and was consecrated, in a manner, by an immediate intercourse
and communication with heaven.

The Catholics, pretending to an infallible guide, had justified
upon that principle their doctrine and practice of persecution; the
Presbyterians, imagining that such clear and certain tenets as
they themselves adopted could be rejected only from a criminal and
pertinacious obstinacy, had hitherto gratified to the full their bigoted
zeal, in a like doctrine and practice: the Independents, from the
extremity of the same zeal, were led into the milder principles of
toleration. Their mind, set afloat in the wide sea of inspiration, could
confine itself within no certain limits; and the same variations in
which an enthusiast indulged himself, he was apt, by a natural train
of thinking, to permit in others. Of all Christian sects, this was the
first which, during its prosperity as well as its adversity, always
adopted the principle of toleration; and it is remarkable that so
reasonable a doctrine owed its origin, not to reasoning, but to the
height of extravagance and fanaticism.

Popery and prelacy alone, whose genius seemed to tend towards
superstition, were treated by the Independents with rigor. The doctrines
too of fate or destiny were deemed by them essential to all religion.
In these rigid opinions the whole sectaries, amidst all their other
differences, unanimously concurred.

The political system of the Independents kept pace with their religious.
Not content with confining to very narrow limits the power of the crown,
and reducing the king to the rank of first magistrate, which was the
project of the Presbyterians, this sect, more ardent in the pursuit of
liberty, aspired to a total abolition of the monarchy, and even of the
aristocracy, and projected an entire equality of rank and order, in a
republic, quite free and independent. In consequence of this scheme,
they were declared enemies to all proposals of peace, except on such
terms as they knew it was impossible to obtain; and they adhered to that
maxim, which is in the main prudent and political, that whoever draws
the sword against his sovereign, should throw away the scabbard. By
terrifying others with the fear of vengeance from the offended prince,
they had engaged greater numbers into the opposition against peace,
than had adopted their other principles with regard to government and
religion. And the great success which had already attended the arms of
the parliament, and the greater which was soon expected, confirmed them
still further in this obstinacy.

Sir Henry Vane, Oliver Cromwell, Nathaniel Fiennes, and Oliver St. John,
the solicitor-general, were regarded as the leaders of the Independents.
The earl of Essex, disgusted with a war of which he began to foresee
the pernicious consequences, adhered to the Presbyterians, and promoted
every reasonable plan of accommodation. The earl of Northumberland, fond
of his rank and dignity, regarded with horror a scheme which, if it took
place, would confound him and his family with the lowest in the kingdom.
The earls of Warwick and Denbigh, Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir William
Waller, Hollis, Massey, Whitlocke, Maynard, Glyn, had embraced the
same sentiments. In the parliament, a considerable majority, and a much
greater in the nation, were attached to the Presbyterian party; and
it was only by cunning and deceit at first, and afterwards by military
violence, that the Independents could entertain any hopes of success.

The earl of Manchester, provoked at the impeachment which the king had
lodged against him, had long forwarded the war with alacrity; but being
a man of humanity and good principles, the view of public calamities,
and the prospect of a total subversion of government, began to moderate
his ardor, and inclined him to promote peace on any safe or honorable
terms. He was even suspected in the field not to have pushed to the
utmost against the king the advantages obtained by the arms of the
parliament; and Cromwell in the public debates revived the accusation,
that this nobleman had wilfully neglected at Dennington Castle a
favorable opportunity of finishing the war by a total defeat of the
royalists. “I showed him evidently,” said Cromwell, “how this success
might be obtained; and only desired leave, with my own brigade of horse
to charge the king’s army in their retreat; leaving it in the earl’s
choice, if he thought proper, to remain neuter with the rest of his
forces: but, notwithstanding my importunity, he positively refused his
consent; and gave no other reason but that, if we met with a defeat,
there was an end of our pretensions we should all be rebels and
traitors, and be executed and forfeited by law.”[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 561.

Manchester, by way of recrimination, informed the parliament, that, at
another time, Cromwell having proposed some scheme to which it seemed
improbable the parliament would agree, he insisted, and said, “My lord,
if you will stick firm to honest men, you shall find yourself at the
head of an army which shall give law both to king and parliament.” “This
discourse,” continued Manchester, “made the greater impression on me,
because I knew the lieutenant-general to be a man of very deep designs;
and he has even ventured to tell me, that it never would be well with
England till I were Mr. Montague, and there were ne’er a lord or peer
in the kingdom.”[*] So full was Cromwell of these republican projects,
that, notwithstanding his habits of profound dissimulation, he could
not so carefully guard his expressions, but that sometimes his favorite
notions would escape him.

These violent dissensions brought matters to extremity, and pushed the
Independents to the execution of their designs. The present generals,
they thought, were more desirous of protracting than finishing the war;
and having entertained a scheme for preserving still some balance in
the constitution, they were afraid of entirely subduing the king, and
reducing him to a condition where he should not be entitled to ask any
concessions. A new model alone of the army could bring complete victory
to the parliament, and free the nation from those calamities under
which it labored. But how to effect this project was the difficulty.
The authority, as well as merits, of Essex was very great with the
parliament. Not only he had served them all along with the most exact
and scrupulous honor: it was in some measure owing to his popularity
that they had ever been enabled to levy an army, or make head against
the royal cause. Manchester, Warwick, and the other commanders, had
likewise great credit with the public; nor were there any hopes
of prevailing over them, but by laying the plan of an oblique and
artificial attack, which would conceal the real purposes of their
antagonists. The Scots and the Scottish commissioners, jealous of the
progress of the Independents, were a new obstacle, which, without the
utmost art and subtlety, it would be difficult to surmount.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 562.

     ** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 562.

The methods by which this intrigue was conducted are so singular, and
show so fully the genius of the age, that we shall give a detail of them
as they are delivered by Lord Clarendon.[*]

A fast, on the last Wednesday of every month, had been ordered by the
parliament at the beginning of these commotions; and their preachers on
that day were careful to keep alive, by their vehement declamations, the
popular prejudices entertained against the king, against prelacy, and
against Popery. The king, that he might combat the parliament with their
own weapons, appointed likewise a monthly fast, when the people should
be instructed in the duties of loyalty, and of submission to the higher
powers; and he chose the second Friday of every month for the devotion
of the royalists.[**] It was now proposed and carried in parliament, by
the Independents, that a new and more solemn fast should be voted; when
they should implore the divine assistance for extricating them from
those perplexities in which they were at present involved. On that day,
the preachers, after many political prayers, took care to treat of the
reigning divisions in the parliament, and ascribed them entirely to the
selfish ends pursued by the members. In the hands of those members,
they said, are lodged all the considerable commands of the army, all the
lucrative offices in the civil administration: and while the nation is
falling every day into poverty, and groans under an insupportable load
of taxes, these men multiply possession on possession, and will in
a little time be masters of all the wealth of the kingdom. That such
persons, who fatten on the calamities of their country, will ever
embrace any effectual measure for bringing them to a period, or insuring
final success to the war, cannot reasonably be expected. Lingering
expedients alone will be pursued; and operations in the field concurring
in the same pernicious end with deliberations in the cabinet, civil
commotions will forever be perpetuated in the nation. After exaggerating
these disorders, the ministers returned to their prayers; and besought
the Lord that he would take his own work into his own hand; and if the
instruments whom he had hitherto employed were not worthy to bring to a
conclusion so glorious a design, that he would inspire others more fit,
who might perfect what was begun, and, by establishing true religion,
put a speedy period to the public miseries.

     * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 565

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 364

On the day subsequent to these devout animadversions when the parliament
met, a new spirit appeared in the looks of many. Sir Henry Vane told the
commons, that if ever God appeared to them, it was in the ordinances
of yesterday; that, as he was credibly informed by many who had been
present in different congregations, the same lamentations and discourses
which the godly preachers had made before them, had been heard in other
churches: that so remarkable a concurrence could proceed only from the
immediate operation of the Holy Spirit: that he therefore entreated
them, in vindication of their own honor, in consideration of their duty
to God and their country, to lay aside all private ends, and renounce
every office attended with profit or advantage: that the absence of so
many members, occupied in different employments, had rendered the house
extremely thin, and diminished the authority of their determinations:
and that he could not forbear, for his own part, accusing himself as one
who enjoyed a gainful office, that of treasurer of the navy; and though
he was possessed of it before the civil commotions, and owed it not
to the favor of the parliament, yet was he ready to resign it, and to
sacrifice, to the welfare of his country, every consideration of private
interest and advantage.

Cromwell next acted his part, and commended the preachers for having
dealt with them plainly and impartially, and told them of their errors,
of which they were so unwilling to be informed. Though they dwelt on
many things, he said, on which he had never before reflected, yet, upon
revolving them, he could not but confess that, till there were a perfect
reformation in these particulars, nothing which they undertook could
possibly prosper. The parliament, no doubt, continued he, had done
wisely on the commencement of the war, in engaging several of its
members in the most dangerous parts of it, and thereby satisfying the
nation that they intended to share all hazards with the meanest of the
people. But affairs are now changed. During the progress of military
operations, there have arisen in the parliamentary armies many excellent
officers, who are qualified for higher commands than they are now
possessed of. And though it becomes not men engaged in such a cause “to
put trust in the arm of flesh,” yet he could assure them, that
their troops contained generals fit to command in any enterprise
in Christendom. The army, indeed, he was sorry to say it, did not
correspond by its discipline to the merit of the officers; nor were
there any hopes, till the present vices and disorders which prevail
among the soldiers were repressed by a new model that their forces would
ever be attended with signal success in any undertaking.

In opposition to this reasoning of the Independents, many of the
Presbyterians showed the inconvenience and danger of the projected
alteration. Whitlocke, in particular, a man of honor, who loved his
country, though in every change of government he always adhered to the
ruling power, said, that besides the ingratitude of discarding, and that
by fraud and artifice, so many noble persons, to whom the parliament had
hitherto owed its chief support, they would find it extremely difficult
to supply the place of men now formed by experience to command and
authority: that the rank alone possessed by such as were members of
either house, prevented envy, retained the army in obedience, and gave
weight to military orders: that greater confidence might safely be
reposed in men of family and fortune, than in mere adventurers, who
would be apt to entertain separate views from those which were embraced
by the persons who employed them: that no maxim of policy was more
undisputed, than the necessity of preserving an inseparable connection
between the civil and military powers, and of retaining the latter in
strict subordination to the former: that the Greeks and Romans, the
wisest and most passionate lovers of liberty, had ever intrusted
to their senators the command of armies, and had maintained an
unconquerable jealousy of all mercenary forces: and that such men alone,
whose interests were involved in those of the public, and who possessed
a vote in the civil deliberations, would sufficiently respect the
authority of parliament, and never could be tempted to turn the sword
against those by whom it was committed to them.[*]

     * Whitlocke, p. 114, 115. Rush. vol. vii. p. 6.

Notwithstanding these reasonings, a committee was chosen to frame what
was called the “self-denying ordinance,” by which the members of both
houses were excluded from all civil and military employments, except
a few offices which were specified. This ordinance was the subject of
great debate, and for a long time rent the parliament and city into
factions. But at last, by the prevalence of envy with some; with others,
of false modesty; with a great many, of the republican and Independent
views; it passed the house of commons, and was sent to the upper house.
The peers, though the scheme was in part levelled against their order;
though all of them were at bottom extremely averse to it; though they
even ventured once to reject it; yet possessed so little authority, that
they durst not persevere in opposing the resolution of the commons; and
they thought it better policy, by an unlimited compliance, to ward
off that ruin which they saw approaching.[*] The ordinance, therefore,
having passed both houses, Essex, Warwick, Manchester, Denbigh, Waller,
Brereton, and many others, resigned their commands, and received the
thanks of parliament for their good services. A pension of ten thousand
pounds a year was settled on Essex.

{1645.} It was agreed to recruit the army to twenty-two thousand men;
and Sir Thomas Fairfax was appointed general.[**] It is remarkable that
his commission did not run, like that of Essex, in the name of the king
and parliament, but in that of the parliament alone; and the article
concerning the safety of the king’s person was omitted: so much had
animosities increased between the parties.[***] Cromwell, being a member
of the lower house, should have been discarded with the others; but
this impartiality would have disappointed all the views of those who had
introduced the self-denying ordinance. He was saved by a subtlety, and
by that political craft in which he was so eminent. At the time when the
other officers resigned their commissions, care was taken that he
should be sent with a body of horse to relieve Taunton besieged by the
royalists. His absence being remarked orders were despatched for his
immediate attendance in parliament; and the new general was directed
to employ some other officer in that service. A ready compliance was
feigned; and the very day was named on which, it was averred, he would
take his place in the house. But Fairfax, having appointed a rendezvous
of the army, wrote to the parliament, and desired leave to retain for
some days Lieutenant General Cromwell, whose advice, he said, would
be useful in supplying the place of those officers who had resigned.
Shortly after, he begged, with much earnestness, that they would allow
Cromwell to serve that campaign.[****] And thus the Independents, though
the minority, prevailed by art and cunning over the Presbyterians, and
bestowed the whole military authority in appearance, upon Fairfax; in
reality, upon Cromwell.

     * Rush. vol. vii. p. 8, 15.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 118. Rush. vol. vii. p. 7.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 133.

     **** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 629, 630. Whitlocke, p. 141.

Fairfax was a person equally eminent for courage and for humanity; and
though strongly infected with prejudices, or principles derived from
religious and party zeal, he seems never, in the course of his public
conduct, to have been diverted by private interest or ambition from
adhering strictly to these principles. Sincere in his professions,
disinterested in his views, open in his conduct, he had formed one of
the most shining characters of the age, had not the extreme narrowness
of his genius in every thing but in war, and his embarrassed and
confused elocution on every occasion but when he gave orders, diminished
the lustre of his merit, and rendered the part which he acted, even when
vested with the supreme command, but secondary and subordinate.

Cromwell, by whose sagacity and insinuation Fairfax was entirely
governed, is one of the most eminent and most singular personages that
occurs in history: the strokes of his character are as open and strongly
marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during the time, dark
and impenetrable. His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most
enlarged projects: his enterprising genius was not dismayed with
the boldest and most dangerous. Carried by his natural temper to
magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy, he
yet knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation,
the most oblique and refined artifice, the semblance of the greatest
moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, though his public
conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, though
he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; he was
engaged in crimes from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation
which is in general irresistible to human nature. And by using well that
authority which he had attained by fraud and violence, he has lessened,
if not overpowered, our detestation of his enormities, by our admiration
of his success and of his genius.

During this important transaction of the self-denying ordinance, the
negotiations for peace were likewise carried on, though with small hopes
of success. The king having sent two messages, one from Evesham,[*]
another from Tavistoke,[**] desiring a treaty, the parliament despatched
commissioners to Oxford with proposals, as high as if they had obtained
a complete victory.[***]

     * 4th of July, 1644.

     ** 8th of Sept 1644.

     *** Dugdale, p. 737. Rush. vol. vi. p 850.

The advantages gained during the campaign and the great distresses of
the royalists, had much elevated their hopes; and they were resolved to
repose no trust in men inflamed with the highest animosity against them,
and who, were they possessed of power, were fully authorized by law to
punish all their opponents as rebels and traitors.

The king, when he considered the proposals, and the disposition of the
parliament, could not expect any accommodation, and had no prospect but
of war, or of total submission and subjection: yet, in order to satisfy
his own party, who were impatient for peace, he agreed to send the duke
of Richmond and earl of Southampton with an answer to the proposals
of the parliament, and at the same time to desire a treaty upon their
mutual demands and pretensions.[*] It now became necessary for him to
retract his former declaration, that the two houses at Westminster were
not a free parliament; and accordingly he was induced, though with
great reluctance, to give them, in his answer, the appellation of the
parliament of England.[**] But it appeared afterwards, by a letter which
he wrote to the queen, and of which a copy was taken at Naseby, that
he secretly entered an explanatory protest in his council book; and he
pretended, that though he had called them the parliament, he had not
thereby acknowledged them for such.[***] This subtlety, which has been
frequently objected to Charles, is the most noted of those very few
instances from which the enemies of this prince have endeavored to
load him with the imputation of insincerity; and have inferred that
the parliament could repose no confidence in his professions and
declarations, not even in his laws and statutes. There is, however, it
must be confessed, a difference universally avowed between simply giving
to men the appellation which they assume, and the formal acknowledgment
of their title to it; nor is any thing more common and familiar in all
public transactions.

     * Whitlocke, p. 110.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 111 Dugdale, p. 748.

     *** His words are, “As for my calling those at London a
     parliament, I shall refer thee to Digby for particular
     satisfaction. This in general: if there had been but two
     besides myself of my opinion, I had not done it; and the
     argument that prevailed with me was, that the calling did no
     ways acknowledge them to be a parliament; upon which
     condition and construction I did it, and no otherwise; and
     accordingly it is registered in the council books, with the
     council’s unanimous approbation.” The King’s Cabinet opened.
     Rush. vol. i. p. 943.

The time and place of treaty being settled, sixteen commissioners from
the king met at Uxbridge with twelve authorized by the parliament,
attended by the Scottish commissioners. It was agreed, that the Scottish
and parliamentary commissioners should give in their demands with regard
to three important articles, religion, the militia, and Ireland; and
that these should be successively discussed in conference with the
king’s commissioners.[*] It was soon found impracticable to come to any
agreement with regard to any of these articles.

In the summer of 1643, while the negotiations were carried on with
Scotland, the parliament had summoned an assembly at Westminster,
consisting of one hundred and twenty-one divines and thirty laymen,
celebrated in their party for piety and learning. By their advice,
alterations were made in the thirty-nine articles, or in the
metaphysical doctrines of the church; and what was of greater
importance, the liturgy was entirely abolished, and in its stead a new
directory for worship was established; by which, suitably to the spirit
of the Puritans, the utmost liberty both in praying and preaching was
indulged to the public teachers. By the solemn league and covenant,
episcopacy was abjured, as destructive of all true piety; and a national
engagement, attended with every circumstance that could render a promise
sacred and obligatory, was entered into with the Scots, never to
suffer its readmission. All these measures showed little spirit of
accommodation in the parliament; and the king’s commissioners were not
surprised to find the establishment of presbytery and the directory
positively demanded, together with the subscription of the covenant,
both by the king and kingdom.[**]

     * Whitlocke, p. 121. Dugdale, p. 758.

     ** Such love of contradiction prevailed in the parliament,
     that they had converted Christmas, which with the churchmen
     was a great festival, into a solemn fast and humiliation;
     “in order,” as they said, “that it might call to remembrance
     our sins and the sins of our forefathers, who, pretending to
     celebrate the memory of Christ, have turned this feast into
     an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal
     and sensual delights.” Rush. vol. vi. p. 817. It is
     remarkable, that as the parliament abolished all holydays,
     and severely prohibited all amusement on the Sabbath; and
     even burned, by the hands of the hangman, the king’s Book of
     Sports; the nation found that there was no time left for
     relaxation or diversion. Upon application, therefore, of the
     servants and apprentices, the parliament appointed the
     second Tuesday of every month for play and recreation. Rush.
     vol. vii. p. 460. Whitlocke, p. 247. But these institutions
     they found great difficulty to execute: and the people were
     resolved to be merry when they themselves pleased, not when
     the parliament should prescribe it to them. The keeping of
     Christmas holydays was long a great mark of malignancy, and
     very severely censured by the commons. Whitlocke, p. 286.
     Even minced pies, which custom had made a Christmas dish
     among the churchmen, was regarded, during that season, as a
     profane and superstitious viand by the sectaries; though at
     other times it agreed very well with their stomachs. In the
     parliamentary ordinance, too, for the observance of the
     Sabbath, they inserted a clause for the taking down of
     maypoles, which they called a heathenish vanity. Since we
     are upon this subject, it may not be amiss to mention that,
     besides setting apart Sunday for the ordinances, as they
     called them, the godly had regular meetings on the
     Thursdays, for resolving cases of conscience, and conferring
     about their progress in grace. What they were chiefly
     anxious about, was the fixing the precise moment of their
     conversion or new birth; and whoever could not ascertain so
     difficult a point of calculation, could not pretend to any
     title to saintship. The profane scholars at Oxford, after
     the parliament became masters of that town, gave to the
     house in which the zealots assembled the denomination of
     Sernple Shop: the zealots, in their turn, insulted the
     scholars and professors; and, intruding into the place of
     lectures, declaimed against human learning, and challenged
     the most knowing of them to prove that their calling was
     from Christ. See Wood’s Fasti Oxonienses, p. 740.

Had Charles been of a disposition to neglect all theological
controversy, he yet had been obliged, in good policy, to adhere to
episcopal jurisdiction; not only because it was favorable to monarchy,
but because all its adherents were passionately devoted to it; and to
abandon them, in what they regarded as so important an article, was
forever to relinquish their friendship and assistance. But Charles had
never attained such enlarged principles. He deemed bishops essential to
the very being of a Christian church; and he thought himself bound, by
more sacred ties than those of policy, or even of honor, to the support
of that order. His concessions, therefore, on this head, he judged
sufficient, when he agreed that an indulgence should be given to tender
consciences with regard to ceremonies; that the bishops should exercise
no act of jurisdiction or ordination without the consent and counsel of
such presbyters as should be chosen by the clergy of each diocese; that
they should reside constantly in their diocese, and be bound to
preach every Sunday; that pluralities be abolished; that abuses in
ecclesiastical courts be redressed; and that a hundred thousand pounds
be levied on the bishops’ estates and the chapter lands, for payment of
debts contracted by the parliament.[*]

     * Dugdale, p. 779, 780.

These concessions, though considerable gave no satisfaction to the
parliamentary commissioners; and, without abating any thing of their
rigor on this head, they proceeded to their demands with regard to the
militia.

The king’s partisans had all along maintained, that the fears and
jealousies of the parliament, after the securities so early and easily
given to public liberty, were either feigned or groundless; and that no
human institution could be better poised and adjusted than was now the
government of England. By the abolition of the star chamber and court of
high commission, the prerogative, they said, has lost all that coercive
power by which it had formerly suppressed or endangered liberty: by
the establishment of triennial parliaments, it can have no leisure
to acquire new powers, or guard itself, during any time, from the
inspection of that vigilant assembly: by the slender revenue of the
crown, no king can ever attain such influence as to procure a repeal
of these salutary statutes; and while the prince commands no military
force, he will in vain by violence attempt an infringement of laws so
clearly defined by means of late disputes, and so passionately cherished
by all his subjects. In this situation, surely the nation, governed by
so virtuous a monarch, may for the present remain in tranquillity, and
try whether it be not possible, by peaceful arts, to elude that danger
with which it is pretended its liberties are still threatened.

But though the royalists insisted on these plausible topics before the
commencement of war, they were obliged to own, that the progress of
civil commotions had somewhat abated the force and evidence of this
reasoning. If the power of the militia, said the opposite party, be
intrusted to the king, it would not now be difficult for him to abuse
that authority. By the rage of intestine discord, his partisans are
inflamed into an extreme hatred against their antagonists; and have
contracted, no doubt, some prejudices against popular privileges, which,
in their apprehension, have been the source of so much disorder. Were
the arms of the state, therefore, put entirely into such hands, what
public security, it may be demanded, can be given to liberty, or what
private security to those who, in opposition to the letter of the law,
have so generously ventured their lives in its defence? In compliance
with this apprehension, Charles offered that the arms of the state
should be intrusted, during three years, to twenty commissioners,
who should be named either by common agreement between him and the
parliament, or one half by him, the other by the parliament. And
after the expiration of that term, he insisted that his constitutional
authority over the militia should again return to him.[*]

The parliamentary commissioners at first demanded, that the power of
the sword should forever be intrusted to such persons as the parliament
alone should appoint:[**] but afterwards they relaxed so far as to
require that authority only for seven years; after which it was not to
return to the king but to be settled by bill, or by common agreement
between him and his parliament.[*] The king’s commissioners asked,
whether jealousies and fears were all on one side; and whether
the prince, from such violent attempts and pretensions as he had
experienced, had not at least as great reason to entertain apprehensions
for his authority, as they for their liberty? Whether there were any
equity in securing only one party, and leaving the other, during the
space of seven years, entirely at the mercy of their enemies? Whether,
if unlimited power were intrusted to the parliament during so long a
period, it would not be easy for them to frame the subsequent bill in
the manner most agreeable to themselves, and keep forever possession
of the sword, as well as of every article of civil power and
jurisdiction.[****]

The truth is, after the commencement of war, it was very difficult, if
not impossible, to find security for both parties, especially for that
of the parliament. Amidst such violent animosities, power alone could
insure safety; and the power of one side was necessarily attended with
danger to the other. Few or no instances occur in history of an equal,
peaceful, and durable accommodation that has been concluded between two
factions which had been inflamed into civil war.

With regard to Ireland, there were no greater hopes of agreement between
the parties. The parliament demanded, that the truce with the rebels
should be declared null; that the management of the war should be
given over entirely to the parliament; and that, after the conquest of
Ireland, the nomination of the lord lieutenant and of the judges, or in
other words the sovereignty of that kingdom, should likewise remain in
their hands.[v]

     * Dugdale, p. 798.

     ** Dugdale, p. 791.

     *** Dugdale, p. 820.

     **** Dugdale, p. 877.

     v Dugdale, p. 826, 827

What rendered an accommodation more desperate was, that the demands
on these three heads, however exorbitant, were acknowledged, by the
parliamentary commissioners, to be nothing but preliminaries. After all
these were granted, it would be necessary to proceed to the discussion
of those other demands, still more exorbitant, which a little before
had been transmitted to the king at Oxford. Such ignominious terms were
there insisted on, that worse could scarcely be demanded, were Charles
totally vanquished, a prisoner, and in chains. The king was required to
attaint and except from a general pardon forty of the most considerable
of his English subjects, and nineteen of his Scottish, together with
all Popish recusants in both kingdoms who had borne arms for him. It was
insisted that forty-eight more, with all the members who had sitten in
either house at Oxford, all lawyers and divines who had embraced the
king’s party, should be rendered incapable of any office, be forbidden
the exercise of their profession, be prohibited from coming within
the verge of the court, and forfeit the third of their estates to the
parliament. It was required that whoever had borne arms for the king,
should forfeit the tenth of their estates; or, if that did not suffice,
the sixth, for the payment of public debts. As if royal authority were
not sufficiently annihilated by such terms, it was demanded that the
court of wards should be abolished; that all the considerable officers
of the crown, and all the judges, should be appointed by parliament;
and that the right of peace and war should not be exercised without the
consent of that assembly.[*]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 850. Dugdale, p. 737.

The Presbyterians, it must be confessed, after insisting on such
conditions, differed only in words from the Independents, who required
the establishment of a pure republic. When the debates had been carried
on to no purpose during twenty days among the commissioners, they
separated, and returned; those of the king to Oxford, those of the
parliament to London.

A little before the commencement of this fruitless treaty, a deed was
executed by the parliament, which proved their determined resolution to
yield nothing, but to proceed in the same violent and imperious manner
with which they had at first entered on these dangerous enterprises.
Archbishop Laud, the most favored minister of the king, was brought to
the scaffold; and in this instance the public might see, that popular
assemblies, as, by their very number, they are in a great measure
exempt from the restraint of shame, so when they also overleap the
bounds of law, naturally break out into acts of the greatest tyranny and
injustice.

From the time that Laud had been committed, the house of commons,
engaged in enterprises of greater moment, had found no leisure to finish
his impeachment, and he had patiently endured so long an imprisonment,
without being brought to any trial. After the union with Scotland, the
bigoted prejudices of that nation revived the like spirit in England;
and the sectaries resolved to gratify their vengeance in the punishment
of this prelate, who had so long, by his authority, and by the execution
of penal laws, kept their zealous spirit under confinement. He was
accused of high treason, in endeavoring to subvert the fundamental laws,
and of other high crimes and misdemeanors. The same illegality of an
accumulative crime and a constructive evidence which appeared in the
case of Strafford, the same violence and iniquity in conducting the
trial, are conspicuous throughout the whole course of this prosecution.
The groundless charge of Popery, though belied by his whole life and
conduct, was continually urged against the prisoner; and every error
rendered unpardonable by this imputation, which was supposed to imply
the height of all enormities. “This man, my lords,” said Serjeant Wilde,
concluding his long speech against him, “is like Naaman the Syrian; a
great man, but a leper.”[*]

We shall not enter into a detail of this matter, which at present seems
to admit of little controversy. It suffices to say, that after a long
trial, and the examination of above a hundred and fifty witnesses, the
commons found so little likelihood of obtaining a judicial sentence
against Laud, that they were obliged to have recourse to their
legislative authority, and to pass an ordinance for taking away the life
of this aged prelate. Notwithstanding the low condition into which the
house of peers was fallen, there appeared some intention of rejecting
this ordinance; and the popular leaders were again obliged to apply to
the multitude, and to extinguish, by threats of new tumults, the small
remains of liberty possessed by the upper house. Seven peers alone voted
in this important question. The rest, either from shame or fear, took
care to absent themselves.[*]

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 830.

     ** Warwick, p. 169.

Laud, who had behaved during his trial with spirit and vigor of genius,
sunk not under the horrors of his execution but though he had usually
professed himself apprehensive of a violent death, he found all his
fears to be dissipated before that superior courage by which he was
animated. “No one,” said he, “can be more willing to send me out of
life, than I am desirous to go,” Even upon the scaffold, and during
the intervals of his prayers, he was harassed and molested by Sir John
Clotworthy, a zealot of the reigning sect, and a great leader in the
lower house: this was the time he chose for examining the principles of
the dying primate, and trepanning him into a confession, that he trusted
for his salvation to the merits of good works, not to the death of the
Redeemer.[*] Having extricated himself from these theological toils, the
archbishop laid his head on the block, and it was severed from the
body at one blow.[**] Those religious opinions for which he suffered,
contributed, no doubt, to the courage and constancy of his end. Sincere
he undoubtedly was, and, however misguided, actuated by pious motives in
all his pursuits; and it is to be regretted that a man of such spirit,
who conducted his enterprises with so much warmth and industry, had not
entertained more enlarged views, and embraced principles more favorable
to the general happiness of society.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p, 838, 839.

     ** 12th of July, 1644.

The great and important advantage which the party gained by Strafford’s
death, may in some degree palliate the iniquity of the sentence
pronounced against him: but the execution of this old, infirm prelate,
who had so long remained an inoffensive prisoner, can be ascribed to
nothing but vengeance and bigotry in those severe religionists by whom
the parliament was entirely governed. That he deserved a better fate was
not questioned by any reasonable man: the degree of his merit in
other respects was disputed. Some accused him of recommending slavish
doctrines, of promoting persecution, and of encouraging superstition;
while others thought that his conduct in these three particulars would
admit of apology and extenuation.

That the letter of the law, as much as the most flaming court sermon,
inculcates passive obedience, is apparent; and though the spirit of
a limited government seems to require, in extraordinary cases, some
mitigation of so rigorous a doctrine, it must be confessed, that the
presiding genius of the English constitution had rendered a mistake in
this particular very natural and excusable. To inflict death, at
least, on those who depart from the exact line of truth in these nice
questions, so far from being favorable to national liberty, savors
strongly of the spirit of tyranny and proscription.

Toleration had hitherto been so little the principle of any Christian
sect, that even the Catholics, the remnant of the religion professed
by their forefathers, could not obtain from the English the least
indulgence. This very house of commons, in their famous remonstrance,
took care to justify themselves, as from the highest imputation, from
any intention to relax the golden reins of discipline, as they called
them, or to grant any toleration;[*] and the enemies of the church
were so fair from the beginning, as not to lay claim to liberty of
conscience, which they called a toleration for soul-murder. They openly
challenged the superiority, and even menaced the established church with
that persecution which they afterwards exercised against her with such
severity. And if the question be considered in the view of policy,
though a sect, already formed and advanced, may, with good reason,
demand a toleration, what title had the Puritans to this indulgence, who
were just on the point of separation from the church, and whom, it might
be hoped, some wholesome and legal severities would still retain in
obedience?[**] [15]

     * Nalson, vol. ii. p. 705.

     ** See note O, at the end of the volume.

Whatever ridicule, to a philosophical mind, may be thrown on pious
ceremonies, it must be confessed that, during a very religious age, no
institutions can be more advantageous to the rude multitude, and tend
more to mollify that fierce and gloomy spirit of devotion to which they
are subject. Even the English church, though it had retained a share of
Popish ceremonies, may justly be thought too naked and unadorned, and
still to approach too near the abstract and spiritual religion of
the Puritans. Laud and his associates, by reviving a few primitive
institutions of this nature, corrected the error of the first reformers,
and presented to the affrightened and astonished mind some sensible,
exterior observances, which might occupy it during its religious
exercises, and abate the violence of its disappointed efforts. The
thought, no longer bent on that divine and mysterious essence, so
superior to the narrow capacities of mankind, was able, by means of the
new model of devotion, to relax itself in the contemplation of pictures,
postures, vestments, buildings; and all the fine arts which minister to
religion, thereby received additional encouragement. The primate, it is
true, conducted this scheme, not with the enlarged sentiments and cool
reflection of a legislator, but with the intemperate zeal of a sectary;
and by over looking the circumstances of the times, served rather to
inflame that religious fury which he meant to repress. But this blemish
is more to be regarded as a general imputation on the whole age,
than any particular failing of Laud’s; and it is sufficient for his
vindication to observe, that his errors were the most excusable of all
those which prevailed during that zealous period.



CHAPTER LVIII



CHARLES I

{1645.} While the king’s affairs declined in England, some events
happened in Scotland which seemed to promise him a more prosperous issue
of the quarrel.

Before the commencement of these civil disorders, the earl of Montrose,
a young nobleman of a distinguished family, returning from his travels,
had been introduced to the king, and had made an offer of his services;
but by the insinuations of the marquis, afterwards duke of Hamilton, who
possessed much of Charles’s confidence, he had not been received with
that distinction to which he thought himself justly entitled.[*]

     * Nalson, Intr p. 63.

Disgusted with this treatment, he had forwarded all the violence of the
Covenanters; and, agreeably to the natural ardor of his genius, he had
employed himself, during the first Scottish insurrection, with great
zeal, as well as success, in levying and conducting their armies. Being
commissioned by the “Tables,” to wait upon the king while the royal army
lay at Berwick, he was so gained by the civilities and caresses of that
monarch, that he thenceforth devoted himself entirely, though secretly,
to his service, and entered into a close correspondence with him. In the
second insurrection, a great military command was intrusted to him by
the Covenanters; and he was the first that passed the Tweed, at the head
of their troops, in the invasion of England. He found means, however,
soon after to convey a letter to the king; and by the infidelity of some
about that prince,--Hamilton as was suspected,--a copy of this letter
was sent to Leven, the Scottish general. Being accused of treachery, and
a correspondence with the enemy, Montrose openly avowed the letter, and
asked the generals if they dared to call their sovereign an enemy;
and by this bold and magnanimous behavior he escaped the danger of an
immediate prosecution. As he was now fully known to be of the royal
party, he no longer concealed his principles; and he endeavored to draw
those who had entertained like sentiments into a bond of association for
his master’s service. Though thrown into prison for this enterprise,[*]
and detained some time, he was not discouraged; but still continued,
by his countenance and protection, to infuse spirit into the distressed
royalists. Among other persons of distinction who united themselves to
him was Lord Napier of Merchiston, son of the famous inventor of the
logarithms, the person to whom the title of a “great man” is more justly
due, than to any other whom his country ever produced. There was in
Scotland another party, who, professing equal attachment to the king’s
service, pretended only to differ with Montrose about the means of
attaining the same end; and of that party Duke Hamilton was the leader.
This nobleman had cause to be extremely devoted to the king, not only by
reason of the connection of blood which united him to the royal family,
but on account of the great confidence and favor with which he had ever
been honored by his master. Being accused by Lord Rae, not without some
appearance of probability, of a conspiracy against the king, Charles was
so far from harboring suspicion against him, that, the very first time
Hamilton came to court, he received him into his bed-chamber, and passed
alone the night with him.[**] But such was the duke’s unhappy fate or
conduct, that he escaped not the imputation of treachery to his friend
and sovereign; and though he at last sacrificed his life in the king’s
service, his integrity and sincerity have not been thought by historians
entirely free from blemish. Perhaps (and this is the more probable
opinion) the subtleties and refinements of his conduct, and his
temporizing maxims, though accompanied with good intentions, have been
the chief cause of a suspicion which has never yet been either fully
proved or refuted.

     * It is not improper to take notice of a mistake committed
     by Clarendon, much to the disadvantage of this gallant
     nobleman; that he offered the king, when his majesty was in
     Scotland, to assassinate Argyle. All the time the king was
     in Scotland, Montrose was confined in prison. Rush. vol. vi.
     p. 980.

     ** Nalson, vol ii. p. 683.

As much as the bold and vivid spirit of Montrose prompted him to
enterprising measures, as much was the cautious temper of Hamilton
inclined to such as were moderate and dilatory. While the former
foretold that the Scottish Covenanters were secretly forming a union
with the English parliament, and inculcated the necessity of preventing
them by some vigorous undertaking, the latter still insisted, that every
such attempt would precipitate them into measures to which otherwise
they were not perhaps inclined. After the Scottish convention was
summoned without the king’s authority, the former exclaimed, that their
intentions were now visible, and that if some unexpected blow were not
struck to dissipate them, they would arm the whole nation against the
king; the latter maintained the possibility of outvoting the disaffected
party, and securing by peaceful means the allegiance of the kingdom.[*]
Unhappily for the royal cause, Hamilton’s representations met with
more credit from the king and queen than those of Montrose; and the
Covenanters were allowed, without interruption, to proceed in all their
hostile measures. Montrose then hastened to Oxford where his invectives
against Hamilton’s treachery, concurring with the general prepossession,
and supported by the unfortunate event of his counsels, were entertained
with universal probation. Influenced by the clamor of his party, more
than his own suspicions, Charles, as soon as Hamilton appeared, sent him
prisoner to Pendennis Castle, in Cornwall. His brother Laneric, who was
also put under confinement found means to make his escape, and to fly
into Scotland.

The king’s ears were now open to Montrose’s counsels, who proposed none
but the boldest and most daring, agreeably to the desperate state of the
royal cause in Scotland. Though the whole nation was subjected by the
Covenanters, though great armies were kept on foot by them, and every
place guarded by a vigilant administration, he undertook, by his own
credit, and that of the few friends who remained to the king, to raise
such commotions as would soon oblige the malecontents to recall
those forces which had so sensibly thrown the balance in favor of the
parliament.[**] Not discouraged with the defeat at Marston Moor, which
rendered it impossible for him to draw any succor from England, he was
content to stipulate with the earl of Antrim, a nobleman of Ireland,
for some supply of men from that country. And he himself changing his
disguises, and passing through many dangers, arrived in Scotland; where
he lay concealed in the borders of the Highlands, and secretly prepared
the minds of his partisans for attempting some great enterprise.[***]

     * Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 380, 381. Rush. vol. vi. p. 980.
     Wishart, cap. 2.

     ** Wishart, cap. 3.

     *** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 618. Rush. vol. vi. p, 982.
     Wishart, cap. 4

No sooner were the Irish landed, though not exceeding eleven hundred
foot, very ill armed, than Montrose declared himself, and entered upon
that scene of action which has rendered his name so celebrated. About
eight hundred of the men of Athole flocked to his standard. Five hundred
men more, who had been levied by the Covenanters, were persuaded to
embrace the royal cause: and with this combined force, he hastened to
attack Lord Elcho, who lay at Perth with an army of six thousand men,
assembled upon the first news of the Irish invasion. Montrose, inferior
in number, totally unprovided with horse, ill supplied with arms and
ammunition, had nothing to depend on, but the courage which he himself,
by his own example, and the rapidity of his enterprises, should inspire
into his raw soldiers. Having received the fire of the enemy, which was
answered chiefly by a volley of stones, he rushed amidst them with
his sword drawn, threw them into confusion, pushed his advantage, and
obtained a complete victory, with the slaughter of two thousand of the
Covenanters.[*]

This victory, though it augmented the renown of Montrose, increased not
his power or numbers. The far greater part of the kingdom was extremely
attached to the covenant; and such as bore an affection to the royal
cause, were terrified by the established authority of the opposite
party. Dreading the superior power of Argyle, who, having joined
his vassals to a force levied by the public, was approaching with a
considerable army, Montrose hastened northwards, in order to rouse again
the marquis of Huntley and the Gordons, who, having before hastily taken
arms, had been instantly suppressed by the Covenanters. He was joined
on his march by the earl of Airly, with his two younger sons, Sir Thomas
and Sir David Ogilvy: the eldest was at that time a prisoner with the
enemy. He attacked at Aberdeen the Lord Burley, who commanded a force
of two thousand five hundred men. After a sharp combat, by his undaunted
courage, which in his situation was true policy, and was also not
unaccompanied with military skill, he put the enemy to flight, and in
the pursuit did great execution upon them.[**]

     * 1st of September, 1644. Rush. vol. vi. p. 983. Wishart,
     cap. 5.

     ** 11th of September, 1644. Rush. vol. vi. p. 983. Wishart,
     cap. 7.

But by this second advantage he obtained not the end which he expected.
The envious nature of Huntley, jealous of Montrose’s glory, rendered him
averse to join an army where he himself must be so much eclipsed by
the superior merit of the general. Argyle, reënforced by the earl of
Lothian, was behind him with a great army: the militia of the northern
counties, Murray, Ross, Caithness, to the number of five thousand men,
opposed him in front, and guarded the banks of the Spey, a deep and
rapid river. In order to elude these numerous armies, he turned aside
into the hills, and saved his weak but active troops in Badenoch.
After some marches and countermarches, Argyle came up with him at Faivy
Castle. This nobleman’s character, though celebrated for political
courage and conduct, was very low for military prowess, and after some
skirmishes, in which he was worsted, he here allowed Montrose to escape
him. By quick marches through these inaccessible mountains, that general
freed himself from the superior forces of the Covenanters.

Such was the situation of Montrose, that very good or very ill fortune
was equally destructive to him, and diminished his army. After every
victory, his soldiers, greedy of spoil, but deeming the smallest
acquisition to be unexhausted riches, deserted in great numbers, and
went home to secure the treasures which they had acquired. Tired too,
and spent with hasty and long marches in the depth of winter, through
snowy mountains, unprovided with every necessary, they fell off, and
left their general almost alone with the Irish, who, having no place to
which they could retire, still adhered to him in every fortune.

With these, and some reënforcements of the Atholemen and Macdonalds whom
he had recalled, Montrose fell suddenly upon Argyle’s country, and let
loose upon it all the rage of war; carrying off the cattle, burning
the houses, and putting the inhabitants to the sword. This severity,
by which Montrose sullied his victories, was the result of private
animosity against the chieftain, as much as of zeal for the public
cause, Argyle, collecting three thousand men, marched in quest of the
enemy, who had retired with their plunder; and he lay at Innerlochy,
supposing himself still at a considerable distance from them. The earl
of Seaforth, at the head of the garrison of Inverness, who were veteran
soldiers, joined to five thousand new levied troops of the northern
counties, pressed the royalists on the other side, and threatened them
with inevitable destruction. By a quick and unexpected march, Montrose
hastened to Innerlochy, and presented himself in order of battle before
the surprised but not affrightened Covenanters. Argyle alone, seized
with a panic, deserted his army, who still maintained their ground, and
gave battle to the royalists. After a vigorous resistance, they were
defeated, and pursued with great slaughter.[*] And the power of the
Campbells (that is Argyle’s name) being thus broken, the Highlanders,
who were in general well affected to the royal cause, began to join
Montrose’s camp in great numbers. Seaforth’s army dispersed of itself,
at the very terror of his name. And Lord Gordon, eldest son of Huntley,
having escaped from his uncle Argyle, who had hitherto detained him, now
joined Montrose, with no contemptible number of his followers, attended
by his brother, the earl of Aboine.

The council at Edinburgh, alarmed at Montrose’s progress, began to
think of a more regular plan of defence against an enemy whose repeated
victories had rendered him extremely formidable. They sent for Baillie,
an officer of reputation, from England; and joining him in command with
Urrey, who had again enlisted himself among the king’s enemies, they
sent them to the field with a considerable army against the royalists.
Montrose, with a detachment of eight hundred men, had attacked Dundee,
a town extremely zealous for the covenant, and having carried it by
assault, had delivered it up to be plundered by his soldiers; when
Baillie and Urrey, with their whole force, were unexpectedly upon
him.[**] His conduct and presence of mind in this emergence appeared
conspicuous. Instantly he called off his soldiers from plunder, put them
in order, secured his retreat by the most skilful measures; and having
marched sixty miles in the face of an enemy much superior, without
stopping, or allowing his soldiers the least sleep or refreshment, he at
last secured himself in the mountains.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 985. Wishart, cap. 8.

     ** Rush. vol. vii. p. 228. Wishart, cap. 9.

Baillie and Urrey now divided their troops, in order the better to
conduct the war against an enemy who surprised them as much by the
rapidity of his marches, as by the boldness of his enterprises. Urrey,
at the head of four thousand men, met him at Alderne, near Inverness;
and, encouraged by the superiority of number, (for the Covenanters were
double the royalists,) attacked him in the post which he had chosen
Montrose, having placed his right wing in strong ground, drew the best
of his forces to the other, and left no main body between them; a defect
which he artfully concealed, by showing a few men through the trees
and bushes with which that ground was covered. That Urrey might have no
leisure to perceive the stratagem, he instantly led his left wing to
the charge; and, making a furious impression upon the Covenanters, drove
them off the field, and gained a complete victory.[*] In this battle,
the valor of young Napier, son to the lord of that name, shone out with
signal lustre.

Baillie now advanced, in order to revenge Urrey’s discomfiture; but at
Alford he met himself with a like fate. Montrose, weak in cavalry, here
lined his troops of horse with infantry; and after putting the enemy’s
horse to rout, fell with united force upon their foot, who were entirely
cut in pieces, though with the loss of the gallant Lord Gordon on the
part of the royalists.[**] And having thus prevailed in so many battles,
which his vigor ever rendered as decisive as they were successful, he
summoned together all his friends and partisans, and prepared himself
for marching into the southern provinces, in order to put a final period
to the power of the Covenanters, and dissipate the parliament, which,
with great pomp and solemnity, they had summoned to meet at St.
Johnstone’s.

While the fire was thus kindled in the north of the island, it blazed
out with no less fury in the south: the parliamentary and royal armies,
as soon as the season would permit, prepared to take the field, in hopes
of bringing their important quarrel to a quick decision. The passing of
the self-denying ordinance had been protracted by so many debates and
intrigues, that the spring was far advanced before it received the
sanction of both houses; and it was thought dangerous by many to
introduce, so near the time of action, such great innovations into the
army. Had not the punctilious principles of Essex engaged him, amidst
all the disgusts which he received, to pay implicit obedience to the
parliament, this alteration had not been effected without some fatal
accident: since, notwithstanding his prompt resignation of the command,
a mutiny was generally apprehended.[***]

     * Rush. vol. vii. p. 229. Wishart, cap. 10.

     ** Rush. vol. vii. p. 229. Wishart, cap. 11.

     *** Rush. vol. vii. p. 126, 127.

Fairfax, or, more properly speaking, Cromwell under his name, introduced
at last the new model into the army, and threw the troops into a
different shape. From the same men new regiments and new companies were
formed, different officers appointed, and the whole military force put
into such hands as the Independents could rely on. Besides members of
parliament who were excluded, many officers, unwilling to serve under
the new generals, threw up their commissions, and unwarily facilitated
the project of putting the army entirely into the hands of that faction.

Though the discipline of the former parliamentary army was not
contemptible, a more exact plan was introduced, and rigorously executed,
by these new commanders. Valor indeed was very generally diffused over
the one party as well as the other, during this period: discipline also
was attained by the forces of the parliament: but the perfection of
the military art, in concerting the general plans of action and the
operations of the field, seems still on both sides to have been in
a great measure wanting. Historians at least, perhaps from their own
ignorance and inexperience, have not remarked any thing but a headlong,
impetuous conduct; each party hurrying to a battle, where valor and
fortune chiefly determined the success. The great ornament of history,
during these reigns, are the civil, not the military transactions.

Never surely was a more singular army assembled, than that which was now
set on foot by the parliament. To the greater number of the regiments
chaplains were not appointed, the officers assumed the spiritual duty,
and united it with their military functions. During the intervals of
action, they occupied themselves in sermons, prayers, exhortations;
and the same emulation there attended them, which in the field is so
necessary to support the honor of that profession. Rapturous ecstasies
supplied the place of study and reflection; and while the zealous
devotees poured out their thoughts in unpremeditated harangues, they
mistook that eloquence which to their own surprise, as well as that of
others, flowed in upon them, for divine illuminations, and for illapses
of the Holy Spirit. Wherever they were quartered, they excluded the
minister from his pulpit; and, usurping his place, conveyed their
sentiments to the audience, with all the authority which followed
their power, their valor, and their military exploits, united to their
appearing zeal and fervor. The private soldiers, seized with the same
spirit, employed their vacant hours in prayer, in perusing the Holy
Scriptures, in ghostly conferences where they compared the progress of
their in grace, and mutually stimulated each other to further advances
in the great work of their salvation. When they were marching to battle,
the whole field resounded, as well with psalms and spiritual songs
adapted to the occasion, as with the instruments of military music:[*]
and every man endeavored to drown the sense of present danger in the
prospect of that crown of glory which was set before him. In so holy a
cause, wounds were esteemed meritorious; death, martyrdom; and the hurry
and dangers of action, instead of banishing their pious visions, rather
served to impress their minds more strongly with them.

The royalists were desirous of throwing a ridicule on this fanaticism
of the parliamentary armies, without being sensible how much reason they
had to apprehend its dangerous consequences. The forces assembled by
the king at Oxford, in the west, and in other places, were equal, if
not superior in number to their adversaries; but actuated by a very
different spirit. That license which had been introduced by want of
pay, had risen to a great height among them, and rendered them more
formidable to their friends than to their enemies. Prince Rupert,
negligent of the people, fond of the soldiery, had indulged the troops
in unwarrantable liberties: Wilmot, a man of dissolute manners, had
promoted the same spirit of disorder: and the licentious Goring,
Gerrard, Sir Richard Granville, now carried it to a great pitch of
enormity. In the west especially, where Goring commanded, universal
spoil and havoc were committed; and the whole country was laid waste
by the rapine of the army. All distinction of parties being in a manner
dropped, the most devoted friends of the church and monarchy wished
there for such success to the parliamentary forces as might put an end
to these oppressions. The country people, despoiled of their substance,
flocked together in several places, armed with clubs and staves; and
though they professed an enmity to the soldiers of both parties, their
hatred was in most places levelled chiefly against the royalists, from
whom they had met with the worst treatment. Many thousands of these
tumultuary peasants were assembled in different parts of England;
who destroyed all such straggling soldiers as they met with, and much
infested the armies.[**]

     * Dugdale, p. 7. Rush. vol. vi. p. 281.

     ** Rush. vol. vii. p. 52, 61, 62. Whitlocke, p. 130, 131,
     133, 136, Clarendon, vol. v. p. 665.

The disposition of the forces on both sides was as follows: part of
the Scottish army was employed in taking Pomfret and other towns in
Yorkshire: part of it besieged Carlisle valiantly defended by Sir Thomas
Glenham. Chester, where Biron commanded, had long been blockaded by Sir
William Brereton; and was reduced to great difficulties. The king,
being joined by the princes Rupert and Maurice, lay at Oxford with a
considerable army, about fifteen thousand men. Fairfax and Cromwell were
posted at Windsor, with the new-modelled army, about twenty-two thousand
men. Taunton, in the county of Somerset, defended by Blake, suffered a
long siege from Sir Richard Granville, who commanded an army of about
eight thousand men; and though the defence had been obstinate, the
garrison was now reduced to the last extremity. Goring commanded in the
west an army of nearly the same number.[*]

On opening the campaign, the king formed the project of relieving
Chester; Fairfax, that of relieving Taunton. The king was first in
motion. When he advanced to Draiton, in Shropshire, Biron met him, and
brought intelligence that his approach had raised the siege, and that
the parliamentary army had withdrawn. Fairfax, having reached Salisbury
in his road westward, received orders from the committee of both
kingdoms appointed for the management of the war, to return and lay
siege to Oxford, now exposed by the king’s absence. He obeyed, after
sending Colonel Weldon to the west with a detachment of four thousand
men. On Weldon’s approach, Granville, who imagined that Fairfax with his
whole army was upon him, raised the siege, and allowed this pertinacious
town, now half taken and half burned, to receive relief: but the
royalists, being reënforced with three thousand horse under Goring,
again advanced to Taunton, and shut up Weldon, with his small army, in
that ruinous place.[**]

The king, having effected his purpose with regard to Chester returned
southwards: and in his way sat down before Leicester, a garrison of the
parliaments. Having made a breach in the wall, he stormed the town on
all sides; and, after a furious assault, the soldiers entered sword in
hand, and committed all those disorders to which their natural violence,
especially when inflamed by resistance, is so much addicted.[***]

     * Rush. vol. vii. p. 18, 19, etc.

     ** Rush, vol. vii. p. 28.

     *** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 652.

A great booty was taken and distributed among them: fifteen hundred
prisoners fell into the king’s hands. This success, which struck a great
terror into the parliamentary army, determined Fairfax to leave Oxford,
which he was beginning to approach; and he marched towards the king,
with an intention of offering him battle. The king was advancing towards
Oxford, in order to raise the siege, which, he apprehended, was now
begun; and both armies, ere they were aware, had advanced within six
miles of each other. A council of war was called by the king, in order
to deliberate concerning the measures which he should now pursue. On the
one hand, it seemed more prudent to delay the combat; because Gerrard,
who lay in Wales with three thousand men, might be enabled in a little
time to join the army; and Goring, it was hoped, would soon be master of
Taunton, and having put the west in full security, would then unite his
forces to those of the king, and give him an incontestable superiority
over the enemy. On the other hand, Prince Rupert, whose boiling ardor
still pushed him on to battle, excited the impatient humor of the
nobility and gentry of which the army was full; and urged the many
difficulties under which the royalists labored, and from which nothing
but a victory could relieve them: the resolution was taken to give
battle to Fairfax; and the royal army immediately advanced upon him.

At Naseby was fought, with forces nearly equal, this decisive and
well-disputed action between the king and parliament. The main body
of the royalists was commanded by the king himself; the right wing by
Prince Rupert; the left by Sir Marmaduke Langdale. Fairfax, seconded by
Skippon, placed himself in the main body of the opposite army; Cromwell
in the right wing; Ireton, Cromwell’s son-in-law, in the left. The
charge was begun, with his usual celerity and usual success, by Prince
Rupert. Though Ireton made stout resistance, and even after he was run
through the thigh with a pike, still maintained the combat till he
was taken prisoner, yet was that whole wing broken, and pursued with
precipitate fury by Rupert: he was even so inconsiderate as to lose time
in summoning and attacking the artillery of the enemy, which had been
left with a good guard of infantry. The king led on his main body, and
displayed in this action all the conduct of a prudent general, and all
the valor of a stout soldier.[*]

     * Whitlocke, p. 146.

Fairfax and Skippon encountered him, and well supported that reputation
which they had acquired. Skippon, being dangerously wounded, was desired
by Fairfax to leave the field; but he declared that he would remain
there as long as one man maintained his ground.[*] The infantry of the
parliament was broken, and pressed upon by the king; till Fairfax, with
great presence of mind, brought up the reserve, and renewed the combat.
Meanwhile Cromwell, having led on his troops to the attack of Langdale,
overbore the force of the royalists, and by his prudence improved that
advantage which he had gained by his valor. Having pursued the enemy
about a quarter of a mile, and detached some troops to prevent their
rallying, he turned back upon the king’s infantry, and threw them into
the utmost confusion. One regiment alone preserved its order unbroken,
though twice desperately assailed by Fairfax: and that general,
excited by so steady a resistance, ordered Doyley, the captain of his
life-guard, to give them a third charge in front, while he himself
attacked them in the rear. The regiment was broken. Fairfax, with his
own hands, killed an ensign, and, having seized the colors, gave them to
a soldier to keep for him. The soldier, afterwards boasting that he had
won this trophy, was reproved by Doyley, who had seen the action. “Let
him retain that honor,” said Fairfax; “I have to-day acquired enough
beside.”[**]

Prince Rupert, sensible too late of his error, left the fruitless attack
on the enemy’s artillery, and joined the king, whose infantry was
now totally discomfited. Charles exhorted this body of cavalry not to
despair, and cried aloud to them, “One charge more, and we recover
the day.”[***] But the disadvantages under which they labored were too
evident; and they could by no means be induced to renew the combat.
Charles was obliged to quit the field, and leave the victory to the
enemy.[****]

     * Rush, vol. vii. p. 43. Whitlocke, p. 145.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 145.

     *** Rush. vol. vii. p. 44.

     **** Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 656, 657. Walker p. 130, 131

The slain on the side of the parliament exceeded those on the side of
the king: they lost a thousand men; he not above eight hundred. But
Fairfax made five hundred officers prisoners, and four thousand
private men; took all the king’s artillery and ammunition, and totally
dissipated his infantry: so that scarce any victory could be more
complete than that which he obtained.

Among the other spoils was seized the king’s cabinet, with the copies of
his letters to the queen, which the parliament afterwards ordered to be
published.[*] They chose, no doubt, such of them as they thought would
reflect dishonor on him: yet, upon the whole, the letters are written
with delicacy and tenderness, and give an advantageous idea both of the
king’s genius and morals. A mighty fondness, it is true, and attachment,
he expresses to his consort, and often professes that he never would
embrace any measures which she disapproved: but such declarations of
civility and confidence are not always to be taken in a full, literal
sense. And so legitimate an affection, avowed by the laws of God and
man, may perhaps be excusable towards a woman of beauty and spirit, even
though she was a Papist.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 658.

     ** Hearne has published the following extract from a
     manuscript work of Sir Simon D’Ewes, who was no mean man in
     the parliamentary party. “On Thursday, the 30th and last day
     of this instant June, 1625, I went to Whitehall, purposely
     to see the queen, which I did fully all the time she sat at
     dinner. I perceived her to be a most absolute delicate lady,
     after I had exactly surveyed all the features of her face,
     much enlivened by her radiant and sparkling black eyes.
     Besides, her deportment among her women was so sweet and
     humble, and her speech and looks to her other servants so
     mild and gracious, as I could not abstain from divers deep-
     fetched sighs, to consider that she wanted the knowledge of
     the true religion.” See Preface to the Chronicle of
     Dunstable, p 64.

The Athenians, having intercepted a letter written by their enemy,
Philip of Macedon, to his wife Olympia, so far from being moved by a
curiosity of prying into the secrets of that relation, immediately sent
the letter to the queen unopened. Philip was not their sovereign; nor
were they inflamed with that violent animosity against him which attends
all civil commotions.

After the battle, the king retreated with that body of horse which
remained entire, first to Hereford, then to Abergavenny; and remained
some time in Wales, from the vain hope of raising a body of infantry
in those harassed and exhausted quarters. Fairfax, having first retaken
Leicester, which was surrendered upon articles, began to deliberate
concerning his future enterprises. A letter was brought him, written by
Goring to the king, and unfortunately intrusted to a spy of Fairfax’s.
Goring there informed the king, that in three weeks he hoped to be
master of Taunton, after which he would join his majesty with all the
forces in the west; and entreated him, in the mean while to avoid coming
to any general action. This letter, which, had it been safely delivered,
had probably prevented the battle of Naseby, served now to direct the
operations of Fairfax.[*] After leaving a body of three thousand men
to Pointz and Rossiter, with orders to attend the king’s motions, he
marched immediately to the west, with a view of saving Taunton, and
suppressing the only considerable force which now remained to the
royalists.

In the beginning of the campaign, Charles, apprehensive of the event,
had sent the prince of Wales, then fifteen years of age, to the west,
with the title of General, and had given orders, if he were pressed by
the enemy, that he should make his escape into a foreign country, and
save one part of the royal family from the violence of the parliament.
Prince Rupert had thrown himself into Bristol, with an intention of
defending that important city. Goring commanded the army before Taunton.

On Fairfax’s approach, the siege of Taunton was raised; and the
royalists retired to Lamport, an open town in the county of Somerset.
Fairfax attacked them in that post, beat them from it, killed about
three hundred men, and took one thousand four hundred prisoners.[**]
After this advantage, he sat down before Bridgewater, a town esteemed
strong, and of great consequence in that country. When he had entered
the outer town by storm, Windham, the Governor, who had retired into the
inner, immediately capitulated, and delivered up the place to Fairfax.
The garrison, to the number of two thousand six hundred men, were made
prisoners of war.

Fairfax, having next taken Bath and Sherborne, resolved to lay siege to
Bristol, and made great preparations for an enterprise which, from
the strength of the garrison, and the reputation of Prince Rupert, the
governor, was deemed of the last importance. But, so precarious in most
men is this quality of military courage, a poorer defence was not made
by any town during the whole war; and the general expectations were here
extremely disappointed. No sooner had the parliamentary forces entered
the lines by storm, than the prince capitulated, and surrendered the
city to Fairfax.[***] A few days before, he had written a letter to the
king, in which he undertook to defend the place for four months, if no
mutiny obliged him to surrender it.

     * Rush, vol. vii. p. 49.

     ** Rush, vol. vii. p. 55.

     *** Rush, vol. vii p. 83.

Charles, who was forming schemes and collecting forces for the relief of
Bristol, was astonished at so unexpected an event, which was little less
fatal to his cause than the defeat at Naseby.[*] Full of indignation, he
instantly recalled all Prince Rupert’s commissions, and sent him a pass
to go beyond sea.[**]

The king’s affairs now went fast to ruin in all quarters. The Scots,
having made themselves masters of Carlisle, after an obstinate siege,
marched southwards, and laid siege to Hereford; but were obliged to
raise it on the king’s approach: and this was the last glimpse of
success which attended his arms. Having marched to the relief of
Chester, which was anew besieged by the parliamentary forces under
Colonel Jones, Pointz attacked his rear, and forced him to give battle.
While the fight was continued with great obstinacy, and victory seemed
to incline to the royalists, Jones fell upon them from the other
side, and put them to rout, with the loss of six hundred slain and one
thousand prisoners.[***] The king, with the remains of his broken army,
fled to Newark, and thence escaped to Oxford, where he shut himself up
during the winter season.

     * Clarendon, vol. vi. p. 690. Walker, p. 137.

     ** Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 695.

     *** Rush, vii. p. 117.

The news which he received from every quarter, were no less fatal than
those events which passed where he himself was present. Fairfax and
Cromwell, after the surrender of Bristol, having divided their forces,
the former marched westwards, in order to complete the conquest of
Devonshire and Cornwall; the latter attacked the king’s garrisons which
lay to the east of Bristol. The Devizes were surrendered to Cromwell;
Berkeley Castle was taken by storm; Winchester capitulated; Basing House
was entered sword in hand; and all these middle counties of England
were, in a little time, reduced to obedience under the parliament.

{1646.} The same rapid and uninterrupted success attended Fairfax. The
parliamentary forces, elated by past victories, governed by the most
rigid discipline, met with no equal opposition from troops dismayed by
repeated defeats, and corrupted by licentious manners. After beating up
the quarters of the royalists at Bovey Tracy, Fairfax sat down before
Dartmouth, and in a few days entered it by storm. Poudram Castle being
taken by him, and Exeter blockaded on all sides, Hopton, a man of merit,
who now commanded the royalists, having advanced to the relief of that
town with an army of eight thousand men, met with the parliamentary army
at Torrington, where he was defeated, all his foot dispersed, and he
himself with his horse obliged to retire into Cornwall. Fairfax followed
him, and vigorously pursued the victory. Having enclosed the royalists
at Truro, he forced the whole army, consisting of five thousand men,
chiefly cavalry, to surrender upon terms. The soldiers, delivering up
their horses and arms, were allowed to disband, and received twenty
shillings apiece, to carry them to their respective abodes. Such of
the officers as desired it had passes to retire beyond sea: the others,
having promised never more to bear arms, paid compositions to the
parliament,[*] and procured their pardon.[**] And thus Fairfax, after
taking Exeter, which completed the conquest of the west, marched with
his victorious army to the centre of the kingdom, and fixed his camp at
Newbury. The prince of Wales, in pursuance of the king’s orders, retired
to Scilly, thence to Jersey; whence he went to Paris, where he joined
the queen, who had fled thither from Exeter, at the time the earl of
Essex conducted the parliamentary army to the west.

In the other parts of England, Hereford was taken by surprise: Chester
surrendered: Lord Digby, who had attempted with one thousand two
hundred horse to break into Scotland and join Montrose, was defeated
at Sherburne, in Yorkshire, by Colonel Copley; his whole force was
dispersed, and he himself was obliged to fly, first to the Isle of Man,
thence to Ireland. News, too, arrived that Montrose himself, after some
more successes, was at last routed; and this only remaining hope of the
royal party finally extinguished.

When Montrose descended into the southern counties, the Covenanters,
assembling their whole force, met him with a numerous army, and gave him
battle, but without success, at Kilsyth.[***] This was the most complete
victory that Montrose ever obtained.

     * These compositions were different, according to the
     demerits of the person: but by a vote of the house, they
     could not be under two years’ rent of the delinquent’s
     estate. Journ. 11th of August, 1648 Whitlocke, p. 160.

     ** Rush, vol. vii. p 108.

     *** 15th August, 1645.

The royalists put to sword six thousand of their enemies, and left the
Covenanters no remains of any army in Scotland. The whole kingdom was
shaken with these repeated successes of Montrose; and many noblemen, who
secretly favored the royal cause, now declared openly for it when they
saw a force able to support them. The marquis of Douglas, the earls of
Annandale and Hartfield, the lords Fleming, Seton, Maderty, Carnegy,
with many others, flocked to the royal standard. Edinburgh opened its
gates, and gave liberty to all the prisoners there detained by the
Covenanters. Among the rest was Lord Ogilvy, son of Airly, whose family
had contributed extremely to the victory gained at Kilsyth.[*]

David Lesly was detached from the army in England, and marched to the
relief of his distressed party in Scotland. Montrose advanced still
farther to the south, allured by vain hopes, both of rousing to arms the
earls of Hume, Traquaire, and Roxborough, who had promised to join him;
and of obtaining from England some supply of cavalry, in which he was
deficient. By the negligence of his scouts, Lesly, at Philipbaugh in
the Forest, surprised his army, much diminished in numbers, from the
desertion of the Highlanders, who had retired to the hills, according to
custom, in order to secure their plunder. After a sharp conflict,
where Montrose exerted great valor, his forces were routed by Lesly’s
cavalry;[**] and he himself was obliged to fly with his broken forces
into the mountains, where he again prepared himself for new battles and
new enterprises.[***]

The Covenanters used the victory with rigor. Their prisoners, Sir Robert
Spotiswood, secretary of state, and son to the late primate, Sir Philip
Nisbet, Sir William Hollo, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Andrew Guthry,
son of the bishop of Murray, William Murray, son of the earl of
Tullibardine, were condemned and executed. The sole crime imputed to
the secretary was his delivering to Montrose the king’s commission to be
captain-general of Scotland. Lord Ogilvy, who was again taken prisoner,
would have undergone the same fate, had not his sister found means to
procure his escape by changing clothes with him. For this instance of
courage and dexterity, she met with harsh usage. The clergy solicited
the parliament that more royalists might be executed; but could not
obtain their request.[****]

     * Rush, vol. vii p. 230, 231. Wishart, cap, 13.

     ** 13th Sept. 1645.

     *** Rush, vol. vii. p. 231

     **** Guthry’s Memoirs. Rush. vol. vii. p. 232.

After all these repeated disasters, which every where befell the royal
party, there remained only one body of troops on which fortune could
exercise her rigor. Lord Astley, with a small army of three thousand
men, chiefly cavalry, marching to Oxford in order to join the king, was
met at Stowe by Colonel Morgan, and entirely defeated, himself
being taken prisoner. “You have done your work,” said Astley to the
parliamentary officers; “and may now go to play, unless you choose to
fall out among yourselves.”[*]

The condition of the king during this whole winter was to the last
degree disastrous and melancholy. As the dread of ills is commonly more
oppressive than their real presence, perhaps in no period of his life
was he more justly the object of compassion. His vigor of mind, which,
though it sometimes failed him in acting, never deserted him in his
sufferings, was what alone supported him; and he was determined, as
he wrote to Lord Digby, if he could not live as a king, to die like a
gentleman; nor should any of his friends, he said, ever have reason
to blush for the prince whom they had so unfortunately served.[**]
The murmurs of discontented officers, on the one hand, harassed their
unhappy sovereign; while they overrated those services and sufferings
which they now saw must forever go unrewarded.[***] The affectionate
duty, on the other hand, of his more generous friends, who respected his
misfortunes and his virtues as much as his dignity, wrung his heart with
a new sorrow, when he reflected that such disinterested attachment would
so soon be exposed to the rigor of his implacable enemies. Repeated
attempts which he made for a peaceful and equitable accommodation with
the parliament, served to no purpose but to convince them that the
victory was entirely in their hands. They deigned not to make the least
reply to several of his messages, in which he desired a passport for
commissioners.[****]

     * Rush, vol. vii. p. 141. It was the same Astley who, before
     he charged at the battle of Edgehill, made this short
     prayer: “O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day.
     If I forget thee, do not thou forget me,” And with that rose
     up and cried, “March on, boys!” Warwick, p. 229. There were
     certainly much longer prayers said in the parliamentary
     army; but I doubt if there were so good a one.

     ** Carte’s Ormond, vol. iii. No. 433.

     *** Walker, p. 147

     **** Rush, vol. vii. p. 215, etc.

At last, after reproaching him with the blood spilt during the war, they
told him that they were preparing bills for him; and his passing them
would be the best pledge of his inclination towards peace: in other
words, he must yield at discretion.[*] He desired a personal treaty, and
offered to come to London, upon receiving a safe-conduct for himself
and his attendants: they absolutely refused him admittance, and issued
orders for the guarding, that is, the seizing of his person, in case he
should attempt to visit them.[**]

     * Rush, vol. vii. p. 217, 219. Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 741.

     ** Rush, vol. vii. p 249. Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 741.

A new incident, which happened in Ireland, served to inflame the minds
of men, and to increase those calumnies with which his enemies had so
much loaded him, and which he ever regarded as the most grievous part of
his misfortunes. After the cessation with the Irish rebels, the king
was desirous of concluding a final peace with them, and obtaining their
assistance in England: and he gave authority to Ormond, lord lieutenant,
to promise them an abrogation of all the penal laws enacted against
Catholics; together with the suspension of Poinings’s statute, with
regard to some particular bills which should be agreed on. Lord Herbert,
created earl of Glamorgan, (though his patent had not yet passed the
seals,) having occasion for his private affairs to go to Ireland, the
king considered that this nobleman, being a Catholic, and allied to the
best Irish families, might be of service: he also foresaw that further
concessions with regard to religion might probably be demanded by the
bigoted Irish; and that, as these concessions, however necessary, would
give great scandal to the Protestant zealots in his three kingdoms,
if would be requisite both to conceal them during some time, and to
preserve Ormond’s character by giving private orders to Glamorgan to
conclude and sign these articles. But as he had a better opinion of
Glamorgan’s zeal and affection for his service than of his capacity, he
enjoined him to communicate all his measures to Ormond; and though the
final conclusion of the treaty must be executed only in Glamorgan’s
own name, he was required to be directed in the steps towards it by the
opinion of the lord lieutenant. Glamorgan, bigoted to his religion, and
passionate for the king’s service, but guided in these pursuits by no
manner of judgment or discretion, secretly, of himself, without any
communication with Ormond, concluded a peace with the council of
Kilkenny, and agreed, in the king’s name, that the Irish should enjoy
all the churches of which they had ever been in possession since the
commencement of their insurrection, on condition that they should assist
the king in England with a body of ten thousand men. This transaction
was discovered by accident. The titular archbishop of Tuam being killed
by a sally of the garrison of Sligo, the articles of the treaty were
found among his baggage, and were immediately published every where,
and copies of them sent over to the English parliament.[*] The lord
lieutenant and Lord Digby, foreseeing the clamor which would be raised
against the king, committed Glamorgan to prison, charged him with
treason for his temerity, and maintained that he had acted altogether
without any authority from his master. The English parliament, however,
neglected not so favorable an opportunity of reviving the old clamor
with regard to the king’s favor of Popery, and accused him of delivering
over, in a manner, the whole kingdom of Ireland to that hated sect. The
king told them, “that the earl of Glamorgan, having made an offer to
raise forces in the kingdom of Ireland, and to conduct them into England
for his majesty’s service, had a commission to that purpose, and to that
purpose only; and that he had no commission at all to treat of any thing
else, without the privity and direction of the lord lieutenant, much
less to capitulate any thing concerning religion, or any property
belonging either to church or laity.”[**] Though this declaration seems
agreeable to truth, it gave no satisfaction to the parliament; and
some historians, even at present, when the ancient bigotry is somewhat
abated, are desirous of representing this very innocent transaction, in
which the king was engaged by the most violent necessity, as a stain on
the memory of that unfortunate prince.[***] [16]

     * Rush, vol. vii. p. 239.

     ** Birch, p. 119.

     *** See note P, at the end of the volume.

Having lost all hope of prevailing over the rigor of the parliament,
either by arms or by treaty, the only resource which remained to the
king was derived from the intestine dissensions which ran very high
among his enemies. Presbyterians and Independents, even before their
victory was fully completed, fell into contests about the division of
the spoil; and their religious as well as civil disputes agitated the
whole kingdom.

The parliament, though they had early abolished Episcopal authority, had
not, during so long a time, substituted any other spiritual government
in its place; and their committees of religion had hitherto assumed
the whole ecclesiastical jurisdiction; but they now established, by an
ordinance, the Presbyterian model in all its forms of congregational,
classical, provincial, and national assemblies. All the inhabitants of
each parish were ordered to meet and choose elders, on whom together
with the minister, was bestowed the entire direction of all spiritual
concerns within the congregation. A number of neighboring parishes,
commonly between twelve and twenty, formed a classis; and the court
which governed this division was composed of all the ministers, together
with two, three, or four elders chosen from each parish. The provincial
assembly retained an inspection over several neighboring classes,
and was composed entirely of clergymen: the national assembly was
constituted in the same manner; and its authority extended over the
whole kingdom. It is probable, that the tyranny exercised by the
Scottish clergy, had given warning not to allow laymen a place in
the provincial or national assemblies; lest the nobility and more
considerable gentry, soliciting a seat in these great ecclesiastical
courts, should bestow a consideration upon them, and render them, in
the eyes of the multitude, a rival to the parliament. In the inferior
courts, the mixture of the laity might serve rather to temper the usual
zeal of the clergy.[*]

But though the Presbyterians, by the establishment of parity among the
ecclesiastics, were so far gratified, they were denied satisfaction in
several other points on which they were extremely intent. The assembly
of divines had voted Presbytery to be of divine right: the parliament
refused their assent to that decision.[**] Selden, Whitlocke, and other
political reasoners, assisted by the Independents, had prevailed in this
important deliberation. They thought, that had the bigoted religionists
been able to get their heavenly charter recognized, the presbyters would
soon become more dangerous to the magistrate than had ever been the
prelatical clergy. These latter, white they claimed to themselves a
divine right, admitted of a like origin to civil authority: the former,
challenging to their own order a celestial pedigree, derived the
legislative power from a source no more dignified than the voluntary
association of the people.

     * Rush. vol. vii. p. 224.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 106. Rush. vol. vii. p. 260, 261.

Under color of keeping the sacraments from profanation, the clergy of
all Christian sects had assumed what they call the power of the keys, or
the right of fulminating excommunication. The example of Scotland was
a sufficient lesson for the parliament to use precaution in guarding
against so severe a tyranny. They determined, by a general ordinance,
all the cases in which excommunication could be used. They allowed of
appeals to parliament from all ecclesiastical courts. And they appointed
commissioners in every province to judge of such cases as fell not
within their general ordinance.[*] So much civil authority, intermixed
with the ecclesiastical, gave disgust to all the zealots.

But nothing was attended with more universal scandal than the propensity
of many in the parliament towards a toleration of the Protestant
sectaries. The Presbyterians exclaimed, that this indulgence made the
church of Christ resemble Noah’s ark, and rendered it a receptacle for
all unclean beasts. They insisted, that the least of Christ’s truths
was superior to all political considerations.[**] They maintained the
eternal obligation imposed by the covenant to extirpate heresy and
schism. And they menaced all their opponents with the same rigid
persecution under which they themselves had groaned, when held in
subjection by the hierarchy.

     * Rush. vol. vii. p. 210.

     ** Rush, vol vii. p. 308.

So great prudence and reserve, in such material points, does great honor
to the parliament; and proves that, notwithstanding the prevalency of
bigotry and fanaticism, there were many members who had more enlarged
views, and paid regard to the civil interests of society. These men,
uniting themselves to the enthusiasts, whose genius is naturally averse
to clerical usurpations, exercised so jealous an authority over the
assembly of divines, that they allowed them nothing but the liberty
of tendering advice, and would not intrust them even with the power
of electing their own chairman or his substitute, or of supplying the
vacancies of their own members.

While these disputes were canvassed by theologians, who engaged in
their spiritual contests every order of the state the king, though he
entertained hopes of reaping advantage from those divisions, was much at
a loss which side it would be most for his interest to comply with.
The Presbyterians were, by their principles, the least averse to regal
authority but were rigidly bent on the extirpation of prelacy: the
Independents were resolute to lay the foundation of a republican
government; but as they pretended not to erect themselves into
a national church, it might be hoped that, if gratified with am
toleration, they would admit the reëstablishment of the hierarchy. So
great attachment had the king to episcopal jurisdiction, that he was
ever inclined to put it in balance even with his own power and kingly
office.

But whatever advantage he might hope to reap from the divisions in the
parliamentary party, he was apprehensive lest it should come too late
to save him from the destruction with which he was instantly threatened.
Fairfax was approaching with a powerful and victorious army, and was
taking the proper measures for laying siege to Oxford, which must
infallibly fall into his hands. To be taken captive, and led in triumph
by his insolent enemies, was what Charles justly abhorred; and every
insult, if not violence, was to be dreaded from that enthusiastic
soldiery who hated his person and despised his dignity. In this
desperate extremity, he embraced a measure which, in any other
situation, might lie under the imputation of imprudence and
indiscretion.

Montreville, the French minister, interested for the king more by the
natural sentiments of humanity than any instructions from his court,
which seemed rather to favor the parliament, had solicited the Scottish
generals and commissioners to give protection to their distressed
sovereign; and having received many general professions and promises,
he had always transmitted these, perhaps with some exaggeration, to
the king. From his suggestions, Charles began to entertain thoughts of
leaving Oxford, and flying to the Scottish army, which at that time lay
before Newark.[*] He considered, that the Scottish nation had been
fully gratified in all their demands; and having already, in their own
country, annihilated both episcopacy and regal authority, had no further
concessions to exact from him. In all disputes which had passed about
settling the terms of peace, the Scots, he heard, had still adhered to
the milder side, and had endeavored to soften the rigor of the English
parliament. Great disgusts also, on other accounts, had taken place
between the nations; and the Scots found that, in proportion as their
assistance became less necessary, less value was put upon them. The
progress of the Independents gave them great alarm; and they were
scandalized to hear their beloved covenant spoken of every day with less
regard, and reverence. The refusal of a divine right to presbytery,
and the infringing of ecclesiastical discipline from political
considerations, were to them the subject of much offence; and the king
hoped that, in their present disposition, the plight of their native
prince, flying to them in this extremity of distress, would rouse
every-spark of generosity in their bosom, and procure him their favor
and protection.

     * Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 750; vol. v. p. 16.

That he might the better conceal his intentions, orders were given at
every gate in Oxford for allowing three persons to pass; and in the
night the king, accompanied by none but Dr. Hudson and Mr. Ashburnham,
went out at that gate which leads to London. He rode before a
portmanteau, and called himself Ashburnham’s servant. He passed through
Henley, St. Albans, and came so near to London as Harrow on the Hill.
He once entertained thoughts of entering into that city, and of throwing
himself on the mercy of the parliament. But at last, after passing
through many cross roads, he arrived at the Scottish camp before
Newark.[*] The parliament, hearing of his escape from Oxford, issued
rigorous orders, and threatened with instant death whoever should harbor
or conceal him.[**]

The Scottish generals and commissioners affected great surprise on
the appearance of the king; and though they paid him all the exterior
respect due to his dignity, they instantly set a guard upon him, under
color of protection, and made him in reality a prisoner. They informed
the English parliament of this unexpected incident, and assured them
that they had entered into no private treaty with the king. They applied
to him for orders to Bellasis, governor of Newark, to surrender that
town, now reduced to extremity; and the orders were instantly obeyed.
And hearing that the parliament laid claim to the entire disposal of the
king’s person, and that the English army was making some motion towards
them, they thought proper to retire northwards, and to fix their camp at
Newcastle.[***]

     * Rush, vol. vii. p. 267.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 208.

     *** Rush, vol. vii. p. 271. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 23.

This measure was very grateful to the king; and he began to entertain
hopes of protection from the Scots. He was particularly attentive to the
behavior of their preachers, on whom all depended. It was the mode of
that age to make the pulpit the scene of news; and on every great event,
the whole Scripture was ransacked by the clergy for passages applicable
to the present occasion. The first minister who preached before the king
chose these words for his text: “And behold all the men of Israel came
to the king, and said unto him, Why have our brethren, the men of Judah,
stolen thee away, and have brought the king and his household, and all
David’s men with him, over Jordan? And all the men of Judah answered the
men of Israel, Because the king is near of kin to us; wherefore then be
ye angry for this matter? Have we eaten at all of the king’s cost? or
hath he given us any gift? And the men of Israel answered the men of
Judah and said, We have ten parts in the king, and we have also more
right in David than ye: why then did ye despise us, that our advice
should not be first had in bringing back our king? And the words of the
men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel.”[*] But
the king soon found, that the happiness chiefly of the allusion had
tempted the preacher to employ this text, and that the covenanting
zealots were nowise pacified towards him. Another preacher, after
reproaching him to his face with his misgovernment, ordered this psalm
to be sung:--

“Why dost thou, tyrant, boast thyself, Thy wicked deeds to praise?”

The king stood up, and called for that psalm which begins with these
words,

“Have mercy, Lord, on me, I pray; For men would me devour.”

The good-natured audience, in pity to fallen majesty, showed for once
greater deference to the king than to the minister, and sung the psalm
which the former had called for.[**]

Charles had very little reason to be pleased with his situation. He not
only found himself a prisoner, very strictly guarded: all his friends
were kept at a distance; and no intercourse, either by letters or
conversation, was allowed him with any one on whom he could depend, or
who was suspected of any attachment towards him. The Scottish generals
would enter into no confidence with him; and still treated him with
distant ceremony and feigned respect. And every proposal which they made
him tended further to his abasement and to his ruin.[***]

     * 2 Sam. chap. xix. ver. 41,42,43. See Clarendon, vol v. p.
     23, 24

     ** Whitlocke, p. 234.

     *** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 30.

They required him to issue orders to Oxford and to all his other
garrisons, commanding their surrender to the parliament; and the king,
sensible that their resistance was to very little purpose, willingly
complied. The terms given to most of them were honorable; and Fairfax,
as far as it lay in his power, was very exact in observing them. Far
from allowing violence, he would not even permit insults or triumph
over the unfortunate royalists; and by his generous humanity, so cruel a
civil war was ended, in appearance, very calmly between the parties.

Ormond, having received like orders, delivered Dublin and other forts
into the hands of the parliamentary officers. Montrose also, after
having experienced still more variety of good and bad fortune, threw
down his arms, and retired out of the kingdom.

The marquis of Worcester, a man past eighty-four, was the last in
England that submitted to the authority of the parliament. He defended
Raglan Castle to extremity; and opened not its gates till the middle of
August. Four years, a few days excepted, were now elapsed since the king
first erected his standard at Nottingham:[*] so long had the British
nations, by civil and religious quarrels, been occupied in shedding
their own blood, and laying waste their native country.

The parliament and the Scots laid their proposals before the king. They
were such as a captive, entirely at mercy, could expect from the most
inexorable victor. Yet were they little worse than what were insisted
on before the battle of Naseby. The power of the sword, instead of ten,
which the king now offered, was demanded for twenty years, together with
a right to levy whatever money the parliament should think proper for
the support of their armies. The other conditions were, in the main, the
same with those which had formerly been offered to the king.[**]

Charles said, that proposals which introduced such important innovations
in the constitution, demanded time for deliberation: the commissioners
replied, that he must give his answer in ten days.[***] He desired to
reason about the meaning and import of some terms: they informed him,
that they had no power of debate; and peremptorily required his consent
or refusal. He requested a personal treaty with the parliament. They
threatened that, if he delayed compliance, the parliament would, by
their own authority, settle the nation.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 293.

     ** Rush. vol. vi. p. 309.

     *** Rush. vol. vii. p. 319.

What the parliament was most intent upon, was not their treaty with
the king, to whom they paid little regard, but that with the Scots. Two
important points remained to be settled with that nation: their delivery
of the king, and the estimation of their arrears.

The Scots might pretend, that, as Charles was king of Scotland as well
as of England, they were entitled to an equal vote in the disposal of
his person; and that, in such a case, where the titles are equal,
and the subject indivisible, the preference was due to the present
possessor. The English maintained, that the king, being in England, was
comprehended within the jurisdiction of that kingdom, and could not be
disposed of by any foreign nation: a delicate question this, and what
surely could not be decided by precedent; since such a situation is not
any where to be found in history.[*]

     * Rush, vol. vii. p. 339.

As the Scots concurred with the English in imposing such severe
conditions on the king, that, notwithstanding his unfortunate situation,
he still refused to accept of them, it is certain that they did not
desire his freedom: nor could they ever intend to join lenity and rigor
together, in so inconsistent a manner. Before the settlement of terms,
the administration must be possessed entirely by the parliaments of both
kingdoms; and how incompatible that scheme with the liberty of the king,
is easily imagined. To carry him a prisoner into Scotland, where
few forces could be supported to guard him, was a measure so full of
inconvenience and danger, that, even if the English had consented to it,
it must have appeared to the Scots themselves altogether uneligible: and
how could such a plan be supported in opposition to England, possessed
of such numerous and victorious armies, which were, at that time at
least seemed to be, in entire union with the parliament? The only
expedient, it is obvious, which the Scots could embrace, if they
scrupled wholly to abandon the king, was immediately to return, fully
and cordially, to their allegiance; and, uniting themselves with the
royalists in both kingdoms, endeavor, by force of arms, to reduce the
English parliament to more moderate conditions: but, besides that this
measure was full of extreme hazard, what was it but instantly to combine
with their old enemies against their old friends; and, in a fit of
romantic generosity, overturn what, with so much expense of blood
and treasure, they had, during the course of so many years, been so
carefully erecting?

But though all these reflections occurred to the Scottish commissioners,
they resolved to prolong the dispute, and to keep the king as a pledge
for those arrears which they claimed from England, and which they were
not likely, in the present disposition of that nation, to obtain by
any other expedient. The sum, by their account, amounted to near two
millions: for they had received little regular pay since they had
entered England. And though the contributions which they had levied, as
well as the price of their living at free quarters, must be deducted,
yet still the sum which they insisted on was very considerable. After
many discussions, it was at last agreed, that, in lieu of all demands,
they should accept of four hundred thousand pounds, one half to be paid
instantly, another in two subsequent payments.[*]

     * Rush, vol. vii. p. 326. Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 236

Great pains were taken by the Scots (and the English complied with
their pretended delicacy) to make this estimation and payment of arrears
appear a quite different transaction from that for the delivery of the
king’s person: but common sense requires that they should be regarded
as one and the same. The English, it is evident, had they not been
previously assured of receiving the king, would never have parted with
so considerable a sum; and, while they weakened themselves, by the same
measure, have strengthened a people with whom they must afterwards have
so material an interest to discuss.

Thus the Scottish nation underwent, and still undergo, (for such
grievous stains are not easily wiped off,) the reproach of selling their
king and betraying their prince for money. In vain did they maintain,
that this money was, on account of former services, undoubtedly their
due; that in their present situation, no other measure, without the
utmost, indiscretion, or even their apparent ruin, could be embraced;
and that, though they delivered their king into the hands of his open
enemies they were themselves as much his open enemies as those to whom
they surrendered him; and their common hatred against him had long
united the two parties in strict alliance with each other. They were
still answered, that they made use of this scandalous expedient
for obtaining their wages; and that, after taking arms without any
provocation against their sovereign, who had ever loved and cherished
them, they had deservedly fallen into a situation from which they could
not extricate themselves without either infamy or imprudence.

The infamy of this bargain had such an influence on the Scottish
parliament, that they once voted that the king should be protected,
and his liberty insisted on. But the general assembly interposed, and
pronounced that, as he had refused to take the covenant, which was
pressed on him, it became not the godly to concern themselves about his
fortunes. After this declaration, it behoved the parliament to retract
their vote.[*]

Intelligence concerning the final resolution of the Scottish nation to
surrender him, was brought to the king; and he happened, at that very
time, to be playing at chess.[**] Such command of temper did he possess,
that he continued his game without interruption; and none of the
bystanders could perceive that the letter which he perused had brought
him news of any consequence. The English commissioners, who, some days
after, came to take him under their custody, were admitted to kiss his
hands; and he received them with the same grace and cheerfulness as if
they had travelled on no other errand than to pay court to him. The old
earl of Pembroke, in particular, who was one of them, he congratulated
on his strength and vigor, that he was still able, during such a season,
to perform so long a journey, in company with so many young people.

{1647.} The king, being delivered over by the Scots to the English
commissioners, was conducted under a guard to Holdenby, in the county
of Northampton. On his journey, the whole country flocked to behold him,
moved partly by curiosity, partly by compassion and affection. If any
still retained rancor against him, in his present condition, they
passed in silence; while his well-wishers, more generous than prudent,
accompanied his march with tears, with acclamations, and with prayers
for his safety.[***] That ancient superstition, likewise, of desiring
the king’s touch in scrofulous distempers, seemed to acquire fresh
credit among the people, from the general tenderness which began to
prevail for this virtuous and unhappy monarch.

     * Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 243, 244.

     ** Burnet’s Memoirs of the Hamiltons.

     *** Ludlow. Herbert.

The commissioners rendered his confinement at Holdenby very rigorous;
dismissing his ancient servants, debarring him from visits, and cutting
off all communication with his friends or family. The parliament, though
earnestly applied to by the king, refused to allow his chaplains to
attend him, because they had not taken the covenant. The king refused to
assist at the service exercised according to the directory; because
he had not as yet given his consent to that mode of worship.[*] Such
religious zeal prevailed on both sides; and such was the unhappy and
distracted condition to which it had reduced king and people.

During the time that the king remained in the Scottish army at
Newcastle, died the earl of Essex, the discarded, but still powerful and
popular general of the parliament. His death, in this conjuncture, was
a public misfortune. Fully sensible of the excesses to which affairs
had been carried, and of the worse consequences which were still to be
apprehended, he had resolved to conciliate a peace, and to remedy, as
far as possible, all those ills to which, from mistake rather than any
bad intentions, he had himself so much contributed. The Presbyterian,
or the moderate party among the commons, found themselves considerably
weakened by his death; and the small remains of authority, which still
adhered to the house of peers, were in a manner wholly extinguished.[**]

     * Clarendon, voL T. p. 39. Warwick, p. 298.

     ** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 48.



CHAPTER LIX.



CHARLES I.

{1647.} The dominion of the parliament was of short duration. No sooner
had they subdued their sovereign, than their own servants rose against
them, and tumbled them from their slippery throne. The sacred boundaries
of the laws being once violated, nothing remained to confine the wild
projects of zeal and ambition: and every successive revolution became a
precedent for that which followed it.

In proportion as the terror of the king’s power diminished, the division
between Independent and Presbyterian became every day more apparent;
and the neuters found it at last requisite to seek shelter in one or the
other faction. Many new writs were issued for elections, in the room of
members who had died, or were disqualified by adhering to the king; yet
still the Presbyterians retained the superiority among the commons:
and all the peers, except Lord Say, were esteemed of that party. The
Independents, to whom the inferior sectaries adhered, predominated in
the army; and the troops of the new model were universally infected with
that enthusiastic spirit. To their assistance did the Independent party
among the commons chiefly trust in their projects for acquiring the
ascendant over their antagonists.

Soon after the retreat of the Scots, the Presbyterians, seeing every
thing reduced to obedience, began to talk of diminishing the army; and,
on pretence of easing the public burdens, they levelled a deadly blow at
the opposite faction. They purposed to embark a strong detachment, under
Skippon and Massey, for the service of Ireland; they openly declared
their intention of making a great reduction of the remainder.[*] It was
even imagined that another new model of the army was projected, in
order to regain to the Presbyterians that superiority which they had so
imprudently lost by the former.[**]

     * Fourteen thousand men were only intended to be kept up;
     six thousand horse, six thousand foot, and two thousand
     dragoons. Bates.

     ** Rush. vol. vii. p. 564.

The army had small inclination to the service of Ireland; a country
barbarous, uncultivated, and laid waste by massacres and civil
commotions: they had less inclination to disband, and to renounce that
pay which, having earned it through fatigues and dangers, they now
purposed to enjoy in ease and tranquillity. And most of the officers,
having risen from the dregs of the people, had no other prospect, if
deprived of their commission, than that of returning to languish in
their native poverty and obscurity.

These motives of interest acquired additional influence, and became more
dangerous to the parliament, from the religious spirit by which the
army was universally actuated. Among the generality of men educated in
regular, civilized societies, the sentiments of shame, duty, honor,
have considerable authority, and serve to counterbalance and direct
the motives derived from private advantage: but, by the predominancy of
enthusiasm among the parliamentary forces, these salutary principles lost
their credit, and were regarded as mere human inventions, yea, moral
institutions, fitter for heathens than for Christians.[*] The saint,
resigned over to superior guidance, was at full liberty to gratify all
his appetites, disguised under the appearance of pious zeal. And
besides the strange corruptions engendered by this spirit, it eluded
and loosened all the ties of morality, and gave entire scope, and even
sanction, to the selfishness and ambition which naturally adhere to the
human mind.

The military confessors were further encouraged in disobedience to
superiors, by that spiritual pride to which a mistaken piety is so
subject. They were not, they said, mere janizaries; mercenary
troops enlisted for hire, and to be disposed of at the will of their
paymasters.[**] Religion and liberty were the motives which had excited
them to arms; and they had a superior right to see those blessings,
which they had purchased with their blood, insured to future
generations. By the same title that the Presbyterians, in
contradistinction to the royalists, had appropriated to themselves the
epithet of godly, or the well affected,[***] the Independents did now,
in contradistinction to the Presbyterians, assume this magnificent
appellation, and arrogate all the ascendant which naturally belongs to
it.

     * Rush. vol. vi. p. 134.

     ** Rush, vol. vii. p. 565.

     *** Bush. vol. vii. p 474.

Hearing of parties in the house of commons, and being informed that
the minority were friends to the army, the majority enemies, the troops
naturally interested themselves in that dangerous distinction, and were
eager to give the superiority to their partisans. Whatever hardships
they underwent, though perhaps derived from inevitable necessity, were
ascribed to a settled design of oppressing them, and resented as an
effect of the animosity and malice of their adversaries.

Notwithstanding the great revenue which accrued from taxes, assessments,
sequestrations, and compositions, considerable arrears were due to
the army; and many of the private men, as well as officers, had near
a twelvemonth’s pay still owing them. The army suspected that this
deficiency was purposely contrived in order to oblige them to live at
free quarters; and, by rendering them odious to the country, serve as
a pretence for disbanding them. When they saw such members as were
employed in committees and civil offices accumulate fortunes, they
accused them of rapine and public plunder. And as no plan was pointed
out by the commons for the payment of arrears, the soldiers dreaded,
that after they should be disbanded or embarked for Ireland, their
enemies, who predominated in the two houses, would entirely defraud them
of their right, and oppress them with impunity.

On this ground or pretence did the first commotions begin in the army.
A petition, addressed to Fairfax, the general, was handed about, craving
an indemnity, and that ratified by the king, for any illegal actions
of which, during the course of the war, the soldiers might have been
guilty; together with satisfaction in arrears, freedom from pressing,
relief of widows and maimed soldiers, and pay till disbanded.[*] The
commons, aware of what combustible materials the army was composed,
were alarmed at this intelligence. Such a combination, they knew, if
not checked in its first appearance, must be attended with the most
dangerous consequences, and must soon exalt the military above the civil
authority. Besides summoning some officers to answer for this attempt,
they immediately voted, that the petition tended to introduce mutiny,
to put conditions upon the parliament, and to obstruct the relief of
Ireland; and they threatened to proceed against the promoters of it as
enemies to the state, and disturbers of public peace.[**]

     * Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 342

     ** Parl. Hist vol. xv. p. 344.

This declaration, which may be deemed violent, especially as the army
had some ground for complaint, produced fatal effects. The soldiers
lamented, that they were deprived of the privileges of Englishmen; that
they were not allowed so much as to represent their grievances; that,
while petitions from Essex and other places were openly encouraged
against the army, their mouths were stopped; and that they, who were
the authors of liberty to the nation, were reduced, by a faction in
parliament, to the most grievous servitude.

In this disposition was the army found by Warwick, Dacres, Massey, and
other commissioners, who were sent to make them proposals for entering
into the service of Ireland.[*] instead of enlisting, the generality
objected to the terms; demanded an indemnity; were clamorous for their
arrears; and, though they expressed no dissatisfaction against Skippon,
who was appointed commander, they discovered much stronger inclination
to serve under Fairfax and Cromwell.[**] Some officers, who were of the
Presbyterian party, having entered into engagements for this service,
could prevail on very few of the soldiers to enlist under them. And,
as these officers lay all under the grievous reproach of deserting the
army, and betraying the interests of their companions, the rest
were further confirmed in that confederacy which they had secretly
formed.[***]

To petition and remonstrate being the most cautious method of conducting
a confederacy, an application to parliament was signed by near two
hundred officers, in which they made their apology with a very imperious
air, asserted their right of petitioning, and complained of that
imputation thrown upon them by the former declaration of the lower
house.[****] The private men, likewise, of some regiments sent a letter
to Skippon, in which, together with insisting on the same topics, they
lament that designs were formed against them and many of the godly party
in the kingdom; and declare that they could not engage for Ireland, till
they were satisfied in their expectations, and had their just desires
granted.[v] The army, in a word, felt their power, and resolved to be
masters.

     * Rush. vol. vii, p. 457.

     ** Rush. vol. vii. p. 458.

     *** Rush. vol. vii. p. 461, 556.

     **** Rush. vol. vii. p. 468.

     v Rush. vol. vii. p. 474.

The parliament, too, resolved, if possible, to preserve their dominion;
but being destitute of power; and not retaining much authority, it was
not easy for them to employ any expedient which could contribute to
their purpose. The expedient which they now made use of was the worst
imaginable. They sent Skippon, Cromwell, Ireton, and Fleetwood, to the
head quarters at Saffron Weldon, in Essex, and empowered them to make
offers to the army, and inquire into the cause of its distempers. These
very generals, at least the three last, were secretly the authors of
all the discontents; and failed not to foment those disorders which they
pretended to appease. By their suggestion, a measure was embraced which
at once brought matters to extremity, and rendered the mutiny incurable.

In opposition to the parliament at Westminster, a military parliament
was formed. Together with a council of the principal officers, which
was appointed after the model of the house of peers, a more free
representative of the army was composed, by the election of two private
men or inferior officers, under the title of agitators, from each troop
or company.[*] By this means, both the general humor of that time was
gratified, intent on plans of imaginary republics; and an easy method
contrived for conducting, underhand, and propagating the sedition of the
army.

This terrible court, when assembled, having first declared that they
found no distempers in the army, but many grievances under which it
labored, immediately voted the offers of the parliament unsatisfactory.
Eight weeks’ pay alone, they said, was promised; a small part of
fifty-six weeks, which they claimed as their due: no visible security
was given for the remainder: and having been declared public enemies
by the commons, they might hereafter be prosecuted as such, unless
the declaration were recalled.[**] Before matters came to this height,
Cromwell had posted up to London, on pretence of laying before the
parliament the rising discontents of the army.

The parliament made one vigorous effort more, to try the force of their
authority: they voted, that all the troops which did not engage for
Ireland, should instantly be disbanded in their quarters.[***]

     * Rush. vol. vii p. 485. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 43.

     ** Rusk. vol. vii p. 497, 505. Whitlocke, p. 250.

     *** Rush. vol. vii. p. 487.

At the same time, the council of the army ordered a general rendezvous
of all the regiments, in order to provide for their common interests.
And while they thus prepared themselves for opposition to the
parliament, they struck a blow which at once decided the victory in
their favor.

A party of five hundred horse appeared at Holdenby, conducted by one
Joyce, who had once been a tailor by profession, but was now advanced
to the rank of cornet, and was an active agitator in the army. Without
being opposed by the guard, whose affections were all on their side,
Joyce came into the king’s presence, armed with pistols, and told him,
that he must immediately go along with him. “Whither?” said the king.
“To the army,” replied Joyce. “By what warrant?” asked the king. Joyce
pointed to the soldiers whom he brought along; tall, handsome, and
well accoutred. “Your warrant,” said Charles, smiling, “is writ in
fair characters, legible without spelling.”[*] The parliamentary
commissioners came into the room: they asked Joyce whether he had any
orders from the parliament? he said, “No;” from the general? “No;” by
what authority he came? he made the same reply as to the king. “They
would write,” they said, “to the parliament to know their pleasure.”
 “You may do so,” replied Joyce; “but in the mean time, the king
must immediately go with me.” Resistance was vain. The king, after
protracting the time as long as he could, went into his coach and was
safely conducted to the army, who were hastening to their rendezvous at
Triplo Heath, near Cambridge. The parliament, informed of this event by
their commissioners, were thrown into the utmost consternation.[**]

     * Whitlocke, p. 254. Warwick, p. 299.

     ** Rush. vol. vii. p. 614, 515. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 47.

Fairfax himself was no less surprised at the king’s arrival. That bold
measure, executed by Joyce, had never been communicated to the general.
The orders were entirely verbal, and nobody avowed them. And while every
one affected astonishment at the enterprise, Cromwell, by whose counsel
it had been directed, arrived from London, and put an end to their
deliberations.

This artful and audacious conspirator had conducted himself in
the parliament with such profound dissimulation, with such refined
hypocrisy, that he had long deceived those who, being themselves
very dexterous practitioners in the same arts, should naturally have
entertained the more suspicion against others. At every intelligence of
disorders in the army, he was moved to the highest pitch of grief and of
anger. He wept bitterly: he lamented the misfortunes of his country: he
advised every violent measure for suppressing the mutiny; and by these
precipitate counsels at once seemed to evince his own sincerity, and
inflamed those discontents of which he intended to make advantage. He
obtested heaven and earth, that his devoted attachment to the parliament
had rendered him so odious in the army, that his life, while among them,
was in the utmost danger; and he had very narrowly escaped a conspiracy
formed to assassinate him. But information being brought that the
most active officers and agitators were entirely his creatures, the
parliamentary leaders secretly resolved, that, next day, when he should
come to the house, an accusation should be entered against him, and he
should be sent to the Tower.[*] Cromwell, who, in the conduct of his
desperate enterprises, frequently approached to the very brink of
destruction, knew how to make the requisite turn with proper dexterity
and boldness. Being informed of this design, he hastened to the camp;
where he was received with acclamations, and was instantly invested with
the supreme command both of general and army.

     * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 46.

Fairfax, having neither talents himself for cabal, nor penetration
to discover the cabals of others, had given his entire confidence to
Cromwell; who, by the best colored pretences, and by the appearance
of an open sincerity and a scrupulous conscience, imposed on the easy
nature of this brave and virtuous man. The council of officers and the
agitators were moved altogether by Cromwell’s direction, and conveyed
his will to the whole army. By his profound and artful conduct, he
had now attained a situation where he could cover his enterprises from
public view; and seeming either to obey the commands of his superior
officer, or yield to the movements of the soldiers, could secretly pave
the way for his future greatness. While the disorders of the army
were yet in their infancy, he kept at a distance, lest his counterfeit
aversion might throw a damp upon them, or his secret encouragement beget
suspicion in the parliament. As soon as they came to maturity, he openly
joined the troops; and, in the critical moment, struck that important
blow of seizing the king’s person, and depriving the parliament of any
resource of an accommodation with him. Though one visor fell off another
still remained to cover his natural countenance.

Where delay was requisite, he could employ the most indefatigable
patience: where celerity was necessary, he flew to a decision. And by
thus uniting in his person the most opposite talents, he was enabled
to combine the most contrary interests in a subserviency to his secret
purposes.

The parliament, though at present defenceless, was possessed of many
resources; and time might easily enable them to resist that violence
with which they were threatened. Without further deliberation,
therefore, Cromwell advanced the army upon them, and arrived in a few
days at St. Albans.

Nothing could be more popular than this hostility which the army
commenced against the parliament. As much as that assembly was once
the idol of the nation, as much was it now become the object of general
hatred and aversion.

The self-denying ordinance had no longer been put in execution, than
till Essex, Manchester, Waller, and the other officers of that party,
had resigned their commission: immediately after, it was laid aside by
tacit consent; and the members, sharing all offices of power and profit
among them, proceeded with impunity in exercising acts of oppression on
the helpless nation. Though the necessity of their situation might serve
as an apology for many of their measures, the people, not accustomed to
such a species of government, were not disposed to make the requisite
allowances.

A small supply of one hundred thousand pounds a year could never be
obtained by former kings from the jealous humor of parliaments; and the
English, of all nations in Europe, were the least accustomed to taxes;
but this parliament, from the commencement of the war, according to some
computations, had levied, in five years, above forty millions;[*] yet
were loaded with debts and incumbrances, which, during that age, were
regarded as prodigious. If these computations should be thought much
exaggerated, as they probably are,[**] the taxes and impositions were
certainly far higher than in any former state of the English government;
and such popular exaggerations are at least a proof of popular
discontents.

     * Clement Walker’s History of the two Juntos, prefixed to
     his History of Independency, p. 8. This is an author of
     spirit and ingenuity; and being a zealous parliamentarian,
     his authority is very considerable, notwithstanding the air
     of satire which prevails in his writings. This computation,
     however, seems much too large; especially as the
     sequestrations during the time of war could not be so
     considerable as afterwards.

     * Yet the same sum precisely is assigned in another book,
     called Royal Treasury of England, p. 297.

But the disposal of this money was no less the object of general
complaint against the parliament than the levying of it. The sum of
three hundred thousand pounds they openly took, it is affirmed,[*] and
divided among their own members. The committees, to whom the management
of the different branches of revenue was intrusted, never brought in
their accounts, and had unlimited power of secreting whatever sums they
pleased from the public treasure.[**] These branches were needlessly
multiplied, in order to render the revenue more intricate, to share the
advantages among greater numbers, and to conceal the frauds of which
they were universally suspected.[***]

The method of keeping accounts practised in the exchequer, was
confessedly the exactest, the most ancient, the best known, and the
least liable to fraud. The exchequer was for that reason abolished, and
the revenue put under the management of a committee, who were subject to
no control.[****]

The excise was an odious tax, formerly unknown to the nation; and was
now extended over provisions, and the common necessaries of life. Near
one half of the goods and chattels, and at least one half of the lands,
rents, and revenues of the kingdom, had been sequestered. To great
numbers of loyalists, all redress from these sequestrations was
refused: to the rest, the remedy could be obtained only by paying large
compositions, and subscribing the covenant, which they abhorred.
Besides pitying the ruin and desolation of so many ancient and honorable
families, indifferent spectators could not but blame the hardship of
punishing with such severity actions which the law, in its usual and
most undisputed interpretation, strictly required of every subject.

The severities, too, exercised against the Episcopal clergy naturally
affected the royalists, and even all men of candor, in a sensible
manner. By the most moderate computation,[v] it appears, that above one
half of the established clergy had been turned out to beggary and
want, for no other crime than their adhering to the civil and religious
principles in which they had been educated, and for their attachment
to those laws under whose countenance they had at first embraced that
profession.

     * Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p. 3, 166.

     ** Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p, 8.

     *** Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p. 8.

     **** Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p. 8.

     v See John Walker’s Attempt towards recovering an Account of
     the Numbers and Sufferings of the Clergy. The parliament
     pretended to leave the sequestered clergy a fifth of their
     revenue; but this author makes it sufficiently appear that
     this provision, small as it is, was never regularly paid the
     ejected clergy.

To renounce Episcopacy and the liturgy, and to subscribe the covenant,
were the only terms which could save them from so rigorous a fate; and
if the least mark of malignancy, as it was called, or affection to the
king, who so entirely loved them, had ever escaped their lips, even this
hard choice was not permitted. The sacred character, which gives the
priesthood such authority over mankind, becoming more venerable from
the sufferings endured for the sake of principle by these distressed
royalists, aggravated the general indignation against their persecutors.

But what excited the most universal complaint was, the unlimited
tyranny and despotic rule of the country committees. During the war,
the discretionary power of these courts was excused, from the plea of
necessity; but the nation was reduced to despair, when it saw neither
end put to their duration, nor bounds to their authority. These could
sequester, fine, imprison, and corporally punish, without law or
remedy. They interposed in questions of private property. Under color of
malignancy, they exercised vengeance against their private enemies.
To the obnoxious, and sometimes to the innocent, they sold their
protection. And instead of one star chamber, which had been abolished,
a great number were anew erected, fortified with better pretences, and
armed with more unlimited authority.[*]

     * Clement Walker’s History of Independency, p. 5. Hollis
     gives the same representation as Walker, of the plundering,
     oppressions, and tyranny of the parliament; only, instead of
     laying the fault on both parties, as Walker does, he
     ascribes it solely to the Independent faction. The
     Presbyterians, indeed, being commonly denominated the
     moderate party, would probably be more inoffensive. See
     Rush. vol. vii. p. 598: and Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 230.

Could any thing have increased the indignation against that slavery into
which the nation, from the too eager pursuit of liberty, had fallen, it
must have been the reflection on the pretences by which the people
had so long been deluded. The sanctified hypocrites, who called their
oppressions the spoiling of the Egyptians, and their rigid severity the
dominion of the elect, interlarded all their iniquities with long and
fervent prayers, saved themselves from blushing by their pious grimaces,
and exercised, in the name of the Lord, all their cruelty on men.
An undisguised violence could be forgiven: but such a mockery of the
understanding, such an abuse of religion, were, with men of penetration,
objects of peculiar resentment.

The parliament, conscious of their decay in popularity, seeing a
formidable armed force advance upon them, were reduced to despair, and
found all their resources much inferior to the present necessity. London
still retained a strong attachment to Presbyterianism; and its militia,
which was numerous, and had acquired reputation in the wars, had, by
a late ordinance, been put into hands in whom the parliament could
entirely confide. This militia was now called out, and ordered to guard
the lines which had been drawn round the city, in order to secure it
against the king. A body of horse was ordered to be instantly levied.
Many officers, who had been cashiered by the new model of the army,
offered their service to the parliament. An army of five thousand men
lay in the north under the command of General Pointz, who was of the
Presbyterian faction; but these were too distant to be employed in so
urgent a necessity. The forces destined for Ireland were quartered in
the west; and, though deemed faithful to the parliament, they also lay
at a distance. Many inland garrisons were commanded by officer: of the
same party; but their troops, being so much dispersed, could at present
be of no manner of service. The Scots were faithful friends, and zealous
for Presbytery and the covenant; but a long time was required ere
they could collect their forces and march to the assistance of the
parliament.

In this situation it was thought more prudent to submit, and by
compliance to stop the fury of the enraged army. The declaration
by which the military petitioners had been voted public enemies was
recalled, and erased from the journal book.[*] This was the first
symptom which the parliament gave of submission; and the army, hoping
by terror alone to effect all their purposes, stopped at St. Albans, and
entered into negotiation with their masters.

     * Rush. vol. vii. p. 503, 547. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 45.

Here commenced the encroachments of the military upon the civil
authority. The army, in their usurpations on the parliament, copied
exactly the model which the parliament itself had set them in their
recent usurpations on the crown.

Every day they rose in their demands. If one claim was granted, they had
another ready, still more enormous and exorbitant; and were determined
never to be satisfied. At first, they pretended only to petition
for what concerned themselves as soldiers: next, they must have a
vindication of their character: then, it was necessary that their
enemies be punished:[*] at last, they claimed a right of modelling the
whole government, and settling the nation.[**]

They preserved, in words, all deference and respect to the parliament;
but, in reality, insulted them and tyrannized over them. That assembly
they pretended not to accuse: it was only evil counsellors, who seduced
and betrayed it.

They proceeded so far as to name eleven members, whom, in general
terms, they charged with high treason, as enemies to the army and evil
counsellors to the parliament. Their names were Hollis, Sir Philip
Stapleton, Sir William Lewis, Sir John Clotworthy, Sir William Waller,
Sir John Maynard, Massey, Glyn, Long, Harley, and Nichols.[***] These
were the very leaders of the Presbyterian party.

They insisted, that these members should immediately be sequestered from
parliament, and be thrown into prison.[****] The commons replied, that
they could not, upon a general charge, proceed so far.[v] The army
observed to them, that the cases of Strafford and Laud were direct
precedents for that purpose.[v*] At last, the eleven members themselves,
not to give occasion for discord, begged leave to retire from the
house; and the army, for the present, seemed satisfied with this mark of
submission.[v**]

Pretending that the parliament intended to levy war upon them, and to
involve the nation again in blood and confusion, they required that
all new levies should be stopped. The parliament complied with this
demand.[v***]

     * Rush. vol. vii. p. 509.

     ** Rush. vol. vii. p. 567, 633, vol. viii. p. 731.

     *** Rush. vol. vii. p. 570.

     **** Rush. vol. vii. p. 572.

     v Rush. vol. vii. p. 592.

     v* Rush. vol vii. p. 594. Whitlocke, p. 259.

     v** Rush. vol. vii. p. 593, 594.

     v*** Rush. vol. vii. p. 572, 574.

There being no signs of resistance, the army, in order to save
appearances, removed, at the desire of the parliament to a greater
distance from London, and fixed their head quarters at Reading. They
carried the king along with them in all their marches.

That prince now found himself in a better situation than at Holdenby,
and had attained some greater degree of freedom as well as of
consideration with both parties.

All his friends had access to his presence: his correspondence with the
queen was not interrupted: his chaplains were restored to him, and he
was allowed the use of the liturgy. His children were once allowed
to visit him, and they passed a few days at Caversham, where he then
resided.[*] He had not seen the duke of Gloucester, his youngest son,
and the princess Elizabeth, since he left London, at the commencement
of the civil disorders;[**] nor the duke of York, since he went to
the Scottish army before Newark. No private man, unacquainted with the
pleasures of a court and the tumult of a camp, more passionately
loved his family, than did this good prince; and such an instance of
indulgence in the army was extremely grateful to him. Cromwell, who was
witness to the meeting of the royal family, confessed that he never
had been present at so tender a scene; and he extremely applauded the
benignity which displayed itself in the whole disposition and behavior
of Charles.

That artful politician, as well as the leaders of all parties, paid
court to the king; and fortune, notwithstanding all his calamities,
seemed again to smile upon him. The parliament, afraid of his forming
some accommodation with the army, addressed him in a more respectful
style than formerly; and invited him to reside at Richmond, and
contribute his assistance to the settlement of the nation. The chief
officers treated him with regard, and spake on all occasions of
restoring him to his just powers and prerogatives. In the public
declarations of the army, the settlement of his revenue and authority
was insisted on.[***] The royalists every where entertained hopes of the
restoration of monarchy; and the favor which they universally bore to
the army, contributed very much to discourage the parliament, and to
forward their submission.

     * Clarendon, vol. i. p. 51, 52, 57.

     ** When the king applied to have his children, the
     parliament always told him, that they could take as much
     care at London, both of their bodies and souls, as could be
     done at Oxford. Parl. Hist. vol. xiii. p. 127.

     *** Rush. vol. vii. p. 590.

The king began to feel of what consequence he was. The more the national
confusions increased, the more was he confident that all parties would
at length have recourse to his lawful authority, as the only remedy for
the public disorders “You cannot be without me,” said he, on several
occasions: “you cannot settle the nation but by my assistance.” A people
without government and without liberty, a parliament without authority,
an army without a legal master; distractions every where, terrors,
oppressions, convulsions: from this scene of confusion, which could not
long continue, all men, he hoped, would be brought to reflect on that
ancient government under which they and their ancestors had so long
enjoyed happiness and tranquillity.

Though Charles kept his ears open to all proposals, and expected to hold
the balance between the opposite parties, he entertained more hopes of
accommodation with the army. He had experienced the extreme rigor of the
parliament. They pretended totally to annihilate his authority: they
had confined his person. In both these particulars, the army showed more
indulgence.[*] He had a free intercourse with his friends. And, in the
proposals which the council of officers sent for the settlement of the
nation, they insisted neither on the abolition of Episcopacy, nor on the
punishment of the royalists; the two points to which the king had the
most extreme reluctance: and they demanded, that a period should be put
to the present parliament, the event for which he most ardently longed.

     * Warwick, p. 303. Parl. Hist. vol. xvi. p. 40. Clarendon,
     vol. *v p. 50.

His conjunction, too, seemed more natural with the generals, than with
that usurping assembly who had so long assumed the entire sovereignty
of the state, and who had declared their resolution still to continue
masters. By gratifying a few persons with titles and preferments, he
might draw over, he hoped, the whole military power, and in an instant
reinstate himself in his civil authority. To Ireton he offered the
lieutenancy of Ireland; to Cromwell the garter, the title of earl of
Essex, and the command of the army. Negotiations to this purpose were
secretly conducted. Cromwell pretended to hearken to them and was well
pleased to keep the door open for an accommodation, if the course of
events should at any time render it necessary. And the king, who had no
suspicion that one born a private gentleman could entertain the daring
ambition of seizing a sceptre, transmitted through a long line of
monarchs, indulged hopes that he would at last embrace a measure
which, by all the motives of duty, interest, and safety, seemed to be
recommended to him.

While Cromwell allured the king by these expectations, he still
continued his scheme of reducing the parliament to subjection, and
depriving them of all means of resistance. To gratify the army, the
parliament invested Fairfax with the title of general-in-chief of all
the forces in England and Ireland; and intrusted the whole military
authority to a person who, though well inclined to their service, was no
longer at his own disposal.

They voted, that the troops which, in obedience to them had enlisted for
Ireland, and deserted the rebellious army, should be disbanded, or, in
other words, be punished for their fidelity. The forces in the north,
under Pointz, had already mutinied against their general, and had
entered into an association with that body of the army which was
so successfully employed in exalting the military above the civil
authority.[*]

That no resource might remain to the parliament, it was demanded, that
the militia of London should be changed, the Presbyterian commissioners
displaced, and the command restored to those who, during the course of
the war, had constantly exercised it. The parliament even complied with
so violent a demand, and passed a vote in obedience to the army.[**]

By this unlimited patience, they purposed to temporize under their
present difficulties, and they hoped to find a more favorable
opportunity for recovering their authority and influence: but the
impatience of the city lost them all the advantage of their cautious
measures. A petition against the alteration of the militia was carried
to Westminster, attended by the apprentices and seditious multitude, who
besieged the door of the house of commons; and by their clamor, noise,
and violence, obliged them to reverse that vote which they had passed so
lately. When gratified in this pretension, they immediately dispersed,
and left the parliament at liberty.[***]

     * Rush. vol. vii. p. 620.

     ** Rush. vol. vii. p. 629, 632.

     *** Rush. vol. vii. p. 641, 643. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 61.
     Whitlocke p. 269. Cl. Walker, p. 38

No sooner was intelligence of this tumult conveyed to Reading, than the
army was put in motion. The two houses being under restraint, they were
resolved, they said, to vindicate, against the seditious citizens, the
invaded privileges of parliament, and restore that assembly to its just
freedom of debate and counsel. In their way to London, they were drawn
up on Hounslow Heath; a formidable body, twenty thousand strong, and
determined, without regard to laws or liberty, to pursue whatever
measures their generals should dictate to them. Here the most favorable
event happened to quicken and encourage their advance. The speakers
of the two houses, Manchester and Lenthal, attended by eight peers and
about sixty commoners, having secretly retired from the city, presented
themselves with their maces, and all the ensigns of their dignity;
and complaining of the violence put upon them, applied to the army for
defence and protection. They were received with shouts and acclamations:
respect was paid to them, as to the parliament of England: and the
army, being provided with so plausible a pretence, which in all
public transactions is of great consequence, advanced to chastise the
rebellious city, and to reinstate the violated parliament.[*]

Neither Lenthal nor Manchester were esteemed Independents; and such a
step in them was unexpected. But they probably foresaw that the army
must in the end prevail; and they were willing to pay court in time to
that authority which began to predominate in the nation.

The parliament, forced from their temporizing measures, and obliged
to resign at once, or combat for their liberty and power, prepared
themselves with vigor for defence, and determined to resist the violence
of the army. The two houses immediately chose new speakers, Lord Hunsdon
and Henry Pelham: they renewed their former orders for enlisting troops:
they appointed Massey to be commander: they ordered the trained bands to
man the lines: and the whole city was in a ferment, and resounded with
military preparations.[**]

When any intelligence arrived, that the army stopped or retreated, the
shout of “One and all.” ran with alacrity, from street to street, among
the citizens: when news came of their advancing, the cry of “Treat
and capitulate,” was no less loud and vehement.[***] The terror of a
universal pillage, and even massacre, had seized the timid inhabitants.

     * Rush. vol. viii. p. 750. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 63.

     ** Rush vol. vii. p. 646

     *** Whitlocke, p. 266.

As the army approached, Rainsborow, being sent by the general over the
river, presented himself before Southwark, and was gladly received by
some soldiers who were quartered there for its defence, and who were
resolved not to separate their interests from those of the army. It
behoved then the parliament to submit. The army marched in triumph
through the city; but preserved the greatest order, decency, and
appearance of humility. They conducted to Westminster the two speakers,
who took their seats as if nothing had happened. The eleven impeached
members, being accused as authors of the tumult, were expelled; and most
of them retired beyond sea: seven peers were impeached; the mayor, one
sheriff, and three aldermen, sent to the Tower, several citizens
and officers of the militia committed to prison; every deed of the
parliament annulled, from the day of the tumult till the return of the
speakers; the lines about the city levelled; the militia restored to
the Independents; regiments quartered in Whitehall and the Mews; and
the parliament being reduced to a regular formed servitude, a day was
appointed of solemn thanksgiving for the restoration of its liberty.[*]

     * Rush. vol. viii. p. 797, 798, etc.

The Independent party among the commons exulted in their victory. The
whole authority of the nation, they imagined, was now lodged in their
hands; and they had a near prospect of moulding the government into that
imaginary republic which had long been the object of their wishes. They
had secretly concurred in all encroachments of the military upon the
civil power; and they expected, by the terror of the sword, to impose a
more perfect system of liberty on the reluctant nation. All parties, the
king, the church, the parliament, the Presbyterians, had been guilty
of errors since the commencement of these disorders: but it must be
confessed, that this delusion of the Independents and republicans was,
of all others, the most contrary to common sense and the established
maxims of policy. Yet were the leaders of that party, Vane, Fiennes,
St. John, Martin, the men in England the most celebrated for profound
thought and deep contrivance; and by their well-colored pretences and
professions, they had overreached the whole nation. To deceive such men,
would argue a superlative capacity in Cromwell; were it not that besides
the great difference there is between dark, crooked counsels and true
wisdom, an exorbitant passion for rule and authority will make the most
prudent overlook the dangerous consequences of such measures as seem to
tend, in any degree, to their own advancement.

The leaders of the army, having established their dominion over the
parliament and city, ventured to bring the king to Hampton Court; and
he lived for some time in that palace, with an appearance of dignity and
freedom. Such equability of temper did he possess, that, during all the
variety of fortune which he underwent, no difference was perceived in
his countenance or behavior; and though a prisoner in the hands of his
most inveterate enemies, he supported, towards all who approached him,
the majesty of a monarch; and that neither with less nor greater state
than he had been accustomed to maintain. His manner, which was not
in itself popular nor gracious, now appeared amiable, from its great
meekness and equality.

The parliament renewed their applications to him, and presented him
with the same conditions which they had offered at Newcastle. The
king declined accepting them, and desired the parliament to take the
proposals of the army into consideration, and make them the foundation
of the public sentiment.[*] He still entertained hopes that his
negotiations with the generals would be crowned with success; though
every thing, in that particular, daily bore a worse aspect. Most
historians have thought that Cromwell never was sincere in his
professions; and that having by force rendered himself master of the
king’s person, and by fair pretences acquired the countenance of the
royalists, he had employed these advantages to the enslaving of the
parliament; and afterwards thought of nothing but the establishment of
his own unlimited authority, with which he esteemed the restoration, and
even life, of the king altogether incompatible. This opinion, so much
warranted by the boundless ambition and profound dissimulation of his
character, meets with ready belief; though it is more agreeable to the
narrowness of human views, and the darkness of futurity, to suppose that
this daring usurper was guided by events, and did not as yet foresee,
with any assurance, that unparalleled greatness which he afterwards
attained. Many writers of that age have asserted,[**] [17]that he
really intended to make a private bargain with the king; a measure
which carried the most plausible appearance both for his safety and
advancement; but that he found insuperable difficulties in reconciling
to it the wild humors of the army.

     * Rush. vol. viii. p. 810.

     ** See note Q, at the end of the volume.

The horror and antipathy of these fanatics had for many years been
artfully fomented against Charles; and though their principles were,
on all occasions, easily warped and eluded by private interest, yet
was some coloring requisite, and a flat contradiction to all former
professions and tenets could not safely be proposed to them. It is
certain, at least, that Cromwell made use of this reason why he admitted
rarely of visits from the king’s friends, and showed less favor than
formerly to the royal cause. The agitators, he said, had rendered him
odious to the army, and had represented him as a traitor, who, for the
sake of private interest, was ready to betray the cause of God to the
great enemy of piety and religion. Desperate projects, too, he asserted
to be secretly formed for the murder of the king; and he pretended much
to dread lest all his authority, and that of the commanding officers,
would not be able to restrain these enthusiasts from their bloody
purposes.[*]

Intelligence being daily brought to the king of menaces thrown out by
the agitators, he began to think of retiring from Hampton Court, and of
putting himself in some place of safety. The guards were doubled upon
him; the promiscuous concourse of people restrained; a more jealous care
exerted in attending his person; all under color of protecting him
from danger, but really with a view of making him uneasy in his present
situation. These artifices soon produced the intended effect. Charles,
who was naturally apt to be swayed by counsel, and who had not then
access to any good counsel, took suddenly a resolution of withdrawing
himself, though without any concerted, at least, any rational scheme for
the future disposal of his person. Attended only by Sir John Berkeley,
Ashburnham, and Leg, he privately left Hampton court; and his escape
was not discovered till near an hour after; when those who entered his
chamber, found on the table some letters directed to the parliament, to
the general, and to the officer who had attended him.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 76.

     ** Rush. vol. viii. p 871.

All night he travelled through the forest, and arrived next day at
Tichfield, a seat of the earl of Southampton’s, where the countess
dowager resided, a woman of honor, to whom the king knew he might safely
intrust his person. Before he arrived at this place, he had gone to the
sea-coast; and expressed great anxiety that a ship which he seemed to
look for, had not arrived; and thence, Berkeley and Leg, who were not
in the secret, conjectured that his intention was to transport himself
beyond sea.

The king could not hope to remain long concealed at Tichfield: what
measure should next be embraced, was the question. In the neighborhood
lay the Isle of Wight, of which Hammond was governor. This man was
entirely dependent on Cromwell. At his recommendation, he had married
a daughter of the famous Hambden, who during his lifetime had been an
intimate friend of Cromwell’s, and whose memory was ever respected
by him. These circumstances were very unfavorable: yet, because the
governor was nephew to Dr. Hammond, the king’s favorite chaplain, and
had acquired a good character in the army, it was thought proper to
have recourse to him in the present exigence, when no other rational
expedient could be thought of. Ashburnham and Berkeley were despatched
to the island. They had orders not to inform Hammond of the place where
the king was concealed, till they had first obtained a promise from him
not to deliver up his majesty, though the parliament and the army should
require him; but to restore him to his liberty, if he could not protect
him. This promise, it is evident, would have been a very slender
security: yet, even without exacting it, Ashburnham imprudently, if not
treacherously, brought Hammond to Tichfield; and the king was obliged to
put himself in his hands, and to attend him to Carisbroke Castle, in
the Isle of Wight where, though received with great demonstrations of
respect and duty, he was in reality a prisoner.

[Illustration: 1-700-carisbrooke.jpg CARISBROKE CASTLE]

Lord Clarendon[*] is positive, that the king, when he fled from Hampton
Court, had no intention of going to this island; and indeed all
the circumstances of that historian’s narrative, which we have here
followed, strongly favor this opinion. But there remains a letter of
Charles’s to the earl of Laneric, secretary of Scotland, in which he
plainly intimates, that that measure was voluntarily embraced: and even
insinuates, that if he had thought proper, he might have been in Jersey,
or any other place of safety.[**] [18]

     * Page 79, 80, etc.

     ** See note R, at the end of the volume.

Perhaps he still confided in the promises of the generals; and flattered
himself, that if he were removed from the fury of the agitators, by
which his life was immediately threatened, they would execute what they
had so often promised in his favor.

Whatever may be the truth in this matter,--for it is impossible fully
to ascertain the truth,--Charles never took a weaker step, nor one more
agreeable to Cromwell and all his enemies. He was now lodged in a place
removed from his partisans, at the disposal of the army, whence it
would be very difficult to deliver him, either by force or artifice. And
though it was always in the power of Cromwell, whenever he pleased, to
have sent him thither, yet such a measure, without the king’s consent,
would have been very invidious, if not attended with some danger. That
the king should voluntarily throw himself into the snare, and thereby
gratify his implacable persecutors, was to them an incident peculiarly
fortunate, and proved in the issue very fatal to him.

Cromwell, being now entirely master of the parliament and free from all
anxiety with regard to the custody of the king’s person, applied himself
seriously to quell those disorders in the army, which he himself had
so artfully raised, and so successfully employed, against both king and
parliament. In order to engage the troops into a rebellion against
their masters, he had encouraged an arrogant spirit among the inferior
officers and private men; and the camp, in many respects, carried more
the appearance of civil liberty than of military obedience. The troops
themselves were formed into a kind of republic; and the plans of
imaginary republics, for the settlement of the state, were every day
the topics of conversation among these armed legislators. Royalty it was
agreed to abolish: nobility must be set aside: even all ranks of men be
levelled; and a universal equality of property, as well as of power, be
introduced among the citizens. The saints, they said, were the salt of
the earth: an entire parity had place among the elect; and by the same
rule that the apostles were exalted from the most ignoble professions,
the meanest sentinel, if enlightened by the Spirit, was entitled to
equal regard with the greatest commander. In order to wean the
soldiers from these, licentious maxims, Cromwell had issued orders for
discontinuing the meetings of the agitators; and he pretended to pay
entire obedience to the parliament, whom being now fully reduced to
subjection, he purposed to make for the future, the instruments of his
authority. But the “levellers,”--for so that party in the army was
called,--having experienced the sweets of dominion, would not so
easily be deprived of it. They secretly continued their meetings: they
asserted, that their officers, as much as any part of the church
or state, needed reformation: several regiments joined in seditious
remonstrances and petitions:[*] separate rendezvouses were concerted;
and every thing tended to anarchy and confusion. But this distemper was
soon cured by the rough but dexterous hand of Cromwell. He chose the
opportunity of a review, that he might display the greater boldness,
and spread the terror the wider. He seized the ringleaders before
their companions; held in the field a council of war; shot one mutineer
instantly; and struck such dread into the rest, that they presently
threw down the symbols of sedition, which they had displayed, and
thenceforth returned to their wonted discipline and obedience.[**]

Cromwell had great deference for the counsels of Ireton, a man who,
having grafted the soldier on the lawyer the statesman on the saint,
had adopted such principles as were fitted to introduce the severest
tyranny, while they seemed to encourage the most unbounded license in
human society. Fierce in his nature, though probably sincere in his
intentions, he purposed by arbitrary power to establish liberty, and,
in prosecution of his imagined religious purposes, he thought himself
dispensed from all the ordinary rules of morality, by which inferior
mortals must allow themselves to be governed. From his suggestion,
Cromwell secretly called at Windsor a council of the chief officers,
in order to deliberate concerning the settlement of the nation, and the
future disposal of the king’s person.[***]

     * Rush. vol. viii. p. 845, 859.

     ** Rush. vol. viii. p. 875. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 87.

     *** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 92.

In this conference, which commenced with devout prayers, poured forth by
Cromwell himself and other inspired persons, (for the officers of this
army received inspiration with their commission,) was first opened the
daring and unheard-of counsel, of bringing the king to justice, and of
punishing, by a judicial sentence, their sovereign, for his pretended
tyranny and maleadministration. While Charles lived, even though
restrained to the closest prison, conspiracies, they knew, and
insurrections would never be wanting in favor of a prince who was so
extremely revered and beloved by his own party, and whom the nation in
general began to regard with great affection and compassion. To murder
him privately was exposed to the imputation of injustice and cruelty,
aggravated by the baseness of such a crime; and every odious epithet
of “traitor” and “assassin” would, by the general voice of mankind, be
indisputably ascribed to the actors in such a villany. Some unexpected
procedure must be attempted, which would astonish the world by its
novelty, would bear the semblance of justice, and would cover its
barbarity by the audaciousness of the enterprise. Striking in with the
fanatical notions of the entire equality of mankind, it would insure the
devoted obedience of the army, and serve as a general engagement against
the royal family, whom, by their open and united deed, they would so
heinously affront and injure.[*]

This measure, therefore, being secretly resolved on, it was requisite,
by degrees, to make the parliament adopt it, and to conduct them from
violence to violence, till this last act of atrocious iniquity should
seem in a manner wholly inevitable. The king, in order to remove those
fears and jealousies, which were perpetually pleaded as reasons for
every invasion of the constitution, had offered, by a message sent from
Carisbroke Castle, to resign, during his own life, the power of the
militia and the nomination to all the great offices; provided that,
after his demise, these prerogatives should revert to the crown.[**] But
the parliament acted entirely as victors and enemies; and, in all their
transactions with him, paid no longer any regard to equity or reason. At
the instigation of the Independents and army, they neglected this offer,
and framed four proposals, which they sent him as preliminaries; and
before they would deign to treat, they demanded his positive assent to
all of them.

     * The following was a favorite text among the enthusiasts of
     that age: “Let the high praises of God be in the mouths of
     his saints, and a twofold sword in their hands, to execute
     vengeance upon the heathen and punishment upon the people;
     to bind their kings with chains and their nobles with
     fetters of iron; to execute upon them the judgments written:
     This honor have all his saints.” Psalm cxlix, ver. 6, 7, 8,
     9. Hugh Peters, the mad chaplain of Cromwell, preached
     frequently upon this text.

     ** Rush. vol. viii. p 880.

By one, he was required to invest the parliament with the military power
for twenty years, together with an authority to levy whatever money
should be necessary for exercising it; and even after the twenty years
should be elapsed, they reserved a right of resuming the same authority,
whenever they should declare the safety of the kingdom to require it.
By the second, he was to recall all his proclamations and declarations
against the parliament, and acknowledge that assembly to have taken arms
in their just and necessary defence. By the third, he was to annul all
the acts, and void all the patents of peerage, which had passed
the great seal since it had been carried from London by Lord Keeper
Littleton; and at the same time, renounce for the future the power of
making peers without consent of parliament. By the fourth, he gave the
two houses power to adjourn as they thought proper; a demand seemingly
of no great importance, but contrived by the Independents, that they
might be able to remove the parliament to places where it should remain
in perpetual subjection to the army.[*]

{1648.} The king regarded the pretension as unusual and exorbitant, that
he should make such concessions, while not secure of any settlement;
and should blindly trust his enemies for the conditions which they were
afterwards to grant him. He required, therefore, a personal treaty with
the parliament, and desired that all the terms on both sides should be
adjusted, before any concession on either side should be insisted on.
The republican party in the house pretended to take fire at this
answer; and openly inveighed, in violent terms, against the person
and government of the king; whose name, hitherto, had commonly, in all
debates, been mentioned with some degree of reverence. Ireton, seeming
to speak the sense of the army, under the appellation of many thousand
godly men, who had ventured their lives in defence of the parliament,
said, that the king, by denying the four bills, had refused safety
and protection to his people; that their obedience to him was but a
reciprocal duty for his protection of them; and that, as he had failed
on his part, they were freed from all obligations to allegiance, and
must settle the nation, without consulting any longer so misguided a
prince.[**]

     * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 88

     ** Cl. Walker, p. 70.

Cromwell, after giving an ample character of the valor, good affections,
and godliness of the army, subjoined, that it was expected the
parliament should guide and defend the kingdom by their own power and
resolutions, and not accustom the people any longer to expect safety
and government from an obstinate man, whose heart God had hardened;
that those who, at the expense of their blood, had hitherto defended the
parliament from so many dangers, would still continue, with fidelity
and courage, to protect them against all opposition in this vigorous
measure. “Teach them not,” added he, “by your neglecting your own safety
and that of the kingdom, (in which theirs too is involved,) to imagine
themselves betrayed, and their interests abandoned to the rage and
malice of an irreconcilable enemy, whom, for your sake, they have dared
to provoke. Beware,” and at these words he laid his hand on his sword,
“beware, lest despair cause them to seek safety by some other means than
by adhering to you, who know not how to consult your own safety.”[*]
Such arguments prevailed; though ninety-one members had still the
courage to oppose. It was voted, that no more addresses be made to the
king, nor any letters or messages be received from him; and that it
be treason for any one, without leave of the two houses, to have any
intercourse with him. The lords concurred in the same ordinance.[**]

By this vote of non-addresses,--so it was called,--the king was in
reality dethroned, and the whole constitution formally overthrown. So
violent a measure was supported by a declaration of the commons no less
violent. The blackest calumnies were there thrown upon the king; such
as, even in their famous remonstrance, they thought proper to omit, as
incredible and extravagant: the poisoning of his father, the betraying
of Rochelle, the contriving of the Irish massacre.[***] By blasting his
fame, had that injury been in their power, they formed a very proper
prelude to the executing of violence on his person.

No sooner had the king refused his assent to the four bills, than
Hammond, by orders from the army, removed all his servants, cut off his
correspondence with his friends, and shut him up in close confinement.
The king afterwards showed to Sir Philip Warwick a decrepit old man,
who, he said, was employed to kindle his fire, and was the best
company he enjoyed during several months that this rigorous confinement
lasted.[****]

     * Cl. Walker, p. 70.

     ** Rush. vol. viii. p. 965, 967.

     *** Rush. vol. viii. p. 998. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 93.

     **** Warwick, p. 329.

No amusement was allowed him, nor society, which might relieve his
anxious thoughts: to be speedily poisoned or assassinated was the only
prospect which he had every moment before his eyes; for he entertained
no apprehension of a judicial sentence and execution; an event of which
no history hitherto furnished an example. Meanwhile, the parliament
was very industrious in publishing, from time to time, the intelligence
which they received from Hammond; how cheerful the king was, how
pleased with every one that approached him, how satisfied in his present
condition:[*] as if the view of such benignity and constancy had not
been more proper to inflame than allay the general compassion of the
people.

     * Rush, vol. viii. p. 989.

The great source whence the king derived consolation amidst all his
calamities, was undoubtedly religion; a principle which, in him, seems
to have contained nothing fierce or gloomy, nothing which enraged him
against his adversaries, or terrified him with the dismal prospect of
futurity. While every thing around him bore a hostile aspect; while
friends, family, relations, whom he passionately loved, were placed at a
distance, and unable to serve him, he reposed himself with confidence in
the arms of that Being who penetrates and sustains all nature, and whose
severities, if received with piety and resignation, he regarded as the
surest pledges of unexhausted favor.

The parliament and army, meanwhile, enjoyed not in tranquillity that
power which they had obtained with so much violence and injustice.
Combinations and conspiracies, they were sensible, were every where
forming around them; and Scotland, whence the king’s cause had
received the first fatal disaster, seemed now to promise it support and
assistance.

Before the surrender of the king’s person at Newcastle, and much more
since that event, the subjects of discontent had been daily multiplying
between the two kingdoms. The Independents, who began to prevail, took
all occasions of mortifying the Scots, whom the Presbyterians looked
on with the greatest affection and veneration. When the Scottish
commissioners, who, joined to a committee of English lords and commons,
had managed the war, were ready to depart, it was proposed in parliament
to give them thanks for their civilities and good offices. The
Independents insisted, that the words “good offices” should be struck
out; and thus the whole brotherly friendship and intimate alliance
with the Scots resolved itself into an acknowledgment of their being
well-bred gentlemen.

The advance of the army to London, the subjection of the parliament, the
seizing of the king at Holdenby, his confinement in Carisbroke Castle,
were so many blows sensibly felt by that nation, as threatening the
final overthrow of Presbytery, to which they were so passionately
devoted. The covenant was profanely called, in the house of commons
an almanac out of date;[*] and that impiety, though complained of, had
passed uncensured. Instead of being able to determine and establish
orthodoxy by the sword and by penal statutes, they saw the sectarian
army, who were absolute masters, claim an unbounded liberty of
conscience, which the Presbyterians regarded with the utmost abhorrence.
All the violences put on the king, they loudly blamed, as repugnant to
the covenant by which they stood engaged to defend his royal person.
And those very actions of which they themselves had been guilty, they
denominated treason and rebellion, when executed by an opposite party.

The earls of Loudon, Lauderdale, and Laneric, who were sent to London,
protested against the four bills, as containing too great a diminution
of the king’s civil power, and providing no security for religion. They
complained that, notwithstanding this protestation, the bills were still
insisted on, contrary to the solemn league, and to the treaty between
the two nations. And when they accompanied the English commissioners
to the Isle of Wight, they secretly formed a treaty with the king for
arming Scotland in his favor.[**]

     * Cl. Walker, p. 80.

     ** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 101.

Three parties at that time prevailed in Scotland: the “royalists,”
 who insisted upon the restoration of the king’s authority, without any
regard to religion sects or tenets: of these, Montrose, though absent,
was regarded as the head. The “rigid Presbyterians,” who hated the king
even more than they abhorred toleration; and who determined to give
him no assistance, till he should subscribe the covenant: these were
governed by Argyle. The “moderate Presbyterians,” who endeavored to
reconcile the interests of religion and of the crown; and hoped, by
supporting the Presbyterian party in England, to suppress the sectarian
army, and to reinstate the parliament, as well as the king, in their
just freedom and authority: the two brothers, Hamilton and Laneric, were
leaders of this party.

When Pendennis Castle was surrendered to the parliamentary army,
Hamilton, who then obtained his liberty, returned into Scotland; and
being generously determined to remember ancient favors more than recent
injuries, he immediately embraced, with zeal and success, the protection
of the royal cause. He obtained a vote from the Scottish parliament to
arm forty thousand men in support of the king’s authority, and to call
over a considerable body under Monro, who commanded the Scottish forces
in Ulster. And though he openly protested that the covenant was the
foundation of all his measures, he secretly entered into correspondence
with the English royalists, Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Sir Philip
Musgrave, who had levied considerable forces in the north of England.

The general assembly, who sat at the same time, and was guided by
Argyle, dreaded the consequences of these measures; and foresaw that the
opposite party, if successful, would effect the restoration of monarchy,
without the establishment of Presbytery in England. To join the king
before he had subscribed the covenant, was, in their eyes, to restore
him to his honor before Christ had obtained his;[*] and they thundered
out anathemas against every one who paid obedience to the parliament.

     * Whitlocke, p. 300.

Two supreme independent judicatures were erected in the kingdom; one
threatening the people with damnation and eternal torments, the other
with imprisonment, banishment, and military execution. The people were
distracted in their choice; and the armament of Hamilton’s party, though
seconded by all the civil power, went on but slowly. The royalists he
would not as yet allow to join him, lest he might give offence to
the ecclesiastical party; though he secretly promised them trust and
preferment as soon as his army should advance into England.

While the Scots were making preparations for the invasion of England,
every part of that kingdom was agitated with tumults, insurrections,
conspiracies, discontents. It is seldom that the people gain any thing
by revolutions in government; because the new settlement, jealous and
insecure, must commonly be supported with more expense and severity than
the old: but on no occasion was the truth of this maxim more sensibly
felt, than in the present situation of England. Complaints against the
oppression of ship money, against the tyranny of the star chamber, had
roused the people to arms: and having gained a complete victory over
the crown, they found themselves loaded with a multiplicity of taxes,
formerly unknown; and scarcely an appearance of law and liberty remained
in the administration. The Presbyterians, who had chiefly supported the
war, were enraged to find the prize, just when it seemed within their
reach, snatched by violence from them. The royalists, disappointed in
their expectations by the cruel treatment which the king now received
from the army, were strongly animated to restore him to liberty, and to
recover the advantages which they had unfortunately lost. All orders of
men were inflamed with indignation at seeing the military prevail over
the civil power, and king and parliament at once reduced to subjection
by a mercenary army. Many persons of family and distinction had, from
the beginning of the war, adhered to the parliament: but all these were,
by the new party, deprived of authority; and every office was intrusted
to the most ignoble part of the nation. A base populace, exalted above
their superiors; hypocrites, exercising iniquity under the visor of
religion: these circumstances promised not much liberty or lenity to the
people; and these were now found united in the same usurped and illegal
administration.

Though the whole nation seemed to combine in their hatred of military
tyranny, the ends which the several parties pursued were so different,
that little concert was observed in their insurrections. Langhorne,
Poyer, and Powel, Presbyterian officers, who commanded bodies of
troops in Wales, were the first that declared themselves; and they
drew together a considerable army in those parts, which were extremely
devoted to the royal cause. An insurrection was raised in Kent by young
Hales and the earl of Norwich. Lord Capel, Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George
Lisle, excited commotions in Essex. The earl of Holland, who had several
times changed sides since the commencement of the civil wars, endeavored
to assemble forces in Surrey. Pomfret Castle, in Yorkshire, was
surprised by Morrice. Langdale and Musgrave were in arms, and masters of
Berwick and Carlisle in the north.

What seemed the most dangerous circumstance, the general spirit of
discontent had seized the fleet. Seventeen ships, lying in the mouth of
the river, declared for the king; and putting Rainsborow, their admiral,
ashore, sailed over to Holland, where the prince of Wales took the
command of them.[*]

     * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 137.

The English royalists exclaimed loudly against Hamilton’s delays, which
they attributed to a refined policy in the Scots as if their intentions
were, that all the king’s party should first be suppressed, and the
victory remain solely to the Presbyterians. Hamilton, with better
reason, complained of the precipitate humor of the English royalists,
who, by their ill-timed insurrections, forced him to march his
army before his levies were completed, or his preparations in any
forwardness.

No commotions beyond a tumult of the apprentices, which was soon
suppressed, were raised in London: the terror of the army kept the
citizens in subjection. The parliament was so overawed, that they
declared the Scots to be enemies, and all who joined them traitors.
Ninety members, however, of the lower house had the courage to dissent
from this vote.

Cromwell and the military council prepared themselves with vigor and
conduct for defence. The establishment of the army was at this time
twenty-six thousand men; but by enlisting supernumeraries the regiments
were greatly augmented, and commonly consisted of more than double their
stated complement.[*]

     * Whitlocke, p. 284.

Colonel Horton first attacked the revolted troops in Wales, and gave
them a considerable defeat. The remnants of the vanquished threw
themselves into Pembroke, and were there closely besieged, and soon
after taken by Cromwell. Lambert was opposed to Langdale and Musgrave in
the north, and gained advantages over them. Sir Michael Livesey defeated
the earl of Holland at Kingston, and pursuing his victory, took him
prisoner at St. Neots. Fairfax, having routed the Kentish royalists at
Maidstone, followed the broken army; and when they joined the royalists
of Essex, and threw themselves into Colchester, he laid siege to that
place, which defended itself to the last extremity. A new fleet was
manned, and sent out under the command of War wick, to oppose the
revolted ships, of which the prince had taken the command.

While the forces were employed in all quarters, the parliament regained
its liberty, and began to act with its wonted courage and spirit.
The members who had withdrawn from terror of the army, returned; and
infusing boldness into their companions, restored to the Presbyterian
party the ascendant which it had formerly lost. The eleven impeached
members were recalled, and the vote by which they were expelled
was reversed. The vote, too, of non-addresses was repealed; and
commissioners, five peers and ten commoners, were sent to Newport in
the Isle of Wight, in order to treat with the king.[*] He was allowed
to summon several of his friends and old counsellors, that he might have
their advice in this important transaction.[**] The theologians on
both sides, armed with their syllogisms and quotations, attended as
auxiliaries.[***] By them the flame had first been raised; and their
appearance was but a bad prognostic of its extinction. Any other
instruments seemed better adapted for a treaty of pacification.

When the king presented himself to this company, a great and sensible
alteration was remarked in his aspect, from what it appeared the year
before, when he resided at Hampton Court. The moment his servants had
been removed, he had laid aside all care of his person, and had allowed
his beard and hair to grow, and to hang dishevelled and neglected. His
hair was become almost entirely gray, either from the decline of years,
or from that load of sorrows under which he labored; and which, though
borne with constancy, preyed inwardly on his sensible and tender mind.
His friends beheld with compassion, and perhaps even his enemies, “that
gray and discrowned head,” as he himself terms it, in a copy of
verses, which the truth of the sentiment, rather than any elegance of
expression, renders very pathetic.[****] Having in vain endeavored by
courage to defend his throne from his armed adversaries, it now behoved
him, by reasoning and persuasion, to save some fragments of it from
these peaceful, and no less implacable negotiators.

The vigor of the king’s mind, notwithstanding the seeming decline of
his body, here appeared unbroken and undecayed. The parliamentary
commissioners would allow none of his council to be present, and refused
to enter into reasoning with any but himself. He alone, during the
transactions of two months, was obliged to maintain the argument against
fifteen men of the greatest parts and capacity in both houses; and no
advantage was ever obtained over him,[v] This was the scene above
all others in which he was qualified to excel. A quick conception, a
cultivated understanding, a chaste conclusion, a dignified manner;
by these accomplishments he triumphed in all discussions of cool and
temperate reasoning.

     * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 180. Sir Edward Walker’s Perfect
     Copies p. 6.

     ** Sir Edward Walker’s Perfect Copies, p. 8.

     *** Sir Edward Walker’s Perfect Copies, p. 8, 38.

     **** Burnet’s Memoirs of Hamilton.

     v    Herbert’s Memoirs, p. 72.

“The king is much changed,” said the earl of Salisbury to Sir Philip
Warwick: “he is extremely improved of late.” “No,” replied Sir Philip,
“he was always so: but you are now at last sensible of it.”[*] Sir Henry
Vane, discoursing with his fellow-commissioners, drew an argument from
the king’s uncommon abilities, why the terms of pacification must be
rendered more strict and rigid.[**] But Charles’s capacity shone not
equally in action as in reasoning.

The first point insisted on by the parliamentary commissioners, was
the king’s recalling all his proclamations and declarations against the
parliament, and the acknowledging that they had taken arms in their own
defence. He frankly offered the former concession, but long scrupled
the latter. The falsehood, as well as indignity of that acknowledgment,
begat in his breast an extreme reluctance against it. The king had, no
doubt, in some particulars of moment, invaded, from a seeming necessity,
the privileges of his people: but having renounced all claim to these
usurped powers, having confessed his errors, and having repaired every
breach in the constitution, and even erected new ramparts in order
to secure it, he could no longer, at the commencement of the war, be
represented as the aggressor. However it might be pretended, that the
former display of his arbitrary inclinations, or rather his monarchical
principles, rendered an offensive or preventive war in the parliament
prudent and reasonable, it could never in any propriety of speech, make
it be termed a defensive one. But the parliament, sensible that the
letter of the law condemned them as rebels and traitors, deemed this
point absolutely necessary for their future security; and the king,
finding that peace could be obtained on no other terms, at last yielded
to it. He only entered a protest, which was admitted, that no concession
made by him should be valid, unless the whole treaty of pacification
were concluded.[***]

     * Warwick, p. 324.

     ** Clarendon. Sir Edward Walker, p. 319

     *** Walker, p. 11, 12, 24.

He agreed that the parliament should retain, during the term of twenty
years, the power over the militia and army, and that of levying what
money they pleased for their support. He even yielded to them the right
of resuming, at any time afterwards, this authority, whenever they
should declare such a resumption necessary for public safety. In effect,
the important power of the sword was forever ravished from him and his
successors.[*]

He agreed that all the great offices, during twenty years should be
filled by both houses of parliament.[**] He relinquished to them the
entire government of Ireland, and the conduct of the war there.[***] He
renounced the power of the wards, and accepted of one hundred thousand
pounds a year in lieu of it.[****] He acknowledged the validity of their
great seal, and gave up his own.[v] He abandoned the power of creating
peers without consent of parliament. And he agreed, that all the debts
contracted in order to support the war against him, should be paid by
the people.

So great were the alterations made on the English constitution by this
treaty, that the king said, not without reason, that he had been more an
enemy to his people by these concessions, could he have prevented them,
than by any other action of his life.

Of all the demands of the parliament, Charles refused only two. Though
he relinquished almost every power of the crown, he would neither give
up his friends to punishment, nor desert what he esteemed his religious
duty. The severe repentance which he had undergone for abandoning
Strafford, had no doubt confirmed him in the resolution never again to
be guilty of a like error. His long solitude and severe afflictions had
contributed to rivet him the more in those religious principles which
had ever a considerable influence over him. His desire, however, of
finishing an accommodation, induced him to go as far in both these
particulars as he thought any wise consistent with his duty.

The estates of the royalists being at that time almost entirely under
sequestration, Charles who could give them no protection, consented
that they should pay such compositions as they and the parliament
should agree on; and only begged that they might be made as moderate as
possible. He had not the disposal of offices; and it seemed but a small
sacrifice to consent, that a certain number of his friends should be
rendered incapable of public employments.[v*]

     * Walker, p. 51.

     ** Walker, p. 78.

     *** Walker, p. 45.

     **** Walker, p. 69, 77

     v    Walker, p. 56, 68

     v*   Walker, p. 61

But when the parliament demanded a bill of attainder and banishment
against _seven_ persons, the marquis of Newcastle, Lord Digby, Lord
Biron, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, Sir Richard Granville, Sir Francis
Doddington, and Judge Jenkins, the king absolutely refused compliance;
their banishment for a limited time he was willing to agree to.[*]

Religion was the fatal point about which the differences had arisen; and
of all others, it was the least susceptible of composition or moderation
between the contending parties. The parliament insisted on the
establishment of Presbytery, the sale of the chapter lands, the
abolition of all forms of prayer, and strict laws against Catholics.
The king offered to retrench every thing which he did not esteem of
apostolicat institution: he was willing to abolish archbishops, deans
prebends, canons: he offered that the chapter lands should be let at low
leases during ninety-nine years; he consented, that the present church
government should continue during three years:[*] after that time, he
required not that any thing should be restored to bishops but the power
of ordination, and even that power to be exercised by advice of the
presbyters.[**] If the parliament, upon the expiration of that period,
still insisted on their demand, all other branches of episcopal
jurisdiction were abolished, and a new form of church government must,
by common consent, be established. The Book of Common Prayer he was
willing to renounce, but required the liberty of using some other
liturgy in his own chapel; [***] a demand, which, though seemingly
reasonable, was positively refused by the parliament.

In the dispute on these articles, one is not surprised that two of the
parliamentary theologians should tell the king, “that if he did not
consent to the utter abolition of Episcopacy he would be damned.” But it
is not without some indignation that we read the following vote of
the lords and commons: “The houses, out of their detestation to that
abominable idolatry used in the mass, do declare, that they cannot admit
of, or consent unto, any such indulgence in any law, as is desired by
his majesty, for exempting the queen and her family from the penalties
to be enacted against the exercise of the mass.” ****

     * Walker, p. 91, 93. * Walker, p. 29, 35, 49

     ** Walker, p. 65.

     *** Walker, p. 75, 82. Rush. vol. viii. p. 1323

     **** Walker, p. 71.

The treaty of marriage, the regard to the queen’s sex and high station,
even common humanity; all considerations were undervalued, in comparison
of their bigoted prejudices.[*] [19]

     * See note S, at the end of the volume.

It was evidently the interest, both of king and parliament, to finish
their treaty with all expedition; and endeavor by their combined force
to resist, if possible, the usurping fury of the army. It seemed
even the interest of the parliament to leave in the king’s hand a
considerable share of authority, by which he might be enabled to protect
them and himself from so dangerous an enemy. But the terms on which they
insisted were so rigorous, that the king, fearing no worse from the
most implacable enemies, was in no haste to come to a conclusion. And so
great was the bigotry on both sides, that they were willing to sacrifice
the greatest civil interests, rather than relinquish the most minute
of their theological contentions. From these causes, assisted by the
artifice of the Independents, the treaty was spun out to such a length,
that the invasions and insurrections were every where subdued; and the
army had leisure to execute their violent and sanguinary purposes.

Hamilton, having entered England with a numerous though undisciplined
army, durst not unite his forces with those of Langdale; because the
English royalists had refused to take the covenant; and the Scottish
Presbyterians, though engaged for the king, refused to join them on any
other terms. The two armies marched together, though at some distance;
nor could even the approach of the parliamentary army under Cromwell,
oblige the Covenanters to consult their own safety, by a close union
with the royalists. When principles are so absurd and so destructive of
human society, it may safely be averred, that the more sincere and the
more disinterested they are, they only become the more ridiculous and
the more odious.

Cromwell feared not to oppose eight thousand men to the numerous armies
of twenty thousand commanded by Hamilton and Langdale. He attacked the
latter by surprise near Preston, in Lancashire; and though the royalists
made a brave resistance, yet, not being succored in time by their
confederates, they were almost entirely cut in pieces. Hamilton was next
attacked, put to rout, and pursued to Utoxeter, where he surrendered
himself prisoner. Cromwell followed his advantage; and, marching into
Scotland with a considerable body joined Argyle, who was also in arms;
and having suppressed Laneric, Monro, and other moderate Presbyterians
he placed the power entirely in the hands of the violent party. The
ecclesiastical authority, exalted above the civil, exercised the
severest vengeance on all who had a share in Hamilton’s engagement, as
it was called; nor could any of that party recover trust, or even live
in safety, but by doing solemn and public penance for taking arms, by
authority of parliament in defence of their lawful sovereign.

The chancellor, Loudon, who had at first countenanced Hamilton’s
enterprise, being terrified with the menaces of the clergy, had some
time before gone over to the other party; and he now openly in the
church, though invested with the highest civil character in the kingdom,
did penance for his obedience to the parliament, which he termed a
“carnal self-seeking.” He accompanied his penance with so many tears,
and such pathetical addresses to the people for their prayers in
this his uttermost sorrow and distress, that a universal weeping and
lamentation took place among the deluded audience.[*]

The loan of great sums of money, often to the ruin of families, was
exacted from all such as lay under any suspicion of favoring the king’s
party, though their conduct had been ever so inoffensive. This was a
device fallen upon by the ruling party, in order, as they said, to reach
“heart malignants.”[**] Never in this island was known a more severe
and arbitrary government, than was generally exercised by the patrons of
liberty in both kingdoms.

     * Whitlocke, p. 360.

     ** Guthrey. Lucas and Sir George Lisle.

The siege of Colchester terminated in a manner no less unfortunate than
Hamilton’s engagement for the royal cause. After suffering the utmost
extremities of famine, after feeding on the vilest aliments, the
garrison desired at last to capitulate. Fairfax required them to
surrender at discretion; and he gave such an explanation to these terms,
as to reserve to himself power, if he pleased, to put them all instantly
to the sword. The officers endeavored, though in vain, to persuade the
soldiers, by making a vigorous sally, to break through, at least to
sell their lives as dear as possible. They were obliged to accept of the
conditions offered; and Fairfax, instigated by Ireton, to whom Cromwell
in his absence had consigned over the government of the passive general,
seized Sir Charles and resolved to make them instant sacrifices to
military justice. This unusual severity was loudly exclaimed against
by all the prisoners. Lord Capel, fearless of danger, reproached Ireton
with it; and challenged him, as they were all engaged in the same
honorable cause, to exercise the same impartial vengeance on all of
them. Lucas was first shot; and he himself gave orders to fire, with
the same alacrity as if he had commanded a platoon of his own soldiers.
Lisle instantly ran and kissed the dead body, then cheerfully presented
himself to a like fate. Thinking that the soldiers destined for his
execution stood at too great a distance, he called to them to come
nearer: one of them replied, “I’ll warrant you, sir, we’ll hit you:”
 he answered, smiling, “Friends, I have been nearer you, when you have
missed me.” Thus perished this generous spirit, not less beloved for
his modesty and humanity, than esteemed for his courage and military
conduct.

Soon after, a gentleman appearing in the king’s presence clothed
in mourning for Sir Charles Lucas, that humane prince, suddenly
recollecting the hard fate of his friends, paid them a tribute which
none of his own unparalleled misfortunes ever extorted from him: he
dissolved into a flood of tears.[*]

     * Whitlocke.

By these multiplied successes of the army, they had subdued all their
enemies; and none remained but the helpless king and parliament
to oppose their violent measures. From Cromwell’s suggestion, a
remonstrance was drawn by the council of general officers, and sent to
the parliament. They there complain of the treaty with the king; demand
his punishment for the blood spilt during the war; require a dissolution
of the present parliament, and a more equal representative for the
future; and assert that, though servants, they are entitled to represent
these important points to their masters, who are themselves no better
than servants and trustees of the people. At the same time, they
advanced with the army to Windsor, and sent Colonel Eure to seize
the king’s person at Newport, and convey him to Hurst Castle, in the
neighborhood, where he was detained in strict confinement.

[Illustration: 1-705-hurst-castle.jpg HURST CASTLE]

This measure being foreseen some time before, the king was exhorted to
make his escape, which was conceived to be very easy: but having given
his word to the parliament not to attempt the recovery of his liberty
during the treaty, and three weeks after, he would not, by any
persuasion, be induced to hazard the reproach of violating that promise.
In vain was it urged, that a promise given to the parliament could no
longer be binding; since they could no longer afford him protection from
violence threatened him by other persons, to whom he was bound by no
tie or engagement. The king would indulge no refinements of casuistry,
however plausible, in such delicate subjects; and was resolved that,
what depredations soever fortune should commit upon him, she never
should bereave him of his honor.[*]

     * Colonel Cooke’s Memoirs, p. 174. Rush. vol. viii. p. 1347.

The parliament lost not courage, notwithstanding the danger with which
they were so nearly menaced. Though without any plan for resisting
military usurpations, they resolved to withstand them to the uttermost;
and rather to bring on a violent and visible subversion of government,
than lend their authority to those illegal and sanguinary measures which
were projected. They set aside the remonstrance of the army, without
deigning to answer it; they voted the seizing of the king’s person to
be without their consent, and sent a message to the general, to know by
what authority that enterprise had been executed; and they issued orders
that the army should advance no nearer to London.

Hollis, the present leader of the Presbyterians, was a man of
unconquerable intrepidity; and many others of that party seconded his
magnanimous spirit. It was proposed by them, that the generals and
principal officers should, for their disobedience and usurpations, be
proclaimed traitors by the parliament.

But the parliament was dealing with men who would not be frightened by
words, nor retarded by any scrupulous delicacy. The generals, under the
name of Fairfax, (for he still allowed them to employ his name,) marched
the army to London, and placing guards in Whitehall, the Mews, St.
James’s, Durham House, Covent Garden, and Palace Yard, surrounded the
parliament with their hostile armaments.

The parliament, destitute of all hopes of prevailing, retained, however,
courage to resist. They attempted, in the face of the army, to close
their treaty with the king; and, though they had formerly voted
his concessions with regard to the church and delinquents to be
unsatisfactory, they now took into consideration the final resolution
with regard to the whole.

After a violent debate of three days, it was carried, by a majority
of one hundred and twenty-nine against eighty-three, in the house of
commons, that the king’s concessions were a foundation for the houses to
proceed upon in the settlement of the kingdom.

Next day, when the commons were to meet, Colonel Pride formerly a
drayman, had environed the house with two regiments; and, directed by
Lord Grey of Groby, he seized in the passage forty-one members of the
Presbyterian party, and sent them to a low room, which passed by the
appellation of “hell;” whence they were afterwards carried to several
inns. Above one hundred and sixty members more were excluded, and none
were allowed to enter but the most furious and the most determined of
the Independents; and these exceeded not the number of fifty or sixty.
This invasion of the parliament commonly passed under the name of
“Colonel Pride’s Purge;” so much disposed was the nation to make merry
with the dethroning of those members who had violently arrogated the
whole authority of government, and deprived the king of his legal
prerogatives.

The subsequent proceedings of the parliament, if this diminutive
assembly deserve that honorable name, retain not the least appearance
of law, equity, or freedom. They instantly reversed the former vote, and
declared the king’s concessions unsatisfactory. They determined that no
member absent at this last vote should be received till he subscribed
it, as agree able to his judgment. They renewed their former vote of
non-addresses. And they committed to prison Sir William Waller, Sir John
Clotworthy, the generals Massey, Brown, Copley, and other leaders of the
Presbyterians. These men, by their credit and authority, which was
then very high, had, at the commencement of the war, supported the
parliament; and thereby prepared the way for the greatness of the
present leaders, who at that time were of small account in the nation.

The secluded members having published a paper, containing a narrative
of the violence which had been exercised upon them, and a protestation,
that all acts were void, which from that time had been transacted in
the house of commons, the remaining members encountered it with a
declaration, in which they pronounced it false, scandalous, seditious,
and tending to the destruction of the visible and fundamental government
of the kingdom.

These sudden and violent revolutions held the whole nation in terror
and astonishment. Every man dreaded to be trampled under foot, in
the contention between those mighty powers which disputed for the
sovereignty of the state. Many began to withdraw their effects beyond
sea: foreigners scrupled to give any credit to a people so torn by
domestic faction, and oppressed by military usurpation: even the
internal commerce of the kingdom began to stagnate: and in order to
remedy these growing evils, the generals, in the name of the army,
published a declaration, in which they expressed their resolution of
supporting law and justice.[*]

The more to quiet the minds of men, the council of officers took into
consideration a scheme called “the agreement of the people;” being the
plan of a republic, to be substituted in the place of that government
which they so violently pulled in pieces. Many parts of this scheme for
correcting the inequalities of the representative, are plausible; had
the nation been disposed to receive it, or had the army intended to
impose it. Other parts are too perfect for human nature, and savor
strongly of that fanatical spirit so prevalent throughout the kingdom.

The height of all iniquity and fanatical extravagance yet remained--the
public trial and execution of their sovereign. To this period was every
measure precipitated by the zealous Independents. The parliamentary
leaders of that party had intended, that the army themselves should
execute that daring enterprise; and they deemed so irregular and lawless
a deed best fitted to such irregular and lawless instruments.[**] But
the generals were too wise to load themselves singly with the infamy
which, they knew, must attend an action so shocking to the general
sentiments of mankind. The parliament, they were resolved, should share
with them the reproach of a measure which was thought requisite for the
advancement of their common ends of safety and ambition. In the house
of commons, therefore, a committee was appointed to bring in a charge
against the king. On their report a vote passed, declaring it treason in
a king to levy war against his parliament, and appointing a high court
of justice to try Charles for this new-invented treason. This vote was
sent up to the house of peers.

     * Rush. vol. viii. p. 1364.

     ** Whitlocke.

The house of peers, during the civil wars, had all along been of small
account; but it had lately, since the king’s fall, become totally
contemptible; and very few members would submit to the mortification
of attending it. It happened that day to be fuller than usual, and they
were assembled to the number of sixteen. Without one dissenting voice,
and almost without deliberation, they instantly rejected the vote of
the lower house, and adjourned themselves for ten days, hoping that this
delay would be able to retard the furious career of the commons.

{1649.} The commons were not to be stopped by so small an obstacle.
Having first established a principle which is noble in itself, and seems
specious, but is belied by all history and experience, “that the people
are the origin of all just power;” they next declared, that the commons
of England, assembled in parliament, being chosen by the people, and
representing them, are the supreme authority of the nation, and that
whatever is enacted and declared to be law by the commons, hath the
force of law, without the consent of king or house of peers. The
ordinance for the trial of Charles Stuart, king of England, (so they
called him,) was again read, and unanimously assented to.

In proportion to the enormity of the violences and usurpations, were
augmented the pretences of sanctity, among those regicides. “Should any
one have voluntarily proposed,” said Cromwell in the house, “to bring
the king to punishment, I should have regarded him as the greatest
traitor; but since Providence and necessity have cast us upon it, I will
pray to God for a blessing on your counsels; though I am not prepared
to give you any advice on this important occasion. Even I myself,”
 subjoined he, “when I was lately offering up petitions for his majesty’s
restoration, felt my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, and
considered this preternatural movement as the answer which Heaven,
having rejected the king, had sent to my supplications.”

A woman of Hertfordshire, illuminated by prophetical visions, desired
admittance into the military council, and communicated to the officers a
revelation, which assured them that their measures were consecrated from
above, and ratified by a heavenly sanction. This intelligence gave them
great comfort, and much confirmed them in their present resolutions.[*]

     * Whitlocke, p. 360.

Colonel Harrison, the son of a butcher, and the most furious enthusiast
in the army, was sent with a strong party to conduct the king to London.
At Windsor, Hamilton, who was there detained a prisoner, was admitted
into the king’s presence: and falling on his knees, passionately
exclaimed, “My dear master!”---“I have indeed been so to you,” replied
Charles, embracing him. No further intercourse was allowed between them,
The king was instantly hurried away. Hamilton long followed him with
his eyes all suffused in tears, and prognosticated, that in this short
salutation, he had given the last adieu to his sovereign and his friend.

Charles himself was assured that the period of his life was now
approaching; but notwithstanding all the preparations which were making,
and the intelligence which he received, he could not even yet believe
that his enemies really meant to conclude their violences by a public
trial and execution. A private assassination he every moment looked for;
and though Harrison assured him that his apprehensions were entirely
groundless, it was by that catastrophe, so frequent with dethroned
princes, that he expected to terminate his life. In appearance, as well
as in reality, the king was now dethroned. All the exterior symbols of
sovereignty were withdrawn, and his attendants had orders to serve him
without ceremony. At first, he was shocked with instances of rudeness
and familiarity, to which he had been so little accustomed. “Nothing
so contemptible as a despised prince!” was the reflection which they
suggested to him. But he soon reconciled his mind to this, as he had
done to his other calamities.

All the circumstances of the trial were now adjusted, and the high
court of justice fully constituted. It consisted of one hundred and
thirty-three persons, as named by the commons; but there scarcely ever
sat above seventy: so difficult was it, notwithstanding the blindness of
prejudice and the allurements of interest, to engage men of any name or
character in that criminal measure. Cromwell, Ireton, Harrison, and the
chief officers of the army, most of them of mean birth, were members,
together with some of the lower house, and some citizens of London. The
twelve judges were at first appointed in the number: but as they had
affirmed, that it was contrary to all the ideas of English law to try
the king for treason, by whose authority all accusations for treason
must necessarily be conducted, their names, as well as those of some
peers, were afterwards struck out. Bradshaw, a lawyer, was chosen
president. Coke was appointed solicitor for the people of England.
Dorislaus, Steele, and Arke, were named assistants. The court sat in
Westminster Hall.

It is remarkable, that in calling over the court, when the crier
pronounced the name of Fairfax, which had been inserted in the number, a
voice came from one of the spectators, and cried, “He has more wit than
to be here.” When the charge was read against the king, “In the name of
the people of England,” the same voice exclaimed, “Not a tenth part of
them.” Axtel, the officer who guarded the court, giving orders to fire
into the box whence these insolent speeches came, it was discovered that
Lady Fairfax was there, and that it was she who had had the courage to
utter them. She was a person of noble extraction, daughter of Horace
Lord Vere of Tilbury; but being seduced by the violence of the times,
she had long seconded her husband’s zeal against the royal cause,
and was now, as well as he, struck with abhorrence at the fatal and
unexpected consequence of all his boasted victories.

The pomp, the dignity, the ceremony of this transaction corresponded to
the greatest conception that is suggested in the annals of human kind;
the delegates of a great people sitting in judgment upon their supreme
magistrate, and trying him for his misgovernment and breach of trust.
The solicitor, in the name of the commons, represented, that Charles
Stuart, being admitted king of England, and intrusted with a limited
power, yet nevertheless, from a wicked design to erect an unlimited
and tyrannical government, had traitorously and maliciously levied war
against the present parliament, and the people, whom they represented,
and was therefore impeached as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and a public
and implacable enemy to the commonwealth. After the charge was finished,
the president directed his discourse to the king, and told him that the
court expected his answer.

The king, though long detained a prisoner, and now produced as a
criminal, sustained, by his magnanimous courage, the majesty of a
monarch. With great temper and dignity, he declined the authority of
the court, and refused to submit himself to their jurisdiction. He
represented, that having been engaged in treaty with his two houses of
parliament, and having finished almost every article, he had expected to
be brought to his capital in another manner, and ere this time to have
been restored to his power, dignity, revenue, as well as to his personal
liberty: that he could not now perceive any appearance of the upper
house, so essential a member of the constitution; and had learned, that
even the commons, whose authority was pretended, were subdued by lawless
force, and were bereaved of their liberty: that he himself was their
“native, hereditary king;” nor was the whole authority of the state,
though free and united, entitled to try him, who derived his dignity
from the Supreme Majesty of heaven: that, admitting those extravagant
principles which levelled all orders of men, the court could plead no
power delegated by the people; unless the consent of every individual,
down to the meanest and most ignorant peasant, had been previously asked
and obtained: that he acknowledged, without scruple, that he had a trust
committed to him, and one most sacred and inviolable; he was intrusted
with the liberties of his people, and would not now betray them
by recognizing a power founded on the most atrocious violence and
usurpation: that having taken arms, and frequently exposed his life in
defence of public liberty, of the constitution, of the fundamental laws
of the kingdom, he was willing in this last and most solemn scene, to
seal with his blood those precious rights for which, though in vain, he
had so long contended: that those who arrogated a title to sit as his
judges, were born his subjects, and born subjects to those laws which
determined “that the king can do no wrong:” that he was not reduced
to the necessity of sheltering himself under this general maxim which
guards every English monarch, even the least deserving; but was able, by
the most satisfactory reasons, to justify those measures in which he had
been engaged: that to the whole world, and even to them, his pretended
judges, he was desirous, if called upon in another manner, to prove the
integrity of his conduct, and assert the justice of those defensive arms
to which, unwillingly and unfortunately, he had had recourse; but that,
in order to preserve a uniformity of conduct, he must at present forego
the apology of his innocence lest, by ratifying an authority no better
founded than that of robbers and pirates, he be justly branded as the
betrayer instead of being applauded as the martyr, of the constitution.

The president, in order to support the majesty of the people, and
maintain the superiority of his court above the prisoner still
inculcated, that he must not decline the authority of his judges; that
they overruled his objections; that they were delegated by the people,
the only source of every lawful power; and that kings themselves acted
but in trust from that community which had invested this high court
of justice with its jurisdiction. Even according to those principles,
which, in his present situation, he was perhaps obliged to adopt, his
behavior in general will appear not a little harsh and barbarous; but
when we consider him as a subject, and one too of no high character,
addressing himself to his unfortunate sovereign, his style will be
esteemed to the last degree audacious and insolent.

[Illustration: 1_706_charles1.jpg CHARLES I.]

Three times was Charles produced before the court, and as often declined
their jurisdiction. On the fourth, the judges having examined some
witnesses, by whom it was proved that the king had appeared in arms
against the forces commissioned by the parliament, they pronounced
sentence against him. He seemed very anxious at this time to be admitted
to a conference with the two houses; and it was supposed, that
he intended to resign the crown to his son: but the court refused
compliance, and considered that request as nothing but a delay of
justice.

It is confessed, that the king’s behavior during this last scene of his
life does honor to his memory; and that, in all appearances before his
judges, he never forgot his part, either as a prince or as a man. Firm
and intrepid, he maintained, in each reply, the utmost perspicuity and
justness both of thought and expression; mild and equable, he rose into
no passion at that unusual authority which was assumed over him. His
soul, without effort or affectation, seemed only to remain in the
situation familiar to it, and to look down with contempt on all the
efforts of human malice and iniquity. The soldiers, instigated by
their superiors, were brought, though with difficulty, to cry aloud for
justice. “Poor souls!” said the king to one of his attendants, “for a
little money they would do as much against their commanders.”[*] Some of
them were permitted to go the utmost length of brutal insolence, and to
spit in his face, as he was conducted along the passage to the court. To
excite a sentiment of pity was the only effect which this inhuman insult
was able to produce upon him.

     * Rush. vol. viii. p. 1425.

The people, though under the rod of lawless, unlimited power, could not
forbear, with the most ardent prayers, pouring forth their wishes for
his preservation; and in his present distress, they avowed him, by their
generous tears, for their monarch, whom, in their misguided fury, they
had before so violently rejected. The king was softened at this moving
scene, and expressed his gratitude for their dutiful affection. One
soldier, too, seized by contagious sympathy, demanded from Heaven a
blessing on oppressed and fallen majesty: his officer, overhearing the
prayer, beat him to the ground in the king’s presence. “The punishment,
methinks, exceeds the offence:” this was the reflection which Charles
formed on that occasion.[*]

As soon as the intention of trying the king was known in foreign
countries, so enormous an action was exclaimed against by the general
voice of reason and humanity; and all men, under whatever form of
government they were born, rejected the example, as the utmost effort of
undisguised usurpation, and the most heinous insult on law and justice.
The French ambassador, by orders from his court, interposed in the
king’s behalf: the Dutch employed their good offices: the Scots
exclaimed and protested against the violence: the queen, the prince,
wrote pathetic letters to the parliament. All solicitations were found
fruitless with men whose resolutions were fixed and irrevocable.

Four of Charles’s friends, persons of virtue and dignity, Richmond,
Hertford, Southampton, Lindesey, applied to the commons. They
represented, that they were the king’s counsellors, and had concurred by
their advice in all those measures which were now imputed as crimes to
their royal master: that, in the eye of the law, and according to
the dictates of common reason, they alone were guilty, and were alone
exposed to censure for every blamable action of the prince; and
that they now presented themselves, in order to save, by their own
punishment, that precious life which it became the commons themselves,
and every subject, with the utmost hazard to protect and defend.[**]
Such a generous effort tended to their honor, but contributed nothing
towards the king’s safety.

     * Warwick, p. 339.

     ** Perinchef, p, 85. Lloyde, p. 319.

The people remained in that silence and astonishment, which all great
passions, when they have not an opportunity of exerting themselves,
naturally produce in the human mind. The soldiers, being incessantly
plied with prayers, sermons and exhortations, were wrought up to a
degree of fury, and imagined, that in the acts of the most extreme
disloyalty towards their prince consisted their greatest merit in the
eye of Heaven.[*]

Three days were allowed the king between his sentence and his execution.
This interval he passed with great tranquillity, chiefly in reading and
devotion. All his family that remained in England were allowed access
to him. It consisted only of the princess Elizabeth and the duke of
Gloucester; for the duke of York had made his escape. Gloucester was
little more than an infant: the princess, notwithstanding her tender
years, showed an advanced judgment; and the calamities of her family
had made a deep impression upon her. After many pious consolations and
advices, the king gave her in charge to tell the queen, that during the
whole course of his life, he had never once, even in thought, failed in
his fidelity towards her; and that his conjugal tenderness and his life
should have an equal duration.

To the young duke, too, he could not forbear giving some advice, in
order to season his mind with early principles of loyalty and obedience
towards his brother, who was so soon to be his sovereign. Holding him on
his knee, he said, “Now they will cut off thy father’s head.” At these
words, the child looked very steadfastly upon him. “Mark, child! what I
say: they will cut off my head! and perhaps make thee a king: but mark
what I say: thou must not be a king as long as thy brothers Charles and
James are alive. They will cut off thy brothers’ heads, when they can
catch them! And thy head, too they will cut off at last! Therefore I
charge thee, do not be made a king by them!” The duke, sighing, replied,
“I will be torn in pieces first!” So determined an answer, from one
of such tender years, filled the king’s eyes with tears of joy and
admiration.

Every night during this interval the king slept as sound as usual;
though the noise of workmen employed in framing the scaffold, and other
preparations for his execution, continually resounded in his ears.[**]

     * Burnet’s History of his Own Times.

     ** Clement Walker’s History of Independency.

The morning of the fatal day he rose early, and calling Herbert, one of
his attendants, he bade him employ more than usual care in dressing him,
and preparing him for so great and joyful a solemnity. Bishop Juxon,
a man endowed with the same mild and steady virtues by which the king
himself was so much distinguished, assisted him in his devotions, and
paid the last melancholy duties to his friend and sovereign.

The street before Whitehall was the place destined for the execution;
for it was intended, by choosing that very place, in sight of his own
palace, to display more evidently the triumph of popular justice over
royal majesty. When the king came upon the scaffold, he found it so
surrounded with soldiers, that he could not expect to be heard by any
of the people: he addressed, therefore, his discourse to the few persons
who were about him; particularly Colonel Tomlinson, to whose care he had
lately been committed, and upon whom, as upon many others, his amiable
deportment had wrought an entire conversion. He justified his own
innocence in the late fatal wars; and observed, that he had not taken
arms till after the parliament had enlisted forces; nor had he any other
object in his warlike operations, than to preserve that authority entire
which his predecessors had transmitted to him. He threw not, however,
the blame upon the parliament, but was more inclined to think, that ill
instruments had interposed, and raised in them fears and jealousies
with regard to his intentions. Though innocent towards his people, he
acknowledged the equity of his execution in the eyes of his Maker; and
observed, that an unjust sentence which he had suffered to take effect,
was now punished by an unjust sentence upon himself. He forgave all his
enemies, even the chief instruments of his death; but exhorted them and
the whole nation to return to the ways of peace, by paying obedience
to their lawful sovereign, his son and successor. When he was preparing
himself for the block, Bishop Juxon called to him: “There is, sir, but
one stage more, which, though turbulent and troublesome, is yet a very
short one. Consider, it will soon carry you a great way; it will carry
you from earth to heaven; and there you shall find, to your great joy,
the prize to which you hasten, a crown of glory.” “I go,” replied
the king, “from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown; where no
disturbance can have place.” At one blow was his head severed from his
body. A man in a visor performed the office of executioner: another,
in a like disguise, held up to the spectators the head, streaming with
blood, and cried aloud, “This is the head of a traitor!”

It is impossible to describe the grief, indignation, and astonishment
which took place, not only among the spectators, who were overwhelmed
with a flood of sorrow, but throughout the whole nation, as soon as the
report of this fatal execution was conveyed to them. Never monarch, in
the full triumph of success and victory, was more dear to his people,
than his misfortunes and magnanimity, his patience and piety, had
rendered this unhappy prince. In proportion to their former delusions,
which had animated them against him, was the violence of their return
to duty and affection; while each reproached himself either with active
disloyalty towards him, or with too indolent defence of his oppressed
cause. On weaker minds, the effect of these complicated passions was
prodigious. Women are said to have cast forth the untimely fruit of
their womb: others fell into convulsions, or sunk into such a melancholy
as attended them to their grave: nay, some, unmindful of themselves, as
though they could not or would not survive their beloved prince, it is
reported, suddenly fell down dead. The very pulpits were bedewed with
unsuborned tears; those pulpits, which had formerly thundered out the
most violent imprecations and anathemas against him. And all men
united in their detestation of those hypocritical parricides, who, by
sanctified pretences, had so long disguised their treasons, and in this
last act of iniquity had thrown an indelible stain upon the nation.

A fresh instance of hypocrisy was displayed the very day of the king’s
death. The generous Fairfax, not content with being absent from the
trial, had used all the interest which he yet retained to prevent the
execution of the fatal sentence; and had even employed persuasion with
his own regiment, though none else should follow him, to rescue the
king from his disloyal murderers. Cromwell and Ireton, informed of this
intention, endeavored to convince him that the Lord had rejected the
king; and they exhorted him to seek by prayer some direction from Heaven
on this important occasion: but they concealed from him that they had
already signed the warrant for the execution. Harrison was the person
appointed to join in prayer with the unwary general. By agreement, he
prolonged his doleful cant till intelligence arrived, that the fatal
blow was struck. He then rose from his knees, and insisted with Fairfax,
that this event was a miraculous and providential answer which Heaven
had sent to their devout supplications.[*]

     * Herbert, p. 135.

It being remarked, that the king, the moment before he stretched out his
neck to the executioner, had said to Juxon with a very earnest accent,
the single word “Remember,” great mysteries were supposed to be
concealed under that expression; and the generals vehemently insisted
with the prelate, that he should inform them of the king’s meaning,
Juxon told them that the king, having frequently charged him to
inculcate on his son the forgiveness of his murderers, had taken this
opportunity, in the last moment of his life, when his commands, he
supposed would be regarded as sacred and inviolable, to reiterate that
desire; and that his mild spirit thus terminated its present course by
an act of benevolence towards his greatest enemies.

The character of this prince, as that of most men, if not of all men,
was mixed; but his virtues predominated extremely above his vices, or,
more properly speaking, his imperfections; for scarce any of his faults
rose to that pitch as to merit the appellation of vices. To consider him
in the most favorable light, it may be affirmed, that his dignity was
free from pride, his humanity from weakness, his bravery from rashness,
his temperance from austerity, his frugality from avarice; all these
virtues in him maintained their proper bounds, and merited unreserved
praise. To speak the most harshly of him, we may affirm, that many of
his good qualities were attended with some latent frailty, which,
though seemingly inconsiderable was able, when seconded by the extreme
malevolence of his fortune, to disappoint them of all their influence:
his beneficent disposition was clouded by a manner not very gracious;
his virtue was tinctured with superstition; his good sense was
disfigured by a deference to persons of a capacity inferior to his own;
and his moderate temper exempted him not from hasty and precipitate
resolutions. He deserves the epithet of a good, rather than of a great
man: and was more fitted to rule in a regular established government,
than either to give way to the encroachments of a popular assembly, or
finally to subdue their pretensions. He wanted suppleness and dexterity
sufficient for the first measure; he was nor endowed with the vigor
requisite for the second. Had he been born an absolute prince, his
humanity and good sense had rendered his reign happy and his memory
precious; had the limitations on prerogative been in his time quite
fixed and certain, his integrity had made him regard as sacred the
boundaries of the constitution. Unhappily, his fate threw him into a
period, when the precedents of many former reigns savored strongly of
arbitrary power, and the genius of the people ran violently towards
liberty. And if his political prudence was not sufficient to extricate
him from so perilous a situation, he may be excused; since, even after
the event, when it is commonly easy to correct all errors, one is at
a loss to determine what conduct, in his circumstances, could have
maintained the authority of the crown, and preserved the peace of
the nation. Exposed, without revenue, without arms, to the assault of
furious, implacable, and bigoted factions, it was never permitted him,
but with the most fatal consequences, to commit the smallest mistake; a
condition too rigorous to be imposed on the greatest human capacity.

Some historians have rashly questioned the good faith of this prince;
but, for this reproach, the most malignant scrutiny of his conduct,
which in every circumstance is now thoroughly known, affords not any
reasonable foundation. On the contrary, if we consider the extreme
difficulties to which he was so frequently reduced, and compare the
sincerity of his professions and declarations, we shall avow, that
probity and honor ought justly to be numbered among his most shining
qualities. In every treaty, those concessions which he thought he could
not in conscience maintain, he never could, by any motive or persuasion,
be induced to make. And though some violations of the petition of right
may perhaps be imputed to him, these are more to be ascribed to the
necessity of his situation, and to the lofty ideas of royal prerogative,
which, from former established precedents, he had imbibed, than to any
failure in the integrity of his principles.[*] [20]

     * See note T, at the end of the volume.

This prince was of a comely presence; of a sweet, but melancholy aspect.
His face was regular, handsome, and well complexioned; his body strong,
healthy, and justly proportioned; and being of a middle stature, he was
capable of enduring the greatest fatigues. He excelled in horsemanship
and other exercises; and he possessed all the exterior, as well as many
of the essential qualities which form an accomplished prince.

The tragical death of Charles begat a question, whether the people, in
any case, were entitled to judge and to punish their sovereign; and most
men, regarding chiefly the atrocious usurpation of the pretended judges,
and the merit of the virtuous prince who suffered, were inclined to
condemn the republican principle, as highly seditious and extravagant:
but there still were a few who, abstracting from the particular
circumstances of this case, were able to consider the question in
general, and were inclined to moderate, not contradict, the prevailing
sentiment. Such might have been their reasoning. If ever, on any
occasion, it were laudable to conceal truth from the populace, it must
be confessed, that the doctrine of resistance affords such an example;
and that all speculative reasoners ought to observe, with regard to this
principle, the same cautious silence which the laws, in every species of
government, have ever prescribed to themselves. Government is instituted
in order to restrain the fury and injustice of the people; and being
always founded on opinion, not on force, it is dangerous to weaken, by
these speculations, the reverence which the multitude owe to authority,
and to instruct them beforehand, that the case can ever happen when
they may be freed from their duty of allegiance. Or should it be found
impossible to restrain the license of human disquisitions, it must
be acknowledged, that the doctrine of obedience ought alone to be
inculcated; and that the exceptions, which are rare, ought seldom or
never to be mentioned in popular reasonings and discourses. Nor is there
any danger that mankind, by this prudent reserve, should universally
degenerate into a state of abject servitude. When the exception really
occurs, even though it be not previously expected and descanted on, it
must, from its very nature, be so obvious and undisputed, as to remove
all doubt, and overpower the restraint, however great, imposed by
teaching the general doctrine of obedience. But between resisting a
prince and dethroning him, there is a wide interval; and the abuses
of power which can warrant the latter violence, are greater and more
enormous than those which will justify the former. History, however,
supplies us with examples even of this kind; and the reality of the
supposition, though for the future it ought ever to be little looked
for, must, by all candid inquirers, be acknowledged in the past. But
between dethroning a prince and punishing him, there is another very
wide interval; and it were not strange, if even men of the most enlarged
thought should question, whether human nature could ever, in any
monarch, reach that height of depravity, as to warrant, in revolted
subjects, this last act of extraordinary jurisdiction. That illusion,
if it be an illusion, which teaches us to pay a sacred regard to the
persona of princes, is so salutary, that to dissipate it by the formal
trial and punishment of a sovereign, will have more pernicious effects
upon the people, than the example of justice can be supposed to have a
beneficial influence upon princes, by checking their career of tyranny.
It is dangerous also, by these examples, to reduce princes to despair,
or bring matters to such extremities against persons endowed with great
power as to leave them no resource, but in the most violent and most
sanguinary counsels. This general position being established, it must,
however, be observed, that no reader, almost of any party or principle,
was ever shocked, when he read in ancient history, that the Roman senate
voted Nero, their absolute sovereign, to be a public enemy, and, even
without trial, condemned him to the severest and most ignominious
punishment; a punishment from which the meanest Roman citizen was, by
the laws, exempted. The crimes of that bloody tyrant are so enormous,
that they break through all rules; and extort a confession, that such a
dethroned prince is no longer superior to his people, and can no longer
plead, in his own defence, laws which were established for conducting
the ordinary course of administration. But when we pass from the case
of Nero to that of Charles, the great disproportion, or rather
total contrariety, of character immediately strikes us; and we stand
astonished, that, among a civilized people, so much virtue could ever
meet with so fatal a catastrophe. History, the great mistress of wisdom,
furnishes examples of all kinds; and every prudential, as well as moral
precept, may be authorized by those events which her enlarged mirror is
able to present to us. From the memorable revolutions which passed in
England during this period, we may naturally deduce the same useful
lesson which Charles himself, in his later years, inferred; that it is
dangerous for princes, even from the appearance of necessity, to
assume more authority than the laws have allowed them. But it must be
confessed, that these events furnish us with another instruction, no
less natural and no less useful, concerning the madness of the people,
the furies of fanaticism, and the danger of mercenary armies.

In order to close this part of British history, it is also necessary
to relate the dissolution of the monarchy in England: that event soon
followed upon the death of the monarch. When the peers met, on the day
appointed in their adjournment, they entered upon business, and sent
down some votes to the commons, of which the latter deigned not to take
the least notice. In a few days, the lower house passed a vote, that
they would make no more addresses to the house of peers nor receive
any front them; and that that house was useless and dangerous, and
was therefore to be abolished. A like vote passed with regard to the
monarchy; and it is remarkable, that Martin, a zealous republican, in
the debate on this question, confessed, that if they desired a king, the
last was as proper as any gentleman in England.[*] The commons ordered
a new great seal to be engraved, on which that assembly was represented,
with this legend, “On the first year of freedom, by God’s blessing,
restored, 1648.” The forms of all public business were changed, from the
king’s name, to that of the keepers of the liberties of England.[**] And
it was declared high treason to proclaim, or any otherwise acknowledge
Charles Stuart, commonly called prince of Wales.

     * Walker’s History of Independency, part ii.

     * The court of king’s bench was called the court of public
     bench. So cautious on this head were some of the
     republicans, that, it is pretended, in reciting the Lord’s
     prayer, they would not say, “thy kingdom come,” but always,
     “thy commonwealth come.”

The commons intended, it is said, to bind the princess Elizabeth
apprentice to a button-maker: the duke of Gloucester was to be taught
some other mechanical employment. But the former soon died; of grief, as
is supposed, for her father’s tragical end: the latter was, by Cromwell,
sent beyond sea.

The king’s statue, in the exchange, was thrown down; and on the pedestal
these words were inscribed: “Exit tyrannus, regum ultimus;” The tyrant
is gone, the last of the kings.

Duke Hamilton was tried by a new high court of justice, as earl of
Cambridge, in England; and condemned for treason. This sentence,
which was certainly hard, but which ought to save his memory from all
imputations of treachery to his master, was executed on a scaffold
erected before Westminster Hall. Lord Capel underwent the same fate.
Both these noblemen had escaped from prison, but were afterwards
discovered and taken. To all the solicitations of their friends for
pardon, the generals and parliamentary leaders still replied, that it
was certainly the intention of Providence they should suffer; since it
had permitted them to fall into the hands of their enemies, after they
had once recovered their liberty.

The earl of Holland lost his life by a like sentence. Though of a polite
and courtly behavior, he died lamented by no party. His ingratitude to
the king, and his frequent changing of sides, were regarded as great
stains on his memory. The earl of Norwich and Sir John Owen, being
condemned by the same court, were pardoned by the commons.

The king left six children--three males: Charles, born in 1630;
James, duke of York, born in 1633; Henry, duke of Gloucester, born
in 1641;--and three females: Mary, princess of Orange, born 1631;
Elizabeth, born 1635; and Henrietta, afterwards duchess of Orleans, born
at Exeter, 1644.

The archbishops of Canterbury in this reign were Abbot and Laud; the
lord keepers, Williams bishop of Lincoln, Lord Coventry, Lord Finch,
Lord Littleton, and Sir Richard Lane; the high admirals, the duke of
Buckingham and the earl of Northumberland; the treasurers, the earl
of Marlborough, the earl of Portland, Juxon bishop of London, and Lord
Cottington; the secretaries of state, Lord Conway, Sir Albertus
Moreton, Coke, Sir Henry Vane, Lord Falkland, Lord Digby, and Sir Edward
Nicholas.

It may be expected that we should here mention the Icon Basiliké, a work
published in the king’s name a few days after his execution. It seems
almost impossible, in the controverted parts of history, to say any
thing which will satisfy the zealots of both parties: but with regard to
the genuineness of that production, it is not easy for an historian
to fix any opinion which will be entirely to his own satisfaction. The
proofs brought to evince that this work is or is not the king’s, are so
convincing, that if an impartial reader peruse any one side apart,[*] he
will think it impossible that arguments could be produced, sufficient to
counterbalance so strong an evidence: and when he compares both sides,
he will be some time at a loss to fix any determination. Should an
absolute suspense of judgment be found difficult or disagreeable in so
interesting a question, I must confess, that I much incline to give
the preference to the arguments of the royalists. The testimonies which
prove that performance to be the king’s, are more numerous, certain,
and direct, than those on the other side. This is the case, even if we
consider the external evidence: but when we weigh the internal, derived
from the style and composition, there is no manner of comparison. These
meditations resemble, in elegance, purity, neatness, and simplicity, the
genius of those performances which we know with certainty to have
flowed from the royal pen; but are so unlike the bombast, perplexed,
rhetorical, and corrupt style of Dr. Gauden, to whom they are ascribed,
that no human testimony seems sufficient to convince us that he was the
author. Yet all the evidences which would rob the king of that honor,
tend to prove that Dr. Gauden had the merit of writing so fine a
performance, and the infamy of imposing it on the world for the king’s.

     * See, on the one hand, Toland’s Amyntor, and on the other,
     Wagataffe’s Vindication of the Royal Martyr, with Young’s
     Addition. We may remark, that Lord Clarendon’s total silence
     with regard to this subject, in so full of history, composed
     in vindication of the king’s measures and character, forms a
     presumption on Toland’s side, and a presumption of which
     that author was ignorant; the works of the noble historian
     not being then published. Bishop Burnet’s testimony, too,
     must be allowed of some weight against the Icon.

It is not easy to conceive the general compassion excited towards the
king, by the publishing, at so critical a juncture, a work so full of
piety, meekness, and humanity. Many have not scrupled to ascribe to that
book the subsequent restoration of the royal family. Milton compares
its effects to those which were wrought on the tumultuous Romans by
Anthony’s reading to them the will of Cæsar. The Icon passed through
fifty editions in a twelvemonth; and, independent of the great interest
taken in it by the nation, as the supposed production of their murdered
sovereign, it must be acknowledged the best prose composition which, at
the time of its publication, was to be found in the English language.



CHAPTER LX.



THE COMMONWEALTH.

   CONTEMPORARY MONARCHS.

   EMP of GERM.         K. OF FRANCE.   K. or SPAIN.

   Ferdinand III 1658    Lewis XIII.    Philip IV.

{1649.} The confusions which overspread England after the murder
of Charles I., proceeded as well from the spirit of refinement and
innovation which agitated the ruling party, as from the dissolution of
all that authority, both civil and ecclesiastical, by which the nation
had ever been accustomed to be governed. Every man had framed the model
of a republic; and, however new it was, or fantastical, he was eager
in recommending it to his fellow-citizens, or even imposing it by force
upon them. Every man had adjusted a system of religion, which, being
derived from no traditional authority, was peculiar to himself; and
being founded on supposed inspiration, not on any principles of human
reason, had no means, besides cant and low rhetoric, by which it
could recommend itself to others. The levellers insisted on an equal
distribution of power and property, and disclaimed all dependence and
subordination. The Millenarians, or Fifth Monarchy men, required, that
government itself should be abolished, and all human powers be laid in
the dust, in order to pave the way for the dominion of Christ, whose
second coming they suddenly expected. The Antinomians even insisted,
that the obligations of morality and natural law were suspended, and
that the elect, guided by an internal principle more perfect and divine,
were superior to the beggarly elements of justice and humanity. A
considerable party declaimed against tithes and a hireling priesthood,
and were resolved that the magistrate should not support by power
or revenue any ecclesiastical establishment. Another party inveighed
against the law and its professors; and, on pretence of rendering more
simple the distribution of justice, were desirous of abolishing the
whole system of English jurisprudence, which seemed interwoven with
monarchical government. Even those among the republicans who adopted not
such extravagancies, were so intoxicated with their saintly character,
that they supposed themselves possessed of peculiar privileges; and all
professions, oaths, laws, and engagements, had, in a great measure,
lost their influence over them. The bands of society were every
where loosened; and the irregular passions of men were encouraged by
speculative principles, still more unsocial and irregular.

The royalists, consisting of the nobles and more considerable gentry,
being degraded from their authority and plundered of their property,
were inflamed with the highest resentment and indignation against
those ignoble adversaries who had reduced them to subjection. The
Presbyterians, whose credit had first supported the arms of the
parliament, were enraged to find that, by the treachery or superior
cunning of then associates, the fruits of all their successful labors
were ravished from them. The former party, from inclination and
principle, zealously attached themselves to the son of their unfortunate
monarch, whose memory they respected, and whose tragical death they
deplored. The latter cast their eye towards the same object; but they
had still many prejudices to overcome, many fears and jealousies to be
allayed, ere they could cordially entertain thoughts of restoring the
family which they had so grievously offended, and whose principles they
regarded with such violent abhorrence.

The only solid support of the republican independent faction, which,
though it formed so small a part of the nation, had violently usurped
the government of the whole, was a numerous army of near fifty thousand
men. But this army, formidable from its discipline and courage, as well
as its numbers, was actuated by a spirit that rendered it dangerous
to the assembly which had assumed the command over it. Accustomed
to indulge every chimera in politics, every frenzy in religion, the
soldiers knew little of the subordination of citizens, and had only
learned, from apparent necessity, some maxims of military obedience. And
while they still maintained, that all those enormous violations of law
and equity, of which they had been guilty, were justified by the success
with which providence had blessed them; they were ready to break out
into any new disorder, wherever they had the prospect of a like sanction
and authority.

What alone gave some stability to all these unsettled humors was the
great influence, both civil and military, acquired by Oliver Cromwell.
This man, suited to the age in which he lived, and to that alone, was
equally qualified to gain the affection and confidence of men, by what
was mean, vulgar, and ridiculous in his character, as to command their
obedience by what was great, daring, and enterprising. Familiar even
to buffoonery with the meanest sentinel, he never lost his authority:
transported to a degree of madness with religious ecstasies, he never
forgot the political purposes to which they might serve. Hating monarchy
while a subject, despising liberty while a citizen, though he
retained for a time all orders of men under a seeming obedience to the
parliament, he was secretly paving the way, by artifice and courage, to
his own unlimited authority.

The parliament,--for so we must henceforth call a small and
inconsiderable part of the house of commons,--having murdered their
sovereign with so many appearing circumstances of solemnity and justice,
and so much real violence, and even fury, began to assume more the air
of a civil legal power, and to enlarge a little the narrow bottom
upon which they stood. They admitted a few of the excluded and absent
members, such as were liable to least exception; but on condition that
these members should sign an approbation of whatever had been done in
their absence with regard to the king’s trial; and some of them were
willing to acquire a share of power on such terms: the greater part
disdained to lend their authority to such apparent usurpations. They
issued some writs for new elections, in places where they hoped to have
interest enough to bring in their own friends and dependents. They named
a council of state, thirty-eight in number, to whom all addresses were
made, who gave orders to all generals and admirals, who executed the
laws, and who digested all business before it was introduced into
parliament.[*] They pretended to employ themselves entirely in adjusting
the laws, forms, and plan of a new representative; and as soon as
they should have settled the nation, they professed their intention of
restoring the power to the people, from whom they acknowledged they had
entirely derived it.

     * Their names were, the earls of Denbigh, Mulgrave,
     Pembroke, Salisbury, Lords Grey and Fairfax, Lisle, Rolles,
     St. John, Wilde, Bradshaw, Cromwell, Skippon, Pickering,
     Massam, Haselrig, Harrington, Vane, Jun., Danvers, Armine,
     Mildmay, Constable, Pennington, Wilson, Whitlocke, Martin,
     Ludlow, Stapleton, Hevingham, Wallop, Hutchinson, Bond,
     Popham, Valentine, Walton, Scott, Purefoy, Jones.

The commonwealth found every thing in England composed into a seeming
tranquillity by the terror of their arms. Foreign powers, occupied in
wars among themselves, had no leisure or inclination to interpose in the
domestic dissensions of this island. The young king, poor and neglected,
living sometimes in Holland, sometimes in France, sometimes in Jersey,
comforted himself amidst his present distresses with the hopes of better
fortune. The situation alone of Scotland and Ireland gave any immediate
inquietude to the new republic.

After the successive defeats of Montrose and Hamilton, and the ruin of
their parties, the whole authority in Scotland fell into the hands of
Argyle and the rigid churchmen, that party which was most averse to
the interests of the royal family. Their enmity, however, against
the Independents, who had prevented the settlement of Presbyterian
discipline in England, carried them to embrace opposite maxims in their
political conduct. Though invited by the English parliament to model
their government into a republican form, they resolved still to adhere
to monarchy, which had ever prevailed in their country, and which, by
the express terms of their covenant they had engaged to defend. They
considered, besides, that as the property of the kingdom lay mostly in
the hands of great families, it would be difficult to establish a common
wealth; or without some chief magistrate, invested with royal authority,
to preserve peace or justice in the community. The execution, therefore,
of the king, against which they had always protested, having occasioned
a vacancy of the throne, they immediately proclaimed his son and
successor, Charles II.; but upon condition “of his good behavior, and
strict observance of the covenant, and his entertaining no other persons
about him but such as were godly men, and faithful to that obligation.”
 These unusual clauses, inserted in the very first acknowledgment of
their prince, sufficiently showed their intention of limiting extremely
his authority. And the English commonwealth, having no pretence to
interpose in the affairs of that kingdom, allowed the Scots, for the
present, to take their own measures in settling their government.

The dominion which England claimed over Ireland, demanded more
immediately their efforts for subduing that country. In order to convey
a just notion of Irish affairs, it will be necessary to look backwards
some years, and to relate briefly those transactions which had passed
during the memorable revolutions in England. When the late king agreed
to that cessation of arms with the Popish rebels,[*] which was become
so requisite, as well for the security of the Irish Protestants as for
promoting his interests in England, the parliament, in order to blacken
his conduct, reproached him with favoring that odious rebellion, and
exclaimed loudly against the terms of the cessation. They even went so
far as to declare it entirely null and invalid, because finished without
their consent; and in this declaration the Scots in Ulster, and the earl
of Inchiquin, a nobleman of great authority in Munster, professed
to adhere. By their means the war was still kept alive; but as the
dangerous distractions in England hindered the parliament from sending
any considerable assistance to their allies in Ireland, the marquis of
Ormond, lord lieutenant, being a native of Ireland, and a person endowed
with great prudence and virtue, formed a scheme for composing the
disorders of his country, and for engaging the rebel Irish to support
the cause of his royal master. There were many circumstances which
strongly invited the natives of Ireland to embrace the king’s party. The
maxims of that prince had always led him to give a reasonable indulgence
to the Catholics throughout all his dominions; and one principal ground
of that enmity which the Puritans professed against him, was this tacit
toleration. The parliament, on the contrary, even when unprovoked, had
ever menaced the Papists with the most rigid restraint, if not a
total extirpation; and immediately after the commencement of the Irish
rebellion, they put to sale all the estates of the rebels, and had
engaged the public faith for transferring them to the adventurers, who
had already advanced money upon that security. The success, therefore,
which the arms of the parliament met with at Naseby, struck a just
terror into the Irish; and engaged the council of Kilkenny, composed of
deputies from all the Catholic counties and cities, to conclude a peace
with the marquis of Ormond.[**]

     * 1643.

     ** 1646.

They professed to return to their duty and allegiance, engaged to
furnish ten thousand men for the support of the king’s authority in
England, and were content with stipulating, in return, indemnity for
their rebellion, and toleration of their religion. Ormond, not doubting
but a peace, so advantageous and even necessary to the Irish, would be
strictly observed, advanced with a small body of troops to Kilkenny, in
order to concert measures for common defence with his new allies. The
pope had sent over to Ireland a nuncio, Rinuccini, an Italian; and this
man, whose commission empowered him to direct the spiritual concerns of
the Irish, was emboldened, by their ignorance and bigotry, to assume
the chief authority in the civil government. Foreseeing that a general
submission to the lord lieutenant would put an end to his own influence,
he conspired with Owen O’Neal, who commanded the native Irish, in
Ulster, and who bore a great jealousy to Preston, the general chiefly
trusted by the council of Kilkenny. By concert, these two malecontents
secretly drew forces together, and were ready to fall on Ormond, who
remained in security, trusting to the pacification so lately concluded
with the rebels. He received intelligence of their treachery, made
his retreat with celerity and conduct, and sheltered his small army in
Dublin and the other fortified towns, which still remained in the hands
of the Protestants.

The nuncio, full of arrogance, levity, and ambition, was not contented
with this violation of treaty. He summoned an assembly of the clergy at
Waterford, and engaged them to declare against that pacification which
the civil council had concluded with their sovereign. He even thundered
out a sentence of excommunication against all who should adhere to a
peace so prejudicial, as he pretended, to the Catholic religion; and the
deluded Irish, terrified with his spiritual menaces, ranged themselves
every where on his side, and submitted to his authority. Without
scruple, he carried on war against the lord lieutenant, and threatened
with a siege the Protestant garrisons, which were all of them very ill
provided for defence.

Meanwhile, the unfortunate king was necessitated to take shelter in
the Scottish army; and being there reduced to close confinement,
and secluded from all commerce with his friends, despaired that his
authority, or even his liberty, would ever be restored to him. He sent
orders to Ormond, if he could not defend himself, rather to submit
to the English than to the Irish rebels; and accordingly the lord
lieutenant, being reduced to extremities, delivered up Dublin, Tredah,
Dundalk, and other garrisons, to Colonel Michael Jones, who took
possession of them in the name of the English parliament. Ormond himself
went over to England, was admitted into the king’s presence, received
a grateful acknowledgment for his past services, and during some time
lived in tranquillity near London. But being banished, with the other
royalists, to a distance from that city, and seeing every event turn out
unfortunately for his royal master, and threaten him with a catastrophe
still more direful, he thought proper to retire into France, where he
joined the queen and the prince of Wales.

In Ireland, during these transactions, the authority of the nuncio
prevailed without control among all the Catholics; and that prelate, by
his indiscretion and insolence, soon made them repent of the power with
which they had intrusted him. Prudent men likewise were sensible of the
total destruction which was hanging over the nation from the English
parliament, and saw no resource or safety but in giving support to the
declining authority of the king. The earl of Clanricarde, a nobleman
of an ancient family, a person too of merit, who had ever preserved his
loyalty, was sensible of the ruin which threatened his countrymen,
and was resolved, if possible, to prevent it. He secretly formed a
combination among the Catholics; he entered into a correspondence
with Inchiquin, who preserved great authority over the Protestants in
Munster; he attacked the nuncio, whom he chased out of the island; and
he sent to Paris a deputation, inviting the lord lieutenant to return
and take possession of his government.

Ormond, on his arrival in Ireland, found the kingdom divided into many
factions, among which either open war or secret enmity prevailed. The
authority of the English parliament was established in Dublin, and the
other towns which he himself had delivered into their hands. O’Neal
maintained his credit in Ulster; and having entered into a secret
correspondence with the parliamentary generals, was more intent on
schemes for his own personal safety, than anxious for the preservation
of his country or religion. The other Irish, divided between their
clergy, who were averse to Ormond, and their nobility, who were attached
to him, were very uncertain in their motions and feeble in their
measures. The Scots in the north, enraged, as well as their other
countrymen, against the usurpations of the sectarian army, professed
their adherence to the king; but were still hindered by many prejudices
from entering into a cordial union with his lieutenant. All these
distracted councils and contrary humors checked the progress of Ormond,
and enabled the parliamentary forces in Ireland to maintain their ground
against him. The republican faction, meanwhile, in England, employed
in subduing the revolted royalists, in reducing the parliament
to subjection, in the trial, condemnation, and execution of their
sovereign, totally neglected the supplying of Ireland, and allowed Jones
and the forces in Dublin to remain in the utmost weakness and necessity.
The lord lieutenant, though surrounded with difficulties, neglected not
the favorable opportunity of promoting the royal cause. Having at
last assembled an army of sixteen thousand men, he advanced upon the
parliamentary garrisons. Dundalk, where Monk commanded, was delivered up
by the troops, who mutinied against their governor. Tredah, Neury, and
other forts, were taken. Dublin was threatened with a siege; and the
affairs of the lieutenant appeared in so prosperous a condition, that
the young king entertained thoughts of coming in person into Ireland.

When the English commonwealth was brought to some tolerable settlement,
men began to cast their eyes towards the neighboring island. During the
contest of the two parties, the government of Ireland had remained a
great object of intrigue; and the Presbyterians endeavored to obtain
the lieutenancy for Waller, the Independents for Lambert. After the
execution of the king, Cromwell himself began to aspire to a command,
where so much glory, he saw, might be won, and so much authority
acquired. In his absence, he took care to have his name proposed to the
council of state; and both friends and enemies concurred immediately
to vote him into that important office: the former suspected, that
the matter had not been proposed merely by chance, without his own
concurrence; the latter desired to remove him to a distance, and hoped,
during his absence, to gain the ascendant over Fairfax, whom he had so
long blinded by his hypocritical professions. Cromwell himself, when
informed of his election, feigned surprise, and pretended at first to
hesitate with regard to the acceptance of the command. And Lambert,
either deceived by his dissimulation, or, in his turn, feigning to
be deceived, still continued, notwithstanding this disappointment his
friendship and connections with Cromwell.

The new lieutenant immediately applied himself with his wonted vigilance
to make preparations for his expedition. Many disorders in England it
behoved him previously to compose. All places were full of danger and
inquietude. Though men, astonished with the successes of the army,
remained in seeming tranquillity, symptoms of the greatest discontent
every where appeared. The English, long accustomed to a mild
administration, and unacquainted with dissimulation, could not conform
their speech and countenance to the present necessity, or pretend
attachment to a form of government which they generally regarded with
such violent abhorrence. It was requisite to change the magistracy of
London, and to degrade, as well as punish, the mayor and some of the
aldermen, before the proclamation for the abolition of monarchy could
be published in the city. An engagement being framed to support the
commonwealth without king or house of peers, the army was with some
difficulty brought to subscribe it; but though it was imposed upon the
rest of the nation under severe penalties, no less than putting all
who refused out of the protection of law, such obstinate reluctance was
observed in the people, that even the imperious parliament was obliged
to desist from it. The spirit of fanaticism, by which that assembly had
at first been strongly supported, was now turned, in a great measure,
against them. The pulpits, being chiefly filled with Presbyterians
or disguised royalists, and having long been the scene of news and
politics, could by no penalties be restrained from declarations
unfavorable to the established government. Numberless were the
extravagancies which broke out among the people. Everard, a disbanded
soldier, having preached that the time was now come when the community
of goods would be renewed among Christians, led out his followers to
take possession of the land; and being carried before the general, he
refused to salute him, because he was but his fellow-creature.[*]
What seemed more dangerous, the army itself was infected with like
humors.[**] [21]

     * Whitlocke.

     ** See note U, at the end of the volume.

Though the levellers had for a time been suppressed by the audacious
spirit of Cromwell, they still continued to propagate their doctrines
among the private men and inferior officers, who pretended a right to
be consulted, as before, in the administration of the commonwealth. They
now practised against their officers the same lesson which they had been
taught against the parliament. They framed a remonstrance, and sent five
agitators to present it to the general and council of war: these were
cashiered with ignominy by sentence of a court martial. One Lockier,
having carried his sedition further, was sentenced to death; but this
punishment was so far from quelling the mutinous spirit, that above a
thousand of his companions showed their adherence to him, by attending
his funeral, and wearing in their hats black and sea-green ribbons
by way of favors. About four thousand assembled at Burford, under the
command of Thomson, a man formerly condemned for sedition by a court
martial, but pardoned by the general. Colonel Reynolds, and afterwards
Fairfax and Cromwell, fell upon them, while unprepared for defence,
and seduced by the appearance of a treaty. Four hundred were taken
prisoners; some of them capitally punished, the rest pardoned. And this
tumultuous spirit, though it still lurked in the army, and broke, out
from time to time, seemed for the present to be suppressed.

Petitions, framed in the same spirit of opposition, were presented
to the parliament by Lieutenant-Colonel Lilburn, the person who,
for dispersing seditious libels, had formerly been treated with such
severity by the star chamber. His liberty was at this time as ill
relished by the parliament; and he was thrown into prison, as a promoter
of sedition and disorder in the commonwealth. The women applied by
petition for his release; but were now desired to mind their household
affairs, and leave the government of the state to the men. From all
quarters the parliament was harassed with petitions of a very free
nature, which strongly spoke the sense of the nation, and proved how
ardently all men longed for the restoration of their laws and liberties.
Even in a feast which the city gave to the parliament and council of
state, it was deemed a requisite precaution, if we may credit Walker
and Dugdale, to swear all the cooks, that they would serve nothing but
wholesome food to them.

The parliament judged it necessary to enlarge the laws of high treason
beyond those narrow bounds within which they had been confined during
the monarchy. They even comprehended verbal offences, nay, intentions,
though they had never appeared in any overt act against the state. To
affirm the present government to be a usurpation, to assert that the
parliament or council of state were tyrannical or illegal, to endeavor
subverting their authority, or stirring up sedition against them: these
offences were declared to be high treason. The power of imprisonment,
of which the petition of right had bereaved the king, it was now found
necessary to restore to the council of state; and all the jails in
England were filled with men whom the jealousies and fears of the ruling
party had represented as dangerous.[*] The taxes continued by the new
government, and which, being unusual, were esteemed heavy, increased the
general ill will under which it labored. Besides the customs and excise,
ninety thousand pounds a month were levied on land for the subsistence
of the army. The sequestrations and compositions of the royalists, the
sale of the crown lands, and of the dean and chapter lands, though they
yielded great sums, were not sufficient to support the vast expenses,
and, as was suspected, the great depredations, of the parliament and of
their creatures.[*]

     * History of Independency, part ii.

     ** Parl. History, vol. xix. p. 136, 176.

Amidst all these difficulties and disturbances, the steady mind of
Cromwell, without confusion or embarrassment, still pursued its purpose.
While he was collecting an army of twelve thousand men in the west
of England, he sent to Ireland, under Reynolds and Venables, a
reënforcement of four thousand horse and foot, in order to strengthen
Jones, and enable him to defend himself against the marquis of Ormond,
who lay at Finglass, and was making preparations for the attack of
Dublin. Inchiquin, who had now made a treaty with the king’s lieutenant,
having, with a separate body, taken Tredah and Dundalk, gave a defeat
to Offarrell, who served under O’Neal, and to young Coot, who commanded
some parliamentary forces. After he had joined his troops to the main
army, with whom for some time he remained united, Ormond passed the
River Liffy, and took post at Rathmines, two miles from Dublin, with
a view of commencing the siege of that city. In order to cut off all
further supply from Jones, he had begun the reparation of an old fort
which lay at the gates of Dublin; and being exhausted with continual
fatigue for some days, he had retired to rest, after leaving orders to
keep his forces under arms. He was suddenly awaked with the noise of
firing; and starting from his bed, saw every thing already in tumult and
confusion. Jones, an excellent officer, formerly a lawyer, had sallied
out with the reënforcement newly arrived; and attacking the party
employed in repairing the fort, he totally routed them, pursued the
advantage, and fell in with the army, which had neglected Ormond’s
orders. These he soon threw into disorder; put them to flight, in spite
of all the efforts of the lord lieutenant; chased them off the field;
seized all their tents, baggage, ammunition; and returned victorious
to Dublin, after killing a thousand men, and taking above two thousand
prisoners.[*]

     * Parl. Hist. vol. xix. p. 165.

This loss, which threw some blemish on the military character of Ormond,
was irreparable to the royal cause. That numerous army, which, with so
much pains and difficulty, the lord lieutenant had been collecting for
more than a year, was dispersed in a moment. Cromwell soon after arrived
in Dublin, where he was welcomed with shouts and rejoicings. He hastened
to Tredah. That town was well fortified: Ormond had thrown into it a
good garrison of three thousand men, under Sir Arthur Aston, an officer
of reputation. He expected that Tredah, lying in the neighborhood of
Dublin, would first be attempted by Cromwell, and he was desirous to
employ the enemy some time in that siege, while he himself should repair
his broken forces. But Cromwell knew the importance of despatch. Having
made a breach, he ordered a general assault. Though twice repulsed with
loss, he renewed the attack, and himself, along with Ireton, led on his
men. All opposition was overborne by the furious valor of the troops.
The town was taken sword in hand; and orders being issued to give no
quarter, a cruel slaughter was made of the garrison. Even a few, who
were saved by the soldiers, satiated with blood, were next day miserably
butchered by orders from the general. One person alone of the garrison
escaped to be a messenger of this universal havoc and destruction.

Cromwell pretended to retaliate by this severe execution the cruelty of
the Irish massacre: but he well knew, that almost the whole garrison
was English; and his justice was only a barbarous policy, in order to
terrify all other garrisons from resistance. His policy, however, had
the desired effect. Having led the army without delay to Wexford, he
began to batter the town. The garrison, after a slight defence, offered
to capitulate; but before they obtained a cessation, they imprudently
neglected their guards; and the English army rushed in upon them. The
same severity was exercised as at Tredah.

Every town before which Cromwell presented himself, now opened its gates
without resistance. Ross, though strongly garrisoned, was surrendered
by Lord Taffe. Having taken Estionage, Cromwell threw a bridge over the
Barrow, and made himself master of Passage and Carrie. The English had
no further difficulties to encounter than what arose from fatigue and
the advanced season. Fluxes and contagious distempers crept in among
the soldiers, who perished in great numbers. Jones himself, the brave
governor of Dublin, died at Wexford. And Cromwell had so far advanced
with his decayed army, that he began to find it difficult, either to
subsist in the enemy’s country, or retreat to his own garrisons. But
while he was in these straits, Corke, Kinsale, and all the English
garrisons in Munster deserted to him, and opening their gates, resolved
to share the fortunes of their victorious countrymen.

This desertion of the English put an end to Ormond’s authority, which
was already much diminished by the misfortunes at Dublin, Tredah, and
Wexford. The Irish, actuated by national and religious prejudices, could
no longer be kept in obedience by a Protestant governor, who was
so unsuccessful in all his enterprises. The clergy renewed their
excommunications against him and his adherents, and added the terrors
of superstition to those which arose from a victorious enemy. Cromwell,
having received a reënforcement from England, again took the field early
in the spring. He made himself master of Kilkenny and Clonmel, the only
places where he met with any vigorous resistance. The whole frame of
the Irish union being in a manner dissolved, Ormond soon after left the
island, and delegated his authority to Clanricarde, who found affairs
so desperate as to admit of no remedy. The Irish were glad to embrace
banishment as a refuge, Above forty thousand men passed into foreign
service; and Cromwell, well pleased to free the island from enemies
who never could be cordially reconciled to the English, gave them full
liberty and leisure for their embarkation.

While Cromwell proceeded with such uninterrupted success in Ireland,
which in the space of nine months he had almost entirely subdued,
fortune was preparing for him a new scene of victory and triumph in
Scotland. Charles was at the Hague, when Sir Joseph Douglas brought him
intelligence, that he was proclaimed king by the Scottish parliament.
At the same time, Douglas informed him of the hard conditions annexed to
the proclamation, and extremely damped that joy which might arise from
his being recognized sovereign in one of his kingdoms. Charles too
considered, that those who pretended to acknowledge his title, were at
that very time in actual rebellion against his family, and would be sure
to intrust very little authority in his hands, and scarcely would afford
him personal liberty and security. As the prospect of affairs in Ireland
was at that time not unpromising, he intended rather to try his fortune
in that kingdom, from which he expected more dutiful submission and
obedience.

Meanwhile he found it expedient to depart from Holland. The people in
the United Provinces were much attached to his interests. Besides his
connection with the family of Orange, which was extremely beloved by the
populace, all men regarded with compassion his helpless condition, and
expressed the greatest abhorrence against the murder of his father;
a deed to which nothing, they thought, but the rage of fanaticism and
faction could have impelled the parliament. But though the public in
general bore great favor to the king, the states were uneasy at his
presence. They dreaded the parliament, so formidable by their power,
and so prosperous in all their enterprises. They apprehended the
most precipitate resolutions from men of such violent and haughty
dispositions. And after the murder of Dorislaus, they found it still
more necessary to satisfy the English commonwealth, by removing the king
to a distance from them.

{1650.} Dorislaus, though a native of Holland, had lived long in
England; and being employed as assistant to the high court of justice
which condemned the late king, he had risen to great credit and favor
with the ruling party. They sent him envoy to Holland; but no sooner had
he arrived at the Hague, than he was set upon by some royalists, chiefly
retainers to Montrose. They rushed into the room where he was sitting
with some company; dragged him from the table; put him to death as the
first victim to their murdered sovereign f very leisurely and peaceably
separated themselves; and though orders were issued by the magistrates
to arrest them, these were executed with such slowness and reluctance,
that the criminals had all of them the opportunity of making their
escape.

Charles, having passed some time at Paris, where no assistance was
given him, and even few civilities were paid him, made his retreat into
Jersey, where his authority was still acknowledged. Here Winram, laird
of Liberton, came to him as deputy from the committee of estates
in Scotland, and informed him of the conditions to which he must
necessarily submit before he could be admitted to the exercise of his
authority. Conditions more severe were never imposed by subjects upon
their sovereign; but as the affairs of Ireland began to decline, and the
king found it no longer safe to venture himself in that island, he
gave a civil answer to Winram, and desired commissioners to meet him at
Breda, in order to enter into a treaty with regard to these conditions.

The earls of Cassilis and Lothian, Lord Burley, the laird of Liberton,
and other commissioners, arrived at Breda; but without any power of
treating: the king must submit without reserve to the terms imposed upon
him. The terms were, that he should issue a proclamation, banishing from
court all excommunicated persons, that is, all those who, either under
Hamilton or Montrose, had ventured their lives for his family; that no
English subject who had served against the parliament, should be allowed
to approach him; that he should bind himself by his royal promise to
take the covenant; that he should ratify all acts of parliament by which
Presbyterian government, the directory of worship, the confession of
faith, and the catechism were established; and that in civil affairs he
should entirely conform himself to the direction of parliament, and
in ecclesiastical to that of the assembly. These proposals the
commissioners, after passing some time in sermons and prayers, in order
to express the more determined resolution, very solemnly delivered to
the king.

The king’s friends were divided with regard to the part which he should
act in this critical conjuncture. Most of his English counsellors
dissuaded him from accepting conditions so disadvantageous and
dishonorable. They said, that the men who now governed Scotland were the
most furious and bigoted of that party which, notwithstanding his gentle
government, had first excited a rebellion against the late king; after
the most unlimited concessions, had renewed their rebellion, and stopped
the progress of his victories in England; and after he had intrusted his
person to them in his uttermost distress, had basely sold him, together
with their own honor, to his barbarous enemies: that they had as yet
shown no marks of repentance; and even in the terms which they now
proposed, displayed the same anti-monarchical principles, and the same
jealousy of their sovereign, by which they had ever been actuated: that
nothing could be more dishonorable, than that the king, in his first
enterprise, should sacrifice, merely for the empty name of royalty
those principles for which his father had died a martyr, and in which he
himself had been strictly educated: that by this hypocrisy he might lose
the royalists, who alone were sincerely attached to him; but never would
gain the Presbyterians, who were averse to his family and his cause, and
would ascribe his compliance merely to policy and necessity: that the
Scots had refused to give him any assurances of their intending to
restore him to the throne of England; and could they even be brought
to make such an attempt, it had sufficiently appeared, by the event
of Hamilton’s engagement, how unequal their force was to so great an
enterprise: that on the first check which they should receive,
Argyle and his partisans would lay hold of the quickest expedient for
reconciling themselves to the English parliament, and would betray the
king, as they had done his father, into the hands of his enemies: and
that, however desperate the royal cause, it must still be regarded as
highly imprudent in the king to make a sacrifice of his honor, where the
sole purchase was to endanger his life or liberty.

The earl of Laneric, now duke of Hamilton, the earl of Lauderdale, and
others of that party who had been banished their country for the late
engagement, were then with the king; and being desirous of returning
home in his retinue, they joined the opinion of the young duke of
Buckingham, and earnestly pressed him to submit to the conditions
required of him. It was urged, that nothing would more gratify the
king’s enemies than to see him fall into the snare laid for him, and by
so scrupulous a nicety, leave the possession of his dominions to those
who desired but a pretence for excluding him: that Argyle, not daring so
far to oppose the bent of the nation as to throw off all allegiance to
his sovereign, had embraced this expedient, by which he hoped to make
Charles dethrone himself, and refuse a kingdom which was offered him:
that it was not to be doubted but the same national spirit, assisted by
Hamilton and his party, would rise still higher in favor of their prince
after he had intrusted himself to their fidelity, and would much abate
the rigor of the conditions now imposed upon him: that whatever might
be the present intentions of the ruling party, they must unavoidably
be engaged in a war with England, and must accept the assistance of the
king’s friends of all parties, in order to support themselves against a
power so much superior: that how much soever a steady, uniform conduct
might have been suitable to the advanced age and strict engagements
of the late king, no one would throw any blame on a young prince for
complying with conditions which necessity had extorted from him: that
even the rigor of those principles professed by his father, though with
some it had exalted his character, had been extremely prejudicial to his
interests; nor could any thing be more serviceable to the royal cause,
than to give all parties room to hope for more equal and more indulgent
maxims of government; and that where affairs were reduced to so
desperate a situation, dangers ought little to be regarded; and the
king’s honor lay rather in showing some early symptoms of courage
and activity, than in choosing strictly a party among theological
controversies, with which, it might be supposed, he was as yet very
little acquainted.

These arguments, seconded by the advice of the queen mother and of the
prince of Orange, the king’s brother-in-law, who both of them thought
it ridiculous to refuse a kingdom merely from regard to Episcopacy, had
great influence on Charles. But what chiefly determined him to comply,
was the account brought him of the fate of Montrose, who, with all
the circumstances of rage and contumely, had been put to death by his
zealous countrymen. Though in this instance the king saw more evidently
the furious spirit by which the Scots were actuated, he had now no
further resource, and was obliged to grant whatever was demanded of him.

Montrose, having laid down his arms at the command of the late king, had
retired into France, and, contrary to his natural disposition, had lived
for some time inactive at Paris. He there became acquainted with the
famous Cardinal de Retz, and that penetrating judge celebrates him in
his memoirs as one of those heroes, of whom there are no longer any
remains in the world, and who are only to be met with in Plutarch.
Desirous of improving his martial genius, he took a journey to Germany,
was caressed by the emperor, received the rank of mareschal, and
proposed to levy a regiment for the imperial service. While employed for
that purpose in the Low Countries, he heard of the tragical death of the
king; and at the same time received from his young master a renewal of
his commission of captain-general in Scotland.[*] His ardent and daring
spirit needed but this authority to put him in action. He gathered
followers in Holland and the north of Germany whom his great reputation
allured to him. The king of Denmark and duke of Holstein sent him some
small supply of money; the queen of Sweden furnished him with arms; the
prince of Orange with ships; and Montrose, hastening his enterprise,
lest the king’s agreement with the Scots should make him revoke his
commission, set out for the Orkneys with about five hundred men, most of
them Germans.

     * Burnet. Clarendon.

These were all the preparations which he could make against a kingdom,
settled in domestic peace, supported by a disciplined army, fully
apprised of his enterprise, and prepared against him. Some of his
retainers having told him of a prophecy, that “to him and him alone it
was reserved to restore the king’s authority in all his dominions,”
 he lent a willing ear to suggestions which, however ill grounded or
improbable, were so conformable to his own daring character.

He armed several of the inhabitants of the Orkneys, though an unwarlike
people, and carried them over with him to Caithness; hoping that the
general affection to the king’s service, and the fame of his former
exploits, would make the Highlanders flock to his standard. But all men
were now harassed and fatigued with wars and disorders: many of
those who formerly adhered to him, had been severely punished by the
Covenanters: and no prospect of success was entertained in opposition
to so great a force as was drawn together against him. But however weak
Montrose’s army, the memory of past events struck a great terror into
the committee of estates. They immediately ordered Lesley and Holborne
to march against him with an army of four thousand men. Strahan was
sent before with a body of cavalry to check his progress. He fell
unexpectedly on Montrose, who had no horse to bring him intelligence.
The royalists were put to flight; all of them either killed or taken
prisoners; and Montrose himself, having put on the disguise of a
peasant, was perfidiously delivered into the hands of his enemies by a
friend to whom he had intrusted his person.

All the insolence which success can produce in ungenerous minds, was
exercised by the Covenanters against Montrose, whom they so much hated
and so much dreaded. Theological antipathy further increased their
indignities towards a person, whom they regarded as impious on account
of the excommunication which had been pronounced against him. Lesley
led him about for several days in the same low habit under which he had
disguised himself. The vulgar, wherever he passed, were instigated to
reproach and vilify him. When he came to Edinburgh, every circumstance
of elaborate rage and insult was put in practice by order of the
parliament. At the gate of the city he was met by the magistrates, and
put into a new cart, purposely made with a high chair or bench, where he
wus placed, that the people might have a full view of him. He was bound
with a cord, drawn over his breast and shoulders, and fastened through
holes made in the cart. The hangman then took off the hat of the noble
prisoner, and rode himself before the cart in his livery, and with
his bonnet on; the other officers, who were taken prisoners with the
marquis, walking two and two before them.

The populace, more generous and humane, when they saw so mighty a change
of fortune in this great man, so lately their dread and terror, into
whose hands the magistrates, a few years before, had delivered on their
knees the keys of the city, were struck with compassion, and viewed him
with silent tears and admiration. The preachers next Sunday exclaimed
against this movement of rebel nature, as they termed it; and reproached
the people with their profane tenderness towards the capital enemy of
piety and religion.

When he was carried before the parliament, which was then sitting,
Loudon, the chancellor, in a violent declamation, reproached him with
the breach of the national covenant, which he had subscribed; his
rebellion against God, the king, and the kingdom; and the many horrible
murders, treasons, and impieties for which he was now to be brought
to condign punishment. Montrose, in his answer, maintained the same
superiority above his enemies, to which, by his fame and great actions,
as well as by the consciousness of a good cause, he was justly entitled.
He told the parliament, that since the king, as he was informed, had so
far avowed their authority as to enter into a treaty with them, he now
appeared uncovered before their tribunal: a respect which, while they
stood in open defiance to their sovereign, they would in vain have
required of him: that he acknowledged, with infinite shame and remorse,
the errors of his early conduct, when their plausible pretences had
seduced him to tread with them the paths of rebellion, and bear arms
against his prince and country: that his following services, he hoped,
had sufficiently testified his repentance; and his death would now
atone for that guilt, the only one with which he could justly reproach
himself. That in all his warlike enterprises he was warranted by that
commission which he had received from his and their master, against
whose lawful authority they had erected their standard: that to venture
his life for his sovereign was the least part of his merit: he had even
thrown down his arms in obedience to the sacred commands of the king;
and had resigned to them the victory, which, in defiance of all their
efforts, he was still enabled to dispute with them: that no blood had
ever been shed by him but in the field of battle; and many persons were
now in his eye, many now dared to pronounce sentence of death upon him,
whose life, forfeited by the laws of war, he had formerly saved from the
fury of the soldiers: that he was sorry to find no better testimony of
their return to allegiance than the murder of so faithful a subject, in
whose death the king’s commission must be at once so highly injured and
affronted: that as to himself, they had in vain endeavored to vilify and
degrade him by all their studied indignities: the justice of his cause,
he knew, would ennoble any fortune; nor had he other affliction than
to see the authority of his prince, with which he was invested, treated
with so much ignominy: and that he now joyfully followed, by a like
unjust sentence, his late sovereign; and should be happy, if in his
future destiny he could follow him to the same blissful mansions, where
his piety and humane virtues had already, without doubt, secured him an
eternal recompense.

Montrose’s sentence was next pronounced against him: “That he James
Graham,” (for this was the only name they vouchsafed to give him,)
“should next day be carried to Edinburgh Cross, and there be hanged on
a gibbet, thirty feet high, for the space of three hours: then be taken
down, his head, he cut off upon a scaffold, and affixed to the prison:
his legs and arms be stuck up on the four chief towns of the kingdom:
his body be buried in the place appropriated for common malefactors;
except the church, upon his repentance, should take off his
excommunication.”

The clergy, hoping that the terrors of immediate death had now given
them an advantage over their enemy, flocked about him, and insulted over
his fallen fortunes. They pronounced his damnation, and assured him that
the judgment which he was so soon to suffer, would prove but an easy
prologue to that which he must undergo hereafter. They next offered
to pray with him; but he was too well acquainted with those forms of
imprecation which they called prayers. “Lord, vouchsafe yet to touch
the obdurate heart of this proud, incorrigible sinner; this wicked,
perjured, traitorous, and profane person, who refuses to hearken to the
voice of thy church.” Such were the petitions which he expected they
would, according to custom, offer up for him. He told them, that they
were a miserably deluded and deluding people; and would shortly bring
their country under the most insupportable servitude to which any nation
had ever been reduced. “For my part,” added he, “I am much prouder to
have my head affixed to the place where it is sentenced to stand, than
to have my picture hang in the king’s bed-chamber. So far from being
sorry that my quarters are to be sent to four cities of the kingdom,
I wish I had limbs enow to be dispersed into all the cities of
Christendom, there to remain as testimonies in favor of the cause for
which I suffer.” This sentiment, that very evening, while in prison,
he threw into verse. The poem remains; a single monument of his heroic
spirit, and no despicable proof of his poetical genius.

Now was led forth, amidst the insults of his enemies, and the tears of
the people, this man of illustrious birth, and of the greatest renown in
the nation, to suffer, for his adhering to the laws of his country,
and the rights of his sovereign, the ignominious death destined to the
meanest malefactor. Every attempt which the insolence of the governing
party had made to subdue his spirit, had hitherto proved fruitless; they
made yet one effort more, in this last and melancholy scene, when all
enmity, arising from motives merely human, is commonly softened and
disarmed. The executioner brought that book which had been published in
elegant Latin, of his great military actions, and tied it with a cord
about his neck. Montrose smiled at this new instance of their malice. He
thanked them, however, for their officious zeal; and said, that he bore
this testimony of his bravery and loyalty with more pride than he had
ever worn the garter. Having asked whether they had any more indignities
to put upon him, and renewing some devout ejaculations, he patiently
endured the last act of the executioner.

Thus perished, in the thirty-eighth year of his age, the gallant marquis
of Montrose; the man whose military genius both by valor and conduct had
shone forth beyond any which, during these civil disorders, had
appeared in the three kingdoms. The finer arts, too, he had in his youth
successfully cultivated; and whatever was sublime, elegant, or noble
touched his great soul. Nor was he insensible to the pleasures either
of society or of love. Something, however, of the vast and unbounded
characterized his actions and deportment; and it was merely by an heroic
effort of duty, that he brought his mind, impatient of superiority, and
even of equality, to pay such unlimited submission to the will of his
sovereign.

The vengeance of the Covenanters was not satisfied with Montrose’s
execution. Urrey, whose inconstancy now led him to take part with the
king, suffered about the same time: Spotiswood of Daersie, a youth of
eighteen, Sir Francis Hay of Dalgetie, and Colonel Sibbald, all of
them of birth and character, underwent a like fate. These were taken
prisoners with Montrose. The marquis of Huntley, about a year before,
had also fallen a victim to the severity of the Covenanters.

The past scene displays in a full light the barbarity of this
theological faction: the sequel will sufficiently display their
absurdity.

The king, in consequence of his agreement with the commissioners of
Scotland, set sail for that country; and being escorted by seven Dutch
ships of war, who were sent to guard the herring fishery, he arrived in
the Frith of Cromarty. Before he was permitted to land, he was required
to sign the covenant; and many sermons and lectures were made him,
exhorting him to persevere in that holy confederacy.[*] Hamilton,
Lauderdale, Dumfermling, and other noblemen of that party whom they
called engagers, were immediately separated from him, and obliged to
retire to their houses, where they lived in a private manner, without
trust or authority. None of his English friends, who had served his
father, were allowed to remain in the kingdom. The king himself found
that he was considered as a mere pageant of state, and that the few
remains of royalty which he possessed, served only to draw on him the
greater indignities. One of the quarters of Montrose, his faithful
servant, who had borne his commission, had been sent to Aberdeen,
and was still allowed to hang over the gates when he passed by that
place.[**]

     * Sir Edward Walker’s Historical Discourses, p. 159.

     ** Sir Edward Walker’s Historical Discourses, p, 160.

The general assembly, and afterwards the committee of estates and the
army, who were entirely governed by the assembly, set forth a public
declaration, in which they protested, “that they did not espouse any
malignant quarrel or party, but fought merely on their former grounds or
principles; that they disclaimed all the sins and guilt of the king,
and of his house; nor would they own him or his interest, otherwise than
with a subordination to God, and so far as he owned and prosecuted the
cause of God, and acknowledged the sins of his house, and of his former
ways.”[*]

The king, lying entirely at mercy, and having no assurance of life
or liberty further than was agreeable to the fancy of these austere
zealots, was constrained to embrace a measure which nothing but the
necessity of his affairs and his great youth and inexperience could
excuse. He issued a declaration, such as they required of him.[**] He
there gave thanks for the merciful dispensations of Providence, by which
he was recovered from the snare of evil counsel, had attained a full
persuasion of the righteousness of the covenant, and was induced to
cast himself and his interests wholly upon God. He desired to be deeply
humbled and afflicted in spirit, because of his father’s following
wicked measures, opposing the covenant and the work of reformation,
and shedding the blood of God’s people throughout all his dominions.
He lamented the idolatry of his mother, and the toleration of it in
his father’s house; a matter of great offence, he said, to all the
Protestant churches, and a great provocation to him who is a jealous
God, visiting the sins of the father upon the children, He professed,
that he would have no enemies but the enemies of the covenant; and
that he detested all Popery, superstition, prelacy, heresy, schism, and
profaneness; and was resolved not to tolerate, much less to countenance,
any of them in any of his dominions. He declared that he should never
love or favor those who had so little conscience as to follow his
interests, in preference to the gospel and the kingdom of Jesus Christ.
And he expressed his hope, that whatever ill success his former guilt
might have drawn upon his cause, yet now, having obtained mercy to be on
God’s side, and to acknowledge his own cause subordinate to that of God,
divine providence would crown his arms with victory.

     * Sir Edward Walker’s Historical Discourses, p. 166, 167.

     ** Sir Edward Walker’s Historical Discourses, p. 170.

Still the Covenanters and the clergy were diffident of the king’s
sincerity. The facility which he discovered in yielding whatever was
required of him, made them suspect, that he regarded all his concessions
merely as ridiculous farces, to which he must of necessity submit. They
had another trial prepared for him. Instead of the solemnity of his
coronation, which was delayed, they were resolved, that he should pass
through a public humiliation, and do penance before the whole
people. They sent him twelve articles of repentance, which he was
to acknowledge; and the king had agreed that he would submit to this
indignity. The various transgressions of his father and grandfather,
together with the idolatry of his mother, are again enumerated and
aggravated in these articles; and further declarations were insisted on,
that he sought the restoration of his rights, for the sole advancement
of religion, and in subordination to the kingdom of Christ.[*] In short,
having exalted the altar above the throne, and brought royalty under
their feet, the clergy were resolved to trample on it and vilify it, by
every instance of contumely which their present influence enabled them
to impose upon their unhappy prince.

Charles, in the mean time, found his authority entirely annihilated, as
well as his character degraded. He was consulted in no public measure.
He was not called to assist at any councils. His favor was sufficient to
discredit any pretender to office or advancement. All efforts which he
made to unite the opposite parties, increased the suspicion which the
Covenanters had entertained of him, as if he were not entirely their
own, Argyle, who, by subtleties and compliances, partly led and partly
was governed by this wild faction, still turned a deaf ear to all
advances which the king made to enter into confidence with him.
Malignants and engagers continued to be the objects of general hatred
and persecution; and whoever was obnoxious to the clergy, failed not to
have one or other of these epithets affixed to him. The fanaticism
which prevailed, being so full of sour and angry principles, and so
overcharged with various antipathies, had acquired a new object of
abhorrence: these were the sorcerers. So prevalent was the opinion of
witchcraft, that great numbers, accused of that crime, were burnt by
sentence of the magistrates throughout all parts of Scotland. In a
village near Berwick, which contained only fourteen houses, fourteen
persons were punished by fire;[**] and it became a science, every where
much studied and cultivated, to distinguish a true witch by proper
trials and symptoms.[***]

     * Sir Edward Walker’s Historical Discourses, p. 178.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 404, 408.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 396, 418.

The advance of the English army under Cromwell was not able to appease
or soften the animosities among the parties in Scotland. The clergy were
still resolute to exclude all but their most zealous adherents. As soon
as the English parliament found that the treaty between the king and
the Scots would probably terminate in an accommodation, they made
preparations for a war, which, they saw, would in the end prove
inevitable. Cromwell, having broken the force and courage of the Irish,
was sent for; and he left the command of Ireland to Ireton, who governed
that kingdom in the character of deputy, and with vigilance and industry
persevered in the work of subduing and expelling the natives.

It was expected that Fairfax, who still retained the name of general,
would continue to act against Scotland, and appear at the head of the
forces; a station for which he was well qualified, and where alone he
made any figure. But Fairfax, though he had allowed the army to make use
of his name in murdering their sovereign, and offering violence to the
parliament, had entertained unsurmountable scruples against invading
the Scots, whom he considered as zealous Presbyterians, and united to
England by the sacred bands of the covenant. He was further disgusted
at the extremities into which he had already been hurried; and was
confirmed in his repugnance by the exhortations of his wife, who
had great influence over him, and was herself much governed by the
Presbyterian clergy. A committee of parliament was sent to reason with
him; and Cromwell was of the number. In vain did they urge, that the
Scots had first broken the covenant by their invasion of England under
Hamilton; and that they would surely renew their hostile attempts, if
not prevented by the vigorous measures of the commonwealth. Cromwell,
who knew the rigid inflexibility of Fairfax, in every thing which he
regarded as matter of principle, ventured to solicit him with the utmost
earnestness; and he went so far as to shed tears of grief and vexation
on the occasion. No one could suspect any ambition in the man who
labored so zealously to retain his general in that high office, which,
he knew, he himself was alone entitled to fill. The same warmth of
temper which made Cromwell a frantic enthusiast, rendered him the most
dangerous of hypocrites; and it was to this turn of mind, as much as to
his courage and capacity, that he owed all his wonderful successes. By
the contagious ferment of his zeal, he engaged every one to coöperate
with him in his measures; and entering easily and affectionately into
every part which he was disposed to act, he was enabled, even after
multiplied deceits, to cover, under a tempest of passion, all his
crooked schemes and profound artifices.

Fairfax having resigned his commission, it was bestowed on Cromwell, who
was declared captain-general of all the forces in England. This command,
in a commonwealth which stood entirely by arms, was of the utmost
importance; and was the chief step which this ambitious politician had
yet made towards sovereign power. He immediately marched his forces, and
entered Scotland with an army of sixteen thousand men.

The command of the Scottish army was given to Lesley, an experienced
officer, who formed a very proper plan of defence. He intrenched himself
in a fortified camp between Edinburgh and Leith, and took care to remove
from the counties of Merse and the Lothians every thing which could
serve to the subsistence of the English army. Cromwell advanced to the
Scotch camp, and endeavored by every expedient to bring Lesley to a
battle: the prudent Scotchman knew that, though superior in numbers, his
army was much inferior in discipline to the English; and he carefully
kept himself within his intrenchments. By skirmishes and small
rencounters he tried to confirm the spirits of his soldiers; and he
was successful in these enterprises. His army daily increased both
in numbers and courage. The king came to the camp; and having exerted
himself in an action, gained on the affections of the soldiery, who were
more desirous of serving under a young prince of spirit and vivacity,
than under a committee of talking gown-men. The clergy were alarmed.
They ordered Charles immediately to leave the camp. They also purged it
carefully of about four thousand malignants and engagers whose zeal had
led them to attend the king, and who were the soldiers of chief credit
and experience in the nation.[*] They then concluded that they had an
army composed entirely of saints, and could not be beaten. They murmured
extremely, not only against their prudent general, but also against the
Lord, on account of his delays in giving them deliverance;[**] and
they plainly told him, that if he would not save them from the English
sectaries, he should no longer be their God.[***]

     * Sir Edw. Walker, p. 165.

     ** Sir Edw. Walker p. 168.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 449.

An advantage having offered itself on a Sunday, they hindered the
general from making use of it, lest he should involve the nation in the
guilt of Sabbath-breaking.

Cromwell found himself in a very bad situation. He had no provisions but
what he received by sea. He had not had the precaution to bring these
in sufficient quantities; and his army was reduced to difficulties. He
retired to Dunbar. Lesley followed him, and encamped on the heights of
Lammermure, which overlook that town. There lay many difficult passes
between Dunbar and Berwick, and of these Lesley had taken possession.
The English general was reduced to extremities. He had even embraced a
resolution of sending by sea all his foot and artillery to England, and
of breaking through, at all hazards, with his cavalry. The madness of
the Scottish ecclesiastics saved him from this loss and dishonor.

Night and day the ministers had been wrestling with the Lord in prayer,
as they termed it; and they fancied that they had at last obtained the
victory. Revelations, they said, were made them, that the sectarian and
heretical army, together with Agag, meaning Cromwell, was delivered into
their hands. Upon the faith of these visions, they forced their general,
in spite of his remonstrances, to descend into the plain with a view
of attacking the English in their retreat. Cromwell, looking through a
glass, saw the enemy’s camp in motion; and foretold, without the help
of revelations, that the Lord had delivered them into his hands. He gave
orders immediately for an attack. In this battle it was easily observed,
that nothing in military actions can supply the place of discipline and
experience; and that, in the presence of real danger, where men are not
accustomed to it, the fumes of enthusiasm presently dissipate, and lose
their influence. The Scots, though double in number to the English, were
soon put to flight, and pursued with great slaughter. The chief, if not
only resistance, was made by one regiment of Highlanders, that part of
the army which was the least infected with fanaticism. No victory could
be more complete than this which was obtained by Cromwell. About three
thousand of the enemy were slain, and nine thousand taken prisoners.
Cromwell pursued his advantage, and took possession of Edinburgh and
Leith. The remnant of the Scottish army fled to Stirling. The approach
of the winter season, and an ague which seized Cromwell, kept him from
pushing the victory any further.

The clergy made great lamentations, and told the Lord that to them it
was little to sacrifice their lives and estates, but to him it was a
great loss to suffer his elect to be destroyed.[*] They published
a declaration containing the cause of their late misfortunes. These
visitations they ascribed to the manifold provocations of the king’s
house, of which, they feared, he had not yet thoroughly repented; the
secret intrusion of malignants into the king’s family, and even into the
camp; the leaving of a most malignant and profane guard of horse, who,
being sent for to be purged, came two days before the defeat, and were
allowed to fight with the army; the owning of the king’s quarrel by
many without subordination to religion and liberty; and the carnal
self-seeking of some, together with the neglect of family prayers by
others.

Cromwell, having been so successful in the war of the sword, took up
the pen against the Scottish ecclesiastics. He wrote them some polemical
letters, in which he maintained the chief points of the Independent
theology. He took care likewise, to retort on them their favorite
argument of providence; and asked them, whether the Lord had not
declared against them. But the ministers thought that the same events
which to their enemies were judgments, to them were trials, and they
replied, that the Lord had only hid his face for a time from Jacob.
But Cromwell insisted that the appeal had been made to God in the
most express and solemn manner; and that, in the fields of Dunbar, an
irrevocable decision had been awarded in favor of the English army.[**]

     * Sir Edward Walker.

     * This is the best of Cromwell’s wretched compositions that
     remains, and we shall here extract a passage out of it. “You
     say you have not so learned Christ as to hang the equity of
     your cause upon events. We could wish that blindness had not
     been upon your eyes to all those marvellous dispensations
     which God hath wrought lately in England. But did not you
     solemnly appeal and pray? Did not we do so too? And ought
     not we and you to think, with fear and trembling, of the
     hand of the great God, in this mighty and strange appearance
     of his, but can slightly call it an event? Were not both
     your and our expectations renewed from time to time, while
     we waited on God, to see which way he would manifest himself
     upon our appeals? And shall we, after all these our prayers,
     fastings, tears, expectations, and solemn appeals, call
     these mere events? The Lord pity you. Surely we fear,
     because it has been a merciful and a gracious deliverance to
     us.

     “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, search after the
     mind of the Lord in it towards you, and we shall help you by
     our prayers, that you may find it. For yet, if we know our
     heart at all, our bowels do in Christ yearn after the godly
     in Scotland.” Thurloe, vol. i. p. 158.

{1651.} The defeat of the Scots was regarded by the king as a fortunate
event. The armies which fought on both sides, were almost equally his
enemies; and the vanquished were now obliged to give him some more
authority, and apply to him for support. The parliament was summoned to
meet at St. Johnstone’s. Hamilton, Lauderdale, and all the engagers were
admitted into court and camp, on condition of doing public penance, and
expressing repentance for their late transgressions. Some malignants
also crept in under various pretences. The intended humiliation or
penance of the king was changed into the ceremony of his coronation,
which was performed at Scone with great pomp and solemnity. But amidst
all this appearance of respect, Charles remained in the hands of the
most rigid Covenanters; and though treated with civility and courtesy
by Argyle, a man of parts and address, he was little better than a
prisoner, and was still exposed to all the rudeness and pedantry of the
ecclesiastics.

This young prince was in a situation which very ill suited his temper
and disposition. All those good qualities which he possessed, his
affability, his wit, his gayety, his gentleman-like, disengaged
behavior, were here so many vices; and his love of ease, liberty, and
pleasure, was regarded as the highest enormity. Though artful in the
practice of courtly dissimulation, the sanctified style was utterly
unknown to him; and he never could mould his deportment into that
starched grimace which the Covenanters required as an infallible mark of
conversion. The duke of Buckingham was the only English courtier allowed
to attend him; and by his ingenious talent for ridicule, he had rendered
himself extremely agreeable to his master. While so many objects of
derision surrounded them, it was difficult to be altogether insensible
to the temptation, and wholly to suppress the laugh. Obliged to attend
from morning to night at prayers and sermons, they betrayed evident
symptoms of weariness or contempt. The clergy never could esteem
the king sufficiently regenerated; and by continual exhortations,
remonstrances, and reprimands, they still endeavored to bring him to a
juster sense of his spiritual duty.

The king’s passion for the fair could not altogether be restrained. He
had once been observed using some familiarities with a young woman; and
a committee of ministers was appointed to reprove him for a behavior
so unbecoming a covenanted monarch. The spokesman of the committee,
one Douglas began with a severe aspect, informed the king, that great
scandal had been given to the godly, enlarged on the heinous nature of
sin, and concluded with exhorting his majesty, whenever he was disposed
to amuse himself, to be more careful for the future in shutting the
windows. This delicacy, so unusual to the place and to the character of
the man, was remarked by the king; and he never forgot the obligation.

The king, shocked at all the indignities, and perhaps still more tired
with all the formalities to which he was obliged to submit, made an
attempt to regain his liberty. General Middleton, at the head of some
royalists, being proscribed by the Covenanters, kept in the mountains,
expecting some opportunity of serving his master. The king resolved
to join this body. He secretly made his escape from Argyle, and fled
towards the Highlands. Colonel Montgomery, with a troop of horse, was
sent in pursuit of him. He overtook the king, and persuaded him to
return. The royalists being too weak to support him, Charles was the
more easily induced to comply. This incident procured him afterwards
better treatment and more authority; the Covenanters being afraid of
driving him, by their rigors, to some desperate resolution.
Argyle renewed his courtship to the king; and the king, with equal
dissimulation, pretended to repose great confidence in Argyle. He even
went so far as to drop hints of his intention to marry that nobleman’s
daughter; but he had to do with a man too wise to be seduced by such
gross artifices.

As soon as the season would permit, the Scottish army was assembled
under Hamilton and Lesley; and the king was allowed to join the camp.
The forces of the western counties, notwithstanding the imminent danger
which threatened their country, were resolute not to unite their cause
with that of an army which admitted any engagers or malignants among
them; and they kept in a body apart under Ker. They called themselves
the protesters; and their frantic clergy declaimed equally against
the king and against Cromwell. The other party were denominated
resolutioners; and these distinctions continued long after to divide and
agitate the kingdom.

Charles encamped at the Torwood; and his generals resolved to conduct
themselves by the same cautious maxims, which so long as they were
embraced, had been successful during the former campaign. The town
of Stirling lay at his back, and the whole north supplied him with
provisions. Strong intrenchments defended his front; and it was in vain
that Cromwell made every attempt to bring him to an engagement. After
losing much time, the English general sent Lambert over the Frith into
Fife, with an intention of cutting off the provisions of the enemy.
Lambert fell upon Holborne and Brown, who commanded a party of the
Scots, and put them to rout with great slaughter. Cromwell also passed
over with his whole army; and lying at the back of the king, made it
impossible for him to keep his post any longer.

Charles, reduced to despair, embraced a resolution worthy of a
young prince contending for empire. Having the way open, he resolved
immediately to march into England, where he expected that all
his friends, and all those who were discontented with the present
government, would flock to his standard. He persuaded the generals to
enter into the same views; and with one consent the army, to the number
of fourteen thousand men, rose from their camp, and advanced by great
journeys towards the south.

Cromwell was surprised at this movement of the royal army. Wholly intent
on offending his enemy, he had exposed his friends to imminent danger,
and saw the king with numerous forces marching into England; where
his presence, from the general hatred which prevailed against the
parliament, was capable of producing some great revolution. But if this
conduct was an oversight in Cromwell, he quickly repaired it by his
vigilance and activity. He despatched letters to the parliament,
exhorting them not to be dismayed at the approach of the Scots: he sent
orders every where for assembling forces to oppose the king: he ordered
Lambert with a body of cavalry to hang upon the rear of the royal army,
and infest their march; and he himself, leaving Monk with seven thousand
men to complete the reduction of Scotland, followed the king with all
the expedition possible.

Charles found himself disappointed in his expectations of increasing
his army. The Scots, terrified at the prospect of so hazardous an
enterprise, fell off in great numbers. The English Presbyterians, having
no warning given them of the king’s approach, were not prepared to join
him. To the royalists, this measure was equally unexpected; and they
were further deterred from joining the Scottish army by the orders which
the committee of ministers had issued, not to admit any, even in this
desperate extremity, who would not subscribe the covenant. The earl of
Derby, leaving the Isle of Man, where he had hitherto maintained his
independence, was employed in levying forces in Cheshire and Lancashire;
but was soon suppressed by a party of the parliamentary army. And the
king, when he arrived at Worcester, found that his forces, extremely
harassed by a hasty and fatiguing march, were not more numerous than
when he rose from his camp in the Torwood.

Such is the influence of established government, that the commonwealth,
though founded in usurpation the most unjust and unpopular, had
authority sufficient to raise every where the militia of the counties;
and these, united with the regular forces, bent all their efforts
against the king. With an army of about thirty thousand men, Cromwell
fell upon Worcester; and attacking it on all sides, and meeting with
little resistance, except from Duke Hamilton and General Middleton,
broke in upon the disordered royalists. The streets of the city were
strowed with dead. Hamilton, a nobleman of bravery and honor, was
mortally wounded; Massey wounded and taken prisoner; the king himself,
having given many proofs of personal valor, was obliged to fly. The
whole Scottish army was either killed or taken prisoners. The country
people, inflamed with national antipathy, put to death the few that
escaped from the field of battle.

The king left Worcester at six o’clock in the afternoon, and without
halting, travelled about twenty-six miles, in company with fifty or
sixty of his friends. To provide for his safety, he thought it best
to separate himself from his companions; and he left them without
communicating his intentions to any of them. By the earl of Derby’s
directions, he went to Boscobel, a lone house in the borders of
Staffordshire, inhabited by one Penderell, a farmer. To this man Charles
intrusted himself. The man had dignity of sentiments much above his
condition, and though death was denounced against all who concealed the
king, and a great reward promised to any one who should betray him, he
professed and maintained unshaken fidelity. He took the assistance of
his four brothers, equally honorable with himself: and having clothed
the king in a garb like their own, they led him into the neighboring
wood, put a bill in his hand, and pretended to employ themselves in
cutting fagots. Some nights he lay upon straw in the house, and fed on
such homely fare as it afforded. For a better concealment, he mounted
upon an oak, where he sheltered himself among the leaves and branches
for twenty-four hours. He saw several soldiers pass by. All of them were
intent in search of the king; and some expressed in his hearing their
earnest wishes of seizing him. This tree was afterwards denominated
the royal oak, and for many years was regarded by the neighborhood with
great veneration.

Charles was in the middle of the kingdom, and could neither stay in
his retreat, nor stir a step from it, without the most imminent danger.
Fears, hopes, and party zeal interested multitudes to discover him; and
even the smallest indiscretion of his friends might prove fatal. Having
joined Lord Wilmot, who was skulking in the neighborhood, they agreed to
put themselves into the hands of Colonel Lane, a zealous royalist, who
lived at Bentley, not many miles distant. The king’s feet were so hurt
by walking about in heavy boots or countrymen’s shoes which did not fit
him, that he was obliged to mount on horseback; and he travelled in
this situation to Bentley, attended by the Penderells, who had been so
faithful to him. Lane formed a scheme for his journey to Bristol, where,
it was hoped, he would find a ship in which he might transport himself.
He had a near kinswoman, Mrs. Norton, who lived within three miles of
that city, and was with child, very near the time of her delivery. He
obtained a pass (for during those times of confusion this precaution was
requisite) for his sister, Jane Lane, and a servant, to travel towards
Bristol, under pretence of visiting and attending her relation. The king
rode before the lady, and personated the servant.

When they arrived at Norton’s, Mrs. Lane pretended that she had brought
along, as her servant, a poor lad, a neighboring farmer’s son, who was
ill of an ague; and she begged a private room for him, where he might be
quiet. Though Charles kept himself retired in this chamber, the butler,
one Pope, soon knew him: the king was alarmed, but made the butler
promise that he would keep the secret from every mortal, even from his
master; and he was faithful to his engagement.

No ship, it was found, would for a month set sail from Bristol, either
for France or Spain, and the king was obliged to go elsewhere for a
passage. He intrusted himself to Colone Windham of Dorsetshire, an
affectionate partisan of the royal family. The natural effect of the
long civil wars, and of the furious rage to which all men were wrought
up in their different factions, was, that every one’s inclinations and
affections were thoroughly known; and even the courage and fidelity
of most men, by the variety of incidents, had been put to trial. The
royalists, too, had, many of them, been obliged to make concealments in
their houses for themselves, their friends, or more valuable effects;
and the arts of eluding the enemy had been frequently practised.
All these circumstances proved favorable to the king in the present
exigency. As he often passed through the hands of Catholics, the priests
hole, as they called it, the place where they were obliged to conceal
their persecuted priests, was sometimes employed for sheltering their
distressed sovereign.

Windham, before he received the king, asked leave to intrust the
important secret to his mother, his wife, and four servants, on whose
fidelity he could rely. Of all these, no one proved wanting either in
honor or discretion. The venerable old matron, on the reception of her
royal guest, expressed the utmost joy, that having lost, without regret,
three sons and one grandchild in defence of his father, she was now
reserved, in her declining years, to be instrumental in the preservation
of himself. Windham told the king, that Sir Thomas, his father, in the
year 1636, a few days before his death, called to him his five sons. “My
children,” said he, “we have hitherto seen serene and quiet times under
our three last sovereigns: but I must now warn you to prepare for clouds
and storms. Factions arise on every side, and threaten the tranquillity
of your native country. But whatever happen, do you faithfully honor and
obey your prince, and adhere to the crown. I charge you never to forsake
the crown, though it should hang upon a bush.” “These last words,”
 added Windham, “made such impressions on all our breasts, that the
many afflictions of these sad times could never efface their indelible
characters.” From innumerable instances, it appears how deep rooted,
in the minds of the English gentry of that age, was the principle of
loyalty to their sovereign; that noble and generous principle, inferior
only in excellence to the more enlarged and more enlightened affection
towards a legal constitution. But during those times of military
usurpation, these passions were the same.

The king continued several days in Windham’s house; and all his friends
in Britain, and in every part of Europe, remained in the most anxious
suspense with regard to his fortunes: no one could conjecture whether
he were dead or alive; and the report of his death, being generally
believed, happily relaxed the vigilant search of his enemies. Trials
were made to procure a vessel for his escape; but he still met with
disappointments. Having left Windham’s house, he was obliged again to
return to it. He passed through many other adventures; assumed different
disguises; in every step was exposed to imminent perils and received
daily proofs of uncorrupted fidelity and attachment. The sagacity of a
smith, who remarked that his horse’s shoes had been made in the north,
not in the west, as he pretended, once detected him; and he narrowly
escaped. At Shoreham, in Sussex, a vessel was at last found, in which he
embarked. He had been known to so many, that if he had not set sail in
that critical moment, it had been impossible for him to escape. After
one and forty days’ concealment, he arrived safely at Fescamp, in
Normandy. No less than forty men and women had at different times been
privy to his concealment and escape.[*]

The battle of Worcester, afforded Cromwell what he called his “crowning
mercy.”[**] So elated was he, that he intended to have knighted in the
field two of his generals, Lambert and Fleetwood; but was dissuaded by
his friends from exerting this act of regal authority. His power and
ambition were too great to brook submission to the empty name of a
republic, which stood chiefly by his influence, and was supported by his
victories. How early he entertained thoughts of taking into his hand
the reins of government, is uncertain. We are only assured, that he
now discovered to his intimate friends these aspiring views; and
even expressed a desire of assuming the rank of king, which he had
contributed with such seeming zeal to abolish.[***]

The little popularity and credit acquired by the republicans, further
stimulated the ambition of this enterprising politician. These men
had not that large thought, nor those comprehensive views, which might
qualify them for acting the part of legislators: selfish aims and
bigotry chiefly engrossed their attention. They carried their rigid
austerity so far as to enact a law declaring fornication, after the
first act, to be felony, without benefit of clergy.[****] They made
small progress in that important work which they professed to have so
much at heart, the settling of a new model of representation, and a
bill was introduced into the house against painting, patches, and other
immodest dress of women; but it did not pass.[v]

     * Heath’s Chronicle, p. 301.

     ** Parl. Hist. vol. xx. p. 47.

     *** Whitlocke, p. 523.

     **** Scobel, p. 121.

     v    Parl. Hist. vol. xix. p. 263.

The nation began to apprehend that they intended to establish themselves
as a perpetual legislature, and to confine the whole power to sixty
or seventy persons, who called themselves the parliament of the
commonwealth of England. And while they pretended to bestow new
liberties upon the nation, they found themselves obliged to infringe
even the most valuable of those which, through time immemorial, had been
transmitted from their ancestors. Not daring to intrust the trials
of treason to juries, who, being chosen indifferently from among the
people, would have been little favorable to the commonwealth, and would
have formed their verdict upon the ancient laws, they eluded that noble
institution, by which the government of this island has ever been so
much distinguished. They had evidently seen in the trial of Lilburn what
they could expect from juries. This man, the most turbulent, but the
most upright and courageous of human kind, was tried for a transgression
of the new statute of treasons: but though he was plainly guilty, he was
acquitted, to the great joy of the people. Westminster Hall, nay, the
whole city, rang with shouts and acclamations. Never did any established
power receive so strong a declaration of its usurpation and invalidity;
and from no institution, besides the admirable one of juries, could be
expected this magnanimous effort.

That they might not for the future be exposed to affronts which so
much lessened their authority, the parliament erected a high court of
justice, which was to receive indictments from the council of state.
This court was composed of men devoted to the ruling party, without name
or character, determined to sacrifice every thing to their own safety
or ambition. Colonel Eusebius Andrews and Colonel Walter Slingsby were
tried by this court for conspiracies, and condemned to death. They were
royalists, and refused to plead before so illegal a jurisdiction. Love,
Gibbons, and other Presbyterians, having entered into a plot against the
republic, were also tried, condemned, and executed. The earl of Derby,
Sir Timothy Featherstone, Bemboe, being taken prisoners after the battle
of Worcester, were put to death by sentence of a court martial; a method
of proceeding declared illegal by that very petition of right, for which
a former parliament had so strenuously contended, and which, after great
efforts, they had extorted from the king.

Excepting their principles of toleration, the maxims by which the
republicans regulated ecclesiastical affairs no more prognosticated
any durable settlement, than those by which they conducted their
civil concerns. The Presbyterian model of congregations, classes, and
assemblies was not allowed to be finished: it seemed even the intention
of many leaders in the parliament to admit of no established church, and
to leave every one, without any guidance of the magistrate, to embrace
whatever sect and to support whatever clergy were most agreeable to him.

The parliament went so far as to make some approaches, in one province,
to their Independent model. Almost all the clergy of Wales being ejected
as malignants, itinerant preachers with small salaries were settled,
not above four or five in each county; and these, being furnished with
horses at the public expense, hurried from place to place, and carried,
as they expressed themselves, the glad tidings of the gospel.[*] They
were all of them men of the lowest birth and education, who had deserted
mechanical trades, in order to follow this new profession. And in this
particular, as well as in their wandering life, they pretended to be
more truly apostolical.

     * Dr. John Walker’s Attempt, p. 147, et seq.

The republicans, both by the turn of their disposition, and by the
nature of the instruments which they employed, were better qualified
for acts of force and vigor, than for the slow and deliberate work
of legislation. Notwithstanding the late wars and bloodshed, and
the present factions, the power of England had never, in any period,
appeared so formidable to the neighboring kingdoms as it did at this
time, in the hands of the commonwealth. A numerous army served equally
to retain every one in implicit subjection to established authority, and
to strike a terror into foreign nations. The power of peace and war was
lodged in the same hands with that of imposing taxes; and no difference
of views, among the several members of the legislature, could any longer
be apprehended. The present impositions, though much superior to what
had ever formerly been experienced, were in reality moderate, and what
a nation so opulent could easily bear. The military genius of the people
had, by the civil contests, been roused from its former lethargy; and
excellent officers were formed in every branch of service. The confusion
into which all things had been thrown, had given opportunity to men of
low stations to break through their obscurity, and to raise themselves
by their courage to commands which they were well qualified to exercise,
but to which their birth could never have entitled them. And while so
great a power was lodged in such active hands, no wonder the republic
was successful in all its enterprises.

Blake, a man of great courage and a generous disposition the same person
who had defended Lyme and Taunten with such unshaken obstinacy against
the late king, was made an admiral; and though he had hitherto been
accustomed only to land service, into which, too, he had not entered
till past fifty years of age, he soon raised the naval glory of the
nation to a greater height than it had ever attained in any former
period. A fleet was put under his command, and he received orders to
pursue Prince Rupert, to whom the king had intrusted that squadron
which had deserted to him. Rupert took shelter in Kinsale; and escaping
thence, fled towards the coast of Portugal. Blake pursued, and chased
him into the Tagus, where he intended to make an attack upon him. But
the king of Portugal, moved by the favor which throughout all Europe
attended the royal cause, refused Blake admittance, and aided Prince
Rupert in making his escape. To be revenged of this partiality, the
English admiral made prize of twenty Portuguese ships, richly laden; and
he threatened still further vengeance. The king of Portugal, dreading
so dangerous a foe to his newly-acquired dominion, and sensible of the
unequal contest in which he was engaged, made all possible submissions
to the haughty republic, and was at last admitted to negotiate the
renewal of his alliance with England. Prince Rupert, having lost a great
part of his squadron on the coast of Spain, made sail towards the
West Indies. His brother, Prince Maurice, was there shipwrecked in
a hurricane. Every where this squadron subsisted by privateering,
sometimes on English, sometimes on Spanish vessels. And Rupert at last
returned to France, where he disposed of the remnants of his fleet,
together with his prizes.

All the settlements in America, except New England, which had been
planted entirely by the Puritans, adhered to the royal party, even after
the settlement of the republic; and Sir George Ayscue was sent with
a squadron to reduce them. Bermudas, Antigua, and Virginia were soon
subdued. Barbadoes, commanded by Lord Willoughby of Parham, made some
resistance; but was at last obliged to submit.

With equal ease were Jersey, Guernsey, Scilly, and the Isle of Man
brought under subjection to the republic; and the sea, which had been
much infested by privateers from these islands, was rendered safe to the
English commerce. The countess of Derby defended the Isle of Man; and
with great reluctance yielded to the necessity of surrendering to the
enemy. This lady, a daughter of the illustrious house of Trimoille,
in France, had, during the civil war, displayed a manly courage by her
obstinate defence of Latham House against the parliamentary forces; and
she retained the glory of being the last person in the three kingdoms,
and in all their dependent dominions, who submitted to the victorious
commonwealth.[*] [24]

     * See note X, at the end of the volume.

Ireland and Scotland were now entirely subjected, and reduced to
tranquillity. Ireton, the new deputy of Ireland, at the head of a
numerous army, thirty thousand strong, prosecuted the work of subduing
the revolted Irish; and he defeated them in many rencounters, which,
though of themselves of no great moment, proved fatal to their declining
cause. He punished without mercy all the prisoners who had any hand in
the massacres. Sir Phelim O’Neale, among the rest, was some time after
brought to the gibbet, and suffered an ignominious death, which he had
so well merited by his inhuman cruelties. Limeric, a considerable town,
still remained in the hands of the Irish; and Ireton, after a vigorous
siege, made himself master of it. He was here infected with the plague,
and shortly after died; a memorable personage, much celebrated for his
vigilance, industry, capacity even for the strict execution of justice
in that unlimited command which he possessed in Ireland. He was observed
to be inflexible in all his purposes; and it was believed by many that
he was animated with a sincere and passionate love of liberty, and
never could have been induced by any motive to submit to the smallest
appearance of regal government. Cromwell appeared to be much affected
by his death; and the republicans, who reposed great confidence in him,
were inconsolable. To show their regard for his merit and services,
they bestowed an estate of two thousand pounds a year on his family, and
honored him with a magnificent funeral at the public charge. Though the
established government was but the mere shadow of a commonwealth, yet
was it beginning by proper arts, to encourage that public spirit, which
no other species of civil polity is ever able fully to inspire.

The command of the army in Ireland devolved on Lieutenant-General Ludlow.
The civil government of the island was intrusted to commissioners.
Ludlow continued to push the advantages against the Irish, and every
where obtained an easy victory. That unhappy people, disgusted with the
king on account of those violent declarations against them and their
religion which had been extorted by the Scots, applied to the king
of Spain, to the duke of Lorraine; and found assistance nowhere.
Clanricarde, unable to resist the prevailing power, made submissions to
the parliament, and retired into England, where he soon after died. He
was a steady Catholic, but a man much respected by all parties.

The successes which attended Monk in Scotland were no less decisive.
That able general laid siege to Stirling Castle, and though it was well
provided for defence, it was soon surrendered to him. He there became
master of all the records of the kingdom; and he sent them to England.
The earl of Leven, the earl of Crawford, Lord Ogilvy, and other
noblemen, having met near Perth, in order to concert measures for
raising a new army, were suddenly set upon by Colonel Alured, and most
of them taken prisoners. Sir Philip Musgrave, with some Scots, being
engaged at Dumfries in a like enterprise, met with a like fate. Dundee
was a town well fortified, supplied with a good garrison under Lumisden,
and full of all the rich furniture, the plate and money of the kingdom,
which had been sent thither as to a place of safety. Monk appeared
before it; and having made a breach, gave a general assault. He carried
the town; and following the example and instructions of Cromwell, put
all the inhabitants to the sword, in order to strike a general terror
into the kingdom. Warned by this example, Aberdeen, St. Andrew’s,
Inverness, and other towns and forts, yielded of their own accord to
the enemy. Argyle made his submissions to the English commonwealth;
and excepting a few royalists, who remained some time in the mountains,
under the earl of Glencairn, Lord Balcarras, and General Middleton,
that kingdom, which had hitherto, through all ages, by means of its
situation, poverty, and valor, maintained its independence, was reduced
to total subjection.

The English parliament sent Sir Harry Vane, St. John, and other
commissioners to settle Scotland. These men, who possessed little of the
true spirit of liberty, knew how to maintain the appearance of it; and
they required the voluntary consent of all the counties and towns of
this conquered kingdom, before they would unite them into the same
commonwealth with England. The clergy protested; because, they said,
this incorporating union would draw along with it a subordination of the
church to the state in the things of Christ.[*] English judges, joined
to some Scottish, were appointed to determine all causes; justice was
strictly administered; order and peace maintained; and the Scots, freed
from the tyranny of the ecclesiastics, were not much dissatisfied with
the present government.[**] [25] The prudent conduct of Monk, a man who
possessed a capacity for the arts both of peace and war, served much to
reconcile the minds of men, and to allay their prejudices.

{1652.} By the total reduction and pacification of the British
dominions, the parliament had leisure to look abroad, and to exert their
vigor in foreign enterprises. The Dutch were the first that felt the
weight of their arms.

During the life of Frederic Henry, prince of Orange, the Dutch republic
had maintained a neutrality in the civil wars of England, and had never
interposed, except by her good offices, between the contending parties.
When William, who had married an English princess, succeeded to his
father’s commands and authority,[***] the states, both before and
after the execution of the late king, were accused of taking steps more
favorable to the royal cause, and of betraying a great prejudice against
that of the parliament. It was long before the envoy of the English
commonwealth could obtain an audience of the states general. The
murderers of Dorislaus were not pursued with such vigor as the
parliament expected. And much regard had been paid to the king, and many
good offices performed to him, both by the public, and by men of all
ranks, in the United Provinces.

After the death of William, prince of Orange,[****] which was
attended with the depression of his party and the triumph of the Dutch
republicans, the parliament thought that the time was now favorable for
cementing a closer confederacy with the states.

     * Whitlocke, p. 496. Heathe’s Chronicle, p. 307.

     ** See note Y, at the end of the volume.

     *** 1647.

     **** October 17, 1650.

St. John, chief justice, who was sent over to the Hague, had entertained
the idea of forming a kind of coalition between the two republics, which
would have rendered their interests totally inseparable; but fearing
that so extraordinary a project would not be relished, he contented
himself with dropping some hints of it, and openly went no further than
to propose a strict defensive alliance between England and the United
Provinces, such as has now, for near seventy years taken place between
these friendly powers.[*] But the states, who were unwilling to form a
nearer confederacy with a government whose measures were so obnoxious,
and whose situation seemed so precarious, offered only to renew the
former alliances with England. And the haughty St. John, disgusted with
this disappointment, as well as incensed at many affronts which had been
offered him with impunity by the retainers of the Palatine and Orange
families, and indeed by the populace in general, returned into England,
and endeavored to foment a quarrel between the republics.

The movement of great states are often directed by as slender springs as
those of individuals. Though war with so considerable a naval power as
the Dutch, who were in peace with all their other neighbors, might seem
dangerous to the yet unsettled commonwealth, there were several motives
which at this time induced the English parliament to embrace hostile
measures. Many of the members thought, that a foreign war would serve
as a pretence for continuing the same parliament, and delaying the
new model of a representative, with which the nation had so long
been flattered. Others hoped, that the war would furnish a reason for
maintaining, some time longer, that numerous standing army, which was so
much complained of.[**]

     * Thurloe, vol. i. p. 182.

     ** We are told, in the Life of Sir Harry Vane, that that
     famous republican opposed the Dutch war, and that it was the
     military gentlemen chiefly who supported that measure.

On the other hand, some, who dreaded the increasing power of Cromwell,
expected that the great expense of naval armaments would prove a motive
for diminishing the military establishment. To divert the attention of
the public from domestic quarrels towards foreign transactions, seemed,
in the present disposition of men’s minds, to be good policy. The
superior power of the English commonwealth, together with its advantages
of situation, promised success; and the parliamentary leaders hoped
to gain many rich prizes from the Dutch, to distress and sink their
flourishing commerce, and by victories to throw a lustre on their own
establishment, which was so new and unpopular. All these views,
enforced by the violent spirit of St. John, who had great influence over
Crom-well, determined the parliament to change the purposed alliance
into a furious war against the United Provinces.

To cover these hostile intentions, the parliament, under pretence of
providing for the interests of commerce, embraced such measures as they
knew would give disgust to the states. They framed the famous act of
navigation; which prohibited all nations from importing into England in
their bottoms any commodity which was not the growth and manufacture
of their own country. By this law, though the terms in which it was
conceived were general, the Dutch were principally affected; because
their country produces few commodities, and they subsist chiefly by
being the general carriers and factors of Europe. Letters of reprisal
were granted to several merchants, who complained of injuries which,
they pretended, they had received from the states; and above eighty
Dutch ships fell into their hands, and were made prizes. The cruelties
committed on the English at Amboyna, which were certainly enormous, but
which seemed to be buried in oblivion by a thirty years’ silence, were
again made the ground of complaint. And the allowing the murderers of
Dorislaus to escape, and the conniving at the insults to which St. John
had been exposed, were represented as symptoms of an unfriendly, if not
a hostile disposition in the states.

The states, alarmed at all these steps, sent orders to their ambassadors
to endeavor the renewal of the treaty of alliance, which had been broken
off by the abrupt departure of St. John. Not to be unprepared, they
equipped a fleet of a hundred and fifty sail, and took care, by
their ministers at London, to inform the council of the state of that
armament. This intelligence, instead of striking terror into the
English republic, was considered as a menace, and further confirmed the
parliament in their hostile resolutions. The minds of men in both states
were every day more irritated against each other; and it was not long
before these humors broke forth into action.

Tromp, an admiral of great renown, received from the states the command
of a fleet of forty-two sail, in order to protect the Dutch navigation
against the privateers of the English. He was forced by stress of
weather, as he alleged, to take shelter in the road of Dover, where he
met with Blake, who commanded an English fleet much inferior in number.
Who was the aggressor in the action which ensued between these two
admirals, both of them men of such prompt and fiery dispositions, it
is not easy to determine; since each of them sent to his own state a
relation totally opposite in all its circumstances to that of the other,
and yet supported by the testimony of every captain in his fleet. Blake
pretended, that having given a signal to the Dutch admiral to strike,
Tromp, instead of complying, fired a broadside at him. Tromp asserted,
that he was preparing to strike, and that the English admiral,
nevertheless, began hostilities. It is certain that the admiralty of
Holland, who are distinct from the council of state, had given Tromp no
orders to strike, but had left him to his own discretion with regard
to that vain but much contested ceremonial. They seemed willing to
introduce the claim of an equality with the new commonwealth, and to
interpret the former respect paid the English flag as a deference due
only to the monarchy. This circumstance forms a strong presumption
against the narrative of the Dutch admiral. The whole Orange party, it
must be remarked, to which Tromp was suspected to adhere, was desirous
of a war with England.

Blake, though his squadron consisted only of fifteen vessels,
reënforced, after the battle began, by eight under Captain Bourne,
maintained the fight with bravery for five hours, and sunk one ship of
the enemy, and took another. Night parted the combatants, and the Dutch
fleet retired towards the coast of Holland. The populace of London were
enraged, and would have insulted the Dutch ambassadors, who lived at
Chelsea, had not the council of state sent guards to protect them.

When the states heard of this action, of which the consequences were
easily foreseen, they were in the utmost consternation. They immediately
despatched Paw, pensionary of Holland, as their ambassador extraordinary
to London, and ordered him to lay before the parliament the narrative
which Tromp had sent of the late rencounter. They entreated them, by
all the bands of their common religion and common liberties, not
to precipitate themselves into hostile measures, but to appoint
commissioners, who should examine every circumstance of the action, and
clear up the truth, which lay in obscurity. And they pretended, that
they had given no orders to their admiral to offer any violence to the
English, but would severely punish him, if they found, upon inquiry,
that he had been guilty of an action which they so much disapproved.
The imperious parliament would hearken to none of these reasons or
remonstrances. Elated by the numerous successes which they had obtained
over their domestic enemies, they thought that every thing must yield to
their fortunate arms; and they gladly seized the opportunity, which they
sought, of making war upon the states. They demanded that, without any
further delay or inquiry, reparation should be made for all the damages
which the English had sustained. And when this demand was not complied
with, they despatched orders for commencing war against the United
Provinces.

Blake sailed northwards with a numerous fleet, and fell upon the herring
busses, which were escorted by twelve men-of-war. All these he either
took or dispersed. Tromp followed him with a fleet of above a hundred
sail. When these two admirals were within sight of each other, and
preparing for battle, a furious storm attacked them. Blake took shelter
in the English harbors. The Dutch fleet was dispersed, and received
great damage.

Sir George Ayscue, though he commanded only forty ships, according to
the English accounts, engaged near Plymouth the famous De Ruiter, who
had under him fifty ships of war, with thirty merchantmen. The Dutch
ships were indeed of inferior force to the English. De Ruiter, the
only admiral in Europe who has attained a renown equal to that of
the greatest general, defended himself so well, that Ayscue gained
no advantage over him. Night parted them in the greatest heat of the
action. De Ruiter next day sailed off with his convoy. The English fleet
had been so shattered in the fight, that it was not able to pursue.

Near the coast of Kent, Blake, seconded by Bourne and Pen, met a Dutch
squadron, nearly equal in numbers, commanded by De Witte and De Ruiter.
A battle was fought, much to the disadvantage of the Dutch. Their
rear-admiral was boarded and taken. Two other vessels were sunk, and one
blown up. The Dutch next day made sail towards Holland.

The English were not so successful in the Mediterranean. Van Galen,
with much superior force, attacked Captain Badily, and defeated him. He
bought, however, his victory with the loss of his life.

Sea fights are seldom so decisive as to disable the vanquished from
making head in a little time against the victors. Tromp, seconded by De
Ruiter, met near the Goodwins, with Blake; whose fleet was inferior to
the Dutch, but who resolved not to decline the combat. A furious battle
commenced where the admirals on both sides, as well as the inferior
officers and seamen, exerted great bravery. In this action the Dutch had
the advantage. Blake himself was wounded. The Garland and Bonaventure
were taken. Two ships were burned, and one sunk; and night came
opportunely to save the English fleet. After this victory, Tromp, in a
bravado fixed a broom to his mainmast; as if he were resolved to sweep
the sea entirely of all English vessels.

{1653.} Great preparations were made in England, in order to wipe off
this disgrace. A gallant fleet of eighty sail was fitted out. Blake
commanded, and Dean under him, together with Monk, who had been sent for
from Scotland. When the English lay off Portland, they descried, near
break of day, a Dutch fleet of seventy-six vessels, sailing up the
Channel, along with a convoy of three hundred merchantmen, who had
received orders, to wait at the Isle of Rhé, till the fleet should
arrive to escort them. Tromp, and under him De Ruiter, commanded the
Dutch. This battle was the most furious that had yet been fought between
these warlike and rival nations. Three days was the combat continued
with the utmost rage and obstinacy; and Blake, who was victor, gained
not more honor than Tromp, who was vanquished. The Dutch admiral made
a skilful retreat, and saved all the merchant ships, except thirty. He
lost, however, eleven ships of war, had two thousand men slain, and near
fifteen hundred taken prisoners. The English, though many of their ships
were extremely shattered, had but one sunk. Their slain were not much
inferior in number to those of the enemy.

All these successes of the English were chiefly owing to the superior
size of their vessels; an advantage which all the skill and bravery
of the Dutch admirals could not compensate. By means of ship money, an
imposition which had been so much complained of, and in some respects
with reason, the late king had put the navy into a situation which it
had never attained in any former reign; and he ventured to build ships
of a size which was then unusual. But the misfortunes which the Dutch
met with in battle, were small in comparison of those which their trade
sustained from the English. Their whole commerce by the Channel was cut
off: even that to the Baltic was much infested by English privateers.
Their fisheries were totally suspended. A great number of their ships,
above sixteen hundred, had fallen into the hands of the enemy. And
all this distress they suffered, not for any national interests or
necessity, but from vain points of honor and personal resentments, of
which it was difficult to give a satisfactory account to the public.
They resolved therefore to gratify the pride of the parliament, and
to make some advances towards peace. They met not, however, with a
favorable reception; and it was not without pleasure that they learned
the dissolution of that haughty assembly by the violence of Cromwell; an
even from which they expected a more prosperous turn to their affairs.

The zealous republicans in the parliament had not been the chief or
first promoters of the war; but, when it was once entered upon, they
endeavored to draw from it every possible advantage. On all occasions,
they set up the fleet in opposition to the army, and celebrated the
glory and successes of their naval armaments. They insisted on the
intolerable expense to which the nation was subjected, and urged the
necessity of diminishing it by a reduction of the land forces. They had
ordered some regiments to serve on board the fleet in the quality
of marines. And Cromwell, by the whole train of their proceedings,
evidently saw that they had entertained a jealousy of his power and
ambition, and were resolved to bring him to a subordination under their
authority. Without scruple or delay, he resolved to prevent them.

On such firm foundations was built the credit of this extraordinary
man, that though a great master of fraud and dissimulation, he judged it
superfluous to employ any disguise in conducting this bold enterprise.
He summoned a general council of officers; and immediately found, that
they were disposed to receive whatever impressions he was pleased to
give them. Most of them were his creatures, had owed their advancement
to his favor, and relied entirely upon him for their future preferment.
The breach being already made between the military and civil powers,
when the late king was seized at Holdenby, the general officers regarded
the parliament as at once their creature and their rival; and thought,
that they themselves were entitled to share among them those offices
and riches, of which its members had so long kept possession. Harrison,
Rich, Overton, and a few others, who retained some principle, were
guided by notions so extravagant, that they were easily deluded into
measures the most violent and most criminal. And the whole army had
already been guilty of such illegal and atrocious actions, that they
could entertain no further scruple with regard to any enterprise which
might serve their selfish or fanatical purposes.

In the council of officers it was presently voted to frame a
remonstrance to the parliament. After complaining of the arrears due to
the army, they there desired the parliament to reflect how many years
they had sitten, and what professions they had formerly made of their
intentions to new model the representative, and establish successive
parliaments, who might bear the burden of national affairs, from which
they themselves would gladly, after so much danger and fatigue, be at
last relieved. They confessed that the parliament had achieved great
enterprises, and had surmounted mighty difficulties; yet was it an
injury, they said, to the rest of the nation to be excluded from bearing
any part in the service of their country. It was now full time for them
to give place to others; and they therefore desired them, after settling
a council, who might execute the laws during the interval, to summon a
new parliament, and establish that free and equal government which they
had so long promised to the people.

The parliament took this remonstrance in ill part, and made a sharp
reply to the council of officers. The officers insisted on their advice;
and by mutual altercation and opposition, the breach became still wider
between the army and the commonwealth. Cromwell, finding matters ripe
for his purpose, called a council of officers, in order to come to a
determination with regard to the public settlement. As he had here many
friends, so had he also some opponents. Harrison having assured the
council, that the general sought only to pave the way for the government
of Jesus and his saints, Major Streater briskly replied, that Jesus
ought then to come quickly: for if he delayed it till after Christmas,
he would come too late; he would find his place occupied. While the
officers were in debate, Colonel Ingoldsby informed Cromwell, that the
parliament was sitting, and had come to a resolution not to dissolve
themselves, but to fill up the house by new elections; and was at
that very time engaged in deliberations with regard to this expedient.
Cromwell in a rage immediately hastened to the house, and carried a body
of three hundred soldiers along with him. Some of them he placed at the
door, some in the lobby, some on the stairs. He first addressed himself
to his friend St. John, and told him that he had come with a purpose of
doing what grieved him to the very soul, and what he had earnestly
with tears besought the Lord not to impose upon him: but there was a
necessity, in order to the glory of God and good of the nation. He sat
down for some time, and heard the debate. He beckoned Harrison, and told
him that he now judged the parliament ripe for a dissolution. “Sir,”
 said Harrison “the work is very great and dangerous: I desire you
seriously to consider, before you engage in it.” “You say well,” replied
the general; and thereupon sat still about a quarter of an hour. When
the question was ready to be put, he said again to Harrison, “This
is the time: I must do it.” And suddenly starting up, he loaded the
parliament with the vilest reproaches, for their tyranny, ambition,
oppression, and robbery of the public. Then stamping with his foot,
which was a signal for the soldiers to enter, “For shame,” said he to
the parliament, “get you gone: give place to honester men; to those
who will more faithfully discharge their trust. You are no longer a
parliament. I tell you, you are no longer a parliament. The Lord has
done with you: he has chosen other instruments for carrying on his
work.” Sir Harry Vane exclaiming against this proceeding, he cried with
a loud voice, “O! Sir Harry Vane, Sir Harry Vane! The Lord deliver me
from Sir Harry Vane!” Taking hold of Martin by the cloak, “Thou art a
whoremaster,” said he; to another, “Thou art an adulterer;” to a third,
“Thou art a drunkard and a glutton;” “And thou an extortioner,” to a
fourth. He commanded a soldier to seize the mace. “What shall we do with
this bauble? Here, take it away. It is you,” said he, addressing himself
to the house, “that have forced me upon this. I have sought the Lord
night and day, that he would rather slay me than put me upon this work.”
 Having commanded the soldiers to clear the hall, he himself went out the
last, and ordering the doors to be locked, departed to his lodgings in
Whitehall.

In this furious manner, which so well denotes his genuine character, did
Cromwell, without the least opposition, or even murmur, annihilate that
famous assembly, which had filled all Europe with the renown of its
actions, and with astonishment at its crimes, and whose commencement was
not more ardently desired by the people than was its final dissolution.
All parties now reaped successively the melancholy pleasure of seeing
the injuries which they had suffered, revenged on their enemies, and
that too by the same arts which had been practised against them. The
king had, in some instances, stretched his prerogative beyond its just
bounds; and aided by the church, had well nigh put an end to all the
liberties and privileges of the nation. The Presbyterians checked the
progress of the court and clergy, and excited, by cant and hypocrisy,
the populace, first to tumults, then to war against the king, the
peers, and all the royalists. No sooner had they reached the pinnacle of
grandeur, than the Independents, under the appearance of still greater
sanctity, instigated the army against them, and reduced them to
subjection. The Independents, amidst their empty dreams of liberty,
or rather of dominion, were oppressed by the rebellion of their own
servants, and found themselves at once exposed to the insults of power
and hatred of the people. By recent, as well as all ancient example, it
was become evident, that illegal violence, with whatever preferences it
may be covered, and whatever object it may pursue, must inevitably end
at last in the arbitrary and despotic government of a single person.



CHAPTER LXI.

[Illustration: 1-726-cromwell.jpg CROMWELL]



THE COMMONWEALTH.


{1653.} OLIVER CROMWELL, in whose hands the dissolution of the parliament
had left the whole power, civil and military, of three kingdoms, was
born at Huntingdon, the last year of the former century, of a good
family; though he himself, being the son of a second brother, inherited
but a small estate from his father. In the course of his education, he
had been sent to the university; but his genius was found little fitted
for the calm and elegant occupations of learning; and he made small
proficiency in his studies. He even threw himself into a dissolute
and disorderly course of life; and he consumed, in gaming, drinking,
debauchery, and country riots, the more early years of his youth,
and dissipated part of his patrimony. All of a sudden, the spirit
of reformation seized him; he married, affected a grave and composed
behavior entered into all the zeal and rigor of the Puritanical party,
and offered to restore to every one whatever sums he had formerly gained
by gaming. The same vehemence of temper which had transported him into
the extremes of pleasure, now distinguished his religious habits. His
house was the resort of all the zealous clergy of the party; and his
hospitality, as well as his liberalities to the silenced and deprived
ministers, proved as chargeable as his former debaucheries. Though
he had acquired a tolerable fortune by a maternal uncle, he found his
affairs so injured by his expenses, that he was obliged to take a
farm at St. Ives, and apply himself for some years to agriculture as a
profession. But this expedient served rather to involve him in further
debts and difficulties. The long prayers which he said to his family in
the morning, and again in the afternoon, consumed his own time and
that of his ploughmen; and he reserved no leisure for the care of his
temporal affairs. His active mind, superior to the low occupations
to which he was condemned, preyed upon itself; and he indulged
his imagination in visions, illuminations, revelations; the great
nourishment of that hypochondriacal temper to which he was ever subject.
Urged by his wants and his piety, he had made a party with Hambden, his
near kinsman, who was pressed only by the latter motive, to transport
himself into New England, now become the retreat of the more zealous
among the Puritanical party; and it was an order of council which
obliged them to disembark and remain in England. The earl of Bedford,
who possessed a large estate in the fen country near the Isle of Ely,
having undertaken to drain these morasses, was obliged to apply to
the king; and by the powers of the prerogative, he got commissioners
appointed, who conducted that work, and divided the new-acquired land
among the several proprietors. He met with opposition from many, among
whom Cromwell distinguished himself; and this was the first public
opportunity which he had met with, of discovering the factious zeal and
obstinacy of his character.

From accident and intrigue he was chosen by the town of Cambridge
member of the long parliament. His domestic affairs were then in greater
disorder; and he seemed not to possess any talents which could qualify
him to rise in that public sphere into which he was now at last entered.
His person was ungraceful, his dress slovenly, his voice untonable, his
elocution homely, tedious, obscure, and embarrassed. The fervor of his
spirit frequently prompted him to rise in the house; but he was not
heard with attention: his name, for above two years, is not to be found
oftener than twice in any committee; and those committees into which
he was admitted, were chosen for affairs which would more interest the
zealots than the men of business. In comparison of the eloquent speakers
and fine gentlemen of the house, he was entirely overlooked; and his
friend Hambden alone was acquainted with the depth of his genius,
and foretold that, if a civil war should ensue, he would soon rise to
eminence and distinction.

Cromwell himself seems to have been conscious where his strength lay;
and partly from that motive, partly from the uncontrollable fury of
his zeal, he always joined that party which pushed every thing to
extremities against the king. He was active in promoting the famous
remonstrance, which was the signal for all the ensuing commotions; and
when, after a long debate, it was carried by a small majority, he told
Lord Falkland, that if the question had been lost, he was resolved next
day to have converted into ready money the remains of his fortune, and
immediately to have left the kingdom. Nor was this resolution, he said,
peculiar to himself: many others of his party he knew to be equally
determined.

He was no less than forty-three years of age when he first embraced the
military profession; and by force of genius, without any master, he soon
became an excellent officer; though perhaps he never reached the fame of
a consummate commander. He raised a troop of horse; fixed his quarters
in Cambridge; exerted great severity towards that university which
zealously adhered to the royal party; and showed himself a man who would
go all lengths in favor of that cause which he had espoused. He would
not allow his soldiers to perplex their heads with those subtleties of
fighting by the king’s authority against his person, and of obeying his
majesty’s commands signified by both houses of parliament: he plainly
told them, that if he met the king in battle, he would fire a pistol in
his face as readily as against any other man. His troop of horse he soon
augmented to a regiment; and he first instituted that discipline, and
inspired that spirit, which rendered the parliamentary armies in the
end victorious. “Your troops,” said he to Hambden, according to his own
account,[*] “are most of them old, decayed serving men and tapsters,
and such kind of fellows; the king’s forces are composed of gentlemen’s
younger sons and persons of good quality. And do you think that the
mean spirits of such base and low fellows as ours will ever be able to
encounter gentlemen, that have honor, and courage, and resolution in
them? You must get men of spirit; and take it not ill that I say, of a
spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go, or else I
am sure you will still be beaten, as you have hitherto been, in every
encounter.”

     * Conference held at Whitehall.

He did as he proposed. He enlisted the sons of freeholders and farmers.
He carefully invited into his regiment all the zealous fanatics
throughout England. When they were collected in a body, their
enthusiastic spirit still rose to a higher pitch. Their colonel, from
his own natural character, as well as from policy, was sufficiently
inclined to increase the flame. He preached, he prayed, he fought, he
punished, he rewarded. The wild enthusiasm, together with valor and
discipline, still propagated itself; and all men cast their eyes on so
pious and so successful a leader. From low commands, he rose with great
rapidity to be really the first, though in appearance only the second,
in the army. By fraud and violence, he soon rendered himself the first
in the state. In proportion to the increase of his authority, his
talents always seemed to expand themselves; and he displayed every day
new abilities, which had lain dormant till the very emergence by which
they were called forth into action. All Europe stood astonished to see a
nation, so turbulent and unruly, who, for some doubtful encroachments
on their privileges, had dethroned and murdered an excellent prince,
descended from a long line of monarchs, now at last subdued and reduced
to slavery by one who, a few years before, was no better than a private
gentleman, whose name was not known in the nation, and who was little
regarded even in that low sphere to which he had always been confined.

The indignation entertained by the people against an authority founded
on such manifest usurpation, was not so violent as might naturally be
expected. Congratulatory addresses, the first of the kind, were made
to Cromwell by the fleet, by the army, even by many of the chief
corporations and counties of England; but especially by the several
congregations of saints dispersed throughout the kingdom.[*]

     * See Milton’s State Papers.

The royalists, though they could not love the man who had imbrued his
hands in the blood of their sovereign, expected more lenity from him
than from the jealous and imperious republicans, who had hitherto
governed. The Presbyterians were pleased to see those men by whom
they had been outwitted and expelled, now in their turn expelled and
outwitted by their own servant; and they applauded him for this last act
of violence upon the parliament. These two parties composed the bulk
of the nation, and kept the people in some tolerable temper. All men,
likewise, harassed with wars and factions, were glad to see any prospect
of settlement. And they deemed it less ignominious to submit to a
person of such admirable talents and capacity, than to a few ignoble,
enthusiastic hypocrites, who, under the name of a republic, had reduced
them to a cruel subjection.

The republicans, being dethroned by Cromwell, were the party whose
resentment he had the greatest reason to apprehend. That party, besides
the Independents, contained two sets of men who are seemingly of the
most opposite principles, but who were then united by a similitude
of genius and of character. The first and most numerous were the
Millenarians, or Fifth Monarchy men, who insisted that, dominion being
founded in grace, all distinction in magistracy must be abolished,
except what arose from piety and holiness; who expected suddenly the
second coming of Christ upon earth; and who pretended, that the saints
in the mean while, that is, themselves, were alone entitled to govern.
The second were the Deists, who had no other object than political
liberty, who denied entirely the truth of revelation, and insinuated,
that all the various sects, so heated against each other, were alike
founded in folly and in error. Men of such daring geniuses were not
contented with the ancient and legal forms of civil government; but
challenged a degree of freedom beyond what they expected ever to enjoy
under any monarchy. Martin, Challoner, Harrington, Sidney, Wildman,
Nevil, were esteemed the heads of this small division.

The Deists were perfectly hated by Cromwell, because he had no hold
of enthusiasm by which he could govern or overreach them; he therefore
treated them with great rigor and disdain, and usually denominated them
the heathens. As the Millenarians had a great interest in the army, it
was much more important for him to gain their confidence; and their size
of understanding afforded him great facility in deceiving them. Of late
years, it had been so usual a topic of conversation to discourse of
parliaments, and councils, and senates, and the soldiers themselves had
been so much accustomed to enter into that spirit, that Cromwell thought
it requisite to establish something which might bear the face of a
commonwealth. He supposed that God, in his providence, had thrown the
whole right, as well as power, of government into his hands; and without
any more ceremony, by the advice of his council of officers, he sent
summons to a hundred and twenty-eight persons of different towns
and counties of England, to five of Scotland, to six of Ireland. He
pretended by his sole act and deed, to devolve upon these the whole
authority of the state. This legislative power they were to exercise
during fifteen months; and they were afterwards to choose the same
number of persons, who might succeed them in that high and important
office.

There were great numbers at that time who made it a principle always to
adhere to any power which was uppermost, and to support the established
government. This maxim is not peculiar to the people of that age;
but what may be esteemed peculiar to them is, that there prevailed
a hypocritical phrase for expressing so prudential a conduct: it was
called a waiting upon providence. When providence, therefore, was so
kind as to bestow on these men, now assembled together, the supreme
authority, they must have been very ungrateful, if, in their turn, they
had been wanting in complaisance towards it. They immediately voted
themselves a parliament; and having their own consent, as well as that
of Oliver Cromwell, for their legislative authority, they now proceeded
very gravely to the exercise of it.

In this notable assembly were some persons of the rank of gentlemen;
but the far greater part were low mechanics; Fifth Monarchy men,
Anabaptists, Antinomians, Independents; the very dregs of the fanatics.
They began with seeking God by prayer: this office was performed by
eight or ten gifted men of the assembly; and with so much success, that,
according to the confession of all, they had never before, in any of
their devotional exercises, enjoyed so much of the Holy Spirit as was
then communicated to them.[*] Their hearts were, no doubt, dilated
when they considered the high dignity to which they supposed themselves
exalted. They had been told by Cromwell, in his first discourse, that he
never looked to see such a day, when Christ should be so owned.[**]

     * Parl. Hist. vol. xx. p. 182.

     * These are his expressions: “Indeed, I have but one word
     more to say to you, though in that perhaps I shall show my
     weakness: it is by way of encouragement to you in this work;
     give me leave to begin thus: I confess I never looked to
     have seen such a day as this,--it may be nor you neither,--
     when Jesus Christ should be so owned as he is at this day
     and in this work. Jesus Christ is owned this day by your
     call, and you own him by your willingness to appear for him,
     and you manifest this (as far as poor creatures can do) to
     be a day of the power of Christ. I know you will remember
     that scripture, ‘he makes his people willing in the day of
     his power.’ God manifests it to be the day of the power of
     Christ, having through so much blood and so much trial as
     has been upon this nation, he makes this one of the greatest
     mercies, next to his own Son, to have his people called to
     the supreme authority. God hath owned his Son, and hath
     owned you, and hath made you to own him. I confess I never
     looked to have seen such a day: I did not.” I suppose at
     this passage he cried; for he was very much given to
     weeping, and could at any time shed abundance of tears. The
     rest of the speech may be seen among Milton’s State Papers,
     p. 106. It is very curious, and full of the same obscurity,
     confusion, embarrassment, and absurdity, which appear in
     almost all Oliver’s productions.

They thought it, therefore, their duty to proceed to a thorough
reformation, and to pave the way for the reign of the Redeemer, and
for that great work which, it was expected, the Lord was to bring
forth among them. All fanatics, being consecrated by their own fond
imaginations, naturally hear an antipathy to the ecclesiastics, who
claim a peculiar sanctity, derived merely from their office and priestly
character. This parliament took into consideration the abolition of the
clerical function, as savoring of Popery; and the taking away of tithes,
which they called a relic of Judaism. Learning also and the universities
were deemed heathenish and unnecessary: the common law was denominated
a badge of the conquest and of Norman slavery; and they threatened the
lawyers with a total abrogation of their profession. Some steps were
even taken towards an abolition of the chancery,[*] the highest court
of judicature in the kingdom; and the Mosaical law was intended to be
established as the sole system of English jurisprudence.[**]

Of all the extraordinary schemes adopted by these legislators, they
had not leisure to finish any, except that which established the legal
solemnization of marriage by the civil magistrate alone, without the
interposition of the clergy. They found themselves exposed to the
derision of the public. Among the fanatics of the house, there was an
active member much noted for his long prayers, sermons, and harangues.
He was a leather-seller in London, his name Praise-God Barebone.
This ridiculous name, which seems to have been chosen by some poet or
allegorist to suit so ridiculous a personage struck the fancy of the
people; and they commonly affixed to this assembly the appellation of
Barebone’s parliament.[***]

     * Whitlocke, p. 543, 548.

     * Conference held at Whitehall.

     * It was usual for the pretended saints at that time to
     change their names from Henry, Edward, Anthony, William,
     which they regarded as heathenish, into others more
     sanctified and godly: even the New Testament names, James,
     Andrew, John, Peter, were not held in such regard as those
     which were borrowed from the Old Testament, Hezekiah
     Habakkuk, Joshua, Zerobabel. Sometimes a whole godly
     sentence was adopted as a name. Here are the names of a jury
     said to be enclosed in the county of Sussex about that
     time:--

     Accepted, Trevor of Norsham. Redeemed, Compton of Battle.
     Faint not, Hewit of Heathfield. Make Peace, Heaton of Hare.
     God Reward, Smart of Fivehurst. Standfast on High, Stringer
     of Crowhurst. Earth, Adams of Warbleton. Called, Lower of
     the same. Kill Sin, Pimple of Witham. Return, Spelman of
     Watling. Be Faithful, Joiner of Britling. Fly Debate,
     Roberts of the same. Fight the good Fight of Faith, White of
     Emer. More Fruit, Fowler of East Hadley. Hope for, Bending
     of the same. Graceful, Harding of Lewes. Weep not, Billing
     of the same. Meek, Brewer of Okeham.

     See Brome’s Travels into England, p. 279. “Cromwell,” says
     Cleveland, “hath beat up his drums clean through the Old
     Testament. You may learn the genealogy of our Savior by the
     names of his regiment. The mustermaster has no other list
     than the first chapter of St. Matthew.” The brother of this
     Praise-God Barebone had for name, “If Christ had not died
     for you, you had been damned, Barebone.” But the people,
     tired of this long name, retained only the last word, and
     commonly gave him the appellation of Damn’d Barebone.

The Dutch ambassadors endeavored to enter into negotiation with this
parliament; but though Protestants, and even Presbyterians, they met
with a bad reception from those who pretended to a sanctity so much
superior. The Hollanders were regarded as worldly-minded men, intent
only on commerce and industry; whom it was fitting the saints should
first extirpate, ere they undertook that great work, to which they
believed themselves destined by Providence, of subduing Antichrist,
the man of sin, and extending to the uttermost bounds of the earth
the kingdom of the Redeemer.[*] The ambassadors, finding themselves
proscribed, not as enemies of England but of Christ, remained in
astonishment, and knew not which was most to be admired, the implacable
spirit or egregious folly of these pretended saints.

Cromwell began to be ashamed of his legislature. If he ever had any
design in summoning so preposterous an assembly beyond amusing the
populace and the army, he had intended to alarm the clergy and lawyers;
and he had so far succeeded as to make them desire any other government,
which might secure their professions, now brought in danger by these
desperate fanatics. Cromwell himself was dissatisfied, that the
parliament, though they had derived all their authority from him, began
to pretend power from the Lord,[**] and to insist already on their
divine commission. He had been careful to summon in his writs several
persons entirely devoted to him.

     * Thurloe, vol. i. p. 273, 591. Also Stubbe, p. 91, 92.

     ** Thurloe, vol. i. p 393

By concert, these met early; and it was mentioned by some among them,
that the sitting of this parliament any longer would be of no service
to the nation. They hastened, therefore, to Cromwell, along with Rouse,
their speaker; and, by a formal deed or assignment, restored into his
hands that supreme authority which they had so lately received from him.
General Harrison and about twenty more remained in the house; and that
they might prevent the reign of the saints from coming to an untimely
end, they placed one Moyer in the chair, and began to draw up protests.
They were soon interrupted by Colonel White, with a party of soldiers.
He asked them what they did there. “We are seeking the Lord,” said they.
“Then you may go elsewhere,” replied he; “for to my certain knowledge,
he has not been here these many years.”

The military being now, in appearance, as well as in reality the sole
power which prevailed in the nation, Cromwell though fit to indulge a
new fancy; for he seems not to have had any deliberate plan in all
these alterations. Lambert, his creature, who, under the appearance of
obsequiousness to him, indulged in unbounded ambition, proposed, in
a council of officers, to adopt another scheme of government, and
to temper the liberty of a commonwealth by the authority of a single
person, who should be known by the appellation of protector. Without
delay, he prepared what was called “the instrument of government,”
 containing the plan of this new legislature; and as it was supposed to
be agreeable to the general, it was immediately voted by the council
of officers. Cromwell was declared protector; and with great solemnity
installed in that high office.

So little were these men endowed with the spirit of legislation, that
they confessed, or rather boasted, that they had employed only four
days in drawing this instrument, by which the whole government of three
kingdoms was pretended to be regulated and adjusted to all succeeding
generations. There appears no difficulty in believing them, when it
is considered how crude and undigested a system of civil polity they
endeavored to establish. The chief articles of the instrument are these:
A council was appointed, which was not to exceed twenty-one, nor be less
than thirteen persons. These were to enjoy their office during life or
good behavior; and in case of a vacancy, the remaining members named
three, of whom the protector chose one. The protector was appointed
supreme magistrate of the commonwealth: in his name was all justice to
be administered; from him were all magistracy and honors derived; he had
the power of pardoning all crimes, excepting murder and treason; to him
the benefit of all forfeitures devolved. The right of peace, war, and
alliance, rested in him but in these particulars he was to act by the
advice and with the consent of his council. The power of the sword
was vested in the protector jointly with the parliament, while it was
sitting, or with the council of state in the intervals. He was obliged
to summon a parliament every three years, and allow them to sit five
months, without adjournment, prorogation, or dissolution. The bills
which they passed were to be presented to the protector for his assent;
but if within twenty days it were not obtained, they were to become laws
by the authority alone of parliament. A standing army for Great Britain
and Ireland was established, of twenty thousand foot and ten thousand
horse; and funds were assigned for their support. These were not to be
diminished without *consent of the protector; and in this article alone
he assumed a negative, During the intervals of parliament, the protector
and council had the power of enacting laws, which were to be valid till
the next meeting of parliament. The chancellor, treasurer, admiral,
chief governors of Ireland and Scotland, and the chief justices of both
the benches, must be chosen with the approbation of parliament; and in
the intervals, with the approbation of the council, to be afterwards
ratified by parliament. The protector was to enjoy his office during
life; and on his death, the place was immediately to be supplied by the
council. This was the instrument of government enacted by the council of
officers, and solemnly sworn to by Oliver Cromwell. The council of
state named by the instrument, were fifteen; men entirely devoted to the
protector, and by reason of the opposition among themselves in party and
principles, not likely ever to combine against him.

Cromwell said, that he accepted the dignity of protector, merely that he
might exert the duty of a constable, and preserve peace in the nation.
Affairs indeed were brought to that pass, by the furious animosities of
the several factions, that the extensive authority and even arbitrary
power of some first magistrate was become a necessary evil, in order
to keep the people from relapsing into blood and confusion. The
Independents were too small a party ever to establish a popular
government, or intrust the nation, where they had so little interest,
with the free choice of its representatives. The Presbyterians had
adopted the violent maxims of persecution; incompatible at all times
with the peace of society, much more with the wild zeal of those
numerous sects which prevailed among the people. The royalists were so
much enraged by the injuries which they had suffered, that the other
prevailing parties would never submit to them, who, they knew, were
enabled, merely by the execution of the ancient laws, to take severe
vengeance upon them. Had Cromwell been guilty of no crime but this
temporary usurpation, the plea of necessity and public good, which he
alleged, might be allowed, in every view, a reasonable excuse for his
conduct.

During the variety of ridiculous and distracted scenes which the civil
government exhibited in England, the military force was exerted with
vigor, conduct, and unanimity; and never did the kingdom appear more
formidable to all foreign nations. The English fleet, consisting of a
hundred sail, and commanded by Monk and Dean, and under them by Pen
and Lauson, met near the coast of Flanders with the Dutch fleet equally
numerous, and commanded by Tromp. The two republics were not inflamed by
any national antipathy, and their interests very little interfered: yet
few battles have been disputed with more fierce and obstinate courage,
than were those many naval combats which were fought during this
short but violent war. The desire of remaining sole lords of the ocean
animated these states to an honorable emulation against each other.
After a battle of two days, in the first of which Dean was killed, the
Dutch, inferior in the size of their ships, were obliged, with great
loss, to retire into their harbors. Blake, towards the end of the fight,
joined his countrymen with eighteen sail. The English fleet lay off the
coast of Holland, and totally interrupted the commerce of that republic.

[Illustration: 1-734-blake.jpg ADMIRAL BLAKE]

The ambassadors whom the Dutch had sent over to England, gave them hopes
of peace. But as they could obtain no cessation of hostilities, the
states, unwilling to suffer any longer the loss and dishonor of being
blockaded by the enemy, made the utmost efforts to recover their injured
honor. Never, on any occasion, did the power and vigor of that republic
appear in a more conspicuous light. In a few weeks, they had repaired and
manned their fleet; and they equipped some Ships of a larger size than
any which they had hitherto sent to sea. Tromp issued out, determined
again to fight the victors, and to die rather than to yield the contest.
He met with the enemy, commanded by Monk; and both sides immediately
rushed into the combat. Tromp, gallantly animating his men, with his
sword drawn, was shot through the heart with a musket ball. This event
alone decided the battle in favor of the English. Though near thirty
ships of the Dutch were sunk and taken, they little regarded this loss
compared with that of their brave admiral.

Meanwhile the negotiations of peace were continually advancing. The
states, overwhelmed with the expense of the war, terrified by their
losses, and mortified by their defeats, were extremely desirous of an
accommodation with an enemy whom they found by experience too powerful
for them. The king having shown an inclination to serve on board their
fleet, though they expressed their sense of the honor intended them,
they declined an offer which might inflame the quarrel with the English
commonwealth. The great obstacle to the peace was found, not to be any
animosity on the part of the English, but, on the contrary, a desire too
earnest of union and confederacy. Cromwell had revived the chimerical
scheme of a coalition with the United Provinces; a total conjunction of
government, privileges, interests, and councils.

{1654.} This project
appeared so wild to the states, that they wondered any man of sense
could ever entertain it; and they refused to enter into conferences with
regard to a proposal which could serve only to delay any practicable
scheme of accommodation. The peace was at last signed by Cromwell now
invested with the dignity of protector, and it proves sufficiently, that
the war had been impolitic, since, after the most signal victories, no
terms more advantageous could be obtained. A defensive league was made
between the two republics. They agreed, each of them, to banish the
enemies of the other: those who had been concerned in the massacre of
Amboyna were to be punished, if any remained alive; the honor of the
flag was yielded to the English: eighty-five thousand pounds were
stipulated to be paid by the Dutch East India Company for losses which
the English Company had sustained; and the Island of Polerone, in the
East Indies was promised to be ceded to the latter.

Cromwell, jealous of the connections between the royal family and that
of Orange, insisted on a separate article; that neither the young
prince nor any of his family should ever be invested with the dignity of
stadtholder. The province of Holland, strongly prejudiced against that
office, which they esteemed dangerous to liberty, secretly ratified this
article. The protector, knowing that the other provinces would not be
induced to make such a concession, was satisfied with this security.

The Dutch war, being successful, and the peace reasonable brought credit
to Cromwell’s administration. An act of justice, which he exercised at
home, gave likewise satisfaction to the people: though the regularity of
it may perhaps appear somewhat doubtful. Don Pantaleon, brother to the
Portuguese ambassador, and joined with him in the same commission,[*]
fancying himself to be insulted, came upon the exchange, armed and
attended by several servants. By mistake, he fell on a gentleman whom he
took for the person that had given him the offence; and having butchered
him with many wounds, he and all his attendants took shelter in the
house of the Portuguese ambassador, who had connived at this base
enterprise.[**] The populace surrounded the house, and threatened to set
fire to it. Cromwell sent a guard, who seized all the criminals.
They were brought to trial; and notwithstanding the opposition of the
ambassador, who pleaded the privileges of his office, Don Pantaleon was
executed on Tower Hill. The laws of nations were here plainly violated;
but the crime committed by the Portuguese gentleman was to the last
degree atrocious; and the vigorous chastisement of it, suiting so well
the undaunted character of Cromwell, was universally approved of at
home, and admired among foreign nations. The situation of Portugal
obliged that court to acquiesce; and the ambassador soon after signed,
with the protector, a treaty of peace and alliance, which was very
advantageous to the English commerce.

     * Thurloe, vol. ii. p. 429.

     ** Thurloe, vol. i. p. 616.

Another act of severity, but necessary in his situation, was, at the
very same time, exercised by the protector, in the capital punishment of
Gerard and Vowel, two royalists, who were accused of conspiring against
his life. He had erected a high court of justice for their trial; an
infringement of the ancient laws which at this time was become familiar,
but one to which no custom or precedent could reconcile the nation.
Juries were found altogether unmanageable. The restless Lilburn, for new
offences, had been brought to a new trial; and had been acquitted with
new triumph and exultation. If no other method of conviction had been
devised during this illegal and unpopular government, all its enemies
were assured of entire impunity.

The protector had occasion to observe the prejudices entertained against
his government, by the disposition of the parliament, which he summoned
on the third of September, that day of the year on which he gained
his two great victories of Dunbar and Worcester, and which he always
regarded as fortunate for him. It must be confessed that, if we are left
to gather Cromwell’s intentions from his instrument of government, it
is such a motley piece, that we cannot easily conjecture whether he
seriously meant to establish a tyranny or a republic. On one hand, a
first magistrate in so extensive a government seemed necessary both for
the dignity and tranquillity of the state; and the authority which he
assumed as protector was, in some respects, inferior to the prerogatives
which the laws intrusted and still intrust to the king. On the other
hand, the legislative power which he reserved to himself and council,
together with so great an army, independent of the parliament, were
bad prognostics of his intention to submit to a civil and legal
constitution. But if this were not his intention, the method in which he
distributed and conducted the elections, being so favorable to liberty,
form an inconsistency which is not easily accounted for. He deprived of
their right of election all the small boroughs, places the most exposed
to influence and corruption. Of four hundred members which represented
England, two hundred and seventy were chosen by the counties. The rest
were elected by London, and the more considerable corporations. The
lower populace too, so easily guided or deceived, were excluded from
the elections: an estate of two hundred pounds’ value was necessary
to entitle any one to a vote. The elections of this parliament were
conducted with perfect freedom; and, excepting that such of the
royalists as had borne arms against the parliament and all their sons
were excluded, a more fair representation of the people could not be
desired or expected. Thirty members were returned from Scotland; as many
from Ireland.

The protector seems to have been disappointed, when he found that
all these precautions, which were probably nothing but covers to his
ambition, had not procured him the confidence of the public. Though
Cromwell’s administration was less odious to every party than that of
any other party, yet was it entirely acceptable to none. The royalists
had been instructed by the king to remain quiet, and to cover themselves
under the appearance of republicans; and they found in this latter
faction such inveterate hatred against the protector, that they
could not wish for more zealous adversaries to his authority. It was
maintained by them, that the pretence of liberty and a popular election
was but a new artifice of this great deceiver, in order to lay asleep
the deluded nation, and give himself leisure * rivet their chains more
securely upon them: that in the instrument of government he openly
declared his intention of still retaining the same mercenary army, by
whose assistance he had subdued the ancient established government, and
who would with less scruple obey him in overturning, whenever he should
please to order them, that new system which he himself had been pleased
to model: that being sensible of the danger and uncertainty of all
military government, he endeavored to intermix some appearance, and but
an appearance, of civil administration, and to balance the army by a
seeming consent of the people: that the absurd trial which he had made
of a parliament, elected by himself, appointed perpetually to elect
their successors, plainly proved, that he aimed at nothing but temporary
expedients, was totally averse to a free republican government, and
possessed not that mature and deliberate reflection which could qualify
him to act the part of a legislator: that his imperious character, which
had betrayed itself in so many incidents, could never seriously submit
to legal limitations; nor would the very image of popular government be
longer upheld than while conformable to his arbitrary will and pleasure:
and that the best policy was to oblige him to take off the mask at once;
and either submit entirely to that parliament which he had summoned, or,
by totally rejecting its authority, leave himself no resource but in his
seditious and enthusiastic army.

In prosecution of these views, the parliament, having heard the
protector’s speech, three hours long,[*] and having chosen Lenthal for
their speaker, immediately entered into a discussion of the pretended
instrument of government, and of that authority which Cromwell, by the
title of protector, had assumed over the nation.

     * Thurloe, vol. ii. p. 588.

The greatest liberty was used in arraigning this new dignity; and even
the personal character and conduct of Cromwell escaped not without
censure. The utmost that could be obtained by the officers and by the
court party,---for so they were called,--was to protract the debate
by arguments and long speeches, and prevent the decision of a question
which, they were sensible, would be carried against them by a great
majority. The protector, surprised and enraged at this refractory spirit
in the parliament, which, however, he had so much reason to expect,
sent for them to the painted chamber, and with an air of great authority
inveighed against their conduct. He told them, that nothing could
be more absurd than for them to dispute his title; since the same
instrument of government which made them a parliament, had invested him
with the protectorship: that some points in the new constitution were
supposed to be fundamentals, and were not, on any pretence, to be
altered or disputed: that among these were the government of the nation
by a single person and a parliament, their joint authority over the
army and militia, the succession of new parliaments, and liberty of
conscience: and that, with regard to these particulars, there was
reserved to him a negative voice; to which, in the other circumstances
of government, he confessed himself nowise entitled.

The protector now found the necessity of exacting a security, which,
had he foreseen the spirit of the house, he would with better grace have
required at their first meeting.[*]

     * Thurloe, vol ii. p. 620.

He obliged the members to sign a recognition of his authority, and
an engagement not to propose or consent to any alteration in the
government, as it was settled in a single person and a parliament;
and he placed guards at the door of the house, who allowed none but
subscribers to enter. Most of the members, after some hesitation,
submitted to this condition; but retained the same refractory spirit
which they had discovered in their first debates. The instrument of
government was taken in pieces, and examined, article by article, with
the most scrupulous accuracy: very free topics were advanced with the
general approbation of the house: and during the whole course of their
proceedings, they neither sent up one bill to the protector, nor took
any notice of him. Being informed that conspiracies were entered into
between the members and some malecontent officers, he hastened to
the dissolution of so dangerous an assembly. By the instrument of
government, to which he had sworn, no parliament could be dissolved
till it had sitten five months; but Cromwell pretended, that a month
contained only twenty-eight days, according to the method of computation
practised in paying the fleet and army. The full time, therefore,
according to this reckoning, being elapsed, the parliament was ordered
to attend the protector, who made them a tedious, confused, angry
harangue, and dismissed them.

{1655.} Were we to judge of Cromwell’s capacity by this, and indeed
by all his other compositions, we should be apt to entertain no very
favorable idea of it. But in the great variety of human geniuses, there
are some which, though they see their object clearly and distinctly
in general, yet, when they come to unfold its parts by discourse or
writing, lose that luminous conception which they had before attained.
All accounts agree in ascribing to Cromwell a tiresome, dark,
unintelligible elocution, even when he had no intention to disguise his
meaning: yet no man’s actions were ever, in such a variety of difficult
incidents, more decisive and judicious.

The electing of a discontented parliament is a proof of a discontented
nation: the angry and abrupt dissolution of that parliament is always
sure to increase the general discontent. The members of this assembly,
returning to their counties, propagated that spirit of mutiny which they
had exerted in the house. Sir Harry Vane and the old republicans, who
maintained the indissoluble authority of the long parliament, encouraged
the murmurs against the present usurpation; though they acted so
cautiously as to give the protector no handle against them. Wildman
and some others of that party carried still further their conspiracies
against the protector’s authority. The royalists, observing this general
ill will towards the establishment, could no longer be retained in
subjection; but fancied that every one who was dissatisfied like
them, had also embraced the same views and inclinations. They did not
consider, that the old parliamentary party, though many of them were
displeased with Cromwell, who had dispossessed them of their power,
were still more apprehensive of any success to the royal cause; whence,
besides a certain prospect of the same consequence, they had so much
reason to dread the severest vengeance for their past transgressions.

In concert with the king, a conspiracy was entered into by the royalists
throughout England, and a day of general rising appointed. Information
of this design was conveyed to Cromwell. The protector’s administration
was extremely vigilant. Thurloe, his secretary, had spies every
where. Manning, who had access to the king’s family, kept a regular
correspondence with him; and it was not difficult to obtain intelligence
of a confederacy so generally diffused, among a party who valued
themselves more on zeal and courage, than on secrecy and sobriety Many
of the royalists were thrown into prison. Others, on the approach of the
day, were terrified with the danger of the undertaking, and remained at
home. In one place alone the conspiracy broke into action. Penruddoc,
Groves, Jones, and other gentlemen of the west, entered Salisbury with
about two hundred horse, at the very time when the sheriff and judges
were holding the assizes. These they made prisoners; and they proclaimed
the king. Contrary to their expectations, they received no accession of
force; so prevalent was the terror of the established government. Having
in vain wandered about for some time, they were totally discouraged; and
one troop of horse was able at last to suppress them. The leaders of
the conspiracy, being taken prisoners, were capitally punished. The rest
were sold for slaves, and transported to Barbadoes.

The easy subduing of this insurrection, which, by the boldness of the
undertaking, struck at first a great terror into the nation, was a
singular felicity to the protector; who could not, without danger, have
brought together any considerable body of his mutinous army in order
to suppress it. The very insurrection itself he regarded as a fortunate
event; since it proved the reality of those conspiracies which his
enemies on every occasion represented as mere fictions, invented to
color his tyrannical severities. He resolved to keep no longer any
terms with the royalists, who, though they were not perhaps the most
implacable of his enemies, were those whom he could oppress under
the most plausible pretences, and who met with least countenance and
protection from his adherents. He issued an edict, with the consent
of his council, for exacting the tenth penny from that whole party; in
order, as he pretended, to make them pay the expenses to which their
mutinous disposition continually exposed the public. Without regard to
compositions, articles of capitulation, or acts of indemnity, all the
royalists, however harassed with former oppressions, were obliged anew
to redeem themselves by great sums of money; and many of them were
reduced by these multiplied disasters to extreme poverty. Whoever was
known to be disaffected, or even lay under any suspicion, though no
guilt could be proved against him, was exposed to the new exaction.

In order to raise this imposition, which commonly passed by the name of
decimation, the protector instituted twelve major-generals; and divided
the whole kingdom of England into so many military jurisdictions.[*]

     * Parl. Hist. vol. xx. p. 433.

These men, assisted by commissioners, had power to subject whom they
pleased to decimation, to levy all the taxes imposed by the protector
and his council, and to imprison any person who should be exposed to
their jealousy or suspicion; nor was there any appeal from them but
to the protector himself and his council. Under color of these powers,
which were sufficiently exorbitant, the major-generals exercised an
authority still more arbitrary, and acted as if absolute masters of the
property and person of every subject. All reasonable men now concluded,
that the very mask of liberty was thrown aside, and that the nation was
forever subjected to military and despotic government, exercised not
in the legal manner of European nations, but according to the maxims of
Eastern tyranny. Not only the supreme magistrate owed his authority to
illegal force and usurpation; he had parcelled out the people into
so many subdivisions of slavery, and had delegated to his inferior
ministers the same unlimited authority which he himself had so violently
assumed.

A government totally military and despotic, is almost sure, after
some time, to fall into impotence and languor: but when it immediately
succeeds a legal constitution, it may, at first, to foreign nations
appear very vigorous and active, and may exert with more unanimity that
power, spirit, and riches, which had been acquired under a better form.
It seems now proper, after so long an interval, to look abroad to the
general state of Europe, and to consider the measures which England at
this time embraced in its negotiations with the neighboring princes.
The moderate temper and unwarlike genius of the two last princes, the
extreme difficulties under which they labored at home, and the great
security which they enjoyed from foreign enemies, had rendered them
negligent of the transactions on the continent; and England, during
their reigns, had been, in a manner, overlooked in the general system of
Europe. The bold and restless genius of the protector led him to extend
his alliances and enterprises to every part of Christendom; and partly
from the ascendant of his magnanimous spirit, partly from the situation
of foreign kingdoms, the weight of England, even under its most legal
and bravest princes, was never more sensibly felt than during this
unjust and violent usurpation.

A war of thirty years, the most signal and most destructive that had
appeared in modern annals, was at last finished in Germany,[*] and by
the treaty of Westphalia, were composed those fatal quarrels which had
been excited by the palatine’s precipitate acceptance of the crown of
Bohemia. The young palatine was restored to part of his dignities and of
his dominions.[**] The rights, privileges, and authority of the several
members of the Germanic body were fixed and ascertained: sovereign
princes and free states were in some degree reduced to obedience under
laws: and by the valor of the heroic Gustavus, the enterprises of the
active Richelieu, the intrigues of the artful Mazarine, was in part
effected, after an infinite expense of blood and treasure, which had
been fondly expected and loudly demanded from the feeble efforts of
the pacific James, seconded by the scanty supplies of his jealous
parliaments.

     * In 1648.

     ** This prince, during the civil wars, had much neglected
     his uncle, and paid court to the parliament; he accepted of
     a pension of eight thousand pounds a year from them, and
     took a place in their assembly of divines.

Sweden, which had acquired by conquest large dominions in the north of
Germany, was engaged in enterprises which promised her, from her success
and valor, still more extensive acquisitions on the side both of Poland
and of Denmark. Charles X., who had mounted the throne of that kingdom
after the voluntary resignation of Christina, being stimulated by the
fame of Gustavus, as well as by his own martial disposition, carried his
conquering arms to the south of the Baltic, and gained the celebrated
battle of Warsaw, which had been obstinately disputed during the space
of three days. The protector, at the time his alliance was courted by
every power in Europe, anxiously courted the alliance of Sweden; and
he was fond of forming a confederacy with a Protestant power of such
renown, even though it threatened the whole north with conquest and
subjection.

The transactions of the parliament and protector with France had been
various and complicated. The emissaries of Richelieu had furnished fuel
to the flame of rebellion, when it first broke out in Scotland; but
after the conflagration had diffused itself, the French court, observing
the materials to be of themselves sufficiently combustible, found
it unnecessary any longer to animate the British malecontents to an
opposition of their sovereign. On the contrary, they offered
their mediation for composing these intestine disorders; and their
ambassadors, from decency, pretended to act in concert with the court of
England, and to receive directions from a prince with whom their master
was connected by so near an affinity. Meanwhile Richelieu died, and soon
after him the French king, Louis XIII., leaving his son, an infant
four years old, and his widow, Anne of Austria, regent of the kingdom.
Cardinal Mazarine succeeded Richelieu in the ministry; and the same
general plan of policy, though by men of such opposite characters,
was still continued in the French councils. The establishment of royal
authority, the reduction of the Austrian family, were pursued with ardor
and success; and every year brought an accession of force and grandeur
to the French monarchy. Not only battles were won, towns and fortresses
taken; the genius too of the nation seemed gradually to improve, and
to compose itself to the spirit of dutiful obedience and of steady
enterprise. A Condé, a Turenne were formed; and the troops, animated
by their valor, and guided by their discipline, acquired every day
a greater ascendant over the Spaniards. All of a sudden, from
some intrigues of the court, and some discontents in the courts of
judicature, intestine commotions were excited, and every thing relapsed
into confusion. But these rebellions of the French, neither ennobled
by the spirit of liberty, nor disgraced by the fanatical extravagancies
which distinguished the British civil wars, were conducted with little
bloodshed, and made but a small impression on the minds of the people.
Though seconded by the force of Spain, and conducted by the prince
of Condé, the malecontents in a little time were either expelled or
subdued; and the French monarchy, having lost a few of its conquests,
returned with fresh vigor to the acquisition of new dominion.

The queen of England and her son Charles, during these commotions,
passed most of their time at Paris; and notwithstanding their near
connection of blood, received but few civilities, and still less
support, from the French court. Had the queen regent been ever so much
inclined to assist the English prince, the disorders of her own affairs
would, for a long time, have rendered such intentions impracticable. The
banished queen had a moderate pension assigned her; but it was so ill
paid, and her credit ran so low, that, one morning, when the cardinal
De Retz waited on her, she informed him that her daughter, the princess
Henrietta, was obliged to lie abed for want of a fire to warm her. To
such a condition was reduced, in the midst of Paris, a queen of England,
and daughter of Henry IV. of France.

The English parliament, however, having assumed the sovereignty of the
state, resented the countenance, cold as it was, which the French court
gave to the unfortunate monarch. On pretence of injuries of which the
English merchants complained, they issued letters of reprisal upon the
French; and Blake went so far as to attack and seize a whole squadron of
ships which were carrying supplies to Dunkirk, then closely besieged by
the Spaniards. That town, disappointed of these supplies, fell into
the hands of the enemy. The French ministers soon found it necessary
to change their measures. They treated Charles with such affected
indifference, that he thought it more decent to withdraw, and prevent
the indignity of being desired to leave the kingdom. He went first to
Spaw, thence he retired to Cologne; where he lived two years, on a small
pension, about six thousand pounds a year, paid him by the court of
France, and on some contributions sent him by his friends in England.
In the management of his family he discovered a disposition to order and
economy; and his temper, cheerful, careless, and sociable, was more
than a sufficient compensation for that empire of which his enemies had
bereaved him. Sir Edward Hyde, created lord chancellor, and the marquis
of Ormond, were his chief friends and confidants.

If the French ministry had thought it prudent to bend under the English
parliament, they deemed it still more necessary to pay deference to the
protector, when he assumed the reins of government. Cardinal Mazarine,
by whom all the counsels of France were directed, was artful and
vigilant, supple and patient, false and intriguing; desirous rather to
prevail by dexterity than violence, and placing his honor more in the
final success of his measures, than in the splendor and magnanimity
of the means which he employed. Cromwell, by his imperious character,
rather than by the advantage of his situation, acquired an ascendant
over this man; and every proposal made by the protector, however
unreasonable in itself, and urged with whatever insolence, met with a
ready compliance from the politic and timid cardinal. Bourdeaux was sent
over to England as minister; and all circumstances of respect were paid
to the daring usurper, who had imbrued his hands in the blood of his
sovereign, a prince so nearly related to the royal family of France.
With indefatigable patience did Bourdeaux conduct this negotiation,
which Cromwell seemed entirely to neglect; and though privateers with
English commission committed daily depredations on the French commerce,
Mazarine was content, in hopes of a fortunate issue, still to submit to
these indignities.[*]

     * Thurloe, vol. iii. p. 103, 619, 653. In the treaty, which
     was signed after long negotiation, the protector’s name was
     inserted before the French king’s in that copy which
     remained in England. Thurloe vol. vi. p. 116 See further,
     vol. vii. p. 178.

The court of Spain, less connected with the unfortunate royal family,
and reduced to greater distress than the French monarchy, had been still
more forward in her advances to the prosperous parliament and protector.
Don Alonzo de Cardenas, the Spanish envoy, was the first public minister
who recognized the authority of the new republic; and in return for this
civility, Ascham was sent envoy into Spain by the parliament. No
sooner had this minister arrived in Madrid, than some of the banished
royalists, inflamed by that inveterate hatred which animated the English
factions, broke into his chamber, and murdered him together with
his secretary. Immediately they took sanctuary in the churches; and,
assisted by the general favor which every where attended the royal
cause, were enabled, most of them, to make their escape. Only one of the
criminals suffered death; and the parliament seemed to rest satisfied
with this atonement.

Spain, at this time, assailed every where by vigorous enemies from
without, and laboring under many internal disorders, retained nothing of
her former grandeur, except the haughty pride of her counsels, and
the hatred and jealousy of her neighbors. Portugal had rebelled,
and established her monarchy in the house of Braganza: Catalonia,
complaining of violated privileges, had revolted to France: Naples was
shaken with popular convulsions: the Low Countries were invaded with
superior forces, and seemed ready to change their master: the Spanish
infantry, anciently so formidable, had been annihilated by Condé in the
fields of Rocroy: and though the same prince, banished France, sustained
by his activity and valor the falling fortunes of Spain, he could only
hope to protract, not prevent, the ruin with which that monarchy was
visibly threatened.

Had Cromwell understood and regarded the interests of his country,
he would have supported the declining condition of Spain against the
dangerous ambition of France, and preserved that balance of power on
which the greatness and security of England so much depend. Had he
studied only his own interests, he would have maintained an exact
neutrality between those great monarchies; nor would he have hazarded
his ill-acquired and unsettled power by provoking foreign enemies who
might lend assistance to domestic faction, and overturn his tottering
throne. But his magnanimity undervalued danger; his active disposition
and avidity of extensive glory made him incapable of repose: and as the
policy of men is continually warped by their temper, no sooner was peace
made with Holland, than he began to deliberate what new enemy he should
invade with his victorious arms.

The extensive empire and yet extreme weakness of Spain in the West
Indies, the vigorous courage and great naval power of England, were
circumstances which, when compared, excited the ambition of the
enterprising protector, and made him hope that he might, by some gainful
conquest, render forever illustrious that dominion which he had assumed
over his country. Should he fail of these durable acquisitions, the
Indian treasures, which must every year cross the ocean to reach Spain,
were, he thought, a sure prey to the English navy, and would support
his military force without his laying new burdens on the discontented
people. From France a vigorous resistance must be expected: no plunder,
no conquests could be hoped for: the progress of his arms, even
if attended with success, must there be slow and gradual; and the
advantages acquired, however real, would be less striking to the
multitude, whom it was his interest to allure. The royal family,
so closely connected with the French monarch, might receive great
assistance from that neighboring kingdom; and an army of French
Protestants landed in England would be able, he dreaded, to unite the
most opposite factions against the present usurpation.[*]

These motives of policy were probably seconded by his bigoted
prejudices; as no human mind ever contained so strange a mixture of
sagacity and absurdity as that of this extraordinary personage. The
Swedish alliance, though much contrary to the interests of England, he
had contracted merely from his zeal for Protestantism;[**] and Sweden
being closely connected with France, he could not hope to maintain that
confederacy, in which he so much prided himself, should a rupture ensue
between England and this latter kingdom.[***]

     * See the account of the negotiations with France and Spain
     by Thurloe, vol. i. p. 759.

     ** He proposed to Sweden a general league and confederacy of
     all the Protestants. Whitlocke, p. 620. Thurloe, vol. vii.
     p. 1. In order to judge of the maxims by which he conducted
     his foreign politics see, further, Thurloe, vol. iv. p. 295,
     343, 443; vol. vii. p. 174.

     *** Thurloe, vol. i. p. 759.

The Hugonots, he expected, would meet with better treatment while he
engaged in a close union with their sovereign.[*] And as the Spaniards
were much more Papists than the French, were much more exposed to the
old Puritanical hatred,[**] and had even erected the bloody tribunal of
the inquisition, whose rigors they had refused to mitigate on Cromwell’s
solicitation,[***] he hoped that a holy and meritorious war with such
idolaters could not fail of protection from Heaven.[****] A preacher,
likewise, inspired as was supposed by a prophetic spirit, bid him “go
and prosper;” calling him “a stone cut out of the mountains without
hands, that would break the pride of the Spaniard, crush Antichrist, and
make way for the purity of the gospel over the whole world.”[v]

     * Thurloe, vol. i. p. 759.

     ** Thurloe, vol. i. p. 759.

     *** Thurloe, vol. i. p. 759. Don Alonzo said, that the
     Indian trade and the inquisition were his master’s two eyes,
     and the protector insisted upon the putting out both of them
     at once.

     **** Carrington, p. 191.

     v    Bates.

Actuated equally by these bigoted, these ambitious, and these interested
motives, the protector equipped two considerable squadrons; and while he
was making those preparations, the neighboring states, ignorant of his
intentions, remained in suspense, and looked with anxious expectation
on what side the storm should discharge itself. One of these squadrons,
consisting of thirty capital ships, was sent into the Mediterranean
under Blake, whose fame was now spread over Europe. No English fleet,
except during the crusades, had ever before sailed in those seas; and
from one extremity to the other there was no naval force, Christian or
Mahometan, able to resist them. The Roman pontiff, whose weakness and
whose pride equally provoked attacks, dreaded invasion from a power
which professed the most inveterate enmity against him, and which so
little regulated its movements by the usual motives of interest and
prudence. Blake, casting anchor before Leghorn, demanded and obtained
from the duke of Tuscany reparation for some losses which the English
commerce had formerly sustained from him. He next sailed to Algiers, and
compelled the dey to make peace, and to restrain his piratical subjects
from further violences on the English. He presented himself before
Tunis; and having there made the same demands, the dey of that republic
bade him look to the castles of Porto-Farino and Goletta, and do his
utmost. Blake needed not to be roused by such a bravado: he drew
his ships close up to the castles, and tore them in pieces with his
artillery. He sent a numerous detachment of sailors in their long
boats into the harbor, and burned every ship which lay there. This bold
action, which its very temerity perhaps rendered safe, was executed with
little loss, and filled all that part of the world with the renown of
English valor.

The other squadron was not equally successful. It was commanded by Pen,
and carried on board four thousand men under the command of
Venables. About five thousand more joined them from Barbadoes and
St. Christopher’s. Both these officers were inclined to the king’s
service;[*] and it is pretended that Cromwell was obliged to hurry the
soldiers on board, in order to prevent the execution of a conspiracy
which had been formed among them in favor of the exiled family.[**] The
ill success of this enterprise may justly be ascribed as much to the
injudicious schemes of the protector who planned it, as to the bad
execution of the officers by whom it was conducted. The soldiers were
the refuse of the whole army: the forces enlisted in the West
Indies were the most profligate of mankind: Pen and Venables were of
incompatible tempers: the troops were not furnished with arms fit for
such an expedition: their provisions were defective both in quantity and
quality: all hopes of pillage, the best incentive to valor among such
men, were refused the soldiers and seamen: no directions or intelligence
were given to conduct the officers in then enterprise: and at the same
time they were tied down to follow the advice of commissioners, who
disconcerted them in all their projects.[***]

     * Clarendon.

     * Vita de Berwici, p. 124

     ** Burchet’s Naval History. See also Carte’s Collection,
     vol. ii. p. 46, 47. Thurloe, vol. iii. p. 505.

It was agreed by the admiral and general to attempt St. Domingo, the
only place of strength in the Island of Hispaniola. On the approach of
the English, the Spaniards in a fright deserted their houses, and fled
into the woods. Contrary to the opinion of Venables, the soldiers were
disembarked without guides ten leagues distant from the town. They
wandered four days through the woods without provisions, and was still
more intolerable in that sultry climate, without water. The Spaniards
recovered spirit, and attacked them. The English, discouraged with the
bad conduct of their officers and scarcely alive from hunger, thirst,
and fatigue, were unable to resist. An inconsiderable number of the
enemy put the whole army to rout, killed six hundred of them, and chased
the rest on board their vessels.

The English commanders, in order to atone as much as possible for
this unprosperous attempt, bent their course to Jamaica, which was
surrendered to them without a blow. Pen and Venables returned to
England, and were both of them sent to the Tower by the protector, who,
though commonly master of his fiery temper, was thrown into a violent
passion at this disappointment. He had made a conquest of greater
importance than he was himself at that time aware of; yet was it much
inferior to the vast projects which he had formed. He gave orders,
however, to support it by men and money; and that island has ever since
remained in the hands of the English; the chief acquisition which they
owe to the enterprising spirit of Cromwell.

{1656.} As soon as the news of this expedition, which was an
unwarrantable violation of treaty, arrived in Europe, the Spaniards
declared war against England, and seized all the ships and goods of
English merchants, of which they could make themselves masters. The
commerce with Spain, so profitable to the English, was cut off; and near
fifteen hundred vessels, it is computed,[*] fell in a few years into the
hands of the enemy. Blake, to whom Montague was now joined in command,
after receiving new orders, prepared himself for hostilities against the
Spaniards.

Several sea officers, having entertained scruples of conscience with
regard to the justice of the Spanish war, threw up their commissions,
and retired.[**]

     * Thurloe, vol. iv. p. 135. World’s Mistake in Oliver
     Cromwell in the Harl. Miscel. vol. i.

     ** Thurloe. vol. iv. p. 670, 688.

No commands, they thought, of their superiors could justify a war which
was contrary to the principles of natural equity, and which the civil
magistrate had no right to order. Individuals, they maintained, in
resigning to the public their natural liberty, could bestow on it only
what they themselves were possessed of, a right of performing lawful
actions, and could invest it with no authority of commanding what
is contrary to the decrees of Heaven. Such maxims, though they seem
reasonable, are perhaps too perfect for human nature; and must be
regarded as one effect, though of the most innocent and even honorable
kind, of that spirit, partly fanatical, partly republican, which
predominated in England.

Blake lay some time off Cadiz, in expectation of intercepting the Plate
fleet, but was at last obliged, for want of water, to make sail towards
Portugal. Captain Stayner, whom he had left on the coast with a squadron
of seven vessels, came in sight of the galleons, and immediately set
sail to pursue them. The Spanish admiral ran his ship ashore: two others
followed his example: the English took two ships, valued at near two
millions of pieces of eight. Two galleons were set on fire; and the
marquis of Badajox, viceroy of Peru, with his wife, and his daughter,
betrothed to the young duke of Medina Celi, were destroyed in them. The
marquis himself might have escaped; but seeing these unfortunate women,
astonished with the danger, fall in a swoon, and perish in the flames,
he rather chose to die with them, than drag out a life imbittered with
the remembrance of such dismal scenes.[*] When the treasures gained by
this enterprise arrived at Portsmouth, the protector, from a spirit of
ostentation, ordered them to be transported by land to London.

     * Thurloe, vol. v. p. 433.

The next action against the Spaniards was more honorable, though less
profitable, to the nation. Blake, having heard that a Spanish fleet of
sixteen ships, much richer than the former, had taken shelter in the
Canaries, immediately made sail towards them. He found them in the Bay
of Santa Cruz, disposed in a formidable posture. The bay was secured
with a strong castle, well provided with cannon, besides seven forts in
several parts of it, all united by a line of communication, manned with
musketeers. Don Diego Diagues, the Spanish admiral, ordered all his
smaller vessels to moor close to the shore, and posted the larger
galleons farther off, at anchor, with their broadsides to the sea.

Blake was rather animated than daunted with this appearance. The wind
seconded his courage, and blowing full into the bay, in a moment brought
him among the thickest of his enemies. After a resistance of four hours,
the Spaniards yielded to English valor, and abandoned their ships, which
were set on fire, and consumed with all their treasure. The greatest
danger still remained to the English. They lay under the fire of the
castle and all the forts, which must in a little time have torn them in
pieces. But the wind, suddenly shifting, carried them out of the bay;
where they left the Spaniards in astonishment at the happy temerity of
their audacious victors.

This was the last and greatest action of the gallant Blake. He was
consumed with a dropsy and scurvy, and hastened home, that he might
yield up his breath in his native country, which he had so much adorned
by his valor. As he came within sight of land, he expired.[*]

     * 20th of April, 1657.

Never man, so zealous for a faction, was so much respected and esteemed
even by the opposite factions. He was by principle an inflexible
republican; and the late usurpations, amidst all the trust and caresses
which he received from the ruling powers, were thought to be very little
grateful to him. “It is still our duty,” he said to the seamen, “to
fight for our country, into what hands soever the government may fall.”
 Disinterested, generous, liberal; ambitious only of true glory, dreadful
only to his avowed enemies; he forms one of the most perfect characters
of the age, and the least stained with those errors and violences which
were then so predominant. The protector ordered him a pompous funeral
at the public charge: but the tears of his countrymen were the most
honorable panegyric on his memory.

The conduct of the protector in foreign affairs, though imprudent and
impolitic, was full of vigor and enterprise, and drew a consideration
to his country, which, since the reign of Elizabeth, it seemed to have
totally lost. The great mind of this successful usurper was intent on
spreading the renown of the English nation; and while he struck mankind
with astonishment at his extraordinary fortune, he seemed to ennoble
instead of debasing, that people whom he had reduced to subjection. It
was his boast, that he would render the name of an Englishman as much
feared and revered as ever was that of a Roman; and as his countrymen
found some reality in these pretensions, their national vanity, being
gratified, made them bear with more patience all the indignities and
calamities under which they labored.

It must also be acknowledged, that the protector, in his civil and
domestic administration, displayed as great regard both to justice and
clemency, as his usurped authority, derived from no law, and founded
only on the sword, could possibly permit. All the chief offices in
the courts of judicature were filled with men of integrity: amidst
the virulence of faction, the decrees of the judges were upright and
impartial; and to every man but himself, and to himself, except where
necessity required the contrary, the law was the great rule of conduct
and behavior. Vane and Lilburn, whose credit with the republicans and
levellers he dreaded, were indeed for some time confined to prison:
Cony, who refused to pay illegal taxes, was obliged by menaces to depart
from his obstinacy: high courts of justice were erected to try those who
had engaged in conspiracies and insurrections against the protector’s
authority, and whom he could not safely commit to the verdict of juries.
But these irregularities were deemed inevitable consequences of his
illegal authority. And though often urged by his officers, as is
pretended,[*] to attempt a general massacre of the royalists, he always
with horror rejected such sanguinary counsels.

     * Clarendon, Life of Lord Berwick, etc.

In the army was laid the sole basis of the protector’s power; and in
managing it consisted the chief art and delicacy of his government. The
soldiers were held in exact discipline; a policy which both accustomed
them to obedience, and made them less hateful and burdensome to the
people. He augmented their pay; though the public necessities sometimes
obliged him to run in arrears to them. Their interests, they were
sensible, were closely connected with those of their general and
protector. And he entirely commanded their affectionate regard, by his
abilities and success in almost every enterprise which he had hitherto
undertaken. But all military government is precarious; much more where
it stands in opposition to civil establishments; and still more where
it encounters religious prejudices. By the wild fanaticism which he had
nourished in the soldiers, he had seduced them into measures, for which,
if openly proposed to them, they would have entertained the utmost
aversion. But this same spirit rendered them more difficult to be
governed, and made their caprices terrible even to that hand which
directed their movements. So often taught, that the office of king was
a usurpation upon Christ, they were apt to suspect a protector not to
be altogether compatible with that divine authority. Harrison, though
raised to the highest dignity, and possessed of Cromwell’s confidence,
became his most inveterate enemy as soon as the authority of a single
person was established, against which that usurper had always made such
violent protestations. Overton, Rich, Okey, officers of rank in the
army, were actuated with like principles, and Cromwell was obliged to
deprive them of their commissions. Their influence, which was before
thought unbounded among the troops, seemed from that moment to be
totally annihilated.

The more effectually to curb the enthusiastic and seditious spirit
of the troops, Cromwell established a kind of militia in the several
counties. Companies of infantry and cavalry were enlisted under proper
officers, regular pay distributed among them, and a resource by that
means provided both against the insurrections of the royalists and
mutiny of the army.

Religion can never be deemed a point of small consequence in civil
government: but during this period, it may be regarded as the great
spring of men’s actions and determinations. Though transported himself
with the most frantic whimseys, Cromwell had adopted a scheme for
regulating this principle in others, which was sagacious and political.
Being resolved to maintain a national church, yet determined neither
to admit Episcopacy nor Presbytery, he established a number of
commissioners, under the name of tryers, partly laymen, partly
ecclesiastics, some Presbyterians, some Independents. These presented to
all livings which were formerly in the gift of the crown; they examined
and admitted such persons as received holy orders; and they inspected
the lives, doctrine, and behavior of the clergy. Instead of supporting
that union between learning and theology, which has so long been
attempted in Europe, these tryers embraced the latter principle in
its full purity, and made it the sole object of their examination.
The candidates were no more perplexed with questions concerning their
progress in Greek and Roman erudition; concerning their talent for
profane arts and sciences: the chief object of scrutiny regarded their
advances in grace, and fixing the critical moment of their conversion.

With the pretended saints of all denominations Cromwell was familiar and
easy. Laying aside the state of protector, which on other occasions
he well knew how to maintain, he insinuated to them, that nothing but
necessity could ever oblige him to invest himself with it. He talked
spiritually to *them; he sighed he wept, he canted, he prayed. He even
entered with them into an emulation of ghostly gifts, and these men,
instead of grieving to be outdone in their own way, were proud that
his highness, by his princely example, had dignified those practices in
which they themselves were daily occupied.[*]

     * Cromwell followed, though but in part, the advice which he
     received from General Harrison, at the time when the
     intimacy and endearment most strongly subsisted betwixt
     them. “Let the waiting upon Jehovah,” said that military
     saint, “be the greatest and most considerable business you
     have every day: reckon it so, more than to eat, sleep, and
     counsel together. Run aside sometimes from your company, and
     get a word with the Lord. Why should not you have three or
     four precious souls always standing at your elbow, with whom
     you might now and then turn into a corner? I have found
     refreshment and mercy in such a way.”--Milton’s State
     Papers, p. 12.

If Cromwell might be said to adhere to any particular form of religion,
they were the Independents who could chiefly boast of his favor; and it
may be affirmed, that such pastors of that sect as were not passionately
addicted to civil liberty, were all of them devoted to him. The
Presbyterian clergy, also saved from the ravages of the Anabaptists and
Millenarians, and enjoying their establishments and tithes, were not
averse to his government; though he still entertained a great jealousy
of that ambitious and restless spirit by which they were actuated. He
granted an unbounded liberty of conscience to all but Catholics and
Prelatists; and by that means he both attached the wild sectaries to
his person, and employed them in curbing the domineering spirit of the
Presbyterians. “I am the only man,” he was often heard to say, “who
has known how to subdue that insolent sect, which can suffer none but
itself.”

The Protestant zeal which possessed the Presbyterians and Independents,
was highly gratified by the haughty manner in which the protector so
successfully supported the persecuted Protestants throughout all Europe.
Even the duke of Savoy, so remote a power, and so little exposed to
the naval force of England, was obliged, by the authority of France,
to comply with his mediation, and to tolerate the Protestants of the
valleys, against whom that prince had commenced a furious persecution.
France itself was constrained to bear, not only with the religion, but
even, in some instances, with the seditious insolence of the Hugonots;
and when the French court applied for a reciprocal toleration of the
Catholic religion in England, the protector, who arrogated in every
thing the superiority, would hearken to no such proposal. He had
entertained a project of instituting a college, in imitation of that
at Rome, for the propagation of the faith; and his apostles, in zeal,
though not in unanimity, had certainly been a full match for the
Catholics.

Cromwell retained the church of England in constraint though he
permitted its clergy a little more liberty than the Republican
parliament had formerly allowed. He was pleased that the superior lenity
of his administration should in every thing be remarked. He bridled the
royalists, both by the army which he retained, and by those secret spies
which he found means to intermix in all their counsels. Manning being
detected, and punished with death, he corrupted Sir Richard Willis, who
was much trusted by Chancellor Hyde and all the royalists; and by means
of this man he was let into every design and conspiracy of the party.
He could disconcert any project, by confining the persons who were to
be the actors in it; and as he restored them afterwards to liberty, his
severity passed only for the result of general jealousy and suspicion,
The secret source of his intelligence remained still unknown and
unsuspected.

Conspiracies for an assassination he was chiefly afraid of; these being
designs which no prudence or vigilance could evade. Colonel Titus, under
the name of Allen, had written a spirited discourse, exhorting every
one to embrace this method of vengeance; and Cromwell knew, that the
inflamed minds of the royal party were sufficiently disposed to put
the doctrine in practice against him. He openly told them, that
assassinations were base and odious, and he never would commence
hostilities by so shameful an expedient; but if the first attempt or
provocation came from them, he would retaliate to the uttermost. He had
instruments, he said, whom he could employ; and he never would desist
till he had totally exterminated the royal family. This menace, more
than all his guards, contributed to the security of his person.[*] [26]

     * See note Z at the end of the volume.

There was no point about which the protector was more solicitous than
to procure intelligence. This article alone, it is said, cost him sixty
thousand pounds a year. Postmasters, both at home and abroad, were in
his pay: carriers were searched or bribed: secretaries and clerks were
corrupted the greatest zealots in all parties were often these who
conveyed private information to him: and nothing could escape his
vigilant inquiry. Such at least is the representation made by historians
of Cromwell’s administration: but it must be confessed, that, if we
may judge by those volumes of Thurloe’s papers which have been lately
published, this affair, like many others, has been greatly magnified.
We scarcely find by that collection, that any secret counsels of foreign
states, except those of Holland, which are not expected to be concealed,
were known to the protector.

The general behavior and deportment of this man, who had been raised
from a very private station, who had passed most of his youth in the
country, and who was still constrained so much to frequent bad company,
was such as might befit the greatest monarch. He maintained a dignity
without either affectation or ostentation; and supported with all
strangers that high idea with which his great exploits and prodigious
fortune had impressed them. Among his ancient friends, he could relax
himself; and by trifling and amusement, jesting and making verses, he
feared not exposing himself to their most familiar approaches.[*] With
others he sometimes pushed matters to the length of rustic buffoonery;
and he would amuse himself by putting burning coals into the boots and
hose of the officers who attended him.[**] Before the king’s trial, a
meeting was agreed on between the chiefs of the republican party and the
general officers, in order to concert the model of that free
government which they were to substitute in the room of the monarchical
constitution now totally subverted. After debates on this subject, the
most important that could fall under the discussion of human creatures,
Ludlow tells us that Cromwell, by way of frolic, threw a cushion at his
head; and when Ludlow took up another cushion, in order to return the
compliment, the general ran down stairs, and had almost fallen in the
hurry. When the high court of justice was signing the warrant for
the execution of the king, a matter, if possible, still more serious,
Cromwell, taking the pen in his hand, before he subscribed his name,
bedaubed with ink the face of Martin, who sat next him. And the
pen being delivered to Martin, he practised the same frolic upon
Cromwell.[***]

     * Whitlocke, p. 647.

     ** Bates.

     *** Trial of the Regicides.

He frequently gave feasts to his inferior officers; and when the meat
was set upon the table, a signal was given; the soldiers rushed in upon,
them; and with much noise, tumult, and confusion, ran away with all the
dishes, and disappointed the guests of their expected meal.[*]

     * Bates.

That vein of frolic and pleasantry which made a part, however
inconsistent, of Cromwell’s character, was apt sometimes to betray him
into other inconsistencies, and to discover itself even where religion
might seem to be a little concerned. It is a tradition, that one day,
sitting at table, the protector had a bottle of wine brought him, of
a kind which he valued so highly, that he must needs open the bottle
himself; but in attempting it, the corkscrew dropped from his hand.
Immediately his courtiers and generals flung themselves on the floor to
recover it. Cromwell burst out a laughing. “Should any fool,” said he,
“put in his head at the door, he would fancy, from your posture, that
you were seeking the Lord; and you are only seeking a corkscrew.”

Amidst all the unguarded play and buffoonery of this singular personage,
he took the opportunity of remarking the characters, designs, and
weaknesses of men; and he would sometimes push them, by an indulgence
in wine, to open to him the most secret recesses of their bosom.
Great regularity, however, and even austerity of manners, were always
maintained in his court; and he was careful never by any liberties to
give offence to the most rigid of the godly. Some state was upheld;
but with little expense, and without any splendor. The nobility, though
courted by him, kept at a distance, and disdained to intermix with
those mean persons who were the instruments of his government. Without
departing from economy, he was generous to those who served him; and he
knew how to find out and engage in his interests every man possessed of
those talents which any particular employment demanded. His generals,
his admirals, his judges, his ambassadors, were persons who contributed,
all of them, in their several spheres, to the security of the protector,
and to the honor and interest of the nation.

Under pretence of uniting Scotland and Ireland in one commonwealth with
England, Cromwell had reduced those kingdoms to a total subjection;
and he treated them entirely as conquered provinces. The civil
administration of Scotland was placed in a council, consisting mostly of
English, of which Lord Broghile was president. Justice was administered
by seven judges, four of whom were English. In order to cure the
tyrannical nobility, he both abolished all vassalage,[*] and revived the
office of justice of peace, which King James had introduced, but was not
able to support.[**] A long line of forts and garrisons was maintained
throughout the kingdom. An army of ten thousand men[***] kept everything
in peace and obedience; and neither the banditti of the mountains nor
the bigots of the Low Countries could indulge their inclination to
turbulence and disorder. He courted the Presbyterian clergy though
he nourished that intestine enmity which prevailed between the
resolutioners and protesters; and he found that very little policy was
requisite to foment quarrels among theologians. He permitted no church
assemblies; being sensible that from thence had proceeded many of the
past disorders. And in the main, the Scots were obliged to acknowledge,
that never before, while they enjoyed their irregular, factious liberty,
had they attained so much happiness as at present, when reduced to
subjection under a foreign nation.

     * Whitlocke, p. 570.

     ** Thurloe, vol. iv. p. 57.

     *** Thurloe, vol. vi. p. 557.

The protector’s administration of Ireland was more severe and violent.
The government of that island was first intrusted to Fleetwood, a
notorious fanatic, who had married Ireton’s widow; then to Henry
Cromwell, second son of the protector, a young man of an amiable,
mild disposition, and not destitute of vigor and capacity. Above five
millions of acres, forfeited either by the Popish rebels or by the
adherents of the king, were divided, partly among the adventurers, who
had advanced money to the parliament, partly among the English soldiers,
who had arrears due to them. Examples of a more sudden and violent
change of property are scarcely to be found in any history. An order
was even issued to confine all the native Irish to the province of
Connaught, where they would be shut up by rivers, lakes, and mountains,
and could not, it was hoped, be any longer dangerous to the English
government: but this barbarous and absurd policy, which, from an
impatience of attaining immediate security, *must have depopulated all
the other provinces, and rendered the English estates of no value, was
soon abandoned as impracticable.

Cromwell began to hope that, by his administration, attended with so
much lustre and success abroad, so much order and tranquillity at home,
he had now acquired such authority as would enable him to meet the
representatives of the nation, and would assure him of their dutiful
compliance with his government. He summoned a parliament; but not
trusting altogether to the good will of the people, he used every art
which his new model of representation allowed him to employ, in order
to influence the elections, and fill the house with his own creatures.
Ireland, being entirely in the hands of the army, chose few but
such officers as were most acceptable to him. Scotland showed a like
compliance; and as the nobility and gentry of that kingdom regarded
their attendance on English parliaments as an ignominious badge of
slavery, it was on that account more easy for the officers to prevail
in the elections. Notwithstanding all these precautions, the protector
still found that the majority would not be favorable to him. He set
guards, therefore, on the door, who permitted none to enter but such as
produced a warrant from his council; and the council rejected about a
hundred, who either refused a recognition of the protector’s government,
or were on other accounts obnoxious to him. These protested against so
egregious a violence, subversive of all liberty; but every application
for redress was neglected both by the council and the parliament.

The majority of the parliament, by means of these arts and violences,
was now at last either friendly to the protector, or resolved, by their
compliance, to adjust, if possible, this military government to their
laws and liberties. They voted a renunciation of all title in Charles
Stuart, or any of his family; and this was the first act, dignified with
the appearance of national consent, which had ever had that tendency.
Colonel Jephson, in order to sound the inclinations of the house,
ventured to move, that the parliament should bestow the crown on
Cromwell; and no surprise or reluctance was discovered on the occasion.
When Cromwell afterwards asked Jephson what induced him to make such
a motion, “As long,” said Jephson, “as I have the honor to sit in
parliament, I must follow the dictates of my own conscience, whatever
offence I may be so unfortunate as to give you.” “Get thee gone,” said
Cromwell, giving him a gentle blow on the shoulder; “get thee gone, for
a mad fellow as thou art.”

In order to pave the way to this advancement, for which he so ardently
longed, Cromwell resolved to sacrifice his major-generals, whom he
knew to be extremely odious to the nation That measure was also become
necessary for his own security. All government, purely military,
fluctuates perpetually between a despotic monarchy and a despotic
aristocracy, according as the authority of the chief commander
prevails, or that of the officers next him in rank and dignity. The
major-generals, being possessed of so much distinct jurisdiction, began
to establish a separate title to power, and had rendered themselves
formidable to the protector himself; and for this inconvenience, though
he had not foreseen it, he well knew, before it was too late, to provide
a proper remedy. Claypole, his son-in-law, who possessed his confidence,
abandoned them to the pleasure of the house; and though the name was
still retained, it was agreed to abridge, or rather entirely annihilate,
the power of the major-generals.

At length, a motion in form was made by Alderman Pack, one of the city
members, for investing the protector with the dignity of king. This
motion at first excited great disorder, and divided the whole house
into parties. The chief opposition came from the usual adherents of the
protector, the major-generals, and such officers as depended on them.
Lambert a man of deep intrigue, and of great interest in the army,
had long entertained the ambition of succeeding Cromwell in the
protectorship; and he foresaw, that if the monarchy were restored,
hereditary right would also be established, and the crown be transmitted
to the posterity of the prince first elected. He pleaded, therefore,
conscience; and rousing all those civil and religious jealousies against
kingly government, which had been so industriously encouraged among the
soldiers, and which served them as a pretence for so many violences, he
raised a numerous, and still more formidable party, against the motion.

On the other hand, the motion was supported by every one who was more
particularly devoted to the protector, and who hoped, by so acceptable
a measure, to pay court to the prevailing authority. Many persons also,
attached to their country, despaired of ever being able to subvert
the present illegal establishment; and were desirous, by fixing it on
ancient foundations, to induce the protector, from views of his own
safety, to pay a regard to the ancient laws and liberties of the
kingdom. Even the royalists imprudently joined in the measure; and hoped
that, when the question regarded only persons, not forms of government,
no one would any longer balance between the ancient royal family and an
ignoble usurper, who, by blood, treason, and perfidy, had made his way
to the throne.

{1657.} The bill was voted by a considerable majority;
and a committee was appointed to reason with the protector, and to
overcome those scruples which he pretended against accepting so liberal
an offer.

The conference lasted for several days. The committee urged, that all
the statutes and customs of England were founded on the supposition of
regal authority, and could not, without extreme violence, be adjusted
to any other form of government: that a protector, except during the
minority of a king, was a name utterly unknown to the laws; and no man
was acquainted with the extent or limits of his authority; that if it
were attempted to define every part of his jurisdiction, many years, if
not ages, would be required for the execution of so complicated a work;
if the whole power of the king were at once transferred to him, the
question was plainly about a name, and the preference was indisputably
due to the ancient title: that the English constitution was more anxious
concerning the form of government, than concerning the birthright of the
first magistrate; and had provided, by an express law of Henry VII.,
for the security of those who act in defence of the king in being, by
whatever means he might have acquired possession: that it was extremely
the interest of all his highness’s friends to seek the shelter of
this statute; and even the people in general were desirous of such a
settlement, and in all juries were with great difficulty induced to give
their verdict in favor of a protector: that the great source of all the
late commotions had been the jealousy of liberty: and that a republic,
together with a protector, had been established in order to provide
further securities for the freedom of the constitution; but that by
experience the remedy had been found insufficient, even dangerous
and pernicious; since every indeterminate power, such as that of a
protector, must be arbitrary; and the more arbitrary, as it was contrary
to the genius and inclination of the people.

The difficulty consisted not in persuading Cromwell. He was sufficiently
convinced of the solidity of these reasons; and his inclination, as well
as judgment, was entirely on the side of the committee. But how to bring
over the soldiers to the same way of thinking, was the question. The
office of king had been painted to them in such horrible colors, that
there were no hopes of reconciling them suddenly to it, even though
bestowed upon their general, to whom they were so much devoted. A
contradiction, open and direct, to all past professions, would make
them pass, in the eyes of the whole nation, for the most shameless
hypocrites, enlisted, by no other than mercenary motives, in the cause
of the most perfidious traitor. Principles, such as they were, had been
encouraged in them by every consideration, human and divine; and though
it was easy, where interest concurred, to deceive them by the thinnest
disguises, it might be found dangerous at once to pull off the mask,
and to show them in a full light the whole crime and deformity of their
conduct. Suspended between these fears and his own most ardent desires,
Cromwell protracted the time, and seemed still to oppose the reasonings
of the committee; in hopes that by artifice he might be able to
reconcile the refractory minds of the soldiers to his new dignity.

While the protector argued so much in contradiction both to his judgment
and inclination, it is no wonder that his elocution, always confused,
embarrassed, and unintelligible, should be involved in tenfold darkness,
and discover no glimmering of common sense or reason. An exact account
of this conference remains, and may be regarded as a great curiosity.
The members of the committee in their reasonings discover judgment,
knowledge, elocution: Lord Broghill in particular exerts himself on this
memorable occasion. But what a contrast when we pass to the protector’s
replies! After so singular a manner does nature distribute her talents,
that, in a nation abounding with sense and learning, a man who, by
superior personal merit alone, had made his way to supreme dignity, and
had even obliged the parliament to make him a tender of the crown, was
yet incapable of expressing himself on this occasion, but in a manner
which a peasant of the most ordinary capacity would justly be ashamed
of.[*]

     * We shall produce any passage at random; for his discourse
     is all of a piece. “I confess, for it behoves me to deal
     plainly with you, I must confess, I would say, I hope I may
     be understood in this; for indeed I must be tender what I
     say to such an audience as this; I say, I would be
     understood, that in this argument I do not make parallel
     betwixt men of a different mind, and a parliament, which
     shall have their desires. I know there is no comparison, nor
     can it be urged upon me that my words have the least color
     that way, because the parliament seems to give liberty to me
     to say any thing to you; as that, that is a tender of my
     humble reasons and judgment and opinion to them; and if I
     think they are such, and will be such to them, and are
     faithful servants, and will be so to the supreme authority,
     and the legislative wheresoever it is: if, I say, I should
     not tell you, knowing their minds to be so, I should not be
     faithful if I should not tell you so, to the end you may
     report it to the parliament: I shall say something for
     myself, for my own mind, I do profess it, I urn not a man
     scrupulous about words or names of such things I have not;
     but as I have the word of God, and I hope I shall ever have
     it, for the rule of my conscience, for my informations; so
     truly men that have been led in dark paths, through the
     providence and dispensation of God; why, surely it is not to
     be objected to a man; for who can love to walk in the dark?
     But providence does so dispose. And though a man may impute
     his own folly and blindness to providence sinfully, yet it
     must be at my peril; the case may be that it is the
     providence of God that doth lead men in darkness: I must
     need say, that I have had a great deal of experience of
     providence; and though it is no rule without or against the
     word, yet it is a very good expositor of the word in many
     cases.” Conference at Whitehall. The great defect in
     Oliver’s speeches consists not in his want of elocution, but
     in his want of ideas. The sagacity of his actions, and the
     absurdity of his discourse, form the most prodigious
     contrast that ever was known. The collection of all his
     speeches, letters, sermons, (for he also wrote sermons,)
     would make a great curiosity, and, with a few exceptions,
     might justly pass for one of the most nonsensical books in
     the world.

The opposition which Cromwell dreaded, was not that which came from
Lambert and his adherents, whom he now regarded as capital enemies, and
whom he was resolved, on the first occasion, to deprive of all power and
authority; it was that which he met with in his own family, and from men
who, by interest as well as inclination, were the most devoted to him.
Fleetwood had married his daughter; Desborow his sister; yet these
men, actuated by principle alone, could by no persuasion, artifice, or
entreaty be induced to consent that their friend and patron should be
invested with regal dignity. They told him, that if he accepted of
the crown, they would instantly throw up their commissions, and never
afterwards should have it in their power to serve him.[*]

     * Thurloe, vol. vi. p. 261.

Colonel Pride procured a petition against the office of king, signed
by a majority of the officers who were in London and the neighborhood.
Several persons, it is said, had entered into an engagement to murder
the protector within a few hours after he should have accepted the offer
of the parliament. Some sudden mutiny in the army was justly dreaded.
And upon the whole, Cromwell, after the agony and perplexity of
long doubt, was at last obliged to refuse that crown which the
representatives of the nation, in the most solemn manner, had tendered
to him. Most historians are inclined to blame his choice; but he must
be allowed the best judge of his own situation. And in such complicated
subjects, the alteration of a very minute circumstance, unknown to the
spectator, will often be sufficient to cast the balance, and render a
determination, which in itself may be uneligible, very prudent, or even
absolutely necessary to the actor.

A dream or prophecy, Lord Clarendon mentions, which, he affirms, (and
he must have known the truth,) was universally talked of almost from
the beginning of the civil wars, and long before Cromwell was so
considerable a person as to bestow upon it any degree of probability. In
this prophecy, it was foretold that Cromwell should be the greatest man
in England, and would nearly, but never would fully, mount the throne.
Such a prepossession probably arose from the heated imagination either
of himself or of his followers; and as it might be one cause of the
great progress which he had already made, it is not an unlikely
reason which may be assigned for his refusing at this time any further
elevation.

The parliament, when the regal dignity was rejected by Cromwell, found
themselves obliged to retain the name of a commonwealth and protector;
and as the government was hitherto a manifest usurpation, it was thought
proper to sanctify it by a seeming choice of the people and their
representatives. Instead of the “instrument of government,” which was
the work of the general officers alone, “an humble petition and advice”
 was framed, and offered to the protector, by the parliament. This
was represented as the great basis cf the republican establishment,
regulating and limiting the powers of each member of the constitution,
and securing the liberty of the people to the most remote posterity. By
this deed, the authority of protector was in some particulars enlarged;
in others, it was considerably diminished. He had the power of
nominating his successor; he had a perpetual revenue assigned him, a
million a year for the pay of the fleet and army, three hundred thousand
pounds for the support of civil government; and he had authority to name
another house, who should enjoy their seats during life, and exercise
some functions of the former house of peers. But he abandoned the power,
assumed in the intervals of parliament, of framing laws with the consent
of his council; and he agreed, that no members of either house should
be excluded but by the consent of that house of which they were members.
The other articles were in the main the same as in the instrument of
government. The instrument of government Cromwell had formerly extolled
as the most perfect work of human invention: he now represented it as
a rotten plank, upon which no man could trust himself without sinking.
Even the humble petition and advice, which he extolled in its turn,
appeared so lame and imperfect, that it was found requisite, this very
session, to mend it by a supplement; and after all, it may be regarded
as a crude and undigested model of government. It was, however, accepted
for the voluntary deed of the whole people in the three united nations;
and Cromwell, as if his power had just commenced from this popular
consent, was anew inaugurated in Westminster Hall, after the most solemn
and most pompous manner.

The parliament having adjourned itself, the protector deprived Lambert
of all his commissions; but still allowed him a considerable pension
of two thousand pounds a year, as a bribe for his future peaceable
deportment. Lambert’s authority in the army, to the surprise of every
body, was found immediately to expire with the loss of his commission.
Packet and some other officers, whom Cromwell suspected, were also
displaced.

Richard, eldest son of the protector, was brought to court, introduced
into public business, and thenceforth regarded by many as his heir in
the protectorship; though Cromwell sometimes employed the gross artifice
of flattering others with hopes of the succession. Richard was a person
possessed of the most peaceable, inoffensive, unambitious character; and
had hitherto lived contentedly in the country, on a small estate which
his wife had brought him. All the activity which he discovered, and
which never was great, was, however, exerted to beneficent purposes:
at the time of the king’s trial, he had fallen on his knees before his
father, and had conjured him, by every tie of duty and humanity, to
spare the life of that monarch. Cromwell had two daughters unmarried;
one of them he now gave in marriage to the grandson and heir of his
great friend the earl of Warwick, with whom he had, in every fortune,
preserved an uninterrupted intimacy and good correspondence. The other
he married to the viscount Fauconberg of a family formerly devoted
to the royal party. He was ambitious of forming connections with the
nobility; and it was one chief motive for his desiring the title of
king, that he might replace every thing in its natural order, and
restore to the ancient families the trust and honor of which he now
found himself obliged, for his own safety, to deprive them.

{1658.} The parliament was again assembled; consisting, as in the times
of monarchy, of two houses, the commons and the other house. Cromwell,
during the interval, had sent writs to his house of peers, which
consisted of sixty members. They were composed of five or six ancient
peers, of several gentlemen of fortune and distinction, and of some
officers who had risen from the meanest stations. None of the ancient
peers, however, though summoned by writ, would deign to accept of a seat
which they must share with such companions as were assigned them. The
protector endeavored at first to maintain the appearance of a legal
magistrate. He placed no guard at the door of either house; but soon
found how incompatible liberty is with military usurpations. By bringing
so great a number of his friends and adherents into the other house he
had lost the majority among the national representatives. In consequence
of a clause in the humble petition and advice the commons assumed
a power of readmitting those members whom the council had formerly
excluded. Sir Arthur Hazelrig and some others, whom Cromwell had
created lords, rather chose to take their seat with the commons. An
incontestable majority now declared themselves against the protector;
and they refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of that other house
which he had established. Even the validity of the humble petition and
advice was questioned, as being voted by a parliament which lay under
force, and which was deprived by military violence of a considerable
number of its members. The protector, dreading combinations between
the parliament and the malecontents in the army, resolved to allow no
leisure for forming any conspiracy against him; and, with expressions of
great displeasure, he dissolved the parliament. When urged by Fleetwood
and others of his friends not to precipitate himself into this rash
measure, he swore by the living God that they should not sit a moment
longer.

These distractions at home were not able to take off the protector’s
attention from foreign affairs; and in all his measures, he proceeded
with the same vigor and enterprise, as if secure of the duty and
attachment of the three kingdoms. His alliance with Sweden he still
supported; and he endeavored to assist that crown in its successful
enterprises for reducing all its neighbors to subjection, and rendering
itself absolute master of the Baltic. As soon as Spain declared war
against him, he concluded a peace and an alliance with France, and
united himself in all his counsels with that potent and ambitious
kingdom. Spain, having long courted in vain the friendship of the
successful usurper, was reduced at last to apply to the unfortunate
prince. Charles formed a league with Philip, removed his small court
to Bruges in the Low Countries, and raised four regiments of his own
subjects, whom he employed in the Spanish service. The duke of York, who
had with applause served some campaigns in the French army, and who
had merited the particular esteem of Marshal Turenne, now joined his
brother, and continued to seek military experience under Don John of
Austria, and the prince of Condé.

The scheme of foreign politics adopted by the protector was highly
imprudent, but was suitable to that magnanimity and enterprise with
which he was so signally endowed. He was particularly desirous of
conquest and dominion on the continent;[*] and he sent over into
Flanders six thousand men under Reynolds, who joined the French army
commanded by Turenne. In the former campaign, Mardyke was taken, and put
into the hands of the English. Early this campaign, siege was laid to
Dunkirk; and when the Spanish army advanced to relieve it, the combined
armies of France and England marched out of their trenches, and fought
the battle of the Dunes, where the Spaniards were totally defeated.[**]

     * He aspired to get possession of Elsinore and the passage
     of the Sound. See World’s Mistake in Oliver Cromwell. He
     also endeavored to get possession of Bremen. Thurloe, vol.
     vi. p. 478.

     * It was remarked by the saints of that time, that the
     battle was fought on a day which was held for a fast in
     London; so that, as Fleetwood said, (Thurloe, vol. vii. p.
     159,) “while we were praying, they were fighting; and the
     Lord hath given a signal answer. The Lord has not only owned
     us in our work there, but in our waiting upon him in a way
     of prayer, which is indeed our old experienced approved way
     in all streights and difficulties.” Cromwell’s letter to
     Blake and Montague, his brave admirals, is remarkable for
     the same spirit. Thurloe, vol. iv. p. 744. “You have,” says
     he, “as I verily believe and am persuaded, a plentiful stock
     of prayers going for you daily, sent up by the soberest and
     most approved ministers and Christians in this nation; and,
     notwithstanding some discouragements very much wrestling of
     faith for you, which are to us, and I trust will be to you,
     matter of great encouragement. But notwithstanding all this,
     it will be good for you and us to deliver up ourselves and
     all our affairs to the disposition of our all-wise Father,
     who, not only out of prerogative, but because of his
     goodness, wisdom, and truth, ought to be resigned unto by
     his creatures, especially those who are children of his
     begetting through the spirit,” etc.

The valor of the English was much remarked on this occasion. Dunkirk,
being soon after surrendered, was by agreement delivered to Cromwell.
He committed the government of that important place to Lockhart,
a Scotchman of abilities, who had married his niece, and was his
ambassador at the court of France.

This acquisition was regarded by the protector as the means only of
obtaining further advantages. He was resolved to concert measures
with the French court for the final conquest and partition of the Low
Countries.[*] Had he lived much longer, and maintained his authority
in England, so chimerical, or rather so dangerous, a project would
certainly have been carried into execution. And this first and principal
step towards more extensive conquest, which France during a whole
century has never yet been able, by an infinite expense of blood
and treasure, fully to attain, had at once been accomplished by the
enterprising, though unskilful politics of Cromwell.

During these transactions, great demonstrations of mutual friendship
and regard passed between the French king and the protector. Lord
Fauconberg, Cromwell’s son-in-law, was despatched to Louis, then in the
camp before Dunkirk; and was received with the regard usually paid to
foreign princes by the French court.[**] Mazarine sent to London his
nephew Mancini, along with the duke of Crequi; and expressed his regret
that his urgent affairs should deprive him of the honor which he had
long wished for, of paying in person his respects to the greatest man in
the world.[***]

     * Thurloe, vol. i. p. 762.

     ** Thurloe, vol. vii. p. 151, 158.

     *** In reality, the cardinal had not entertained so high an
     idea of Cromwell. He used to say that he was a fortunate
     madman. Vie de Cromwell, par Raguenet. See also Carte’s
     Collection, vol. ii. p. 81 Gumble’s Life of Monk, p. 93.
     World’s Mistake in Oliver Cromwell.

The protector reaped little satisfaction from the success of his arms
abroad: the situation in which he stood at home kept him in perpetual
uneasiness and inquietude. His administration, so expensive both by
military enterprises and secret intelligence, had exhausted his revenue,
and involved him in a considerable debt. The royalists, he heard, had
renewed their conspiracies for a general insurrection; and Ormond was
secretly come over with a view of concerting measures for the execution
of this project. Lord Fairfax, Sir William Waller, and many heads of the
Presbyterians, had secretly entered into the engagement. Even the army
was infected with the general spirit of discontent; and some sudden
and dangerous eruption was every moment to be dreaded from it. No hopes
remained, after his violent breach with the last parliament, that
he should ever be able to establish, with general consent, a legal
settlement, or temper the military with any mixture of civil authority.
All his arts and policy were exhausted; and having so often, by fraud
and false pretences, deceived every party, and almost every individual,
he could no longer hope, by repeating the same professions, to meet with
equal confidence and regard.

However zealous the royalists, their conspiracy took not effect: Willis
discovered the whole to the protector. Ormond was obliged to fly, and he
deemed himself fortunate to have escaped so vigilant an administration.
Great numbers were thrown into prison. A high court of justice was anew
erected for the trial of those criminals whose guilt was most apparent.
Notwithstanding the recognition of his authority by the last parliament,
the protector could not as yet trust to an unbiased jury. Sir Henry
Slingsby and Dr. Huet were condemned and beheaded. Mordaunt, brother
to the earl of Peterborough, narrowly escaped. The numbers for his
condemnation and his acquittal were equal; and just as the sentence was
pronounced in his favor. Colonel Pride, who was resolved to condemn him,
came into court. Ashton, Storey, and Bestley were hanged in different
streets of the city.

The conspiracy of the Millenarians in the army struck Cromwell with
still greater apprehensions. Harrison and the other discarded officers
of that party could not remain at rest. Stimulated equally by revenge,
by ambition, and by conscience, they still harbored in their breast some
desperate project; and there wanted not officers in the army who,
from like motives, were disposed to second all their undertakings. The
levellers and agitators had been encouraged by Cromwell to interpose
with their advice in all political deliberations; and he had even
pretended to honor many of them with his intimate friendship, while he
conducted his daring enterprises against the king and the parliament. It
was a usual practice with him, in order to familiarize himself the more
with the agitators, who were commonly corporals or sergeants, to take
them to bed with him, and there, after prayers and exhortations, to
discuss together their projects and principles, political as well as
religious. Having assumed the dignity of protector, he excluded them
from all his councils, and had neither leisure nor inclination to
indulge them any further in their wonted familiarities. Among those who
were enraged at this treatment was Sexby, an active agitator, who now
employed against him all that restless industry which had formerly
been exerted in his favor. He even went so far as to enter into a
correspondence with Spain, and Cromwell, who knew the distempers of
the army, was justly afraid of some mutiny, to which a day, an hour, an
instant, might provide leaders.

Of assassinations, likewise, he was apprehensive, from the zealous
spirit which actuated the soldiers. Sindercome had undertaken to murder
him; and by the most unaccountable accidents, had often been prevented
from executing his bloody purpose. His design was discovered; but the
protector could never find the bottom of the enterprise, nor detect any
of his accomplices. He was tried by a jury; and, notwithstanding the
general odium attending that crime, notwithstanding the clear and full
proof of his guilt, so little conviction prevailed of the protector’s
right to the supreme government, it was with the utmost difficulty[*]
that this conspirator was condemned. When every thing was prepared for
his execution, he was found dead; from poison, as is supposed, which he
had voluntarily taken.

     * Thurloe, voL vi. p. 53.

The protector might better have supported those fears and apprehensions
which the public distempers occasioned, had he enjoyed any domestic
satisfaction, or possessed any cordial friend of his own family, in
whose bosom he could safely have unloaded his anxious and corroding
cares. But Fleetwood, his son-in-law, actuated by the wildest zeal,
began to estrange himself from him; and was enraged to discover, that
Cromwell, in all his enterprises, had entertained views of promoting his
own grandeur, more than of encouraging piety and religion, of which
he made such fervent professions. His eldest daughter, married to
Fleetwood, had adopted republican principles so vehement, that she could
not with patience behold power lodged in a single person, even in her
indulgent father. His other daughters were no less prejudiced in favor
of the royal cause, and regretted the violences and iniquities into
which, they thought, their family had so unhappily been transported.
Above all, the sickness of Mrs. Claypole, his peculiar favorite, a lady
endued with many humane virtues and amiable accomplishments, depressed
his anxious mind, and poisoned all his enjoyments. She had entertained a
high regard for Dr. Huet, lately executed; and being refused his pardon,
the melancholy of her temper, increased by her distempered body, had
prompted her to lament to her father all his sanguinary measures, and
urge him to compunction for those heinous crimes into which his fatal
ambition had betrayed him. Her death, which followed soon after, gave
new edge to every word which she had uttered.

All composure of mind was now forever fled from the protector: he felt
that the grandeur which he had attained with so much guilt and courage,
could not insure him that tranquillity which it belongs to virtue alone,
and moderation, fully to ascertain. Overwhelmed with the load of public
affairs, dreading perpetually some fatal accident in his distempered
government, seeing nothing around him but treacherous friends or enraged
enemies, possessing the confidence of no party, resting his title on
no principle, civil or religious, he found his power to depend on so
delicate a poise of factions and interests, as the smallest event was
able, without any preparation, in a moment to overturn. Death, too,
which with such signal intrepidity he had braved in the field, being
incessantly threatened by the poniards of fanatical or interested
assassins, was ever present to his terrified apprehension, and haunted
him in every scene of business or repose. Each action of his life
betrayed the terrors under which he labored. The aspect of strangers was
uneasy to him: with a piercing and anxious eye he surveyed every face to
which he was not daily accustomed. He never moved a step without strong
guards attending him: he wore armor under his clothes, and further
secured himself by offensive weapons, a sword, falchion, and pistols,
which he always carried about him. He returned from no place by
the direct road, or by the same way which he went. Every journey he
performed with hurry and precipitation. Seldom he slept above three
nights together in the same chamber; and he never let it be known
beforehand what chamber he intended to choose, nor intrusted himself
in any which was not provided with back doors, at which sentinels were
carefully placed. Society terrified him, while he reflected on his
numerous, unknown, and implacable enemies: solitude astonished him,
by withdrawing that protection which he found so necessary for his
security.

His body, also, from the contagion of his anxious mind, began to be
affected, and his health seemed sensibly to decline. He was seized with
a slow fever, which changed into a tertian ague. For the space of a
week, no dangerous symptoms appeared: and in the intervals of the
fits he was able to walk abroad. At length the fever increased, and he
himself began to entertain some thoughts of death, and to cast his
eye towards that future existence, whose idea had once been intimately
present to him; though since, in the hurry of affairs, and the shock of
wars and factions, it had, no doubt, been considerably obliterated. He
asked Goodwin, one of his preachers, if the doctrine were true, that
the elect could never fall, or suffer a final reprobation. “Nothing more
certain,” replied the preacher. “Then I am safe,” said the protector;
“for I am sure that once I was in a state of grace.”

His physicians were sensible of the perilous condition to which his
distemper had reduced him; but his chaplains, by their prayers, visions,
and revelations, so buoyed up his hopes, that he began to believe his
life out of all danger. A favorable answer, it was pretended, had been
returned by Heaven to the petitions of all the godly: and he relied
on their asseverations much more than on the opinion of the most
experienced physicians. “I tell you,” he cried with confidence to the
latter, “I tell you, I shall not die of this distemper: I am well
assured of my recovery. It is promised by the Lord, not only to my
supplications, but to those of men who hold a stricter commerce and more
intimate correspondence with him. Ye may have skill in your profession;
but nature can do more than all the physicians in the world, and God
is far above nature.” (*) Nay, to such a degree of madness did their
enthusiastic assurances mount, that, upon a fast day, which was observed
on his account both at Hampton Court and at Whitehall, they did not so
much pray for his health, as give thanks for the undoubted pledges which
they had received of his recovery. He himself was overheard offering
up his addresses to Heaven; and so far had the illusions of fanaticism
prevailed over the plainest dictates of natural morality, that he
assumed more the character of a mediator, in interceding for his people,
than that of a criminal, whose atrocious violation of social duty had,
from every tribunal, human and divine, merited the severest vengeance.

     * Bates. See also Ihurloe, vol. vii. p. 356, 416.

Meanwhile, all the symptoms began to wear a more fatal aspect; and
the physicians were obliged to break silence, and to declare that the
protector could not survive the next fit with which he was threatened.
The council was alarmed. A deputation was sent to know his will with
regard to his successor His senses were gone, and he could not now
express his intentions. They asked him whether he did not mean that his
eldest son, Richard, should succeed him in the protectorship. A simple
affirmative was, or seemed to be, extorted from him. Soon after, on the
third of September, that very day which he had always considered as the
most fortunate for him, he expired, A violent tempest, which immediately
succeeded his death, served as a subject of discourse to the vulgar. His
partisans, as well as his enemies, were fond of remarking this event;
and each of them endeavored, by forced inferences, to interpret it as a
confirmation of their particular prejudices.

The writers attached to the memory of this wonderful person, make
his character, with regard to abilities, bear the air of the most
extravagant panegyric: his enemies form such a representation of his
moral qualities as resembles the most virulent invective. Both of them,
it must be confessed, are supported by such striking circumstances in
his conduct and fortune, as bestow on their representation a great air
of probability. “What can be more extraordinary,” it is said,[*] “than
that a person of private birth and education, no fortune, no eminent
qualities of body, which have sometimes, nor shining talents of mind,
which have often, raised men to the highest dignities, should have the
courage to attempt, and the abilities to execute, so great a design as
the subverting one of the most ancient and best established monarchies
in the world? That he should have the power and boldness to put his
prince and master to an open and infamous death? Should banish that
numerous and strongly allied family? Cover all these temerities under a
seeming obedience to a parliament, in whose service he pretended to
be retained? Trample, too, upon that parliament in their turn,
and scornfully expel them as soon as they gave him ground of
dissatisfaction? Erect in their place the dominion of the saints, and
give reality to the most visionary idea which the heated imagination of
any fanatic was ever able to entertain? Suppress again that monster in
its infancy, and openly set up himself above all things that ever were
called sovereign in England? Overcome first all his enemies by arms, and
all his friends afterwards by artifice? Serve all parties patiently for
a while, and command them victoriously at last? Overrun each corner of
the three nations, and subdue, with equal facility, both the riches of
the south and the poverty of the north? Be feared and courted by all
foreign princes, and be adopted a brother to the gods of the earth? Call
together parliaments with a word of his pen, and scatter them again with
the breath of his mouth? Reduce to subjection a warlike and discontented
nation, by means of a mutinous army? Command a mutinous army by means of
seditious and factious officers? Be humbly and daily petitioned, that he
would be pleased, at the rate of millions a year, to be hired as master
of those who had hired him before to be their servant? Have the estates
and lives of three nations as much at his disposal as was once the
little inheritance of his father, and be as noble and liberal in the
spending of them? And lastly, (for there is no end of enumerating every
particular of his glory,) with one word bequeath all this power and
splendor to his posterity? He possessed of peace at home and triumph
abroad? Be buried among kings, and with more than regal solemnity; and
leave a name behind him not to be extinguished but with the whole world;
which as it was too little for his praise, so might it have been for his
conquests, if the short line of his mortal life could have stretched out
to the extent of his immortal designs?”

     * Cowley’s Discourses. This passage is altered in some
     particulars from the original.

My intention is not to disfigure this picture, drawn by so masterly
a hand: I shall only endeavor to remove from it somewhat of the
marvellous; a circumstance which, on all occasions, gives much ground
for doubt and suspicion. It seems to me, that the circumstance of
Cromwell’s life in which his abilities are principally discovered, is
his rising from a private station, in opposition to so many rivals, so
much advanced before him, to a high command and authority, in the army.
His great courage, his signal military talents, his eminent dexterity
and address, were all requisite for this important acquisition. Yet will
not this promotion appear the effect of supernatural abilities, when
we consider, that Fairfax himself, a private gentleman, who had not the
advantage of a seat in parliament, had, through the same steps,
attained even a superior rank, and, if endued with common capacity
and penetration, had been able to retain it. To incite such an army to
rebellion against the parliament, required no uncommon art or industry:
to have kept them in obedience had been the more difficult enterprise.
When the breach was once formed between the military and civil powers,
a supreme and absolute authority, from that moment, is devolved on the
general; and if he be afterwards pleased to employ artifice or policy,
it may be regarded, on most occasions, as great condescension, if not
as superfluous caution. That Cromwell was ever able really to blind or
overreach either the king or the republicans, does not appear: as they
possessed no means of resisting the force under his command, they were
glad to temporize with him, and, by seeming to be deceived, wait for
opportunities of freeing themselves from his dominion. If he seduced the
military fanatics, it is to be considered, that their interests and his
evidently concurred; that their ignorance and low education exposed them
to the grossest imposition; and that he himself was at bottom as frantic
an enthusiast as the worst of them; and, in order to obtain their
confidence, needed but to display those vulgar and ridiculous habits
which he had early acquired, and on which he set so high a value. An
army is so forcible, and at the same time so coarse a weapon, that
any hand which wields it, may, without much dexterity, perform any
operation, and attain any ascendant, in human society.

The domestic administration of Cromwell, though it discovers great
abilities, was conducted without any plan either of liberty or arbitrary
power: perhaps his difficult situation admitted of neither. His foreign
enterprises, though full of intrepidity, were pernicious to national
interest, and seem more the result of impetuous fury or narrow
prejudices, than of cool foresight and deliberation. An eminent
personage, however, he was in many respects, and even a superior genius;
but unequal and irregular in his operations. And though not defective
in any talent, except that of elocution, the abilities which in him were
most admirable, and which most contributed to his marvellous success,
were the magnanimous resolution of his enterprises, and his peculiar
dexterity in discovering the characters, and practising on the
weaknesses, of mankind.

If we survey the moral character of Cromwell with that indulgence which
is due to the blindness and infirmities of the human species, we shall
not be inclined to load his memory with such violent reproaches as
those which his enemies usually throw upon it. Amidst the passions and
prejudices of that period, that he should prefer the parliamentary to
the royal cause, will not appear extraordinary; since, even at present,
some men of sense and knowledge are disposed to think, that the
question, with regard to the justice of the quar* *rel, may be regarded
as doubtful and uncertain. The murder of the king, the most atrocious of
all his actions, was to him covered under a mighty cloud of republican
and fanatical illusions; and it is not impossible, but he might believe
it, as many others did, the most meritorious action that he could
perform. His subsequent usurpation was the effect of necessity, as well
as of ambition; nor is it easy to see how the various factions could
at that time have been restrained, without a mixture of military and
arbitrary authority. The private deportment of Cromwell, as a son, a
husband, a father, a friend, is exposed to no considerable censure, if
it does not rather merit praise. And, upon the whole, his character
does not appear more extraordinary and unusual by the mixture of so much
absurdity with so much penetration, than by his tempering such violent
ambition and such enraged fanaticism with so much regard to justice and
humanity.

Cromwell was in the fifty-ninth year of his age when he died. He was
of a robust frame of body, and of a manly, though not of an agreeable
aspect. He left only two sons, Richard and Henry; and three daughters;
one married to General Fleetwood, another to Lord Fauconberg, a third to
Lord Rich. His father died when he was very young. His mother lived till
after he was protector; and, contrary to her orders, he buried her with
great pomp in Westminster Abbey. She could not be persuaded that his
power or person was ever in safety. At every noise which she heard, she
exclaimed that her son was murdered; and was never satisfied that he was
alive, if she did not receive frequent visits from him. She was a decent
woman; and by her frugality and industry had raised and educated a
numerous family upon a small fortune. She had even been obliged to set
up a brewery at Huntingdon, which she managed to good advantage. Hence
Cromwell, in the invectives of that age, is often stigmatized with
the name of the brewer. Ludlow, by way of insult, mentions the great
accession which he would receive to his royal revenues upon his mother’s
death, who possessed a jointure of sixty pounds a year upon his estate.
She was of a good family, of the name of Stuart; remotely allied, as is
by some supposed, to the royal family.



CHAPTER LXII

THE COMMONWEALTH.

{1658.} All the arts of Cromwell’s policy had been so often practised,
that they began to lose their effect; and his power, instead of being
confirmed by time and success, seemed every day to become more uncertain
and precarious. His friends the most closely connected with him, and
his counsellors the most trusted, were entering into cabals against his
authority; and with all his penetration into the characters of men, he
could not find any ministers on whom he could rely. Men of probity and
honor, he knew, would not submit to be the instruments of a usurpation
violent and illegal: those who were free from the restraint of
principle, might betray, from interest, that cause in which, from no
better motives, they had enlisted themselves. Even those on whom he
conferred any favor, never deemed the recompense an equivalent for the
sacrifices which they made to obtain it: whoever was refused any demand,
justified his anger by the specious colors of conscience and of duty.
Such difficulties surrounded the protector, that his dying at so
critical a time is esteemed by many the most fortunate circumstance
that ever attended him; and it was thought, that all his courage
and dexterity could not much longer have extended his usurped
administration.

But when that potent hand was removed which conducted the government,
every one expected a sudden dissolution of the unwieldy and ill-jointed
fabric. Richard, a young man of no experience, educated in the country,
accustomed to a retired life, unacquainted with the officers, and
unknown to them, recommended by no military exploits, endeared by no
familiarities, could not long, it was thought, maintain that authority
which his father had acquired by so many valorous achievements and such
signal successes. And when it was observed, that he possessed only the
virtues of private life, which in his situation were so many vices;
that indolence, incapacity, irresolution, attended his facility and good
nature, the various hopes of men were excited by the expectation of
some great event or revolution. For some time, however, the public was
disappointed in this opinion. The council recognized the succession
of Richard: Fleetwood, in whose favor it was supposed, Cromwell
had formerly made a will, renounced all claim or pretension to the
protectorship: Henry, Richard’s brother, who governed Ireland with
popularity, insured him the obedience of that kingdom: Monk, whose
authority was well established in Scotland, being much attached to the
family of Cromwell, immediately proclaimed the new protector: the army,
every where, the fleet, acknowledged his title: above ninety addresses,
from the counties and most considerable corporations, congratulated
him on his accession, in all the terms of dutiful allegiance: foreign
ministers were forward in paying him the usual compliments: and Richard,
whose moderate, unambitious character never would have led him to
contend for empire, was tempted to accept of so rich an inheritance,
which seemed to be tendered to him by the consent of all mankind.

It was found necessary to call a parliament, in order to furnish
supplies, both for the ordinary administration, and for fulfilling those
engagements with foreign princes, particularly Sweden, into which the
late protector had entered. In hopes of obtaining greater influence in
elections, the ancient right was restored to all the small boroughs; and
the counties were allowed no more than their usual members.

{1659.} The
house of peers, or the other house, consisted of the same persons that
had been appointed by Oliver.

All the commons, at first, signed without hesitation an engagement not
to alter the present government. They next proceeded to examine the
humble petition and advice; and after great opposition and many vehement
debates, it was at length, with much difficulty, carried by the court
party to confirm it. An acknowledgment, too, of the authority of the
other house, was extorted from them; though it was resolved not to treat
this house of peers with any greater respect than they should return to
the commons. A declaration was also made, that the establishment of the
other house should nowise prejudice the right of such of the ancient
peers as had from the beginning of the war adhered to the parliament.
But in all these proceedings, the opposition among the commons was so
considerable, and the debates were so much prolonged, that all business
was retarded, and great alarm given to the partisans of the young
protector.

But there was another quarter from which greater dangers were justly
apprehended. The most considerable officers of the army, and even
Fleetwood, brother-in-law to the protector, were entering into cabals
against him. No character in human society is more dangerous than that
of the fanatic; because, if attended with weak judgment, he is exposed
to the suggestions of others; if supported by more discernment, he is
entirely governed by his own illusions, which sanctify his most selfish
views and passions. Fleetwood was of the former species; and as he was
extremely addicted to a republic, and even to the fifth monarchy
or dominion of the saints, it was easy for those who had insinuated
themselves into his confidence, to instil disgusts against the dignity
of protector. The whole republican party in the army, which was still
considerable, Fitz, Mason, Moss, Farley, united themselves to that
general. The officers, too, of the same party, whom Cromwell had
discarded, Overton, Ludlow, Rich, Okey, Alured, began to appear, and
to recover that authority which had been only for a time suspended.
A party, likewise, who found themselves eclipsed in Richard’s favor,
Sydenham, Kelsey, Berry, Haines, joined the cabal of the others. Even
Desborow, the protector’s uncle, lent his authority to that faction.
But above all, the intrigues of Lambert, who was now roused from his
retreat, inflamed all those dangerous humors, and threatened the nation
with some great convulsion. The discontented officers established their
meetings in Fleetwood’s apartments; and because he dwelt in Wallingford
House, the party received a denomination from that place.

Richard, who possessed neither resolution nor penetration, was prevailed
on to give an unguarded consent for calling a general council of
officers, who might make him proposals, as they pretended, for the
good of the army. No sooner were they assembled than they voted a
remonstrance. They there lamented, that the good old cause, as they
termed it, that is, the cause for which they had engaged against the
late king, was entirely neglected; and they proposed as a remedy, that
the whole military power should be intrusted to some person in whom
they might all confide. The city militia, influenced by two aldermen,
Tichburn and Ireton, expressed the same resolution of adhering to the
good old cause.

The protector was justly alarmed at those movements among the officers.
The persons in whom he chiefly confided, were all of them, excepting
Broghill, men of civil characters and professions; Fiennes, Thurloe,
Whitlocke, Wolseley, who could only assist him with their advice and
opinion. He possessed none of those arts which were proper to gain an
enthusiastic army. Murmurs being thrown out against some promotions
which he had made, “Would you have me,” said he, “prefer none but the
godly? Here is Dick Ingoldsby,” continued he, “who can neither pray nor
preach; yet will I trust him before ye all.”[*] This imprudence gave
great offence to the pretended saints. The other qualities of the
protector were correspondent to these sentiments: he was of a gentle,
humane, and generous disposition. Some of his party offering to put
an end to those intrigues by the death of Lambert, he declared that he
would not purchase power or dominion by such sanguinary measures.

The parliament was no less alarmed at the military cabals. They voted
that there should be no meeting or general council of officers, except
with the protector’s consent, or by his orders. This vote brought
affairs immediately to a rupture. The officers hastened to Richard, and
demanded of him the dissolution of the parliament. Desborow, a man of
a clownish and brutal nature, threatened him, if he should refuse
compliance. The protector wanted the resolution to deny, and possessed
little ability to resist. The parliament was dissolved; and by the same
act, the protector was by every one considered as effectually dethroned.
Soon after, he signed his demission in form.

Henry, the deputy of Ireland, was endowed with the same moderate
disposition as Richard; but as he possessed more vigor and capacity, it
was apprehended that he might make resistance. His popularity in Ireland
was great; and even his personal authority, notwithstanding his youth,
was considerable. Had his ambition been very eager, he had, no doubt,
been able to create disturbance: but being threatened by Sir Hardress
Waller, Colonel John Jones, and other officers, he very quietly resigned
his command, and retired to England. He had once entertained thoughts,
which he had not resolution to execute, of proclaiming the king in
Dublin.[**]

     * Ludlow.

     ** Carte’s Collections, vol. ii. p. 243.

Thus fell, suddenly and from an enormous height, but, by a rare fortune,
without any hurt or injury, the family of the Cromwells. Richard
continued to possess an estate, which was moderate, and burdened too
with a large debt, which he had contracted for the interment of his
father. After the restoration, though he remained unmolested, he thought
proper to travel for some years; and at Pezenas, in Languedoc, he was
introduced under a borrowed name to the prince of Conti. That prince,
talking of English affairs, broke out into admiration of Cromwell’s
courage and capacity. “But as for that poor, pitiful fellow Richard,”
 said he, “what has become of him? How could he be such a blockhead as
to reap no greater benefit from all his father’s crimes and successes?”
 Richard extended his peaceful and quiet life to an extreme old age, and
died not till the latter end of Queen Anne’s reign. His social virtues,
more valuable than the greatest capacity, met with a recompense
more precious than noisy fame, and more suitable--contentment and
tranquillity.

The council of officers, now possessed of supreme authority, deliberated
what form of government they should establish. Many of them seemed
inclined to exercise the power of the sword in the most open manner; but
as it was apprehended, that the people would with great difficulty
be induced to pay taxes levied by arbitrary will and pleasure, it was
agreed to preserve the shadow of civil administration, and to revive
the long parliament, which had been expelled by Cromwell. That assembly
could not be dissolved, it was asserted, but by their own consent; and
violence had interrupted, but was not able to destroy, their right
to government. The officers also expected, that as these members had
sufficiently felt their own weakness, they would be contented to act in
subordination to the military commanders, and would thenceforth allow
all the authority to remain where the power was so visibly vested.

The officers applied to Lenthal, the speaker, and proposed to him, that
the parliament should resume their seats. Lenthal was of a low, timid
spirit; and being uncertain what issue might attend these measures, was
desirous of evading the proposal. He replied, that he could by no means
comply with the desire of the officers; being engaged in a business
of far greater importance to himself, which he could not omit on
any account, because it concerned the salvation of his own soul. The
officers pressed him to tell what it might be. He was preparing, he
said, to participate of the Lord’s supper, which he resolved to take
next Sabbath. They insisted, that mercy was preferable to sacrifice; and
that he could not better prepare himself for that great duty, than
by contributing so the public service. All their remonstrances had no
effect.

However, on the appointed day, the speaker, being informed that a quorum
of the house was likely to meet, thought proper, notwithstanding the
salvation of his soul, as Ludlow observes, to join them; and the house
immediately proceeded upon business. The secluded members attempted, but
in vain, to resume their seats among them.

The numbers of this parliament were small, little exceeding seventy
members: the authority in the nation, ever since they had been purged by
the army, was extremely diminished; and, after their expulsion, had been
totally annihilated; but being all of them men of violent ambition, some
of them men of experience and capacity, they were resolved, since they
enjoyed the title of the supreme authority, and observed that some
appearance of a parliament was requisite for the purposes of the army,
not to act a subordinate part to those who acknowledged themselves
their servants. They chose a council, in which they took care that the
officers of Wallingford House should not be the majority: they appointed
Fleetwood lieutenant-general, but inserted in his commission, that it
should only continue during the pleasure of the house: they chose seven
persons, who should nominate to such commands as became vacant; and they
voted, that all commissions should be received from the speaker, and be
signed by him in the name of the house. These precautions, the tendency
of which was visible, gave great disgust to the general officers; and
their discontent would immediately have broken out into some resolution
fatal to the parliament, had it not been checked by the apprehensions of
danger from the common enemy.

The bulk of the nation consisted of royalists and Presbyterians; and
to both these parties the dominion of the pretended parliament had
ever been to the last degree odious. When that assembly was expelled by
Cromwell, contempt had succeeded to hatred; and no reserve had been used
in expressing the utmost derision against the impotent ambition of these
usurpers. Seeing them reinstated in authority, all orders of men
felt the highest indignation; together with apprehensions, lest such
tyrannical rulers should exert their power by taking vengeance upon
their enemies, who had so openly insulted them. A secret reconciliation,
therefore, was made between the rival parties; and it was agreed, that,
burying former enmities in oblivion, all efforts should be used for the
overthrow of the rump; so they called the parliament, in allusion
to that part of the animal body. The Presbyterians, sensible from
experience that their passion for liberty, how ever laudable, had
carried them into unwarrantable excesses were willing to lay aside
ancient jealousies, and at all hazards to restore the royal family.
The nobility, the gentry, bent their passionate endeavors to the same
enterprise, by which alone they could be redeemed from slavery. And no
man was so remote from party, so indifferent to public good, as not to
feel the most ardent wishes for the dissolution of that tyranny, which,
whether the civil or the military part of it were considered, appeared
equally oppressive and ruinous to the nation.

Mordaunt, who had so narrowly escaped on his trial before the high court
of justice, seemed rather animated than daunted with past danger; and
having by his resolute behavior obtained the highest confidence of the
royal party, he was now become the centre of all their conspiracies. In
many counties, a resolution was taken to rise in arms. Lord Willoughby
of Parham and Sir Horatio Townshend undertook to secure Lynne. General
Massey engaged to seize Gloucester: Lord Newport, Littleton, and other
gentlemen, conspired to take possession of Shrewsbury; Sir George
Booth of Chester; Sir Thomas Middleton of North Wales; Arundel, Pollar,
Granville, Trelawney, of Plymouth and Exeter. A day was appointed for
the execution of all these enterprises. And the king, attended by the
duke of York, had secretly arrived at Calais, with a resolution of
putting himself at the head of his loyal subjects. The French court
had promised to supply him with a small body of forces, in order to
countenance the insurrections of the English.

This combination was disconcerted by the infidelity of Sir Richard
Willis. That traitor continued with the parliament the same
correspondence which he had begun with Cromwell. He had engaged to
reveal all conspiracies, so far as to destroy their effect; but reserved
to himself, if he pleased, the power of concealing the conspirators.
He took care never to name any of the old genuine cavaliers, who had
zealously adhered, and were resolved still to adhere, to the royal
cause in every fortune. These men he esteemed; these he even loved. He
betrayed only the new converts among the Presbyterians, or such lukewarm
royalists as, discouraged with their disappointments, were resolved to
expose themselves to no more hazards; a lively proof how impossible
it is, even for the most corrupted minds, to divest themselves of all
regard to morality and social duty.

Many of the conspirators in the different counties were thrown into
prison: others, astonished at such symptoms of secret treachery, left
their houses, or remained quiet: the most tempestuous weather prevailed
during the whole time appointed for the rendezvouses; insomuch that some
found it impossible to join their friends, and others were dismayed
with fear and superstition at an incident so unusual during the summer
season. Of all the projects, the only one which took effect, was that
of Sir George Booth for the seizing of Chester. The earl of Derby,
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Mr. Lee, Colonel Morgan, entered into this
enterprise. Sir William Middleton joined Booth with some troops from
North Wales; and the malecontents were powerful enough to subdue all in
that neighborhood who ventured to oppose them. In their declaration
they made no mention of the king; they only demanded a free and full
parliament.

The parliament was justly alarmed. How combustible the materials, they
well knew; and the fire was now fallen among them. Booth was of a family
eminently Presbyterian; and his conjunction with the royalists they
regarded as a dangerous symptom. They had many officers whose fidelity
they could more depend on than that of Lambert; but there was no one
in whose vigilance and capacity they reposed such confidence. They
commissioned him to suppress the rebels. He made incredible haste. Booth
imprudently ventured himself out of the walls of Chester, and exposed,
in the open field, his raw troops against these hardy veterans. He was
soon routed and taken prisoner. His whole army was dispersed. And the
parliament had no further occupation than to fill all the jails
with their open or secret enemies. Designs were even entertained of
transporting the loyal families to Barbadoes, Jamaica, and the other
colonies, lest they should propagate in England children of the same
malignant affections with themselves.

This success hastened the ruin of the parliament. Lambert, at the
head of a body of troops, was no less dangerous to them than Booth. A
thousand pounds, which they sent him to buy a jewel, were employed by
him in liberalities to his officers. At his instigation, they drew up a
petition, and transmitted it to Fleetwood, a weak man, and an honest,
if sincerity in folly deserve that honorable name. The import of this
petition was, that Fleetwood should be made commander-in-chief,
Lambert major-general, Desborow lieutenant-general of the horse, Monk
major-general of the foot. To which a demand was added, that no officer
should be dismissed from his command but by a court martial.

The parliament, alarmed at the danger, immediately cashiered Lambert,
Desborow, Berry, Clarke, Barrow, Kelsey, Cobbet. Sir Arthur Hazelrig
proposed the impeachment of Lambert for high treason. Fleetwood’s
commission was vacated, and the command of the army was vested in seven
persons, of whom that general was one. The parliament voted, that they
would have no more general officers. And they declared it high treason
to levy any money without consent of parliament.

But these votes were feeble weapons in opposition to the swords of the
soldiery. Lambert drew some troops together, in order to decide the
controversy. Okey, who was leading his regiment to the assistance of
the parliament, was deserted by them. Morley and Moss brought their
regiments into Palace-yard, resolute to oppose the violence of Lambert.
But that artful general knew an easy way of disappointing them. He
placed his soldiers in the streets which led to Westminster Hall. When
the speaker came in his coach, he ordered the horses to be turned, and
very civilly conducted him home. The other members were in like manner
intercepted. And the two regiments in Palace-yard, observing that they
were exposed to derision, peaceably retired to their quarters. A little
before this bold enterprise, a solemn fast had been kept by the army;
and it is remarked, that this ceremony was the usual prelude to every
signal violence which they committed.

The officers found themselves again invested with supreme authority, of
which they intended forever to retain the substance, however they
might bestow on others the empty shadow or appearance. They elected a
committee of twenty-three persons, of whom seven were officers. These
they pretended to invest with sovereign authority; and they called
them a “committee of safety.” They spoke every where of summoning a
parliament chosen by the people; but they really took some steps towards
assembling a military parliament, composed of officers elected from
every regiment in the service.[*]

     * Ludlow.

Throughout the three kingdoms there prevailed nothing but the
melancholy fears, to the nobility and gentry of a bloody massacre and
extermination; to the rest of the people, of perpetual servitude beneath
those sanctified robbers, whose union and whose divisions would be
equally destructive and who, under pretence of superior illuminations,
would soon extirpate, if possible, all private morality, as they had
already done all public law and justice, from the British dominions.

During the time that England continued in this distracted condition,
the other kingdoms of Europe were hastening towards a composure of those
differences by which they had so long been agitated. The parliament,
while it preserved authority, instead of following the imprudent
politics of Cromwell, and lending assistance to the conquering Swede,
embraced the maxims of the Dutch commonwealth, and resolved, in
conjunction with that state, to mediate by force an accommodation
between the northern crowns. Montague was sent with a squadron to
the Baltic, and carried with him, as ambassador, Algernon Sidney, the
celebrated republican. Sidney found the Swedish monarch employed in the
siege of Copenhagen, the capital of his enemy; and was highly pleased
that, with a Roman arrogance, he could check the progress of royal
victories, and display in so signal a manner the superiority of freedom
above tyranny. With the highest indignation, the ambitious prince was
obliged to submit to the imperious mediation of the two commonwealths.
“It is cruel,” said he, “that laws should be prescribed me by parricides
and pedlers.” But his whole army was enclosed in an island, and might be
starved by the combined squadrons of England and Holland. He was obliged
therefore to quit his prey, when he had so nearly gotten possession of
it; and having agreed to a pacification with Denmark, he retired into
his own country, where he soon after died.

The wars between France and Spain were also concluded by the treaty of
the Pyrenees. These animosities had long been carried on between the
rival states, even while governed by a sister and brother, who cordially
loved and esteemed each other. But politics, which had so long prevailed
over these friendly affections, now at last yielded to their influence;
and never was the triumph more full and complete. The Spanish Low
Countries, if not every part of that monarchy, lay almost entirely at
the mercy of its enemy. Broken armies, disordered finances, slow
and irresolute counsels by these resources alone were the dispersed
provinces of Spain defended against the vigorous power of France. But
the queen regent, anxious for the fate of her brother, employed
her authority with the cardinal to stop the progress of the French
conquests, and put an end to a quarrel which, being commenced by
ambition, and attended with victory, was at last concluded with
moderation. The young monarch of France, though aspiring and warlike in
his character, was at this time entirely occupied in the pleasures of
love and gallantry, and had passively resigned the reins of empire
into the hands of his politic minister. And he remained an unconcerned
spectator, while an opportunity for conquest was parted with, which he
never was able, during the whole course of his active reign, fully to
retrieve.

The ministers of the two crowns, Mazarine and Don Louis de Haro, met at
the foot of the Pyrenees, in the Isle of Pheasants, a place which was
supposed to belong to neither kingdom. The negotiation being brought
to an issue by frequent conferences between the ministers, the monarchs
themselves agreed to a congress; and these two splendid courts appeared
in their full lustre amidst those savage mountains. Philip brought his
daughter, Mary Therese, along with him; and giving her in marriage to
his nephew Louis, endeavored to cement by this new tie the incompatible
interests of the two monarchies. The French king made a solemn
renunciation of every succession which might accrue to him in right
of his consort; a vain formality, too weak to restrain the ungoverned
ambition of princes.

The affairs of England were in so great disorder, that it was not
possible to comprehend that kingdom in the treaty, or adjust measures
with a power which was in such incessant fluctuation. The king, reduced
to despair by the failure of all enterprises for his restoration, was
resolved to try the weak resource of foreign succors; and he went to the
Pyrenees at the time when the two ministers were in the midst of
their negotiations. Don Louis received him with that generous civility
peculiar to his nation; and expressed great inclination, had the low
condition of Spain allowed him, to give assistance to the distressed
monarch. The cautious Mazarine, pleading the alliance of France with
the English commonwealth, refused even to see him; and though the king
offered to marry the cardinal’s niece,[*] he could for the present
obtain nothing but empty profusions of respect and protestations of
services. The condition of that monarch, to all the world, seemed
totally desperate.

     * King James’s Memoirs.

His friends had been baffled in every attempt for his service: the
scaffold had often streamed with the blood of the more active royalists:
the spirits of many were broken with tedious imprisonments: the estates
of all were burdened by the fines and confiscations which had been
levied upon them: no one durst openly avow himself of that party: and so
small did their number seem to a superficial view, that, even should
the nation recover its liberty, which was deemed nowise probable, it was
judged uncertain what form of government it would embrace. But amidst
all these gloomy prospects, fortune, by a surprising revolution, was now
paving the way for the king to mount, in peace and triumph, the throne
of his ancestors. It was by the prudence and loyalty of General Monk
that this happy change was at last accomplished.

George Monk, to whom the fate was reserved of reëstablishing monarchy,
and finishing the bloody dissensions of three kingdoms, was the second
son of a family in Devonshire, ancient and honorable, but lately, from
too great hospitality and expense, somewhat fallen to decay. He betook
himself in early youth to the profession of arms; and was engaged in the
unfortunate expeditions to Cadiz and the Isle of Rhé. After England had
concluded peace with all her neighbors, he sought military experience in
the Low Countries, the great school of war to all the European nations;
and he rose to the command of a company under Lord Goring. This company
consisted of two hundred men, of whom a hundred were volunteers, often
men of family and fortune, sometimes noblemen, who lived upon their own
income in a splendid manner: such a military turn at that time prevailed
among the English.

When the sound of war was first heard in this island, Monk returned
to England, partly desirous of promotion in his native country, partly
disgusted with some ill usage from the states, of which he found reason
to complain. Upon the Scottish pacification, he was employed by the earl
of Leicester against the Irish rebels; and having obtained a regiment,
was soon taken notice of for his military skill, and for his calm and
deliberate valor. Without ostentation, expense, or caresses, merely by
his humane and equal temper, he gained the good will of the soldiery;
who, with a mixture of familiarity and affection, usually called
him “honest George Monk,” an honorable appellation, which they still
continued to him even during his greatest elevation. He was remarkable
for his moderation in party; and while all around him were inflamed
into rage against the opposite faction, he fell under suspicion from the
candor and tranquillity of his behavior. When the Irish army was called
over into England, surmises of this kind had been so far credited, that
he had even been suspended from his command, and ordered to Oxford, that
he might answer the charge laid against him. His established character
for truth and sincerity here stood him in great stead; and upon his
earnest protestations and declarations, he was soon restored to his
regiment, which he joined at the siege of Nantwich. The day after his
arrival, Fairfax attacked and defeated the royalists commanded by Biron,
and took Colonel Monk prisoner. He was sent to the Tower, where he
endured, above two years, all the rigors of poverty and confinement. The
king, however, was so mindful as to send him, notwithstanding his own
difficulties, a present of one hundred guineas; but it was not till
after the royalists were totally subdued that he recovered his liberty.
Monk, however distressed, had always refused the most inviting offers
from the parliament: but Cromwell, sensible of his merit, having
solicited him to engage in the wars against the Irish, who were
considered as rebels both by king and parliament, he was not unwilling
to repair his broken fortunes by accepting a command which, he flattered
himself, was reconcilable to the strictest principles of honor. Having
once engaged with the parliament, he was obliged to obey orders; and
found himself necessitated to fight both against the marquis of Ormond
in Ireland, and against the king himself in Scotland. Upon the reduction
of the latter kingdom, Monk was left with the supreme command; and by
the equality and justice of his administration, he was able to give
contentment to that restless people, now reduced to subjection by a
nation whom they hated. No less acceptable was his authority to the
officers and soldiers; and foreseeing that the good will of the army
under his command might some time be of great service to him, he had
with much care and success cultivated their friendship.

The connections which he had formed with Cromwell, his benefactor,
preserved him faithful to Richard, who had been enjoined by his father
to follow in every thing the directions of General Monk. When the long
parliament was restored, Monk, who was not prepared for opposition,
acknowledged their authority, and was continued in his command, from
which it would not have been safe to attempt dislodging him. After the
army had expelled the parliament, he protested against the violence, and
resolved, as he pretended, to vindicate their invaded privileges. Deeper
designs, either in the king’s favor or his own, were from the beginning
suspected to be the motive of his actions.

A rivalship had long subsisted between him and Lambert; and every body
saw the reason why he opposed the elevation of that ambitious general,
by whose success his own authority, he knew, would soon be subverted.
But little friendship had ever subsisted between him and the
parliamentary leaders; and it seemed nowise probable that he intended
to employ his industry, and spend his blood, for the advancement of ene
enemy above another. How early he entertained designs for the king’s
restoration, we know not with certainty: it is likely that, as soon
as Richard was deposed, he foresaw that, without such an expedient, it
would be impossible ever to bring the nation to a regular settlement.
His elder and younger brothers were devoted to the royal cause: the
Granvilles, his near relations, and all the rest of his kindred, were
in the same interests: he himself was intoxicated with no fumes of
enthusiasm, and had maintained no connections with any of the fanatical
tribe. His early engagements had been with the king; and he had left
that service without receiving any disgust from the royal family. Since
he had enlisted himself with the opposite party, he had been guilty
of no violence or rigor which might render him obnoxious. His return,
therefore, to loyalty, was easy and open; and nothing could be supposed
to counterbalance his natural propensity to that measure, except the
views of his own elevation, and the prospect of usurping the same
grandeur and authority which had been assumed by Cromwell. But from such
exorbitant, if not impossible projects, the natural tranquillity and
moderation of his temper, the calmness and solidity of his genius, not
to mention his age, now upon the decline, seem to have set him at a
distance. Cromwell himself, he always asserted,[*] could not long have
maintained his usurpation; and any other person, even equal to him in
genius, it was obvious, would now find it more difficult to practise
arts of which every one from experience was sufficiently aware. It is
more agreeable, therefore, to reason as well as candor, to suppose,
that Monk, as soon as he put himself in motion, had entertained views of
effecting the king’s restoration; nor ought any objections, derived
from his profound silence even to Charles himself, to be regarded as
considerable. His temper was naturally reserved; his circumstances
required dissimulation; the king, he knew, was surrounded with spies and
traitors; and, upon the whole, it seems hard to interpret that conduct
which ought to exalt our idea of his prudence, as a disparagement of his
probity.

     * Gumble’s Life of Monk, p. 93.

Sir John Granville, hoping that the general would engage in the king’s
service, sent into Scotland his younger brother, a clergyman, Dr. Monk,
who carried him a letter and invitation from the king. When the doctor
arrived, he found that his brother was then holding a council of
officers, and was not to be seen for some hours. In the mean time, he
was received and entertained by Price, the general’s chaplain, a man
of probity, as well as a partisan of the king’s. The doctor, having an
entire confidence in the chaplain, talked very freely to him about the
object of his journey, and engaged him, if there should be occasion,
to second his applications. At last, the general arrives; the brothers
embrace; and after some preliminary conversation, the doctor opens his
business. Monk interrupted him, to know whether he had ever before to
any body mentioned the subject. “To nobody,” replied his brother, “but
to Price, whom I know to be entirely in your confidence.” The general,
altering his countenance, turned the discourse; and would enter into
no further confidence with him, but sent him away with the first
opportunity. He would not trust his own brother the moment he knew that
he had disclosed the secret, though to a man whom he himself could have
trusted.[*]

     * Lord Lansdowne’s Defence of General Monk.

His conduct in all other particulars was full of the same reserve and
prudence; and no less was requisite for effecting the difficult work
which he had undertaken. All the officers in his army of whom he
entertained any suspicion, he immediately cashiered; Cobbet, who had
been sent by the committee of safety, under pretence of communicating
their resolutions to Monk, but really with a view of debauching his
army, he committed to custody: he drew together the several scattered
regiments: he summoned an assembly somewhat resembling a convention of
states; and having communicated to them his resolution of marching into
England, he received a seasonable, though no great supply of money.

Hearing that Lambert was advancing northward with his army, Monk sent
Cloberry and two other commissioners to London, with large professions
of his inclination to peace, and with offers of terms for an
accommodation. His chief aim was to gain time, and relax the
preparations of his enemies. The committee of safety fell into the
snare. A treaty was signed by Monk’s commissioners; but he refused
to ratify it, and complained that they had exceeded their powers. He
desired, however, to enter into a new negotiation at Newcastle. The
committee willingly accepted this fallacious offer.

Meanwhile these military sovereigns found themselves surrounded on all
hands with inextricable difficulties. The nation had fallen into total
anarchy; and by refusing the payment of all taxes, reduced the army
to the greatest necessities. While Lambert’s forces were assembling
at Newcastle, Hazelrig and Morley took possession of Portsmouth,
and declared for the parliament. A party, sent to suppress them, was
persuaded by their commander to join in the same declaration. The city
apprentices rose in a tumult, and demanded a free parliament. Though
they were suppressed by Colonel Hewson, a man who from the profession
of a cobbler had risen to a high rank in the army, the city still
discovered symptoms of the most dangerous discontent. It even
established a kind of separate government, and assumed the supreme
authority within itself. Admiral Lawson with his squadron came into the
river, and declared for the parliament. Hazelrig and Morley, hearing of
this important event, left Portsmouth, and advanced towards London. The
regiments near that city, being solicited by their old officers, who
had been cashiered by the committee of safety, revolted again to the
parliament. Desborow’s regiment, being sent by Lambert to support his
friends, no sooner arrived at St. Albans, than it declared for the same
assembly.

Fleetwood’s hand was found too weak and unstable to support this
ill-founded fabric, which every where around him was falling into ruins.
When he received intelligence of any murmurs among the soldiers, he
would prostrate himself in prayer, and could hardly be prevailed with
to join the troops. Even when among them, he would, in the midst of
any discourse, invite them all to prayer, and put himself on his knees
before them. If any of his friends exhorted him to more vigor, they
could get no other answer than, that God had spitten in his face, and
would not hear him. Men now ceased to wonder why Lambert had promoted
him to the office of general, and had contented himself with the second
command in the army.

Lenthal, the speaker, being invited by the officers, again assumed
authority, and summoned together the parliament, which twice before had
been expelled with so much reproach and ignominy. As soon as assembled,
they repealed their act against the payment of excise and customs; they
appointed commissioners for assigning quarters to the army; and, without
taking any notice of Lambert, they sent orders to the forces under his
command immediately to repair to those quarters which were appointed
them.

{1660.} Lambert was now in a very disconsolate condition. Monk, he saw,
had passed the Tweed at Coldstream, and was advancing upon him. His own
soldiers deserted him in great multitudes, and joined the enemy. Lord
Fairfax, too, he heard, had raised forces behind him, and had possessed
himself of York, without declaring his purpose. The last orders of the
parliament so entirely stripped him of his army, that there remained not
with him above a hundred horse: all the rest went to their quarters with
quietness and resignation; and he himself was, some time after, arrested
and committed to the Tower. The other officers, who had formerly been
cashiered by the parliament, and who had resumed their commands that
they might subdue that assembly, were again cashiered and confined to
their houses. Sir Harry Vane and some members who had concurred with
the committee of safety, were ordered into a like confinement. And the
parliament now seemed to be again possessed of more absolute authority
than ever, and to be without any danger of opposition or control.

The republican party was at this time guided by two men, Hazelrig and
Vane, who were of opposite characters, and mortally hated each other.
Hazelrig, who possessed greater authority in the parliament, was
haughty, imperious, precipitate, vainglorious; without civility, without
prudence; qualified only by his noisy, pertinacious obstinacy to
acquire an ascendant in public assemblies. Vane was noted in all civil
transactions for temper, insinuation, address, and a profound judgment;
in all religious speculations, for folly and extravagance. He was a
perfect enthusiast; and fancying that he was certainly favored with
inspiration, he deemed himself, to speak in the language of the times,
to be a _man above ordinances_, and, by reason of his perfection,
to be unlimited and unrestrained by any rules which govern inferior
mortals. These whimseys, mingling with pride, had so corrupted his
excellent understanding, that sometimes he thought himself the
person deputed to reign on earth for a thousand years over the whole
congregation of the faithful.[*]

     * Clarendon.

Monk, though informed of the restoration of the parliament, from whom
he received no orders, still advanced with his army, which was near six
thousand men: the scattered forces in England were above five times more
numerous. Fairfax, who had resolved to declare for the king, not being
able to make the general open his intentions, retired to his own house
in Yorkshire. In all counties through which Monk passed, the prime
gentry flocked to him with addresses, expressing their earnest desire
that he would be instrumental in restoring the nation to peace and
tranquillity, and to the enjoyment of those liberties which by law were
their birthright, but of which, during so many years, they had been
fatally bereaved; and that, in order to this salutary purpose, he would
prevail, either for the restoring of those members who had been secluded
before the king’s death, or for the election of a new parliament, who
might legally and by general consent again govern the nation. Though
Monk pretended not to favor these addresses, that ray of hope which the
knowledge of his character and situation afforded, mightily animated
all men. The tyranny and the anarchy which now equally oppressed the
kingdom; the experience of past distractions, the dread of future
convulsions, the indignation against military usurpation, against
sanctified hypocrisy; all these motives had united every party, except
the most desperate, into ardent wishes for the king’s restoration, the
only remedy for all these fatal evils.

Scot and Robinson were sent as deputies by the parliament, under
pretence of congratulating the general, but in reality to serve as
spies upon him. The city despatched four of their principal citizens to
perform like compliments; and at the same time to confirm the general
in his inclination to a free parliament, the object of all men’s
prayers and endeavors. The authority of Monk could scarcely secure the
parliamentary deputies from those insults which the general hatred
and contempt towards their masters drew from men of every rank and
denomination.

Monk continued his march with few interruptions till he reached St.
Albans. He there sent a message to the parliament, desiring them to
remove from London those regiments which, though they now professed to
return to their duty, had so lately offered violence to that assembly.
This message was unexpected, and exceedingly perplexed the house. Their
fate, they found, must still depend on a mercenary army; and they were
as distant as ever from their imaginary sovereignty. However, they found
it necessary to comply. The soldiers made more difficulty. A mutiny
arose among them. One regiment in particular, quartered in Somerset
House, expressly refused to yield their place to the northern army. But
those officers who would gladly on such an occasion have inflamed the
quarrel, were absent or in confinement; and for want of leaders, the
soldiers were at last, with great reluctance, obliged to submit. Monk
with his army took quarters in Westminster.

The general was introduced to the House; and thanks were given him by
Lenthal, for the eminent services which he had done his country. Monk
was a prudent, not an eloquent speaker. He told the house, that the
services which he had been enabled to perform were no more than his
duty, and merited not such praises as those with which they were pleased
to honor him: that among many persons of greater worth who bore their
commission, he had been employed as the instrument of Providence for
effecting their restoration; but he considered this service as a step
only to more important services, which it was their part to render to
the nation: that while on his march, he observed all ranks of men, in
all places, to be in earnest expectation of a settlement, after the
violent convulsions to which they had been exposed; and to have no
prospect of that blessing but from the dissolution of the present
parliament, and from the summoning of a new one, free and full, who,
meeting without oaths or engagements, might finally give contentment to
the nation: that applications had been made to him for that purpose; but
that he, sensible of his duty, had still told the petitioners, that the
parliament itself, which was now free, and would soon be full, was the
best judge of all these measures; and that the whole community ought
to acquiesce in their determination: that though he expressed himself in
this manner to the people, he must now freely inform the house, that the
fewer engagements were exacted, the more comprehensive would their plan
prove, and the more satisfaction would it give to the nation: and that
it was sufficient for public security, if the fanatical party and the
royalists were excluded; since the principles of these factions were
destructive either of government or of liberty.

This speech, containing matter which was both agreeable and disagreeable
to the house, as well as to the nation, still kept every one in
suspense, and upheld that uncertainty in which it seemed the general’s
interest to retain the public. But it was impossible for the kingdom
to remain long in this doubtful situation: the people, as well as the
parliament, pushed matters to a decision. During the late convulsions,
the payment of taxes had been interrupted; and though the parliament,
upon their assembling, renewed the ordinances for impositions, yet so
little reverence did the people pay to those legislators, that they gave
very slow and unwilling obedience to their commands. The common council
of London flatly refused to submit to an assessment required of them;
and declared that, till a free and lawful parliament imposed taxes, they
never should deem it their duty to make any payment. This resolution,
if yielded to, would immediately have put an end to the dominion of the
parliament: they were determined, therefore, upon this occasion, to make
at once a full experiment of their own power, and of their general’s
obedience.

Monk received orders to march into the city; to seize twelve persons,
the most obnoxious to the parliament; to remove the posts and chains
from all the streets; and to take down and break the portcullises and
gates of the city; and very few hours were allowed him to deliberate
upon the execution of these violent orders. To the great surprise
and consternation of all men, Monk prepared himself for obedience.
Neglecting the entreaties of his friends, the remonstrances of his
officers, the cries of the people, he entered the city in a military
manner; he apprehended as many as he could of the proscribed persons,
whom he sent to the Tower; with all the circumstances of contempt, he
broke the gates and portcullises; and having exposed the city to the
scorn and derision of all who hated it, he returned in triumph to his
quarters in Westminster.

No sooner had the general leisure to reflect, than he found that this
last measure, instead of being a continuation of that cautious ambiguity
which he had hitherto maintained, was taking party without reserve, and
laying himself, as well as the nation, at the mercy of that tyrannical
parliament, whose power and long been odious, as their persons
contemptible, to all men. He resolved, therefore, before it were too
late, to repair the dangerous mistake into which he had been betrayed,
and to show the whole world, still more without reserve, that he
meant no longer to be the minister of violence and usurpation. After
complaining of the odious service in which ha had been employed, he
wrote a letter to the house, reproaching them, as well with the
new cabals which they had formed with Vane and Lambert, as with the
encouragement given to a fanatical petition presented by Praise-God
Barebone; and he required them, in the name of the citizens, soldiers,
and whole commonwealth, to issue writs within a week, for the filling
of their house, and to fix the time for their own dissolution and the
assembling of a new parliament. Having despatched this letter, which
might be regarded, he thought, as an undoubted pledge of his sincerity,
he marched with his army into the city, and desired Allen, the mayor, to
summon a common council at Guildhall. He there made many apologies for
the indignity which two days before he had been obliged to put upon
them; assured them of his perseverance in the measures which he had
adopted; and desired that they might mutually plight their faith for
a strict union between city and army, in every enterprise for the
happiness and settlement of the commonwealth.

It would be difficult to describe the joy and exultation which displayed
itself throughout the city, as soon as intelligence was conveyed of this
happy measure embraced by the general. The prospect of peace, concord,
liberty, justice, broke forth at once from amidst the deepest darkness
in which the nation had ever been involved. The view of past calamities
no longer presented dismal prognostics of the future: it tended only
to enhance the general exultation for those scenes of happiness and
tranquillity which all men now confidently promised themselves. The
royalists, the Presbyterians, forgetting all animosities, mingled in
common joy and transport, and vowed never more to gratify the ambition
of false and factious tyrants by their calamitous divisions. The
populace more outrageous in their festivity, made the air resound with
acclamations, and illuminated every street with signals of jollity and
triumph. Applauses of the general were every where intermingled with
detestation against the parliament The most ridiculous inventions were
adopted, in order to express this latter passion. At every bonfire rumps
were roasted; and where these could no longer be found, pieces of
flesh were cut into that shape; and the funeral of the parliament
(the populace exclaimed) was celebrated by these symbols of hatred and
derision.

The parliament, though in the agonies of despair, made still one effort
for the recovery of their dominion. They sent a committee with offers
to gain the general. He refused to hear them, except in the presence
of some of the secluded members. Though several persons, desperate from
guilt and fanaticism, promised to invest him with the dignity of supreme
magistrate, and to support his government, he would not hearken to such
wild proposals. Having fixed a close correspondence with the city, and
established its militia in hands whose fidelity could be relied on, he
returned with his army to Westminster, and pursued every proper measure
for the settlement of the nation. While he still pretended to
maintain republican principles, he was taking large steps towards the
reëstablishment of the ancient monarchy.

The secluded members, upon the general’s invitation, went to the house,
and finding no longer any obstruction, they entered, and immediately
appeared to be the majority: most of the Independents left the place.
The restored members first repealed all the ordinances by which they had
been excluded: they gave Sir George Booth and his party their liberty
and estates: they renewed the general’s commission, and enlarged his
powers: they fixed an assessment for the support of the fleet and army:
and having passed these votes for the present composure of the kingdom,
they dissolved themselves, and issued writs for the immediate assembling
of a new parliament. This last measure had been previously concerted
with the general, who knew that all men, however different in
affections, expectations, and designs, united in their detestation of
the long parliament.

A council of state was established, consisting of men of character and
moderation; most of whom, during the civil wars, had made a great figure
among the Presbyterians. The militia of the kingdom was put into such
hands as would promote order and settlement. These, conjoined with
Monk’s army, which lay united at London, were esteemed a sufficient
check on the more numerous, though dispersed army, of whose inclinations
there was still much reason to be diffident Monk, however, was every day
removing the more obnoxious officers, and bringing the troops to a state
of discipline and obedience.

Overton, governor of Hull, had declared his resolution to keep
possession of that fortress till the coming of King Jesus, but when
Alured produced the authority of parliament for his delivering the place
to Colonel Fairfax, he thought proper to comply.

Montague, who commanded the fleet in the Baltic, had entered into the
conspiracy with Sir George Booth; and pretending want of provisions, had
sailed from the Sound towards the coast of England, with an intention
of supporting that insurrection of the royalists. On his arrival,
he received the news of Booth’s defeat, and the total failure of the
enterprise. The great difficulties to which the parliament was then
reduced, allowed them no leisure to examine strictly the reasons
which he gave for quitting his station; and they allowed him to retire
peaceably to his country house. The council of state now conferred on
him, in conjunction with Monk, the command of the fleet; and secured
the naval, as well as military force, in hands favorable to the public
settlement.

Notwithstanding all these steps which were taking towards the
reëstablishment of monarchy, Monk still maintained the appearance of
zeal for a commonwealth, and hitherto allowed no canal of correspondence
between himself and the king to be opened. To call a free parliament,
and to restore the royal family, were visibly, in the present
disposition of the kingdom, one and the same measure: yet would not the
general declare, otherwise than by his actions, that he had adopted
the king’s interests; and nothing but necessity extorted at last the
confession from him. His silence in the commencement of his enterprise
ought to be no objection to his sincerity; since he maintained the same
reserve at a time when, consistent with common sense, he could have
entertained no other purpose.[*] [27]

     * See note AA, at the end of the volume.

There was one Morrice, a gentleman of Devonshire, of a sedentary,
studious disposition, nearly related to Monk, and one who had always
maintained the strictest intimacy with him. With this friend alone did
Monk deliberate concerning that great enterprise which he had projected.
Sir John Granville, who had a commission from the king, applied to
Morrice for access to the general; but received for answer, that the
general desired him to communicate his business to Morrice. Granville,
though importunately urged, twice refused to deliver his message to any
but Monk himself; and this cautious politician, finding him now a person
whose secrecy could be safely trusted, admitted him to his presence,
and opened to him his whole intentions. Still he scrupled to commit
any thing to writing: he delivered only a verbal message by Granville
assuring the king of his services, giving advice for his conduct, and
exhorting him instantly to leave the Spanish territories, and retire
into Holland. He was apprehensive lest Spain might detain him as a
pledge for the recovery of Dunkirk and Jamaica. Charles followed these
directions, and very narrowly escaped to Breda. Had he protracted his
journey a few hours, he had certainly, under pretence of honor and
respect, been arrested by the Spaniards.[*]

Lockhart, who was governor of Dunkirk, and nowise averse to the king’s
service, was applied to on this occasion. The state of England was
set before him, the certainty of the restoration represented, and the
prospect of great favor displayed, if he would anticipate the vows of
the kingdom, and receive the king into his fortress. Lockhart still
replied, that his commission was derived from an English parliament, and
he would not open his gates but in obedience to the same authority.[**]
This scruple, though in the present emergence it approaches towards
superstition, it is difficult for us entirely to condemn.

     * Lansdowne, Clarendon.

     ** Burnet.

The elections for the new parliament went every where in favor of the
king’s party. This was one of those popular torrents, where the most
indifferent, or even the most averse, are transported with the general
passion, and zealously adopt the sentiments of the community to which
they belong. The enthusiasts themselves seemed to be disarmed of their
fury; and, between despair and astonishment, gave way to those measures
which they found it would be impossible for them, by their utmost
efforts, to withstand. The Presbyterians and the royalists, being
united, formed the voice of the nation, which, without noise, but with
infinite ardor, called for the king’s restoration. The kingdom was
almost entirely in the hands of the former party; and some zealous
leaders among them began to renew the demand of those conditions which
had been required of the late king in the treaty of Newport: but
the general opinion seemed to condemn all those rigorous and jealous
capitulations with their sovereign. Harassed with convulsions and
disorders, men ardently longed for repose; and were terrified at the
mention of negotiations or delays, which might afford opportunity to
the seditious army still to breed new confusion. The passion too for
liberty, having been carried to such violent extremes, and having
produced such bloody commotions, began, by a natural movement, to give
place to a spirit of loyalty and obedience; and the public was less
zealous in a cause which was become odious, on account of the calamities
which had so long attended it. After the legal concessions made by the
late king, the constitution seemed to be sufficiently secured; and the
additional conditions insisted on, as they had been framed during the
greatest ardor of the contest, amounted rather to annihilation than a
limitation of monarchy. Above all, the general was averse to the mention
of conditions; and resolved, that the crown, which he intended to
restore, should be conferred on the king entirely free and unencumbered.
Without further scruple, therefore, or jealousy, the people gave
their voice in elections for such as they knew to entertain sentiments
favorable to monarchy; and all paid court to a party, which they
foresaw was soon to govern the nation. Though the parliament had voted,
that no one should be elected who had himself, or whose father, had
borne arms for the late king, little regard was any where paid to this
ordinance. The leaders of the Presbyterians, the earl of Manchester,
Lord Fairfax, Lord Robarts, Hollis, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, Annesley,
Lewis, were determined to atone for past transgressions by their present
zeal for the royal interests; and from former merits, successes, and
sufferings, they had acquired with their party the highest credit and
authority.

The affairs of Ireland were in a condition no less favorable to the
king. As soon as Monk declared against the English army, he despatched
emissaries into Ireland, and engaged the officers in that kingdom
to concur with him in the same measures. Lord Broghill, president of
Munster, and Sir Charles Coote, president of Connaught, went so far
as to enter into a correspondence with the king, and to promise their
assistance for his restoration. In conjunction with Sir Theophilus Jones
and other officers, they took possession of the government, and
excluded Ludlow, who was zealous for the rump parliament, but whom they,
pretended to be in a confederacy with the committee of safety. They kept
themselves in readiness to serve the king; but made no declarations,
till they should see the turn which affairs took in England.

But all these promising views had almost been blasted by an untoward
accident. Upon the admission of the secluded members, the republican
party, particularly the late king’s judges, were seized with the justest
despair, and endeavored to infuse the same sentiment into the army. By
themselves or their emissaries, they represented to the soldiers, that
all those brave actions which had been performed during the war, and
which were so meritorious in the eyes of the parliament, would, no
doubt, be regarded as the deepest crimes by the royalists, and would
expose the army to the severest vengeance: that in vain did that
party make professions of moderation and lenity; the king’s death, the
execution of so many of the nobility and gentry, the sequestration
and imprisonment of the rest, were in their eyes crimes so deep, and
offences so personal, as must be prosecuted with the most implacable
resentment: that the loss of all arrears, and the cashiering of
every officer and soldier, were the lightest punishment which must
be expected; after the dispersion of the army, no further protection
remained to them, either for life or property, but the clemency of
enraged victors: and that, even if the most perfect security could be
obtained, it were inglorious to be reduced by treachery and deceit to
subjection under a foe, who, in the open field, had so often yielded to
their superior valor.

After these suggestions had been infused into the army, Lambert suddenly
made his escape from the Tower, and threw Monk and the council of state
into great consternation. They knew Lambert’s vigor and activity; they
were acquainted with his popularity in the army; they were sensible
that, though the soldiers had lately deserted him, they sufficiently
expressed their remorse, and their detestation of those who, by false
professions, they found had so egregiously deceived them. It seemed
necessary, therefore, to employ the greatest celerity in suppressing so
dangerous a foe: Colonel Ingoldsby, who had been one of the late
king’s judges, but who was now entirely engaged in the royal cause,
was despatched after him. He overtook him at Daventry, while he had yet
assembled but four troops of horse. One of them deserted him. Another
quickly followed the example. He himself, endeavoring to make his
escape, was seized by Ingoldsby, to whom he made submissions not
suitable to his former character of spirit and valor. Okey, Axtel,
Cobbet, Crede, and other officers of that party, were taken prisoners
with him. All the roads were full of soldiers hastening to join them. In
a few days, they had been formidable. And it was thought, that it might
prove dangerous for Monk himself to have assembled any considerable body
of his republican army for their suppression: so that nothing could be
more happy than the sudden extinction of this rising flame.

When the parliament met, they chose Sir Harbottle Grimstone speaker, a
man who, though he had for some time concurred with the late parliament,
had long been esteemed affectionate to the king’s service. The great
dangers incurred during former usurpations, joined to the extreme
caution of the general, kept every one in awe; and none dared for some
days to make any mention of the king. The members exerted their spirit
chiefly in bitter invectives against the memory of Cromwell, and in
execrations against the inhuman murder of their late sovereign. At
last, the general, having sufficiently sounded their inclinations, gave
directions to Annesley, president of the council, to inform them, that
one Sir John Granville, a servant of the king’s, had been sent over by
his majesty, and was now at the door with a letter to the commons. The
loudest acclamations were excited by this intelligence. Granville was
called in; the letter, accompanied with a declaration, greedily
read: without one moment’s delay, and without a contradictory vote, a
committee was appointed to prepare an answer: and in order to spread the
same satisfaction throughout the kingdom, it was voted that the letter
and declaration should immediately be published.

The people, freed from the state of suspense in which they had so long
been held, now changed their anxious hope for the unmixed effusions of
joy; and displayed a social triumph and exultation, which no private
prosperity, even the greatest, is ever able fully to inspire. Traditions
remain of men, particularly of Oughtred, the mathematician, who died of
pleasure, when informed of this happy and surprising event. The King’s
declaration was well calculated to uphold the satisfaction inspired by
the prospect of public settlement. It offered a general amnesty to all
persons whatsoever: and that without any exceptions but such as should
afterwards be made by parliament: it promised liberty of conscience; and
a concurrence in any act of parliament which, upon mature deliberation,
should be offered, for insuring that indulgence: it submitted to
the arbitration of the same assembly, the inquiry into all grants,
purchases, and alienations; and it assured the soldiers of all their
arrears, and promised them, for the future, the same pay which they then
enjoyed.

The lords, perceiving the spirit by which the kingdom as well as the
commons was animated, hastened to reinstate themselves in their ancient
authority, and to take their share in the settlement of the nation. They
found the doors of their house open; and all were admitted, even such as
had formerly been excluded on account of their pretended delinquency.

The two houses attended; while the king was proclaimed, with great
solemnity, in Palace Yard, at Whitehall, and at Temple Bar. The commons
voted five hundred pounds to buy a jewel for Granville, who had brought
them the king’s gracious messages: a present of fifty thousand pounds
was conferred on the king, ten thousand pounds on the duke of York,
five thousand pounds on the duke of Gloucester. A committee of lords
and commons was despatched to invite his majesty to return and take
possession of the government. The rapidity with which all these events
were conducted was marvellous, and discovered the passionate zeal and
entire unanimity of the nation. Such an impatience appeared, and such
an emulation, in lords, and commons, and city, who should make the most
lively expressions of their joy and duty, that, as the noble historian
expresses it, a man could not but wonder where those people dwelt who
had done all the mischief, and kept the king so many years from enjoying
the comfort and support of such excellent subjects. The king himself
said, that it must surely have been his own fault, that he had not
sooner taken possession of the throne; since he found every body so
zealous in promoting his happy restoration.

The respect of foreign powers soon followed the submission of the king’s
subjects. Spain invited him to return to the Low Countries, and embark
in some of her maritime towns. France made protestations of affection
and regard, and offered Calais for the same purpose. The states general
sent deputies with a like friendly invitation. The king resolved to
accept of this last offer. The people of the republic bore him a cordial
affection; and politics no longer restrained their magistrates from
promoting and expressing that sentiment. As he passed from Breda to the
Hague, he was attended by numerous crowds, and was received with the
loudest acclamations; as if themselves, not their rivals in power and
commerce, were now restored to peace and security. The states general
in a body, and afterwards the states of Holland apart, performed their
compliments with the greatest solemnity: every person of distinction was
ambitious of being introduced to his majesty; all ambassadors and public
ministers of kings, princes, or states, repaired to him, and professed
the joy of their masters in his behalf; so that one would have thought,
that from the united efforts of Christendom had been derived this
revolution, which diffused every where such universal satisfaction.

The English fleet came in sight of Scheveling. Montague had not waited
for orders from the parliament; but had persuaded the officers of
themselves to tender their duty to his majesty. The duke of York
immediately went on board, and took the command of the fleet as high
admiral.

When the king disembarked at Dover, he was met by the general, whom he
cordially embraced. Never subject in fact, probably in his intentions,
had deserved better of his king and country. In the space of a few
months, without effusion of blood, by his cautious and disinterested
conduct alone, he had bestowed settlement on three kingdoms, which had
long been torn with the most violent convulsions; and having obstinately
refused the most inviting conditions offered him by the king, as well as
by every party in the kingdom, he freely restored his injured master to
the vacant throne. The king entered London on the twenty-ninth of May,
which was also his birthday. The fond imaginations of men interpreted as
a happy omen the concurrence of two such joyful periods.

At this era, it may be proper to stop a moment, and take a general
survey of the age, so far as regards manners, finances, arms, commerce,
arts, and sciences. The chief use of history is, that it affords
materials for disquisitions of this nature; and it seems the duty of an
historian to point out the proper inferences and conclusions.

No people could undergo a change more sudden and entire in their
manners, than did the English nation during this period. From
tranquillity, concord, submission, sobriety, they passed in an instant
to a state of faction, fanaticism, rebellion, and almost frenzy. The
violence of the English parties exceeded any thing which we can now
imagine: had they continued but a little longer, there was just reason
to dread all the horrors of the ancient massacres and proscriptions. The
military usurpers, whose authority was founded on palpable injustice,
and was supported by no national party, would have been impelled by
rage and despair into such sanguinary measures; and if these furious
expedients had been employed on one side, revenge would naturally have
pushed the other party, after a return of power, to retaliate upon their
enemies. No social intercourse was maintained between the parties; no
marriages or alliances contracted. The royalists, though oppressed,
harassed, persecuted, disdained all affinity with their masters. The
more they were reduced to subjection, the greater superiority did
they affect above those usurpers, who, by violence and injustice, had
acquired an ascendant over them.

The manners of the two factions were as opposite as those of the most
distant nations. “Your friends, the cavaliers,” said a parliamentarian
to a royalist, “are very dissolute and debauched.” “True,” replied
the royalist, “they have the infirmities of men; but your friends, the
roundheads, have the vices of devils--tyranny, rebellion, and spiritual
pride.”[*] Riot and disorder, it is certain, notwithstanding the good
example set them by Charles I., prevailed very much among his partisans.
Being commonly men of birth and fortune, to whom excesses are less
pernicious than to the vulgar, they were too apt to indulge themselves
in all pleasures, particularly those of the table. Opposition to the
rigid preciseness of their antagonists increased their inclination to
good fellow-ship; and the character of a man of pleasure was affected
among them, as a sure pledge of attachment to the church and monarchy.
Even when ruined by confiscations and sequestrations, they endeavored
to maintain the appearance of a careless and social jollity. “As much as
hope is superior to fear,” said a poor and merry cavalier, “so much is
our situation preferable to that of our enemies. We laugh while they
tremble.”

     * Sir Philip Warwick.

The gloomy enthusiasm which prevailed among the parliamentary party, is
surely the most curious spectacle presented by any history; and the
most instructive, as well as entertaining, to a philosophical mind.
All recreations were in a manner suspended by the rigid severity of
the Presbyterians and Independents. Horse-races and cock-matches were
prohibited as the greatest enormities.[*]

     * Killing no Murder

Even bear-baiting was esteemed heathenish and unchristian: the sport
of it, not the inhumanity, gave offence. Colonel Hewson, from his pious
zeal, marched with his regiment into London, and destroyed all the bears
which were kept there for the diversion of the citizens. This adventure
seems to have given birth to the fiction of Hudibras. Though the English
nation be naturally candid and sincere, hypocrisy prevailed among them
beyond any example in ancient or modern times. The religious hypocrisy,
it may be remarked, is of a peculiar nature; and being generally unknown
to the person himself, though more dangerous, it implies less falsehood
than any other species of insincerity. The Old Testament, preferably
to the New, was the favorite of all the sectaries. The Eastern poetical
style of that composition made it more easily susceptible of a turn
which was agreeable to them.

We have had occasion, in the course of this work, to speak of the
many sects which prevailed in England: to enumerate them all would
be impossible. The Quakers, however, are so considerable, at least so
singular, as to merit some attention; and as they renounced by principle
the use of arms, they never made such a figure in public transactions as
to enter into any part of our narrative.

The religion of the Quakers, like most others, began with the lowest
vulgar, and, in its progress, came at last to comprehend people of
better quality and fashion. George Fox, born at Drayton, in Lancashire,
in 1624, was the founder of this sect. He was the son of a weaver, and
was himself bound apprentice to a shoemaker. Feeling a stronger
impulse towards spiritual contemplations than towards that mechanical
profession, he left his master, and went about the country clothed in
a leathern doublet, a dress which he long affected, as well for its
singularity as its cheapness. That he might wean himself from sublunary
objects, he broke off all connections with his friends and family,
and never dwelt a moment in one place; lest habit should beget new
connections, and depress the sublimity of his aerial meditations. He
frequently wandered into the woods, and passed whole days in hollow
trees without company, or any other amusement than his Bible. Having
reached that pitch of perfection as to need no other book, he soon
advanced to another state of spiritual progress, and began to pay
less regard even to that divine composition itself. His own breast, he
imagined, was full of the same inspiration which had guided the prophets
and apostles themselves; and by this inward light must every spiritual
obscurity be cleared, by this living spirit must the dead letter be
animated.

When he had been sufficiently consecrated in his own imagination, he
felt that the fumes of self-applause soon dissipate, if not continually
supplied by the admiration of others; and he began to seek proselytes.
Proselytes were easily gained, at a time when all men’s affections were
turned towards religion, and when the most extravagant modes of it were
sure to be most popular. All the forms of ceremony, invented by pride
and ostentation, Fox and his disciples, from a superior pride and
ostentation, carefully rejected: even the ordinary rites of civility
were shunned, as the nourishment of carnal vanity and self-conceit. They
would bestow no titles, of distinction: the name of “friend” was the
only salutation, with which they indiscriminately accosted every one. To
no person would they make a bow, or move their hat, or give any signs
of reverence. Instead of that affected adulation introduced into modern
tongues, of speaking to individuals as if they were a multitude, they
returned to the simplicity of ancient languages; and “thou” and “thee”
 were the only expressions which, on any consideration, they could be
brought to employ.

Dress too, a material circumstance, distinguished the members of this
sect. Every superfluity and ornament was carefully retrenched: no plaits
to their coat, no buttons to their sleeves; no lace, no ruffles, no
embroidery. Even a button to the hat, though sometimes useful, yet
not being always so, was universally rejected by them with horror and
detestation.

The violent enthusiasm of this sect, like all high passions, being
too strong for the weak nerves to sustain, threw the preachers into
convulsions, and shakings, and distortions in their limbs; and they
thence receded the appellation of “Quakers.” Amidst the great toleration
which was then granted to all sects, and even encouragement given to all
innovations, this sect alone suffered persecution. From the fervor of
their zeal, the Quakers broke into churches, disturbed public worship,
and harassed the minister and audience with railing and reproaches. When
carried before a magistrate, they refused him all reverence, and treated
him with the same familiarity as if he had been their equal. Sometimes
they were thrown into mad-houses, sometimes into prisons; sometimes
whipped, sometimes pilloried. The patience and fortitude with which they
suffered, begat compassion, admiration, esteem.[*] A supernatural spirit
was believed to support them under those sufferings, which the ordinary
state of humanity, freed from the illusions of passion, is unable to
sustain.

     * The following story is told by Whitlocke, p. 599. Some
     Quakers at Hasington, in Northumberland, coming to the
     minister on the Sabbath day, and speaking to him, the people
     fell upon the Quakers, and almost killed one or two of them,
     who, going out, fell on their knees, and prayed God to
     pardon the people, who knew not what they did; and
     afterwards speaking to the people, so convinced them of the
     evil they had done in beating them, that the country people
     fell a quarrelling, and beat one another more than they had
     before beaten the Quakers.

The Quakers crept into the army; but as they preached universal peace,
they seduced the military zealots from their profession, and would soon,
had they been suffered, have put an end, without any defeat or calamity,
to the dominion of the saints. These attempts became a fresh ground of
persecution, and a new reason for their progress among the people.

Morals with this sect were carried, or affected to be carried to the
same degree of extravagance as religion. Give a Quaker a blow on one
cheek, he held up the other: ask his cloak, he gave you his coat also;
the greatest interest could not engage him, in any court of judicature,
to swear even to the truth: he never asked more for his wares than
the precise sum which he was determined to accept. This last maxim is
laudable, and continues still to be religiously observed by the sect.

No fanatics ever carried further the hatred to ceremonies forms, orders,
rites, and positive institutions. Even baptism and the Lord’s supper,
by all other sects believed to be interwoven with the very vitals of
Christianity, were disdainfully rejected by them. The very Sabbath they
profaned. The holiness of churches they derided; and they would give
to these sacred edifices no other appellation than that of shops or
steeplehouses. No priests were admitted in their sect: every one had
received from immediate illumination a character much superior to the
sacerdotal. When they met for divine worship, each rose up in his place,
and delivered the extemporary inspirations of the Holy Ghost: women
also were admitted to teach the brethren, and were considered as proper
vehicles to convey the dictates of the spirit. Sometimes a great
many preachers were moved to speak at once sometimes a total silence
prevailed in their congregations.

Some Quakers attempted to fast forty days, in imitation of Christ; and
one of them bravely perished in the experiment.[*] A female Quaker
came naked into the church where the protector sat; being moved by the
spirit, as she said, to appeal as a sign to the people. A number of
them fancied, that the renovation of all things had commenced, and that
clothes were to be rejected, together with other superfluities. The
sufferings which followed the practice of this doctrine, were a species
of persecution not well calculated for promoting it.

James Naylor was a Quaker, noted for blasphemy, or rather madness,
in the time of the protectorship. He fancied, that he himself was
transformed into Christ, and was become the real savior of the world;
and in consequence of this frenzy, he endeavored to imitate many actions
of the Messiah related in the evangelists. As he bore a resemblance to
the common pictures of Christ, he allowed his beard to grow in a like
form: he raised a person from the dead:[**] he was ministered unto by
women:[***] he entered Bristol mounted on a horse, (I suppose, from the
difficulty in that place of finding an ass:) his disciples spread their
garments before him, and cried, “Hosanna to the highest; holy, holy is
the Lord God of Sabaoth.” When carried before the magistrate, he would
give no other answer to all questions than “Thou hast said it.” What
is remarkable, the parliament thought that the matter deserved their
attention. Near ten days they spent in inquiries and debates about
him.[****]

     * Whitlocke, p. 624.

     ** Harleian Miscellany, vol. vi. p. 399. One Dorcas Barberry
     made oath before a magistrate, that she had been dead two
     days, and that Naylor had brought her to life.

     *** Harleian Miscellany, vol. vi. p. 399

     **** Thurloe, vol v. p. 708.

They condemned him to be pilloried, whipped, burned in the face, and to
have his tongue bored through with a red-hot iron. All these severities
he bore with the usual patience. So far his delusion supported him.
But the sequel spoiled all. He was sent to Bridewell, confined to hard
labor, fed on bread and water, and debarred from all his disciples,
male and female. His illusions dissipated; and after some time, he
was contented to come out an ordinary man, and return to his usual
occupations.

The chief taxes in England, during the time of the commonwealth, were
the monthly assessments, the excise, and the customs. The assessments
were levied on personal estates as well as on land;[*] and commissioners
were appointed in each county for rating the individuals. The highest
assessment amounted to one hundred and twenty thousand pounds a month
in England; the lowest was thirty-five thousand. The assessments in
Scotland were sometimes ten thousand pounds a month;[**] commonly six
thousand. Those on Ireland nine thousand. At a medium, this tax might
have afforded about a million a year. The excise, during the civil wars,
was levied on bread, flesh-meat, as well as beer, ale, strong waters and
many other commodities. After the king was subdued bread and flesh-meat
were exempted from excise. The customs on exportation were lowered in
1656.[***] In 1650, commissioners were appointed to levy both customs
and excises. Cromwell, in 1657, returned to the old practice of farming.
Eleven hundred thousand pounds were then offered, both for customs
and excise, a greater sum than had ever been levied by the
commissioners:[****] the whole of the taxes during that period might
at a medium amount to above two millions a year; a sum which,
though moderate, much exceeded the revenue of any former king.[v]
Sequestrations, compositions, sale of crown and church lands, and of the
lands of delinquents, yielded also considerable sums, but very
difficult to be estimated. Church lands are said to have been sold for
a million.[v*] None of these were ever valued at above ten or eleven
years’ purchase.[v**] The estates of delinquents amounted to above two
hundred thousand pounds a year.[**] Cromwell died more than two millions
in debt;[v***] though the parliament had left him in the treasury above
five hundred thousand pounds; and in stores, the value of seven hundred
thousand pounds.[v****]

     * Scobel, p. 419.

     ** Thurloe, vol. ii. p. 476.

     *** Scobel, p. 376.

     **** Thurloe, vol. vi. p. 425.

     v It appears that the late king’s revenue, from 1637 to the
     meeting of the long parliament, was only nine hundred
     thousand pounds of which two hundred thousand may be
     esteemed illegal.

     v* Dr Walker, p. 14.

     v** Thurloe, vol. i. p. 753.

     v*** Thurloe, vol. ii. p. 414.

     v**** Thurloe, vol. vii. p. 667.

The committee of danger, in April, 1648, voted to raise the army to
forty thousand men.[*] The same year, the pay of the army was estimated
at eighty thousand pounds a month.[**] The establishment of the army, in
1652, was, in Scotland, fifteen thousand foot, two thousand five hundred
and eighty horse, five hundred and sixty dragoons; in England, four
thousand seven hundred foot, two thousand five hundred and twenty horse,
garrisons six thousand one hundred and fifty-four. In all, thirty one
thousand five hundred and fourteen, besides officers.[***] The army in
Scotland was afterwards considerably reduced. The army in Ireland was
not much short of twenty thousand men; so that, upon the whole, the
commonwealth maintained, in 1652, a standing army of more than
fifty thousand men. Its pay amounted to a yearly sum of one million
forty-seven thousand seven hundred and fifteen pounds.[****] Afterwards
the protector reduced the establishment to thirty thousand men; as
appears by the “instrument of government and humble petition and
advice.” His frequent enterprises obliged him from time to time to
augment them. Richard had on foot in England an army of thirteen
thousand two hundred and fifty-eight men, in Scotland nine thousand five
hundred and six, in Ireland about ten thousand men.[v] The foot soldiers
had commonly a shilling a day.[v*] The horse had two shillings and
sixpence; so that many gentlemen and younger brothers of good family
enlisted in the protector’s cavalry.[v**] No wonder that such men were
averse from the reëstablishment of civil government, by which, they well
knew, they must be deprived of so gainful a profession.

At the time of the battle of Worcester the parliament had on foot about
eighty thousand men, partly militia, partly regular forces. The vigor
of the commonwealth, and the great capacity of those members who had
assumed the government, never at any time appeared so conspicuous.[v***]

     * Whitlocke, p. 298.

     ** Whitlocke, p. 378.

     *** Journal, 2d December, 1652.

     **** Journal, 2d December, 1652.

     v Journal, 6th of April, 1659.

     v* Thurloe, vol. i. p. 395; vol. ii. p. 414.

     v** Gumble’s Life of Monk.

     v*** Whitlocke, p. 477.

The whole revenue of the public during the protectorship of Richard was
estimated at one million eight hundred and sixty-eight thousand seven
hundred and seventeen pounds; his annual expenses at two millions two
hundred and one thousand five hundred and forty pounds. An additional
revenue was demanded from parliament.[*]

The commerce and industry of England increased extremely during the
peaceable period of Charles’s reign: the trade to the East Indies and to
Guinea became considerable. The English possessed almost the sole trade
with Spain. Twenty thousand cloths were annually sent to Turkey.[**]
Commerce met with interruption, no doubt, from the civil wars and
convulsions which afterwards prevailed; though it soon recovered after
the establishment of the commonwealth. The war with the Dutch, by
distressing the commerce of so formidable a rival, served to encourage
trade in England; the Spanish war was to an equal degree pernicious.
All the effects of the English merchants, to an immense value, were
confiscated in Spain. The prevalence of democratical principles engaged
the country gentlemen to bind their sons apprentices to merchants;[***]
and commerce has ever since been more honorable in England than in any
other European kingdom. The exclusive companies, which formerly confined
trade, were never expressly abolished by any ordinance of parliament
during the commonwealth; but as men paid no regard to the prerogative
whence the charters of these companies were derived, the monopoly was
gradually invaded, and commerce increased by the increase of liberty.
Interest in 1650 was reduced to six per cent.

The customs in England, before the civil wars, are said to have amounted
to five hundred thousand pounds a year;[****] a sum ten times greater
than during the best period in Queen Elizabeth’s reign: but there is
probably some exaggeration in this matter.

The post-house, in 1653, was farmed at ten thousand pounds a year, which
was deemed a considerable sum for the three kingdoms. Letters paid only
about half the present postage.

From 1619 to 1638, there had been coined six millions nine hundred
thousand and forty-two pounds. From 1638 to 1657, the coinage amounted
to seven millions seven hundred and thirty-three thousand five hundred
and twenty-one pounds.[v]

     * Journal, 7th April, 1659.

     ** Strafford’s Letters, vol. i. p. 421, 423, 430, 467.

     *** Clarendon.

     **** Lewis Roberts’s Treasure of Traffick.

     v Happy Future State of England

Dr. Davenant has told us, from the registers of the mint, that, between
1558 and 1659, there had been coined nineteen millions eight hundred
and thirty-two thousand four hundred and seventy-six pounds in gold and
silver.

The first mention of tea, coffee, and chocolate, is about 1660.[*]
Asparagus, artichokes, cauliflower, and a variety of salads, were about
the same time introduced into England.[**]

The colony of New England increased by means of the Puritans, who fled
thither in order to free themselves from the constraint which Laud and
the church party had imposed upon them; and, before the commencement of
the civil wars, it is supposed to have contained twenty-five thousand
souls.[***] For a like reason, the Catholics, afterwards, who found
themselves exposed to many hardships, and dreaded still worse treatment
went over to America in great numbers, and settled the colony of
Maryland.

Before the civil wars, learning and the fine arts were favored at
court, and a good taste began to prevail in the nation. The king loved
pictures, sometimes handled the pencil himself, and was a good judge of
the art. The pieces of foreign masters were bought up at a vast price;
and the value of pictures doubled in Europe by the emulation between
Charles and Philip IV. of Spain, who were touched with the same elegant
passion. Vandyke was caressed and enriched at court. Inigo Jones was
master of the king’s buildings; though afterwards persecuted by the
parliament, on account of the part which he had in rebuilding St.
Paul’s, and for obeying some orders of council, by which he was directed
to pull down houses, in order to make room for that edifice. Laws, who
had not been surpassed by any musician before him, was much beloved by
the king, who called him the father of music. Charles was a good judge
of writing, and was thought by some more anxious with regard to purity
of style than became a monarch.[****]

     * Anderson, vol. ii. p. 111.

     ** Anderson, vol. ii. p. 111.

     *** British Empire in America, vol. i. p. 372.

     **** Purnet.

Notwithstanding his narrow revenue, and his freedom from all vanity, he
lived in such magnificence, that he possessed four and twenty palaces,
all of them elegantly and completely furnished; insomuch that, when he
removed from one to another, he was not obliged to transport any thing
along with him.

Cromwell, though himself a barbarian was not insensible to literary
merit. Usher, notwithstanding his being a bishop, received a pension
from him. Marvel and Milton were in his service. Waller, who was his
relation, was caressed by him. That poet always said, that the protector
himself was not so wholly illiterate as was commonly imagined. He gave
a hundred pounds a year to the divinity professor at Oxford; and
an historian mentions this bounty as an instance of his love of
literature.[*] He intended to have erected a college at Durham for the
benefit of the northern counties.

Civil wars, especially when founded on principles of liberty are not
commonly unfavorable to the arts of elocution and composition; or
rather, by presenting nobler and more interesting objects, they amply
compensate that tranquillity of which they bereave the muses. The
speeches of the parliamentary orators, during this period, are of a
strain much superior to what any former age had produced in England;
and the force and compass of our tongue were then first put to trial. It
must, however, be confessed, that the wretched fanaticism, which so much
infected the parliamentary party, was no less destructive of taste and
science, than of all law and order. Gayety and wit were proscribed;
human learning despised; freedom of inquiry detested; cant and hypocrisy
alone encouraged. It was an article positively insisted on in the
preliminaries to the treaty of Uxbridge, that all play-houses should
forever be abolished. Sir John Davenant, says Whitlocke,[**] speaking
of the year 1658, published an opera, notwithstanding the nicety of the
times. All the king’s furniture was put to sale: his pictures, disposed
of at very low prices, enriched all the collections in Europe: the
cartoons, when complete, were only appraised at three hundred pounds,
though the whole collection of the king’s curiosities was sold at above
fifty thousand,[***]

     * Neale’s History of the Puritans, vol. iv. p. 123.

     ** Page 639.

     *** Parl. Hist. vol. xix. p. 83.

Even the royal palaces were pulled in pieces, and the materials of them
sold. The very library and medals at St. James’s were intended by the
generals to be brought to auction, in order to pay the arrears of some
regiments of cavalry quartered near London; but, Seiden, apprehensive
of the loss, engaged his friend Whitlocke, then lord-keeper for the
commonwealth, to apply for the office of librarian. This expedient saved
that valuable collection.

It is, however, remarkable, that the greatest genius by far that
shone out in England during this period, was deeply engaged with these
fanatics, and even prostituted his pen in theological controversy, in
factious disputes, and in justifying the most violent measures of the
party. This was John Milton, whose poems are admirable, though liable to
some objections; his prose writings disagreeable, though not altogether
defective in genius. Nor are all his poems equal: his Paradise Lost,
his Comus, and a few others, shine out amidst some flat and insipid
compositions. Even in the Paradise Lost, his capital performance, there
are very long passages, amounting to near a third of the work,
almost wholly destitute of harmony and elegance, nay, of all vigor
of imagination. This natural inequality in Milton’s genius was much
increased by the inequalities in his subject; of which some parts are of
themselves the most lofty that can enter into human conception; others
would have required the most labored elegance of composition to support
them. It is certain that this author, when in a happy mood, and employed
on a noble subject, is the most wonderfully sublime of any poet in any
language, Homer, and Lucretius, and Tasso not excepted. More concise
than Homer, more simple than Tasso, more nervous than Lucretius, had he
lived in a later age, and learned to polish some rudeness in his verses;
had he enjoyed better fortune, and possessed leisure to watch
the returns of genius in himself; he had attained the pinnacle of
perfection, and borne away the palm of epic poetry.

It is well known, that Milton never enjoyed in his lifetime the
reputation which he deserved. His Paradise Lost was long neglected:
prejudices against an apologist for the regicides, and against a work
not wholly purged from the cant of former times, kept the ignorant world
from perceiving the prodigious merit of that performance. Lord Somers,
by encouraging a good edition of it, about twenty years after the
author’s death, first brought it into request; and Tonson, in his
dedication of a smaller edition, speaks of it as a work just beginning
to be known. Even during the prevalence of Milton’s party, he seems
never to have been much regarded, and Whitlocke talks of one Milton, as
he calls him, a blind man, who was employed in translating a treaty with
Sweden into Latin. These forms of expression are amusing to posterity,
who consider how obscure Whitlocke himself though lord-keeper and
ambassador, and indeed a man of great abilities and merit, has become in
comparison of Milton.

It is not strange that Milton received no encouragement after the
restoration: it is more to be admired that he escaped with his life.
Many of the cavaliers blamed extremely that lenity towards him, which
was so honorable in the king, and so advantageous to posterity. It is
said, that he had saved Davenant’s life during the protectorship; and
Davenant in return afforded him like protection after the restoration;
being sensible that men of letters ought always to regard their sympathy
of taste as a more powerful band of union, than any difference of party
or opinion as a source of animosity. It was during a state of poverty,
blindness, disgrace, danger, and old age, that Milton composed his
wonderful poem, which not only surpassed all the performances of his
contemporaries, but all the compositions which had flowed from his
pen during the vigor of his age and the height of his prosperity. This
circumstance is not the least remarkable of all those which attend that
great genius. He died in 1674, aged sixty-six.

Waller was the first refiner of English poetry, at least of English
rhyme; but his performances still abound with many faults, and, what is
more material, they contain but feeble and superficial beauties. Gayety,
wit, and ingenuity are their ruling character: they aspire not to the
sublime; still less to the pathetic. They treat of love, without making
us feel any tenderness; and abound in panegyric, without exciting
admiration. The panegyric, however, on Cromwell, contains more force
than we should expect, from the other compositions of this poet.

Waller was born to an ample fortune, was early introduced to the court,
and lived in the best company. He possessed talents for eloquence as
well as poetry; and till his death, which happened in a good old age,
he was the delight of the house of commons. The errors of his life
proceeded more from want of courage, than of honor or integrity. He died
in 1687, aged eighty-two.

Cowley is an author extremely corrupted by the bad taste of his age; but
had he lived even in the purest times of Greece nor Rome, he must always
have been a very indifferent poet. He had no ear for harmony; and his
verses are only known to be such by the rhyme which terminates them. In
his rugged untenable numbers are conveyed sentiments the most strained
and distorted; long-spun allegories, distant allusions, and forced
conceits. Great ingenuity, however, and vigor of thought, sometimes
break out amidst those unnatural conceptions: a few anacreontics
surprise us by their ease and gayety: his prose writings please by the
honesty and goodness which they express, and even by their spleen and
melancholy. This author was much more praised and admired during his
lifetime, and celebrated after his death, than the great Milton. He died
in 1667, aged forty-nine.

Sir John Denham, in his Cooper’s Hill, (for none of his other poems
merit attention,) has a loftiness and vigor which had not before him
been attained by any English poet who wrote in rhyme. The mechanical
difficulties of that measure retarded its improvement. Shakspeare, whose
tragic scenes are sometimes so wonderfully forcible and expressive, is a
very indifferent poet when he attempts to rhyme. Precision and neatness
are chiefly wanting in Denham. He died in 1688, aged seventy-three.

No English author in that age was more celebrated, both abroad and at
home, than Hobbes: in our time, he is much neglected; a lively instance
how precarious all reputations founded on reasoning and philosophy.
A pleasant comedy, which paints the manners of the age, and exposes a
faithful picture of nature, is a durable work, and is transmitted to
the latest posterity. But a system, whether physical or metaphysical,
commonly owes its success to its novelty; and is no sooner canvassed
with impartiality than its weakness is discovered. Hobbes’s politics
are fitted only to promote tyranny, and his ethics to encourage
licentiousness. Though an enemy to religion, he partakes nothing of
the spirit of scepticism; but is as positive and dogmatical as if human
reason, and his reason in particular, could attain a thorough conviction
in these subjects. Clearness and propriety of style are the chief
excellencies of Hobbes’s writings. In his own person, he is represented
to have been a man of virtue; a character nowise surprising,
notwithstanding his libertine system of ethics. Timidity is the
principal fault with which he is reproached; he lived to an extreme old
age, yet could never reconcile himself to the thoughts of death. The
boldness of his opinions and sentiments form a remarkable contrast to
this part of his character. He died in 1679, aged ninety-one.

Harrington’s Oceana was well adapted to that age, when the plans of
imaginary republics were the daily subjects of debate and conversation;
and even in our time, it is justly admired as a work of genius and
invention. The idea however, of a perfect and immortal commonwealth,
will always be found as chimerical as that of a perfect and immortal
man. The style of this author wants ease and fluency; but the good
matter which his work contains, makes compensation. He died in 1677,
aged sixty-six.

Harvey is entitled to the glory of having made, by reasoning alone,
without any mixture of accident, a capital discovery in one of the most
important branches of science. He had also the happiness of establishing
at once his theory on the most solid and convincing proofs; and
posterity has added little to the arguments suggested by his industry
and ingenuity. His treatise of the circulation of the blood is further
embellished by that warmth and spirit which so naturally accompany the
genius of invention. This great man was much favored by Charles I.,
who gave him the liberty of using all the deer in the royal forests
for perfecting his discoveries on the generation of animals. It was
remarked, that no physician in Europe, who had reached forty years of
age, ever, to the end of his life, adopted Harvey’s doctrine of the
circulation of the blood; and that his practice in London diminished
extremely, from the reproach drawn upon him by that great and signal
discovery. So slow is the progress of truth in every science, even when
not opposed by factious or superstitious prejudices. He died in 1657,
aged seventy-nine.

This age affords great materials for history; but did not produce any
accomplished historian. Clarendon, however, will always be esteemed an
entertaining writer, even independent of our curiosity to know the facts
which he relates. His style is prolix and redundant, and suffocates
us by the length of its periods: but it discovers imagination and
sentiment, and pleases us at the same time that we disapprove of it. He
is more partial in appearance than in reality for he seems perpetually
anxious to apologize for the king; but his apologies are often well
grounded. He is less partial in his relation of facts, than in his
account of characters: he was too honest a man to falsify the former;
his affections were easily capable, unknown to himself, of disguising
the latter. An air of probity and goodness runs through the whole
work; as these qualities did in reality embellish the whole life of the
author. He died in 1674, aged sixty-six.

These are the chief performances which engage the attention of
posterity. Those numberless productions with which the press then
abounded; the cant of the pulpit, the declamations of party, the
subtilties of theology, all these have long ago sunk in silence and
oblivion. Even a writer such as Selden, whose learning was his chief
excellency, or Chillingworth, an acute disputant against the Papists,
will scarcely be ranked among the classics of our language or country.



NOTES

[Footnote 1: NOTE A, p. 15. By a speech of Sir Simon D’Ewes, in the
first year of the long parliament, it clearly appears, that the nation
never had, even to that time, been rightly informed concerning the
transactions of the Spanish negotiation, and still believed the court
of Madrid to have been altogether insincere in their professions. What
reason, upon that supposition, had they to blame either the prince or
Buckingham for their conduct, or for the narrative delivered to the
parliament? This is a capital fact, and ought to be well attended to.
D’Ewes’s speech is in Nalson, vol. ii. p. 368. No author or historian of
that age mentions the discovery of Buckingham’s impostures as a cause of
disgust in the parliament. Whitlocke (p. 1) only says, that the commons
began to suspect, that it had been spleen in Buckingham, not zeal for
public good, which had induced him to break the Spanish match; a clear
proof that his falsehood was not suspected. Wilson (p. 780) says, that
Buckingham lost his popularity after Bristol arrived, not because that
nobleman discovered to the world the falsehood of his narrative, but
because he proved that Buckingham, while in Spain, had professed himself
a Papist; which is false, and which was never said by Bristol. In all
the debates which remain, not the least hint is ever given that any
falsehood was suspected in the narrative. I shall further add, that even
if the parliament had discovered the deceit in Buckingham’s narrative,
this ought not to have altered their political measures, or made them
refuse supply to the king. They had supposed it practicable to wrest the
Palatinate by arms from the house of Austria; they had represented it
as prudent to expend the blood and treasure of the nation in such an
enterprise; they had believed that the king of Spain never had any
sincere intention of restoring that principality. It is certain that he
had not now any such intention; and though there was reason to suspect,
that this alteration in his views had proceeded from the ill conduct of
Buckingham, yet past errors could not be retrieved; and the nation
was undoubtedly in the same situation which the parliament had ever
supposed, when they so much harassed their sovereign by their impatient,
importunate, and even undutiful solicitations. To which we may add,
that Charles himself was certainly deceived by Buckingham when he
corroborated his favorite’s narrative by his testimony. Party
historians are somewhat inconsistent in their representations of these
transactions. They represent the Spaniards as totally insincere, that
they may reproach James with credulity in being so long deceived by
them. They represent them as sincere, that they may reproach the king,
the prince, and the duke with falsehood in their narrative to the
parliament. The truth is, they were insincere at first; but the reasons,
proceeding from bigotry, were not suspected by James, and were at last
overcome, They became sincere; but the prince, deceived by the many
unavoidable causes of delay, believed that they were still deceiving
him.]


[Footnote 2: NOTE B, p. 42. This petition is of so great importance,
that we shall here give it at length: Humbly show unto our sovereign
lord the king, the lords spiritual and temporal, and commons in
parliament assembled, That, whereas it is declared and enacted, by a
statute made in the time of the reign of King Edward I., commonly called
Statutum de Tallagio non concedendo, That no tallage or aid shall be
levied by the king or his heirs in this realm, without the good will and
assent of the archbishops, bishops, earls, barons, knights, burgesses,
and other the freemen of the commonalty of this realm; and, by authority
of parliament holden in the five and twentieth year of the reign of King
Edward III., it is declared and enacted, That, from thenceforth, no
person shall be compelled to make any loans to the king against his
will, because such loans were against reason, and the franchise of the
land; and, by other laws of this realm, it is provided, That none should
be charged by any charge or imposition called a benevolence, or by such
like charge; by which the statutes before mentioned, and other the good
laws and statutes of this realm, your subjects have inherited this
freedom, that they should not be compelled to contribute to any tax,
tallage, aid, or other like charge, not set by common consent in
parliament.

II. Yet, nevertheless, of late divers commissions, directed to sundry
commissioners in several counties, with instructions, have issued; by
means whereof your people have been in divers places assembled, and
required to lend certain sums of money unto your majesty; and many of
them, upon their refusal to do so, have had an oath administered unto
them not warrantable by the laws or statutes of this realm, and have
been constrained to become bound to make appearance and give attendance
before your privy council, and in other places; and others of them have
been therefore imprisoned, confined, and sundry other ways molested and
disquieted; and divers other charges have been laid and levied upon your
people, in several counties, by lord lieutenants, deputy lieutenants,
commissioners for musters, justices of peace, and others, by command or
direction from your majesty, or your privy council, against the laws and
free customs of this realm.

III. And whereas also, by the statute called the Great Charter of the
liberties of England, it is declared and enacted, That no freeman may
be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold or liberties, or
his free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or in any manner destroyed,
but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.

IV. And, in the eight and twentieth year of the reign of King Edward
III., it was declared and enacted, by authority of parliament, That no
man, of what estate or condition that he be, should be put out of his
land or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor dispirited, nor
put to death, without being brought to answer by due process of law.

V. Nevertheless, against the tenor of the said statutes, and other the
good laws and statutes of your realm to that end provided, divers of
your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause showed; and
when, for their deliverance, they were brought before justice, by your
majesty’s writs of habeas corpus there to undergo and receive as the
court should order, and their keepers commanded to certify the causes of
their detainer, no cause was certified, but that they were detained by
your majesty’s special command, signified by the lords of your privy
council, and yet were returned back to several prisons, without being
charged with any thing to which they might make answer according to the
law.

VI. And whereas of late great companies of soldiers and mariners have
been dispersed into divers counties of the realm, and the inhabitants,
against their wills, have been compelled to receive them into their
houses, and there to suffer them to sojourn, against the laws and
customs of this realm, and to the great grievance and vexation of the
people.

VII. And whereas also, by authority of parliament, in the five and
twentieth year of the reign of King Edward III., it is declared and
enacted, That no man should be forejudged of life or limb, against the
form of the Great Charter and law of the land; and, by the said Great
Charter, and other the laws and statutes of this your realm, no man
ought to be judged to death but by the laws established in this
your realm, either by the customs of the same realm, or by acts of
parliament; and whereas no offender, of what kind soever, is exempted
from the proceedings to be used, and punishments to be inflicted by
the laws and statutes of this your realm; nevertheless, of late divers
commissions, under your majesty’s great seal, have issued forth, by
which certain persons have been assigned and appointed commissioners,
with power and authority to proceed within the land, according to the
justice of martial law, against such soldiers and mariners, or other
dissolute persons joining with them, as should commit any murther,
robbery, felony, mutiny, or other outrage or misdemeanor whatsoever, and
by such summary course and order as is agreeable to martial law, and
as is used in armies in time of war, to proceed to the trial and
condemnation of such offenders, and them to cause to be executed and put
to death according to the law martial.

VIII. By pretext whereof, some of your majesty’s subjects have been by
some of the said commissioners put to death, when and where, if by the
laws and statutes of the land they had deserved death, by the same laws
and statutes also they might, and by no other ought, to have been judged
and executed.

IX. And also sundry grievous offenders, by color thereof claiming an
exemption, have escaped the punishments due to them by the laws and
statutes of this your realm, by reason that divers of your officers
and ministers of justice have unjustly refused or forborne to proceed
against such offenders, according to the same laws and statutes, upon
pretence that the said offenders were punishable only by martial law,
and by authority of such commissions as aforesaid; which commissions,
and all other of like nature, are wholly and directly contrary to the
said laws and statutes of this your realm.

X. They do therefore humbly pray your most excellent majesty That no
man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence,
tax, or such like charge, without common consent, by act of parliament;
and that none be called to make answer, or take such oath, or to
give attendance, or be confined, or otherways molested or disquieted
concerning the same, or for refusal thereof; and that no freeman, in any
such manner as is before mentioned, be imprisoned or detained; and that
your majesty would be pleased to remove the said soldiers and mariners,
and that people may not be so burdened in time to come; and that the
aforesaid commissions, for proceeding by martial law, may be revoked
and annulled; and that hereafter no commissions of like nature may issue
forth, to any person or persons whatsoever, to be executed as aforesaid,
lest, by color of them, any of your majesty’s subjects be destroyed, or
put to death, contrary to the laws and franchise of the land.

XL All which they most humbly pray of your most excellent majesty, as
their rights and liberties, according to the laws and statutes of this
realm; and that your majesty would also vouchsafe to declare, That the
awards, doings, and proceedings to the prejudice of your people, in
any of the premises, shall not be drawn hereafter into consequence or
example; and that your majesty would be also graciously pleased, for the
further comfort and safety of your people, to declare your royal will
and pleasure, that in the things aforesaid, all your officers and
ministers shall serve you according to the laws and statutes of this
realm, as they tender the honor of your majesty, and the prosperity of
this kingdom. Stat. 17 Car. cap. 14.]


[Footnote 3: NOTE C, p. 52. The reason assigned by Sir Philip Warwick
(p. 2) for this unusual measure of the commons, is, that they intended
to deprive the crown of the prerogative which it had assumed, of varying
the rates of the impositions, and at the same time were resolved to cut
off the new rates fixed by James. These were considerable diminutions
both of revenue and prerogative; and whether they would have there
stopped, considering their present disposition, may be much doubted. The
king, it seems, and the lords were resolved not to trust them; nor
to render a revenue once precarious, which perhaps they might never
afterwards be able to get reestablished on the old footing.]


[Footnote 4: NOTE D, p. 80. Here is a passage of Sir John Davis’s
Question concerning Impositions, (p. 131.) “This power of laying on
arbitrarily new impositions being a prerogative in point of government,
as well as in point of profit, it cannot be restrained or bound by act
of parliament; it can not be limited by any certain or fixt rule of law,
no more than the course of a pilot upon the sea, who must turn the helm
or bear higher or lower sail, according to the wind or weather; and
therefore it may be properly said, that the king’s prerogative, in this
point, is as strong as Samson; it cannot be bound; for though an act of
parliament be made to restrain it, and the king doth give his
consent unto it, as Samson was bound with his own consent; yet if the
Philistines come, that is, if any just or important occasion do arise,
it cannot hold or restrain the prerogative; it will be as thread, and
broken as easy as the bonds of Samson. The king’s prerogatives are the
sunbeams of the crown, and as inseparable from it as the sunbeams from
the sun. The king’s crown must be taken from him; Samson’s hair must
be cut off, before his courage can be any jot abated. Hence it is that
neither the king’s act, nor any act of parliament, can give away his
prerogative.”]


[Footnote 5: NOTE E, p. 121. We shall here make use of the liberty
allowed in a note to expatiate a little on the present subject. It
must be confessed, that the king in this declaration touched upon that
circumstance in the English constitution which it is most difficult,
or rather altogether impossible, to regulate by laws, and which must be
governed by certain delicate ideas of propriety and decency, rather than
by any exact rule or prescription. To deny the parliament all right of
remonstrating against what they esteem grievances, were to reduce that
assembly to a total insignificancy, and to deprive the people of every
advantage which they could reap from popular councils. To complain
of the parliament’s employing the power of taxation as the means of
extorting concessions from their sovereign, were to expect that they
would entirely disarm themselves, and renounce the sole expedient
provided by the constitution for insuring to the kingdom a just and
legal administration. In different periods of English story, there
occur instances of their remonstrating with their princes in the freest
manner, and sometimes of their refusing supply when disgusted with
any circumstance of public conduct. It is, however, certain, that this
power, though essential to parliaments, may easily be abused, as well
by the frequency and minuteness of their remonstrances, as by their
intrusion into every part of the king’s counsels and determinations.
Under color of advice, they may give disguised orders; and in
complaining of grievances, they may draw to themselves every power of
government. Whatever measure is embraced without consulting them, may
be pronounced an oppression of the people; and, till corrected, they may
refuse the most necessary supplies to their indigent sovereign. From the
very nature of this parliamentary liberty, it is evident that it must
be left unbounded by law; for who can foretell how frequently grievances
may occur, or what part of administration may be affected by them?
From the nature, too, of the human frame, it may be expected, that this
liberty would be exerted in its full extent, and no branch of authority
be allowed to remain unmolested in the hands of the prince; for will the
weak limitations of respect and decorum be sufficient to restrain human
ambition, which so frequently breaks through all the prescriptions of
law and justice?

But here it is observable, that the wisdom of the English constitution,
or rather the concurrence of accidents, has provided, in different
periods, certain irregular checks to this privilege of parliament and
thereby maintained, in some tolerable measure, the dignity and authority
of the crown.

In the ancient constitution, before the beginning of the seventeenth
century, the meetings of parliament were precarious, and were not
frequent. The sessions were short, and the members had no leisure
either to get acquainted with each other, or with public business. The
ignorance of the age made men more submissive to that authority which
governed them. And above all, the large demesnes of the crown, with
the small expense of government during that period, rendered the
prince almost independent, and taught the parliament to preserve great
submission and duty towards him.

In our present constitution, many accidents which have rendered
governments every where, as well as in Great Britain, much more
burdensome than formerly, have thrown into the hands of the crown the
disposal of a large revenue, and have enabled the king, by the private
interest and ambition of the members, to restrain the public interest
and ambition of the body. While the opposition (for we must still have
an opposition, open or disguised,) endeavors to draw every branch of
administration under the cognizance of parliament, the courtiers reserve
a part to the disposal of the crown; and the royal prerogative, though
deprived of its ancient powers, still maintains a due weight in the
balance of the constitution.

It was the fate of the house of Stuart to govern England at a period
when the former source of authority was already much diminished, and
before the latter began to flow in any tolerable abundance. Without a
regular and fixed foundation, the throne perpetually tottered; and the
prince sat upon it anxiously and precariously. Every expedient used
by James and Charles in order to support their dignity, we have seen
attended with sensible inconveniencies. The majesty of the crown,
derived from ancient powers and prerogatives, procured respect, and
checked the approaches of insolent intruders. But it begat in the king
so high an idea of his own rank and station, as made him incapable
of stooping to popular courses, or submitting, in any degree, to the
control of parliament. The alliance with the hierarchy strengthened law
by the sanction of religion; but it enraged the Puritanical party, and
exposed the prince to the attacks of enemies, numerous, violent, and
implacable. The memory, too, of these two kings, from like causes, has
been attended, in some degree, with the same infelicity which pursued
them during the whole course of their lives. Though it must be
confessed, that their skill in government was not proportioned to the
extreme delicacy of their situation, a sufficient indulgence has not
been given them, and all the blame, by several historians, has been
unjustly thrown on their side. Their violations of law, particularly
those of Charles, are, in some few instances, transgressions of a plain
limit which was marked out to loyal authority. But the encroachments of
the commons, though in the beginning less positive and determinate,
are no less discernible by good judges, and were equally capable of
destroying the just balance of the constitution. While they exercised
the powers transmitted to them in a manner more independent, and less
compliant, than had ever before been practised, the kings were, perhaps
imprudently, but as they imagined, from necessity, tempted to assume
powers which had scarcely ever been exercised, or had been exercised in
a different manner by the crown. And from the shock of these opposite
pretensions, together with religious controversy, arose all the
factions, convulsions, and disorders which attended that period.

“This footnote was in the first editions a part of the text.]


[Footnote 6: NOTE F, p. 166. Mr. Carte, in his Life of the duke of
Ormond, has given us some evidence to prove that this letter was
entirely a forgery of the popular leaders, in order to induce the king
to sacrifice Strafford. He tells us, that Strafford said so to his son
the night before his execution, But there are some reasons why I adhere
to the common way of telling this story. 1. The account of the forgery
comes through several hands, and from men of characters not fully known
to the public; a circumstance which weakens every evidence. It is a
hearsay of a hearsay. 2. It seems impossible but young Lord Strafford
must inform the king, who would not have failed to trace the forgery,
and expose his enemies to their merited infamy. 3. It is not to be
conceived but Clarendon and Whitlocke, not to mention others, must have
heard of the matter. 4. Sir George Ratcliffe, in his Life of Strafford,
tells the story the same way that Clarendon and Whitlocke do. Would
he also, who was Strafford’s intimate friend, never have heard of the
forgery? It is remarkable, that this Life is dedicated or addressed to
young Strafford. Would not he have put Sir George right in so material
and interesting a fact?]


[Footnote 7: NOTE G, p. 167. What made this bill appear of less
consequence was, that the parliament voted tonnage and poundage for no
longer a period than two months; and as that branch was more than half
of the revenue, and the government could not possibly subsist without
it, it seemed indirectly in the power of the parliament to continue
themselves as long as they pleased. This indeed was true in the ordinary
administration of government; but on the approaches towards a civil war,
which was not then foreseen, it had been of great consequence to the
king to have reserved the right of dissolution, and to have endured any
extremity rather than allow the continuance of the parliament.]


[Footnote 8: NOTE H, p. 190. It is now so universally allowed,
notwithstanding some muttering to the contrary, that the king had no
hand in the Irish rebellion, that it will be superfluous to insist on a
point which seems so clear. I shall only suggest a very few arguments,
among an infinite number which occur. 1. Ought the affirmation of
perfidious, infamous rebels ever to have passed for any authority? 2.
Nobody can tell us what the words of the pretended commission were. That
commission, which we find in Rush, (vol. v. p. 400,) and in Milton’s
Works, (Toland’s edition,) is plainly an imposture; because it pretends
to be dated in October, 1641, yet mentions facts which happened not
till some months after. It appears that the Irish rebels, observing
some inconsistence in their first forgery, were obliged to forge this
commission anew, yet could not render it coherent or probable. 3.
Nothing could be more obviously pernicious to the king’s cause than the
Irish rebellion: because it increased his necessities, and rendered
him still more dependent on the parliament, who had before sufficiently
shown on what terms they would assist him. 4. The instant the king heard
of the rebellion, which was a very few days after its commencement, he
wrote to the parliament, and gave over to them the management of the
war. Had he built any projects on that rebellion, would he not have
waited some little time, to see how they would succeed? Would he
presently have adopted a measure which was evidently so hurtful to his
authority? 5. What can be imagined to be the king’s projects? To raise
the Irish to arms, I suppose, and bring them over to England for his
assistance. But is it not plain, that the king never intended to raise
war in England? Had that been his intention, would he have rendered the
parliament perpetual? Does it not appear, by the whole train of events,
that the parliament forced him into the war? 6. The king conveyed to the
justices intelligence which ought to have prevented the rebellion. 7.
The Irish Catholics, in all their future transactions with the king,
where they endeavor to excuse their insurrection, never had the
assurance to plead his commission. Even amongst themselves they dropped
that pretext. It appears that Sir Phelim O’Neale chiefly, and he only at
first, promoted that imposture. See Carte’s Ormond, vol. iii. No. 100,
111, 112, 114, 115, 121, 132, 137. 8. O’Neale himself confessed the
imposture on his trial, and at his execution. See Nalson, vol. ii.
p. 528. Maguire, at his execution, made a like confession. 9. It is
ridiculous to mention the justification which Charles II. gave to the
marquis of Antrim, as if he had acted by his father’s commission. Antrim
had no hand in the first rebellion and the massacre. He joined not the
rebels till two years after; it was with the king’s consent, and he did
important service in sending over a body of men to Montrose.]

[Footnote 9: NOTE I, p. 220. The great courage and conduct displayed by
many of the popular leaders, have commonly inclined men to do them, in
one respect, more honor than they deserve, and to suppose that, like
able politicians, they employed pretences which they secretly despised,
in order to serve their selfish purposes. It is, however, probable, if
not certain, that they were, generally speaking, the dupes of their own
zeal. Hypocrisy, quite pure and free from fanaticism, is perhaps, except
among men fixed in a determined philosophical scepticism, then unknown,
as rare as fanaticism entirely purged from all mixture of hypocrisy.
So congenial to the human mind are religions sentiments, that it is
impossible to counterfeit long these holy fervors, without feeling some
share of the assumed warmth: and, on the other hand, so precarious and
temporary, from the frailty of human nature, is the operation of these
spiritual views, that the religious ecstasies, if constantly employed,
must often be counterfeit, and must be warped by those more familiar
motives of interest and ambition, which insensibly gain upon the mind.
This indeed teems the key to most of the celebrated characters of that
age. Equally full of fraud and of ardor, these pious patriots talked
perpetually of seeking the Lord, yet still pursued their own purposes;
and have left a memorable lesson to posterity, how delusive, how
destructive that principle is by which they were animated.

With regard to the people, we can entertain no doubt that the
controversy was, on their part, entirely theological. The generality of
the nation could never have flown out into such fury, in order to
obtain new privileges, and acquire greater liberty than they and their
ancestors had ever been acquainted with. Their fathers had been entirely
satisfied with the government of Elizabeth. Why should they have been
thrown into such extreme rage against Charles, who, from the beginning
of his reign, wished only to maintain such a government? And why not at
least compound matters with him, when, by all his laws, it appeared that
he had agreed to depart from it? especially AS he had put it entirely
out of his power to retract that resolution. It is in vain, therefore,
to dignify this civil war, and the parliamentary authors of it, by
supposing it to have any other considerable foundation than theological
zeal, that great source of animosity among men. The royalists also were
very commonly zealots; but as they were at the same time maintaining the
established constitution in state as well as church, they had an object
which was natural, and which might produce the greatest passion, even
without any considerable mixture of theological fervor.

The former part of this footnote was in the first editions a part of the
text]


[Footnote 11: NOTE K, p. 221. In some of these declarations, supposed to
be penned by Lord Falkland, is found the first regular definition of the
constitution, according to our present ideas of it, that occurs in any
English composition; at least any published by authority. The three
species of government, monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical,
are there plainly distinguished, and the English government is expressly
said to be none of them pure, but all of them mixed and tempered
together. This style, though the sense of it was implied in many
institutions, no former king of England would have used, and no subject
would have been permitted to use. Banks and the crown lawyers against
Hambden, in the case of ship money, insist plainly and openly on the
king’s absolute and sovereign power; and the opposite lawyers do not
deny it; they only assert, that the subjects have also a fundamental
property in their goods, and that no part of them can be taken but by
their own consent in parliament. But that the parliament was instituted
to check and control the king, and share the supreme power, would in
all former times have been esteemed very blunt and indiscreet, if not
illegal language. We need not be surprised that governments should long
continue, though the boundaries of authority in their several branches
be implicit, confused, and undetermined. This is the case all over the
world. Who can draw an exact line between the spiritual and temporal
powers in Catholic states? What code ascertained the precise authority
of the Roman senate in every occurrence? Perhaps the English is the
first mixed government where the authority of every part has been very
accurately defined; and yet there still remain many very important
questions between the two houses, that, by common consent, are buried in
a discreet silence. The king’s power is, indeed, more exactly limited;
but this period of which we now treat is the time a which that accuracy
commenced. And it appears from Warwick and Hobbes, that many royalists
blamed this philosophical precision in the king’s penman, and
thought that the veil was very imprudently drawn off the mysteries of
government. It is certain that liberty reaped mighty advantages from
these controversies and inquiries; and the royal authority itself became
more secure within those provinces which were assigned to it.

Since the first publication of this History, the sequel of Lord
Clarendon has been published; where that nobleman asserts, that he
himself was the author of most of these remonstrances and memorials of
the king.]


[Footnote 12: NOTE L, p. 240. Whitlocke, who was one of the
commissioners, says, (p. 65,) “In this treaty the king manifested
his great parts and abilities, strength of reason and quickness of
apprehension, with much patience in hearing what was objected against
him; wherein he allowed all freedom and would himself sum up the
arguments, and give a most clear judgment upon them. His unhappiness
was, that he had a better opinion of others’ judgments than of his
own, though they were weaker than his own; and of this the parliament
commissioners had experience to their great trouble. They were often
waiting on the king, and debating some points of the treaty with him
until midnight, before they could come to a conclusion. Upon one of the
most material points, they pressed his majesty with their reasons and
best arguments they could use to grant what they desired. The king said
he was fully satisfied, and promised to give them his answer in writing
according to their desire; but because it was then past midnight, and
too late to put it into writing, he would have it drawn up next morning,
when he commanded them to wait on him again, and then he would give them
his answer in writing as it was now agreed upon. But next morning the
king told them that he had altered his mind; and some of his friends, of
whom the commissioners inquired, told them, that after they were
gone, and even his council retired, some of his bed-chamber never left
pressing and persuading him till they prevailed on him to change his
former resolutions.” It is difficult, however, to conceive that any
negotiation could have succeeded between the king and parliament, while
the latter insisted, as they did all along, on a total submission to all
their demands; and challenged the whole power, which they professedly
intended to employ to the punishment of all the king’s friends.]


[Footnote 13: NOTE M, p. 247. The author is sensible that some blame
may be thrown upon him, on account of this last clause in Mr. Hambden’s
character; as if he were willing to entertain a suspicion of bad
intentions where the actions were praiseworthy. But the author’s meaning
is directly contrary. He esteems the last actions of Mr. Hambden’s
life to hare been very blamable; though, as they were derived from good
motives, only pushed to an extreme, there is room left to believe that
the intentions of that patriot, as well as of many of his party, were
laudable. Had the preceding administration of the king, which we are
apt to call arbitrary, proceeded from ambition, and an unjust desire
of encroaching on the ancient liberties of the people, there would have
been less reason for giving him any trust, or leaving in his hands a
considerable share of that power which he had so much abused. But if
his conduct was derived in a great measure from necessity, and from a
natural desire of defending that prerogative which was transmitted
to him from his ancestors, and which his parliaments were visibly
encroaching on, there is no reason why he may not be esteemed a very
virtuous prince, and entirely worthy of trust from his people. The
attempt, therefore, of totally annihilating monarchical power, was a
very blamable extreme; especially as it was attended with the danger,
to say the least, of a civil war, which, besides the numberless ills
inseparable from it, exposed liberty to much greater perils than it
could have incurred under the now limited authority of the king. But as
these points could not be supposed be clear during the time as they are,
or may be, at present, there are great reasons of alleviation for men
who were heated by the controversy, or engaged in the action. And it
is remarkable, that even at present, (such is the force of party
prejudices,) there are few people who have coolness enough to see these
matters in a proper light, or are convinced that the parliament could
prudently have stopped in their pretensions. They still plead the
violations of liberty attempted by the king, after granting the petition
of right; without considering the extreme harsh treatment which he
met with after making that great concession, and the impossibility of
supporting government by the revenue then settled on the crown. The
worst of it is, that there was a great tang of enthusiasm in the conduct
of the parliamentary leaders, which, though it might render their
conduct sincere, will not much enhance their character with posterity.
And though Hambden was, perhaps, less infected with this spirit than
many of his associates, he appears not to have been altogether free from
it. Eds intended migration to America, where he could only propose the
advantage of enjoying Puritanical prayers and sermons, will be allowed a
proof of the prevalence of this spirit in him.]


[Footnote 14: NOTE N, p. 260. In a letter of the king to the queen,
preserved in the British Museum, and published by Mrs. Macaulay, (vol.
iv. p. 420,) he says, that unless religion was preserved, the militia
(being not, as in France, a formed powerful strength) would be of little
use to the crown; and that if the pulpits had not obedience, which would
never be if Presbyterian government was absolutely established, the king
would have but small comfort of the militia. This reasoning shows the
king’s good sense, and proves that his attachment to Episcopacy, though
partly founded on religious principles, was also, in his situation,
derived from the soundest views of civil policy. In reality, it was easy
for the king to perceive, by the necessary connection between trifles
and important matters, and by the connection maintained at that time
between religion and politics, that, when he was contending for the
surplice, he was in effect fighting for his crown, and even for his
head. Few of the popular party could perceive this connection. Most of
them were carried headlong by fanaticism; as might be expected in
the ignorant multitude. Few even of the leaders seem to have had more
enlarged views.]


[Footnote 15: NOTE O, p. 298. That Laud’s severity was not extreme,
appears from this feet, that he caused the acts or records of the high
commission court to be searched, and found that there had been fewer
suspensions, deprivations, and other punishments, by three, during the
seven years of his time, than hi any seven years of his predecessor,
Abbott, who was, notwithstanding, in great esteem with the house of
commons. Troubles and Trials of Laud, p. 164. But Abbot was little
attached to the court, and was also a Puritan in doctrine, and bore a
mortal hatred to the Papists. Not to mention, that the mutinous spirit
was rising higher in the time of Laud, and would less bear control.
The maxims, however, of his administration were the same that had ever
prevailed in England, and that had place in every other European nation,
except Holland, which studied chiefly the interests of commerce, and
France, which was fettered by edicts and treaties. To have changed them
for the modern maxims of toleration, how reasonable soever, would have
been deemed a very bold and dangerous enterprise. It is a principle
advanced by President Montesquieu, that where the magistrate, is
satisfied with the established religion, he ought to repress the first
attempts towards innovation, and only grant a toleration to sects that
are diffused and established. See L’Esprit des Loix, liv. 25, chap. 10.
According to this principle, Laud’s indulgence to the Catholics, and
severity to the Puritans, would admit of apology. I own, however,
that it is very questionable, whether persecution can in any case
be justified; but, at the same time, it would be hard to give that
appellation to Laud’s conduct, who only enforced the act of uniformity,
and expelled the clergymen that accepted of benefices, and yet refused
to observe the ceremonies which they previously knew to be enjoined
by law. He never refused them separate places of worship, because they
themselves would have esteemed it impious to demand them, and no less
impious to allow them.]


[Footnote 16: NOTE P, p. 319. Dr. Birch has written a treatise on this
subject It is not my business to oppose any facts contained in that
gentleman’s performance. I shall only produce arguments, which prove
that Glamorgan, when he received his private commission, had injunctions
from the king to net altogether in concert with Ormond. 1. It seems to
be implied in the very words of the commission. Glamorgan is empowered
and authorized to treat and conclude with the confederate Roman
Catholics in Ireland. “If upon necessity any (articles) be condescended
unto, wherein the king’s lieutenant cannot so well be seen in, as not
fit for us at present publicly to own.” Here no articles are mentioned
which are not fit to be communicated to Ormond, but only not fit for
him and the king publicly to be seen in, and to avow. 2. The king’s
protestation to Ormond ought, both on account of that prince’s
character, and the reasons he assigns, to have the greatest weight. The
words are these: “Ormond, I cannot but add to my long letter, that, upon
the word of a Christian, I never intended Glamorgan should treat any
thing without your approbation, much less without your knowledge.
For besides the injury to you, I was always diffident of his judgment
(though I could not think him so extremely weak as now to my cost I have
found;) which you may easily perceive in a postscript of a letter of
mine to you.” Carte, vol. ii. App. xxiii. It is impossible that any man
of honor, however he might dissemble with his enemies, would assert a
falsehood in so solemn a manner to his best friend, especially where
that person must have had opportunities of knowing the truth. The
letter, whose postscript is mentioned by the king, is to be found in
Carte, vol. ii. App. xiii. 3. As the king had really so low an opinion
of Glamorgan’s understanding, it is very unlikely that he would trust
him with the sole management of so important and delicate a treaty.
And if he had intended that Glamorgan’s negotiation should have been
independent of Ormond, he would never have told the latter nobleman of
it, nor have put him on his guard against Glamorgan’s imprudence. That
the king judged aright of this nobleman’s character, appears from his
Century of Arts, or Scantling of Inventions, which is a ridiculous
compound of Hes, chimeras, and impossibilities, and shows what might be
expected from such a man. 4. Mr. Carte has published a whole series of
the king’s correspondence with Ormond, from the time that Glamorgan came
into Ireland; and it is evident that Charles all along considers the
lord lieutenant as the person who was conducting the negotiations with
the Irish. The 31st of July, 1645, after the battle of Naseby, being
reduced to great straits, he writes earnestly to Ormond, to conclude a
peace upon certain conditions mentioned, much inferior to those granted
by Glamorgan; and to come over himself with all the Irish he could
engage in his service. Carte, vol. iii. No. 400. This would have been a
great absurdity, if he had already fixed a different canal, by which, on
very different conditions, he purposed to establish a peace On the
22d of October, as his distresses multiply, he somewhat enlarges
the conditions, though they still fall short of Glamorgan’s; a new
absurdity! See Carte, vol. iii. p. 411. 5. But What is equivalent to
a demonstration that Glamorgan was conscious that he had no powers
to conclude a treaty on these terms, or without consulting the lord
lieutenant, and did not even expect that the king would ratify the
articles, is the defeasance which he gave to the Irish council at the
time of signing the treaty. “The earl of Glamorgan does no way intend
hereby to oblige his majesty other than he himself shall please, after
he has received these ten thousand men as a pledge and testimony of
the said Roman Catholics’ loyalty and fidelity to his majesty; yet
he promises faithfully, upon his word and honor, not to acquaint his
majesty with this defeasance, till he had endeavored, as far as in him
lay, to induce his majesty to the granting of the particulars in the
said articles; but that done, the said commissioners discharge the
said earl of Glamorgan, both in honor and conscience, of any further
engagement to them therein; though his majesty should not be pleased
to grant the said particulars in the articles mentioned; the said earl
having given them assurance, upon his word, honor, and voluntary oath,
that he would never, to any person whatsoever, discover this defeasance
in the interim without their consents.” Dr. Birch, p. 96. All
Glamorgan’s view was to get troops for the king’s service without
hurting his own honor or his master’s. The wonder only is, why the Irish
accepted of a treaty which bound nobody, and which the very person who
concludes it, seems to confess he does not expect to be ratified. They
probably hoped that the king would, from their services, be more easily
induced to ratify a treaty which was concluded, than to consent to its
conclusion. 6. I might add, that the lord lieutenant’s concurrence in
the treaty was the more requisite, because without it the treaty could
not be carried into execution by Glamorgan, nor the Irish troops be
transported into England; and even with Ormond’s concurrence, it clearly
appears, that a treaty so ruinous to the Protestant religion in Ireland,
could not be executed in opposition to the zealous Protestants in
that kingdom. No one can doubt of this truth, who peruses Ormond’s
correspondence in Mr. Carte. The king was sufficiently apprised of this
difficulty. It appears indeed to be the only reason why Ormond objected
to the granting of high terms to the Irish Catholics.

Dr. Birch (in p. 360) has published a letter of the king’s to Glamorgan,
where he says, “Howbeit I know you cannot be but confident of my making
good all instructions and promises to you and the nuncio.” But it is to
be remarked, that this letter is dated in April 6th, 1646; after there
had been a new negotiation entered into between Glamorgan and the Irish,
and after a provisional treaty had even been concluded between them. See
Dr. Birch, p. 179. The king’s assurances, therefore, can plainly relate
only to this recent transaction. The old treaty had long been disavowed
by the king, and supposed by all parties to be annulled.]


[Footnote 17: NOTE Q, p. 347. Salmonet, Ludlow, Hollis, etc., all these,
especially the last, being the declared inveterate enemies of Cromwell,
are the more to be credited, when they advance any fact which may serve
to apologize for his violent and criminal conduct. There prevails a
story, that Cromwell intercepted a letter written to the queen, where
the king said, that he would first raise, and then destroy Cromwell.
But, besides that this conduct seems to contradict the character of the
king, it is, on other accounts, totally unworthy of credit. It is first
told by Roger Coke, a very passionate and foolish historian, who wrote,
too, so late as King William’s reign; and even he mentions it only as a
mere rumor or hearsay, without any known foundation. In the memoirs
of Lord Broghill, we meet with another story of an intercepted letter,
which deserves some more attention, and agrees very well with the
narration here given. It is thus related by Mr. Maurice, chaplain to
Roger, earl of Orrery: “Lord Orrery, in the time of his greatness with
Cromwell, just after he had so seasonably relieved him in his great
distress at Clonmell, riding out of Youghall one day with him and
Ireton, they fell into discourse about the king’s death. Cromwell
thereupon said more than once, that if the king had followed his own
judgment, and had been attended by none but trusty servants, he had
fooled them all; and that once they had a mind to have closed with him;
but, upon something that happened, fell off from that design. Orrery,
finding them in good humor, and being alone with them, asked if he
might presume to desire to know why they would once have closed with his
majesty, and why they did not. Cromwell very freely told him, he would
satisfy him in both his queries. The reason, says he, why we would
have closed with the king was this: we found that the Scotch and
Presbyterians began to be more powerful than we, and were likely to
agree with him, and leave us in the lurch. For this reason, we thought
it best to prevent them, by offering first to come in upon reasonable
conditions; but whilst our thoughts were taken up with this subject,
there came a letter to us from one of our spies, who was of the king’s
bedchamber, acquainting us, that our final doom was decreed that very
day; that he could not possibly learn what it was, but we might discover
it, if we could but intercept a letter sent from the king to the queen,
wherein he informed her of his resolution; that this letter was sown
up in the skirt of a saddle, and the bearer of it would come with the
saddle upon his head, about ten of the clock that night, to the Blue
Boar in Holborn, where he was to take horse for Dover. The messenger
knew nothing of the letter in the saddle, though some in Dover did.
‘We were at Windsor,’ said Cromwell, ‘when we received this letter; and
immediately upon the receipt of it, Ireton and I resolved to take one
trusty fellow with us, and to go in troopers’ habits to that inn. We did
so; and leaving our man at the gate of the inn, (which had a wicket only
open to let persons in and out,) to watch and give us notice when any
man came in with a saddle, we went into a drinking-stall. We there
continued, drinking cans of beer, till about ten of the clock, when our
sentinel at the gate gave us notice that the man with the saddle was
come. We rose up presently, and just as the man was leading out his
horse saddled, we came up to him with drawn swords, and told him we
were to search all that went in and out there: but as he looked like
an honest man, we would only search his saddle, and so dismiss him.
The saddle was ungirt; we carried it into the stall where we had been
drinking and ripping open one of the skirts, we there found the letter
we wanted. Having thus got it into our hands, we delivered the man (whom
we had left with our sentinel) his saddle, told him he was an honest
fellow, and bid him go about his business; which he did, pursuing his
journey without more ado, and ignorant of the harm he had suffered. We
found in the letter, that his majesty acquainted the queen that he was
courted by both factions, the Scotch Presbyterians and the army: and
that those which bade the fairest for him should have him. But yet he
thought he should close with the Scots sooner than with the other. Upon
this we returned to Windsor; and finding we were not like to have good
terms from the king, we from that time vowed his destruction.’ This
relation suiting well enough with other passages and circumstances at
this time, I have inserted to gratify the reader’s curiosity.” Carte’s
Ormond, vol. ii. p. 12.]


[Footnote 18: NOTE R, p. 349. These are the words: “Laneric; I wonder
to hear (if that be true) that some of my friends say, that my going to
Jersey would have much more furthered my personal treaty, than my coming
hither, for which, as I see no color of reason, so I had not been here,
if I had thought that fancy true, or had not been secured of a personal
treaty; of which I neither do, nor I hope will repent; for I am daily
more and more satisfied with the governor, and find these islanders very
good, peaceable, and quiet people. This encouragement I have thought not
unfit for you to receive; hoping at least it may do good upon others,
though needless to you.” Burnet’s Memoirs of Hamilton, p. 326. See also
Rushworth, part 4, vol. ii. p. 941. All the writers of that age, except
Clarendon, represent the king’s going to the Isle of Wight as voluntary
and intended. Perhaps the king thought it little for his credit to be
trepanned into this measure, and was more willing to take it on himself
as entirely voluntary. Perhaps he thought it would encourage his
friends, if they thought him in a situation which was not disagreeable
to him.]


[Footnote 19: NOTE S, p. 364. The king composed a letter to the
prince, in which he related the whole course of this transaction, and
accompanied his narrative with several wise, as well as pathetical
reflections and advices. The words with which he concluded the letter,
are remarkable: “By what hath been said, you see how long I have labored
in the search of peace. Do not you be disheartened to tread in the same
steps. Use all worthy means to restore yourself to your rights, but
prefer the way of peace. Show the greatness of your mine, rather to
conquer your enemies by pardoning than by punishing. If you saw
how unmanly and unchristian the implacable disposition is in our
ill-wishers, you would avoid that spirit. Censure me not for having
parted with so much of our right. The price was great, but the commodity
was security to us, peace to my people. And I am confident, that another
parliament would remember how useful a king’s power is to a people’s
liberty; of how much power I divested myself, that I and they might
meet once again in a parliamentary way, in order to agree the bounds of
prince and people. Give belief to my experience, never to affect more
greatness or prerogative than what is really and intrinsically for the
good of the subjects, not the satisfaction of favorites If you thus use
it, you will never want means to be a father to all, and a bountiful
prince to any whom you incline to be extraordinarily gracious to. You
may perceive, that all men intrust their treasure where it returns them
interest; and if a prince, like the sea, receive and repay all the fresh
streams which the rivers intrust with him, they will not grudge, but
pride themselves to make him up an ocean. These considerations may make
you as great a prince as your father if a low one; and your state may be
so much the more established, as mine hath been shaken. For our subjects
have learned, I dare say, that victories over their princes are but
triumphs over themselves, and so will more unwillingly hearken to
changes hereafter. The English nation are a sober people, however at
present infatuated. I know not but this may be the last time I may speak
to you or the world publicly. I am sensible into what hands I am fallen;
and yet, I bless God, I have those inward refreshments which the malice
of my enemies cannot perturb. I have learned to be busy myself, by
retiring into myself; and therefore can the better digest whatever
befalls me, not doubting but God’s providence will restrain our enemies’
power, and turn their fierceness into his praise. To conclude, if God
give you success, use it humbly, and be ever far from revenge. If he
restore you to your right on hard conditions, whatever you promise, keep
These men who have violated laws which they were bound to preserve, will
find their triumphs full of trouble. But do not you think any thing in
the world worth attaining by foul and unjust means.”]


[Footnote 20: NOTE T, p. 380. The imputation of insincerity on Charles
I., like most party clamors, is difficult to be removed; though it may
not here be improper to say something with regard to it. I shall first
remark, that this imputation seems to be of a later growth than his
own age; and that even his enemies, though they loaded him with many
calumnies, did not insist on this accusation. Ludlow, I think, is
almost the only parliamentarian who imputes that vice to him; and
how passionate a writer he is, must be obvious to every one. Neither
Clarendon nor any other of the royalists ever justify him from
insincerity, as not supposing that he had ever been accused of it. In
the second place, his deportment and character in common life was free
from that vice. He was reserved, distant, stately; cold in his address,
plain in his discourse, inflexible in his principles; wide of the
caressing, insinuating manners of his son, or the professing, talkative
humor of his father. The imputation of insincerity must be grounded on
some of his public actions, which we are therefore in the third place
to examine. The following are the only instances which I find cited to
confirm that accusation. 1. His vouching Buckingham’s narrative of
the transactions in Spain. But it is evident that Charles himself was
deceived: why otherwise did he quarrel with Spain? The following is a
passage of a letter from Lord Kensington, ambassador in France, to the
duke of Buckingham Cabbala p. 318. “But his highness (the prince) had
observed as great a weakness and folly as that, in that after they (the
Spaniards) had used him so ill, they would suffer him to depart, which
was one of the first speeches he uttered after he came into the ship.
But did he say so? said the queen (of France.) Yes, madam, I will
assure you, quoth I, from the witness of mine own ears. She smiled, and
replied, Indeed, I heard he was used ill. So he was, answered I, but
not in his entertainment; for that was as splendid as that country
could afford it; but in their frivolous delays, and in the unreasonable
conditions which they propounded and pressed, upon the advantage they
had of his princely person.” 2. Bishop Burnet, in his History of the
House of Hamilton, (p. 154.) has preserved a letter of the king’s to
the Scottish bishops, in which he desires them not to be present at the
parliament, where they would be forced to ratify the abolition of their
own order. “For,” adds the king, “we do hereby assure you, that it shall
be still one of our chiefest studies how to rectify and establish the
government of that church aright, and to repair your losses, which we
desire you to be most confident of.” And in another place, “You may
rest secure, that though perhaps we may give way for the present to that
which will be prejudicial both to the church and our own government, yet
we shall not leave thinking in time how to remedy both.” But does the
king say that he will arbitrarily revoke his concessions? Does not
candor require us rather to suppose, that he hoped his authority would
so far recover as to enable him to obtain the national consent to
reestablish Episcopacy, which he believed so material a part of religion
as well as of government? It is not easy indeed to think how he could
hope to effect this purpose in any other way than his father had
taken, that is, by consent of parliament. 3. There is a passage in Lord
Clarendon, where it is said, that the king assented the more easily to
the bill which excluded the bishops from the house of peers, because he
thought that that law, being enacted by force, could not be valid. But
the king certainly reasoned right in that conclusion. Three fourths of
the temporal peers were at that time banished by the violence of the
populace. Twelve bishops were unjustly thrown into the Tower by the
commons. Great numbers of the commons themselves were kept away by fear
or violence. The king himself was chased from London. If all this be not
force, there is no such thing. But this scruple of the king’s
affects only the bishops’ bill, and that against pressing. The other
constitutional laws had passed without the least appearance of violence,
as did indeed all the bills passed during the first year, except
Strafford’s attainder, which could not be recalled. The parliament,
therefore, even if they had known the king’s sentiments in this
particular, could not, on that account, have had any just foundation of
jealousy. 4. The king’s letter intercepted at Naseby has been the source
of much clamor. We have spoken of it already in chapter lviii. Nothing
is more usual in all public transactions than such distinctions. Alter
the death of Charles II. of Spain, King William’s ambassadors gave the
duke of Anjou the title of King of Spain; yet at that very time, King
William was secretly forming alliances to dethrone him and soon after he
refused him that title, and insisted (as he had reason) that he had
not acknowledged his right. Yet King William justly passes for a very
sincere prince; and this transaction is not regarded as any objection to
his character in that particular. In all the negotiations at the peace
of Ryswic, the French ambassadors always addressed King William as king
of England; yet it was made an express article of the treaty, that the
French king should acknowledge him as such. Such a palpable difference
is there between giving a title to a prince, and positively recognizing
his right to it. I may add, that Charles, when he asserted that
protestation in the council books before his council, surely thought he
had reason to justify his conduct. There were too many men of honor in
that company to avow a palpable cheat. To which we may subjoin, that, if
men were as much disposed to judge of this prince’s actions with candor
as severity, this precaution of entering a protest in his council
books might rather pass for a proof of scrupulous honor; lest he should
afterwards be reproached with breach of his word, when he should think
proper again to declare the assembly at Westminster no parliament. 5.
The denying of his commission to Glamorgan is another instance which
has been cited. This matter has been already treated in a footnote to
chapter lviii. That transaction was entirely innocent. Even if the king
had given a commission to Glamorgan to conclude that treaty, and had
ratified it, will any reasonable man, in our age, think it strange that,
in order to save his own life, his crown, his family, his friends, and
his party, he should make a treaty with Papists, and grant them very
large concessions for their religion? 6. There is another of the king’s
intercepted letters to the queen commonly mentioned; where, it is
pretended, he talked of raising and then destroying Cromwell. But
that story stands on no manner of foundation, as we have observed in a
preceding footnote to this chapter. In a word, the parliament, after
the commencement of their violences, and still more after beginning the
civil war, had reason for their scruples and jealousies, founded on the
very nature of their situation, and on the general propensity of the
human mind; not on any fault of the king’s character, who was candid,
sincere, upright; as much as any man whom we meet with in history.
Perhaps it would be difficult to find another character so
unexceptionable in this particular.

As to the other circumstances of Charles’s character chiefly exclaimed
against, namely, his arbitrary principles in government, one may venture
to assert, that the greatest enemies of this prince will not find, in
the long line of his predecessors, from the conquest to his time, any
one king, except perhaps his father, whose administration was not more
arbitrary and less legal, or whose conduct could have been recommended
to him, by the popular party themselves, as a model, in this particular,
for his government. Nor is it sufficient to say, that example and
precedent can never authorize vices. Examples and precedents, uniform
and ancient, can surely fix the nature of any constitution, and the
limits of any form of government. There is indeed no other principle by
which those landmarks or boundaries can be settled.

What a paradox in human affairs, that Henry VIII. should have been
almost adored in his lifetime, and his memory be respected; while
Charles I. should, by the same people, at no greater distance than a
century, have been led to a public and ignominious execution, and his
name be ever after pursued by falsehood and by obloquy!

Even at present, an historian, who, prompted by his courageous
generosity, should venture, though from the most authentic and
undisputed facts, to vindicate the fame of that prince, would be sure
to meet with such treatment as would discourage even the boldest from so
dangerous, however splendid an enterprise.]


[Footnote 21: NOTE U, p. 394. The following instance of extravagance is
given by Walker, in his History of Independency, part ii. p. 152. About
this time there came six soldiers into the parish church of Walton upon
Thames, near twilight; Mr. Faucet, the preacher there, not having till
then ended his sermon. One of the soldiers had a lantern in his hand,
and a candle burning in it, and in the other hand four candles not
lighted. He desired the parishioners to stay a while, saying he had a
message from God unto them, and thereupon offered to go into the pulpit.
But the people refusing to give him leave so to do, or to stay in the
church, he went into the churchyard, and there told them that he had a
vision, wherein he had received a command from God to deliver his will
unto them, which he was to deliver and they to receive upon pain
of damnation; consisting of five lights. 1. “That the Sabbath was
abolished, as unnecessary, Jewish, and merely ceremonial. And here
(quoth he) I should put out the first light, but the wind is so high
I cannot kindle it. 2. That tithes are abolished, as Jewish and
ceremonial, a great burden to the saints of God, and a discouragement of
industry and tillage. And here I should put out my second light, etc. 3.
That ministers are abolished, as anti-Christian, and of no longer use,
now Christ himself descends into the hearts of his saints, and his
spirit enlighteneth them with revelations and inspirations. And here
I should put out my third light, etc. 4. Magistrates are abolished,
as useless, now that Christ himself is in purity amongst us, and hath
erected the kingdom of the saints upon earth. Besides they are tyrants,
and oppressors of the liberty of the saints, and tie them to laws and
ordinances, mere human inventions. And here I should put out my fourth
light, etc. 5. Then putting his hand into his pocket, and pulling out
a little Bible, he showed it open to the people, saying, Here is a book
you have in great veneration, consisting of two parts, the Old and
New Testament. I must tell you it is abolished. It containeth beggarly
rudiments, milk for babes. But now Christ is in glory amongst us, and
imparts a further measure of his spirit to his saints than this can
afford. I am commanded to burn it before your face. Then putting out the
candle, he said, And here my fifth light is extinguished.” It became a
pretty common doctrine at that time, that it was unworthy of a Christian
man to pay rent to his fellow-creatures; and landlords were obliged to
use all the penalties of law against their tenants, whose conscience was
scrupulous.]

[Footnote 24: NOTE X, p. 424. When the earl of Derby was alive, he had
been summoned by Ireton to surrender the Isle of Man; and he returned
this spirited and memorable answer:

“I received your letter with indignation, and with scorn return you this
answer; that I cannot but wonder whence you should gather any hopes that
I should prove, like you, treacherous to my sovereign; since you cannot
be ignorant of my former actions in his late majesty’s service,
from which principles of loyalty I am no whit departed. I scorn your
proffers; I disdain your favor; I abhor your treason; and am so far from
delivering up this island to your advantage, that I shall keep it to the
utmost of my power to your destruction. Take this for your final answer,
and forbear any farther solicitations; for if you trouble me with any
more messages of this nature, I will burn the paper and hang up the
bearer. This is the immutable resolution, and shall be the undoubted
practice of him who accounts it his chiefest glory to be his majesty’s
most loyal and obedient subject,

“DERBY.”]


[Footnote 25: NOTE Y, p. 426. It had been a usual policy of the
Presbyterian ecclesiastics to settle a chaplain in the great families,
who acted as a spy upon his master, and gave them intelligence of
the most private transactions and discourses of the family; a signal
instance of priestly tyranny, and the subjection of the nobility! They
even obliged the servants to give intelligence against their masters.
Whitlocke, p. 502. The same author (p. 512) tells the following story:
The synod meeting at Perth, and citing the ministers and people who had
expressed a dislike of their heavenly government, the men being out
of the way, their wives resolved to answer for them. And on the day
of appearance, one hundred and twenty women, with good clubs in their
hands, came and besieged the church where the reverend ministers
sat. They sent one of their number to treat with the females; and he,
threatening excommunication, they basted him for his labor, kept him
prisoner, and sent a party of sixty, who routed the rest of the clergy,
bruised their bodies sorely, took all their baggage and twelve horses.
One of the ministers, after a mile’s running, taking all creatures
for his foes, meeting with a soldier, fell on his knees, who, knowing
nothing of the matter, asked the blackcoat what he meant. The female
conquerors, having laid hold on the synod clerk, beat him till he
forswore his office. Thirteen ministers rallied about four miles from
the place, and voted that this village should never more have a synod
in it, but be accursed; and that though in the years 1638, and 1639, the
godly women were cried up for stoning the bishops, yet now the whole sex
should be esteemed wicked.]


[Footnote 26: NOTE Z, p. 468. About this time an accident had almost
robbed the protector of his life, and saved his enemies the trouble of
all their machinations. Having got six fine Friesland coach horses, as a
present from the count of Oldenburgh, he undertook for his amusement to
drive them about Hyde Park, his secretary, Thurloe, being in the coach.
The horses were startled and ran away. He was unable to command them
or keep the box. He fell upon the pole, was dragged upon the ground for
some time. A pistol, which he carried in his pocket, went off and by
that singular good fortune which ever attended him, he was taken up
without any considerable hurt or bruise.]


[Footnote 27: NOTE AA, p. 512. After Monk’s declaration for a free
parliament on the eleventh of February, he could mean nothing but the
king’s restoration; yet it was long before he would open himself even
to the king. This declaration was within eight days after his arrival
in London. Had he ever intended to have set up for himself, he would not
surely have so soon abandoned a project so inviting; he would have taken
some steps which would have betrayed it. It could only have been some
disappointment, some frustrated attempt, which could have made him
renounce the road of private ambition. But there is not the least
symptom of such intentions. The story told of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper,
by Mr. Locke, has not any appearance of truth. See Lord Linsdowne’s
Vindication, and Philips’s Continuation of Baker. I shall add to what
those authors have advanced, that Cardinal Mazarine wished for the
king’s restoration; though he would not have ventured much to have
procured it.]





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