CHAPTER X.

TRIUMPH OF THE ARMY OVER PARLIAMENT. DEATH OF THE KING. 1647-1649.

Men must reap the things they sow; Force from force must ever flow. SHELLEY.

The ablest men that ever were, have had all an openness and frankness of dealing, and a name of certainty and veracity. Dissimulation is but a faint kind of policy or wisdom; it commonly carries with it a show of fearfulness which in any business doth spoil the feathers of sound flying up to the mark; it depriveth a man of one of the most principal instruments for action, which is trust and belief.--BACON, ESSAY, vi.

%VOTES AGAINST ARMY.%

The war was now at an end. Harlech Castle, in Wales, the last place to hold out for the king, surrendered in April (1647). A committee of Parliament sat daily at Goldsmith’s Hall, whither came Royalists in numbers to compound for their estates; compounding being the resignation of a part to avert the confiscation of the whole. Yet the Presbyterians could have little pleasure in the submission of the Royalists; what they yearned for was a triumph over the Independents. In the Commons the Presbyterian majority was but small; and the hopes they had built on the king had fallen through. The Earl of Essex, their most respected leader, had been some months in the grave (ob. 14th Sept., 1646). The Scotch army had left the kingdom, and it was hazardous for unarmed politicians to irritate an armed body of some thirty thousand men. They had to rely on themselves, and they had no genius for policy. The pay of the army was ten months in arrear. ♦Presbyterians pass votes for disbanding army.♦ The Presbyterians proposed to pay a sixth of this sum and disband these dangerous allies. Their proposal was carried by a bare majority of ten. Of the few regiments who were excepted, some were to be despatched to Ireland, others employed upon garrison duty at home (Feb. 19th). They then passed a new self-denying ordinance to eliminate from the army the Independent officers who were in the Commons, while they required subscription of the covenant to eliminate those who were not (8th March). A bare majority saved Fairfax from being cashiered (5th March). In passing these votes, the Presbyterians had at once attacked the soldier by an attempt to deprive him of his arrears; the officer, by threatening to remove him from command; the sectarian, by the imposition of the covenant, the first step to persecution. A petition was drawn up by officers and soldiers, to be presented to Fairfax, demanding that all arrears should be paid; that none should be required to go to Ireland against their will; that provision should be made for orphans and wounded; that an Act of Indemnity should be passed to protect the soldiers from being called to account for any past acts--crimes, perhaps, in the eye of the common law, but justified by the necessities of war. The Presbyterians, still thinking themselves masters of the situation, sent orders to Fairfax to suppress the petition, and published a declaration, that whoever joined in it “was an enemy to the State, and a disturber of the public peace” (20th March). The army was in a ferment. “Have we,” said the soldiers, “who have been the instruments to recover the lost liberties of the nation, fought ourselves into slavery? Hard it is that we should be denied the subject’s liberty to petition.”[137] Two councils were formed, in communication with one another; the first of officers, the second of ‘adjutators’ or representatives of the regiments. ♦Army petitions Parliament.♦ The officers addressed to Parliament a vindication of their conduct, complaining of the treatment they had received, and asserting that, by being soldiers, they had not lost the subject’s capacity of petitioning (30th April). No sooner had the Commons heard this paper read, than Skippon produced a second, given him by three troopers, which declared the service in Ireland “a perfidious design to separate the soldiers from the officers they loved, and to conceal the ambition of a few men, who had long been servants, but having lately tasted of sovereign power, were degenerating into tyrants.” The Presbyterians fully understood at whom these bold expressions were aimed. The three troopers were called in and questioned. “Were your officers engaged in this letter, or not?” “No; it was drawn up by the agents of eight regiments, and few of the officers knew of it.” “Were you ever Cavaliers; for none but Cavaliers would have been concerned in such a letter?” “No; we have been engaged in the Parliament’s cause ever since Edgehill fight, and have been wounded in several battles.” “What does that expression mean--‘certain men aiming at sovereignty’?” “The letter being a joint act, we cannot answer; but if you will put your question in writing, we will bring you back the replies of the regiments.”[138] The Presbyterians were at first inclined to pass some violent votes, but fear soon got the better of anger, and they agreed to send down to head-quarters four of the Independent officers, Cromwell, Ireton, Fleetwood, and Skippon, with instructions to pacify the soldiers before disbanding, inquire into grievances, and promise redress (7th May). They afterwards increased their offer of pay by a miserable pittance (14th May), drew up an ordinance for an amnesty (21st May), voted funds for widows and orphans, and then, thinking they had granted enough to carry their point, sent down Presbyterian commissioners to see the army disbanded (22nd May). ♦Army refuses to disband.♦ The soldiers, however, mutinied instead of disbanding, seized money intended for their pay, expelled officers they mistrusted, and then demanded of Fairfax a general meeting of the army.

%MUTINY OF ARMY.%

A dangerous crisis had now arrived, when it was natural that both army and Parliament should turn their thoughts upon the king as a possible makeweight to one side or the other. ♦Charles carried off from Holmby.♦ At two o’clock in the morning of the 3rd of June, a body of horse was discovered before the gates of Holmby Castle. “Who commands?” anxiously inquired the Presbyterian commissioners, entrusted by Parliament with the care of Charles. “All command,” replied the strange troops; “we come from the army to secure the king’s person, there being a plot to steal him away and raise another army to suppress this, which is under Sir Thomas Fairfax.” No attempt was made at resistance, for the soldiers of the garrison were at one with the troopers.

%ARMY SEIZES CHARLES.%

The following evening, about ten o’clock, Cornet Joyce, the leader of the party, holding a cocked pistol in his hand, went to the door of the king’s chamber. “I am sorry,” he said, “to disquiet the king, but cannot help it, for speak with him I will.” The gentlemen of the bedchamber, not liking the look of the pistol, disputed his entrance, until Charles, awakened by the noise, bade them let the intruder in. After a long conversation, the king half promised to leave the castle in his company. “Come, Mr. Joyce,” he said, the next morning, standing on the castle steps, “deal ingenuously with me, and tell me what commission you have.” “Here,” said the cornet, pointing with his hand behind him to his mounted soldiers drawn up in the court below. “As fair a commission,” replied the king, smiling, “as I ever saw in my life; such a company of proper handsome men as I have not seen a great while.” The king made a pretence of unwillingness to blind the Presbyterian commissioners, but soon rode off with his new escort to Cambridge, the merriest of the party.[139] It was clear that the value of his support was rising; he might yet get his terms. Fairfax, who was perfectly sincere, wishing neither to disband the army, nor to quarrel with the Parliament, was displeased when he heard the news.[140] “I don’t like it,” he said; “who gave the orders?” But none of the officers owned to them. Ireton said he had ordered that the king should be secured at Holmby, but not that he should be carried away. Cromwell, who was much suspected by his Presbyterian fellow-members, left London quietly one day, and joined the army in the eastern counties. The Presbyterians, thoroughly depressed at the loss of their prize, now passed a Bill of Indemnity, voted that some instalments of the arrears should be paid down on disbanding, and once again sent down commissioners to see the army disbanded. ♦Rendezvous at Triploe Heath.♦ At a rendezvous, held at Triploe Heath, near Cambridge, the votes of the Parliament were read to the assembled regiments. It was not likely they would disband now. The commissioners received their answer in loud shouts of ‘Justice, justice!’ and that same afternoon Cromwell and Fairfax set the army in motion for London (10th June). Both Parliament and city had for some time past been taking measures to oppose force by force. The command of the city militia was taken from the Independents and given to a committee of Presbyterians (4th May). Strong guards were set, the shops were shut, and Presbyterian officers of Waller’s and Essex’ old armies crowded to serve in the train-bands, which were largely recruited. But no one really believed the city forces could stand an attack for a day. The army meanwhile was approaching, and sent in its demands. The House was required to give a month’s pay to the troops, without conditions, to raise no new forces, and to suspend eleven of the leading Presbyterian members, against whom an impeachment of treason was preferred, for having caused a misunderstanding between the Parliament and the army (16th, 17th June). The Commons granted a month’s pay, and reversed an ordinance passed for raising new forces, but could not bring themselves to turn out their own members. The army, however, still advanced. It was at Uxbridge and Kingston-upon-Thames, within twenty miles of the city, when the eleven members saved the pride of their friends by asking leave to absent themselves for six months from the House (26th June). The army, so far satisfied, withdrew from the immediate neighbourhood of the city.

%COMMONS AGAINST ARMY.%

At this time, ‘settlement of the kingdom’ were the only words in men’s mouths, the only hope in their hearts. No one perceived more clearly than Cromwell how much a settlement was needed, nor how difficult it would be to effect. Royalists, Republicans, Presbyterians, sectarians, soldiers, reformers--what possible form of government was to harmonize all these? The Royalists beaten, but numerous; the Republicans speaking with calm contempt of the rule of kings; the Presbyterians regarding the sectarians “as the most wicked men that breathed;” the army filled with fanatics and revolutionists, demanding reform in the law, the Church, and society. On one point alone was Cromwell’s mind at this time fixed, that, as far as in his power lay, he would prevent any settlement that did not provide for civil liberty and freedom of conscience. And now the clouds seemed to break, and the sun again to shine upon Charles; for the officers decided that the best way of making a settlement, satisfactory to at least the larger part of the nation, would be by restoring the king to some shadow of his former power. At Holmby under the care of the Presbyterians, Charles, though always civilly treated, had been deprived of the attendance of his chaplains, forced to dismiss his favourite servants, and not allowed to see his friends and children, or to correspond with his wife. But, from the time of his arrival in the army’s quarters, he met with far more liberal treatment. Four chaplains were permitted to attend him, and perform the old Church of England service; the officers were his frequent and respectful visitors; and his friends found ready access to his presence. At the request of Fairfax, the Parliament allowed the Duke of York, the Lady Elizabeth, and the Duke of Gloucester to visit their father for two days. The meeting took place at Maidenhead; people strewed flowers on the road, and the Republicans remembered afterwards with horror that Cromwell, their hoped-for leader, came away shedding tears, and saying that the interview between the king and his children was one of the tenderest sights that ever his eyes beheld.

%ARMY PROPOSITIONS.%

The propositions now drawn up for the king’s acceptance by commissioners from the Parliament and the army demanded that a period should be put to the present Parliament within a year at most; that new Parliaments should be elected every two years, and should appoint standing committees to continue during the intervals; that the command of the militia by sea and land should reside in Parliament for ten years, and should not even then return to the crown, without the consent of both Houses; that Parliament and its committees should dispose of all great offices of State, and that peace and war should not be made without their consent. Thus far these demands aimed at transferring the executive power from king to Parliament in much the same way as previous propositions, with the one exception of the dissolution of the existing assembly, a measure specially dreaded by the Presbyterians, because they had lost the confidence of the country. But the propositions on religion and reform, which now emanated from the Independents, were conceived in a very different spirit from those which had been proposed by the Presbyterians. Instead of requiring the king to abolish Episcopacy, establish the Presbyterian Church, and take the covenant, they asked that an Act of Parliament should be passed, repealing all laws which inflicted civil penalties for spiritual offences. There was to be no privilege for covenant any more than for Prayer-book; the sword of the persecutor was to be changed into the harmless crook of the pastor. To the king’s friends they were as merciful as they were to his conscience: with the exception of seven persons, Royalists were to be allowed to compound for their estates at easier rates, and their incapacity for office was to be limited to five years. “There must,” said Ireton “be some distinction made between the conquerors and the conquered.” Lastly, there were additional reforms proposed, in which the popular instinct of the army showed to advantage beside Presbyterians and Republicans, who cared more to gratify their theories than to relieve the wants of the people. No man’s life was to be taken away by less than two witnesses. The course of law was to be reformed, so that suits might be more certain in their issues, and costs not so great. Poor debtors were not to be kept in perpetual imprisonment. The excise was to be taken off the necessaries of life. Lastly, there was to be a redistribution of seats, giving more weight in the Commons to the chief centres of population.

%ARMY PROPOSITIONS--KING’S CHANCE.%

These propositions, with which Ireton was chiefly credited, were by far the most liberal towards all parties that had yet been brought forward. But we must not suppose that the officers intended to trust themselves or their friends to the generosity of Presbyterians and Royalists. Not a word was said about disbanding the army. Had these offers been accepted, Cromwell, as privy councillor, member of Parliament, and general of a devoted army, would have stood by the side of the throne, the controller of the king’s actions, and with a sword to repel attacks on religious toleration or civil liberty. Such a position was not what Charles held before the war; but it was a tolerable position. The loss of the power of the sword was a great loss; but Charles had put this question to the arbitrament of war, and had been beaten. He could not hope to be trusted with the sword by either Presbyterians or Independents. But the Independents offered him great advantages. His religious convictions would be respected, and if he could not resuscitate the glories of the Laudian hierarchy, he at least escaped the establishment of the Presbyterian Church and the subscription of the covenant. The treatment of himself and his friends was liberal. Further, the Independents had the power to perform what they promised, which the Presbyterians had not. They had not only the army with them, but the country. Moreover, had Charles understood the country which he ruled, he would have seen that two or three years of real constitutional government, enforced or not, would have cleared off the remains of his unpopularity, so that when the inevitable reaction set in, the current would have carried him on the flood of popular favour into much of his former dignity and power. But this was not to be. Charles was, unfortunately, too astute to be wise. While outwardly treating with the officers, he was secretly dealing with their enemies, and as he wrote to his friends, “he was engaged either to Presbyterians or Independents, and whichever bid most for him should have him.”[141] He was, in fact, hoping for a new civil war, which might end in his own restoration to absolute power.

%PARLIAMENT MOBBED BY PRESBYTERIANS.%

The impeachment of the eleven members not only cowed the Presbyterians, but put them in an actual minority. But though they lost command of the House, the city was still at their back, and when the Commons passed an ordinance, giving the command of the train-bands to Independents, London rose in tumult, and the citizens, flocking in crowds to Skinners’ Hall, put their hands to an engagement to ‘endeavour the king’s return to his Parliament with safety, honour, and freedom.’ Parliament passed a vote that all who joined in the engagement were traitors. On this, a mob of apprentices, watermen, and officers invaded the House with petitions for the restoration of the city militia to its Presbyterian officers, and for the return of the eleven members to their seats. Though the terrified Parliament yielded to both these demands, their petitioners still barred the doors. “What question,” said Lenthall, the speaker, “do you further desire to be put?” “That the king be invited to come to London with safety, honour, and freedom,” shouted the rabble. “No!” cried the Republican Ludlow, at the top of his voice. The question, however, being put to the vote, was carried, in the midst of general noise and confusion, and Lenthall, at last released from his chair and hustled downstairs by the mob, was thankful to escape into the first coach he could find (26th July). On hearing of this adverse vote, the indignation of both officers and soldiers turned upon the king. They knew, or believed, that he had been at the bottom of the rising. “Sire,” said Ireton, “you intend to be arbitrator between the Parliament and us, and we intend to be so between your Majesty and the Parliament.” ♦King rejects army propositions.♦ The Army Propositions were presented to him notwithstanding. To these Charles’ refusal was so defiant, that it made his own friends stand aghast when they heard it. First alluding to the exclusion of seven Royalists from the amnesty, “I will have no man suffer for my sake,” he said. “I repent of nothing so much as that I passed the bill against the Earl of Strafford.” He then added, that he wished Episcopacy to be established by law; and repeated several times over, “You cannot be without me; you will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you.” Enraged with king and Presbyterians alike, the officers and soldiers marched on the capital, to teach the citizens to recognize their masters; on the way, at Hounslow Heath, they met the speaker, accompanied by a hundred members of the Lower House and fourteen of the Upper, who in disgust at the violence offered them, sought refuge with the army (30th July). Meanwhile in London the shops were again shut, the drums beat, and new troops enlisted in the train-bands. But the hearts of the citizens began to fail them when they heard the army had already reached Hounslow Heath, and was still continuing its advance, after receiving the fugitive members with shouts of joy (3rd Aug.). If a scout reported a halt of the army, the word in London was, “One and all; live and die;” if an advance, the cry was, “Treat, treat, treat.” The Borough of Southwark refused to fight, and the Lord Mayor and City Council finally wrote to Fairfax that they quite concurred with him in wishing to restore the fugitive members. Thus the king’s hopes were disappointed: all passed over without a blow; the eleven Presbyterian members fled a second time; the fugitive Republicans and Independents retook their seats (6th Aug.), and the whole army marched in triumph through London (8th Aug.).

%ARMY MARCHES ON LONDON.%

Cromwell, however, was aware that at least two-thirds of the nation still desired the king’s restoration. He, therefore, continued to treat with Charles. It was doubtful, however, whether it was any longer in his power to conclude a treaty, even if Charles would have made the required concessions. The distrust that had always prevailed of the king’s good faith, had deepened into an absolute certainty. ♦Republicans, sectarians, Levellers, refuse to treat any longer with king.♦ Republicans and sectarians had from the first disliked holding dealings with a man they regarded as the “chief delinquent, guilty of all the blood shed in the war,” and now finding themselves absolute masters of city, Parliament, and king, they were far from thinking of allowing Charles any shadow of power. On seeing that Cromwell continued to treat, they openly talked of the “baseness of those who would for the sake of honours and office desert a noble cause, and a second time enslave the people.” A report was soon credited in the army that Cromwell had been promised the command-in-chief of the king’s armies with the title of Earl of Essex, and Ireton the government of Ireland, as the price of betraying their cause and their friends. The army had, in fact, been leavened by a new class of reformers, who had won over to their opinions a majority of both soldiers and officers. These reformers were nicknamed Levellers, being rather pure Democrats than Republicans. They disliked the House of Lords as much as the king, and their aim was equality of ranks and abolition of all class privileges before the law. Their leader, John Lilburne, who began life by defying the Court of Star Chamber,[142] tried to stir the soldiers to mutiny against the generals. Cromwell knew that divisions in the army would only pave the way for the triumph of Presbyterians and Royalists. In that event his cherished cause, ‘Liberty of conscience,’ would be lost. He therefore determined on making his peace with his old friends, and giving up the attempt to effect a settlement by restoring Charles to the throne. In this he was perfectly justified, for there was no doubt that the king was acting insincerely towards the officers. “I shall play my game as well as I can,” Charles said, in one of his sanguine moments. “If your Majesty have a game to play,” replied Ireton, “you must give us also liberty to play ours.” All this time Charles was placing his faith in the Scots, who, finding that the Independent army was not, after all, disbanded, nor the king restored to his throne, began to use menacing language, and to threaten an invasion of England. So well was Cromwell aware of the whole thread of the king’s policy, that he told the royalist, Berkley, “he had in his own possession letters which showed that the king had commanded all his party to serve under the Parliament and the city, and that he had at that instant, when he made greatest profession to close with the army, a treaty with the Scots, which did very much justify the general misfortune he lived under of having the reputation of little faith in his dealings.”[143]

%FLIGHT OF CHARLES.%

Charles, who was residing at Hampton Court, found his position altered; his movements were more restrained; his friends were shut out from his presence, and anonymous letters reached his hands, warning him that his life was in danger. Accompanied only by a servant and two friends, Berkley and Ashburnham, he fled from Hampton Court one dark stormy evening, and after riding hard all night arrived early the next morning at the coast opposite the Isle of Wight (12th Nov.). Here, taking refuge the while in a neighbouring house, he sent Berkley and Ashburnham over to the island with instructions to extract from the governor, Hammond, a promise to grant his Majesty means of conduct to a place of safety. Hammond turned pale, and at first, in terror at the news, begged that the king might not be brought to the island, for “what between his duty to the king and his trust to the army, he should be confounded.” But he soon changed his mind, and became anxious to know where the king was to be found. “I will promise to perform,” he said, “whatever can be expected of a person of honour and honesty.” Though little confidence could be placed in such a vague expression of good-will, Ashburnham and Berkley, not knowing how to rid themselves of the governor’s company, undertook to conduct him and one other man, Captain Basket, to the royal presence. “Oh, you have undone me!” exclaimed Charles, when he heard that they had brought Hammond with them, “for I am by this means made fast from stirring.” “Since what has been done does not please your Majesty,” replied Ashburnham in tears, “I will kill the governor and the captain with my own hands.” Charles took two or three turns up and down the room. “No,” he replied; “it would be said that he ventured his life for me, and I took it away from him. We must go through with it now.” Arrived at Carisbrooke, Charles felt in better spirits. Hammond treated him courteously; gentlemen came to visit him, and being left at liberty to ride over the island he did not doubt of being able at any time to escape across the Channel.

Cromwell has been accused of having purposely frightened Charles away from Hampton Court, with the intention of getting him more completely into the power of the army. He certainly wrote a note to Colonel Whalley, bidding him have a care of his guards, for “if any attempt should be made upon his Majesty’s person, it would be accounted a most horrid act.” He was also the first to hear from Whalley of the king’s escape, and reported the news to Parliament. But this evidence does not seem strong enough to support the conclusion drawn from it. Many of the Levellers were so unscrupulous that the rumours of an intended assassination were not likely to be without foundation. Cromwell’s note, therefore, may have been intended simply as a caution to Whalley. Further, Cromwell could not have foreseen that the fugitives would seek refuge in the Isle of Wight; in fact, when there the king was not more but less in the power of the army than before. At Hampton Court, his keeper was Whalley, who was throughout on the side of the army, and was afterwards one of his judges; whereas in the Isle of Wight he was under Hammond, who disapproved of the dealings of the army with the Parliament, and was afterwards removed from his post to make place for a surer man. Had he, on the other hand, escaped into Scotland, he would undoubtedly have soon been again in England at the head of an army, and Royalists by thousands been flocking to his standard. The obvious conclusion is that if Cromwell connived at the flight from Hampton Court, his desire can only have been to save Charles’ life from the assassin’s dagger, and to give him a chance of escape across the Channel.

%MUTINY OF LEVELLERS.%

Cromwell had incurred unpopularity with the army by being too favourable to the king, and now had to turn his mind to the suppression of the mutinous spirit that had appeared amongst the soldiers. Different regiments of the army were ordered to attend him at three several meetings. To the first meeting, held between Hertford and Ware, only three regiments were summoned. But when Fairfax and Cromwell arrived on the ground, they found that Robert Lilburne’s regiment of infantry and Colonel Harrison’s regiment of cavalry had come without orders. The soldiers, most of whom were Levellers, were in a state of great excitement, and had fixed to their hats copies of one of Lilburne’s pamphlets, entitled ‘The Agreement of the People.’ Fairfax read a remonstrance to the quieter regiments, reminding them of the good faith their chiefs had always shown them, and promising that he would support the demands of the soldiers, if they would obey the orders of their officers. This appeal to the soldiers’ feelings was answered by shouts of approval. Even Harrison’s troopers, on hearing the address, tore the copies of the ‘Agreement’ from their hats, declaring that they had been deceived, and would live and die with their general. But Lilburne’s regiment showed no signs of submission. “Take that paper from your hats!” cried Cromwell; and when none obeyed, riding with drawn sword into the ranks, he ordered fourteen of the leading mutineers to be arrested. Old habits of discipline in the soldier, the commanding voice and gesture of the officer, produced obedience. A court-martial was held on the spot, and, out of three condemned, one soldier was shot to death in front of the regiment (Nov. 15th). The two following meetings went off quietly.

%CROMWELL SUPPRESSES MUTINY.%

Yet, though he had overawed them for the moment, Cromwell knew that these soldiers held the destinies of England in their hands, and that, if he would be their master and stay their hands from havoc, he must first regain their confidence. Several meetings were held between officers and adjutators, at which he and the officers admitted that the treaty with the king, entered into ‘through the fear of man and want of a spirit of faith, had become a cause of division, to the danger of the blessed cause in which the army was engaged.’ In thus speaking it is not to be supposed that Cromwell and his officers were acting the parts of knaves and hypocrites. It was an undeniable fact that, in treating with Charles, they had taken a wrong road to effect a settlement which would secure religious toleration and civil liberty. Charles had deceived them; he had not only stirred up the city against them, but now at his summons a Scotch army was about to invade the country, while Royalists were preparing to rise. In the divisions that had ensued amongst themselves, in the dangers that now threatened them, they recognized a judgment of God on their own backslidings. The conferences concluded with “a very clear and joint resolution, on many grounds at large there debated amongst us, that it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that blood he had shed and mischief he had done to his utmost against the Lord’s cause and people in these poor nations.”[144]

%CHARLES’ TREATY WITH SCOTS.%

While this was the final resolution of the army, the Presbyterians in Parliament carried a vote that, if the king gave his consent to four bills, granting the command of the militia to the Parliament, and revoking his declarations of treason against the two Houses, he should be allowed to come to London and treat in person (Dec. 14th). ♦Charles’ secret treaty with Scots.♦ Charles, however, rejected the bills; for about the same time that they were presented, commissioners came from Scotland to Carisbrooke, and concluded a treaty with him on easier terms then had ever yet been proposed. It was agreed that a Scotch army should enter the kingdom in the ensuing spring; that the Cavaliers should rise at the same time; that the Presbyterian Church should be established in England for three years; and that the king should not be required to take the covenant or conform to the public worship (26th Dec.). The papers containing the terms were carefully closed up in lead, and concealed in a private house, for it would have been fatal to the king’s character had their contents become known to the English Parliament. Charles, however, had, unfortunately, but little character for honesty left with either party. Both Parliament and army knew he had made a secret agreement with the Scots, and ascribed his rejection of the four bills to its true cause (27th Dec.). Having delayed to escape until he had concluded the treaty with the Scots, Charles found that the opportunity was gone; his guards were doubled, his friends dismissed, and his walks confined to a small garden.

♦Republicans propose dethronement.♦ The Republicans seized the advantage offered them by the rejection of the bills to venture on the boldest step they had yet taken; they openly proposed, in Parliament, to exclude the king from the throne. “Mr. Speaker,” said Sir Thomas Wroth, “Bedlam was appointed for madmen, and Tophet for kings; but our kings of late have carried themselves as if they were fit for no place but Bedlam. I propose we lay the king by, and settle the kingdom without him. I care not what form of government you set up, so it be not by kings or devils.”

%CROMWELL FORESEES REACTION.%

After a warm debate, the Presbyterians were beaten, and a resolution was carried by 141 votes against 92, that no more addresses should be made to the king by any person whatsoever, without consent of both Houses, under penalties of high treason (3rd Jan., 1648). Yet, in spite of this success within Parliament House, outside there were many signs of disaffection, which boded but a stormy birth for the young Republic. An invasion from Scotland was expected; the city was slow to lend money to pay the army, and hated the Parliament ever since the exclusion of the eleven Presbyterian members; the country people were clamouring against the taxes and calling for the restoration of the king. Cromwell, hoping at least to effect cordial co-operation between the friends of a common cause, brought together the ‘Parliament grandees’ and the ‘army grandees’ at a dinner at his own house. He there stated, as his own opinion, that either a monarchical, aristocratical, or democratical government might be good in themselves, or good for England, according to the directions of Providence. The Republicans disputed both points. God, they said, had charged upon the Israelites their choice of Saul as a rejection of Himself; therefore, monarchy could not be good in itself, any more than it could be good for England, to which it had been the main source of oppression. “It is our duty,” they said, “to call the king to account for the blood that has been shed, and then to establish a commonwealth, founded upon the consent of the people, so that it may have their hearts and hands in its support.” Cromwell, being pressed by Ludlow to declare himself plainly for or against a republic, flung a cushion at his questioner’s head, and ran downstairs, to give some vent to the irritation he was obliged to suppress. Fools to talk of founding a republic, with the consent of the nation! when against it were not Royalists only, but Presbyterians and thousands of honest men who had taken arms against the king, not to abolish kingship, but to ensure their own liberties. “I see,” he said to Ludlow the next day, “that it is desirable, but not that it is possible;” whereupon Ludlow angrily left him, suspicious of his intentions. For these Republicans had now become so deeply imbued with the idea that the only way to ensure England’s liberties was by founding a commonwealth without king or House of Lords, that they disbelieved in the honesty of every one who doubted the efficacy of the nostrum.

But the storm, which Cromwell had foreseen, now burst, and the presence of a common foe made Levellers, Republicans, and army officers unite again. Great excitement had prevailed throughout the country since the vote passed against making further addresses to the king. Reverence for their country’s past combined with pity for their fallen monarch. Bands of the City militia would patrol the streets, stop coaches, and force their occupants to drink the king’s health. Some apprentices, playing at bowls in Moorfields one Sunday, drove off a body of soldiers who would have stopped their game, and then marched to the City, raising the cry of ‘God and King Charles!’ Joined on their way by thousands of sympathizers, they broke open an arsenal, placed chains across the streets, and remained masters of the City till the following morning (April 13th).

In the country similar scenes were witnessed. In defiance of the soldiers, tumultuous crowds of country people assembled to raise the forbidden maypole, and were seldom dispersed without bloodshed. Rebellion followed tumult. The knowledge that the Scots were coming to deliver the king from prison raised the drooping spirits of the Cavaliers. In Wales, in Kent, in Essex, in Hertfordshire, in Nottinghamshire, in Cornwall, in the western counties, the royal standard was unfurled. The same reaction extended to the navy. Seventeen ships of war sailed to Holland and offered their services to the Prince of Wales. But the army had generals who were not slow to act, and troops such as the raw levies of the Cavaliers could not long resist. Cromwell soon triumphed in the west, and forced the Royalists to take refuge in Pembroke Castle (May). In the counties round London, after a fortnight’s fighting, little remained of the royal forces, and this little was besieged by Fairfax in Colchester (June).

%SCOTCH PARTIES--HAMILTON’S INVASION.%

There was serious danger, however, yet to come. Scotland, at this time, was a country divided against itself. The Covenanters had split into two parties. The first, headed by the Duke of Argyle, and supported by the Church Assembly, were indignant at the terms of the treaty their commissioners had made in the Isle of Wight. A war to replace a king who refused the Covenant seemed at once treason to their religion and a breach of their treaty with the English Parliament. The second, or moderate party, under the Duke of Hamilton, were ready to forgive any shortcomings of the king sooner than see Independents triumph over Presbyterians. In defence of the war they could argue, not without truth, that the purpose of their solemn league and covenant had been to establish the Presbyterian Church in England, and secure constitutional rule, and not to enable Republicans and sectarians to overthrow monarchy and secure liberty of conscience. The moderate party was strongest in the Scottish Parliament, and, in spite of the opposition of the Church Assembly, a vote had been passed to raise an army of 40,000 men to fight in defence of the Covenant and of the king. The service, however, was not popular. Under Hamilton’s command some 20,000 came straggling into England, followed by the curses of the extreme Covenanters. Fairfax being before Colchester, Cromwell before Pembroke, the invaders marched loosely and confidently. On the 16th of August, Hamilton, with the main body of his army, was at Preston; his horse at Wigan, more than ten miles in advance; his rear straggling another ten miles behind. At Langridge, about four miles to the east, up the northern bank of the Ribble, was Sir Marmaduke Langdale and a body of 3000 English Cavaliers. But security is not safety. Further east, another four or five miles up the same stream, at Stonyhurst and Clitheroe, was Cromwell, with an army of nearly 9000 men, a fact of which Duke Hamilton lay in complete ignorance. Pembroke had, in fact, surrendered just in time to allow the Ironsides to hasten north by forced marches, and meet the new enemy before he had advanced far into Lancashire. In the morning Cromwell descended the stream of the Ribble on the northern bank, and attacked the Cavaliers at Langridge. Hamilton, believing the enemy to be merely some small body of Yorkshiremen, sent no reinforcements to Langdale, who, after a gallant resistance and four hours’ hard fighting, was driven back from hedge to hedge into Preston town, the enemy following close at his heels, and charging through the streets. While the Cavaliers were fighting, the main body of the Scots had been making their way in happy ignorance to the south side of the Ribble, intending to follow their horse. While in this plight, Cromwell fell upon them and drove them off Ribble bridge before their rear had crossed. The troops thus left on the north bank of the river were cut to pieces, and chased to Lancaster with terrible loss (Aug. 17th).

[Illustration: MAP OF LANCASHIRE.]

South of the Ribble, Hamilton held a council of war. Most of his officers were for pushing on the same night to Wigan, where they expected to find their horse. “But what,” said others, “will become of our unfortunate ammunition, since forward with us we cannot get it?” “It shall be blown up by a train,” said the duke. But, in the hurry and confusion of a retreat by night, it was not blown up, and the whole fell into the hands of Cromwell. The next morning (Aug. 18th), after this “drumless march,” the Scots found themselves at Wigan Moor, weary in body and depressed in spirit, for weather was wet and ways were bad, and the twenty thousand had dwindled to ten. The officers agreed to push the retreat on to Warrington, another ten miles south, where they hoped to take up a strong defensive position, and dispute the passage of the enemy at the bridge over the Mersey. But before their rear, which did not begin its march until the evening, was through Wigan, Cromwell was upon them. In the market-place the moon cast dim light upon a scene of inextricable confusion. The Ironsides charged the Scots’ rear; the Scots’ horse dashed headlong onwards, and were received on the pikes of their own infantry, who cried out, “These are Cromwell’s men!” They charged, however, so fiercely that the pikemen threw down their weapons and fled for refuge to the nearest houses. The same mistakes were repeated. “After this,” says one who was present, “all the horse galloped away, and, as I was told afterwards, rode not through, but over our whole foot.” Such were the scenes of the night. In the morning (Aug. 19th), at a place called Redbank, two miles outside Warrington, a body of pikemen took advantage of a favourable position to face about, and dispute the ground with the enemy. After several hours’ hard fighting, driven back at push of pike, they entered Warrington in company with their pursuers, and pressed on to the bridge over the Mersey, which was already held by their friends, and strongly barricaded. Here, however, the three days’ battle ended. Hamilton and the horse had made off some time before, sending word to the lieutenant-general of the foot to make as good conditions for himself as he could. Officers and soldiers yielded themselves prisoners of war, being promised their lives and civil usage. Hamilton and his horse were caught in Staffordshire. Thus, as Cromwell wrote to the Parliament, did an army of 8600 men shatter and dissipate another of at least 21,000. Two thousand Scots were slain, and eight or nine thousand more made prisoners, without counting those destroyed or brought in by the country people[145] (August 17, 18, 19).

%CROMWELL IN SCOTLAND.%

Cromwell, after his victory, marched with his army into Scotland, where the extreme Covenanters had risen in arms against the friends of Hamilton’s invasion. A peace was effected by his influence (Sept. 28th). The Engagers, the name given to those who served under Hamilton, were disqualified from serving in any public employment, but were left in possession of their property, on condition of disbanding their forces and renewing their allegiance to the Covenant. The government was thus left entirely in the hands of Argyle and other opponents of the late war.

A few days after Cromwell’s victory over the Scots in Lancashire, Fairfax brought the war to a close in the south. Subdued by famine, the gentlemen and officers shut up in Colchester surrendered at discretion, the soldiers upon promise of quarter (Aug. 27th). Three of the garrison were condemned by a council of war to be shot. “It is necessary,” Ireton is reported to have said, “for the example of others, and to prevent the peace of the kingdom from being disturbed in this way again, that some should suffer.” Fairfax, though always inclined to the side of mercy, agreed with Ireton. One, a foreigner, he reprieved; the other two, who had both broken their word of honour not to bear arms against the Parliament, were executed.

While the generals were engaged in fighting Royalists and Scots, the Presbyterians in London, taking advantage of the absence of many Independent members with the army, were doing their utmost to ruin the cause of civil and religious liberty. There were, without doubt, many members of the Parliament who would sooner have seen victory on the side of the Scots than of the Independents. In the Upper House this party was in a majority, so that when the Commons voted that all Englishmen who should abet the invaders were traitors, the Lords actually refused to concur in the vote (July 18th). A persecuting ordinance was fulminated against sectarians (p. 203). The eleven Presbyterian members were recalled to their seats (June). The Presbyterian major-general, Huntingdon, presented to Parliament a paper, modestly entitled, ‘Sundry Reasons inducing him to lay down his Commission,’ but really containing charges against his commander, which, in the event of the Scots’ success, might have served to cost Cromwell his head. Even those Presbyterians whose feelings of nationality were too strong to suffer them to wish success to the invaders, were yet most eager to conclude a treaty with the king, and thereby sacrifice the cause for which the English armies were fighting. The vote of the 3rd of January, forbidding any addresses to be made to the king, under penalties of treason, was now rescinded (June 30th), and, after some time had passed in preliminaries, fifteen commissioners were sent to negotiate the terms of a treaty with Charles at Newport (Sept. 13th).

%PARLIAMENT UNPOPULAR.%

The Parliament had now exercised supreme power since the breaking out of the war in the year ’41. Once looked upon as the saviour of the nation’s liberties, it was now hated and despised. The causes of this were manifold. In the first place, however able and honest were some of its members, it had, as a body, been subjected to violence, and had sacrificed all consistency, voting one day to please the soldiers, another to please a City mob. A former Royalist member justly reproaches them with “voting of members in and out so often; voting there shall be no more addresses to the king, and then voting that there shall--a temper something like that of Henry VIII., who advanced men in a good humour he knew not why, and ruined them again in another he knew not why.”[146]

%TRIAL OF LILBURNE.%

A second cause that brought the Parliament into disfavour with the people, was that both Houses of Parliament constantly trespassed on the liberties of the people by fining and imprisoning political offenders, under the pretence of breach of privilege, without showing legal cause or bringing the victims to trial. Yet the House of Lords, except in cases of impeachment or appeals from inferior courts, possessed an undisputed jurisdiction only over peers; while the House of Commons possessed no judicial power at all, except in disputed elections and in cases of interference with the free action of members. Lilburne had already signalized himself by attacking the encroachments thus made upon the liberties of the people. He had been committed to prison by order of the Lords (July, 1646), and it was two years before he succeeded in obtaining from the judges of the King’s Bench his writ of ‘habeas corpus.’ It was not to be expected that in time of war a troublesome agitator should meet with other than summary treatment. Lilburne had attacked one of the two Houses under which he served, and, when imprisoned for this, had been writing pamphlets exciting the soldiers to mutiny. In such a case, a temporary suspension of the subject’s right to a ‘habeas corpus’ was necessary and justifiable. It probably, however, did the Parliament quite as much injury as if the man had been left at liberty. A revolutionary government, though surrounded by enemies, and with none of the prestige of an old-established régime to protect it, is none the less expected to show a far greater regard to the liberties of the subject than the government it has displaced. So now crowds of sympathizing spectators thronged the court when Lilburne demanded his liberty on the ground that the Lords acted illegally in calling any but peers to the bar of their House. The judges, however, supported the jurisdiction of the Lords, and refused to grant Lilburne his release, on the ground that he had been committed by a superior court. Notwithstanding the decision of the judges, abuse of privilege was a real blot on the administration: so was also the subservience the Parliament had shown.

%FINANCIAL OPPRESSION.%

There can be no doubt, however, that what ruined the government in the opinion of the country at large was the bad financial administration. The other causes touched the men who thought and the men who felt; but this weighed with the average men who did not either think much or feel much. Such men are four out of five in any community. As a rule they follow their leaders, but in England, if their pockets are once touched, they take a course of their own. These men the Parliament had alienated by bad finance. Properly administered, the revenue would have been more than sufficient to meet the expenditure. Its sources were numerous--the excise, the customs, the monthly assessment on land and goods, the compositions made by Royalists, and the seizure and sale of bishops’ lands, crown lands, and the estates of those who preferred poverty and exile to having any dealings with rebels. But the machinery for collection was both oppressive and expensive. There was a bureaucracy of the worst kind, for the counties were put in the hands of committees, who levied the taxes, looked after Royalists’ estates, and secured obedience to the government. It was said, indeed, that one half of the revenue was devoured by these committees and their officials. Large sums of money were lavishly granted by the Parliament to its adherents, sometimes as rewards for services, sometimes as payments of loans, borrowed at a high interest during the war. Adventurers who had joined the side of the Parliament as a paying speculation, succeeded in their object, making large fortunes either as members of Parliament or as members of county committees. Colonel Birch, a merchant of Bristol, who had abandoned his business as unprofitable, and enlisted in the Parliament’s army, was granted at different times the sums of £1500, £800, and £4900, and in the year 1650 had so much spare capital that he bought bishops’ lands to the value of £2000. While these liberal gifts were made, the pay of the soldiers was left in arrear. To meet the deficit, heavy extra impositions were laid on the country. Thus, in 1647, the people in many parts of Radnor, though they had already paid their six months’ contribution, were required to raise an additional rate of three shillings for each foot soldier quartered amongst them. During the war Fairfax exacted from the city of Bath £90,000 in six months, in addition to twelve months’ pay, which had been previously granted. Thus, while men connected with the government grew rich, the tradespeople in garrison towns were being gradually reduced to beggary, and the country people in some places were almost starving. “Amazing,” says Lilburne in one of his pamphlets, “that so many men in Parliament, and their associates elsewhere, who pride themselves as the only saints and godly men upon earth, and have large possessions of their own, can take yearly salaries of £1000, £3000, £6000.”[147]

%PARTIES IN COMMONS.%

From these various causes the House of Commons was unpopular. It was also divided against itself. It contained three chief political parties. First, the Presbyterians, eager to recover their former ascendancy by making a treaty with the king; secondly, the Republicans, who aimed at getting rid of king and House of Lords; thirdly, Independents, still true to the cause of liberty of conscience: besides these were the lawyers and the waverers, who voted with the Republicans, either through dread of Presbyterian ascendancy, or because, after long enjoying the sweets of power, they were loath to see the present Parliament dissolved. Outside the Commons’ House was an army of between 20,000 and 30,000 men, at this time the real power in the land. The officers’ views of settlement differed from those of the Republicans principally in the following point, that while the Republicans wished the army to act as an obedient servant in establishing their Republican ideal, the officers cared little about the form of the civil power as long as it carried out their own views of reform. The two parties, however, were closely allied, and, in fact, intermingled. A standing army had never before been known in England, and was as little loved by the people as the perpetual Parliament itself. Thus the officers, unable to rule in their own names, hoped to rule by coalescing with the Republicans. The Republicans, in their anxiety to found their own form of government, mistook the character and aims of their only and necessary supporters. The ranks of the army were really filled with sectarians and Levellers. The reforms these demanded were not theoretical, but practical and popular--the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the lessening of lawyers’ fees, an adjustment of seats to population, the meeting of new parliaments every year, and the reform of the Church.

A Leveller has given us a picture of a meeting of officers, Republicans, Independents, and some of his own party, held during the autumn months, while the Presbyterians were treating with the king. “We intend,” said the officers, “to cut off the king’s head, and purge, if not dissolve, the Parliament.” “We know,” replied Lilburne, as the spokesman of the Levellers, “that the king is a bad man, but the army deceived us last year, and is not to be trusted. It is our interest to keep up one tyrant against the other, until we can know which tyrant will give more freedom. For we do not wish the government to develop into the wills and swords of the army, and we [be] dealt with as the slavish peasants of France, who can call nothing their own. An agreement must be drawn up before anything else is done.” “There is no time,” objected an officer; “the treaty between the king and the Parliament will be concluded, and then you will be destroyed as well as we.” “We must dissolve the Parliament,” said Ireton for the officers, “for how else are we to get rid of it? It will never dissolve itself.” On the other hand, Republican and Independent members of the House opposed a dissolution, thinking a purge of their Presbyterian companions a far more desirable remedy, and by no means objecting to concentrating all civil power in their own hands.

%NEGOTIATIONS AT NEWPORT.%

When such were the counsels of the men in power, the negotiations begun at Newport in September appear little better than a farce. There Charles was himself receiving, disputing, and answering the propositions of the Parliament, which were the same as those offered at Newcastle. Two of the commissioners on their knees implored him to waste no time, but to grant on the first day all that he could on the last. It probably mattered less than they thought whether he yielded on the first or last day, for where in either case was to be found the means to resist the will of the army, which was opposed to all compromise? At last, after protracting the negotiations over six weeks, Charles agreed to grant to Parliament the command of the militia and the government of Ireland for twenty years; to suspend the power of bishops for three years, until a form of Church government should be agreed upon by himself and the two Houses; and to allow seven of his friends to be excepted from pardon. How far, however, he was sincere in making these concessions may be judged from his own letters. “Be not startled,” he wrote to Ormond, “at my great concessions about Ireland, for that they will come to nothing.”

For some time past Charles’ mind had been occupied with thoughts of escape. He was beginning at last to realize that it was possible for subjects to take the life of an anointed king. Still he hardly dared leave the country without first obtaining the consent of his wife. The Prince of Wales might have sailed from Holland with the revolted ships to attempt his father’s release, but he made no effort. One day Charles told Sir John Bowring, who frequently pressed him to escape, that he had received a letter from beyond seas, advising him not to go out of the island, for it was not in the power of the army to touch a hair of his head. “So,” he continued, “as I have made concessions, and the treaty has had a fair end, and especially since I have received this advice (you guess from whence it comes), I am resolved to stay here, and God’s will be done.” It was in fact his wife’s will which was still to be done, till her fatal influence had finally ruined him. The will of the army was soon shown. Regiment after regiment presented petitions to Fairfax demanding ‘that the same fault may have the same punishment in a king or lord as in the poorest commoner.’ A united Army Remonstrance was read in Parliament, requiring the House to set aside the treaty and ‘proceed against the king in a way of justice.’ By a majority of ninety, the Commons decided not to take the Army Remonstrance into consideration.

%CHARLES AT HURST CASTLE.%

On the 2nd of December they were debating whether the king’s concessions were sufficient to serve as a basis of peace. Meanwhile the soldiers were taking up their quarters in the City, and Fairfax was establishing himself at Whitehall. “The debate ought to be laid aside,” said Prynne, “until we are a free Parliament. Our debates cannot be with liberty now we are environed by the army.” On Monday (Dec. 4th) the news came that Charles had been carried off by a party of soldiers from Carisbrooke to Hurst Castle, a gloomy fortress on the Hampshire coast. The Presbyterians, more indignant than alarmed, declared the honour of Parliament at stake, for it had voted that the king should treat in honour, safety, and freedom. Prynne appeared as the King’s champion, so vastly had times changed within the last eight years. “Mr. Speaker,” he said, “all the royal favour I ever yet received from his Majesty was the slitting off my ears in a most barbarous manner; the setting me upon three several pillories for two hours at a time; the burning of my books by the hand of the hangman; the imposing two fines upon me of £5000 a piece; expulsion from the University of Oxford; above eight years’ imprisonment without pens, ink, paper, or books except my Bible. If any member envy me for such royal favour, I only wish him the same badges of favour, and then he will no more asperse me for a royal favourite or apostate from the public cause.” For hours he continued speaking, showing that there was no danger to liberty in accepting the king’s concessions, and calling on the House not to sacrifice its freedom to fear of the army. “If the king and we shall happily close upon this treaty, I hope we shall have not such great need of their future service; however, _fiat justitia, ruat cœlum_--let us do our duty and leave the issue to God.”

%PRIDE’S PURGE.%

It was five o’clock on Tuesday morning before the House divided, when a resolution was carried by 140 to 104, that the answers of the king were a sufficient ground to proceed upon for a settlement of the kingdom. The next day (6th Dec.) was memorable as that of Pride’s Purge. A party of officers, headed by Ireton, had determined to put an end to what they considered Presbyterian dictation. Cromwell was on his way from Scotland, and did not reach London till the next day; and Fairfax was in ignorance of the designs of his officers. But by seven o’clock in the morning every approach to the Commons’ House was barred by soldiers. At the door stood their officer, Colonel Pride, with a list of the proscribed in his hand. When a leading Presbyterian came up the staircase, Lord Grey of Groby pointed him out to Pride, and if the member refused to go away of his own accord, the soldiers forced him down the staircase. Forty Presbyterians were thus excluded, while several others were frightened and kept away of themselves. As the House refused to proceed to business until its absent members should be restored, the next morning the same scene was repeated, and forty more members were excluded (Dec. 7). A minority of twenty-six withdrew of their own accord; the remainder, nicknamed the Rump, formed a House of fifty-three members, all bound to work in accordance with their friends in the army.

♦Ordinance for High Court of Justice.♦ First, in order to have a law by which to convict Charles of treason, the Commons voted that it was treason in the King of England to levy war against the Parliament and kingdom; next, in order to have a court by which to try him, they framed an ordinance for making a special or High Court of Justice, composed of men of their own party. As the House of Lords, though it had now dwindled down to twelve members, still had spirit enough to reject the ordinance unanimously, the Commons resolved, that whatever is enacted by the Commons has the force of law without the consent of king or House of Peers, and then passed the ordinance in their own name alone (Jan. 6th).

%TRIAL OF THE KING.%

The court first met in private in order to make preparations for the trial. 135 judges were named on the ordinance, but many refused to attend the sittings. Algernon Sidney came once, and interrupted the debate by saying, “The king can be tried by no court, and no man by this court.” “I tell you,” said Cromwell, “we will cut off his head with the crown upon it.” “You may take your course, I cannot stop you,” replied Algernon; “but I will keep myself clean from having any hand in the business.”[148] He then left the room and never returned. Sir Henry Vane retired into the country; Fairfax attended the first meeting only.

Charles had already been removed from Hurst Castle to Windsor, and after a few days was taken on to London. The trial was held in Westminster Hall. The judges, about eighty in number, sat upon benches, which rose one above another at the upper end of the hall. Bradshaw, Cromwell’s cousin, sat on a chair of state as Lord President of the Court. Below the President’s chair was a table, on which lay the sword and mace of the House of Commons. Twenty-one gentlemen, bearing ‘partisans,’ were ranged on either side in front of the judges. At the other end of the table, opposite the President’s seat, was placed a red velvet chair for the prisoner; within a bar on the right-hand side of the prisoner’s chair stood the three solicitors for the Commonwealth. Ladies and others were seated in galleries. The body of the hall was filled with a tearful, expectant crowd, separated from the soldiers by scaffoldings. The king was conducted up the centre of the hall by a guard of soldiers. He did not raise his hat or show any sign of respect to the court, but after regarding his judges severely for some moments, turned round and inspected the crowds behind. Cook, the solicitor of the Commonwealth, read the charge, in which Charles Stuart was accused of having endeavoured to overturn the liberties of the people, and of being guilty of all the murders and spoils under which the nation had suffered, “wherefore the people of England impeached Charles Stuart as a tyrant, traitor, and murderer.” The king smiled visibly when he heard the words, “tyrant, traitor, murderer.” He persistently refused to answer to the charge, asserting that the court had no lawful authority derived from the people of England by which to try him, and that therefore in refusing to plead “he stood more for the liberties of the people than did his pretended judges.” Cook accordingly demanded that sentence might be pronounced against the prisoner, in accordance with the rule of law, that if the accused refuses to plead guilty or not guilty, his silence be taken as a confession of guilt. The king was brought before the court for the fourth and last time to hear his sentence read. The President had changed his black for a scarlet gown. He spoke as follows: ‘Gentlemen, it is well known to all, or most of you here present, that the prisoner at the bar hath been several times brought before the court to make answer to a charge of high treason, exhibited against him in the name of the people of England----’

‘It’s a lie! not one half of them. Oliver Cromwell is a traitor!’ shouted a voice from one of the galleries.

A violent commotion arose in the hall; murmurs of indignation amongst the soldiers, of applause amongst the crowd. The speaker was found to be no less a person than Lady Fairfax, and order with some difficulty having been restored, Bradshaw offered the prisoner for the last time leave to answer to his charge, before sentence was pronounced. “I desire,” said the king, “to make a proposal to the Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber, touching the peace of the kingdom and the liberty of the subject.” The judges withdrew for half an hour, and on their return Bradshaw first informed the king that his proposal was rejected, and then made a long speech to justify the conduct of the Parliament, charging the king with having ruled as a tyrant, and thereby rendered resistance both a duty and necessity. “A great necessity,” he said, “occasioned the calling of the Parliament, and what your designs and plots and endeavours all along have been for the crushing and confounding of this Parliament hath been very notorious to the whole kingdom; it makes me call to mind that that we read of a great Roman emperor--by-the-way, let us call him a great Roman tyrant--Caligula, that wished that the people of Rome had had but one neck, that at one blow he might cut it off. And your proceedings have been somewhat like to this, for the body of the people of England hath been represented but in the Parliament, and could but have confounded that, you had at one blow cut off the neck of England. But God hath reserved better things for us, and hath pleased for to confound your designs and to break your forces, and to bring your person into custody that you might be responsible to justice.”

The whole court stood up in sign of assent, while the clerk read the sentence, that Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traitor, and murderer, should be put to death by the severance of the head from the body.

The king appeared deeply agitated and now tried to speak, but as he had refused to plead before the sentence was given, he was not allowed to speak after, and the judges rose and retired. The king, in the midst of vain endeavours to make himself heard, was forced down the hall by the soldiers, who shouted in his ears, ‘Justice! justice!’ ‘Execution!’ As he passed in his chair from Westminster to Whitehall, the windows, the shops, the streets, were crowded with people weeping and praying ‘God to bless the king’[149] (Jan. 27th).

%EXECUTION OF THE KING.%

On taking leave of his two youngest children, who were still in England, Charles bade the Lady Elizabeth, a girl of twelve years old, tell her brother James it was his father’s last desire that he should no longer look on Charles as his eldest brother only, but be obedient to him as his sovereign. Then taking the little Duke of Gloucester on his knee, he said to him, ‘Sweet heart, now they’ll cut off thy father’s head; mark, child, what I say, they’ll cut off my head, and perhaps make thee a king; but mark what I say, you must not be king so long as your brothers Charles and James live; for they’ll cut off your brothers’ heads when they can catch them, and cut off thy head too at last; and, therefore, I charge you not to be made a king by them.’ ‘I will be torn in pieces first,’ said the child weeping.[150] Charles kissed them both, and bade Bishop Juxon have them taken away, while he turned to the window to hide his own emotion. The next morning the king walked from St. James’s to Whitehall amidst a guard of soldiers, with Juxon on one side and Col. Tomlinson on the other, talking to them on the way calmly and cheerfully. About noon he was conducted through a passage, made in the wall of the Banqueting House at Whitehall, on to the scaffold, which had been erected in the open street. Men and women who had forced their way into the hall uttered prayers in his behalf as he passed by. The soldiers throughout the whole occasion kept a deep silence, awed by the solemnity of their own act. On the scaffold, which was hung with black, stood two executioners disguised in masks. Soldiers filled the space immediately below, so that the crowded spectators beyond could hear no word the king uttered. Charles died in the firm belief in which he had lived, that in the quarrel between himself and his subjects he had been always in the right, they always in the wrong. He addressed a short, cold speech to the few assembled on the scaffold, in which he asserted this belief, and then prepared calmly to die. “Hurt not the axe,” he said to a gentlemen who touched its edge while he was speaking; “that may hurt me.” In the words of Marvell:

“He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable scene, But with his keener eye The axe’s edge did try; Nor call’d the gods with vulgar spite To vindicate his helpless right; But bow’d his comely head Down, as upon a bed.”

“I go from a corruptible to an incorruptible crown,” he said to the bishop, “where no disturbance can be, no disturbance in the world.” Then putting his head upon the block, he said to the executioner, “When I put out my hands this way, then--; stay for the sign.” Within a few moments the sign was given, and the executioner, holding the head up in his hand, cried to the people, “Behold the head of a traitor.”

%INSTANCES OF DEPOSITION.%

By Charles’ trial two issues were decided, the king’s deposition and his execution. The two issues are distinct. That a king holds office for the good of his people, and, if he perverts his power to their injury, may justly be deprived of it by their representatives, is a constitutional principle, which has been acted on in the later as well as in the earlier years of history. Forty years after the trial and execution of Charles I., Parliament resolved that his son, King James II., having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of the kingdom by breaking the original contract between king and people, and having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, had abdicated the government, that the throne had thereby become vacant. The crown which the House of Stuart thus for a second time forfeited, they proceeded to bestow upon William and Mary of Orange. For a hundred years, in fact till the death of Charles Edward in 1788, that the kings ruled by a Parliamentary title was not merely a theoretical principle, but the actual basis of the settlement of the crown. It was also one of the original principles of the nation. The Saxon kings were, in fact, elected, and the principle was partly recognized that what the nation gave, it could take away; Sigeberht, Æthelred, Harthacnut were all deposed by the Witenagemot, or great council of the nation. Hereditary succession was not established as the rule in practice till the accession of Edward I. The sanction of the nation was added in doubtful cases. Nor did the Great Council, when transformed into the two Houses of Parliament, forget the use of its ultimate power of deposition. In 1327 the moral sense of the nation revolted at the conduct of its king. A bill, charging him with immorality, incapacity, cruelty, and oppression was read and admitted as a sufficient ground of deposition. By this, Parliament declared that Edward II. had ceased to reign, and bestowed the crown on his son. In 1399 thirty-three charges were read in Parliament against Richard II. The king was declared guilty on every charge, and his deposition pronounced. The scene was one which the great dramatist had made familiar to the nation. When, therefore, the court told Charles that he was responsible to the Commons of England, and was tried in the name of the people of England, they were introducing no new principle into the constitution. In such cases, the fictions of lawyers, which in ordinary times may often be useful as preventives against revolutions, are cast aside like gossamer threads, and the king, “who can do no wrong,” stands arraigned as a common criminal.

If Charles then had been merely deposed by Parliament, he would never have gained the reputation he has had as a martyr. The justice and legality of the course taken to compass his death is, however, a distinct question. His trial and execution was the work, not of a full Parliament, but of a small minority which could make no pretence of representing the people of England. To carry out their end, this minority proceeded to violent measures which only circumstances of extreme necessity could justify. They excluded members by violence from the House of Commons;[151] they virtually abolished the House of Lords; they passed a retrospective ordinance; and, instead of exercising their function in Parliament according to precedent, they erected a new and arbitrary court of justice.

It must, indeed, be said that a great advance had been made in the treatment of deposed kings since the fourteenth century. An arbitrary court and an _ex post facto_ law are better than the secret murder which was the lot of Edward and Richard. The light of day and the presence of the chief men of the nation gave the semblance of a fair trial. Even this semblance is less debasing to the morality of the community than the sanction of murder by government. Compared with this, informalities were but a slight evil; indeed it could scarcely be expected that a constitution could provide special legal forms for the trial of the chief of the State, who could never be tried except after a revolution.

On the one hand it has been said that the people had been rent asunder into two great bodies, one engaged for the king, the other for the Parliament, and that, therefore, if Charles was to be put on trial for his life at all, he ought to have been tried, not by the rules of common or statute law, but by those of international law, which obtain between foreign nations. These forbid that the victors should take the lives of the vanquished. It was, in fact, on these principles that the struggle had been maintained. Prisoners on either side had rarely been put to death as traitors, the fellow-feeling of the combatants, as well as the fear of retaliation, having prevented such cruelty. The rules of international law applied as much to the leaders as to their followers. On the other hand, it was undoubtedly true that Charles was guilty in a sense in which no other leader was guilty, and no mere general could have been. For it was his deceptions, followed as they were by the refusal of the necessary Militia Bill, that caused the war. Had he read aright the history of the past, he would have seen that the great Edward’s “pactum serva” contained the whole law for a constitutional king. Charles was not punished as a combatant, but as the cause of the combat, in other words, for his previous actions as a king. As for the rights of war, the Independent leaders could scarcely have doubted that, had the cases been reversed, he would have meted the same measure to them.

The voice of the nation, however, was for clemency in the hour of their king’s fall; they did not think he had committed such sanguinary crimes as justified the violation of law to accomplish his death. Thousands had fought on his side; thousands who had fought against him wished to spare his life. His enemies might plead that they were acting in self-defence; but if they counted on the king’s death stopping the reaction, they greatly miscalculated. When Charles was dead, they had his son to deal with, who had not, as his father, lost the confidence of the nation.

%THE FEELINGS OF THE ACTORS.%

These objections were so strongly felt at the time, that several officers, and several Republicans, stood aloof from the whole proceeding. Fairfax, Skippon, Vane, Algernon Sidney, exerted all their influence to prevent a trial for life, wishing to see the king merely deposed. On the other hand, the mass of sectarians, Republicans, and Levellers pressed for Charles’ execution as a grand and signal display of justice; one that had not its record in history, and might serve as a warning to all crowned heads for the future. Charles, according to them, had broken his coronation oath, in which he swore to govern by the laws of the land, and had thereby been the author of the civil war, and the bloodshed attendant upon it. Any accommodation was alike unsafe and wicked; unsafe, because his duplicity had been proved over and over again; wicked, because of the express words to be found in God’s law, that “blood defileth the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.”[152] “As for Mr. Hutchinson,” says his wife, “although he was very much confirmed in his judgment concerning the cause, yet being here called to an extraordinary action, whereof many were of several minds, he addressed himself to God by prayer, desiring the Lord, that, if through any human frailty he were led into any error, He would open his eyes and not suffer him to proceed--and finding no check, he proceeded to sign the sentence against the king. Although he did not then believe but it might one day come to be again disputed among men, yet both he and others thought they could not refuse it without giving up the people of God (whom they had led forth and engaged themselves unto by oath) into the hands of God and their enemies.”

Cromwell and Ireton placed themselves at the head of the movement they were powerless to prevent. There is no doubt that they sympathized in it. Only once does Cromwell allude to the execution, at least in the letters and speeches that still remain. “They,” he says, “that acted this great business have given a reason of their faith in the action, and some here are ready, further, to do it against all gainsayers.”[153] Such a decision as the Independent leaders had to make in regard to the execution of Charles I., shows what is really terrible in revolutions. It is not that men carry their lives in their hands, the soldier thinks nothing of that. It is that crises come then, when men cannot choose the good, cannot stand aside, but must choose between two evils, and see the evil of what they choose. At such a time many a man would gladly oppose both and fall; but a leader is bound to the helm, though he may see no course but to run his ship on the rocks, and drown some to save many. This is what is most terrible in revolutions; after the fact it is terrible to all; it is terrible at the time only to the weaker or more delicate spirits. These birds of calm are caught by the storm and drowned while doubting. Not so the real leaders of revolutions. They ride upon the storm. They see but as the lightning flashes. To them the lesser evil seems a transcendent good. Charles had hoped by his intrigues to crush Cromwell; he failed; and Cromwell thenceforth looked upon him as hopelessly false; as one who was destitute of that sense of truth between man and man, which was a necessity of political life. Such a man, if a ruler, he held, must be dealt with by banishment or by death, as an incurable evil of the commonwealth. His was a stern mind, and a mind into which an idea of privilege did not enter. There was with him no respect of persons. If he had no mercy on Lilburne’s misguided Leveller, who endangered the fidelity of a regiment, he was as severe to the prince, who endangered the liberty of the country. Such a mind, intensely confident of its own sense of justice, never recoiled from its conclusion. If it could not draw back, still less could it conceal its purpose. As it abhorred secret murder, so it abhorred that lingering murder, which, while it shrinks from taking away life, shrinks not from taking away the means of life. If Charles was to die, it could not be by the lingering death Charles himself had assigned to Eliot. There was no secrecy in Cromwell’s dealing with prince or private; the one was given over to martial law before the eyes of his comrades; the other was given as openly to no less stern inquisitors of blood.

%CAUSES OF SYMPATHY.%

The world, however, has not judged as Cromwell did. And, though on grounds of abstract justice, it is hard to say why a king deserves a mercy which he has denied to his subjects, yet many faults will be forgiven to those who have had the difficult task of governing others. Among the causes which have won an excess of sympathy for Charles, we observe the natural pity for the greatness of the fall, a disinclination to judge hardly of the fallen, but, above all, the deep-rooted sentiment of loyalty, which the restriction of prerogative has itself attached to the king, by making his throne the ideal element of the constitution, and thus so raising him above parties, that when his ministers do well, he receives the honour, when ill, he can restore, or even increase, his own popularity by ridding himself of his advisers. Besides these general considerations, it will be remembered that the interpreter of his times for all the generations before our own, has been one who wrote in the full tide of the reaction, and who, as is now known, has not shrunk on occasion from suppressing truth, in his endeavour to palliate the faults of one side or blacken those of the other. The historian has been seconded so ably by the painter and novelist, that a Cavalier has been held the type of all that is noble, and a patriot of all that is mean. It will be noticed that the two classes by whom Charles has been most admired, have been the clergy, who may have been unconsciously biassed by a not unnatural antipathy to the religious theories of his opponents; and those whose lives have brought them least in contact with public interests: these have judged him as one of their own society, and have been carried away by the many virtues of his private life, his courage in the field, his tender nature and his piety, as well as by the noble attitude in which these qualities sustained him at his death. Those, on the other hand, who have interested themselves deeply in the cause of the people, must perforce judge public men by what they have done for the nation. In their roll of martyrs will come not Charles, who died from reluctance to abandon boldly a prerogative which had been proved to be untenable and pernicious, but Eliot, who died in defence of the necessary rights of the Commons’ house, and the ransacking of whose most secret papers has only proved more clearly what was clear before, that the only ends he aimed at were his country’s, his God’s, and truth’s. Those who look to national interests will hold that the first intellectual virtue of a ruler is an insight into the spirit of his time and the first moral virtue, a sympathy with his people’s hopes and fears. As men may be too good fathers, if they use patronage as a vehicle of nepotism, so kings are too good husbands, when they give or withhold their consent to the nation’s wishes according to the tempers or caprices of their wives, and too good churchmen, when they put one half of their subjects without the pale of toleration. This is not the sense in which, with kings, as with others, “England expects every man to do his duty.”

FOOTNOTES:

[137] Rushworth, Abr., vi. 99, 100.

[138] Rushworth, Abr., vi. 113.

[139] Herb. Mem.; Rush. Abr., vi. 140, 144.

[140] Huntingdon in Masères Tracts, 398.

[141] Clar. State Papers, ii. appendix.

[142] See p. 73.

[143] Ashburnham’s Narrative, 94.

[144] Somers, Tracts, vi.

[145] Carl., i. 279-295; Hodgson and Slingsby, Mem.

[146] “Letter of an Ejected Member” (printed 1648).

[147] Memoirs of Col. Birch, 68, 96, 152, 236; Whitelock, Mem; Hollis, Memoirs; ‘Fundamental Liberties of England vindicated,’ in King’s Tracts.

[148] Blencowe, Sidney Papers, i. 237.

[149] Herb., Mem., 168.

[150] Rushworth, vi. 604; Herbert, 180.

[151] This great blot on the proceedings was well hit by a remonstrance addressed to Ireton. “The godly and moral jealousy, I have over you and others related to the lieutenant-general, makes me present these few lines.... Surely of all others the change of laws and government had need to be done in full Parliament. But that it may be as near as possible the act of the whole people, as many as may be should be present, lest it fails of the _esse_ of _magnum consilium_, or that the absence of many by a forced or legal impediment be not judged a just impediment to proceedings. And whether this Parliament be either a free or impartial one will abide disputed at least, and if ever time shall come in which examination may be of things and present transactions in reference to this Parliament, who can tell if it may not be judged beyond the Earl of Strafford’s fault, which was but arbitrary government, which is but a slighting of laws--much of this a total abolition of them?... It may, perhaps, come to be said of your many dangerous ends and extraordinary actings, as the Romans of Pompey the Great, his daughter, it was a fair and happy daughter, brought forth of an ugly and odious mother; I wish it may be so--only thus much, if you save the people of this land in the way you are in, it must be both against their wills and prayers.” “This I delivered to Ireton about a fortnight before the king’s trial. Signed, John Clayton.” See an unpublished pamphlet among Clarendon Papers in Bodleian, entitled, “State Colours and Complections, in which are reasons against the proceedings to try the king.”

[152] Numbers xxxv. 33.

[153] Carl. ii. 210.