It withdrew with him to Newcastle. He remained with it during the summer and autumn, served like a monarch, but guarded as a captive. Neither the arguments of the Scottish clergymen, nor the offers of restoration to power held out to him by the Scottish statesmen and soldiers, could prevail with him to announce himself a Presbyterian. The English Parliament claimed the custody of his person. A sharp conflict of argument ensued as to the goodness of this pretension. At length, in fulfilment of a treaty in which the English stipulated the immediate payment of arrears due to the auxiliaries which had come from the sister kingdom, the King was surrendered into the hands of Commissioners from the Parliament, who conducted him to his appointed place of confinement at Holdenby, in Northamptonshire. His surren der to Par liament. 1647. Jan. 30. The King being no longer sovereign, it remained to be seen on whom the sovereignty devolved. The war being over, it appeared to Parliament that the nation was keeping up an army more costly than there remained occasion for; while many, in and out of Parliament, Presbyterians and others, observed with uneasiness that the army was strong, and that some of its commanders were ambitious. An Ordinance was passed for a reduction of the military establishment. But it was urged, on the other hand, at least with great appearance of truth,- - that a material reduction of the military force at this time would be followed by the restoration of the royal power, or by strenuous and sanguinary efforts to that end. At all events, the army had no mind to submit to a reduction which would at once divest it of power to enforce its claims, and leave the nation to the chances of Frustrated attempt to reduce the army. March. 'The King's comfortless condition, while with the Scottish army, is painfully portrayed in a series of letters written by him to the Queen in the year 1646, and published in 1856 by Mr. John Brace for the Camden Society. The letters at the same time complete the illustration of King Charles's utterly treacherous character. that Presbyterian sway, which many of the active spirits utterly distrusted, for other reasons as well as for the apprehension that it would end in reinstating the King. The army made a demand that, previous to any disbanding of the forces, there should be a "settlement of the kingdom," with sufficient guaranties for safety, and a provision for the arrears of pay. The latter condition involved an enormous outlay; for in order to obtain the highest degree of military aptitude and create an army such as that of the Parliament had now proved itself to be, the pay of the private soldier had been fixed at a rate beyond the average earnings of Englishmen. The war had lasted between four and five years, and it was alleged that the service of more than one year remained unrequited. The King While this matter was pending, and Parliament was beginning to be taught its impotence, the surprising news came to Westminster that a party of five hundred cavalry, under one Joyce, had taken the King from Holdenby, and conducted him to the Parliament army, which was now marching upon the capital. conveyed to the army. threatened. June 5. A panic seized the legislators. They disbanded some City levies which they had raised in the suddenness of their first alarm. They expunged from their journals an offensive resolve, in which they had denounced the fomenters of agitation in the army as "enemies to the state, and disturbers of the public peace;" they placed officers of the Independent party in command of the militia of London; and, under the form of granting a liberty of absence, the House of Commons, in compliance with a demand from the troops, expelled eleven Presbyterian members, two of whom were no less considerable persons than Hollis and Waller. The Presbyterian spirit of the City revived, when the army, satisfied for the present with what it had done, withdrew to a distance of some forty miles. A mob of apprentices and others beset July 26. the Houses of Parliament; and, frightened or emboldened by their clamor, the Houses cancelled their recent proceedings, and passed a vote inviting the King to Westminster. Depositing him at Hampton Court, Fairfax advanced the army a second time to the City; and now to more purpose. Ten thousand men had there been arrayed to oppose him; but their commanders- men so distinguished as Massey, Waller, and Poyntz- could not London occupied by the army. Aug. 6. rouse them to any resolution. Fairfax pushed on his troops by a rapid march, and proceeded to occupy Westminster. The question of power between Presbyterians and Independents — between the Parliament and the army-was a question no longer. Two or three years had passed since the strife became overt; it was not yet formally brought to an end; but henceforward the party which had so suddenly emerged to greatness was in a condition to prescribe the terms of settlement. In such a division, it was natural for the King to flatter himself that each side would be disposed to bid high for his favor. At the same time, even with his imperfect. knowledge of what was passing, he could not but see which side was the stronger; and he began to court the army, and to entertain a sanguine hope of its support. The cause of the rupture of the negotiations into which at this time he entered with its leaders remains obscure. But whether it was, that he unreasonably distrusted their sincerity; or that he again had hopes of crushing both parties, and preferred that chance; or that Cromwell, Ireton, and their confidants, intended only to delude and use him; or that, on further experience, they became satisfied that he could not, under any securities, be trusted; or that, with a real desire to make a composition with him, they found themselves at last unable to command in such a proceeding the support of their followers; — however these things were, the King became anxious as the Isle of Wight. to the dispositions of those in whose power he lived, and resolved a second time to seek safety in flight. With three attendants, he reached the Isle of Wight, The King's and there surrendered himself to the Parliamen- escape to tary Governor, Colonel Hammond, being probably determined to that course by the fact that Hammond was the nephew of one of his chaplains. The Governor lodged him in Carisbrook Castle, and caused him to be entertained with respect. Nov. 11. Dec. 15. Suspicions of the purpose of the officers who had been treating with the King raised a mutiny in the army, which with some difficulty was quelled by Fairfax and Cromwell. A reconciliation was sealed by an engagement to bring the King to justice. The time for the consummation of that project had not come; and for the present he was only subjected to severer restraint, the leaders having such confidence in the fidelity of Hammond as to feel satisfied that he would be securely kept.2 The Scottish Commissioners to Parliament, whom it was not yet prudent to affront, were permitted to visit the King at Carisbrook, and used their opportunity to negotiate with him anew. Alarmed by the progress of the adverse interest in the sects and in the army, they consented to make a large abatement from the rigor of their former demands. Instead of requiring him to take the Covenant and engage to establish Presbytery, they agreed to accept his promise, that, if restored to power, he would favor that discipline as far as his conscience. would allow, and that he would at once acquiesce in its establishment as the national, but not the exclusive, re Clarendon, III. 67-71. A collection, published in London, in 1764, of "Letters between Colonel Robert Hammond, Governor of the Isle of Wight, and the Committee of Lords and Commons at Derby House, General Fairfax, Lieutenant-General Cromwell, Commissary-General Ireton, &c., relating to King Charles the First, while he was confined in Carisbrook Castle, in that Island," is full of interest. Three letters of Cromwell to Hammond (22, 40, 101) are highly characteristic. The last is long and elaborate. Treaty of the Dec. 28. ligion of England for three years. A treaty on this basis was secretly signed, and the Commissioners went home to animate Scotland against the Independents and for the King. The strict Presbyterians of that kingdom, with the Earl of Argyll at their head, were dissatisfied with the bargain. The party of the Commissioners, under the lead of the Duke of Hamilton, prevailed in the Scottish Parliament, and a levy of forty thousand troops was ordered. The enlistments, however, went on heavily, and not half that force was actually raised. war. 1648. March 3. Arrangements had been quietly made for a simultaneous rising in England of the royalists and other maleSecond civil contents; and, in the spring after the treaty with the Scots, what is called the Second War of this period began by an insurrection at Pembroke, in Wales. The Scots moved too slowly; and, before it became necessary to encounter them, there proved to be time effectually to suppress ill-managed outbreaks in the west, south, and east of the kingdom. Cromwell left little danger behind him when he moved to intercept the invasion from the north. At Preston, in Lancashire, with Battle of Preston. Aug. 17. nine thousand of his veterans, he met the Duke of Hamilton, at the head of a force of some twenty thousand men. Cromwell's victory was complete. Of the enemy two thousand were killed, eight or nine thousand taken prisoners, and the rest scattered in all directions. Within a fortnight the town of Colchester, the chief position of the insurgents, surrendered to Fairfax, and the second war of arms was finished. Aug. 28. Availing themselves of the absence of the army, Parliament resorted once more to negotiation with Treaty at the King. He was conducted from Carisbrook Sept. 18- to Newport, where he was met by a commission consisting of five Lords and fifteen members of Newport. Nov. 27. |