Could any thing have increased the indignation against that slavery into which the nation, from the too eager pursuit of liberty, had fallen, it must have been the reflection on the pretences by which the people had so long been deluded. The sanctified hypocrites, who called their oppressions the spoiling of the Egyptians, and their rigid severity the dominion of the elect, interlarded all their iniquities with long and fervent prayers, saved themselves from blushing by their pious grimaces, and exercised, in the name of the Lord, all their cruelty on men. An undisguised violence could be forgiven: but such a mockery of the understanding, such an abuse of religion, were, with men of penetration, objects of peculiar resentment.
The parliament, conscious of their decay in popularity, seeing a formidable armed force advance upon them, were reduced to despair, and found all their resources much inferior to the present necessity. London still retained a strong attachment to Presbyterianism; and its militia, which was numerous, and had acquired reputation in the wars, had, by a late ordinance, been put into hands in whom the parliament could entirely confide. This militia was now called out, and ordered to guard the lines which had been drawn round the city, in order to secure it against the king. A body of horse was ordered to be instantly levied. Many officers, who had been cashiered by the new model of the army, offered their service to the parliament. An army of five thousand men lay in the north under the command of General Pointz, who was of the Presbyterian faction; but these were too distant to be employed in so urgent a necessity. The forces destined for Ireland were quartered in the west; and, though deemed faithful to the parliament, they also lay at a distance. Many inland garrisons were commanded by officer: of the same party; but their troops, being so much dispersed, could at present be of no manner of service. The Scots were faithful friends, and zealous for Presbytery and the covenant; but a long time was required ere they could collect their forces and march to the assistance of the parliament.
In this situation it was thought more prudent to submit, and by compliance to stop the fury of the enraged army. The declaration by which the military petitioners had been voted public enemies was recalled, and erased from the journal book.[*] This was the first symptom which the parliament gave of submission; and the army, hoping by terror alone to effect all their purposes, stopped at St. Albans, and entered into negotiation with their masters.
Here commenced the encroachments of the military upon the civil authority. The army, in their usurpations on the parliament, copied exactly the model which the parliament itself had set them in their recent usurpations on the crown.
Every day they rose in their demands. If one claim was granted, they had another ready, still more enormous and exorbitant; and were determined never to be satisfied. At first, they pretended only to petition for what concerned themselves as soldiers: next, they must have a vindication of their character: then, it was necessary that their enemies be punished:[*] at last, they claimed a right of modelling the whole government, and settling the nation.[**]
They preserved, in words, all deference and respect to the parliament; but, in reality, insulted them and tyrannized over them. That assembly they pretended not to accuse: it was only evil counsellors, who seduced and betrayed it.
They proceeded so far as to name eleven members, whom, in general terms, they charged with high treason, as enemies to the army and evil counsellors to the parliament. Their names were Hollis, Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir William Lewis, Sir John Clotworthy, Sir William Waller, Sir John Maynard, Massey, Glyn, Long, Harley, and Nichols.[***] These were the very leaders of the Presbyterian party.
They insisted, that these members should immediately be sequestered from parliament, and be thrown into prison.[****] The commons replied, that they could not, upon a general charge, proceed so far.[v] The army observed to them, that the cases of Strafford and Laud were direct precedents for that purpose.[v*] At last, the eleven members themselves, not to give occasion for discord, begged leave to retire from the house; and the army, for the present, seemed satisfied with this mark of submission.[v**]
Pretending that the parliament intended to levy war upon them, and to involve the nation again in blood and confusion, they required that all new levies should be stopped. The parliament complied with this demand.[v***]
There being no signs of resistance, the army, in order to save appearances, removed, at the desire of the parliament to a greater distance from London, and fixed their head quarters at Reading. They carried the king along with them in all their marches.
That prince now found himself in a better situation than at Holdenby, and had attained some greater degree of freedom as well as of consideration with both parties.
All his friends had access to his presence: his correspondence with the queen was not interrupted: his chaplains were restored to him, and he was allowed the use of the liturgy. His children were once allowed to visit him, and they passed a few days at Caversham, where he then resided.[*] He had not seen the duke of Gloucester, his youngest son, and the princess Elizabeth, since he left London, at the commencement of the civil disorders;[**] nor the duke of York, since he went to the Scottish army before Newark. No private man, unacquainted with the pleasures of a court and the tumult of a camp, more passionately loved his family, than did this good prince; and such an instance of indulgence in the army was extremely grateful to him. Cromwell, who was witness to the meeting of the royal family, confessed that he never had been present at so tender a scene; and he extremely applauded the benignity which displayed itself in the whole disposition and behavior of Charles.
That artful politician, as well as the leaders of all parties, paid court to the king; and fortune, notwithstanding all his calamities, seemed again to smile upon him. The parliament, afraid of his forming some accommodation with the army, addressed him in a more respectful style than formerly; and invited him to reside at Richmond, and contribute his assistance to the settlement of the nation. The chief officers treated him with regard, and spake on all occasions of restoring him to his just powers and prerogatives. In the public declarations of the army, the settlement of his revenue and authority was insisted on.[***] The royalists every where entertained hopes of the restoration of monarchy; and the favor which they universally bore to the army, contributed very much to discourage the parliament, and to forward their submission.
The king began to feel of what consequence he was. The more the national confusions increased, the more was he confident that all parties would at length have recourse to his lawful authority, as the only remedy for the public disorders “You cannot be without me,” said he, on several occasions: “you cannot settle the nation but by my assistance.” A people without government and without liberty, a parliament without authority, an army without a legal master; distractions every where, terrors, oppressions, convulsions: from this scene of confusion, which could not long continue, all men, he hoped, would be brought to reflect on that ancient government under which they and their ancestors had so long enjoyed happiness and tranquillity.
Though Charles kept his ears open to all proposals, and expected to hold the balance between the opposite parties, he entertained more hopes of accommodation with the army. He had experienced the extreme rigor of the parliament. They pretended totally to annihilate his authority: they had confined his person. In both these particulars, the army showed more indulgence.[*] He had a free intercourse with his friends. And, in the proposals which the council of officers sent for the settlement of the nation, they insisted neither on the abolition of Episcopacy, nor on the punishment of the royalists; the two points to which the king had the most extreme reluctance: and they demanded, that a period should be put to the present parliament, the event for which he most ardently longed.
His conjunction, too, seemed more natural with the generals, than with that usurping assembly who had so long assumed the entire sovereignty of the state, and who had declared their resolution still to continue masters. By gratifying a few persons with titles and preferments, he might draw over, he hoped, the whole military power, and in an instant reinstate himself in his civil authority. To Ireton he offered the lieutenancy of Ireland; to Cromwell the garter, the title of earl of Essex, and the command of the army. Negotiations to this purpose were secretly conducted. Cromwell pretended to hearken to them and was well pleased to keep the door open for an accommodation, if the course of events should at any time render it necessary. And the king, who had no suspicion that one born a private gentleman could entertain the daring ambition of seizing a sceptre, transmitted through a long line of monarchs, indulged hopes that he would at last embrace a measure which, by all the motives of duty, interest, and safety, seemed to be recommended to him.
While Cromwell allured the king by these expectations, he still continued his scheme of reducing the parliament to subjection, and depriving them of all means of resistance. To gratify the army, the parliament invested Fairfax with the title of general-in-chief of all the forces in England and Ireland; and intrusted the whole military authority to a person who, though well inclined to their service, was no longer at his own disposal.
They voted, that the troops which, in obedience to them had enlisted for Ireland, and deserted the rebellious army, should be disbanded, or, in other words, be punished for their fidelity. The forces in the north, under Pointz, had already mutinied against their general, and had entered into an association with that body of the army which was so successfully employed in exalting the military above the civil authority.[*]
That no resource might remain to the parliament, it was demanded, that the militia of London should be changed, the Presbyterian commissioners displaced, and the command restored to those who, during the course of the war, had constantly exercised it. The parliament even complied with so violent a demand, and passed a vote in obedience to the army.[**]
By this unlimited patience, they purposed to temporize under their present difficulties, and they hoped to find a more favorable opportunity for recovering their authority and influence: but the impatience of the city lost them all the advantage of their cautious measures. A petition against the alteration of the militia was carried to Westminster, attended by the apprentices and seditious multitude, who besieged the door of the house of commons; and by their clamor, noise, and violence, obliged them to reverse that vote which they had passed so lately. When gratified in this pretension, they immediately dispersed, and left the parliament at liberty.[***]
No sooner was intelligence of this tumult conveyed to Reading, than the army was put in motion. The two houses being under restraint, they were resolved, they said, to vindicate, against the seditious citizens, the invaded privileges of parliament, and restore that assembly to its just freedom of debate and counsel. In their way to London, they were drawn up on Hounslow Heath; a formidable body, twenty thousand strong, and determined, without regard to laws or liberty, to pursue whatever measures their generals should dictate to them. Here the most favorable event happened to quicken and encourage their advance. The speakers of the two houses, Manchester and Lenthal, attended by eight peers and about sixty commoners, having secretly retired from the city, presented themselves with their maces, and all the ensigns of their dignity; and complaining of the violence put upon them, applied to the army for defence and protection. They were received with shouts and acclamations: respect was paid to them, as to the parliament of England: and the army, being provided with so plausible a pretence, which in all public transactions is of great consequence, advanced to chastise the rebellious city, and to reinstate the violated parliament.[*]
Neither Lenthal nor Manchester were esteemed Independents; and such a step in them was unexpected. But they probably foresaw that the army must in the end prevail; and they were willing to pay court in time to that authority which began to predominate in the nation.
The parliament, forced from their temporizing measures, and obliged to resign at once, or combat for their liberty and power, prepared themselves with vigor for defence, and determined to resist the violence of the army. The two houses immediately chose new speakers, Lord Hunsdon and Henry Pelham: they renewed their former orders for enlisting troops: they appointed Massey to be commander: they ordered the trained bands to man the lines: and the whole city was in a ferment, and resounded with military preparations.[**]
When any intelligence arrived, that the army stopped or retreated, the shout of “One and all.” ran with alacrity, from street to street, among the citizens: when news came of their advancing, the cry of “Treat and capitulate,” was no less loud and vehement.[***] The terror of a universal pillage, and even massacre, had seized the timid inhabitants.
As the army approached, Rainsborow, being sent by the general over the river, presented himself before Southwark, and was gladly received by some soldiers who were quartered there for its defence, and who were resolved not to separate their interests from those of the army. It behoved then the parliament to submit. The army marched in triumph through the city; but preserved the greatest order, decency, and appearance of humility. They conducted to Westminster the two speakers, who took their seats as if nothing had happened. The eleven impeached members, being accused as authors of the tumult, were expelled; and most of them retired beyond sea: seven peers were impeached; the mayor, one sheriff, and three aldermen, sent to the Tower, several citizens and officers of the militia committed to prison; every deed of the parliament annulled, from the day of the tumult till the return of the speakers; the lines about the city levelled; the militia restored to the Independents; regiments quartered in Whitehall and the Mews; and the parliament being reduced to a regular formed servitude, a day was appointed of solemn thanksgiving for the restoration of its liberty.[*]
The Independent party among the commons exulted in their victory. The whole authority of the nation, they imagined, was now lodged in their hands; and they had a near prospect of moulding the government into that imaginary republic which had long been the object of their wishes. They had secretly concurred in all encroachments of the military upon the civil power; and they expected, by the terror of the sword, to impose a more perfect system of liberty on the reluctant nation. All parties, the king, the church, the parliament, the Presbyterians, had been guilty of errors since the commencement of these disorders: but it must be confessed, that this delusion of the Independents and republicans was, of all others, the most contrary to common sense and the established maxims of policy. Yet were the leaders of that party, Vane, Fiennes, St. John, Martin, the men in England the most celebrated for profound thought and deep contrivance; and by their well-colored pretences and professions, they had overreached the whole nation. To deceive such men, would argue a superlative capacity in Cromwell; were it not that besides the great difference there is between dark, crooked counsels and true wisdom, an exorbitant passion for rule and authority will make the most prudent overlook the dangerous consequences of such measures as seem to tend, in any degree, to their own advancement.
The leaders of the army, having established their dominion over the parliament and city, ventured to bring the king to Hampton Court; and he lived for some time in that palace, with an appearance of dignity and freedom. Such equability of temper did he possess, that, during all the variety of fortune which he underwent, no difference was perceived in his countenance or behavior; and though a prisoner in the hands of his most inveterate enemies, he supported, towards all who approached him, the majesty of a monarch; and that neither with less nor greater state than he had been accustomed to maintain. His manner, which was not in itself popular nor gracious, now appeared amiable, from its great meekness and equality.
The parliament renewed their applications to him, and presented him with the same conditions which they had offered at Newcastle. The king declined accepting them, and desired the parliament to take the proposals of the army into consideration, and make them the foundation of the public sentiment.[*] He still entertained hopes that his negotiations with the generals would be crowned with success; though every thing, in that particular, daily bore a worse aspect. Most historians have thought that Cromwell never was sincere in his professions; and that having by force rendered himself master of the king’s person, and by fair pretences acquired the countenance of the royalists, he had employed these advantages to the enslaving of the parliament; and afterwards thought of nothing but the establishment of his own unlimited authority, with which he esteemed the restoration, and even life, of the king altogether incompatible. This opinion, so much warranted by the boundless ambition and profound dissimulation of his character, meets with ready belief; though it is more agreeable to the narrowness of human views, and the darkness of futurity, to suppose that this daring usurper was guided by events, and did not as yet foresee, with any assurance, that unparalleled greatness which he afterwards attained. Many writers of that age have asserted,[**] 17that he really intended to make a private bargain with the king; a measure which carried the most plausible appearance both for his safety and advancement; but that he found insuperable difficulties in reconciling to it the wild humors of the army.
The horror and antipathy of these fanatics had for many years been artfully fomented against Charles; and though their principles were, on all occasions, easily warped and eluded by private interest, yet was some coloring requisite, and a flat contradiction to all former professions and tenets could not safely be proposed to them. It is certain, at least, that Cromwell made use of this reason why he admitted rarely of visits from the king’s friends, and showed less favor than formerly to the royal cause. The agitators, he said, had rendered him odious to the army, and had represented him as a traitor, who, for the sake of private interest, was ready to betray the cause of God to the great enemy of piety and religion. Desperate projects, too, he asserted to be secretly formed for the murder of the king; and he pretended much to dread lest all his authority, and that of the commanding officers, would not be able to restrain these enthusiasts from their bloody purposes.[*]
Intelligence being daily brought to the king of menaces thrown out by the agitators, he began to think of retiring from Hampton Court, and of putting himself in some place of safety. The guards were doubled upon him; the promiscuous concourse of people restrained; a more jealous care exerted in attending his person; all under color of protecting him from danger, but really with a view of making him uneasy in his present situation. These artifices soon produced the intended effect. Charles, who was naturally apt to be swayed by counsel, and who had not then access to any good counsel, took suddenly a resolution of withdrawing himself, though without any concerted, at least, any rational scheme for the future disposal of his person. Attended only by Sir John Berkeley, Ashburnham, and Leg, he privately left Hampton court; and his escape was not discovered till near an hour after; when those who entered his chamber, found on the table some letters directed to the parliament, to the general, and to the officer who had attended him.[**]
All night he travelled through the forest, and arrived next day at Tichfield, a seat of the earl of Southampton’s, where the countess dowager resided, a woman of honor, to whom the king knew he might safely intrust his person. Before he arrived at this place, he had gone to the sea-coast; and expressed great anxiety that a ship which he seemed to look for, had not arrived; and thence, Berkeley and Leg, who were not in the secret, conjectured that his intention was to transport himself beyond sea.
The king could not hope to remain long concealed at Tichfield: what measure should next be embraced, was the question. In the neighborhood lay the Isle of Wight, of which Hammond was governor. This man was entirely dependent on Cromwell. At his recommendation, he had married a daughter of the famous Hambden, who during his lifetime had been an intimate friend of Cromwell’s, and whose memory was ever respected by him. These circumstances were very unfavorable: yet, because the governor was nephew to Dr. Hammond, the king’s favorite chaplain, and had acquired a good character in the army, it was thought proper to have recourse to him in the present exigence, when no other rational expedient could be thought of. Ashburnham and Berkeley were despatched to the island. They had orders not to inform Hammond of the place where the king was concealed, till they had first obtained a promise from him not to deliver up his majesty, though the parliament and the army should require him; but to restore him to his liberty, if he could not protect him. This promise, it is evident, would have been a very slender security: yet, even without exacting it, Ashburnham imprudently, if not treacherously, brought Hammond to Tichfield; and the king was obliged to put himself in his hands, and to attend him to Carisbroke Castle, in the Isle of Wight where, though received with great demonstrations of respect and duty, he was in reality a prisoner.
Lord Clarendon[*] is positive, that the king, when he fled from Hampton Court, had no intention of going to this island; and indeed all the circumstances of that historian’s narrative, which we have here followed, strongly favor this opinion. But there remains a letter of Charles’s to the earl of Laneric, secretary of Scotland, in which he plainly intimates, that that measure was voluntarily embraced: and even insinuates, that if he had thought proper, he might have been in Jersey, or any other place of safety.[**] 18
Perhaps he still confided in the promises of the generals; and flattered himself, that if he were removed from the fury of the agitators, by which his life was immediately threatened, they would execute what they had so often promised in his favor.
Whatever may be the truth in this matter,—for it is impossible fully to ascertain the truth,—Charles never took a weaker step, nor one more agreeable to Cromwell and all his enemies. He was now lodged in a place removed from his partisans, at the disposal of the army, whence it would be very difficult to deliver him, either by force or artifice. And though it was always in the power of Cromwell, whenever he pleased, to have sent him thither, yet such a measure, without the king’s consent, would have been very invidious, if not attended with some danger. That the king should voluntarily throw himself into the snare, and thereby gratify his implacable persecutors, was to them an incident peculiarly fortunate, and proved in the issue very fatal to him.
Cromwell, being now entirely master of the parliament and free from all anxiety with regard to the custody of the king’s person, applied himself seriously to quell those disorders in the army, which he himself had so artfully raised, and so successfully employed, against both king and parliament. In order to engage the troops into a rebellion against their masters, he had encouraged an arrogant spirit among the inferior officers and private men; and the camp, in many respects, carried more the appearance of civil liberty than of military obedience. The troops themselves were formed into a kind of republic; and the plans of imaginary republics, for the settlement of the state, were every day the topics of conversation among these armed legislators. Royalty it was agreed to abolish: nobility must be set aside: even all ranks of men be levelled; and a universal equality of property, as well as of power, be introduced among the citizens. The saints, they said, were the salt of the earth: an entire parity had place among the elect; and by the same rule that the apostles were exalted from the most ignoble professions, the meanest sentinel, if enlightened by the Spirit, was entitled to equal regard with the greatest commander. In order to wean the soldiers from these, licentious maxims, Cromwell had issued orders for discontinuing the meetings of the agitators; and he pretended to pay entire obedience to the parliament, whom being now fully reduced to subjection, he purposed to make for the future, the instruments of his authority. But the “levellers,”—for so that party in the army was called,—having experienced the sweets of dominion, would not so easily be deprived of it. They secretly continued their meetings: they asserted, that their officers, as much as any part of the church or state, needed reformation: several regiments joined in seditious remonstrances and petitions:[*] separate rendezvouses were concerted; and every thing tended to anarchy and confusion. But this distemper was soon cured by the rough but dexterous hand of Cromwell. He chose the opportunity of a review, that he might display the greater boldness, and spread the terror the wider. He seized the ringleaders before their companions; held in the field a council of war; shot one mutineer instantly; and struck such dread into the rest, that they presently threw down the symbols of sedition, which they had displayed, and thenceforth returned to their wonted discipline and obedience.[**]
Cromwell had great deference for the counsels of Ireton, a man who, having grafted the soldier on the lawyer the statesman on the saint, had adopted such principles as were fitted to introduce the severest tyranny, while they seemed to encourage the most unbounded license in human society. Fierce in his nature, though probably sincere in his intentions, he purposed by arbitrary power to establish liberty, and, in prosecution of his imagined religious purposes, he thought himself dispensed from all the ordinary rules of morality, by which inferior mortals must allow themselves to be governed. From his suggestion, Cromwell secretly called at Windsor a council of the chief officers, in order to deliberate concerning the settlement of the nation, and the future disposal of the king’s person.[***]
In this conference, which commenced with devout prayers, poured forth by Cromwell himself and other inspired persons, (for the officers of this army received inspiration with their commission,) was first opened the daring and unheard-of counsel, of bringing the king to justice, and of punishing, by a judicial sentence, their sovereign, for his pretended tyranny and maleadministration. While Charles lived, even though restrained to the closest prison, conspiracies, they knew, and insurrections would never be wanting in favor of a prince who was so extremely revered and beloved by his own party, and whom the nation in general began to regard with great affection and compassion. To murder him privately was exposed to the imputation of injustice and cruelty, aggravated by the baseness of such a crime; and every odious epithet of “traitor” and “assassin” would, by the general voice of mankind, be indisputably ascribed to the actors in such a villany. Some unexpected procedure must be attempted, which would astonish the world by its novelty, would bear the semblance of justice, and would cover its barbarity by the audaciousness of the enterprise. Striking in with the fanatical notions of the entire equality of mankind, it would insure the devoted obedience of the army, and serve as a general engagement against the royal family, whom, by their open and united deed, they would so heinously affront and injure.[*]
This measure, therefore, being secretly resolved on, it was requisite, by degrees, to make the parliament adopt it, and to conduct them from violence to violence, till this last act of atrocious iniquity should seem in a manner wholly inevitable. The king, in order to remove those fears and jealousies, which were perpetually pleaded as reasons for every invasion of the constitution, had offered, by a message sent from Carisbroke Castle, to resign, during his own life, the power of the militia and the nomination to all the great offices; provided that, after his demise, these prerogatives should revert to the crown.[**] But the parliament acted entirely as victors and enemies; and, in all their transactions with him, paid no longer any regard to equity or reason. At the instigation of the Independents and army, they neglected this offer, and framed four proposals, which they sent him as preliminaries; and before they would deign to treat, they demanded his positive assent to all of them.
By one, he was required to invest the parliament with the military power for twenty years, together with an authority to levy whatever money should be necessary for exercising it; and even after the twenty years should be elapsed, they reserved a right of resuming the same authority, whenever they should declare the safety of the kingdom to require it. By the second, he was to recall all his proclamations and declarations against the parliament, and acknowledge that assembly to have taken arms in their just and necessary defence. By the third, he was to annul all the acts, and void all the patents of peerage, which had passed the great seal since it had been carried from London by Lord Keeper Littleton; and at the same time, renounce for the future the power of making peers without consent of parliament. By the fourth, he gave the two houses power to adjourn as they thought proper; a demand seemingly of no great importance, but contrived by the Independents, that they might be able to remove the parliament to places where it should remain in perpetual subjection to the army.[*]
1648.
The king regarded the pretension as unusual and exorbitant, that he should make such concessions, while not secure of any settlement; and should blindly trust his enemies for the conditions which they were afterwards to grant him. He required, therefore, a personal treaty with the parliament, and desired that all the terms on both sides should be adjusted, before any concession on either side should be insisted on. The republican party in the house pretended to take fire at this answer; and openly inveighed, in violent terms, against the person and government of the king; whose name, hitherto, had commonly, in all debates, been mentioned with some degree of reverence. Ireton, seeming to speak the sense of the army, under the appellation of many thousand godly men, who had ventured their lives in defence of the parliament, said, that the king, by denying the four bills, had refused safety and protection to his people; that their obedience to him was but a reciprocal duty for his protection of them; and that, as he had failed on his part, they were freed from all obligations to allegiance, and must settle the nation, without consulting any longer so misguided a prince.[**]
Cromwell, after giving an ample character of the valor, good affections, and godliness of the army, subjoined, that it was expected the parliament should guide and defend the kingdom by their own power and resolutions, and not accustom the people any longer to expect safety and government from an obstinate man, whose heart God had hardened; that those who, at the expense of their blood, had hitherto defended the parliament from so many dangers, would still continue, with fidelity and courage, to protect them against all opposition in this vigorous measure. “Teach them not,” added he, “by your neglecting your own safety and that of the kingdom, (in which theirs too is involved,) to imagine themselves betrayed, and their interests abandoned to the rage and malice of an irreconcilable enemy, whom, for your sake, they have dared to provoke. Beware,” and at these words he laid his hand on his sword, “beware, lest despair cause them to seek safety by some other means than by adhering to you, who know not how to consult your own safety.”[*] Such arguments prevailed; though ninety-one members had still the courage to oppose. It was voted, that no more addresses be made to the king, nor any letters or messages be received from him; and that it be treason for any one, without leave of the two houses, to have any intercourse with him. The lords concurred in the same ordinance.[**]
By this vote of non-addresses,—so it was called,—the king was in reality dethroned, and the whole constitution formally overthrown. So violent a measure was supported by a declaration of the commons no less violent. The blackest calumnies were there thrown upon the king; such as, even in their famous remonstrance, they thought proper to omit, as incredible and extravagant: the poisoning of his father, the betraying of Rochelle, the contriving of the Irish massacre.[***] By blasting his fame, had that injury been in their power, they formed a very proper prelude to the executing of violence on his person.
No sooner had the king refused his assent to the four bills, than Hammond, by orders from the army, removed all his servants, cut off his correspondence with his friends, and shut him up in close confinement. The king afterwards showed to Sir Philip Warwick a decrepit old man, who, he said, was employed to kindle his fire, and was the best company he enjoyed during several months that this rigorous confinement lasted.[****]
No amusement was allowed him, nor society, which might relieve his anxious thoughts: to be speedily poisoned or assassinated was the only prospect which he had every moment before his eyes; for he entertained no apprehension of a judicial sentence and execution; an event of which no history hitherto furnished an example. Meanwhile, the parliament was very industrious in publishing, from time to time, the intelligence which they received from Hammond; how cheerful the king was, how pleased with every one that approached him, how satisfied in his present condition:[*] as if the view of such benignity and constancy had not been more proper to inflame than allay the general compassion of the people.
The great source whence the king derived consolation amidst all his calamities, was undoubtedly religion; a principle which, in him, seems to have contained nothing fierce or gloomy, nothing which enraged him against his adversaries, or terrified him with the dismal prospect of futurity. While every thing around him bore a hostile aspect; while friends, family, relations, whom he passionately loved, were placed at a distance, and unable to serve him, he reposed himself with confidence in the arms of that Being who penetrates and sustains all nature, and whose severities, if received with piety and resignation, he regarded as the surest pledges of unexhausted favor.
The parliament and army, meanwhile, enjoyed not in tranquillity that power which they had obtained with so much violence and injustice. Combinations and conspiracies, they were sensible, were every where forming around them; and Scotland, whence the king’s cause had received the first fatal disaster, seemed now to promise it support and assistance.
Before the surrender of the king’s person at Newcastle, and much more since that event, the subjects of discontent had been daily multiplying between the two kingdoms. The Independents, who began to prevail, took all occasions of mortifying the Scots, whom the Presbyterians looked on with the greatest affection and veneration. When the Scottish commissioners, who, joined to a committee of English lords and commons, had managed the war, were ready to depart, it was proposed in parliament to give them thanks for their civilities and good offices. The Independents insisted, that the words “good offices” should be struck out; and thus the whole brotherly friendship and intimate alliance with the Scots resolved itself into an acknowledgment of their being well-bred gentlemen.
The advance of the army to London, the subjection of the parliament, the seizing of the king at Holdenby, his confinement in Carisbroke Castle, were so many blows sensibly felt by that nation, as threatening the final overthrow of Presbytery, to which they were so passionately devoted. The covenant was profanely called, in the house of commons an almanac out of date;[*] and that impiety, though complained of, had passed uncensured. Instead of being able to determine and establish orthodoxy by the sword and by penal statutes, they saw the sectarian army, who were absolute masters, claim an unbounded liberty of conscience, which the Presbyterians regarded with the utmost abhorrence. All the violences put on the king, they loudly blamed, as repugnant to the covenant by which they stood engaged to defend his royal person. And those very actions of which they themselves had been guilty, they denominated treason and rebellion, when executed by an opposite party.
The earls of Loudon, Lauderdale, and Laneric, who were sent to London, protested against the four bills, as containing too great a diminution of the king’s civil power, and providing no security for religion. They complained that, notwithstanding this protestation, the bills were still insisted on, contrary to the solemn league, and to the treaty between the two nations. And when they accompanied the English commissioners to the Isle of Wight, they secretly formed a treaty with the king for arming Scotland in his favor.[**]
Three parties at that time prevailed in Scotland: the “royalists,” who insisted upon the restoration of the king’s authority, without any regard to religion sects or tenets: of these, Montrose, though absent, was regarded as the head. The “rigid Presbyterians,” who hated the king even more than they abhorred toleration; and who determined to give him no assistance, till he should subscribe the covenant: these were governed by Argyle. The “moderate Presbyterians,” who endeavored to reconcile the interests of religion and of the crown; and hoped, by supporting the Presbyterian party in England, to suppress the sectarian army, and to reinstate the parliament, as well as the king, in their just freedom and authority: the two brothers, Hamilton and Laneric, were leaders of this party.
When Pendennis Castle was surrendered to the parliamentary army, Hamilton, who then obtained his liberty, returned into Scotland; and being generously determined to remember ancient favors more than recent injuries, he immediately embraced, with zeal and success, the protection of the royal cause. He obtained a vote from the Scottish parliament to arm forty thousand men in support of the king’s authority, and to call over a considerable body under Monro, who commanded the Scottish forces in Ulster. And though he openly protested that the covenant was the foundation of all his measures, he secretly entered into correspondence with the English royalists, Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Sir Philip Musgrave, who had levied considerable forces in the north of England.
The general assembly, who sat at the same time, and was guided by Argyle, dreaded the consequences of these measures; and foresaw that the opposite party, if successful, would effect the restoration of monarchy, without the establishment of Presbytery in England. To join the king before he had subscribed the covenant, was, in their eyes, to restore him to his honor before Christ had obtained his;[*] and they thundered out anathemas against every one who paid obedience to the parliament.
Two supreme independent judicatures were erected in the kingdom; one threatening the people with damnation and eternal torments, the other with imprisonment, banishment, and military execution. The people were distracted in their choice; and the armament of Hamilton’s party, though seconded by all the civil power, went on but slowly. The royalists he would not as yet allow to join him, lest he might give offence to the ecclesiastical party; though he secretly promised them trust and preferment as soon as his army should advance into England.
While the Scots were making preparations for the invasion of England, every part of that kingdom was agitated with tumults, insurrections, conspiracies, discontents. It is seldom that the people gain any thing by revolutions in government; because the new settlement, jealous and insecure, must commonly be supported with more expense and severity than the old: but on no occasion was the truth of this maxim more sensibly felt, than in the present situation of England. Complaints against the oppression of ship money, against the tyranny of the star chamber, had roused the people to arms: and having gained a complete victory over the crown, they found themselves loaded with a multiplicity of taxes, formerly unknown; and scarcely an appearance of law and liberty remained in the administration. The Presbyterians, who had chiefly supported the war, were enraged to find the prize, just when it seemed within their reach, snatched by violence from them. The royalists, disappointed in their expectations by the cruel treatment which the king now received from the army, were strongly animated to restore him to liberty, and to recover the advantages which they had unfortunately lost. All orders of men were inflamed with indignation at seeing the military prevail over the civil power, and king and parliament at once reduced to subjection by a mercenary army. Many persons of family and distinction had, from the beginning of the war, adhered to the parliament: but all these were, by the new party, deprived of authority; and every office was intrusted to the most ignoble part of the nation. A base populace, exalted above their superiors; hypocrites, exercising iniquity under the visor of religion: these circumstances promised not much liberty or lenity to the people; and these were now found united in the same usurped and illegal administration.
Though the whole nation seemed to combine in their hatred of military tyranny, the ends which the several parties pursued were so different, that little concert was observed in their insurrections. Langhorne, Poyer, and Powel, Presbyterian officers, who commanded bodies of troops in Wales, were the first that declared themselves; and they drew together a considerable army in those parts, which were extremely devoted to the royal cause. An insurrection was raised in Kent by young Hales and the earl of Norwich. Lord Capel, Sir Charles Lucas, Sir George Lisle, excited commotions in Essex. The earl of Holland, who had several times changed sides since the commencement of the civil wars, endeavored to assemble forces in Surrey. Pomfret Castle, in Yorkshire, was surprised by Morrice. Langdale and Musgrave were in arms, and masters of Berwick and Carlisle in the north.
What seemed the most dangerous circumstance, the general spirit of discontent had seized the fleet. Seventeen ships, lying in the mouth of the river, declared for the king; and putting Rainsborow, their admiral, ashore, sailed over to Holland, where the prince of Wales took the command of them.[*]