[306] Clar. Papers, p. 275.

[307] Id. 294, 297, 300. She had said as much before (King's Cabinet Opened, p. 28); so that this was not a burst of passion. "Conservez vous la militia," she says in one place (p. 271), "et n'abandonnez jamais; et par cela tout reviendra." Charles, however, disclaimed all idea of violating his faith in case of a treaty (p. 273); but observes as to the militia, with some truth, that "the retaining of it is not of so much consequence—I am far from saying, none—as is thought, without the concurrence of other things; because the militia here is not, as in France and other countries, a formed powerful strength; but it serves more to hold off ill than to do much good. And certainly, if the pulpits teach not obedience (which will never be, if presbyterian government be absolutely settled), the Crown will have little comfort of the militia."—P. 296.

[308] P. 301.

[309] P. 313.

[310] Pp. 245, 247, 278, 314. In one place he says, that he will go to France to clear his reputation to the queen. P. 265. He wrote in great distress of mind to Jermyn and Colepepper, on her threatening to retire from all business into a monastery, in consequence of his refusal to comply with her wishes. P. 270. See also Montreuil's memoir in Thurloe's State Papers, i. 85, whence it appears that the king had thoughts of making his escape in Jan. 1647.

[311] "For the proposition to Bellievre (a French agent at Newcastle after Montreuil's recall), I hate it. If any such thing should be made public, you are undone; your enemies will make a malicious use of it. Be sure you never own it again in any discourse, otherwise than as intended as a foil, or an hyperbole, or any other ways except in sober earnest," etc. P. 304. The queen and her counsellors, however, seem afterwards to have retracted in some measure what they had said about his escape; and advised that if he could not be suffered to go into Scotland, he would try Ireland or Jersey. P. 312.

Her dislike to the king's escape showed itself, according to Clarendon, vi. 192, even at a time when it appeared the only means to secure his life, during his confinement in the Isle of Wight. Some may suspect that Henrietta had consoled herself too well with Lord Jermyn to wish for her husband's return.

[312] P. 344.

[313] P. 279.

[314] Clarendon and Hume inveigh against the parliament for this publication; in which they are of course followed by the whole rabble of Charles's admirers. But it could not reasonably be expected that such material papers should be kept back; nor were the parliament under any obligation to do so. The former writer insinuates that they were garbled; but Charles himself never pretended this (see Supplement to Evelyn's Diary, p. 101); nor does there seem any foundation for the surmise. His own friends garbled them, however, after the restoration; some passages are omitted in the edition of King Charles's Works; so that they can only be read accurately in the original publication, called The King's Cabinet Opened, a small tract in quarto; or in the modern compilations, such as the Parliamentary History, which have copied it. Ludlow says he has been informed that some of the letters taken at Naseby were suppressed by those intrusted with them, who since the king's restoration have been rewarded for it. Memoirs, i. 156. But I should not be inclined to believe this.

There is, however, an anecdote which may be mentioned in this place: A Dr. Hickman, afterwards Bishop of Derry, wrote in 1690, the following letter to Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, a copy of which, in Dr. Birch's handwriting, may be found in the British Museum. It was printed by him in the Appendix to the Inquiry into the Share K. Charles I. had in Glamorgan's Transactions, and from thence by Harris, in his Life of Charles I., p. 144.

"My Lord,—Last week Mr. Bennet [a bookseller] left with me a manuscript of letters from King Charles I. to his queen; and said it was your lordship's desire and Dr. Pelling's, that my Lord Rochester should read them over, and see what was fit to be left out in the intended edition of them. Accordingly, my lord has read them over, and upon the whole matter says he is very much amazed at the design of printing them, and thinks that the king's enemies could not have done him a greater discourtesy. He showed me many passages which detract very much from the reputation of the king's prudence, and something from his integrity; and in short he can find nothing throughout the whole collection, but what will lessen the character of the king and offend all those who wish well to his memory. He thinks it very unfit to expose any man's conversation and familiarity with his wife, but especially that king's; for it was apparently his blind side, and his enemies gained great advantage by showing it. But my lord hopes his friends will spare him; and therefore he has ordered me not to deliver the book to the bookseller, but put it into your lordship's hands; and when you have read it, he knows you will be of his opinion. If your lordship has not time to read it all, my lord has turned down some leaves where he makes his chief objections. If your lordship sends any servant to town, I beg you would order him to call here for the book, and that you would take care about it."

Though the description of these letters answers perfectly to those in the King's Cabinet Opened, which certainly "detract much from the reputation of Charles's prudence, and something from his integrity," it is impossible that Rochester and the others could be ignorant of so well-known a publication; and we must consequently infer that some letters injurious to the king's character have been suppressed by the caution of his friends.

[315] The king had long entertained a notion, in which he was encouraged by the attorney-general Herbert, that the act against the dissolution of the parliament without its own consent was void in itself. Life of Clarendon, p. 86. This high monarchical theory of the nullity of statutes in restraint of the prerogative was never thoroughly eradicated till the Revolution, and in all contentions between the Crown and parliament destroyed the confidence, without which no accommodation could be durable.

[316] "There is little or no appearance but that this summer will be the hottest for war of any that hath been yet; and be confident that, in making peace, I shall ever show my constancy in adhering to bishops and all our friends, not forgetting to put a short period to this perpetual parliament." King's Cabinet Opened, p. 7. "It being presumption, and no piety, so to trust to a good cause as not to use all lawful means to maintain it, I have thought of one means more to furnish thee with for my assistance, than hitherto thou hast had: it is, that I give thee power to promise in my name, to whom thou thinkest most fit, that I will take away all the penal laws against the Roman catholics in England as soon as God shall enable me to do it; so as by their means, or in their favours, I may have so powerful assistance as may deserve so great a favour, and enable me to do it. But if thou ask what I call that assistance, I answer that when thou knowest what may be done for it, it will be easily seen, if it deserve to be so esteemed. I need not tell thee what secrecy this business requires; yet this I will say, that this is the greatest point of confidence I can express to thee; for it is no thanks to me to trust thee in anything else but in this, which is the only point of difference in opinion betwixt us: and yet I know thou wilt make as good a bargain for me, even in this, as if thou wert a protestant." Id. ibid. "As to my calling those at London a parliament, I shall refer thee to Digby for particular satisfaction; this in general—if there had been but two, besides myself, of my opinion, I had not done it; and the argument that prevailed with me was, that the calling did no ways acknowledge them to be a parliament, upon which condition and construction I did it, and no otherwise, and accordingly it is registered in the council books, with the council's unanimous approbation." Id. p. 4. The one counsellor who concurred with the king was Secretary Nicholas, Supplement to Evelyn's Memoirs, p. 90.

[317] The queen evidently suspected that he might be brought to abandon the catholics. King's Cabinet Opened, pp. 30, 31. And, if fear of her did not prevent him, I make no question that he would have done so, could he but have carried his other points.

[318] Parl. Hist. 428; Somers Tracts, v. 542. It appears by several letters of the king, published among those taken at Naseby, that Ormond had power to promise the Irish a repeal of the penal laws and the use of private chapels as well as a suspension of Poyning's law. King's Cabinet Opened, pp. 16, 19; Rushw. Abr. v. 589. Glamorgan's treaty granted them all the churches with the revenues thereof, of which they had at any time since October 1641 been in possession; that is, the re-establishment of their religion: they, on the other hand, were to furnish a very large army to the king in England.

[319] Rushw. Abr. v. 582, 594. This, as well as some letters taken on Lord Digby's rout at Sherborn about the same time, made a prodigious impression. "Many good men were sorry that the king's actions agreed no better with his words; that he openly protested before God with horrid imprecations that he endeavoured nothing so much as the preservation of the protestant religion and rooting out of popery; yet in the meantime, underhand, he promised to the Irish rebels an abrogation of the laws against them, which was contrary to his late expressed promises in these words, 'I will never abrogate the laws against the papists.' And again he said, 'I abhor to think of bringing foreign soldiers into the kingdom,' and yet he solicited the Duke of Lorrain, the French, the Danes, and the very Irish, for assistance." May's "Breviate of Hist. of Parliament" in Maseres's Tracts, i. 61. Charles had certainly never scrupled (I do not say that he ought to have done so) to make application in every quarter for assistance; and began in 1642 with sending a Col. Cochran on a secret mission to Denmark, in the hope of obtaining a subsidiary force from that kingdom. There was at least no danger to the national independence from such allies. "We fear this shall undo the king for ever, that no repentance shall ever obtain a pardon of this act, if it be true, from his parliaments." Baillie, ii. 185. Jan. 20, 1646. The king's disavowal had some effect; it seems as if even those who were prejudiced against him could hardly believe him guilty of such an apostasy, as it appeared in their eyes. P. 175. And, in fact, though the catholics had demanded nothing unreasonable either in its own nature or according to the circumstances wherein they stood, it threw a great suspicion on the king's attachment to his own faith, when he was seen to abandon altogether, as it seemed, the protestant cause in Ireland, while he was struggling so tenaciously for a particular form of it in Britain. Nor was his negotiation less impolitic than dishonourable. Without depreciating a very brave and injured people, it may be said with certainty that an Irish army could not have had the remotest chance of success against Fairfax and Cromwell; the courage being equal on our side, the skill and discipline incomparably superior. And it was evident that Charles could never reign in England but on a protestant interest.

[320] Birch's Inquiry into the Share which King Charles I. had in the Transactions of the Earl of Glamorgan, 1747. Four letters of Charles to Glamorgan, now in the British Museum (Sloane MSS. 4161), in Birch's handwriting, but of which he was not aware at the time of that publication, decisively show the king's duplicity. In the first, which was meant to be seen by Digby, dated Feb. 3, 1646, he blames him for having been drawn to consent to conditions much beyond his instructions. "If you had advised with my lord lieutenant, as you promised me, all this had been helped;" and tells him he had commanded as much favour to be shown him as might possibly stand with his service and safety. On Feb. 28 he writes by a private hand, Sir John Winter, that he is every day more and more confirmed in the trust that he had of him. In a third letter, dated April 5, he says, in a cipher, to which the key is given, "you cannot be but confident of my making good all instructions and promises to you and nuncio." The fourth letter is dated April 6, and is in these words: "Herbert, as I doubt not but you have too much courage to be dismayed or discouraged at the usage like you have had, so I assure you that my estimation of you is nothing diminished by it, but rather begets in me a desire of revenge and reparation to us both (for in this I hold myself equally interested with you), whereupon not doubting of your accustomed care and industry in my service, I assure you of the continuance of my favour and protection to you, and that in deeds more than in words I shall show myself to be your most assured constant friend. C. R."

These letters have lately been republished by Dr. Lingard, Hist. of Eng. x. note B, from Warner's Hist. of the Civil War in Ireland. The cipher may be found in the Biographia Britannica, under the article Bales. Dr. L. endeavours to prove that Glamorgan acted all along with Ormond's privity; and it must be owned that the expression in the king's last letter about revenge and reparation, which Dr. L. does not advert to, has a very odd appearance.

The controversy is, I suppose, completely at an end; so that it is hardly necessary to mention a letter from Glamorgan, then Marquis of Worcester, to Clarendon after the restoration, which has every internal mark of credibility, and displays the king's unfairness. Clar. State Pap. ii. 201, and Lingard, ubi supra. It is remarkable that the transaction is never mentioned in the History of the Rebellion. The noble author was, however, convinced of the genuineness of Glamorgan's commission, as appears by a letter to Secretary Nicholas. "I must tell you, I care not how little I say in that business of Ireland, since those strange powers and instructions given to your favourite Glamorgan, which appear to be so inexcusable to justice, piety, and prudence. And I fear there is very much in that transaction of Ireland, both before and since that you and I were never thought wise enough to be advised with in. Oh! Mr. Secretary, those stratagems have given me more sad hours than all the misfortunes in war which have befallen the king, and look like the effect of God's anger towards us." Id. p. 237. See also a note of Mr. Laing, Hist. of Scotland, iii. 557, for another letter of the king to Glamorgan, from Newcastle, in July 1646, not less explicit than the foregoing.

[321] Burnet's Mem. of Dukes of Hamilton, 284. Baillie's letters, throughout 1646, indicate his apprehension of the prevalent spirit, which he dreaded as implacable, not only to monarchy, but to presbytery and the Scots nation. "The leaders of the people seem inclined to have no shadow of a king, to have liberty for all religions, a lame Erastian presbytery, to be so injurious to us as to chase us hence with the sword."—148. March 31, 1646. "The common word is, that they will have the king prisoner. Possibly they may grant to the prince to be a duke of Venice. The militia must be absolutely, for all time to come, in the power of the parliament, alone," etc.—200. On the king's refusal of the propositions sent to Newcastle, the Scots took great pains to prevent a vote against him. 226. There was still, however, danger of this. 236, Oct. 13, and p. 243. His intrigues with both parties, the presbyterians and independents, were now known; and all sides seem to have been ripe for deposing them. 245. These letters are a curious contrast to the idle fancies of a speedy and triumphant restoration, which Clarendon himself as well as others of less judgment seem to have entertained.

[322] "Though he should swear it," says Baillie, "no man will believe that he sticks upon episcopacy for any conscience."—ii. 205. And again: "It is pity that base hypocrisy, when it is pellucid, shall still be entertained. No oaths did ever persuade me, that episcopacy was ever adhered to on any conscience."—224. This looks at first like mere bigotry. But, when we remember that Charles had abolished episcopacy in Scotland, and was ready to abolish protestantism in Ireland, Baillie's prejudices will appear less unreasonable. The king's private letters in the Clarendon Papers have convinced me of his mistaken conscientiousness about church government; but of this his contemporaries could not be aware.

[323] Hollis maintains that the violent party were very desirous that the Scots should carry the king with them, and that nothing could have been more injurious to his interests. If we may believe Berkley, who is much confirmed by Baillie, the presbyterians had secretly engaged to the Scots that the army should be disbanded, and the king brought up to London with honour and safety. "Memoirs of Sir J. Berkley," in Maseres's Tracts, i. 358; Baillie, ii. 257. This affords no bad justification of the Scots for delivering him up.

"It is very like," says Baillie, "if he had done any duty, though he had never taken the covenant, but permitted it to have been put in an act of parliament in both kingdoms, and given so satisfactory an answer to the rest of the propositions, as easily he might, and sometimes I know he was willing, certainly Scotland had been for him as one man: and the body of England, upon many grounds, was upon a disposition to have so cordially embraced him, that no man, for his life, durst have muttered against his present restitution. But remaining what he was in all his maxims, a full Canterburian, both in matters of religion and state, he still inclined to a new war; and for that end resolved to go to Scotland. Some great men there pressed the equity of Scotland's protecting of him on any terms. This untimeous excess of friendship has ruined that unhappy prince; for the better party finding the conclusion of the king's coming to Scotland, and thereby their own present ruin, and the ruin of the whole cause, the making the malignants masters of church and state, the drawing the whole force of England upon Scotland for their perjurious violation of their covenant, they resolved by all means to cross that design."—P. 253.

[324] The votes for payment of the sum of £400,000 to the Scots are on Aug. 21, 27, and Sept. 1; though it was not fully agreed between the two nations till Dec. 8. Whitelock, 220, 229. But Whitelock dates the commencement of the understanding as to the delivery of the king about Dec. 24. P. 231. See Commons' Journals. Baillie, ii. 246, 253; Burnet's Memoirs of Hamiltons, 293, etc.; Laing, iii. 362; and Mr. Godwin's History of the Commonwealth, ii. 258; a work in which great attention has been paid to the order of time.

[325] Journals, Aug. and Sept.; Godwin, ubi supra; Baillie, ii. passim.

[326] Baillie, who, in Jan. 1644, speaks of the independents as rather troublesome than formidable, and even says: "No man, I know, in either of the houses of any note is for them" (437); and that "Lord Say's power and reputation is none at all;" admits, in a few months, the alarming increase of independency and sectarianism in the Earl of Manchester's army; more than two parts in three of the officers and soldiers being with them, and those the most resolute and confident; though they had no considerable force either in Essex's or Waller's army, nor in the assembly of divines or the parliament, ii. 5, 19, 20. This was owing in a great degree to the influence, at that period, of Cromwell over Manchester. "The man," he says, "is a very wise and active head, universally well beloved, as religious and stout; being a known independent, and most of the soldiers who love new ways put themselves under his command."—60.

[327] The independent party, or at least some of its most eminent members, as Lord Say and Mr. St. John, were in a secret correspondence with Oxford, through the medium of Lord Saville, in the spring of 1645, if we believe Hollis, who asserts that he had seen their letters, asking offices for themselves. Mem. of Hollis, sect. 43. Baillie refers this to an earlier period, the beginning of 1644 (i. 427); and I conceive that Hollis has been incorrect as to the date. The king, however, was certainly playing a game with them in the beginning of 1646, as well as with the presbyterians, so as to give both parties an opinion of his insincerity. Clarendon State Papers, 214; and see two remarkable letters written by his order to Sir Henry Vane, 226, urging an union, in order to overthrow the presbyterian government.

[328] The principles of the independents are set forth candidly, and even favourably, by Collier, 829; as well as by Neal, ii. 98. For those who are not much acquainted with ecclesiastical distinction, it may be useful to mention the two essential characteristics of this sect, by which they differed from the presbyterians. The first was, that all churches or separate congregations were absolutely independent of each other as to jurisdiction or discipline; whence they rejected all synods and representative assemblies as possessing authority; though they generally admitted, to a very limited degree, the alliance of churches for mutual counsel and support. Their second characteristic was the denial of spiritual powers communicated in ordination by apostolical succession; deeming the call of a congregation a sufficient warrant for the exercise of the ministry. See Orme's Life of Owen, for a clear view and able defence of the principles maintained by this party. I must add, that Neal seems to have proved that the independents, as a body, were not systematically adverse to monarchy.

[329] Edwards's Gangræna, a noted book in that age, enumerates one hundred and seventy-six heresies, which, however, are reduced by him to sixteen heads; and these seem capable of further consideration. Neal, 249. The house ordered a general fast, Feb. 1647, to beseech God to stop the growth of heresy and blasphemy. Whitelock, 236; a presbyterian artifice to alarm the nation.

[330] Parl. Hist. ii. 1479. They did not meet till July 1, 1643. Rushw. Abr. v. 123; Neal, 42; Collier, 823. Though this assembly showed abundance of bigotry and narrowness, they were by no means so contemptible as Clarendon represents them (ii. 423); and perhaps equal in learning, good sense, and other merits, to any lower house of convocation that ever made a figure in England.

[331] Whitelock, 71; Neal, 103. Selden, who owed no gratitude to the episcopal church, was from the beginning of its dangers a steady and active friend, displaying, whatever may have been said of his timidity, full as much courage as could reasonably be expected from a studious man advanced in years. Baillie, in 1641, calls him "the avowed proctor of the bishops" (i. 245); and when provoked by his Erastian opposition in 1646, presumes to talk of his "insolent absurdity" (ii. 96). Selden sat in the assembly of divines; and by his great knowledge of the ancient languages and of ecclesiastical antiquities, as well as by his sound logic and calm clear judgment, obtained an undeniable superiority, which he took no pains to conceal.

[332] Scobell; Rushw. Abr. v. 576; Parl. Hist. iii. 444; Neal, 199. The latter says, this did not pass the Lords till June 6. But this is not so. Whitelock very rightly opposed the prohibition of the use of the common prayer, and of the silencing episcopal ministers, as contrary to the principle of liberty of conscience avowed by the parliament, and like what had been complained of in the bishops. 226, 239, 281. But, in Sept. 1647, it was voted that the indulgence in favour of tender consciences should not extend to tolerate the common prayer. Id. 274.

[333] The Erastians were named from Erastus, a German physician in the sixteenth century. The denomination is often used in the present age ignorantly, and therefore indefinitely; but I apprehend that the fundamental principle of his followers was this: That in a commonwealth where the magistrate professes Christianity, it is not convenient that offences against religion and morality should be punished by the censures of the church, especially by excommunication. Probably he may have gone farther, as Selden seems to have done (Neal, 194), and denied the right of exclusion from church communion, even without reference to the temporal power; but the limited proposition was of course sufficient to raise the practical controversy. The Helvetic divines, Gualter and Bullinger, strongly concurred in this with Erastus; "Contendimus disciplinam esse debere in ecclesiâ, sed satis esse, si ea administretur a magistratu." Erastus, de Excommunicatione, p. 350; and a still stronger passage in p. 379. And it is said, that Archbishop Whitgift caused Erastus's book to be printed at his own expense. See one of Warburton's notes on Neal. Calvin, and the whole of his school, held, as is well known, a very opposite tenet. See Erasti Theses de Excommunicatione, 4to, 1579.

The ecclesiastical constitution of England is nearly Erastian in theory, and almost wholly so in practice. Every sentence of the spiritual judge is liable to be reversed by a civil tribunal, the court of delegates, by virtue of the king's supremacy over all causes. And, practically, what is called church discipline, or the censures of ecclesiastical governors for offences, has gone so much into disuse, and what remains is so contemptible, that I believe no one, except those who derive a little profit from it, would regret its abolition.

"The most part of the House of Commons," says Baillie, ii. 149, "especially the lawyers, whereof there are many, and divers of them very able men, are either half or whole Erastians, believing no church government to be of divine right, but all to be a human constitution depending on the will of the magistrate." "The pope and king," he says in another place (196), "were never more earnest for the headship of the church than the plurality of this parliament." See also p. 183; and Whitelock, 169.

[334] Parl. Hist. 459 et alibi; Rushw. Abr. v. 578 et alibi; Whitelock, 165, 169, 173, 176 et post; Baillie's Letters, passim; Neal, 23, etc., 191 et post; Collier, 841. The assembly attempted to sustain their own cause by counter votes; and, the minority of independents and Erastians having withdrawn, it was carried with a single dissent of Lightfoot, that Christ had established a government in his church independent of the civil magistrate. Neal, 223.

[335] Neal, 228. Warburton says, in his note on this passage, that "the presbyterian was to all intents and purposes the established religion during the time of the commonwealth." But, as coercive discipline and synodical government are no small intents and purposes of that religion, this assertion requires to be modified, as it has been in my text. Besides which, there were many ministers of the independent sect in benefices, some of whom probably had never received ordination. "Both baptists and independents," says a very well informed writer of the latter denomination, "were in the practice of accepting the livings, that is, the temporalities of the church. They did not, however, view themselves as parish ministers, and bound to administer all the ordinances of religion to the parish population. They occupied the parochial edifices, and received a portion of the tithes for their maintenance; but in all other respects acted according to their own principles." Orme's Life of Owen, 136. This he thinks would have produced very serious evils, if not happily checked by the Restoration. "During the commonwealth," he observes afterwards (245), "no system of church government can be considered as having been properly or fully established. The presbyterians, if any, enjoyed this distinction."

[336] The city began to petition for the establishment of presbytery, and against toleration of sectaries, early in 1646; and not long after came to assume what seemed to the Commons too dictatorial a tone. This gave much offence, and contributed to drive some members into the opposite faction. Neal, 193, 221, 241; Whitelock, 207, 240.

[337] Vol. ii. 268. See also 207, and other places. This is a remark that requires attention; many are apt to misunderstand the question. "For this point (toleration) both they and we contend," says Baillie, "tanquam pro aris et focis."—ii. 175. "Not only they praise your magistrate" (writing to a Mr. Spang in Holland), "who for policy gives some secret tolerance to divers religions, wherein, as I conceive, your divines preach against them as great sinners, but avow that by God's command the magistrate is discharged to put the least discourtesy on any man, Jew, Turk, Papist, Socinian, or whatever, for his religion."—18. See also 61, and many other passages. "The army" (says Hugh Peters in a tract, entitled "A Word for the Army, and Two Words to the People," 1647) "never hindered the state from a state religion, having only wished to enjoy now what the puritans begged under the prelates; when we desire more, blame us, and shame us." In another, entitled "Vox Militaris," the author says: "We did never engage against this platform, nor for that platform, nor ever will, except better informed; and therefore, if the state establisheth presbytery, we shall never oppose it."

The question of toleration, in its most important shape, was brought at this time before parliament, on occasion of one Paul Best who had written against the doctrine of the trinity. According to the common law, heretics, on being adjudged by the spiritual court, were delivered over to be burned under the writ de hæretico comburendo. This punishment had been inflicted five times under Elizabeth; on Wielmacker and Ter Wort, two Dutch anabaptists, who, like many of that sect, entertained Arian tenets, and were burned in Smithfield in 1575; on Matthew Hammond in 1579, Thomas Lewis in 1583, and Francis Ket in 1588; all burned by Scambler, Bishop of Norwich. It was also inflicted on Bartholomew Legat and Edward Wightman, under James, in 1614; the first burned by King, Bishop of London, the second by Neile of Litchfield. A third, by birth a Spaniard, incurred the same penalty; but the compassion of the people showed itself so strongly at Legat's execution that James thought it expedient not to carry the sentence into effect. Such is the venomous and demoralising spirit of bigotry, that Fuller, a writer remarkable for good nature and gentleness, expresses his indignation at the pity which was manifested by the spectators of Legat's sufferings. Church Hist. part ii. p. 62. In the present case of Paul Best, the old sentence of fire was not suggested by any one; but an ordinance was brought in, Jan. 1646, to punish him with death. Whitelock, 190. Best made, at length, such an explanation as was accepted (Neal, 214); but an ordinance to suppress blasphemies and heresies as capital offences was brought in. Commons' Journals, April 1646. The independents gaining strength, this was long delayed; but the ordinance passed both houses, May 2, 1648. Id. 303. Neal (338) justly observes, that it shows the governing presbyterians would have made a terrible use of their power, had they been supported by the sword of the civil magistrate. The denial of the trinity, incarnation, atonement, or inspiration of any book of the Old or New Testament, was made felony. Lesser offences, such as anabaptism, or denying the lawfulness of presbyterian government, were punishable by imprisonment till the party should recant. It was much opposed, especially by Whitelock. The writ de hæretico comburendo, as is well known, was taken away by act of parliament in 1677.

[338] "In all New England, no liberty of living for a presbyterian. Whoever there, were they angels for life and doctrine, will essay to set up a different way from them [the independents], shall be sure of present banishment." Baillie, ii. 4, also 17. I am surprised to find a late writer of that country (Dwight's Travels in New England) attempt to extenuate at least the intolerance of the independents towards the quakers, who came to settle there; and which, we see, extended also to the presbyterians. But Mr. Orme, with more judgment, observes that the New England congregations did not sufficiently adhere to the principle of independency, and acted too much as a body; to which he ascribes their persecution of the quakers and others. Life of Owen, 335. It is certain that the congregational scheme leads to toleration, as the national church scheme is adverse to it, for manifold reasons which the reader will discover.

[339] Though the writings of Chillingworth and Hales are not directly in behalf of toleration, no one could relish them without imbibing its spirit in the fullest measure. The great work of Jeremy Taylor, on the Liberty of Prophesying, was published in 1647; and, if we except a few concessions to the temper of the times, which are not reconcilable to its general principles, has left little for those who followed him. Mr. Orme admits that the remonstrants of Holland maintained the principles of toleration very early (p. 50); but refers to a tract by Leonard Busher, an independent, in 1614, as "containing the most enlightened and scriptural views of religious liberty."—P. 99. He quotes other writings of the same sect under Charles I.

[340] Several proofs of this occur in the Clarendon State Papers. A letter, in particular, from Colepepper to Digby, in Sept. 1645, is so extravagantly sanguine, considering the posture of the king's affairs at that time, that, if it was perfectly sincere, Colepepper must have been a man of less ability than has generally been supposed. Vol. ii. p. 188. Neal has some sensible remarks on the king's mistake in supposing that any party which he did not join must in the end be ruined. P. 268. He had not lost this strange confidence after his very life had become desperate; and told Sir John Bowring, when he advised him not to spin out the time at the treaty of Newport, that "any interests would be glad to come in with him." See Bowring's Memoirs in Halifax's Miscellanies, 132.

[341] Baillie's letters are full of this feeling, and must be reckoned fair evidence, since no man could be more bigoted to presbytery, or more bitter against the royalist party. I have somewhere seen Baillie praised for his mildness. His letters give no proof of it. Take the following specimens: "Mr. Maxwell of Ross has printed at Oxford so desperately malicious an invective against our assemblies and presbyteries, that, however I could hardly consent to the hanging of Canterbury or of any jesuit, yet I could give my sentence freely against that unhappy man's life."—ii. 99. "God has struck Coleman with death; he fell in an ague, and after three or four days expired. It is not good to stand in Christ's way."—P. 199.

Baillie's judgment of men was not more conspicuous than his moderation. "Vane and Cromwell are of horrible hot fancies to put all in confusion, but not of any deep reach. St. John and Pierrepont are more stayed, but not great heads."—P. 258. The drift of all his letters is, that every man who resisted the jus divinum of presbytery was knave or fool, if not both. They are, however, eminently serviceable as historical documents.

[342] "Now for my own particular resolution," he says in a letter to Digby, March 26, 1646, "it is this. I am endeavouring to get to London, so that the conditions may be such as a gentleman may own, and that the rebels may acknowledge me king; being not without hope that I shall be able so to draw either the presbyterians or independents to side with me for extirpating the one or the other, that I shall be really king again." Carte's Ormond, iii. 452; quoted by Mr. Brodie, to whom I am indebted for the passage. I have mentioned already his overture about this time to Sir Henry Vane through Ashburnham.

[343] Clarendon, followed by Hume and several others, appears to say that Ragland Castle in Monmouthshire, defended by the Marquis of Worcester, was the last that surrendered; namely, in August 1646. I use the expression appears to say, because the last edition, which exhibits his real text, shows that he paid this compliment to Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, and that his original editors (I suppose to do honour to a noble family), foisted in the name of Ragland. It is true, however, of neither. The North Welsh castles held out considerably longer; that of Harlech was not taken till April 1647, which put an end to the war. Whitelock.

Clarendon, still more unyielding than his master, extols the long resistance of his party, and says that those who surrendered at the first summons obtained no better terms than they who made the stoutest defence; as if that were a sufficient justification for prolonging a civil war. In fact, however, they did the king some harm; inasmuch as they impeded the efforts made in parliament to disband the army. Several votes of the Commons show this; see the Journals of 12th May and 31st July 1646.

[344] The resolution to disband Fairfax's regiment next Tuesday at Chelmsford passed 16th May 1647, by 136 to 115; Algernon Sidney being a teller of the noes. Commons' Journals. In these votes the house, that is, the presbyterian majority, acted with extreme imprudence; not having provided for the payment of the army's arrears at the time they were thus disbanding them. Whitelock advised Hollis and his party not to press the disbanding; and on finding them obstinate, drew off, as he tells us, from that connection, and came nearer to Cromwell. P. 248. This, however, he had begun to do rather earlier. Independently of the danger of disgusting the army, it is probable that, as soon as it was disbanded, the royalists would have been up in arms. For the growth of this discontent, day by day, peruse Whitelock's Journal for March and the three following months, as well as the Parliamentary History.

[345] It was only carried by 159 to 147, March 5, 1647, that the forces should be commanded by Fairfax. But on the 8th, the house voted without a division, that no officer under him should be above the rank of a colonel, and that no member of the house should have any command in the army. It is easy to see at whom this was levelled. Commons' Journals. They voted at the same time that the officers should all take the covenant, which had been rejected two years before; and, by a majority of 136 to 108, that they should all conform to the government of the church established by both houses of parliament.

[346] Clar. State Papers, ii. 365. The army, in a declaration not long after the king fell into their power, June 24, use these expressions: "We clearly profess that we do not see how there can be any peace to this kingdom firm or lasting, without a due provision for the rights, quiet, and immunity of his majesty, his royal family, and his late partakers."—Parl. Hist. 647.

[347] Hollis censures the speakers of the two houses and others who fled to the army from this mob; the riot being "a sudden tumultuous thing of young idle people without design." Possibly this might be the case; but the tumult at the door of the house, 26th July, was such that it could not be divided. Their votes were plainly null, as being made under duress. Yet the presbyterians were so strong in the Commons that a resolution to annul all proceedings during the speaker's absence was lost by 97 to 95, after his return; and it was only voted to repeal them. A motion to declare that the houses, from 26th July to 6th August, had been under a force, was also lost by 78 to 75. Journals, 9th and 17th August. The Lords, however, passed an ordinance to this effect; and after once more rejecting it, the Commons agreed on August 20, with a proviso that no one should be called in question for what had been done.

[348] These transactions are best read in the Commons' Journals, and Parliamentary History, and next to those, in Whitelock. Hollis relates them with great passion; and Clarendon, as he does everything else that passed in London, very imperfectly. He accounts for the Earl of Manchester and the Speaker Lenthal's retiring to the army by their persuasion that the chief officers had nearly concluded a treaty with the king, and resolved to have their shares in it. This is a very unnecessary surmise. Lenthal was a poor-spirited man, always influenced by those whom he thought the strongest, and in this instance, according to Ludlow (p. 206) persuaded with difficulty by Haslerig to go to the army. Manchester indeed had more courage and honour; but he was not of much capacity, and his parliamentary conduct was not systematic. But upon the whole it is obvious, on reading the list of names (Parl. Hist. 757), that the king's friends were rather among those who staid behind, especially in the Lords, than among those who went to the army. Seven of eight peers who continued to sit from 26th July to 6th of August 1647, were impeached for it afterwards (Parl. Hist. 764), and they were all of the most moderate party. If the king had any previous connection with the city, he acted very disingenuously in his letter to Fairfax, Aug. 3, while the contest was still pending; wherein he condemns the tumults, and declares his unwillingness that his friends should join with the city against the army, whose proposals he had rejected the day before with an imprudence of which he was now sensible. This letter, as actually sent to Fairfax, is in the Parliamentary History, 734, and may be compared with a rough draught of the same, preserved in Clarendon Papers, 373, from which it materially differs, being much sharper against the city.

[349] Fairfax's "Memoirs" in Maseres's Collection of Tracts, vol. i. p. 447. "By this," says Fairfax, who had for once found a man less discerning of the times than himself, "I plainly saw the broken reed he leaned on. The agitators had brought the king into an opinion that the army was for him." Ireton said plainly to the king, "Sir, you have an intention to be the arbitrator between the parliament and us; and we mean to be so between your majesty and the parliament."—Berkley's "Memoirs," ibid. p. 360.

This folly of the king, if Mrs. Hutchinson is well informed, alienated Ireton, who had been more inclined to trust him than is commonly believed. "Cromwell," she says, "was at that time so incorruptibly faithful to his trust and the people's interest, that he could not be drawn in to practise even his own usual and natural dissimulation on this occasion. His son-in-law Ireton, that was as faithful as he, was not so fully of the opinion, till he had tried it, and found to the contrary, but that the king might have been managed to comply with the public good of his people, after he could no longer uphold his own violent will; but upon some discourses with him, the king uttering these words to him, 'I shall play my game as well as I can,' Ireton replied, 'If your majesty have a game, you must give us also the liberty to play ours.' Colonel Hutchinson privately discoursing with his cousin about the communications he had had with the king, Ireton's expressions were these: 'He gave us words, and we paid him in his own coin, when we found he had no real intention to the people's good, but to prevail, by our factions, to regain by art what he had lost in fight.'"—P. 274.

It must be said for the king that he was by no means more sanguine or more blind than his distinguished historian and minister. Clarendon's private letters are full of strange and absurd expectations. Even so late as October 1647, he writes to Berkley in high hopes from the army, and presses him to make no concessions except as to persons. "If they see you will not yield, they must; for sure they have as much or more need of the king than he of them."—P. 379. The whole tenor, indeed, of Clarendon's correspondence demonstrates that, notwithstanding the fine remarks occasionally scattered through his history, he was no practical statesman, nor had any just conception, at the time, of the course of affairs. He never flinched from one principle, not very practicable or rational in the circumstances of the king; that nothing was to be receded from which had ever been desired. This may be called magnanimity; but no foreign or domestic dissension could be settled, if all men were to act upon it, or if all men, like Charles and Clarendon, were to expect that Providence would interfere to support what seems to them the best, that is, their own cause. The following passage is a specimen: "Truly I am so unfit to bear a part in carrying on this new contention [by negotiation and concession], that I would not, to preserve myself, wife, and children from the lingering death of want by famine (for a sudden death would require no courage), consent to the lessening any part, which I take to be in the function of a bishop, or the taking away the smallest prebendary in the church, or to be bound not to endeavour to alter any such alteration."—Id. vol. iii. p. 2, Feb. 4, 1648.

[350] Parl. Hist. 738. Clarendon talks of these proposals as worse than any the king had ever received from the parliament; and Hollis says they "dissolved the whole frame of the monarchy." It is hard to see, however, that they did so in a greater degree than those which he had himself endeavoured to obtain as a commissioner at Uxbridge. As to the church, they were manifestly the best that Charles had ever seen. As to his prerogative and the power of the monarchy, he was so thoroughly beaten, that no treaty could do him any substantial service; and he had, in truth, only to make his election, whether to be the nominal chief of an aristocratical or a democratical republic. In a well-written tract, called "Vox Militaris," containing a defence of the army's proceedings and intentions, and published apparently in July 1647, their desire to preserve the king's rights, according to their notion of them, and the general laws of the realm, is strongly asserted.

[351] The precise meaning of this word seems obscure. Some have supposed it to be a corruption of adjutators, as if the modern term adjutant meant the same thing. But I find agitator always so spelled in the pamphlets of the time.

[352] Berkley's Memoirs, 366. He told Lord Capel about this time that he expected a war between Scotland and England; that the Scots hoped for the assistance of the presbyterians; and that he wished his own party to rise in arms on a proper conjuncture, without which he could not hope for much benefit from the others. Clarendon, v. 476.

[353] Berkley, 368, etc. Compare the letter of Ashburnham, published in 1648, and reprinted in 1764, but probably not so full as the MS. in the Earl of Ashburnham's possession; also the Memoirs of Hollis, Huntingdon, and Fairfax, which are all in Maseres's Collection; also Ludlow, Hutchinson, Clarendon, Burnet's Memoirs of Hamilton, and some despatches in 1647 and 1648, from a royalist in London, printed in the appendix to the second volume of the Clarendon Papers. This correspondent of Secretary Nicholas believes Cromwell and Ireton to have all along planned the king's destruction, and set the levellers on, till they proceeded so violently, that they were forced to restrain them. This also is the conclusion of Major Huntingdon, in his Reasons for laying down his Commission. But the contrary appears to me more probable.

Two anecdotes, well known to those conversant in English history, are too remarkable to be omitted. It is said by the editor of Lord Orrery's Memoirs, as a relation which he had heard from that noble person, that in a conversation with Cromwell concerning the king's death, the latter told him, he and his friends had once a mind to have closed with the king, fearing that the Scots and presbyterians might do so; when one of their spies, who was of the king's bedchamber, gave them information of a letter from his majesty to the queen, sewed up in the skirt of a saddle, and directing them to an inn where it might be found. They obtained the letter accordingly, in which the king said, that he was courted by both factions, the Scots presbyterians and the army; that those which bade fairest for him should have him; but he thought he should rather close with the Scots than the other. Upon this, finding themselves unlikely to get good terms from the king, they from that time vowed his destruction. Carte's Ormond, ii. 12.

A second anecdote is alluded to by some earlier writers, but is particularly told in the following words, by Richardson, the painter, author of some anecdotes of Pope, edited by Spence. "Lord Bolingbroke told us, June 12, 1742 (Mr. Pope, Lord Marchmont, and myself), that the second Earl of Oxford had often told him that he had seen, and had in his hands, an original letter that Charles the First wrote to his queen, in answer to one of hers that had been intercepted, and then forwarded to him; wherein she had reproached him for having made those villains too great concession, viz. that Cromwell should be lord lieutenant of Ireland for life without account; that that kingdom should be in the hands of the party, with an army there kept which should know no head but the lieutenant; that Cromwell should have a garter, etc.: That in this letter of the king's it was said, that she should leave him to manage, who was better informed of all circumstances than she could be; but she might be entirely easy as to whatever concessions he should make them; for that he should know in due time how to deal with the rogues, who, instead of a silken garter, should be fitted with a hempen cord. So the letter ended; which answer as they waited for, so they intercepted accordingly; and it determined his fate. This letter Lord Oxford said he had offered £500 for."

The authenticity of this latter story has been constantly rejected by Hume and the advocates of Charles in general; and, for one reason among others, that it looks like a misrepresentation of that told by Lord Orrery, which both stands on good authority, and is perfectly conformable to all the memoirs of the time. I have, however, been informed, that a memorandum nearly conformable to Richardson's anecdote is extant, in the handwriting of Lord Oxford.

It is possible that this letter is the same with that mentioned by Lord Orrery; and in that case was written in the month of October. Cromwell seems to have been in treaty with the king as late as September; and advised him, according to Berkley, to reject the proposals of the parliament in that month. Herbert mentions an intercepted letter of the queen (Memoirs, 60); and even his story proves that Cromwell and his party broke off with Charles from a conviction of his dissimulation. See Laing's note, iii. 562; and the note by Strype, therein referred to, on Kennet's Complete Hist. of England, iii. 170; which speaks of a "constant tradition" about this story, and is more worthy of notice, because it was written before the publication of Lord Orrery's Memoirs, or of the Richardsoniana.

[354] Ashburnham gives us to understand that the king had made choice of the Isle of Wight, previously to his leaving Hampton Court, but probably at his own suggestion. This seems confirmed by the king's letter in Burnet's Mem. of Dukes of Hamilton, 326. Clarendon's account is a romance, with little mixture probably of truth. Ashburnham's Narrative, published in 1830, proves that he suggested the Isle of Wight, in consequence of the king's being forced to abandon a design he had formed of going to London, the Scots commissioners retracting their engagement to support him.

[355] Parl. Hist. 799.

[356] Jan. 15. This vote was carried by 141 to 92. Id. 831. And see Append. to 2nd vol. of Clar. State Papers. Cromwell was now vehement against the king, though he had voted in his favour on Sept. 22. Journals, and Berkley, 372. A proof that the king was meant to be wholly rejected is, that at this time, in the list of the navy, the expression "his majesty's ship," was changed to "the parliament's ship." Whitelock, 291.

The four bills were founded on four propositions (for which I refer to Hume or the Parliamentary History, not to Clarendon, who has mis-stated them) sent down from the Lords. The lower house voted to agree with them by 115 to 106; Sidney and Evelyn tellers for the ayes, Martin and Morley for the noes. The increase of the minority is remarkable, and shows how much the king's refusal of the terms offered him in September, and his escape from Hampton Court, had swollen the commonwealth party; to which, by the way, Colonel Sidney at this time seems not to have belonged. Ludlow says, that party hoped the king would not grant the four bills (i. 224). The Commons published a declaration of their reasons for making no further addresses to the king, wherein they more than insinuate his participation in the murder of his father by Buckingham. Parl. Hist. 847.

[357] Clarendon, whose aversion to the Scots warps his judgment, says that this treaty contained many things dishonourable to the English nation. Hist. v. 532. The king lost a good deal in the eyes of this uncompromising statesman, by the concessions he made in the Isle of Wight. State Papers, 387. I cannot, for my own part, see anything derogatory to England in the treaty; for the temporary occupation of a few fortified towns in the north can hardly be called so. Charles, there is some reason to think, had on a former occasion made offers to the Scots far more inconsistent with his duty to this kingdom.

[358] Clarendon; May, "Breviate of the Hist. of the Parliament," in Maseres's Tracts, i. 113; Whitelock, 307, 317, etc. In a conference between the two houses, July 25, 1648, the Commons gave as a reason for insisting on the king's surrender of the militia as a preliminary to a treaty, that such was the disaffection to the parliament on all sides, that without the militia they could never be secure. Rush. Abr. vi. 444. "The chief citizens of London," says May, 122, "and others called presbyterians, though the presbyterian Scots abominated this army, wished good success to these Scots no less than the malignants did. Whence let the reader judge of the times." The fugitive sheets of this year, such as the "Mercurius Aulicus," bear witness to the exulting and insolent tone of the royalists. The chuckle over Fairfax and Cromwell, as if they had caught a couple of rats in a trap.

[359] April 28, 1648; Parl. Hist. 883.

[360] June 6. These peers were the Earls of Suffolk, Middlesex, and Lincoln, Lords Willoughby of Parham, Berkley, Hunsdon, and Maynard. They were impeached for sitting in the house during the tumults from 26th of July to 6th of August 1647. The Earl of Pembroke, who had also continued to sit, merely because he was too stupid to discover which party was likely to prevail, escaped by truckling to the new powers.

[361] June 8.

[362] See Parl. Hist. 823, 892, 904, 921, 924, 959, 996, for the different votes on this subject, wherein the presbyterians gradually beat the independent or republican party, but with very small and precarious majorities.

[363] Clarendon, vi. 155. He is very absurd in imagining that any of the parliamentary commissioners would have been satisfied with "an act of indemnity and oblivion."

That the parliament had some reason to expect the king's firmness of purpose to give way, in spite of all his haggling, will appear from the following short review of what had been done. 1. At Newmarket, in June 1642, he absolutely refused the nineteen propositions tendered to him by the Lords and Commons. 2. In the treaty of Oxford, March 1643, he seems to have made no concession, not even promising an amnesty to those he had already excluded from pardon. 3. In the treaty of Uxbridge, no mention was made on his side of exclusion from pardon; he offered to vest the militia for seven years in commissioners jointly appointed by himself and parliament, so that it should afterwards return to him, and to limit the jurisdiction of the bishops. 4. In the winter of 1645, he not only offered to disband his forces, but to let the militia be vested for seven years in commissioners to be appointed by the two houses, and afterwards to be settled by bill; also to give the nomination of officers of state and judges pro hâc vice to the houses. 5. He went no farther in substance till May 1647; when he offered the militia for ten years, as well as great limitations of episcopacy, and the continuance of presbyterian government for three years; the whole matter to be afterwards settled by bill on the advice of the assembly of divines, and twenty more of his own nomination. 6. In his letter from Carisbrook, Nov. 1647, he gave up the militia for his life. This was in effect to sacrifice almost everything as to immediate power; but he struggled to save the church lands from confiscation, which would have rendered it hardly practicable to restore episcopacy in future. His further concessions in the treaty of Newport, though very slowly extorted, were comparatively trifling.

What Clarendon thought of the treaty of Newport may be imagined. "You may easily conclude," he writes to Digby, "how fit a counsellor I am like to be, when the best that is proposed is that which I would not consent unto to preserve the kingdom from ashes. I can tell you worse of myself than this; which is, that there may be some reasonable expedients which possibly might in truth restore and preserve all, in which I could bear no part."—P. 459. See also p. 351 and 416. I do not divine what he means by this. But what he could not have approved was, that the king had no thoughts of dealing sincerely with the parliament in this treaty, and gave Ormond directions to obey all his wife's commands, but not to obey any further orders he might send, nor to be startled at his great concessions respecting Ireland, for they would come to nothing. Carte's Papers, i. 185. See Mr. Brodie's remarks on this, iv. 143-146. He had agreed to give up the government of Ireland for twenty years to the parliament. In his answer to the propositions at Newcastle, sent in May 1647, he had declared that he would give full satisfaction with respect to Ireland. But he thus explains himself to the queen: "I have so couched that article that, if the Irish give me cause, I may interpret it enough to their advantage. For I only say that I will give them (the two houses) full satisfaction as to the management of the war, nor do I promise to continue the war; so that, if I find reason to make a good peace there, my engagement is at an end. Wherefore make this my interpretation known to the Irish." Clar. State Papers. "What reliance," says Mr. Laing, from whom I transcribe this passage (which I cannot find in the book quoted), "could parliament place at the beginning of the dispute, or at any subsequent period, on the word or moderation of a prince, whose solemn and written declarations were so full of equivocation?" Hist. of Scotland, iii. 409. It may here be added that, though Charles had given his parole to Colonel Hammond, and had the sentinels removed in consequence, he was engaged during most part of his stay at Carisbrook in schemes for an escape. See Col. Cooke's "Narrative," printed with Herbert's Memoirs; and in Rushw. Abr. vi. 534. But his enemies were apprised of this intention, and even of an attempt to escape by removing a bar of his window, as appears by the letters from the committee of Derby House, Cromwell, and others, to Col. Hammond, published in 1764.

[364] Clarendon mentions an expression that dropped from Henry Martin in conversation, not long after the meeting of the parliament: "I do not think one man wise enough to govern us all." This may doubtless be taken in a sense perfectly compatible with our limited monarchy. But Martin's republicanism was soon apparent; he was sent to the Tower in August 1643, for language reflecting on the king. Parl. Hist. 161. A Mr. Chillingworth had before incurred the same punishment for a like offence, December 1, 1641. Nalson, ii. 714. Sir Henry Ludlow, father of the regicide, was also censured on the same account. As the opposite faction grew stronger, Martin was not only restored to his seat, but the vote against him was expunged. Vane, I presume, took up republican principles pretty early; perhaps also Haslerig. With these exceptions, I know not that we can fix on any individual member of parliament the charge of an intention to subvert the constitution till 1646 or 1647.

[365] Pamphlets may be found as early as 1643 which breathe this spirit; but they are certainly rare till 1645 and 1646. Such are "Plain English," 1643; "The Character of an Anti-malignant," 1645; "Last Warning to all the Inhabitants of London," 1647.

[366] Charles Louis, elector palatine, elder brother of the Princes Rupert and Maurice, gave cause to suspect that he was looking towards the throne. He left the king's quarters where he had been at the commencement of the war, and retired to Holland; whence he wrote, as well as his mother, the Queen of Bohemia, to the parliament, disclaiming and renouncing Prince Rupert, and begging their own pensions might be paid. He came over to London in August 1644, took the covenant, and courted the parliament. They showed, however, at first, a good deal of jealousy of him; and intimated that his affairs would prosper better by his leaving the kingdom. Whitelock, 101; Rush. Abr. xv. 359. He did not take this hint, and obtained next year an allowance of £8000 per annum. Id. 145. Lady Ranelagh, in a letter to Hyde, March 1644, conjuring him by his regard for Lord Falkland's memory to use all his influence to procure a message from the king for a treaty, adds: "Methinks what I have informed my sister, and what she will inform you, of the posture of the prince elector's affairs are in here, should be a motive to hasten away this message." Clar. State Papers, ii. 167. Clarendon himself, in a letter to Nicholas, Dec. 12, 1646 (where he gives his opinion that the independents look more to a change of the king and his line than of the monarchy itself, and would restore the full prerogative of the Crown to one of their own choice), proceeds in these remarkable words: "And I pray God they have not such a nose of wax ready for their impression. This it is makes me tremble more than all their discourses of destroying monarchy; and that towards this end, they find assistance from those who from their hearts abhor their confusions." P. 308. These expressions seem more applicable by far to the elector than to Cromwell. But the former was not dangerous to the parliament, though it was deemed fit to treat him with respect. In March 1647, we find a committee of both houses appointed to receive some intelligence which the prince elector desired to communicate to the parliament of great importance to the protestant religion. Whitelock, 241. Nothing farther appears about this intelligence; which looks as if he was merely afraid of being forgotten. He left England in 1649, and died in 1680.

[367] Baxter's Life, 50. He ascribes the increase of enthusiasm in the army to the loss of its presbyterian chaplains, who left it for their benefices, on the reduction of the king's party and the new-modelling of the troops. The officers then took on them to act as preachers. Id. 54; and Neal, 183. I conceive that the year 1645 is that to which we must refer the appearance of a republican party in considerable numbers, though not yet among the House of Commons.

[368] These passed against the royalist members separately, and for the most part in the first months of the war.

[369] "The best friends of the parliament were not without fears what the issue of the new elections might be; for though the people durst not choose such as were open enemies to them, yet probably they would such as were most likely to be for a peace on any terms, corruptly preferring the fruition of their estates and sensual enjoyments before the public interest," etc. Ludlow, i. 168. This is a fair confession how little the commonwealth party had the support of the nation.

[370] C. Journals; Whitelock, 168. The borough of Southwark had just before petitioned for a new writ, its member being dead or disabled.

[371] That the House of Commons, in December 1645, entertained no views of altering the fundamental constitution, appears from some of their resolutions as to conditions of peace: "That Fairfax should have an earldom, with £5000 a year; Cromwell and Waller baronies, with half that estate; Essex, Northumberland, and two more be made dukes; Manchester and Salisbury marquises, and other peers of their party be elevated to higher ranks; Haslerig, Stapylton, and Skippon to have pensions." Parl. Hist. 403; Whitelock, 182. These votes do not speak much for the magnanimity and disinterestedness of that assembly, though it may suit political romancers to declaim about it.