The real problem that we have to resolve, as to the political justice of the civil war, is not the character, the past actions, or even the existing designs, of Charles; not even whether he had as justly forfeited his crown as his son was deemed to have done for less violence and less insincerity; not even, I will add, whether the liberties of his subjects could have been absolutely secure under his government; but whether the risk attending his continuance upon the throne with the limited prerogatives of an English sovereign were great enough to counterbalance the miseries of protracted civil war, the perils of defeat, and the no less perils, as experience showed, of victory. Those who adopt the words spoken by one of our greatest orators, and quoted by another, "There was ambition, there was sedition, there was violence; but no man shall persuade me that it was not the cause of liberty on one side, and of tyranny on the other," have for themselves decided this question.[241] But, as I know (and the history of eighteen years is my witness) how little there was on one side of such liberty as a wise man would hold dear, so I am not yet convinced that the great body of the royalists, the peers and gentry of England, were combating for the sake of tyranny. I cannot believe them to have so soon forgotten their almost unanimous discontent at the king's arbitrary government in 1640, or their general concurrence in the first salutary measures of the parliament. I cannot think that the temperate and constitutional language of the royal declarations and answers to the House of Commons in 1642, known to have proceeded from the pen of Hyde, and as superior to those on the opposite side in argument as they were in eloquence, was intended for the willing slaves of tyranny. I cannot discover in the extreme reluctance of the royalists to take up arms, and their constant eagerness for an accommodation (I speak not of mere soldiers, but of the greater and more important portion of that party), that zeal for the king's re-establishment in all his abused prerogatives which some connect with the very names of a royalist or a cavalier.[242]
It is well observed by Burnet, in answer to the vulgar notion that Charles I. was undone by his concessions, that, but for his concessions, he would have had no party at all. This is, in fact, the secret of what seems to astonish the parliamentary historian, May, of the powerful force that the king was enabled to raise, and the protracted resistance he opposed. He had succeeded, according to the judgment of many real friends of the constitution, in putting the House of Commons in the wrong. Law, justice, moderation, once ranged against him, had gone over to his banner. His arms might reasonably be called defensive, if he had no other means of preserving himself from the condition, far worse than captivity, of a sovereign compelled to a sort of suicide upon his own honour and authority. For, however it may be alleged that a king is bound in conscience to sacrifice his power to the public will, yet it could hardly be inexcusable not to have practised this disinterested morality; especially while the voice of his people was by no means unequivocal, and while the major part of one house of parliament adhered openly to his cause.[243]
It is indeed a question perfectly distinguishable from that of the abstract justice of the king's cause, whether he did not too readily abandon his post as a constitutional head of the parliament; whether, with the greater part of the peers, and a very considerable minority in the Commons, resisting in their places at Westminster all violent encroachments on his rights, he ought not rather to have sometimes persisted in a temperate though firm assertion of them, sometimes had recourse to compromise and gracious concession, instead of calling away so many of his adherents to join his arms as left neither numbers nor credit with those who remained. There is a remarkable passage in Lord Clarendon's life, not to quote Whitelock and other writers less favourable to Charles, where he intimates his own opinion that the king would have had a fair hope of withstanding the more violent faction, if, after the queen's embarkation for Holland in February 1642, he had returned to Whitehall; admitting, at the same time, the hazards and inconveniences to which this course was liable.[244] That he resolved on trying the fortune of arms, his noble historian insinuates to have been the effect of the queen's influence, with whom, before her departure, he had concerted his future proceedings. Yet, notwithstanding the deference owing to contemporary opinions, I cannot but suspect that Clarendon has, in this instance as in some other passages, attached too great an importance to particular individuals, measuring them rather by their rank in the state, than by that capacity and energy of mind, which, in the levelling hour of revolution, are the only real pledges of political influence. He thought it of the utmost consequence to the king that he should gain over the Earls of Essex and Northumberland, both, or at least the former, wavering between the two parties, though voting entirely with the Commons. Certainly the king's situation required every aid, and his repulsive hardness towards all who had ever given him offence displayed an obstinate unconciliating character, which deprived him of some support he might have received. But the subsequent history of these two celebrated earls, and indeed of all the moderate adherents to the parliament, will hardly lead us to believe that they could have afforded the king any protection. Let us suppose that he had returned to Whitehall, instead of proceeding towards the north. It is evident that he must either have passed the bill for the militia, or seen the ordinances of both houses carried into effect without his consent. He must have consented to the abolition of episcopacy, or at least have come into some compromise which would have left the bishops hardly a shadow of their jurisdiction and pre-eminence. He must have driven from his person those whom he best loved and trusted. He would have found it impossible to see again the queen, without awakening distrust and bringing insult on them both. The royalist minority of parliament, however considerable in numbers, was lukewarm and faint-hearted. That they should have gained strength so as to keep a permanent superiority over their adversaries, led as they were by statesmen so bold and profound as Hampden, Pym, St. John, Cromwell, and Vane, is what, from the experience of the last twelve months, it was unreasonable to anticipate. But, even if the Commons had been more favourably inclined, it would not have been in their power to calm the mighty waters that had been moved from their depths. They had permitted the populace to mingle in their discussions, testifying pleasure at its paltry applause, and encouraging its tumultuous aggressions on the minority of the legislature. What else could they expect than that, so soon as they ceased to satisfy the city apprentices, or the trained bands raised under their militia bill, they must submit to that physical strength which is the ultimate arbiter of political contentions?
Thus, with evil auspices, with much peril of despotism on the one hand, with more of anarchy on the other, amidst the apprehensions and sorrows of good men, the civil war commenced in the summer of 1642. I might now perhaps pass over the period that intervened, until the restoration of Charles II., as not strictly belonging to a work which undertakes to relate the progress of the English constitution. But this would have left a sort of chasm that might disappoint the reader; and as I have already not wholly excluded our more general political history, without a knowledge of which the laws and government of any people must be unintelligible, it will probably not be deemed an unnecessary digression, if I devote one chapter to the most interesting and remarkable portion of British history.
FROM THE BREAKING OUT OF THE CIVIL WAR TO THE RESTORATION
Part I
Factions that, while still under some restraint from the forms at least of constitutional law, excite our disgust by their selfishness or intemperance, are little likely to redeem their honour when their animosities have kindled civil warfare. If it were difficult for an upright man to enlist with an entire willingness under either the royalist or the parliamentarian banner, at the commencement of hostilities in 1642, it became far less easy for him to desire the complete success of one or the other cause, as advancing time displayed the faults of both in darker colours than they had previously worn. Of the parliament—to begin with the more powerful and victorious party—it may be said, I think, with not greater severity than truth, that scarce two or three public acts of justice, humanity, or generosity, and very few of political wisdom or courage, are recorded of them from their quarrel with the king to their expulsion by Cromwell.
Notwithstanding the secession from parliament before the commencement of the war, of nearly all the peers who could be reckoned on the king's side, and of a pretty considerable part of the Commons, there still continued to sit at Westminster many sensible and moderate persons, who thought that they could not serve their country better than by remaining at their posts, and laboured continually to bring about a pacification by mutual concessions. Such were the Earls of Northumberland, Holland, Lincoln, and Bedford, among the peers; Selden, Whitelock, Hollis, Waller, Pierrepont, and Rudyard, in the Commons. These however would have formed but a very ineffectual minority, if the war itself, for at least twelve months, had not taken a turn little expected by the parliament. The hard usage Charles seemed to endure in so many encroachments on his ancient prerogative awakened the sympathies of a generous aristocracy, accustomed to respect the established laws, and to love monarchy, as they did their own liberties, on the score of its prescriptive title; averse also to the rude and morose genius of puritanism, and not a little jealous of those upstart demagogues who already threatened to subvert the graduated pyramid of English society. Their zeal placed the king at the head of a far more considerable army than either party had anticipated.[245] In the first battle, that of Edgehill, though he did not remain master of the field, yet all the military consequences were evidently in his favour.[246] In the ensuing campaign of 1643, the advantage was for several months entirely his own; nor could he be said to be a loser on the whole result, notwithstanding some reverses that accompanied the autumn. A line drawn from Hull to Southampton would suggest no very incorrect idea of the two parties, considered as to their military occupation of the kingdom, at the beginning of September 1643; for if the parliament, by the possession of Glocester and Plymouth, and by some force they had on foot in Cheshire, and other midland parts, kept their ground on the west of this line, this was nearly compensated by the Earl of Newcastle's possession at that time of most of Lincolnshire, which lay within it. Such was the temporary effect, partly indeed of what may be called the fortune of war, but rather of the zeal and spirit of the royalists, and of their advantage in a more numerous and intrepid cavalry.[247]
It has been frequently supposed, and doubtless seems to have been a prevailing opinion at the time, that if the king, instead of sitting down before Glocester at the end of August, had marched upon London, combining his operations with Newcastle's powerful army, he would have brought the war to a triumphant conclusion.[248] In these matters men judge principally by the event. Whether it would have been prudent in Newcastle to have left behind him the strong garrison of Hull under Fairfax, and an unbroken though inferior force, commanded by Lord Willoughby and Cromwell in Lincolnshire, I must leave to military critics; suspecting however that he would have found it difficult to draw away the Yorkshire gentry and yeomanry, forming the strength of his army, from their unprotected homes. Yet the parliamentary forces were certainly, at no period of the war, so deficient in numbers, discipline, and confidence; and it may well be thought that the king's want of permanent resources, with his knowledge of the timidity and disunion which prevailed in the capital, rendered the boldest and most forward game his true policy.
Efforts by the moderate party for peace.—It was natural that the moderate party in parliament should acquire strength by the untoward fortune of its arms. Their aim, as well as that of the constitutional royalists, was a speedy pacification; neither party so much considering what terms might be most advantageous to their own side, as which way the nation might be freed from an incalculably protracted calamity. On the king's advance to Colnbrook in November 1642, the two houses made an overture for negotiation, on which he expressed his readiness to enter. But, during the parley, some of his troops advanced to Brentford, and a sharp action took place in that town. The parliament affected to consider this such a mark of perfidy and blood-thirstiness as justified them in breaking off the treaty; a step to which they were doubtless more inclined by the king's retreat, and their discovery that his army was less formidable than they had apprehended. It is very probable, or rather certain, even from Clarendon's account, that many about the king, if not himself, were sufficiently indisposed to negotiate; yet, as no cessation of arms had been agreed upon, or even proposed, he cannot be said to have waived the unquestionable right of every belligerent, to obtain all possible advantage by arms, in order to treat for peace in a more favourable position. But, as mankind are seldom reasonable in admitting such maxims against themselves, he seems to have injured his reputation by this affair of Brentford.
Treaty at Oxford.—A treaty, from which many ventured to hope much, was begun early in the next spring at Oxford, after a struggle which had lasted through the winter within the walls of parliament.[249] But though the party of Pym and Hampden at Westminster were not able to prevent negotiation against the strong bent of the House of Lords, and even of the city, which had been taught to lower its tone by the interruption of trade, and especially of the supply of coals from Newcastle; yet they were powerful enough to make the houses insist on terms not less unreasonable than those contained in their nineteen propositions the year before.[250] The king could not be justly expected to comply with these; but, had they been more moderate, or if the parliament would have in some measure receded from them, we have every reason to conclude, both by the nature of the terms he proposed in return, and by the positive testimony of Clarendon, that he would not have come sincerely into any scheme of immediate accommodation. The reason assigned by that author for the unwillingness of Charles to agree on a cessation of arms during the negotiation, though it had been originally suggested by himself (and which reason would have been still more applicable to a treaty of peace), is one so strange that it requires all the authority of one very unwilling to confess any weakness or duplicity of the king to be believed. He had made a solemn promise to the queen on her departure for Holland the year before, "that he would receive no person who had disserved him into any favour or trust, without her privity and consent; and that, as she had undergone many reproaches and calumnies at the entrance into the war, so he would never make any peace but by her interposition and mediation, that the kingdom might receive that blessing only from her."[251] Let this be called, as the reader may please, the extravagance of romantic affection, or rather the height of pusillanimous and criminal subserviency, we cannot surely help acknowledging that this one marked weakness in Charles's character, had there been nothing else to object, rendered the return of cordial harmony between himself and his people scarce within the bounds of natural possibility. In the equally balanced condition of both forces at this particular juncture, it may seem that some compromise on the great question of the militia was not impracticable, had the king been truly desirous of accommodation; for it is only just to remember that the parliament had good reason to demand some security for themselves, when he had so peremptorily excluded several persons from amnesty. Both parties, in truth, were standing out for more than, either according to their situation as belligerents, or even perhaps according to the principles of our constitution, they could reasonably claim; the two houses having evidently no direct right to order the military force, nor the king, on the other hand, having a clear prerogative to keep on foot an army which is not easily distinguishable from a militia without consent of parliament. The most reasonable course apparently would have been for the one to have waived a dangerous and disputed authority, and the other to have desisted from a still more unconstitutional pretension; which was done by the bill of rights in 1689. The kingdom might have well dispensed, in that age, with any military organisation; and this seems to have been the desire of Whitelock, and probably of other reasonable men. But unhappily when swords are once drawn in civil war, they are seldom sheathed till experience has shown which blade is the sharper.
Impeachment of the queen.—Though this particular instance of the queen's prodigious ascendancy over her husband remained secret till the publication of Lord Clarendon's life, it was in general well known, and put the leaders of the Commons on a remarkable stroke of policy, in order to prevent the renewal of negotiations. On her landing in the north, with a supply of money and arms, as well as with a few troops she had collected in Holland, they carried up to the Lords an impeachment for high treason against her. This measure (so obnoxious was Henrietta) met with a less vigorous opposition than might be expected, though the moderate party was still in considerable force.[252] It was not only an insolence, which a king, less uxorious than Charles, could never pardon; but a violation of the primary laws and moral sentiments that preserve human society, to which the queen was acting in obedience. Scarce any proceeding of the long parliament seems more odious than this; whether designed by way of intimidation, or to exasperate the king, and render the composure of existing differences more impracticable.
Waller's plot.—The enemies of peace were strengthened by the discovery of what is usually called Waller's plot, a scheme for making a strong demonstration of the royalist party in London, wherein several members of both houses appear to have been more or less concerned. Upon the detection of this conspiracy, the two houses of parliament took an oath not to lay down arms, so long as the papists now in arms should be protected from the justice of parliament; and never to adhere to, or willingly assist, the forces raised by the king, without the consent of both houses. Every individual member of the Peers and Commons took this oath; some of them being then in secret concert with the king, and others entertaining intentions, as their conduct very soon evinced, of deserting to his side.[253] Such was the commencement of a system of perjury, which lasted for many years, and belies the pretended religion of that hypocritical age. But we may always look for this effect from oppressive power, and the imposition of political tests.
The king was now in a course of success, which made him rather hearken to the sanguine courtiers of Oxford, where, according to the invariable character of an exiled faction, every advantage or reverse brought on a disproportionate exultation or despondency, than to those better counsellors who knew the precariousness of his good fortune. He published a declaration, wherein he denied the two houses at Westminster the name of a parliament; which he could no more take from them, after the bill he had passed, than they could deprive him of his royal title, and by refusing which he shut up all avenues to an equal peace.[254] This was soon followed by so extraordinary a political error as manifests the king's want of judgment, and the utter improbability that any event of the war could have restored to England the blessings of liberty and repose.
Secession of some peers to the king's quarters.—Three peers of the moderate party, the Earls of Holland, Bedford, and Clare, dissatisfied with the preponderance of a violent faction in the Commons, left their places at Westminster, and came into the king's quarters. It might be presumed from general policy as well as from his constant declarations of a desire to restore peace, that they would have been received with such studied courtesy as might serve to reconcile to their own mind a step which, when taken with the best intentions, is always equivocal and humiliating. There was great reason to believe that the Earl of Northumberland, not only the first peer then in England as to family and fortune, but a man highly esteemed for prudence, was only waiting to observe the reception of those who went first to Oxford, before he followed their steps. There were even well-founded hopes of the Earl of Essex, who, though incapable of betraying his trust as commander of the parliament's army, was both from personal and public motives disinclined to the war-party in the Commons. There was much to expect from all those who had secretly wished well to the king's cause, and from those whom it is madness to reject or insult, the followers of fortune, the worshippers of power, without whom neither fortune nor power can long subsist. Yet such was the state of Charles's council-board at Oxford that some were for arresting these proselyte earls; and it was carried with difficulty, after they had been detained some time at Wallingford, that they might come to the court. But they met there with so many and such general slights that, though they fought in the king's army at Newbury, they found their position intolerably ignominious; and after about three months, returned to the parliament with many expressions of repentance, and strong testimonies to the evil counsels of Oxford.[255]
The king seems to have been rather passive in this strange piece of impolicy, but by no means to have taken the line that became him, of repressing the selfish jealousy or petty revengefulness of his court. If the Earl of Holland was a man, whom both he and the queen, on the score of his great obligations to them, might justly reproach with some ingratitude, there was nothing to be objected against the other two, save their continuance at Westminster, and compliance in votes that he disliked. And if this were to be visited by neglect and discountenance, there could, it was plain, be no reconciliation between him and the parliament. For who could imagine that men of courage and honour, while possessed of any sort of strength and any hopes of preserving it, would put up with a mere indemnity for their lives and fortunes, subject to be reckoned as pardoned traitors who might thank the king for his clemency, without presuming to his favour? Charles must have seen his superiority consolidated by repeated victories, before he could prudently assume this tone of conquest. Inferior in substantial force, notwithstanding his transient advantages, to the parliament, he had no probability of regaining his station, but by defections from their banner; and these, with incredible folly, he seemed to decline; far unlike his illustrious father-in-law, who had cordially embraced the leaders of a rebellion much more implacable than the present. For the Oxford counsellors and courtiers who set themselves against the reception of the three earls, besides their particular animosity towards the Earl of Holland,[256] and that general feeling of disdain and distrust which, as Clarendon finely observes, seems by nature attached to all desertion and inconstancy, whether in politics or religion (even among those who reap the advantage of it, and when founded upon what they ought to reckon the soundest reasons), there seems grounds to suspect that they had deeper and more selfish designs than they cared to manifest. They had long beset the king with solicitations for titles, offices, pensions; but these were necessarily too limited for their cravings. They had sustained, many of them, great losses; they had performed real or pretended services for the king; and it is probable that they looked to a confiscation of enemies' property for their indemnification or reward. This would account for an averseness to all overtures for peace, as decided, at this period, among a great body of the cavaliers as it was with the factions of Pym or Vane.
The anti-pacific party gain the ascendant at Westminster.—These factions were now become finally predominant at Westminster. On the news that Prince Rupert had taken Bristol, the last and most serious loss that the parliament sustained, the Lords agreed on propositions for peace to be sent to the king, of an unusually moderate tone.[257] The Commons, on a division of 94 to 65, determined to take them into consideration; but the lord mayor Pennington having procured an address of the city against peace, backed by a tumultuous mob, a small majority was obtained against concurring with the other house.[258] It was after this that the Lords above-mentioned, as well as many of the Commons, quitted Westminster. The prevailing party had no thoughts of peace, till they could dictate its conditions. Through Essex's great success in raising the siege of Glocester, the most distinguished exploit in his military life, and the battle of Newbury wherein the advantage was certainly theirs, they became secure against any important attack on the king's side, the war turning again to endless sieges and skirmishes of partisans. And they now adopted two important measures, one of which gave a new complexion to the quarrel.
Littleton, the lord keeper of the great seal, had carried it away with him to the king. This of itself put a stop to the regular course of the executive government, and to the administration of justice within the parliament's quarters. No employments could be filled up, no writs for election of members issued, no commissions for holding the assizes completed without the indispensable formality of affixing the great seal. It must surely excite a smile, that men who had raised armies, and fought battles against the king, should be perplexed how to get over so technical a difficulty. But the great seal in the eyes of English lawyers, has a sort of mysterious efficacy, and passes for the depository of royal authority in a higher degree than the person of the king.
The parliament makes a new great seal.—The Commons prepared an ordinance in July for making a new great seal, in which the Lords could not be induced to concur till October. The royalists, and the king himself, exclaimed against this as the most audacious treason, though it may be reckoned a very natural consequence of the state in which the parliament was placed; and in the subsequent negotiations, it was one of the minor points in dispute whether he should authorise the proceedings under the great seal of the two houses, or they consent to sanction what had been done by virtue of his own.
The second measure of parliament was of greater moment and more fatal consequences. I have already mentioned the stress laid by the bigoted Scots presbyterians on the establishment of their own church government in England. Chiefly perhaps to conciliate this people, the House of Commons had entertained the bill for abolishing episcopacy; and this had formed a part of the nineteen propositions that both houses tendered to the king.[259] After the action at Brentford they concurred in a declaration to be delivered to the Scots commissioners, resident in London, wherein, after setting forth the malice of the prelatical clergy in hindering the reformation of ecclesiastical government, and professing their own desire willingly and affectionately to pursue a closer union in such matters between the two nations, they request their brethren of Scotland to raise such forces as they should judge sufficient for the securing the peace of their own borders against ill-affected persons there; as likewise, to assist them in suppressing the army of papists and foreigners, which, it was expected, would shortly be on foot in England.[260]
This overture produced for many months no sensible effect. The Scots, with all their national wariness, suspected that, in spite of these general declarations in favour of their church polity, it was not much at heart with most of the parliament, and might be given up in a treaty, if the king would concede some other matters in dispute. Accordingly, when the progress of his arms, especially in the north, during the ensuing summer, compelled the parliament to call in a more pressing manner, and by a special embassy, for their aid, they resolved to bind them down by such a compact as no wavering policy should ever rescind. They insisted therefore on the adoption of the solemn league and covenant, founded on a similar association of their own, five years before, through which they had successfully resisted the king, and overthrown the prelatic government. The covenant consisted in an oath to be subscribed by all sorts of persons in both kingdoms, whereby they bound themselves to preserve the reformed religion in the church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, according to the word of God and practice of the best reformed churches; and to endeavour to bring the churches of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of church-government, directory for worship, and catechising: to endeavour, without respect of persons, the extirpation of popery, prelacy (that is, church government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries, deans and chapters, archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy), and whatsoever should be found contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness to preserve the rights and privileges of the parliaments, and the liberties of the kingdoms, and the king's person and authority, in the preservation and defence of the true religion and liberties of the kingdoms: to endeavour the discovery of incendiaries and malignants, who hinder the reformation of religion, and divide the king from his people, that they may be brought to punishment: finally, to assist and defend all such as should enter into this covenant, and not suffer themselves to be withdrawn from it, whether to revolt to the opposite party, or to give in to a detestable indifference or neutrality. In conformity to the strict alliance thus established between the two kingdoms, the Scots commissioners at Westminster were intrusted, jointly with a committee of both houses, with very extensive powers to administer the public affairs.[261]
The parliament subscribes to the covenant.—Every member of the Commons who remained at Westminster, to the number of 228, or perhaps more, and from 20 to 30 Peers that formed their upper house,[262] subscribed this deliberate pledge to overturn the established church; many of them with extreme reluctance, both from a dislike of the innovation, and from a consciousness that it raised a most formidable obstacle to the restoration of peace; but with a secret reserve, for which some want of precision in the language of this covenant (purposely introduced by Vane, as is said, to shelter his own schemes) afforded them a sort of apology.[263] It was next imposed on all civil and military officers, and upon all the beneficed clergy.[264] A severe persecution fell on the faithful children of the Anglican church. Many had already been sequestered from their livings, or even subjected to imprisonment, by the parliamentary committee for scandalous ministers, or by subordinate committees of the same kind set up in each county within their quarters; sometimes on the score of immoralities or false doctrine, more frequently for what they termed malignity, or attachment to the king and his party.[265] Yet wary men who meddled not with politics, might hope to elude this inquisition. But the covenant, imposed as a general test, drove out all who were too conscientious to pledge themselves by a solemn appeal to the Deity to resist the polity which they generally believed to be of his institution. What number of the clergy were ejected (most of them but for refusing the covenant, and for no moral offence or imputed superstition) it is impossible to ascertain. Walker, in his Sufferings of the Clergy, a folio volume published in the latter end of Anne's reign, with all the virulence and partiality of the high-church faction in that age, endeavoured to support those who had reckoned it at 8000; a palpable over-statement upon his own showing, for he cannot produce near 2000 names, after a most diligent investigation. Neal, however, admits 1600, probably more than one-fifth of the beneficed ministers in the kingdom.[266] The biographical collections furnish a pretty copious martyrology of men the most distinguished by their learning and virtues in that age. The remorseless and indiscriminate bigotry of presbyterianism might boast that it had heaped disgrace on Walton, and driven Lydiat to beggary; that it trampled on the old age of Hales, and embittered with insult the dying moments of Chillingworth.
Impeachment and execution of Laud.—But the most unjustifiable act of these zealots, and one of the greatest reproaches of the long parliament, was the death of Archbishop Laud. In the first days of the session, while the fall of Strafford struck every one with astonishment, the Commons had carried up an impeachment against him for high treason, in fourteen articles of charge; and he had lain ever since in the Tower, his revenues, and even private estate sequestered, and in great indigence. After nearly three years' neglect, specific articles were exhibited against him in October 1643, but not proceeded on with vigour till December 1644; when, for whatever reason, a determination was taken to pursue this unfortunate prelate to death. The charges against him, which Wild, Maynard, and other managers of the impeachment, were to aggravate into treason, related partly to those papistical innovations which had nothing of a political character about them, partly of the violent proceedings in the star-chamber and high-commission courts, wherein Laud was very prominent as a counsellor, but certainly without any greater legal responsibility than fell on many others. He defended himself, not always prudently or satisfactorily, but with courage and ability; never receding from his magnificent notions of spiritual power, but endeavouring to shift the blame of the sentences pronounced by the council on those who concurred with him. The imputation of popery he repelled by a list of the converts he had made; but the word was equivocal, and he could not deny the difference between his protestantism and that of our reformation. Nothing could be more monstrous than the allegation of treason in this case. The judges, on a reference by the Lords, gave it to be understood, in their timid way, that the charges contained no legal treason.[267] But, the Commons having changed their impeachment into an ordinance for his execution, the Peers were pusillanimous enough to comply. It is said by Clarendon that only seven Lords were in the house on this occasion: but the Journals unfortunately bear witness to the presence of twenty.[268] Laud had amply merited punishment for his tyrannical abuse of power; but his execution at the age of seventy, without the slightest pretence of political necessity, was a far more unjustifiable instance of it than any that was alleged against him.
Decline of the king's affairs in 1644.—Pursuant to the before-mentioned treaty, the Scots army of 21,000 men marched into England in January 1644. This was a very serious accession to Charles's difficulties, already sufficient to dissipate all hopes of final triumph, except in the most sanguine minds. His successes, in fact, had been rather such as to surprise well-judging men than to make them expect any more favourable termination of the war than by a fair treaty. From the beginning it may be said that the yeomanry and trading classes of towns were generally hostile to the king's side, even in those counties which were in his military occupation; except in a few, such as Cornwall, Worcester, Salop, and most of Wales, where the prevailing sentiment was chiefly royalist;[269] and this disaffection was prodigiously increased through the licence of his ill-paid and ill-disciplined army. On the other hand, the gentry were, in a great majority, attached to his cause, even in the parts of England which lay subject to the parliament. But he was never able to make any durable impression on what were called the associated counties, extending from Norfolk to Sussex inclusively, within which no rising could be attempted with any effect:[270] while, on the other hand, the parliament possessed several garrisons, and kept up considerable forces in that larger portion of the kingdom where he might be reckoned superior. Their resources were far greater; and the taxes imposed by them, though exceedingly heavy, more regularly paid, and less ruinous to the people, than the sudden exactions, half plunder, half contribution, of the ravenous cavaliers. The king lost ground during the winter. He had built hopes on bringing over troops from Ireland; for the sake of which he made a truce, then called the cessation, with the rebel catholics. But this reinforcement having been beaten and dispersed by Fairfax at Namptwich, he had the mortification of finding that this scheme had much increased his own unpopularity, and the distrust entertained of him even by his adherents, without the smallest advantage. The next campaign was marked by the great defeat of Rupert and Newcastle at Marston Moor, and the loss of the north of England; a blow so terrible as must have brought on his speedy ruin, if it had not been in some degree mitigated by his strange and unexpected success over Essex in the west, and by the tardiness of the Scots in making use of their victory. Upon the result of the campaign of 1644, the king's affairs were in such bad condition that nothing less than a series of victories could have reinstated them; yet not so totally ruined as to hold out much prospect of an approaching termination to the people's calamities.
Factions at Oxford.—There had been, from the very commencement of the war, all that distraction in the king's councils at Oxford, and all those bickerings and heart-burnings among his adherents, which naturally belong to men embarked in a dangerous cause with different motives and different views. The military men, some of whom had served with the Swedes in Germany, acknowledged no laws but those of war; and could not understand that, either in annoying the enemy or providing for themselves, they were to acknowledge any restraints of the civil power. The lawyers, on the other hand, and the whole constitutional party laboured to keep up, in the midst of arms, the appearances at least of legal justice, and that favourite maxim of Englishmen, the supremacy of civil over military authority, rather more strictly perhaps than the nature of their actual circumstances would admit. At the head of the former party stood the king's two nephews, Rupert and Maurice, the younger sons of the late unfortunate elector palatine, soldiers of fortune (as we may truly call them), of rude and imperious characters, avowedly despising the council and the common law, and supported by Charles, with all his injudiciousness and incapacity for affairs, against the greatest men of the kingdom. Another very powerful and obnoxious faction was that of the catholics, proud of their services and sacrifices, confident in the queen's protection, and looking at least to a full toleration as their just reward. They were the natural enemies of peace, and little less hated at Oxford than at Westminster.[271]
Royalist lords and commoners summoned to Oxford.—At the beginning of the winter of 1643 the king took the remarkable step of summoning the peers and commoners of his party to meet in parliament at Oxford. This was evidently suggested by the constitutionalists with the intention of obtaining a supply by more regular methods than forced contribution, and of opposing a barrier to the military and popish interests.[272] Whether it were equally calculated to further the king's cause may admit of some doubt. The royalist convention indeed, which name it ought rather to have taken than that of parliament, met in considerable strength at Oxford. Forty-three peers, and one hundred and eighteen commoners, subscribed a letter to the Earl of Essex, expressing their anxiety for a treaty of peace; twenty-nine of the former, and fifty-seven of the latter, it is said, being then absent on the king's service, or other occasions.[273] Such a display of numbers, nearly double in one house, and nearly half in the other, of those who remained at Westminster, might have an effect on the nation's prejudices, and at least redeem the king from the charge of standing singly against his parliament. But they came in no spirit of fervid loyalty, rather distrustful of the king, especially on the score of religion, averse to some whom he had injudiciously raised to power, such as Digby and Cottington, and so eager for pacification as not perhaps to have been unwilling to purchase it by greater concessions than he could prudently make.[274] Peace however was by no means brought nearer by their meeting; the parliament, jealous and alarmed at it, would never recognise their existence; and were so provoked at their voting the Lords and Commons at Westminster guilty of treason, that, if we believe a writer of high authority, the two houses unanimously passed a vote on Essex's motion, summoning the king to appear by a certain day.[275] But the Scots commissioners had force enough to turn aside such violent suggestions, and ultimately obtained the concurrence of both houses in propositions for a treaty.[276] They had begun to find themselves less likely to sway the councils of Westminster than they had expected, and dreaded the rising ascendancy of Cromwell. The treaty was opened at Uxbridge in January 1645. But neither the king nor his adversaries entered on it with minds sincerely bent on peace: they, on the one hand, resolute not to swerve from the utmost rigour of a conqueror's terms, without having conquered; and he, though more secretly, cherishing illusive hopes of a more triumphant restoration to power than any treaty could be expected to effect.[277]
The three leading topics of discussion among the negotiators at Uxbridge were, the church, the militia, and the state of Ireland. Bound by their unhappy covenant, and watched by their Scots colleagues, the English commissioners on the parliament side demanded the complete establishment of a presbyterian polity, and the substitution of what was called the directory for the Anglican liturgy. Upon this head there was little prospect of a union. The king had deeply imbibed the tenets of Andrews and Laud, believing an episcopal government indispensably necessary to the valid administration of the sacraments, and the very existence of a christian church. The Scots, and a portion of the English clergy, were equally confident that their presbyterian form was established by the apostles as a divine model, from which it was unlawful to depart.[278] Though most of the laity in this kingdom entertained less narrow opinions, the parliamentary commissioners thought the king ought rather to concede such a point than themselves, especially as his former consent to the abolition of episcopacy in Scotland weakened a good deal the force of his plea of conscience; while the royalists, even could they have persuaded their master, thought episcopacy, though not absolutely of divine right (a notion which they left to the churchmen), yet so highly beneficial to religion, and so important to the monarchy, that nothing less than extreme necessity, or at least the prospect of a signal advantage, could justify its abandonment. They offered however what in an earlier stage of their dissensions would have satisfied almost every man, that limited scheme of episcopal hierarchy, above-mentioned as approved by Usher, rendering the bishop among his presbyters much like the king in parliament, not free to exercise his jurisdiction, nor to confer orders without their consent, and offered to leave all ceremonies to the minister's discretion. Such a compromise would probably have pleased the English nation, averse to nothing in their established church except its abuses; but the parliamentary negotiators would not so much as enter into discussion upon it.[279]
They were hardly less unyielding on the subject of the militia. They began with a demand of naming all the commanders by sea and land, including the lord lieutenant of Ireland and all governors of garrisons, for an unlimited time. The king, though not very willingly, proposed that the command should be vested in twenty persons, half to be named by himself, half by the parliament, for the term of three years, which he afterwards extended to seven; at the expiration of which time it should revert to the Crown. But the utmost concession that could be obtained from the other side was to limit their exclusive possession of this power to seven years, leaving the matter open for an ulterior arrangement by act of parliament at their termination.[280] Even if this treaty had been conducted between two belligerent states, whom rivalry or ambition often excite to press every demand which superior power can extort from weakness, there yet was nothing in the condition of the king's affairs which should compel him thus to pass under the yoke, and enter his capital as a prisoner. But we may also remark that, according to the great principle, that the English constitution, in all its component parts, was to be maintained by both sides in this contest, the question for parliament was not what their military advantages or resources for war entitled them to ask, but what was required for the due balance of power under a limited monarchy. They could rightly demand no further concession from the king than was indispensable for their own and the people's security; and I leave any one who is tolerably acquainted with the state of England at the beginning of 1645, to decide whether their privileges and the public liberties incurred a greater risk, by such an equal partition of power over the sword, as the king proposed, than his prerogative and personal freedom would have encountered by abandoning it altogether to their discretion. I am far from thinking that the acceptance of the king's propositions at Uxbridge would have restored tranquillity to England. He would still have repined at the limitations of monarchy, and others would have conspired against its existence. But of the various consequences which we may picture to ourselves as capable of resulting from a pacification, that which appears to me the least likely is, that Charles should have re-established that arbitrary power which he had exercised in the earlier period of his reign. Whence, in fact, was he to look for assistance? Was it with such creatures of a court as Jermyn or Ashburnham, or with a worn-out veteran of office, like Cottington, or a rash adventurer, like Digby, that he could outwit Vane, or overawe Cromwell, or silence the press and the pulpit, or strike with panic the stern puritan and the confident fanatic? Some there were, beyond question, both soldiers and courtiers, who hated the very name of a limited monarchy, and murmured at the constitutional language which the king, from the time he made use of the pens of Hyde and Falkland, had systematically employed in his public declarations.[281] But it is as certain that the great majority of his Oxford parliament, and of those upon whom he must have depended, either in the field or in council, were apprehensive of any victory that might render him absolute, as that Essex and Manchester were unwilling to conquer at the expense of the constitution.[282] The catholics indeed, generally speaking, would have gone great lengths in asserting his authority. Nor is this any reproach to that body, by no means naturally less attached to their country and its liberties than other Englishmen, but driven by an unjust persecution to see their only hope of emancipation in the nation's servitude. They could not be expected to sympathise in that patriotism of the seventeenth century, which, if it poured warmth and radiance on the protestant, was to them as a devouring fire. But the king could have made no use of the catholics as a distinct body for any political purpose, without uniting all other parties against him. He had already given so much offence, at the commencement of the war, by accepting the services which the catholic gentry were forward to offer, that instead of a more manly justification, which the temper of the times, he thought, did not permit, he had recourse to the useless subterfuges of denying or extenuating the facts, and even to a strangely improbable recrimination; asserting, on several occasions, that the number of papists in the parliament's army was much greater than in his own.[283]
It may still indeed be questioned whether, admitting the propositions tendered to the king to have been unreasonable and insecure, it might not yet have been expedient, in the perilous condition of his affairs, rather to have tried the chances of peace than those of war. If he could have determined frankly and without reserve to have relinquished the church, and called the leaders of the presbyterian party in both houses to his councils, it is impossible to prove that he might not both have regained his power over the militia in no long course of time, and prevailed on the parliament to consent to its own dissolution. The dread that party felt of the republican spirit rising amongst the independents, would have induced them to place in the hands of any sovereign they could trust, full as much authority as our constitution permits. But no one who has paid attention to the history of that period, will conclude that they could have secured the king against their common enemy, had he even gone wholly into their own measures.[284] And this were to suppose such an entire change in his character, and ways of thinking, as no external circumstances could produce. Yet his prospects from a continuance of hostilities were so unpromising that most of the royalists would probably have hailed his almost unconditional submission at Uxbridge. Even the steady Richmond and Southampton, it is said, implored him to yield, and deprecated his misjudging confidence in promises of foreign aid, or in the successes of Montrose.[285] The more lukewarm or discontented of his adherents took this opportunity of abandoning an almost hopeless cause; between the breach of the treaty of Uxbridge and the battle of Naseby, several of the Oxford peers came over to the parliament, and took an engagement never to bear arms against it. A few instances of such defection had occurred before.[286]
Miseries of the war.—It remained only, after the rupture of the treaty at Uxbridge, to try once more the fortune of war. The people, both in the king's and parliament's quarters, but especially the former, heard with dismay that peace could not be attained. Many of the perpetual skirmishes and captures of towns which made every man's life and fortune precarious, have found no place in general history; but may be traced in the journal of Whitelock, or in the Mercuries and other fugitive sheets, great numbers of which are still extant. And it will appear, I believe, from these that scarcely one county in England was exempt, at one time or other of the war, from becoming the scene of this unnatural contest. Compared indeed with the civil wars in France in the preceding century, there had been fewer acts of enormous cruelty, and less atrocious breaches of public faith. But much blood had been wantonly shed, and articles of capitulation had been very indifferently kept. "Either side," says Clarendon, "having somewhat to object to the other, the requisite honesty and justice of observing conditions was mutually, as it were by agreement, for a long time violated."[287] The royalist army, especially the cavalry, commanded by men either wholly unprincipled, or at least regardless of the people, and deeming them ill affected, the princes Rupert and Maurice, Goring and Wilmot, lived without restraint of law or military discipline, and committed every excess even in friendly quarters.[288] An ostentatious dissoluteness became characteristic of the cavalier, as a formal austerity was of the puritan; one spoiling his neighbour in the name of God, the other of the king. The parliament's troops were not quite free from these military vices, but displayed them in a much less scandalous degree, owing to their more religious habits and the influence of their presbyterian chaplains, to the better example of their commanders, and to the comparative, though not absolute, punctuality of their pay.[289] But this pay was raised through unheard-of assessments, especially an excise on liquors, a new name in England, and through the sequestration of the estates of all the king's adherents; resources of which he also had availed himself, partly by the rights of war, partly by the grant of his Oxford parliament.[290]
A war so calamitous seemed likely to endure till it had exhausted the nation. With all the parliament's superiority, they had yet to subdue nearly half the kingdom. The Scots had not advanced southward, content with reducing Newcastle and the rest of the northern counties. These they treated almost as hostile, without distinction of parties, not only exacting contributions, but committing, unless they are much belied, great excesses of indiscipline; their presbyterian gravity not having yet overcome the ancient national propensities.[291] In the midland and western parts the king had just the worse, without having sustained material loss; and another summer might pass away in marches and counter-marches, in skirmishes of cavalry, in tedious sieges of paltry fortifications, some of them mere country houses, which nothing but an amazing deficiency in that branch of military science could have rendered tenable.
Essex and Manchester suspected of lukewarmness.—This protraction of the war had long given rise to no unnatural discontent with its management, and to suspicions, first of Essex, then of Manchester and others in command, as if they were secretly reluctant to complete the triumph of their employers. It is indeed not impossible that both these peers, especially the former, out of their desire to see peace restored on terms compatible with some degree of authority in the Crown, and with the dignity of their own order, did not always press their advantages against the king, as if he had been a public enemy.[292] They might have thought that, having drawn the sword avowedly for the preservation of his person and dignity as much as for the rights and liberties of the people, they were no farther bound by their trust than to render him and his adherents sensible of the impracticability of refusing their terms of accommodation.
Self-denying ordinance.—There could however be no doubt that Fairfax and Cromwell were far superior, both by their own talents for war and the discipline they had introduced into their army, to the earlier parliamentary commanders, and that, as a military arrangement, the self-denying ordinance was judiciously conceived. This, which took from all members of both houses their commands in the army, or civil employments, was, as is well known, the first great victory of the independent party which had grown up lately in parliament under Vane and Cromwell.[293] They carried another measure of no less importance, collateral to the former; the new-modelling, as it was called, of the army; reducing it to twenty-one or twenty-two thousand men; discharging such officers and soldiers as were reckoned unfit, and completing their regiments by more select levies. The ordinance, after being once rejected by the Lords, passed their house with some modifications in April.[294] But many joined them on this occasion for those military reasons which I have mentioned, deeming almost any termination of the war better than its continuance. The king's rejection of their terms at Uxbridge had disgusted some of the more moderate men, such as the Earl of Northumberland and Pierrepont; who, deeming reconciliation impracticable, took from this time a different line of politics from that they had previously followed, and were either not alive to the danger of new-modelling the army, or willing to hope that it might be disbanded before that danger could become imminent. From Fairfax too, the new general, they saw little to fear and much to expect; while Cromwell, as a member of the House of Commons, was positively excluded by the ordinance itself. But, through a successful intrigue of his friends, this great man, already not less formidable to the presbyterian faction than to the royalists, was permitted to continue lieutenant-general.[295] The most popular justification for the self-denying ordinance, and yet perhaps its real condemnation, was soon found at Naseby; for there Fairfax and Cromwell triumphed not only over the king and the monarchy, but over the parliament and the nation.
It does not appear to me that a brave and prudent man, in the condition of Charles the First, had, up to that unfortunate day, any other alternative than a vigorous prosecution of the war, in hope of such decisive success as, though hardly within probable calculation, is not unprecedented in the changeful tide of fortune. I cannot therefore blame him either for refusing unreasonable terms of accommodation, or for not relinquishing altogether the contest. But, after his defeat at Naseby, his affairs were, in a military sense, so irretrievable that in prolonging the war with as much obstinacy as the broken state of his party would allow, he displayed a good deal of that indifference to the sufferings of the kingdom and of his own adherents, which has been sometimes imputed to him. There was, from the hour of that battle, one only safe and honourable course remaining. He justly abhorred to reign, if so it could be named, the slave of parliament, with the sacrifice of his conscience and his friends. But it was by no means necessary to reign at all. The sea was for many months open to him; in France, or still better in Holland, he would have found his misfortunes respected, and an asylum in that decent privacy which becomes an exiled sovereign. Those very hopes which he too fondly cherished, and which lured him to destruction, hopes of regaining power through the disunion of his enemies, might have been entertained with better reason, as with greater safety, in a foreign land. It is not perhaps very probable that he would have been restored; but his restoration in such circumstances seems less desperate than through any treaty that he could conclude in captivity at home.
Whether any such thoughts of abandoning a hopeless contest were ever entertained by the king during this particular period, it is impossible to pronounce; we should infer the contrary from all his actions. It must be said that many of his counsellors seem to have been as pertinacious as himself, having strongly imbibed the same sanguine spirit, and looking for deliverance, according to their several fancies, from the ambition of Cromwell or the discontent of the Scots. But, whatever might have been the king's disposition, he would not have dared to retire from England. That sinister domestic rule, to which he had so long been subject, controlled every action. Careless of her husband's happiness, and already attached probably to one whom she afterwards married, Henrietta longed only for his recovery of a power which would become her own.[296] Hence, while she constantly laid her injunctions on Charles never to concede anything as to the militia or the Irish catholics, she became desirous, when no other means presented itself, that he should sacrifice what was still nearer to his heart, the episcopal church-government. The queen-regent of France, whose sincerity in desiring the king's restoration there can be no ground to deny,[297] was equally persuaded that he could hope for it on no less painful conditions. They reasoned of course very plausibly from the great precedent of flexible consciences, the reconciliation of Henrietta's illustrious father to the catholic church. As he could neither have regained his royal power, nor restored peace to France without this compliance with his subjects' prejudices, so Charles could still less expect, in circumstances by no means so favourable, that he should avoid a concession, in the eyes of almost all men but himself, of incomparably less importance.
The king throws himself into the hands of the Scots.—It was in expectation of this sacrifice, that the French envoy, Montreuil, entered on his ill-starred negotiation for the king's taking shelter with the Scots army. And it must be confessed that several of his best friends were hardly less anxious that he should desert a church he could not protect.[298] They doubted not, reasoning from their own characters, that he would ultimately give way. But that Charles, unchangeably resolved on this head,[299] should have put himself in the power of men fully as bigoted as himself (if he really conceived that the Scots presbyterians would shed their blood to re-establish the prelacy they abhorred), was an additional proof of that delusion which made him fancy that no government could be established without his concurrence; unless indeed we should rather consider it as one of those desperate courses, into which he who can foresee nothing but evil from every calculable line of action will sometimes plunge at a venture, borrowing some ray of hope from the uncertainty of its consequences.[300]
It was an inevitable effect of this step, that the king surrendered his personal liberty, which he never afterwards recovered. Considering his situation, we may at first think the parliament tolerably moderate, in offering nearly the same terms of peace at Newcastle which he had rejected at Uxbridge; the chief difference being, that the power of the militia which had been demanded for commissioners nominated and removable by the two houses during an indefinite period, was now proposed to reside in the two houses for the space of twenty years; which rather more unequivocally indicated their design of making the parliament perpetual.[301] But in fact they had so abridged the royal prerogative by their former propositions, that, preserving the decent semblance of monarchy, scarce anything further could be exacted. The king's circumstances were however so altered that, by persisting in his refusal of those propositions, he excited a natural indignation at his obstinacy in men who felt their own right (the conqueror's right), to dictate terms at pleasure. Yet this might have had a nobler character of firmness, if during all the tedious parleys of the last three years of his life, he had not, by tardy and partial concessions, given up so much of that for which he contended, as rather to appear like a pedlar haggling for the best bargain, than a sovereign unalterably determined by conscience and public spirit. We must, however, forgive much to one placed in such unparalleled difficulties. Charles had to contend, during his unhappy residence at Newcastle, not merely with revolted subjects in the pride of conquest, and with bigoted priests, as blindly confident in one set of doubtful propositions as he was in the opposite, but with those he had trusted the most, and loved the dearest. We have in the Clarendon State Papers a series of letters from Paris, written, some by the queen, others jointly by Colepepper, Jermyn, and Ashburnham, or the two former, urging him to sacrifice episcopacy, as the necessary means of his restoration. We have the king's answers, that display, in an interesting manner, the struggles of his mind under this severe trial.[302] No candid reader, I think, can doubt that a serious sense of obligation was predominant in Charles's persevering fidelity to the English church. For, though he often alleges the incompatibility of presbyterianism with monarchy, and says very justly, "I am most confident that religion will much sooner regain the militia than the militia will religion,"[303] yet these arguments seem rather intended to weigh with those who slighted his scruples, than the paramount motives of his heart. He could hardly avoid perceiving that, as Colepepper told him in his rough style, the question was, whether he would choose to be a king of presbytery or no king. But the utmost length which he could prevail on himself to go was to offer the continuance of the presbyterian discipline, as established by the parliament, for three years, during which a conference of divines might be had, in order to bring about a settlement. Even this he would not propose without consulting two bishops, Juxon and Duppa, whether he could lawfully do so. They returned a very cautious answer, assenting to the proposition as a temporary measure, but plainly endeavouring to keep the king fixed in his adherence to the episcopal church.[304]