The prince sent a command to Warwick to strike his flag, and yield obedience to him as supreme me admiral by the king's commission; but the earl kept his flag flying, and, avoiding an engagement, waited the arrival of reinforcements from Portsmouth, still covering the Essex coast. The prince, from the mouth of the Thames, maintained a secret correspondence with some persons in the city of London, but the merchants there were greatly indisposed to his service when he demanded money from them to save their ships from capture. The utter failure of Hamilton's expedition and of all the royalist risings, the surrender of Colchester, and the temper of the people along the coasts, rendered the presence of the royalist fleet useless; but still if it had sailed to the Isle of Wight it might have saved the king, whose very life was now threatened. The hapless prisoner expressly urged this course by a message, yet the prince still lay about the Downs, the sailors, it is said, insisting upon fighting the fleet under Warwick. To our minds, these things suggest darker thoughts than arise out of any other transaction of these times. On the other side, Warwick waited patiently till Sir George Ayscough, successfully sailing by Prince Charles in the night, brought round the reinforcements from Portsmouth. Then the parliament's fleet was a match for the royalists, but the prince ventured no attack, fired not a gun, and, through a real or pretended want of provisions, stood round and steered away for the Dutch coast, without an effort for apparently without a thought of-his hapless father. The Levellers reproached Warwick for not engaging and destroying the prince and his fleet; but, by the course he pursued, that commander, perhaps, did better service for the parliament: he followed the retreating fleet to the coast of Holland, most carefully avoiding any collision with such of the ships as were Eng. lish; he sent his men on shore to talk with their countrymen and old comrades about the wickedness and folly of deserting their own country, and serving against it with foreigners; he offered the mutineers a free pardon from the parliament, and he soon recovered most of the ships and nearly every English seaman that had deserted.

While Cromwell, who had with him several of the republican leaders in parliament, was engaged as yet with the war in Wales, the Presbyterians carried several important votes, and entirely annulled and made void the resolution against making more addresses to the king. Emboldened by their success, they proposed that, without binding him to anything, they should bring the king to London, and there treat with him personally with honour, freedom, and safety; and this would have been carried but for Cromwell's decisive victories, the ruin of Hamilton, and the other circumstances which revived the hopes and courage of the Independents, the fears and misgivings of the Presbyterians. At last, as a sort of compromise between the two parties, it was voted that fifteen commissioners-the Earls of Northumberland,

Pembroke, Salisbury, Middlesex, and Saye, of the

Upper House, and the Lord Wenman, Sir Harry Vane, junior, Sir Harbottle Grimstone, Hollis, Pierpoint, Browne, Crewe, Potts, Glynne, and Buckley, of the Commons-should conduct a treaty personally with Charles, not in London, but at Newport, in the Isle of Wight. The treaty was not fairly entered upon until the 18th of September, when Prince Charles had returned to Holland, and when Cromwell was thinking of returning from Scotland. "The king," says May, "during this treaty, found not only great reverence and observance from the commissioners of parliament, but was attended with a prince-like retinue, and was allowed what servants he should choose, to make up the splendour of a court. The Duke of Richmond, the Marquess of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton and Lindsey, with other gentlemen of note, and a competent number of them, waited in his train; his own chaplains and divers of his lawyers, to advise him in the treaty, were allowed there. But whilst this treaty proceeded, and some months were spent in debates, concessions, and denials, behold, another strange alteration happened, which threw the king from the height of honour into the lowest condition. So strangely did one contrary provoke another. Whilst some laboured to advance the king into his, throne again upon slender conditions, or none at all, others, weighing what the king had done, what the commonwealth, and, especially, what the parliament's friends might suffer, if he should come to reign again with unchanged affections, desired to take him quite away. From hence divers and frequent petitions were presented to the parliament, and some to the General Fairfax, that whosoever had offended against the commonwealth, no persons excepted, might come to judgment.' The first of these petitions, entitled "The humble petition of many thousands of well-affected men in the cities of London and Westminster, in the borough of Southwark, and the neighbouring villages," was presented to parliament on the 11th of September; it was followed by many others from different counties of England, and from several regiments of the army, the scope of them all being the same

that is, that justice might be done; that the chief authors of so much bloodshed, and particu larly those who had been the raisers of this second civil war, and were now in the parliament's custody, as Hamilton, Holland, Goring, Capel, and the rest, should be proceeded against; that the king himself, the chief offender, the raiser of the whole war, should be called to judgment; that the parliament should not ungratefully throw away so many miraculous deliverances of Almighty God, nor betray themselves and their faithful friends by deceitful treaties with an implacable enemy. The important cities of Newcastle, York, and Hull, with others that had been among the greatest sufferers in the war, called for impartial and speedy justice, for the execution of incendiaries, and the

· • May, Breviary.

forfeiture of their estates to go towards discharging | arrears and paying the public debt. The counties

of Oxford, Somerset, and Leicester, petitioned to the same effect. On the 4th of October the petition of many commanders in the army was presented; on the 10th three other petitions were brought up in one day; on the 18th Ireton's regiment petitioned for justice upon the king as if he were the humblest commoner; and on the 21st Ingoldsby's regiment proclaimed the king to be a traitor, and the negotiations at Newport a trap.

But there was small chance now that the Presbyterians and Independents would agree with the king in any treaty. The matured successes of Cromwell had removed all cause of apprehension from Sir Harry Vane, the chief manager for the Independents, and the Presbyterians were wholly disconcerted by the king's determined resolution not to gratify them in church matters. The articles submitted to the king were substantially the same as those which had been proposed to him at Hampton Court, and not much harsher than the articles which had been discussed so long before at Uxbridge. Again were the Liturgy and episcopacy debated at a wearisome length. Charles asked what fault they found in the Book of Common Prayer. The Presbyterians replied that the Liturgy was taken out of the mass-book, only spoilt in the translation. The king said that, if it were good in itself, that did not make it ill. The sale of bishops' lands Charles held to be sacrilege. He insisted that episcopacy should not be abolished, but only suspended; that the bishops' lands should not be sold, but only leased for a term of years; that all his adherents and followers should be admitted to composition for their delinquency; and that the covenant should be forced neither upon any of them, nor upon himself, until his conscience were better satisfied. The Presbyterian commissioners, who saw their own ruin in that of the king, knelt, and wept, and prayed, but all was in vain. Other points Charles yielded readily enough, but he promised, as he had ever done, with a mental reservation to break his promises as soon as he should be able. On the 24th of October, when he had assented to the propositions of the commissioners about the command of the army, he wrote to Sir William Hopkins, a gentleman in the Isle of Wight, with whom he was concerting some new means of escape :· "To deal freely with you, the great concession I made this day was merely in order to my escape, of which if I had not hope, I would not have done it." He had also agreed to cease all connexion with the papists in Ireland, and yet, encouraged by some circumstances which had occurred in that island, he wrote to Ormond, who, after yielding to the parliament, was ready to do everything against it, desiring him to obey all the queen's commands, not to obey any command of his own until he should advertise him that he was free from restraint, and not to be surprised at his great concessions concerning Ireland-" for," said Charles," they will come to nothing." This

VOL. III.

letter, which was written on the 10th of October, was soon followed by another, in which he spoke in the following terms of the pending treaty with the parliament:" And though you will hear that this treaty is near, or at least most likely to be concluded, yet believe it not, but pursue the way you are in with all possible vigour. Deliver also this my command to all your friends, but not in a public way, because otherwise it may be inconvenient to me." The English parliament had no knowledge of these royal letters; but a letter written by Ormond came into their hands, and from it they learned that Ormond had returned from France to Ireland with authority to treat with the insurgents. The commissioners consequently desired his majesty to make a public declaration that he had given no authority to Ormond, and that he disapproved of his proceedings. After several palpable falsehoods, Charles wrote a public letter commanding Ormond to desist; but the marquess, who had been well schooled, went on more vigorously than ever.*

All this time the king was buoying himself up with hopes that he should be able to escape,-that his friends would relieve him,-or that, if all failed, he should give that colour to his resistance that would entitle him to the honour of a martyr.

Though they cannot relieve me in the time I demand it," said Charles, "let them relieve me when they can, else I will hold it out till I make some stone in this building my tombstone. And so will I do by the Church of England."+ In the course of the discussions at Newport, he always put the church question foremost, and it is said that he displayed very considerable knowledge upon that head, and a presence of mind and of wit in no way impaired by misfortune. "For," says Warwick, through the whole treaty, managing all thus singly himself, he showed that he was very conversant in divinity, law, and good reason, insomuch as one day, whilst I turned the king's chair, when he was about to rise, the Earl of Salisbury came suddenly upon me and called me by my name, and said, The king is wonderfully improved; to which I as suddenly replied, No, my lord, he was always so; but your lordship too late discerned it.”

The Presbyterians in parliament, beset by the army, and deeming their only salvation to lie in a successful termination of the negotiations with the king, added twenty days to the forty originally prescribed for the duration of the treaty. This brought them down to the 27th of November; but, in the interval, their scheme had been shaken to pieces by the Independents. The army had drawn together in the town of St. Albans, and there a council of officers, after a week's deliberation and preparation, drew up a remonstrance to the House of Commons, which was presented by a deputation from their own body, and seconded by

or,

a letter from Fairfax. The remonstrance urged their sad apprehensions of the danger and evil of the treaty with the king, and of any accommodation with him; that he ought to be brought to trial on account of the evils done by him; that the English monarchy should henceforward be elective, "that no king be hereafter admitted but upon the election of, and as upon trust from, the people by their representatives, nor without first disclaiming and disavowing all pretence to a negative voice against the determinations of the said representatives or commons in parliament, and that to be done in some certain form, more clear than heretofore in the coronation oath;" that a period should be set to this present parliament; that parliaments for the future should be annual or biennial; and that the elective franchise should be extended and made more equal. This remonstrance, which is of very great length, and signed by Rushworth, now secretary to the Lord General Fairfax, "induced a long and high debate, some inveighing sharply against the insolency of it, others palliated and excused the matters in it, and some did not stick to justify it, but most were silent because it came from the army, and feared the like to be done by them as had been done formerly in fine, the debate was adjourned."*

In fact Cromwell was now at hand; and he, the most powerful of all, was determined, above all, not to trust for an hour to so weak a reed as a treaty with Charles,-not to brook the existence of the Presbyterian faction, which of late had carried most of their measures by large majorities. He had been for some time in earnest correspondence with Governor Hammond, representing to him that, before the Lord and in his own conscience, he would be justified in keeping the person of the king for the service and uses of the army, which alone combated for the good cause; and now he and Ireton, perceiving that Hammond withstood these appeals and inclined to keep the king for the parliament, procured his recall to head-quarters, and got Colonel Ewer appointed in his stead. Ewer, a zealous republican, hastened to the Isle of Wight; and there, on the 30th of November, he sent a squadron of horse and Lieutenant-Colonel Cobbet to make sure of his majesty. Cobbet presented himself to the king in an abrupt manner, telling him that he had orders to remove him from Newport. Charles, much moved, asked for a sight of these orders, and to know to what place he was to be carried. Cobbet told him that it was to be out of the island, but he would not show any orders. The noblemen, bishops, and officers of the household gathered round in alarm and grief; "but, no remedy appearing, they approached to kiss the king's hand, and to pour forth their supplications to Almighty God to safeguard and comfort his majesty in that his disconsolate condition; and his majesty, who at other times was cheerful in parting from his friends, showed sorrow in his heart by the sadness of his countenance."+ He

was sent over to the surer prison of Hurst Castle, situated on a little promontory which projects from the coast of Hampshire, right over against the Isle of Wight," a place which stood in the sea (for every tide the water surrounded it); and it contained only a few dog-lodgings for soldiers, being chiefly designed for a platform to command the ships." "The solitude and dreariness of the place struck like a death-damp to the heart of Charles. So confident was he that the "treasons" of the Independents were "not able to endure the sight of day" that he never, until the last moment, suspected that they would venture to bring him to a public trial and execution; but darker suspicions of secret assassination haunted his mind, and, as he looked round the dreary walls of Hurst Castle, he thought that were a fitting place for such a deed. Yet, whatever were the errors or crimes of the great leaders of the Independents, they were certainly men that abhorred this kind of guilt, and that had courage equal to the open course which they deemed essential to the preservation of their party-their own lives-their country. No notion of secret murder or assassination ever entered their heads. The enthusiasts on the other side were less innocent in this respect, and one of the bravest officers in the army had recently fallen beneath their daggers. This was Colonel Rainsborough, a thorough-going republican, who was shot and stabbed to death at Doncaster by three royalist ruffians, who got access to him by pretending that they were the bearers of a letter from his friend Cromwell.† Several other officers of less note were assassinated, and many persons were attacked, so that the report of the desperate royalists being banded for the purpose of removing in this way the enemies of the king was not altogether an absurd rumour.

On the 30th of November, the same day on which Ewer removed the king from Newport, the question, whether the remonstrance of the army should be taken into speedy consideration, was negatived by the Presbyterian majority in the Commons, and a letter from Fairfax, demanding money and threatening to take it where he could find it if he were not seasonably supplied, was voted 66 a high and unbeseeming letter." And on the same eventful day a declaration " from a full council of the army was presented to the

• Warwick.

66

Rushworth.-Whitelock says, "They came to his chamber, there called to him, and said they had a letter from LieutenautGeneral Cromwell. The colonel rose and opened his door to them, expecting such a letter that morning, and presently the three soldiers fell upon him, shot him into the neck, and another shot him into the heart, with other wounds, and left him dead, escaping away without any alarm given." Clarendon says that they only intended to carry him off as security for the life of their general, Sir Marmaduke Lang dale, who had been taken prisoner; that they found Rainsborough in his bed, and that, upon his beginning to struggle and to cry out, seeing no hope of carrying him away, they immediately ran him through with their swords; that, when Rainsborough's soldiers found their general dead upon the ground without any body in view, they thought the devil had been there, and that the gallant party" (for so the royalist historian styles the assassins) got safe home without the least damage. The victim was as much distinguished by his knowledge of maritime affairs and his services at sea as by his military ability and services on shore. "There was not an officer in the army," says Clarendon," whom Cromwell would not as willingly have lost as this man."

House, wherein the officers, after reciting their late remonstrance and justifying the heads of it, said, that to their great grief they found that, instead of a reasonable answer, they were put off from day to day; that they could see, in the majority of those trusted with the great affairs of the kingdom, nothing less than a treacherous or corrupt neglect of, and apostasy from, the public trust reposed in them; that, this parliament being sole judges of their own performance or breach of trust, they (the officers) held themselves necessitated to, and justified in, an appeal from the parliament as now constituted unto the extraordinary judgment of God and good people; that yet, in the prosecution of this appeal, they should wholly seek the speedy obtaining of a more orderly and equal judicature in a just representative, endeavouring to preserve so much of the present parliamentary authority as might be safe or useful till a purer constitution could be introduced; that they should rejoice if the majority of the House of Commons would become sensible of the destructiveness of their late ways, and exclude all such corrupt and apostatized members as had obstructed justice, safety, and public interest; desiring, however, that so many of them as God had kept upright would, by protests or otherwise, acquit themselves of guilt, promising to own such as should so do as having the chief trust of the kingdom remaining in them, &c. But the last clause of all was the most effective, for it told the House that, for all these ends, they were drawing up with the

army to London, there to follow Providence as God should clear their way.*

The Presbyterian majority mustered courage to fall with some dignity. Notwithstanding this. unequivocal declaration, notwithstanding the approach of the army, they, on the following day, the 1st of December, twice read over the report of the commissioners, detailing all his majesty's concessions in the treaty at Newport, and passed a vote of thanks to Hollis,† Pierpoint, and the Lord Wenman, three of the commissioners who had come last to town, for their great pains and care in managing that good treaty; Hollis then moved that the king's answer should be declared satisfactory and sufficient; but this vital question was adjourned to the next day. Before they rose they ordered that a letter should be written to Fairfax to acquaint him that it was the pleasure of the House that he should not bring the army nearer to London. On the 2nd of December, when the question of the king's answer was resumed, and while they were in a long and high debate, Fairfax and

This declaration is signed by Rushworth, "by the appointment of his Excellency the Lord Fairfax, lord general, and his general council of officers held at Windsor." It was followed on the morrow by a letter from Fairfax to the lord mayor and common council of London, telling them of the immediate advance of the army towards the city, and referring them for the reasons thereof to their late remoustrance and declaration. The general assured the civil authorities that they were far from the least plunder or wrong to any, and that. for the better prevention of any disorder, they desired 40,0007. should be paid to them forthwith, and then they would quarter in the void and great houses in and about the city.-Whitelock.

↑ Hollis and the rest of the expelled members had been recalled by the Presbyterian majority.

| his army arrived at London, and took up their quarters in Whitehall, St. James's, the Mews, York House, and other vacant houses. Another adjournment took place, and the House did not meet till the 4th of December. Then they learned-apparently for the first time-that the army had the person of the king in their hands; and they voted that the seizing of the king, and carrying him prisoner to Hurst Castle, was without the advice and consent of the House. It was on this day that Cromwell arrived in London. The debate about the answer and treaty was stoutly maintained by the Presbyterians, and the House sat all that night. Yet on the morning of the 5th they proceeded with the same debate. In the course of this long and fierce struggle many remarkable speeches were made on both sides. Sir Harry Vane the younger said that a treaty had been carried on for months, and that, after all, the king, if he were to be understood even by his own answers, reserved to himself the power or right of being as great a tyrant as before; and he moved that the House should instantly return to its former vote of nonaddresses, cease all negotiations, and settle the commonwealth on another model. Sir Henry Mildmay declared that "the king was no more to be trusted than a caged lion set at liberty:" this was the conviction of the entire body of the Independents, and of a very considerable portion of the nation besides; nor can we conceive how the case should possibly have been otherwise. The Presbyterians, in the end, modified their resolution so as to make it assert, not that the king's answers were satisfactory, but that his concessions to the propositions of the parliament upon the treaty were sufficient grounds for settling the peace of the kingdom; and in this form it was carried in the course of the morning of the 5th by a majority of 140 to 104. This done, they appointed a committee to confer with Fairfax and the officers of his army for the continuance of a good correspondence and friendship between the parliament and them. But the mighty stream of revolution could not now be checked, the sword was all-powerful, -the mace become a bauble. Twenty thousand brave and enthusiastic men had vowed in their hearts that they would purge this parliament; and on the morning of the 6th the regiment of horse of Colonel Rich and the foot regiment of Colonel Pride surrounded the Houses and dismissed the City train-bands who had kept guard. Colonel Pride, from whose active part in it the operation has been called "Pride's purge," drew up divers of his foot in the Court of Requests, and upon the stairs and in the lobby of the House; and, as the members were going into the House, the colonel having a paper of names in his hand, and one of the door-keepers, and sometimes Lord Grey of Groby standing by him to inform him who the members were, he seized upon such as were down on the list, and sent them away as prisoners, some to the Queen's Court and Court of Wards, and some to other places, by special order from the

general and council of the army. Forty-one leading Presbyterians were thus secured; and Pride continued his purge on the following day. Not a few of the members fled into the country or hid themselves in the city; so that, by the 8th of December, all that were left in the House of Commons were some fifty Independents, who were afterwards styled the Rump.

On the 6th, which Whitelock calls " a sad and most disorderly day," Cromwell went into the purged or purified House, and received their hearty thanks for his great services to the kingdom. On the 8th, which was kept as a solemn fast, accompanied by a collection of money for poor soldiers' wives and widows, they adjourned till the 11th. On the Sunday, Hugh Peters, the Independent minister and great advocate of republicanism, preached in St. Margaret's, Westminster, upon the significant text, "Bind "Bind your king with chains, and your nobles with fetters of iron;" and, in the course of his sermon, he called King Charles the great Barabbas, murtherer, tyrant, and traitor. Twenty commoners of note, four earls, and the Prince Palatine, Charles's own nephew, were present at this discourse.

The Houses did not sit, as they had appointed to do, on the 11th; but Fairfax and the council of the army received on that day a new scheme of government, styled "A new representative, or an agreement of the people," which was said by its authors to be published with the view that any man might offer what he thought fit by way of alteration or addition to any part of it. The composition was generally thought to be Ireton's. It contained much the same matter as the late remonstrance of the army; but it went into more particulars about elections, and it prescribed that the present parliament should be wholly dissolved by April next, and a new one chosen according to the new rules. It declared that officers and malignants should be incapable of electing or being elected; that the country should be more equally represented; and that the House of Commons should consist in all of 300 members. On the following day both Houses-if we can call them by that name-sat, and letters from Ireland were received, intimating that the Marquess of Ormond was acting openly with the Papists and insurgents, whose main design was to seize upon Dublin. In the Commons the Independents, who had it all their own way, annulled the vote for revoking the order of disabling the eleven Presbyterian members, and for re-admitting them into the House; and they likewise voted that the House, by concurring with the Lords in rescinding the former vote which forbade any more addresses to the king, had acted in a manner highly dishonourable to parliament and destructive to the good of the kingdom. On the 13th they finished this part of their business, by deciding that the old vote of non-addresses should stand; and that the treaty in the Isle of Wight had been a monstrous error, a dishonour, and a great peril to the country. On the 16th a strong

party of horse, under the command of Colonel Harrison, were detached to Hurst Castle with orders to remove the king to Windsor Castle. It was at the dead of night when Charles was startled by the creaking of the descending drawbridge and the tramp of horsemen. Before dawn he summoned Herbert to his bedside, and bade him learn what was the matter. Herbert soon told him that it was Colonel Harrison that had arrived. The king, in great trepidation, bade Herbert wait in the outer room, and went himself to his devotions, being still haunted by the dread of secret assassination, and believing that his last hour was now come. He prayed for nearly an hour, and then calling in Herbert, told him that Harrison was the man that had been named to him as designing to assassinate him. The king added, "I trust in God, who is my helper, but I would not be surprised; this is a place fit for such a purpose." He was completely unmanned-he shed tears. Herbert went to glean more news, and, when he returned this second time, he told the king that Harrison's commission was merely to remove him to Windsor. Harrison, the suspected assassin, still kept out of sight. On the morrow Charles, with great alacrity, "bade solitary Hurst adieu." The party of horse guarded him to the entrance of Farnham, when another troop appeared drawn up in good order. "In the head of it was the captain gallantly mounted and armed; a velvet montier was on his head, a new buff coat upon his back, and a crimson silk scarf about his waist richly fringed; who, as the king passed by with an easy pace, as delighted to see men well horsed and armed, gave the king a bow with his head à la soldade, which his majesty requited.”* Harrison; and Charles, who professed to have some judgment in faces, declared, after a searching gaze, that that man did not look like a murderer. That night, in the house where he was to lodge, the king took Harrison by the arm, and led him to the embrasure of a window, where they conversed for half an hour or more. Charles reminded the republican soldier how he had been warned that he had meant to assassinate him. Harrison replied, "that what was reported of him was not true; what he had said he might repeat-that the law was equally obliging to great and small, and that justice had no respect to persons—or words to that purpose."+ Herbert tells us that his majesty finding these things "affectedly spoken, and to no good end, left off further communication with him, and went to supper, being all the time

Herbert, Memoirs.

It was

+ Clarendon says, "In this journey, Harrison observing that the king had always an apprehension that there was a purpose to murder him, and had once let fall some words of the odiousness and wickedness of such an assassination and murder, which could never be safe to the person who undertook it; he told him plainly that he needed not to entertain any such imagination or apprehension,-that the parliament had too much honour and justice to cherish so foul an intention, and assured him that whatever the parliament resolved to do would be very public, and in a way of justice, to which the world should be witness, and would never endure a thought of secret violence; which his majesty could not persuade himself to believe, not did imagine that they durst ever produce him in the sight of the people under any form whatsoever of a public trial."-Hist.