It was on these two Houses that the duty devolved of hammering out, if possible, a new Constitution for England that should satisfy the Army and yet be accepted by the King.

It had been a halcyon time with his Majesty since he had come into the keeping of the Army. He was still a captive, but his captivity was little more than nominal. Subject to the condition that he should accompany the Army's movements, and not range beyond their grasp, he had been allowed to vary his residence at his pleasure. From his own house or hunting- lodge at Newmarket, whither he had gone from Childersley (June 7), he had made visits in his coach or on horseback to various noblemen's houses near; thence he had gone to his smaller hunting-seat at Royston; thence (June 26) to the Earl of Salisbury's mansion at Hatfield; thence (July 1) to Windsor; thence (July 3) to Lord Craven's at Caversham, near Beading; thence (July 15) to Maidenhead; thence (July 20) to the Earl of Bedford's at Woburn; thence to Latimers in Bucks, a mansion of the Earl of Devonshire; and so by other stages, always moving as the Army moved, till, on the 14th of August, he was at Oatlands, and on the 24th at his palace of Hampton Court. At all these places the freest concourse to him had been permitted, not only of Parliamentarian noblemen and gentlemen, and Cambridge scholars desiring to pay their respects, but even of noted Royalists and old Councillors, such as the Duke of Richmond. His three young children—the Duke of York, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Duke of Gloucester—had been brought to see him, in charge of their guardian the Earl of Northumberland, and had spent a day or two with him at Caversham, to the unbounded delight of the country-people thereabouts. But, what was the most agreeable change of all for Charles, he had been permitted, since his first coming to the Army, to have his own Episcopal chaplains, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sheldon, and others, in constant attendance upon him. These civilities and courtesies had been partly yielded to him by the personal generosity of the Army chiefs, Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton, acting on their own responsibility, partly procured for him by their mediation with the Parliament. There had been grumblings in the Houses, indeed, at the too great indulgence shown to his Majesty in his choice of chaplains and other company. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs (ed. 1813), pp. 37-49; Godwin, II. 349-361.]

What one dwells on as most interesting in the changed circumstances of his Majesty is that, amid all the concourse of people round him, it was Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and the other Army chiefs, that could now come closest to him for purposes of real conference. They were now, indeed, frequently with him, conversing with him, studying him face to face, considering within themselves whether it would be possible after all to come to an arrangement with that man. In their interviews with him they were most studious of external respect, though Cromwell and Ireton, it seems, never offered to follow Fairfax in the extreme ceremony of kissing the royal hand. The King, on his side, showed them every attention, and would be "sometimes very pleasant in his discourse with them." What was to come of it all? [Footnote: Herbert, 36, 37; Clar. 614.]

The meetings of the Army-chiefs with Charles were not purposeless. Since he had been in their keeping they had been carefully drawing up, and putting into exact expression, certain Heads of Proposals, to be submitted both to him and to Parliament as a basis for Peace, better in its own nature, and certainly more to the mind of the Army, than those Nineteen Propositions of July 1646 which had hitherto been the vexed subject of debate. What these Heads of Proposals were, or came to be in their complete shape, we know from a final redaction of them put forth on the 1st of August when the Army was at Colnbrook on its march upon refractory London. The document is signed by Rushworth, "by the appointment of his Excellency Sir Tho. Fairfax and the Council of War," but the penning is Ireton's, and probably much of the matter too. It is a document of consummate political skill and most lawyerlike precision. It consists of sixteen Heads, some of them numerically subdivided, each Head propounding the Army's desires on one of the great questions in dispute between the nation and the King. Biennial Parliaments in a strictly guaranteed series for the future, each to sit for not less than 120 days and not more than 240, and the Commons House in each to have increased powers and to be elected by constituencies so reformed as to secure a fair and equable representation of population and property all over England: this is the substance of the first Head. Entire control by Parliament of the Militia for ten years, with a voice in subsequent arrangements, and farther, for security on this matter, the exclusion from places of public trust for the next five years of persons who had borne arms against the Parliament, unless in so far as Parliament might see fit to make individual exceptions: such is the provision under the second Head. Of the remaining Articles, one or two refer to Ireland, and others to law-reforms in England. Articles XI.-XIII. treat of the Religious Question, and are remarkably liberal. They say nothing about Episcopacy or Presbytery as such, but stipulate for the abolition of "all coercive power, authority and jurisdiction of Bishops and all other ecclesiastical officers whatsoever extending to any civil penalties upon any," and also for the repeal of all Acts enforcing the Book of Common Prayer, or attendance at church, or prohibiting meetings for worship apart from the regular Church; and they expressly stipulate for non- enforcement of the Covenant on any. In other words, the Army, as a whole, neither advised an Established Church, nor objected to one, nor would indicate a preference for Presbytery or Episcopacy in the rule of such a Church, but stood out, in any case and all cases, for Liberty of Religious Dissent. How far they went on this negative principle may be judged from the fact that they do not haggle on even the Roman Catholic exception, but hint that, so far as it might be necessary to discover Papists and Jesuits and prevent them from disturbing the State, other means than enforced church-attendance might be devised for that end. Article XIV. proposes the restoration of the King, Queen, and their issue, to full "safety, honour, and freedom," when the preceding Articles shall have been settled, and with no limitation of the regal power except as therein provided. The remaining two Articles appear therefore supernumerary. One refers to Compositions by Delinquents, and urges a generous relaxation of the rates on such, so as not to ruin people for past faults. So also the last Article recommends a general Act of Oblivion of past offences, and a restoration of all Royalists to their full civil rights and privileges, after composition, or, in cases of good desert, without composition, with only the exception provided in the second Article.

These Heads of Proposals of the Army strike one as not only inspired by a far wiser and deeper political philosophy than the Nineteen Propositions of the Parliament, but really also as magnanimously considerate of the King in comparison. They are so generous that we can account for them only by supposing that the Army-chiefs were really prepared for a fresh trial of government by King, Lords, and Commons, with the security against renewed despotism furnished by the Article about the Militia, combined with the Article for a succession of Biennial Parliaments. Two things are to be observed, however. One is that the Heads of Proposals were tendered for the English kingdom alone, "leaving the terms of Peace for the kingdom of Scotland to stand as in the late [Nineteen] Propositions of both kingdoms, until that kingdom shall agree to any alteration." But farther, even as respected England, there was no promise by the Army that the King could avoid the establishment of Presbytery. Things had gone so far in that direction, and the majority seemed so determined in it, that the Army neither could nor did desire to resist a Presbyterian establishment, were it persevered in by Parliament. Only they were resolved that the creed, discipline, or worship of that establishment, or of any other, should not be compulsory either on the King or on any of his subjects. [Footnote: See the Heads of Proposals complete in Parl. Hist. III. 738-745, and Rushworth, VII. 731-736 (the paging in this vol. beginning p. 731). Sufficient attention has not been paid by historians, except perhaps Godwin (II. 373-378), to this great document. Even Godwin resorts to the extraordinary hypothesis the Proposals were not in good faith, but only a Machiavellian device of Cromwell and Ireton for detaching Charles from the Presbyterians and bringing him over to the Army, who could then laugh at him and the Proposals too. Godwin remarks in particular that, as Ireton, who penned the Proposals, was "the most inflexible Republican that ever existed," his self-repression in drawing up such a document, accepting restored Royalty, and casting away the chance of a Republic, must have been colossal. In Royalist historians of the seventeenth century this kind of reasoning was natural, but one is surprised to find it affecting a mind so able and candid as Godwin's. There is no reason to doubt that, when the Heads of Proposals were settled, they expressed the real and deliberate conclusions of the Army chiefs as to those terms the honest acceptance of which by Charles would satisfy them. Nay, the publication of them was a service to Charles, by instructing the nation generally on a better means of dealing with him than the Nineteen Propositions. See Denzil Holles's amazed opinion of them as "a new platform of government, an Utopia of their own." (Memoirs, p. 176 et seq.). As for Ireton's suppression of his Republicanism, Ireton's Republicanism, like other people's, probably grew.]

The Army Proposals, or the main substance of them, had been the subject of conversations between Charles and the Army-chiefs, and even of a formal conference between him and them, on or about July 24, when he was at Woburn. He had fumed and stormed at the Proposals, telling the deputation he would have Episcopacy established by law, the Army could not do without him, its chiefs would be ruined if they had not his support, and so on. The secret of this behaviour seems to have been that Charles was at that moment building great hopes on the recent demonstrations of the City of London in favour of a Personal Treaty with him in the Presbyterian interest, and was even aware of the attempted revolution then about to break forth in the form of the London tumults. It says much for the forbearance of the Army-leaders that they did not withdraw the Proposals after this first rejection of them by the King. On the contrary, they were resolved that the King should still have the option of agreeing with them; they modified them in some points to suit him; and they were willing that the whole world should know what they were. Hence the formal redaction of them into the Paper of Aug. 1, at Colnbrook. Copies of the Paper were then and there delivered to the Parliamentary Commissioners with the Army; and it was with that Paper carried before it that the Army continued its march into London. Accordingly, on the first day of the meeting of the reconstituted Houses (Aug. 6), the Army's Heads of Proposals were officially tabled in both (in the Commons by Sir Henry Vane), in order that the Houses might, if they saw fit, adopt them in future dealings with the King, instead of the Nineteen Propositions. [Footnote: Major Huntingdon's Paper accusing Cromwell, Parl. Hist. III. 970; Sir John Berkley's Memoirs of Negotiations (1699), reprinted in Harleian' Miscellany, IX 466-488; Godwin (quoting Bamfield), II. 378-380; Parl. Hist. III. 737; Commons Journals, Aug. 6. There is evidence that, between the submission of the Proposals to the King at Woburn on or about July 24 and their complete redaction for publication Aug. 1; additions had been made to accommodate the King. Such additions may have been the two supernumerary Articles providing for lenity to compounders and a general Act of Oblivion.]

September and October were the months of the complicated negotiation thus arising. The King was then at Hampton Court, whither he had removed Aug. 24, and where he was surrounded by such state and luxury that it seemed as if the old days of Royalty had returned. Not only had he his chaplains about him, and favourite household servants brought together again from different parts of England; not only could he ride over when he liked to see his children at the Earl of Northumberland's seat of Sion House; but, as if an amnesty had already been passed, Royalists of the most marked antecedents, some of them from their places of exile abroad, were permitted to gather round him, permanently or for a day or two at a time, so as to form a Court of no mean appearance. Such were (in addition to the Duke of Richmond) the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton and Dorset, Lord Capel from Jersey, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Legge and Mr. Ashburnham from France, and, not least, the Marquis of Ormond, now at last, by his surrender of Dublin to Parliament, free from his long duty in Ireland. Save that Colonel Whalley and his regiment of horse kept guard at Hampton Court, "captivity" was hardly now a word to be applied to Charles's condition. Whalley's horse, it is true, were but the outpost at Hampton Court of the greater force near at hand. On the 27th of August, or three days after the King had removed to Hampton Court, the Army's head-quarters had been shifted to Putney, and they continued to be at Putney all the while the King was at Hampton Court. From Hampton Court to Westminster is twelve miles, and Putney lies exactly half way between; and the complex problem then trying to work itself out may be represented to the memory by the names and relative positions of these three places. At Westminster was the regular Parliament, moving for that policy which could command the majority in a body of mixed Presbyterians and Independents of various shades, with Army officers among them; at Putney midway was the Army, containing its military Parliament, of which the generals and colonels were the Upper House, while the under-officers, with the regimental agitators, were the Commons; and at Hampton Court, in constant communication with both powers, and entertaining proposals from both, was Charles with his revived little Court. Scotland in the distance must not be forgotten. Her emissaries and representatives were on the scene too, running from Parliament to Hampton Court and from Hampton Court to Parliament, as busy as needles, but rather avoiding Putney. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 789 et seq.; Herbert, 47-51.]

A very considerable element, indeed, in the now complex condition of affairs was the interference from Scotland. As the Presbyterian Rising in London had occasioned great joy in Scotland, so the collapse of that attempt had been a sore disappointment. Baillie's comments, written from Edinburgh, where he chanced to be at the time, are very instructive. The impression in Edinburgh was that there had been great cowardice among the London Presbyterians, and stupid mismanagement of a splendid opportunity. Had the Parliament put on a bolder front, had the City stood to their "brave Engagement," had Massey and Waller shown "any kind of masculous activity," and above all had not Mr. Stephen Marshall and seventeen of the London ministers with him separated themselves at the critical moment from the body of their brethren, and put forth a childish Petition disavowing all sympathy with the tumults, what a different ending there might have been! As it was, "a company of silly rascals" (Fairfax's Army to wit) had "made themselves masters of the King and Parliament and City, and by them of all England." So wrote Baillie privately, and the public organs of Scottish opinion had spoken out to the same effect. There had been Letters and Remonstrances from the Scottish Committee of Estates to the reconstituted English Parliament, severely criticising the general state of affairs in England, and complaining especially of the monstrous insolence of the Army in possessing themselves of the King, and the expulsion at their instance of the eleven Presbyterian leaders from the Commons. Were not these acts, though done in England, outrages on Scotland as well, and against the obligations of the Covenant? The England with which Scotland had consented to league herself by the Covenant was a very different England from that which seemed now to be coming into fashion—an England in which constituted authority seemed to be at an end, and an Army ruled all! And what an Army! An Army of Sectaries, driving on for a principle of Liberty of Conscience which would lead to a "Babylonish confusion," and impregnated also (as could be proved by extracts from their favourite pamphlets) with ideas actually anti-monarchical and revolutionary! So, in successive letters, from Aug. 13 onwards, the Scottish Government remonstrated from Edinburgh, intermingling political criticisms with special complaints, which they had a better right to make, of insults done by officers and soldiers of Fairfax's Army to the Scottish envoys in England, and especially to the Earl of Lauderdale. Nor was the Scottish Kirk more backward. The regular annual Assembly of the Kirk had met at Edinburgh Aug. 4; and in a long document put forth by that body Aug. 20, in the form of "A Declaration and Brotherly Exhortation to their Brethren of England," the anarchy of England on the religious question is largely bewailed. "Nevertheless," they say, after recounting the steps of the happy progress made by England to conformity with Scotland in one and the same Presbyterian Church-rule, "we are also very sensible of the great and imminent dangers into which this common cause of Religion is now brought by the growing and spreading of most dangerous errors in England, to the obstructing and hindering of the begun Reformation: as namely (besides many others) Socinianism, Arminianism, Anabaptism, Antinomianism, Brownism, Erastianism, Independency, and that which is called, by abuse of the word, Liberty of Conscience, being indeed liberty of error, scandal, schism, heresy, dishonouring God, opposing the truth, hindering reformation, and seducing others; whereunto we add those Nullifidians, or men of no religion, commonly called Seekers." [Footnote: Baillie, III. 9- 22; Acts of Scottish General Assembly of 1647; Rushworth, VII. 768-771; and correspondence of Scottish Commissioners in Lords Journals of Aug. and Sept. 1647. For the escapade of Stephen Marshall and his friends, referred to by Baillie, see Neal, III. 375-6. While these few of the city ministers disavowed the tumults, the Westminster Divines as a body merely mediated in a neutral style to avoid bloodshed (Commons Journals, Aug. 2).]

Great as was the influence of the Army on the Parliament it had reinstated, the extreme Tolerationism of the Army Proposals would have made their chance hopeless with that body even if left to itself. But with such blasts coming from Scotland, and repeated close at hand by the key-bugles of Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners in London, the Parliament did not dare even to consider the Proposals. To have done so would have been at once to sever the two nations, enrage the Scots, and drive them to no one could tell what revenge. To fall back on the Nineteen Propositions was, therefore, the only possible policy. Accordingly, on the 7th of September, the Nineteen Propositions, with but one or two slight alterations, were again ceremoniously tendered to Charles on the part of the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners conjointly. They desired his answer within six days at the utmost. "Six or sixteen, it was equal to him," he said to the Earl of Pembroke, who presented them; and in fact his Majesty's Answer, dated Hampton Court, was returned Sept. 9. It was that he retained all his former objections to those now familiar Propositions, and that, having seen certain "Proposals of the Army," to which "he conceived his two Houses not to be strangers," he was of opinion that they would be "a fitter foundation for a lasting Peace." In other words, though Charles had rejected the Army Proposals when first offered to him, he now played them against the Nineteen Propositions, ironically asking the Parliament not to persevere in terms of negotiation that might be regarded as obsolete, but to agree to a Treaty with him on the much better terms which had been suggested by their own Army, but which apparently they wanted to keep out of sight. This for England; and, for what concerned Scotland, he would willingly have a separate Treaty with the Scottish Commissioners, if they chose, on those parts of the Nineteen Propositions which were of interest to the Scottish nation. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 796, 802-3, and 810-11; and Lords Journals, Sept. 8 and Sept. 14.]

Parliament was in a dilemma. Was Charles to be taken at his word? Were the Nineteen Propositions to be flung overboard, and the Army Proposals publicly brought forward instead? The Presbyterian dread of Toleration, if not Presbyterianism itself, was still too strong in the Parliament, and the prospect of a rupture with the Scots was still too awful with many, to admit of such a course. What was actually done, after twelve days of hesitation and consultation, appears from three entries in the Commons Journals of Sept. 21, Sept. 22, and Sept. 23, respectively. Sept. 21: "Resolved, That the King, in this Answer of the 9th Sept., given at Hampton Court, hath denied to give his consent to the Propositions: "such is the first entry. The second, on the following day, runs thus:" The question being put, That the House be forthwith resolved into a Grand Committee, to take into consideration the whole matter concerning the King, according to the former order, the House was divided. The Yeas went forth: (Lieut.-General Cromwell, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for the Yea) with the Yea 84; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Rainsborough, tellers for the No) with the No 34; so that the question passed with the affirmative." On the following day, accordingly, we find "The question was propounded, That the House will once again make application to the King for those things which the Houses shall judge necessary for the welfare and safety of the kingdom; and, the question being put, Whether this question shall be now put, the House was divided: (Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for the Yea) with the Yea 70; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Marten, tellers for the No) with the No 23: so that the question passed with the affirmative." As far as one can construe what lies under these entries, the state of the case was this:—By the King's new rejection of the Nineteen Propositions (the Army-chiefs aware of the rejection beforehand and much approving [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs, Harl. Misc. IX. 478. "We [Berkley, Ashburnham, &c.] gave our friends in the Army a sight of this [the King's] Answer the day before it was sent, with which they seemed infinitely satisfied."]), the Presbyterians were checkmated. Unless they would vote the King dethroned, they had no move left. The power of moving then lay with the Independents. Now the more strenuously Republican of these, including Colonel Rainsborough and Henry Marten, were for not using the power, either because they desired to break with Charles entirely, or because they wanted to shut up him and Parliament together to the Army Proposals absolutely. Cromwell, however, though faithful to the Army Proposals as the plan ideally best, was not prepared to take the responsibility of bringing on the crash at once. Might there not be a temporizing method? Might not the two Houses be asked to cease thinking of the Nineteen Propositions as a perfected series to which they were bound in all its parts and items, and to go over the whole business afresh, selecting the most essential questions of the Nineteen Propositions and expressing present conclusions on these in new Propositions to be offered to the King? Haselrig, Evelyn of Wilts, and others of the Independent leaders, agreeing with this view, and a good few of the Presbyterians perhaps accepting it gladly in their dilemma, Cromwell divided the Commons upon it, and obtained his decisive majority of Sept. 22, confirmed by the as decisive majority of the next day. [Footnote: Commons Journals of days named.]

The Lords having concurred, Sept. 30, in this motion for a new application to the King, and the Scottish Commissioners having been duly informed, the two Houses went on busily, framing the new Propositions, and, where any differences arose, adjusting them at conferences with each other. By the 28th of October a good many important propositions had been agreed to; but, on the whole, one does not see that the terms for Charles were to be much easier by this route than they had been by the other. In one matter, however, the Commons had proposed a change. On the 13th of October, a committee having reported on that one of the intended Propositions which concerned Church-government, and the resolution before the House being that the King be asked to give his consent to the Acts for settling the Presbyterian Government, Cromwell had forced the House to three divisions. First he tried to limit the term of such settlement to three years, and lost in a small House by a minority of 35 to 38; then he insisted that some limit of time should be mentioned, and won by 44 to 30; then he proposed that seven years should be the term, and lost by 33 to 41, Finally it was agreed that the Presbyterian Settlement to which the King's consent should be asked should be till the end of the Parliament next after that then sitting. But on the same day and the following the question of Toleration also came up, and with these results: Toleration to be granted of separate worship for Nonconformists of tender consciences, but not for Roman Catholics, nor any toleration of the use of the Book of Common Prayer, nor of preaching contrary to the main principles of the Christian Religion, nor yet of absence on the Lord's day from worship and hearing of the word of God somewhere. This was all the amount of Toleration that Cromwell and the Independents even in October 1647, with an Army at Putney all aflame for Toleration, could extract from the reluctant Commons at Westminster. The Lords appear to have hesitated about even so much as this; for it was not till the 2nd of November that the two Houses came to an understanding on the subject, and even on the 9th of that month the Lords wanted some additional security in the form of a "Proposition for suppressing innovations in Religion." [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates named; and Rushworth, VII. 843-4 and 853-4.]

Here, to bring the history of the English Church-question to a period for the present, we may notice one or two contemporary incidents.——On Saturday, Oct. 2, the Commons had resumed their examination of the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith, at the point where they had left off that work in the preceding May, viz. at Chap. IV. "Of Creation," (ante, p. 545). They passed that chapter and also the first paragraph of Chap. V., "Of Providence," that day, and resolved to continue the business next Wednesday and punctually every following Wednesday till it should be despatched. But Wednesday after Wednesday came; other business was too pressing; and so the matter hung. This was the more inconvenient because on the 22nd of October the Assembly presented to the two Houses their Larger Catechism completed. It was ordered that 600 copies should be printed for consideration, and that matter too lay over. In the midst of such delays in Parliament it was something on the credit side that the SECOND PROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF LONDON duly met in Sion College on the 8th of November, with Dr. Seaman for Moderator. It was, indeed, time now for English Presbyterianism to be walking alone. Gillespie, one of the two Scottish Divines left last in the Westminster Assembly, had returned to Scotland in the preceding August; and on the 9th of November it was announced in the Lords that Mr. Rutherford too was going. In bidding farewell to his brethren of the Assembly he took care to have it duly recorded in their books that the Scottish Commissioners, all or some, had been present to that point and had constantly taken part in the proceedings. The Assembly was still to linger on, he meant to say, but its best days were over. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of the dates given; and Neal, III. 354 and 358-9.]

There was no greater mystery all this while than the conduct of Cromwell and Ireton. Since the King had come to Hampton Court he had been in continual intercourse with them, either in direct conferences, or by messages through Mr. Ashburnham and others. The intercourse had been kept up even after Cromwell's motion of Sept. 22 for re-approaching the King on the whole question in a Parliamentary way, and while Cromwell was constantly attending the House and taking part in the proceedings consequent on his motion. [Footnote: "Sir, I pray excuse my not- attendance upon you. I feared to miss the House a day, where it's very necessary for me to be." So wrote Cromwell to Fairfax Oct. 13, the very day of his three divisions of the House on the duration of Presbytery, and of the compromise there on Toleration (Carlyle's Cromwell, f. 239).] What did it all mean? We have little difficulty now in seeing what it meant. Cromwell, even while urging on the re-application to the King in a Parliamentary way, had not given up hope that the King might be constrained into an extra-Parliamentary pact on some basis like that of the Army Proposals. Might not Charles be wise now in the extremity to which he saw himself reduced, and accept the prospect, which the Army scheme held out, of a restoration of his Royalty, under inevitable constitutional restrictions, but those less galling in many respects, and especially in the religious respect, than the restrictions demanded by Parliament? Such, we can see now, were the reasonings of Cromwell and Ireton, and to such an end were their labours directed. But the world at the time was suspicious and saw much more. What the English Presbyterians and the Scots saw was Cromwell wheedling his Majesty into the possession of himself and his Sectaries, so as to be able to overthrow Parliament and Presbytery immediately, and then reserve his Majesty for more leisurely ruin. What the Royalists round the King saw was more. A blue riband, the Earldom of Essex, the Captaincy-general of all the forces, the permanent premiership in England under the restored Royalty, and the Lieutenancy of Ireland for his son-in-law Ireton—how could the Brewer resist such temptations? Mean rumours of this kind ran about, or were mischievously circulated, till they affected the Army itself and roused suspicions of Cromwell's integrity even among his own Ironsides. It was not only that Colonel Rainsborough, who had opposed Cromwell's motion for re-opening negotiations with Charles, had since then stood out against his policy of conciliation, and had been joined by other officers, such as Colonel Ewer. Despite this opposition in the Council of the chief officers at Putney, Cromwell and Ireton still ruled in that body. But among the inferior officers and the Agitatorships a spirit had arisen outgoing the control of the chiefs, critical of their proceedings, and impatient for a swifter and rougher settlement of the whole political question than seemed agreeable to Cromwell. [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs (Harl. Misc.) 476, 478; Holles, 184; Baxter, Book I. p.60; Clar. 620; Godwin, II. 400 et seq. See also Major Huntington's Paper of Accusations against Cromwell and Ireton in Aug. 1648 (Parl. Hist. III. 966-974). Duly interpreted, it is very instructive.]

At Putney the Army, having little to do, had resolved itself into a great daily debating-society, holding meetings of its own Agitatorships and receiving deputations from the similar but civilian Agitatorships that had sprung up in London. Hence a rapid increase among the common soldiers of the political school of THE LEVELLERS. Of this school John Lilburne, still in his prison in the Tower, but with the freedom of pen and ink there, was now conspicuously one of the chiefs. "That the House of Commons should think of that great Murderer of England (meaning the King), for by the impartial Law of God there is no exemption of Kings, Princes, Dukes, Earls, more than cobblers, tinkers, or chimney-sweepers;" "That the Lords are but painted puppets and Dagons, no natural issue of Laws, but the mushrooms of prerogative, the wens of just government, putting the body of the People to pain,"—such were opinions and phrases collected from Lilburne's and other pamphlets by the Scottish Government as early as Aug. 13, and then publicly presented in the name of Scotland for the rebuke of the English Parliament and the horror of the whole British world. In such phrases we have the essence of the doctrine of the Levellers, as distinct from the more tentative Democracy of many contemporary minds. The Army Proposals of Aug. 1 were not for a total subversion of the English Constitution of King, Lords, and Commons, but only for a great limitation of the Royal Power, a reduction also of the power of the House of Lords, a corresponding increase of the power of the Commons or Representative House, and a broader basing of that House in a popular suffrage. But, now that the King had rejected the Proposals, the Levelling Doctrine burst up from its secret beds, and rushed more visibly through the whole Army. There began to be comments among the Agitators on the dilatoriness of Cromwell, and especially on his coquettings with the King. "I have honoured you, and my good thoughts of you are not yet wholly gone, though I confess they are much weakened," Lilburne had written to Cromwell Aug. 13, kindly offering him a chance of redeeming his character, but otherwise threatening to pull him down from all his "present conceived greatness" before he was three months older. Cromwell not having mended his ways, Lilburne had been endeavouring to fulfil his threat; and by the end of October there was a wide-spread mutiny through the regiments at Putney. The Army, having its own printers, had by that time made its designs known in two documents. One, entitled The Case of the Army, was signed by the agents of five regiments, Cromwell's and Ireton's own included (Oct. 18); the other, entitled An Agreement of the People (Nov. 1), emanated from the same regiments and eleven others. Both documents pledged the regiments not to disband until the Army had secured its rights; and among these rights were the speedy dissolution of the existing Parliament, and the reconstitution of the Government of England in a single Representative House, elected by a reformed system of suffrage, and meeting biennially. This House was to be supreme in all matters, except five specified fundamentals which were to be regarded as settled ab initio beyond disturbance or even reconsideration by any corporate authority whatever. One of them was absolute freedom to all "in the matter of Religion and the ways of God's worship"; but this was not to prevent the State from setting up any "public way of instructing the Nation, so it be not compulsive." In fact, here was the accurate essence of the Army Proposals over again, only distilled to a higher strength and more fiercely flavoured. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 769, 770, 845-6, and 859, 860; Godwin, II. 423-428, and 436-450. One of the numerous incredible and contradictory hypotheses about Cromwell is that it was he who, while in treaty with the King for a restoration of his Royalty, was all the while, by his secret grip of the Army-Agitatorships, hounding them on in their ultra democratic tendencies. The Levelling Principle itself would be a useful force in his hands, and he could well consent to being abused by the Agitators while they were really working for his ends!!]

Cromwell's preserved Letters of this period are few, but one of them contains a reference to the misconstructions to which he was then subject. "Though, it may be, for the present," he says, "a cloud may lie over our actions to those who are not acquainted with the grounds of them, yet we doubt not but God will clear our integrity, and innocency from any other ends we aim at but His glory and the Public Good." [Footnote: Letter to Colonel Jones, Governor of Dublin, dated Sept 14, 1647; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 237-8.] At length, however, he had to let it be seen that he had broken off from Charles utterly. Who does not know the picturesque popular myth at this point of Cromwell's biography? Cromwell and Ireton says the myth, sat one night in the Blue Boar Tavern, Holborn, disguised as common troopers and calling for cans of beer, till the sentinel they had placed outside came in and told them the man with the saddle had arrived; whereupon, going out, they collared the man, got possession of the saddle he carried, and, ripping up the skirt of it, found the King's letter to the Queen in which he quite agreed with her opinion of the two Army-villains he was then obliged to cajole, and assured her they should have their deserts at last. [Footnote: The story professes to have come from Cromwell's own lips in conversation in 1649 with Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, afterwards Earl of Orrery; but its mythical character is obvious.].

It needed no such interception of a letter in the yard of a tavern to convince Cromwell at last that Charles could not be trusted even in a negotiation for his own benefit. All the while that he had been treating with Cromwell and Ireton, in the sense of the Army Proposals, with a Religious Toleration included, he had been treating with the Scots, both by messages through the Earl of Lauderdale and by letters in his own hand to the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh, in a sense directly the opposite: i.e. on the terms of a paction with the Scots for compulsory Presbytery and suppression of the Sects in England, in return for the armed assistance of the Scottish nation towards a restoration of his kingship in all other respects. Late in October, Lanark and Loudoun had come from Scotland to help Lauderdale in finishing this negotiation; and the three Lords together, in conferences at Hampton Court, had assured Charles that, "if he would give satisfaction in the point of Religion, he was master of Scotland on what terms as to other things he would demand." He had not quite given them all the satisfaction they wanted; but the three Lords still remained loyally about him, with plans for his escape to Berwick. Nothing of all this appeared, of course, in the public communications of the Scottish Commissioners with the English Parliament. The purport, however, had been entrusted to Ormond, Capel, and others of the Royalists who were chief in the King's counsels; and Cromwell had his means of guessing. [Footnote: For the interesting and instructive correspondence of Charles with Lanark from June 1647 onwards, with details of the negotiations after Lanark and Loudoun joined Lauderdale at Hampton Court, see Burnet's Hamiltons, 401-412. See also Clar. 622-3; Rushworth, VII, 850; and Lords Journals, Nov. 6.]

The mutinous disposition of so many Regiments, and its manifestation in such tracts as The Case of the Army and the Agreement of the People, had greatly alarmed Parliament. The investigation of the matter had been substantially left, however, in the hands of Fairfax and the Council of War at Putney. That Council, with Fairfax and Cromwell present in it, had appointed a special Committee of Inquiry, consisting of twenty officers with Ireton at their head; and in a series of meetings of this Committee and of the collective Council itself, extending from Oct. 22 to Nov. 8, things were brought to a kind of adjustment. There was to be a general Rendezvous of the Army for ending of disorder; and meanwhile certain new Proposals were sketched out, to be presented to Parliament as a summary of what might now be considered the opinions of the chief representatives of the Army, reviewing their former Proposals of Aug. 1 in the light of all that had since occurred. So far as the Proposals were sketched out, one observes in them a curious combination of compromises. There is decidedly greater severity in them to the King than in the original Army Proposals. On the other hand, there is nothing about the abolition of Kingship or of the House of Lords, no concession on these points to the ultra-democratic tendency of the Levellers. The question of King or No King had been raised, it is said, in the Council meetings by the Agitators, but had been quashed by the chief officers. Again, rather strangely, the question of Liberty of Conscience and the terms of the establishment of Presbytery is entirely waived, unless we regard the provision that Delinquents should be obliged to take the Covenant before being admitted to compound as a sign that on this question too there was a recession from former liberality. On the whole, the new Army Proposals look like a jumble of incongruities, and rather disappoint one after the clear political comprehensiveness of the original Proposals which Ireton had drafted, or even the rude simplification of the same put forth by the democratic Agitators. The reason probably was that the Army-chiefs desired at the moment to patch up a concordat, suppressing all unnecessary appearance of difference between the Parliament and the Army, and bringing both as amicably as possible into the one direct track of the new set of Parliamentary Propositions to the King. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 849-866; Godwin, II, 450-454.]

On the 10th of November, all the Propositions being ready, a very emphatic Preamble to them was agreed upon by the two Houses. It was intended that they should be presented to the King formally at Hampton Court within the next few days. Before that could be done, however, his Majesty had vanished.

The vicinity of Putney, with exasperated Levellers and Agitators all about, had become really unsafe for Charles; and, after some meditation and hesitation, he had himself arranged a plan of escape. It was put in execution on Thursday the 11th of November. On the evening of that day his Majesty, accompanied by Mr. Ashburnham, Mr. William Legge, and Sir John Berkley, contrived to slip out of Hampton Court Palace, by the back garden, unobserved. It was supper-time before he was missed by Whalley and the guard; the night was excessively dark and stormy; and, though it was ascertained that he and his companions had mounted horses near the Palace, the route they had taken could not be guessed. For the next two or three days, therefore, London was all anxiety. Meanwhile the fugitives, guided by the King himself through the New Forest, had reached the south coast, near Southampton, and in sight of the Isle of Wight. The King's reasons for taking this direction appear to have been the vaguest; nor is it certainly known that the Isle of Wight had been in his mind when he left Hampton Court. No ship, however, having been provided for a more distant voyage, and the King being in any case irresolute about yet leaving England altogether, the island did now, if not before, occur to him as suitable for his purpose. One inducement may have been that the Governor, young Colonel Robert Hammond, was a person whom the King had reason to believe as well disposed to him as any Parliamentarian officer. Hammond, indeed, was the nephew of the King's favourite chaplain, Dr. Henry Hammond; and, though he was one of Cromwell's admiring disciples, and had married a daughter of Hampden, his uncle's reasonings, or other influences, had begun of late to weaken his ardour. It had been with undisguised pleasure that, but a week or two before, he had left his post in the Army and gone to this quiet and distant governorship, where he might live in retirement and without active duty. What, then, was his horror when, on the morning of Saturday, Nov. 13, as he was riding along the road near his residence of Carisbrooke Castle, in the centre of the island, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Ashburnham presented themselves, and told him that the King had fled in their company from Hampton Court and desired to be his guest! "He grew so pale," says Berkley, "and fell into such a trembling, that I did really believe he would have fallen from his horse; which trembling continued with him at least an hour after, in which he broke out into passionate and distracted expressions, sometimes saying 'O gentlemen, you have undone me.'" He collected himself at length, however, and accepted the duty which fate had sent him. Crossing over, with Berkley and Ashburnham, to the earl of Southampton's house of Titchfield on the mainland, where Charles had meanwhile been waiting with Legge, he paid his homage gravely enough; and, after some conversation, in which he promised to do all for his Majesty that might be consistent with his obedience to Parliament, he returned to the island, with the King in his charge, and Berkley, Ashburnham, and Legge in attendance. His letter, narrating what had happened, and asking instructions, was read in the two houses of Parliament on Monday, Nov. 15. [Footnote: Berkley's Memoir, Harl. Miscell. IX. 479-483; Rushworth, VII. 871-874; Clar. 624-7; Parl. Hist. III. 785-791. As usual, in the later Royalist accounts, it is Cromwell that had contrived the whole affair of the King's escape both matter and form. Hammond's appointment to the Governorship of the island (Sept. 9) was Cromwell's doing, in anticipation of what might be needed; then he had stirred up the Agitators at Putney to threaten the King's life at Hampton Court; then he had warned the King, through Whalley, of the designs of the Agitators, so as to frighten him into flight; then, through Ashburnham or otherwise, he had suggested the Isle of Wight as the very place for the King to go to, and so had caught him in the prepared trap.]

FOURTH STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: IN THE ISLE OF WIGHT: NOV. 1647-NOV. 1648.

Carisbrooke Castle, and the King's Letters thence. Parliament's New Method of the Four Bills. Indignation of the Scots; their Complaints of Breach of the Covenant—Army Rendezvous at Ware: Suppression of a Mutiny of Levellers by Cromwell, and Establishment of the Concordat with Parliament—Parliamentary Commissioners in the Isle of Wight: Scottish Commissioners also there: the King's Rejection of the Four Bills—Firmness of Parliament: their Resolutions of No Further Addresses to the King: Severance of the Scottish Alliance—The Engagement, or Secret Treaty between Charles and the Scots in the Isle of Wight—Stricter guard of the King in Carisbrooke Castle: His Habits in his Imprisonment—First Rumours of The Scottish Engagement: Royalist Programme of a SECOND CIVIL WAR—Beginnings of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR: Royalist Risings: Cromwell in Wales: Fairfax in the South-east: Siege of Colchester—Revolt of the Fleet: Commotion among the Royalist Exiles abroad: Holland's attempted Rising in Surrey—Invasion of England by Hamilton's Scottish Army: Arrival of the Prince of Wales off the Southeast Coast: Blockade of the Thames—Consternation of the Londoners: Faintheartedness of Parliament: New Hopes of the Presbyterians: their Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies: their Leanings to the King: Independents in a struggling minority: Charge of Treason against Cromwell in his absence—The Three Days' Battle of Preston and utter Defeat of the Scots by Cromwell: Surrender of Colchester to Fairfax: Return of the Prince of Wales to Holland: Virtual End of THE SECOND CIVIL WAR—Parliamentary Treaty with the King at Newport: Unsatisfactory Results—Protests against the Treaty by the Independents—Disgust of the Army with the Treaty: Revocation of their Concordat with Parliament, and Resolution to seize the Political Mastery: Formation of a Republican Party—Petitions for Justice on the King: The Grand Army Remonstrance—Cromwell in Scotland: Restoration of the Argyle Government there: Cromwell at Pontefract: His Letter to Hammond—The King removed from the Isle of Wight to Hurst Castle—The Army again in possession of London.

Carisbrooke Castle, now mostly a ruin, but in Charles's time the chief fortified place in the Isle of Wight, stands almost in the centre of the island, close to the village of Carisbrooke, and near the town of Newport, which, although really an inland town, communicates with the sea by a navigable river. Here, with the verdant island all round him, and fine views both of land and sea, Charles was to live for a whole year. Though it was November when he came into the island, a lady, as he passed through Newport on his way to Carisbrooke, could present him with a damask-rose just picked from her garden; and he was to see all the circle of seasons in that mild South-English climate, till November came round again. [Footnote: Herbert, 55, 56.]

In a letter which Charles had left at Hampton Court, to be communicated to the two Houses, he had avowed that, though security from threatened violence was the immediate reason for his disappearance for a time into a place of retirement, yet another reason was his desire to extricate himself from a negotiation in which he felt that the "chief interests" concerned were not all represented. In the same spirit of eclecticism, with a word for each of the "chief interests," and a special show of solicitude for the Army, is a Letter sent by the King to the two Houses only four days after he had been in the Isle of Wight (Nov. 17). It gives his Majesty's view of what would be the right kind of negotiation, and conveys his definite offers. He cannot consent to the abolition of Episcopacy, but he will assent to the experiment of Presbytery for three years, if accompanied by a Toleration, but not for Papists, Atheists, and Blasphemers; he will surrender the Militia for his own life, on condition that it shall afterwards revert to the Crown; he will undertake for the Arrears of the Army; and on other matters he will be ready to do his utmost in a conclusive Personal Treaty in London. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 871-2 and 880-833; Parl. Hist. III. 786-7 and 799-802; and King Charles's Works (1651), 117-125.]

The two Houses retained their own ideas of the negotiation necessary; and, while giving orders for the despatch of a sufficient guard to the Isle of Wight, to be under Hammond's command, and also for the King's household they were re-adjusting their battery of negotiation for the changed circumstances of its object.

At first the notion was to pursue the King to the Isle of Wight with the whole series of Propositions which the Houses had so carefully drawn out for presentation to him at Hampton Court. Here, however, they encountered the most obstinate opposition from the Scottish Commissioners. The mood of these gentlemen (Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, Sir Charles Erskine, Hugh Kennedy, and Robert Barclay), sufficiently irritable before the King's flight from Hampton Court, was now that of the Thistle in full bloom. The King, they declared, had done right in fleeing from the hard usage of the English. Could his Majesty be expected to endure longer the insults, terrors, indignities, to which he had been of late subjected, ending actually in danger to his life from the ruffians of an ill-managed Army? Moreover, was not Charles also the sovereign of Scotland! Could the Scottish nation be expected to bear the contempt shown it in these "tossings" to and fro of their King, aggravated by the studied neglect of all the previous Remonstrances of the Scottish Commissioners and Estates on this very subject? No! let those Propositions which the English Parliament had been preparing be thrown aside, and let the King be invited to come to London, in safety and honour, for a Personal Treaty with Parliament, in which all might be "voluntary and free"!—Partly to please the angry Scottish Commissioners, partly to shake them off if they would not be pleased, the two Houses did make an alteration in their procedure. Instead of the entire prepared series of Propositions, or rather as antecedent to them, it was resolved to send to the King "Four Bills," embodying the Propositions "absolutely necessary for present security." Bill 1 was for the power of Parliament over the Militia for twenty years, or longer if necessary; Bill 2 was for confirmation of all acts of the Parliament in the late war; Bill 3 was for the cancelling of all Peerages conferred by the King since the beginning of the war, and the creation of new Peers only with consent of the two Houses; and Bill 4 was for giving the two Houses the right of adjournment at their own pleasure.—This change of procedure was first proposed in the Lords Nov. 25 (fifteen Peers present); there were divisions on it in the Commons Nov. 26 and 27, in the last of which it was carried by 115 to 106 (an unusually full House) to concur generally with the Peers in the matter; and then, after debates and conferences on details, the Bills, as above indicated, passed the Commons finally Dec. 11, and the Lords finally Dec. 14. It was also then arranged that the Earl of Denbigh and Lord Montague, for the Lords, and Mr. John Bulkeley, Mr. John Lisle, Mr. John Kemp, and Mr. Robert Goodwin, for the Commons, should be the Commissioners for carrying the Four Bills, and the Propositions too, so far as not superseded by the Bills, to the King in the Isle of Wight. They were to require his Majesty's consent to the Four Bills within ten days at the utmost; but the remaining Propositions were to be delivered to his Majesty only as containing matters on which the Houses would send another Commission to treat with him after he had assented to the Four Bills. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. II. 799-804 and 823-826; Lords and Commons Journals of days named; also (for a special Letter of the Scottish Commissioners) Lords Journals, Nov. 18. For this Letter Charles thanked Lanark, saying, "Seriously, it is as full to my sense as if I had penned it myself." Burnet's Hamiltons, 416.]

If the two Houses had resorted at first to this changed method of procedure with any idea of pleasing the Scots, they had found reason to abandon that idea. The very day the Four Bills were finally passed (Dec. 14), the Scottish Commissioners, knowing well enough privately what they were, applied formally to the Committee of the Two Kingdoms for a copy of them. This being reported to the Commons, a discussion ensued, and Mr. Selden (particularly active about this time, and at any rate always eager for a brush with the Scots) was appointed chairman of a Committee to prepare an Answer. The Answer, adopted by the Commons Dec. 16, was taken up by Mr. Selden to the Lords the same day, and by them adopted also. It was to the effect that, as it was against the custom of the English kingdom to communicate Bills ready for the King's assent to "any other whomsoever" until his Majesty's reply had been received, the Four Bills could not be communicated to the Scottish Commissioners, but that, as for the rest, it was intended to send these Bills to the King on Monday next, together with those Propositions of which the Scottish Commissioners were already cognisant, and that, if the Scottish Commissioners desired to add any Propositions concerning Scotland, they had better make haste. As if to increase the irony of this Answer, there was frankly included in it a copy of the Instructions to the English envoys as to their procedure both with the Bills concealed from the Scots and the Propositions known to them. Matter and manner both, the Answer drove the Scottish Commissioners mad. There may be yet read in the Lords Journals of Dec. 18 the Reply, in nineteen printed folio columns, which they thundered in upon the two Houses. We do not see such documents now-a-days, and even then it was a marvel. The whole soul of Scotland, past and present, seemed to launch itself upon the Londoners in this tremendous lecture, issued from Worcester House "by command of the Commissioners for the Parliament of Scotland," and signed by John Chiesley, their clerk. After a hint of the indebtedness of England to the Scots for some years past, there was a recapitulation of all the recent acts of contumely sustained by Scotland at the hands of the English, followed by a summary of the reasons for preferring the Scottish plan of a free Personal Treaty with the King to the English plan of prosecuting him with peremptory and ready-made Propositions. But, as the English Parliament had communicated to the Scottish Commissioners their new set of Propositions (though not the Four Bills), there was a criticism of these Propositions, from the Scottish point of view, collectively and seriatim. The largest criticism was on the Religious question. Nearly one half of the entire document was occupied with this subject. Was not the Religious question the main one, the unum necessarium, deserving the first place in any national negotiation? Yet was it not made secondary in the Propositions, brought in anywhere in the middle of them, as if to show that the two Houses did not really care much about it, and would not be so stiff in it as in matters of civil import? Tenacious in one's own concerns, and "liberal in the matters of God"! Again, not a word in the Propositions, or hardly a word, respecting the Solemn League and Covenant itself, a vow that had been sworn to with uplifted hands by nearly the whole generation of living Englishmen! Oh! what an omission was that! Was the Covenant to be voted out of date, and buried in the ashes of oblivion? But, apart from the Covenant, how did the Propositions treat the cause of Presbyterial government in England and of conformity of Church-rule in the two kingdoms? Most miserably! No pressing of Presbytery to full purity and completeness, but rather a cynical acquiescence in the imperfect Presbytery that had already been set up, and a glee in not being committed even to that beyond three years! Finally, even this Presbytery was turned into a present mockery by an accompanying concession to the cry for Liberty of Conscience! The Commissioners had never desired that "pious and peaceable men should be troubled because in everything they cannot conform themselves to Presbyterial government;" but they did "from their very souls abhor such a general and vast Toleration" as one of the Propositions seemed to provide. Unless they were mistaken, it was a Toleration to "all the sectaries of the time," whether they were "Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, Familists, Erastians, Brownists, Separatists, Libertines, or Independents;" yea it extended to "those Nullifidians the Seekers, to the new sect of Shakers, and divers others;" and, though it professed not to include "Antitrinitarians, Arians, and Antiscripturists," where was the security that these might not at least print and publish their blasphemies and errors? "Our minds are astonished, and our bowels are moved, &c.!"—There is a story of an irascible and fluent man who, after a torrent of abusive words addressed to a cool-tempered friend with whom he had a difference, was brought to a stop by the calm request of his friend that he would be so good as to repeat his observations. Something of the kind happened now. The reply of the two Houses to the portentous Paper of the Scottish Commissioners was that its length prevented immediate attention to it; but that they were sensible of the "aspersions" it cast upon them, and begged that such might be "forborne for the future." This drew from the Commissioners a shorter letter (Dec. 20), in which they disavowed any intention of disrespect, and assigned the gravity of the crisis as a reason why their expressions had been "more pathetique than ordinarily." Nevertheless from that moment the connexion between the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners was totally severed. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of Dec. 15- 21.]

What had become of the third party concerned, the English Army?—The general Rendezvous resolved on by the Council of War at Putney, in consequence of the Concordat between the Army and Parliament (ante, p. 573), had been cleverly changed into a tripartite Rendezvous, or distribution of the regiments into three brigades, to be reviewed on different days and at different places. The first of these Reviews was held near Ware in Herts, Nov. 15, the very day on which the King's arrival in the Isle of Wight was known. At the head of each of seven regiments then present according to order there was read a Remonstrance by Fairfax, pointing out the evils of relaxed discipline, condemning the recent excesses of the Agitators and their attempts to make the men disaffected to their officers, declaring the resolution of himself and the chief officers to maintain all the Army's just rights, but protesting that he could not continue to head an Army which was mutinous, and requiring therefore that the officers and men of each regiment should subscribe an engagement of future obedience, As nothing was said in the document about either King or House of Lords, but mention only made of a guarantee of future Parliaments and a Reformed Representative House, no offence was given to the Democratic instincts of the regiments, and they at once acquiesced in what was but a fit soldierly compact. There were, however, two regiments on the field that had come without orders—Colonel Harrison's horse-regiment and Colonel Robert Lilburne's foot-regiment. They had come in a wild state of excitement, with copies of the Agreement of the People stuck in their hats. John Lilburne, recently released from the Tower, had come down to Ware to see the result. It was decisive, but not in the way John had expected. Harrison's regiment, on being reasoned with by Fairfax and the other officers, at length good-humouredly gave way, tore the mutinous emblem from their hats, and broke into cheers. Lilburne's, which had driven away most of its officers, remained sulky and vociferous, till Cromwell, riding up to them, ordered them also to remove that thing from their hats, and, on their refusing, had fourteen of them dragged from the ranks, three of these tried on the spot and condemned to death, and one of the three shot. After this turn given to the first Review, the others passed off pleasantly enough, and all that was farther needed was the minor punishment of one or two of the mutineers among the common soldiers, with temporary restraint or rebuke for Colonel Rainsborough, Colonel Ewer, Major Scott, Major Cobbet, and Lieutenant Bray, the officers who had been most implicated in the revolt.—So, at the expense of but one life, had a dangerous Mutiny been quelled, and the ultra- Democrats of the Army taught the lesson of the Concordat. That lesson was that, in the opinion of Cromwell and Ireton as well as of Fairfax, it was best for England that the Army should still serve the constituted authority of Parliament, and not raise any political banner of its own. No sooner had this lesson been taught, however, than Cromwell and Ireton had hastened to obliterate all traces of the occasion there had been for teaching it. Their intention had not been to struggle with the Democratic spirit itself, but only with its mutinous manifestation; and they knew, in fact, that the political tenets of the poor fellow whom it had been necessary to shoot remained, and would remain, not the less the tenets of two-thirds of the Army. Accordingly, through November and December the great aim of Cromwell and Ireton, in the new Army head-quarters at Windsor, had been to soothe ruffled spirits and restore harmony. Rainsborough, Ewer, Scott, and the other ultra-Democratic officers had been restored to their places, with even studied respect; and strong recommendations had gone to Parliament that Rainsborough, who, before the Mutiny, had been named for the post of Vice-Admiral of the Fleet (in recollection of his original profession), should be confirmed in that high appointment. At Windsor there had been Army-dinners and great prayer-meetings of officers and men, in which Cromwell and Ireton took a conspicuous part, winning all back by their zeal and graciousness into a happy frame of concord, which the Parliamentary Commissioners with the Army described as "a sweet and comfortable agreement, the whole matter of the kingdom being left with Parliament." And so, while the two Houses were arranging to send their Four Bills and the Propositions to the Isle of Wight, the Army only looked on approvingly. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 791-799 and 805-822; Godwin, II. 462-8; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 254; Rushworth, VII. 951.]

On Friday, Dec. 24, the Earl of Denbigh and the other Commissioners of the two Houses arrived in the Isle of Wight and delivered the Four Bills and the Propositions to his Majesty. Next day (Christmas Day) Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, arrived, and delivered to his Majesty, in the name of the Kingdom of Scotland, a Protest against the English Bills and Propositions. For the day or two following, these Scottish Commissioners were more with his Majesty than the English Commissioners; but on the 28th the English Commissioners received from him in writing his Answer to the two Houses. It was utterly unfavourable, declining to assent to the Bills or anything else except after a complete and deliberate Treaty, and assigning the Protest of the Scottish Commissioners as a sufficient reason for this had there been no other. With this Answer the English Commissioners returned to London, and it was read in both Houses on the 3lst. The effects were extraordinary. On the 3rd of January, 1647-8, it was resolved in the Commons, by a majority of 141 to 92, that no farther applications or addresses should be made to the King by that House, that no addresses or applications to him by any person whatsoever should be made without leave of the Houses under the penalties of High Treason, that no messages from the King should be received, and that no one should presume to bring or carry such. On the 15th the Lords agreed in these Resolutions, only Manchester and Warwick dissenting out of sixteen Peers present. Negotiation was thus declared to be at an end; and the Army, delighted with the news, burst into applauses of Parliament, and vowed to live or die with it in the common cause.

One consequence of what had occurred was the dissolution of the peculiar body which, under the name of "The Committee of the two Kingdoms," had hitherto exercised so much power, and been in fact a common executive for the Parliaments of England and Scotland (ante, p. 41). As Scotland had broken off from England, this body had become an absurdity; and so, on the same days on which the two Houses adopted the No-Address Resolution, they resolved "That the powers formerly granted by both Houses to the Committee of both Kingdoms, relating to the kingdoms of England and Ireland, be now granted and vested in the members of both Houses only that are of that Committee." In other words, Lords Loudoun and Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners were no longer wanted in England, and might go home. These gentlemen, being themselves of the same opinion, sent a letter to the Lords, Jan. 17, intimating that they were about to take their leave. With great civility the Lords sent Manchester and Warwick "to wish them a good journey," assure them that any arrears of business between England and Scotland would be attended to, and express a desire for "the continuance of the brotherly union and good correspondency between the two nations." Actually, a few days afterwards, the Commissioners left London; and on the 29th the Houses appointed six Commissioners of their own to follow them to Edinburgh, and allay, if possible, any ill feeling that might be caused there by their representation of recent occurrences.

Had the two Houses known all, their politeness would have been less! It had not been only to give in a protest in the name of Scotland against the English Bills and Propositions that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had made their Christmas journey to Carisbrooke in the wake of the English Commissioners. The King had been in correspondence with them for some time before on the subject begun with them at Hampton Court; and, when they came to Carisbrooke, they had brought with them not only the Protest against the English Bills, but also a secret document of a more momentous nature, prepared for the King's signature. Actually on the 26th of December, or two days before the English Commissioners were dismissed with the unfavourable Answer to the English Parliament, this document had been signed in Carisbrooke Castle by the King on the one part, and by Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Lanark on the other. Not daring to bring it out of the island with them, the Commissioners, Clarendon says, had it wrapt up in lead and buried in a garden whence they could recover it afterwards. And little wonder! It was A SECRET TREATY BETWEEN CHARLES AND THE SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS, in which his Majesty bound himself, on the word of a King, to confirm the Covenant for such as had taken it or might take it (without forcing it on the unwilling), also to confirm Presbyterian Church-government and the Westminster Directory of Worship in England for three years (with a reservation of the Liturgy, &c., for himself and his household), and moreover to see to the suppression of the Independents and all other sects and heresies; while the Scots, in return, were to send an Army into England for the purpose of restoring him, on these conditions, to his full Royalty in that kingdom! Thus at last Charles had made a conclusive Treaty with one section of his adversaries; and, as Queen Henrietta Maria had always advised, it was with the Scots, all but absolutely on their own terms of the abolition of Episcopacy and the establishment of strict Presbytery in England!! [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals; Parl. Hist. III. 827-837; Burnet's Hamiltons (for correspondence between the King and Lanark) 412-423; Stevenson's Hist. of the Church of Scotland, ed. 1840, p. 586 (for Loudoun's account of the substance of the Treaty); Clarendon, 634-637. Clarendon's account of the Treaty is full; and, though he condemns it as "monstrous," he gives the apology that had reconciled the King to it in his despair. It was that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had themselves argued that the Treaty would turn out mere waste paper. After the Scottish Army should be in England, and the Royalists in England roused, "there would be nobody to exact all those particulars, but everybody would submit to what his Majesty should think fit to be done!"]

Until the decisive rupture with Parliament on the Four Bills, Charles had been permitted to range about the Isle of Wight very much at his pleasure, and the concourse of visitors to him had been as free as at Hampton Court. From the moment of the rupture, however, all was changed. Aware that an escape abroad was now meditated by Charles, and warned by some stir about Carisbrooke itself for the King's rescue, Colonel Hammond had at once taken precautions, but implored Parliament at the same time either to remove the King to some other place or else to discharge himself from an office the burden of which he found insupportable. With this last request Parliament did not comply, and Hammond had to continue in his painful trust, obeying the instructions sent him. His Majesty was not to be allowed any longer to ride about the island, or to receive unauthorized visitors; he was to be restrained to Carisbrooke Castle and the line round it; Ashburnham, Legge, and other suspicious persons in his service, including his chaplains Hammond and Sheldon, were to be dismissed; and his remaining household were to be under very strict regulation. These instructions having been carried into effect, Charles's life in the Isle of Wight from January 1647-8 onwards was one of straiter captivity and seclusion than he had experienced even at Holmby. He had the liberty only of the Castle and its precincts; which, however, were sufficiently large and convenient for the exercise of walking, with "good air and a delightful prospect both to the sea and land." For his solace and recreation in his favourite game, the barbican of the Castle, a spacious parading ground beyond the walls but within the line, was converted by Hammond into "a bowling-green scarce to be equalled," at one side of which there was built "a pretty summer-house for retirement." This at vacant hours became the King's chief resort both forenoon and afternoon, there being "no gallery, nor rooms of state nor garden," within the Castle walls. Occasionally, notwithstanding the strict guard, some poor stray creature troubled with scrofula, who had come to the Isle of Wight for the Royal touch, would contrive to beguile the sentries and obtain admission to the barbican. As at Holmby, however, the King had his set times in-doors for his devotions and for reading and writing; and his favourite books, catalogued and placed in the charge of Mr. Herbert, were again in request. Though he still declined the services of any Presbyterian clergyman, he rather liked the society of young Mr. Troughton, the governor's chaplain, and had arguments with him daily on theological points. Once, when a half-crazed minister, nicknamed Doomsday Sedgwick, came all the way from London to present him with a book he had written, suitable for his comfort and entitled "Leaves from the Tree of Life for the healing of the Nations," he ordered him to be admitted, received the book, glanced at some pages of it, and then returned it to the author with the observation that surely he must need some sleep after having written a book like that. And so day by day the routine flowed on, and always at night the wax-lamp was kept burning in the silver basin close to his Majesty's bed. [Footnote: Lords Journals, Dec. 31, 1647, and of subsequent dates; Herbert's Memoirs of the Last Years of Charles, 57- 67 and 95-98; Wood's Ath. III. 894-6. Doomsday Sedgwick was not Obadiah Sedgwick of the Assembly, but William Sedgwick of Ely.]

The Treaty with the Scots could not remain long secret. No sooner had the Scottish Commissioners who had framed it returned to Edinburgh than they were obliged to let the substance of it become known. This was done in the Committee of Estates on the 15th of February, when Loudoun and Lauderdale formally reported the result of their visit to the Isle of Wight. Then ensued a most perplexed agitation in Scotland on the whole subject. THE ENGAGEMENT, as the Secret Treaty was called, was universally discussed, and with great diversity of opinion. In the Committee of Estates, the Hamiltons, who had been the real authors of the Engagement, carried all their own way. Nay in the Parliament, or full Convention of the Estates, which met on the 2nd of March, the majority went passionately with the Hamiltons. Four-fifths of the nobles went with them; more than half the lairds; and nearly half the burgesses, including most of the representatives of the larger Scottish towns. These were the HAMILTONIANS or ENGAGERS. Not the less in Parliament itself was there a strong opposition party, headed by Argyle, Eglinton, Lothian, Cassilis, and some half-dozen other nobles, aided by Johnstone of Warriston; and, as this party rested on the nearly unanimous support of the Scottish clergy, it had a powerful organ of expression, apart from Parliament, in the Commission of the Kirk. It was argued, on their side, that the Commissioners to the Isle of Wight had exceeded their powers, that the conditions made with Charles were too slippery, that he had in reality evaded the Covenant, and that, though Scotland might have a just cause for war against the English Sectaries, no good could come of a war, nominally against them, in which Presbyterians would be allied with Malignants, Prelatists, and perhaps even Papists. Declarations embodying these views were published by the Commission; the pulpits rang with denunciations of the Engagement; petitions against it from Provincial Synods and Presbyteries of the Kirk were poured in upon Parliament; had the entire population been polled, the PROTESTERS or ANTI-ENGAGERS would have been found in the majority. Even Loudoun detached himself from the Hamiltons, and publicly, in the High Church of Edinburgh, submitted to ecclesiastical rebuke, professing repentance of his handiwork. Nevertheless the Hamiltons persevered; two-thirds of the Parliament adhered to them; and by the end of April 1648 it was understood, not in England only, but also on the Continent, that an Army of 40,000 Scots was to be raised somehow, in spite of Argyle and the Scottish clergy, for an invasion of England in the King's behalf. The Army was to be commanded in chief by the Duke of Hamilton himself, with the Earl of Callander for his Lieutenant-general. [Footnote: Baillie, III. 24-46; Stevenson, 582-595; Burnet's Hamiltons, 424-435.] Thus out of the Scottish Engagement with the King in the Isle of Wight there grew what is called THE SECOND CIVIL WAR, It was a much briefer affair than the first. That had spread over four years; but the real substance of this was to be crushed into as many months (May-Aug. 1648). The military story of these months shall concern us here only in so far as it is interwoven with the political narrative.

The Engagement with the Scots had been communicated to Queen Henrietta Maria at St. Germains, and gradually, with more or less precision, to all those dispersed Royalists, at home or abroad, who might be expected to take leading parts in co-operation with the promised Scottish invasion. The programme, so far as it could be settled, was something after this fashion:—(1) Risings were to be promoted in all parts of England and Wales, to coalesce at last, if possible, into a great general rising in which London should be involved. All the conditions seemed favourable for such an attempt. Not only in every county were there eager and revengeful remains of the old Episcopal Royalism, but the tendency even of the Presbyterians throughout England had been of late decidedly Royalist. The Presbyterians had never been anti-monarchical in theory; and large numbers of them had begun of late to pity the King, and to question whether the excessively hard terms imposed upon him by Parliament were altogether necessary. Even if he were to be restored to larger powers in some things than might be quite desirable, would not that be better than continuing in the present state of uproar and confusion, with a Democratic Army fastened vampire-like on the land, preying on its resources, and poisoning its principles? For people in this state of mind the promised invasion of the Scots in Charles's behalf was the very pretext needed. Much of the Presbyterianism of England, including the City of London, might be whirled, along with the readier Old Royalism, into a rising for the King. To promote and manage risings in particular districts, however, there must be leaders authorized from St. Germains. Such leaders were found among eminent Royalists either already in England or able to transfer themselves thither without delay. In the North, where immediate co-operation with the Scots would be necessary, Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Sir Philip Musgrave were to be the chief agents; and for the West, the Midlands, and the South, there were the Earl of Norwich (formerly Lord Goring), the Earl of Peterborough, Lord Byron, Lord Capel, and others. The young Duke of Buckingham, and his brother Lord Francis Villiers, who had not been concerned in the first Civil War, being then but boys and on their travels abroad, had recently returned to their great estates in England, and were anxious to figure as became the name they bore. Strangely enough, in the midst of all these, as the commissioned generalissimo of the King's forces in England when they should be in the field, was to be the Earl of Holland. His veerings in the first war had not been to his credit; but his long seclusion had done him good; he had always been in favour with the Queen; and his Parliamentary and Presbyterian connexions were an advantage. (2) There was to be a gathering of all the Royalist exiles to accompany or follow the Prince of Wales in a landing on the British shores. As early as Feb. 8, when only the vaguest rumour of the Scottish Engagement can have been in circulation on the Continent, the report from the Hague had been that it would be "no wonder to see 10,000 merry souls, then lying there, and cursing the Parliament in every cup they drank, venturing over to make one cast more for the King." Certain it is that in the following months there was a stir in all the nests of English refugees in France and Holland, and in the Channel Islands. Not only Prince Rupert, Percy, Wilmot, Jermyn, Colepepper, Ormond, and others round the Queen and the Prince in Paris, but the Earl of Bristol, Lord Cottington, Secretary Nicholas, and others, in Rouen or Caen, and Hopton and Hyde in Jersey, were all in motion. Money was the great want; they were all so wretchedly poor; but that difficulty might be overcome so far as to make an expedition to England at least possible. Mazarin might lend help; or, if he did not, the Prince of Orange, the husband of Charles's eldest daughter, and now Stadtholder of Holland, might be expected to do all he could for his father-in-law consistently with the limited powers of his Stadtholdership. A Dutch port might be more convenient than a French one for the embarkation of the refugees collectively or in detachments. Most would be bound for England; but the true sphere of some, as for example Ormond, would be in Ireland. For the Prince of Wales himself what was specially destined by the Queen was a voyage to Scotland. It was by being among the Scots personally till their Army could be got ready, and either remaining in Scotland afterwards or accompanying the Army into England, that his Royal Highness would be of most use. On this point the Queen was emphatic. [Footnote: Clarendon, Book XI., where the pre-arrangement of the new Civil War from head-quarters, and the parts assigned to different persons, are set forth more lucidly, and with better information, than anywhere else. Dates are deficient, but the sketching is masterly. See also Rushworth for Feb., March, and April, 1648.]

Such being the programme, what was the performance? It did not quite come up to the programme, but it was sufficiently formidable.

The first rising was in Wales. There a certain drunken Colonel Poyer, governor of Pembroke Castle, with a Colonel Powell and a Colonel Laughern, also in Parliamentary employment, revolted as early as the end of February. Ostensibly it was in resentment of an order of Parliament for disbanding supernumeraries; but, before the end of April, the affair became a Royalist outbreak of all Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, and Cardiganshire, spreading through the rest of South Wales. To suppress this rising Cromwell was to go from London, May 1, with two regiments of horse and three of foot; which, with the forces already in the region, would make an army of about 8,000 men. Before he went, risings of less importance had been heard of in Cornwall and Dorsetshire, and there had been one tremendous tumult in London itself, to the cry of "For God and King Charles!" (Sunday, April 9.) It had been suppressed only by street- charges of the regiments quartered at Whitehall and Charing Cross. Significant incidents of the same month were the revolt to the Irish Rebels of Lord Inchiquin, hitherto one of the most zealous Parliamentarians in Ireland, and the escape from London of the young Duke of York. By the contrivance of a Colonel Bamfield the Duke was whisked away from St. James's Palace (April 21), and conveyed, in girl's clothes, to Holland. He was not quite fifteen years of age; but his father had instructed him to escape when he could, and the fact that he had been designated for the command of the Navy was likely to be useful.

All this before Cromwell had gone into Wales; but hardly had he gone when there came the news that Berwick had been seized for the King by Sir Marmaduke Langdale (April 30), and Carlisle by Sir Philip Musgrave and Sir Thomas Glenham (May 6). Langdale and Musgrave had been staying in Edinburgh, and the seizure of these two towns was by arrangement with the Duke of Hamilton and in preparation for his invasion. Langdale, indeed, announced himself as commissioned General for the King in the five northern counties, and the business of watching against his advance lay with Lambert, the Parliamentarian General in those parts, assisted by Sir Arthur Haselrig, now Governor of Newcastle.

Meanwhile the preservation of the peace in and near London was in the hands of Fairfax, Ireton, and Skippon—Fairfax now no longer mere Sir Thomas, but Lord Fairfax of the Scottish Peerage, as successor to his father Lord Ferdinando, who had died March 13. These three were soon as hard at work in their south-eastern region as Cromwell in Wales and Lambert in the north. For the county of Surrey having followed the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk in sending in a petition for the disbanding of the Army and the restoration of the King "to the splendour of his ancestors" (May 16), a new riot in London "For God and King Charles" was the consequence, and in a short time there was more or less of Royalist commotion north and south of London, through Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, Herts, Essex, Surrey, and Kent. The insurrection in Kent was of independent origin, and was the most extensive and hence It had been begun by the Kentish people themselves, roused by Roger L'Estrange and a young Mr. Hales; but the Earl of Norwich had come into Kent to take the lead. Canterbury, Dover, Sandwich, and the castles of Deal and Walmer, had been won for the King; there were communications between the insurgents and the Londoners, and in the end of May some 10,000 or 12,000 men of Kent, with runaway citizens and apprentices from London in their ranks, were marching towards the City with drums and banners. To meet these Fairfax and Ireton, with seven regiments, went out to Blackheath, May 29; and, the insurgents then drawing back, the two were at Gravesend May 31, and at Maidstone June 1. A few days of their hard blows, struck right in the heart of Kent, sufficed for that county; and the Earl of Norwich, with the Kentish fugitives, crossed the Thames into Essex. Insurgents from other parts, including Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and Sir Charles Lucas, having at the same time gathered into that county, there was a junction of forces, with the intention of a roundabout march upon London, by Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridge, The swift approach of Fairfax out of conquered Kent (June 11) compelled them to change their plan. They threw themselves into Colchester (June 12), adding some 4,000 or 5,000 armed men to the population of that doomed town. Doomed! for Fairfax, having failed to take it on the first assault, resolved to reduce it by starvation, and so, the insurgents on their side resolving to hold out to the last, inasmuch as the detention of Fairfax in Essex till the Scots should be in England was the best hope, both for themselves and for the general cause, the SIEGE OF COLCHESTER (June l2— Aug. 28) turned out one of the most horrible events of the war.

An important episode of the Kentish Insurrection was the Revolt of the Fleet. The main station of the Fleet being in the Downs, just off the Kentish coast, Royalist emissaries had been busy among the sailors, and with such effect that, when Vice-Admiral Rainsborough, who had been ashore Defending Deal Castle against the insurgents, tried to go on board his own ship, he was laid hold of and sent back. This was about the 27th of May; and, though the Parliament immediately re-appointed the Presbyterian Earl of Warwick to his old post of Lord High Admiral, and sent him down to pacify the Fleet (May 29), the effort failed. The cry of the sailors was, "We will go to our own Admiral," meaning the young Duke of York in Holland. Actually, some ten warships, having ejected all their Parliamentarian officers, did put to sea, and, after cruising about the coasts of Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, till the insurrection in those parts was quashed, did cross to Helvoetsluys in Holland, early in June, in search of the young Duke. It was a splendid accident for the world of Royalist exiles on the Continent, for it supplied them with the wooden bridge they needed for transit into the mother-country. Accordingly, though the royal boy-admiral came at once from the Hague to Helvoetsluys, went on board the Fleet, and was for a week or two the pet of the sailors, the higher powers at Paris hastened to turn the accident to the largest account. Mazarin refusing all help, some money was raised otherwise, so as to enable the Prince of Wales, with Prince Rupert, Hopton, Colepepper and others, to embark at Calais for Helvoetsluys. He arrived there early in July, was received with acclamations by the Fleet, and immediately relieved his younger brother in the command. The Prince and Princess of Orange coming from the Hague to welcome him, there was a joyful family-meeting, with much consultation, but a good deal of difference, among all concerned, as to the ways and means.

About the time of the Revolt of the Fleet, Parliament had received other bad news. Pontefract had been seized for the King, June 2, and other important places in Yorkshire were taken or attempted soon after. Through the rest of June there were risings or threats of rising in the Midlands, so that in the beginning of July things looked very ill. There had been successes, it was true, against the insurgents in Wales, and Cromwell was hopefully besieging Pembroke; Lambert was doing well with his small forces against Langdale in the north; Colchester was beginning to be distressed in the grip of Fairfax; but still, with the whole of England in Royalist or semi-Royalist palpitation, and the City of London actually heaving with suppressed revolt, what could be expected when Hamilton and his army of Scottish Presbyterians did cross the border? There had been delays in the levy of this army, owing to the continued resistance of the Argyle party, the clergy, and the western shires; and it had only been by the most tyrannic exercise of power that it had been got together. At last, however, it had been got together; and now England was full of the rumour of its coming. Lo! at the rumour the Earl of Holland, the designated generalissimo of the English army of co-operation, could not choose but start from his lethargy! With the young Duke of Buckingham, young Lord Francis Villiers, the Earl of Peterborough, and the Dutch Colonel Dalbier, in his company, and a following of 500 horse, he started up at Kingston-on-Thames on the 6th of July; addressed a formal Declaration of his motives to Parliament and the City of London, as well as a letter of encouragement to the besieged at Colchester; and called on all Surrey, Sussex and Middlesex, to join him. That bravado, however, lasted but two days. On the 8th of July, a Parliamentary force under Sir Michael Livesey attacked Holland's horse and routed them utterly. Lord Francis Villiers and Dalbier were slain; the Duke of Buckingham and the Earl of Peterborough escaped to London, and thence abroad; but Holland himself, pursued into Hunts, was taken prisoner.

On the very day of the defeat of Holland in Surrey (Saturday, July 8) the Scots did come into England. They came from Annan on the Solway Firth, marching to Carlisle. They were not the expected 40,000, but the advanced portion of an army which, when it had all come in, may have numbered about 20,000. The Duke himself led the van with his Lifeguards in great state, preceded by trumpeters "all in scarlet cloaks full of silver lace;" Generals Thomas Middleton and William Baillie came next with horse and foot; and the Earl of Callander brought up the rear. Joined by Sir Marmaduke Langdale and his English, they marched on, or rather sauntered on, to Penrith (July 15), and thence to Kendal (Aug. 1?), the wary Lambert retreating before them, but watching their every motion, skirmishing when he could, and waiting anxiously for the arrival of Cromwell, who, having at length taken Pembroke and so far settled Wales (July 11), was hurrying to the new scene of action in the north. Off Kendal, a body of about 3,000 Scots, brought over from Ireland by Major- general Sir George Monro, attached itself to Hamilton, with an understanding that Hamilton's orders to it were to be directly from himself to Monro. There was then a debate whether it would be best to advance straight south into Lancashire, or to strike east into Yorkshire. It was decided for Lancashire. On into Lancashire, therefore, they moved, the poor people in the track behind them grieving dreadfully over their ravages, but dignified papers of the Scottish Parliament preceding them to explain the invasion. Scotland had made an Engagement to rescue the King, free England from the tyranny of an Army of Sectaries, establish Presbytery, and put down "that impious Toleration settled by the two Houses contrary to the Covenant!"

While the Scots were thus advancing into the north-west of England, the Prince of Wales had brought his Fleet from Holland, and (the Queen's idea that he should go to Scotland having been postponed) was hovering about the south-east coast. By fresh accessions the fleet had been increased to nineteen sail; it had been provisioned by the Prince of Orange; and there were 2,000 soldiers on board. On the 25th of July the Prince was off Yarmouth, where a landing of the soldiers was attempted with a view to relieve Colchester. That failing, he removed to the mouth of the Thames, to obstruct the commerce of the Londoners, and make prizes of their ships. Precisely at the time when the Westmorland and Lancashire people were grieving over the ravages of the invading Scots, the Londoners were in consternation over the capture by the Prince of an Indiaman and several other richly-laden vessels. For the ransom of these by their owners the Prince demanded huge sums of money, intimating at the same time (Aug 8) that the block of the Thames would be kept up until the Londoners declared for the King, or Parliament agreed to a cessation of arms on certain loyal conditions. [Footnote: In the summary given in the text of the incidents of the Civil War from March to August 1648, I have tried to reduce into chronological connexion the information given disconnectedly in Rushworth, VII. 1010-1220, and at large in Clarendon, Book XI. There have been references, for dates and facts, to the Parliamentary History and Journals, Burnet's Hamiltons, Godwin's Commonwealth, and Carlyle's Cromwell.]

Through these four or five months of Royalist risings coalescing at last in a Civil War as extensive as the first had been, and much more entangled (April-Aug. 1648), what had been the conduct of Parliament? It had been very odd indeed.

Nothing could have been bolder than the attitude of the two Houses, and especially of the Commons, for a month or so after their famous No- Address Resolutions of Jan. 1-15. Thus, on the 11th of February, the Commons adopted, by a majority of 80 to 50, a Declaration, which had been prepared in Committee, and chiefly by Nathaniel Fiennes and Henry Marten, setting forth their Reasons for breaking off communication with the King. They published the document without consulting the other House. It was the severest criticism of the King personally that had yet been put forth by either House of Parliament, severe even to atrocity. His whole reign was reviewed remorselessly from its beginning, and characterized as "a continued track of breach of trust to the three kingdoms," and there was even the horrible insinuation that he had connived with the Duke of Buckingham in poisoning his own father. After this tremendous document— so tremendous that two Answers to it were published, one from the King himself, and the other written anonymously by Hyde in Jersey—who could have expected that the Commons would again make friendly overtures to his Majesty? Yet such was the fact. The tergiversation, however, was gradual. Through the rest of February, the whole of March and most of April, the Commons were still in their austere fit, utterly ignoring the King, and prosecuting punctiliously such pieces of business as the Reply to the recent Declarations and Protests of the Scots, and the Revision of the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith and Larger Catechism. [Footnote: The Revision of the Confession of Faith by the two Houses was completed June 20, 1648, when, with the exception of certain portions about Church-government held in reserve, it was passed and ordered to be printed: not, however, with the title "Confession of Faith," but as "Articles of Christian Religion approved and passed by both Houses of Parliament after advice had with the Assembly of Divines by authority of Parliament sitting at Westminster." The Revision, though detailed, was much a matter of form, paragraph after paragraph passing without discussion. On at least one point, however, there was a division in the Commons (Feb. 18, 1647-8). It related to Chap. XXIV. of the Confession, entitled Of Marriage and Divorce. The question was whether the House should agree to the last clause of the 4th paragraph of that Chapter—"The man may not marry any of his wife's kindred nearer in blood than he may of his own, nor the woman of her husband's kindred nearer in blood than of her own." For the Yea there voted 40 (Sir Robert Pye and Sir Anthony Irby, tellers); for the No 71 (Sir William Armyn and Mr. Knightley, tellers); in other words, the House by a majority of 31 doubted the ecclesiastical doctrine of forbidden degrees of affinity in marriage.] The attendance during these months ranged from about 70 to 190, and the Independents, or friends of the Army, seemed still to command the majority. On the 24th of April, however, on a call of the House, occasioned by the prospect of the Scottish invasion and the signs of Royalist movement in England, no fewer than 306 members appeared in their places, Many of these seem to have been Presbyterian members, long absent, but now whistled back by their leaders for a fresh effort in behalf of Royalty in connexion with Presbytery. At all events, from this call of the House on April 24 the tide is turned, and we find vote after vote showing renewed Presbyterian ascendency with an inclination to the King. Thus, on the 28th of April, it was carried by 165 votes to 99, that the House should declare that it would not alter the fundamental government of the kingdom, by King, Lords, and Commons; also, by 108 to 105, that "the matter of the Propositions sent to the King at Hampton Court by consent of both kingdoms" should be the ground of a new debate for the settlement of the kingdom; also, by 146 to 101, that the No-Address Resolutions of January should not hinder any member from propounding in the debate anything that might tend to an improvement of the said Propositions. Here certainly was a change of policy; and, if there could be any doubt that it was effected by a sudden influx of Presbyterians, that doubt would be removed by a stupendous event which followed, appertaining wholly to the Religious question. On the 1st of May (the very day on which Cromwell was ordered off to South Wales by Fairfax and the Council of War) there was brought up in the Commons an "Ordinance for the Suppression of Blasphemies and Heresies," which the Presbyterians had been long urging and labouring at in committees, but which the Independents and Tolerationists had hitherto managed to keep back. Without a division it passed the House that day; next day it passed the Lords; and, accordingly, under date May 2, 1648, this is what stands in the Lords Journals as thenceforward to be the Law of England:—