Constitutional History of England Volume II Part 14

[250] _Parl. Hist._ iii. 68, 94; Clarendon; May; Whitelock. If we believe the last (p. 68), the king, who took as usual a very active part in the discussions upon this treaty, would frequently have been inclined to come into an adjustment of terms; if some of the more war-like spirits about him (glancing apparently at Rupert) had not over persuaded his better judgment. This, however, does not accord with what Clarendon tells us of the queen's secret influence, nor indeed with all we have reason to believe of the king's disposition during the war.

[251] _Life of Clarendon_, p. 79. This induced the king to find pretexts for avoiding the cessation, and was the real cause of his refusal to restore the Earl of Northumberland to his post of lord admiral during this treaty of Oxford, which was urged by Hyde. That peer was, at this time, and for several months afterwards, inclining to come over to the king; but, on the bad success of Holland and Bedford in their change of sides, he gave into the opposite course of politics, and joined the party of Lords Say and Wharton, in determined hostility to the king.

Dr. Lingard has lately thrown doubts upon this pa.s.sage in Clarendon, but upon grounds which I do not clearly understand. _Hist. of Engl._ x. 208, note. That no vestige of its truth should appear, as he observes, in the private correspondence between Charles and his consort (if he means the letters taken at Naseby, and I know no other), is not very singular; as the whole of that correspondence is of a much later date.

[252] I cannot discover in the Journals any division on this impeachment. But Hollis inveighs against it in his memoirs as one of the flagrant acts of St. John's party; and there is an account of the debate on this subject in the _Somers Tracts_, v. 500; whence it appears that it was opposed by Maynard, Waller, Whitelock, and others; but supported by Pym, Strode, Long, Glynn, and by Martin with his usual fury and rudeness. The first of these carried up the impeachment to the House of Lords.

This impeachment was not absolutely lost sight of for some time. In January 1644, the Lords appointed a committee to consider what mode of proceeding for bringing the queen to trial was most agreeable to a parliamentary way, and to peruse precedents. _Parl. Hist._ 194.

[253] _Parl. Hist._ 129.

[254] _Parl. Hist._ 133, June 20; Clarendon, iv. 155. He published, however, a declaration soon after the taking of Bristol, containing full a.s.surances of his determination to govern by the known laws.

_Parl. Hist._ 144.

[255] Clarend. iv. 192, 262; Whitelock, 70. They met with a worse reception at Westminster than at Oxford, as indeed they had reason to expect. A motion that the Earl of Holland should be sent to the Tower was lost in the Commons by only one voice. _Parl. Hist._ 180. They were provoked at his taking his seat without permission. After long refusing to consent, the Lords agreed to an ordinance (June 29, 1644) that no peer or commoner who had been in the king's quarters, should be admitted again to sit in either house. _Parl. Hist._ 271. This severity was one cause of Ess.e.x's discontent, which was increased when the Commons refused him leave to take Holland with him on his expedition into the west that summer. Baillie, i. 426; Whitelock, 87.

If it be asked why this Roman rigour was less impolitic in the parliament than in the king, I can only answer, that the stronger and the weaker have different measures to pursue. But relatively to the pacification of the kingdom, upon such terms as fellow-citizens ought to require from each other, it was equally blamable in both parties, or rather more so in that possessed of the greater power.

[256] It is intimated by Clarendon that some at Oxford, probably Jermyn and Digby, were jealous of Holland's recovering the influence he had possessed with the queen, who seems to have retained no resentment against him. As to Bedford and Clare, they would probably have been better received, if not accompanied by so obnoxious an intriguer of the old court. This seems to account for the unanimity which the historian describes to have been shown in the council against their favourable reception. Light and pa.s.sionate tempers, like that of Henrietta, are p.r.o.ne to forget injuries; serious and melancholic ones, like that of Charles, never lose sight of them.

[257] Baillie deplores at this time "the horrible fears and confusions in the city, the king everywhere being victorious. In the city, a strong and insolent party for him."--P. 391. "The malignants stirred a mult.i.tude of women of the meaner and more infamous rank to come to the door of both houses, and cry tumultuously for peace on any terms. This tumult could not be suppressed but by violence, and killing some three or four women, and hurting some of them, and imprisoning many."--P.

300.

[258] Lords and Commons' Journals; _Parl. Hist._ 156, etc.; Clarendon, iv. 183; Hollis's _Memoirs_. Hollis was a teller for the majority on this occasion; he had left the war-like party some months (Baillie, i.

356); and his name is in the journals repeatedly, from November 1642, as teller against them, though he is charged with having said the year before, that he abhorred the name of accommodation. Hutchinson, p.

296. Though a very honest, and to a certain extent, an able man, he was too much carried away by personal animosities; and as these shifted, his principles shifted also.

[259] The resolution, that government by archbishops, bishops, etc., was inconvenient, and ought to be taken away, pa.s.sed both houses unanimously September 10, 1642; _Parl. Hist._ ii. 1465. But the ordinance to carry this fully into effect was not made till October 1646. Scobell's _Ordinances_.

[260] _Parl. Hist._ iii. 15.

[261] This committee, appointed in February 1644, consisted of the following persons, the most conspicuous, at that time, of the parliament: the Earls of Northumberland, Ess.e.x, Warwick, and Manchester; Lords Say, Wharton, and Roberts; Mr. Pierrepont, the two Sir Henry Vanes, Sir Philip Stapylton, Sir William Waller, Sir Gilbert Gerrard, Sir William Armyn, Sir Arthur Haslerig; Messrs. Crew, Wallop, St. John, Cromwell, Brown, and Glynn. _Parl. Hist._ iii. 248.

[262] _Somers Tracts_, iv. 533. The names marked in the _Parliamentary History_ as having taken the covenant, are 236.

The Earl of Lincoln alone, a man of great integrity and moderation, though only conspicuous in the Journals, refused to take the covenant, and was excluded in consequence from his seat in the house: but on his pet.i.tion next year, though, as far as appears, without compliance, was restored, and the vote rescinded. _Parl. Hist._ 393. He regularly protested against all violent measures; and we still find his name in the minority on such occasions after the Restoration.

Baillie says, the desertion of about six peers at this time to the king, was of great use to the pa.s.sing of the covenant in _a legal way_. Vol. i. p. 390.

[263] Burnet's _Mem. of Duke of Hamilton_, p. 239. I am not quite satisfied as to this, which later writers seem to have taken from Burnet. It may well be supposed that the ambiguity of the covenant was not very palpable; since the Scots presbyterians, a people not easily cozened, were content with its expression. According to fair and honest rules of interpretation, it certainly bound the subscribers to the establishment of a church-government conformed to that of Scotland; namely, the presbyterian, exclusive of all mixture with any other. But Selden, and the other friends of moderate episcopacy who took the covenant, justified it, I suppose, to their consciences, by the pretext that, in renouncing the jurisdiction of bishops, they meant the unlimited jurisdiction without concurrence of any presbyters. It was not, however, an action on which they could reflect with pleasure. Baxter says that Gataker, and some others of the a.s.sembly, would not subscribe the covenant, but on the understanding that they did not renounce primitive episcopacy by it. _Life of Baxter_, p. 48. These controversial subtleties elude the ordinary reader of history.

[264] After the war was ended, none of the king's party were admitted to compound for their estates, without taking the covenant. This Clarendon, in one of his letters, calls "making haste to buy d.a.m.nation at two years' purchase." Vol. ii. p. 286.

[265] Neal, ii. 19, etc., is fair enough in censuring the committees, especially those in the country. "The greatest part [of the clergy]

were cast out for malignity [attachment to the royal cause]; superst.i.tion and false doctrine were hardly ever objected; yet the proceedings of the sequestrators were not always justifiable; for, whereas a court of judicature should rather be counsel for the prisoner than the prosecutor, the commissioners considered the king's clergy as their most dangerous enemies, and were ready to lay hold of all opportunities to discharge them their pulpits."--P. 24. But if we can rely at all on White's _Century of Malignant Ministers_ (and I do not perceive that Walker has been able to controvert it), there were a good many cases of irregular life in the clergy, so far at least as haunting alehouses; which, however, was much more common, and consequently less indecent, in that age than at present. See also Baxter's _Life_, p. 74; whose authority, though open to some exceptions on the score of prejudice, is at least better than Walker's.

The king's party were not less oppressive towards ministers whom they reckoned puritan; which unluckily comprehended most of those who were of strict lives, especially if they preached calvinistically, unless they redeemed that suspicion by strong demonstrations of loyalty.

Neal, p. 21; Baxter's _Life_, p. 42. And, if they put themselves forward on this side, they were sure to suffer most severely for it on the parliament's success; an ordinance of April 1, 1643, having sequestered the private estates of all the clergy who had aided the king. Thus the condition of the English clergy was every way most deplorable; and in fact they were utterly ruined.

[266] Neal, p. 93. He says it was not tendered, by favour, to some of the clergy who had not been active against the parliament, and were reputed Calvinists. P. 59. Sanderson is said to be one instance. This historian, an honest and well-natured man at bottom, justly censures its imposition.

[267] "All the judges answered that they could deliver no opinion in this case, in point of treason by the law; because they could not deliver any opinion in point of treason, but what was particularly expressed to be treason in the statute of 25 E. III., and so referred it wholly to the judgment of this house." Lords' Journals, 17th December 1644.

[268] Lords' Journals, 4th January. It is not said to be done _nem.

con._

[269] "The difference in the temper of the common people of both sides was so great that they who inclined to the parliament left nothing unperformed that might advance the cause; whereas they who wished well to the king thought they had performed their duty in doing so, and that they had done enough for him, in that they had done nothing against him." Clarendon, pp. 3, 452. "Most of the gentry of the county (Nottinghamshire)," says Mrs. Hutchinson, "were disaffected to the parliament; most of the middle sort, the able substantial freeholders and the other commons, who had not their dependence upon the malignant n.o.bility and gentry, adhered to the parliament."--P. 81. This I conceive to have been the case in much the greater part of England.

Baxter, in his _Life_, p. 30, says just the same thing in a pa.s.sage worthy of notice. But the Worcestershire populace, he says, were violent royalists, p. 39. Clarendon observes in another place (iii.

41), "There was in this county (Cornwall), as throughout the kingdom, a wonderful and superst.i.tious reverence towards the name of a parliament, and a prejudice to the power of the court." He afterwards (p. 436) calls "an implicit reverence to the name of a parliament, the fatal disease of the whole kingdom." So prevalent was the sense of the king's arbitrary government, especially in the case of ship-money.

Warburton remarks, that he never expressed any repentance, or made any confession in his public declarations, that his former administration had been illegal. Notes on Clarendon, p. 566. But this was not, perhaps, to be expected; and his repeated promises to govern according to law might be construed into tacit acknowledgments of past errors.

[270] The a.s.sociated counties, properly speaking, were at first Norfolk, Suffolk, Ess.e.x, Hertford, Cambridge; to which some others were added. Suss.e.x, I believe, was not a part of the a.s.sociation; but it was equally within the parliamentary pale, though the gentry were remarkably loyal in their inclinations. The same was true of Kent.

[271] Clarendon, _pa.s.sim_; May, 160; Baillie, i. 416. See, in the _Somers Tracts_, v. 495, a dialogue between a gentleman and a citizen, printed at Oxford, 1643. Though of course a royalist pamphlet, it shows the disunion that prevailed in that unfortunate party, and inveighs against the influence of the papists, in consequence of which the Marquis of Hertford is said to have declined the king's service.

Rupert is praised, and Newcastle struck at. It is written, on the whole, in rather a lukewarm style of loyalty. The Earl of Holland and Sir Edward Dering gave out as their reason for quitting the king's side, that there was great danger of popery. This was much exaggerated; yet Lord Sunderland talks the same language. _Sidney Papers_, ii. 667. Lord Falkland's dejection of spirits, and constant desire of peace, must chiefly be ascribed to his disgust with the councils of Oxford, and the greater part of those with whom he was a.s.sociated.

E quel che piu ti gravera le spalle Sara la compagnia malvagia e ria, Nella quel tu cadrai in questa valle.

We know too little of this excellent man, whose talents, however, and early pursuits do not seem to have particularly qualified him for public life. It is evident that he did not plunge into the loyal cause with all the zeal of his friend Hyde; and the king doubtless had no great regard for the counsels of one who took so very different a view of some important matters from himself. _Life of Clarendon_, 48. He had been active against Strafford, and probably had a bad opinion of Laud. The prosecution of Finch for high treason he had himself moved.

In the Ormond _Letters_, i. 20, he seems to be struck at by one writing from Oxford, June 1, 1643: "G.o.d forbid that the best of men and kings be so used by some bad hollow-hearted counsellors, who affect too much the parliamentary way. Many spare not to name them; and I doubt not but you have heard their names."

[272] It appears by the late edition of Clarendon, iv. 351, that he was the adviser of calling the Oxford parliament. The former editors omitted his name.

[273] _Parl. Hist._ 218. The number who took the covenant in September 1643, appears by a list of the long parliament in the same work (vol.

ii.) to be 236; but twelve of these are included in both lists, having gone afterwards into the king's quarters. The remainder, about 100, were either dead since the beginning of the troubles, or for some reason absented themselves from both a.s.semblies. Possibly the list of those who took the covenant is not quite complete; nor do I think the king had much more than about sixty peers on his side. The parliament, however, could not have produced thirty. Lords' Journals, Jan. 22, 1644. Whitelock, p. 80, says that two hundred and eighty appeared in the House of Commons, Jan. 1644, besides one hundred absent in the parliament's service; but this cannot be quite exact.

[274] Rushworth Abr. v. 266, and 296; where is an address to the king, intimating, if attentively considered, a little apprehension of popery and arbitrary power. Baillie says, in one of his letters, "The first day the Oxford parliament met, the king made a long speech; but many being ready to give in papers for the removing of Digby, Cottington, and others from court, the meeting was adjourned for some days."--i.

429. Indeed, the restoration of Cottington, and still more of Windebank, to the king's councils, was no pledge of protestant or const.i.tutional measures. This opposition, so natural to parliaments in any circ.u.mstances, disgusted Charles. In one of his letters to the queen, he congratulates himself on being "freed from the place of all mutinous motions, his mongrel parliament." It may be presumed that some of those who obeyed the king's summons to Oxford were influenced less by loyalty than a consideration that their estates lay in parts occupied by his troops; of course the same is applicable to the Westminster parliament.

[275] Baillie, 441. I can find no mention of this in the Journals; but, as Baillie was then in London, and in constant intercourse with the leaders of parliament, there must have been some foundation for his statement, though he seems to have been inaccurate as to the fact of the vote.

[276] _Parl. Hist._ 299, _et post_; Clarendon, v. 16; Whitelock, 110, etc.; Rushw. Abr. v. 449, etc.

[277] It was impossible for the king to avoid this treaty. Not only his Oxford parliament, as might naturally be expected, were openly desirous of peace, but a great part of the army had, in August 1644, while opposed to that of Ess.e.x in the west, taken the extraordinary step of sending a letter to that general, declaring their intentions for the rights and liberties of the people, privileges of parliament, and protestant religion against popish innovations; and that on the faith of subjects, the honour and reputation of gentlemen and soldiers, they would with their lives maintain that which his majesty should publicly promise in order to a bloodless peace; they went on to request that Ess.e.x, with six more, would meet the general (Earl of Brentford) with six more, to consider of all means possible to reconcile the unhappy differences and misunderstandings that have so long afflicted the kingdom. Sir Edward Walker's _Historical Discourses_, 59. The king was acquainted with this letter before it was sent, but after some hands had been subscribed to it. He consented, but evidently with great reluctance, and even indignation; as his own expressions testify in this pa.s.sage of Walker, whose ma.n.u.script here, as in many other places, contains interlineations by Charles himself. It was doubtless rather in a mutinous spirit, which had spread widely through the army, and contributed to its utter ruin in the next campaign. I presume it was at the king's desire that the letter was signed by the general, as well as by Prince Maurice, and all the colonels, I believe, in his army, to take off the appearance of a faction; but it certainly originated with Wilmot, Percy, and some of those whom he thought ill affected. See Clarendon, iv. 527, _et post_; Rushw. Abr. v. 348, 358.

[278] The king's doctors, Steward and Sheldon, argued at Uxbridge that episcopacy was _jure divino_; Henderson and others that presbytery was so. Whitelock, 132. These churchmen should have been locked up like a jury, without food or fire, till they agreed.

If we may believe Clarendon, the Earl of Loudon offered in the name of the Scots, that if the king would give up episcopacy, they would not press any of the other demands. It is certain, however, that they would never have suffered him to become the master of the English parliament; and, if this offer was sincerely made, it must have been from a conviction that he could not become such.

[279] Rushworth, Whitelock, Clarendon. The latter tells in his life, which reveals several things not found in his history, that the king was very angry with some of his Uxbridge commissioners, especially Mr.

Bridgman, for making too great concessions with respect to episcopacy.

He lived, however, to make himself much greater.

[280] Whitelock, 133.

[281] The creed of this party is set forth in the _Behemoth_ of Hobbes; which is, in other words, the application of those principles of government which are laid down in the _Leviathan_, to the const.i.tution and state of England in the civil war. It is republished in Baron Maseres's _Tracts_, ii. 565, 567. Sir Philip Warwick, in his _Memoirs_, 198, hints something of the same kind.

[282] Warburton, in the notes subjoined to the late edition of Clarendon, vii. 563, mentions a conversation he had with the Duke of Argyle and Lord Cobham (both soldiers, and the first a distinguished one) as to the conduct of the king and the Earl of Ess.e.x after the battle of Edgehill. They agreed it was inexplicable on both sides by any military principle. Warburton explained it by the unwillingness to be _too victorious_, felt by Ess.e.x himself, and by those whom the king was forced to consult. Father Orleans, in a pa.s.sage with which the bishop probably was acquainted, confirms this; and his authority is very good as to the secret of the court. Rupert, he says, proposed to march to London. "Mais l'esprit Anglois, qui ne se dement point meme dans les plus attaches a la royaute, l'esprit Anglois, dis-je, toujours entete de ces libertez si funestes au repos de la nation, porta la plus grande partie du conseil a s'opposer a ce dessein. Le pretexte fut qu'il etoit dangereux pour le roy de l'entreprendre, et pour la ville que le Prince Robert l'executast, jeune comme il etoit, emporte, et capable d'y mettre le feu. La vraie raison etoit qu'ils craignoient que, si le roy entroit dans Londres les armes a la main, il ne pretendist sur la nation une espece de droit de conquete, qui le rendist trop absolu." _Revolut. d'Angleterre_, iii. 104.

[283] Rushworth Abr. iv. 550. At the very time that he was publicly denying his employment of papists, he wrote to Newcastle, commanding him to make use of all his subjects' services, without examining their consciences, except as to loyalty. Ellis's _Letters_, iii. 291, from an original in the Museum. No one can rationally blame Charles for anything in this, but his inveterate and useless habit of falsehood.