Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/299

] England to join the converging forces, and plant the king on the throne.

But this wholesale conspiracy could not escape the secret agents of Cromwell; the whole was revealed to him, and he bitterly upbraided Ashburnham with the incurable duplicity of his master, who, whilst he was negotiating with the army, was planning its destruction. There appears, moreover, every reason to believe that Cromwell discovered deeper and more personal treason in Charles towards himself. Morrice, in his life of lord Orrery, declares that Cromwell himself related to lord Broghill, that at this crisis, when Cromwell was asserting himself to bring about the agreement with the king; be and Ireton were informed by one of their spies, who belonged to the king's bed-chamber, that their doom was fixed, and that they might convince themselves of it by intercepting a secret messenger of the king's, who would that night sleep at the Blue Boar, in Holborn, and who carried his despatches sewed up in the skirt of his saddle. That Cromwell and Ireton, disguised as troopers, waited that evening, and seized the saddle, where they found a letter in which the king informed the queen that he was now courted by both factions, and that that which bid the highest for him should have him, but he thought he should close with the Scots rather than the other.

This not only agrees with the fact that he was at that moment planning the Scotch invasion, but lord Bolingbroke assured Pope and lord Marchmont, that lord Oxford had often told him that he had seen and handled an original letter that Charles I. wrote to the queen in answer to one of hers that had been intercepted, and then forwarded to him; wherein she had reproached him for having made too great concessions to these villains, namely, that Cromwell should be lieutenant of Ireland for life without account; that that country should be in the hands of the party; and that Cromwell should have a garter, &c. That in this letter of the king's it was said that she might leave him to manage, who was better acquainted with all the circumstances than she could be; but she might be entirely easy as to the concessions he should make, for he should know in due time how to deal with the rogues, who, instead of a silken garter, should be fitted with a hempen cord.

From this moment, whatever was the cause, and the preceding incidents appear both certain and sufficient, Cromwell, Ireton, and the army in general, came to the conclusion that all attempts to bring so double-faced and intriguing a person to any honourable and enduring terms were vain. That if he were restored to power, he would use it to destroy every one who had been compelled to oppose his despotic plans; if he were not restored, they would be in a perpetual state of plottings, alarms, and disquietudes, destructive of all comfort or prosperity to the nation. As the officers drew back from further intercourse with the king, the menaces of the levellers became louder; and there were not wanting persons to carry these threats to the king. He saw the levellers growing in violence, and in numbers, in fact, leveller and agitator were synonymous terms; the infection had spread through the greater part of the army. The fact of the officers having been friendly with him, had made them suspicious to the men; they had driven Ireton from the council, and there were loud threats of impeaching Cromwell. Several regiments were in a state of insubordination, and it was doubtful whether, at the approaching rendezvous, Fairfax could maintain the discipline of the army. The reports of the proceedings of the levellers, who really threatened to seize his person to prevent the parliament or officers agreeing with him, and their truculent manifestos, were all diligently carried to him by the Scottish commissioners, who, according to Berkeley, "were the first that presented his dangers to him." He was assured by Mr. Ackworth, that colonel Rainsborough, the favourite of the levellers, meant to kill him; and Clarendon says that "every day he received little billets or letters, secretly conveyed to him without any name, which advertised him of wicked designs upon his life;" many, he adds, who repaired to him brought the same advice from men of unquestionable sincerity.

Charles resolved to escape, and, as he was in some cases as religiously scrupulous of his word as he was in others reckless of it, he withdrew his promise not to attempt to escape, on the plea that he found himself quite as rigourously watched as if he were not on honour. Colonel Whalley, who commanded his guard, immediately ordered it to be doubled, and dismissed all his servants except Legge, refusing further admittance to him. Notwithstanding this, he found means of communicating with Ashburnham and Berkeley, and consulted with them on the means of escape, and the place to escape to. He proposed the city, and Ashburnham advised him to go to the house of the lord mayor, in London, there to meet the Scottish commissioners, agree with them on their last propositions, and then send for the lords. Berkeley disapproved of this, believing they would not bring over the common; and then Ashburnham recommended the king to flee to the Isle of Wight, and throw himself on the generosity of colonel Hammond, the governor there. This, he says, he did, because colonel Hammond had a few days before told him he was going down to him government, "because he found the army was resolved to break all promises with the king, and that he would hare nothing to with such perfidious actions."

This seems to have inspired a belief in these men that Hammond was secretly in favour of the king, strengthened, no doubt, by the fact that Dr. Hammond, the king's chaplain, was his uncle, and had lately introduced him to his majesty as an ingenuous and repentant youth, notwithstanding his post, of real loyalty. They forgot that Hammond had another uncle, lieutenant-general Hammond, who was as democratic as the chaplain was loyal, and was a great patron of the adjutators. They seem to have reckoned as little on the honour of the young man, who was a gentleman and officer, and had married a daughter of John Hampden.

There were other schemes, one to seek refuge in Sir John Oglander's House, in the Isle of Wight, and there was a talk of a ship being ordered to be somewhere ready for him; but when the escape was made, it appeared to have been just as ill contrived as all the rest of Charles's escapes. Ashburnham and Berkeley had contrived to meet the king in the evening in the gallery of Hampton Court, and settled the mode of escape. It was the king's custom, on the Mondays and Thursdays, to write letters for the foreign post, and in the