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] should come to satisfactory terms. What raised Charles's confidence in Hammond's honour still higher, was that on the news of Charles's retreat reaching Loudon, the parliament sent to the governor, desiring him to send up the king's three attendants, Ashburnham, Berkeley, and Legge, but he refused.

Scarcely had Charles reached Carisbrook, when he learned the result of the military rendezvous. The plans of the agitators had threatened, if successful, equal disaster to himself as to Cromwell. If they triumphed over their commanders, they vowed to kill Cromwell for having, as they believed, concerted with Charles his escape to the Isle of Wight, and to put down both king and lords. This turbulence forboded universal anarchy, but Fairfax and Cromwell determined to meet it boldly, and make an end of it. On the day appointed, the army mustered in a field betwixt Hereford and Ware, and a remonstrance, drawn up in the name of Fairfax, was read to them. In this he told them of the great objects for which the array was striving, but which could only be attained by union and subordination. Only two regiments in the field showed a refractory spirit—Harrison's horse and Lilburne's foot. These men had expelled many of their' officers, and came on to the ground with a motto round their hats—"The people's freedom and the soldiers' rights." As these men showed a mutinous spirit, Cromwell, followed by some of his most trusty officers, dished into their ranks, and according to Clarendon, "knocked two or three of their ringleaders on the head with his own hand, then charged the rest with his troop, and took such a number of them as he thought fit, whereof he presently caused some to be hanged, and sent others to London for a more formal trial. By two or three such encounters, for the obstinacy continued long, he totally subdued that spirit in the army, though it continued and increased very much in the kingdom, and if it had not been encountered at that time with that rough and brisk temper of Cromwell, it would presently have produced all imaginable confusion in the parliament, army, and kingdom."

According to Whitelock and Ludlow, the real facts were different, and more accordant with what followed. Cromwell did not knock several of them on the head, but brought out a number of the ringleaders, who were judged by a court martial on the spot, one man shot, two more condemned, and several others reserved as pledges for the submission of their comrades. But the spirit itself was not extinguished, it pervaded three-fourths of the army, and the quick genius of Cromwell saw that to attempt to trample it out would be impossible, and not more impossible than absurd. There was but a slight shade of difference, indeed, betwixt the ideas of the soldiers and his own. Their violation of discipline had misled his judgment: his and their convictions wore the same. He had already expressed his conviction openly that this kingdom would be far happier with a government like that of Holland, that is, a republic, with a stadtholder, as near as possible the ideal which he afterwards worked out. No sooner did he perceive this than he at once acknowledged his error. Historians have ridiculed the manner of his doing it, and treated it as a piece of his consummate cant. In the assembly of the officers he confessed, weeping as he spoke, that "his mind, dazzled by the glory of the world, had not clearly discovered the work of the Lord; and therefore had humbled himself before them, and desired the prayers of the saints that God would forgive his self-seeking." But that which appears cant to the worldly spirit of the present age, was the real spirit and manner of that time. It was a time filled with the effervescence of religious faith; from the general study of the Bible among the people, its language, its tone, were become the popular language and tone; the heroes of the Old Testament, especially, were the heroes of its admiration, and nothing so completely proves their earnestness as the simple and unshrinking openness with which they avowed their religion, and placed it foremost in their words and actions. It does not follow that the world, and its motives and its ambitions, did not mingle largely with this religious orgasm; nothing is so subtle and deceptive as human nature, and the love of self was always contrived to steal in under the colour of the love of God, more or less, in every historic phenomenon. The besetting sin of Cromwell was ambition; there is no doubt that he afterwards became signally "dazzled by the glory of the world, so that he did not always clearly discern the work of the Lord;" but he was undoubtedly in earnest, and as undoubtedly was deeply religious, even when he was swayed aside by the mighty temptations of his position. He now confessed himself wrong and the army right, and declared his resolution to stand or fall with it. This was the only thing wanting to complete the triumph of the army and of democratic principles. The soldiers already knew that he was the military genius of the age, and as he now avowed himself one with them in faith and opinion, they received the confession with universal acclamations, and from that moment he was the hero, the idol, and the soul of the army. Ireton made the same confession, and took the same vow, and so far from "that spirit being totally subdued in the array," as Clarendon asserts, it became its entire life, and the pledge of its predominance.

Charles again employed the time on his hands in negotiation. As the army had restored unity to itself, he sought to obtain its concurrence to a personal treaty, and sent Berkeley to Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton, at Windsor. On his way there he fell in with cornet Joyce, who carried off the king from Holmby, who informed him of an ominous proposition discussed by the agitators, namely, to bring the king to trial; not, he said, with any design of putting him to death, but to prove on evidence who really bore the blame of the war. This prelude did but too truly prefigure the interview itself. The general, Cromwell, and Ireton, received him with severe aspects and distant coldness, and informed him that they were but the servants of the parliament, and referred him to it. He was not prevented by this, however, from sending a secret message to Cromwell, reminding him of his promises, and letting him know that he had secret instructions from the king to him. But Cromwell had now had too convincing proofs of the king's duplicity; he refused to receive the letters, informed Berkeley that he would do all in his power towards effecting a real peace, but was not disposed to risk his head for the king's sake. Repulsed here, Charles applied to parliament, which sent him four propositions as the basis of agreement, namely, that his majesty should concur in the bill for settling the militia; should