Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/303

1648] This treatment only doubled his determination to escape. Ashburnham, Berkeley, and Legge, though banished from the island, kept saddle horses on the coast ready, in case of the king's escaping from the castle; and his friends from all quarters corresponded with him, and their letters were conveyed to Lira by one Henry Firebrace, who was in some employment in the castle, and was occasionally, he tells his, employed by one of the warders to take his place before the king's chamber door, when he put the correspondence intrusted to him through a crevice of the door. The whole island resented the incarceration of the king, and there were loud threats of rising and liberating him by force. One captain Burley was mad enough to make the attempt. At midnight a drum was beaten. Burley put himself at the head of a rabble in Newport, without, as reported, having one musket among them, and was speedily taken and executed.

John Bradshaw, From an authentic Portrait.

On the 3rd January the two houses discussed the relations with the king, and in the commons the plainest republican sentiments were avowal. The refusal of the four bills of the king was deemed convincing proof that no possibility was left of ever coming to an agreement with him. Sir Thomas Wroth declared that kings of late had conducted themselves more like inmates of Bedlam than anything else; and that for his part he did not care what government was set up if it were not by kings or devils. Ireton contended that the relation of king and subjects implied mutual bonds and duties. The king was to protect the people, and the people to maintain the king in his duty; but that Charles had abandoned his duty, had ceased to protect his people, nay, had made war on them, and therefore had annulled the compact. That seeing this, the army was resolved to stand by the parliament for the establishment of national right. Cromwell, after numbers had proceeded in a like strain, asserted that it was time to fulfil the wearied expectation of