Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/91

 civil penalties upon any.’ Neither the prayer-book nor the covenant was to be enforced.

It is intelligible that Charles should not have been prepared to accede to so wise a settlement; but at least he might have been expected not to make the overtures of the army counters in intrigue. He had at first rejected them, but on 9 Sept., having been asked by the parliament—which in spite of the domination of the army retained its presbyterian sentiments—to accept a presbyterian government, he answered that he preferred to that to adopt the proposals of the army. All that he got by this move was to weaken the hold of the army upon the parliament, and the result was that on 2 Nov. the houses came to an understanding that presbyterianism should be established, with toleration for tender consciences, but with no toleration for those who wished to use the Book of Common Prayer. Charles, if he had been wise, would have closed even now with Cromwell and the army. All he thought of was to try to win over the army leaders by offers of peerages and places. Whether Cromwell actually intercepted a letter from Charles to the queen informing her that he meant to hang him as soon as he had made use of him, may be doubted, but it is quite clear that Cromwell was not the man to be played with. The army and the parliament came to an understanding, and on 10 Nov. drew up new proposals in concert. On the 11th the king escaped from Hampton Court, making his way to the Isle of Wight, where he seems to have expected that Colonel Hammond, the governor of Carisbrooke Castle, would protect him, and perhaps contrive his escape to France if it should prove necessary. Hammond, however, was faithful to his trust, and Charles became a resident, and before long a prisoner in the castle.

Upon this the houses embodied their own proposals in four bills. To these bills, on 28 Dec., Charles refused his assent, and on 3 Jan. 1648 the commons resolved that they would not again address the king, a resolution which on the 15th was accepted by the lords.

At last it seemed likely that Charles would find supporters. The Scots had long been dissatisfied with the behaviour of the English parliament towards them, and on 26 Dec. their commissioners in England signed with Charles a secret treaty in which they engaged to send an army to replace him on the throne on condition that he would establish presbyterianism in England for three years and put down the sects. The result of this treaty, the engagement as it was called, was the second civil war. The invading army of the Scots was backed by the English cavaliers, and in part at least by the English presbyterians. Fairfax and Cromwell, however, disposed of all the enemies of the army, and by the beginning of September Charles was left unaided to face the angry soldiers.

At first, indeed, it seemed as if the second civil war would go for nothing. On 18 Sept. a fresh negotiation with Charles—the treaty of Newport—was opened by parliamentary commissioners. Charles would neither close with his adversaries nor break with them. His only object was to spin out time. By the end of October the houses, anxious as they were for a settlement, discovered, what they might have known before, that Charles was resolved not to abandon episcopacy. He had fresh hopes of aid from Ireland and the continent. ‘Though you will hear,’ he had written to Ormonde, ‘that this treaty is near, or at least most likely to be concluded, yet believe it not, but pursue the way you are in with all possible vigour; deliver also that my command to all your friends, but not in public way.’

The army at least was weary of constant talk which led to nothing but uncertainty. In a remonstrance adopted by a council of the officers on 16 Nov. it demanded ‘that the capital and grand author of our troubles, the person of the king, by whose commissions, commands, or procurement, and in whose behalf and for whose interest only, of will and power, all our wars and troubles have been, with all the miseries attending them, may be speedily brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief he is therein guilty of.’

The complaint against Charles was true, but it was not the whole truth. Charles, ill-judged and irritating as his mode of action was, did nevertheless in making his stand upon episcopacy represent the religious convictions of a large portion of his subjects. Moreover, the demand of the army shocked all who reverenced law, or, in other words, who wished to see general rules laid down, and any attempt to infringe them punished after they had been openly promulgated, and not before. To depose Charles was one thing; to execute him was another. In hurrying on to the latter action the army only exposed the radical injustice of its proceeding by the self-deception with which it clothed an act of violence with informal forms of law. Charles was removed from Carisbrooke, and on 1 Dec. lodged in Hurst Castle. On the 6th members of the House of Commons too favourable to the king were excluded from parliament by Pride's purge. On 17 Dec. Charles was removed from Hurst Castle and brought to Windsor, where he arrived on 23 Dec. On