Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 11.djvu/301

 spake most in those debates, and was not at all gracious to the soldiers' (ib. vii. 239). Rupert in consequence 'crossed all he proposed,' and Wilmot plotted a petition of officers that he might be excluded from all councils of war (ib. viii. 96, 168). Hence, when the king created the master of the rolls Lord Colepeper of Thoresway in Lincolnshire (21 Oct. 1644,, Baronage, ii. 472), 'it did much dissatisfy both the court and army ' (, Rebellion, viii. 170). The parliament also, when Colepeper was appointed one of the commissioners for the Uxbridge treaty, refused to recognise his new dignity (, ff. 125-6). In March 1645 Charles appointed Colepeper one of the council of the Prince of Wales, effected a reconciliation between him and Hyde, and despatched both with the prince to the west of England. A large amount of his correspondence with Goring and other royalist commanders during the disastrous campaign of 1645 is preserved in the Clarendon Papers and the Tanner MSS. In August the king sent for Colepeper to Brecon, and there commissioned him in case of danger to convey the prince to France, a destination which later letters altered to Denmark. The council, including Colepeper, remonstrated and urged the king to select Scilly or Jersey as a refuge for the prince when all hope of holding out in Cornwall was lost (, Rebellion, 74, 112, 116). Colepeper himself hoped still to get aid from Scotland, and with that object procured the liberation of the Duke of Hamilton from his imprisonment (ib. Appendix 40). He urged Ashburnham to 'bend all his wits to advance the treaty with the Scots. It is the only way to save the crown and the three kingdoms; all other tricks will deceive you. All they can ask, or the king part with, is a trifle in respect of the price of a crown' (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 168). A few days later (2 March 1646) he was forced to embark with the prince for Scilly, whence he was sent to France to inform the queen of her son's position and needs. The queen won over Colepeper to the view that the prince's removal to France was absolutely necessary, and when the rest of the prince's council determined to remain in Jersey, he alone decided to accompany Prince Charles to France. Apart from distrust of France, the chief reason was that the policy of making religious concessions to gain the Scots, which was advocated by the queen and by Mazarin, commended itself to Colepeper while it was disapproved by Hyde and the others (, Rebellion). From St. Germain Colepeper, in joint letters with Jermyn and Ashburnham, continued to press this policy on the king (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 271). 'As for your advice,' replied the king to one of these letters, 'you speak my soul in everything but one; that is, the church' (ib. ii. 243). And in an earlier letter to the queen Charles wrote : 'As for Colepeper I confess never much to have esteemed him in religion, though in other things I reverenced his judgment' (, Letters of Charles I in 1646, 30). They also urged the king to retain at all costs his right to the militia, and neither to suffer himself to be handed over to the parliament without security for his safety, nor to leave his own dominions (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 301). Sir John Berkeley's mission to England in the following year to promote an agreement between the king and the army was largely the work of Colepeper (, Memoirs; Masères Tracts, 356). On the revolt of a portion of the fleet in the summer of 1648, Colepeper accompanied the prince to sea, and was his principal adviser. The failure of this expedition to achieve anything was generally attributed to him, and some accused him of corruption. Clarendon repels this charge : 'he was not indeed to be wrought upon that way, but having some infirmities and a multitude of enemies, he was never absolved from anything of which any man accused him' (Rebellion, xi. 82). Lord Hatton, however, writing to Nicholas, goes so far as to say : 'I am sure I saw him plot and design against the relieving Pembroke and Colchester, and endeavour what in him lay to hinder any commission to the Duke of Buckingham unless he would be solely under the Earl of Holland and declare for the covenant and such popular ways' (Nicholas Papers, 96). On the return of the prince to the Hague the old quarrel between Colepeper and Prince Rupert broke out again, and was industriously inflamed by Herbert, the attorney-general. On one occasion, when Rupert in the council nominated a certain Sir Robert Walsh as agent for the sale of prize goods, Colepeper, who opposed the appointment, concluded by offering to fight Rupert, but the intervention of Hyde and Cottington induced him to apologise a few days later (, Rebellion, xi. 128). Walsh, however, instigated by Herbert, violently assaulted Colepeper in the streets on 23 Oct. 1648, and was for that offence forbidden to appear at court and banished from the Hague (, Ormonde, vi. 592;, xi. 130). After the execution of the king Colepeper was one of the chief supporters of the Scotch proposals to Charles II (June 1649; Nicholas Papers, 135). When Charles II decided to go to Ireland instead of Scotland, Colepeper was sent to Russia to borrow money from the czar, and succeeded 