Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/149

 dubitable that he did participate;—as indeed, the former course of listening to his Parliament having been abandoned, this other of coercing or awing it by armed force was the only remaining one.

These Army-Plots, detected one after another, and investigated and commented upon, with boundless interest, in Parliament and out of it, kept the Summer and Autumn of 1641 in continual alarm and agitation; taught all Opposition persons, and a factious Parliament in general, what ground they were standing on;—and in the factious Parliament especially, could not but awaken the liveliest desire of having the Military Force put in such hands as would be safe for them. ‘The Lord-Lieutenants of Counties,’ this factious Parliament conceived an unappeasable desire of knowing who these were to be:—this is what they mean by ‘Power of the Militia;’ on which point, as his Majesty would not yield a jot, his Parliament and he,—the point becoming daily more important, new offences daily accumulating, and the split ever widening,—ultimately rent themselves asunder, and drew swords to decide it.

Such was the well-known consummation; which in Cromwell’s next Letter we find to have arrived. Here are a few dates which may assist the reader to grope his way thither. From ‘Mr Willingham in Swithin’s Lane’ in February 1641, to the Royal Standard at Nottingham in August 1642, and ‘Mr. Barnard at Huntingdon’ in January 1643, which is our next stage, there is a long vague road; and the lights upon it are mostly a universal dance of will-o’-wisps, and distracted fireflies in a state of excitement—not good guidance for the traveller!

Monday 3d May.&emsp;Strafford’s Trial being ended, but no sentence yet given, Mr. Robert Baillie, Minister of Kilwinning, who was here among the Scotch Commissioners at present, saw in Palaceyard, Westminster, ‘some thousands of Citizens and