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=Milton, John, 1608-1674=
 * Author: Masson, David, 1822-1907 Subject: Milton, John, 1608-1674 Publisher: London, Macmillan Book contributor: Cornell University Library less clear OCR
 * Volume: 6 Subject: Milton, John, 1608-1674 Publisher: London : Macmillan and Co. Call number: SRLF_UCLA:LAGE-2288544 Book contributor: University of California Libraries ||Masson, David, 1822-1907, The life of John Milton: narrated in connexion with the political, ecclesiastical, and literary history of his time (1875), Volume 6 www.archive.org better OCR

The Life of John Milton: Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary ... (1880), David Masson. p. 36

ROYAL DECLARATION OF INDEMNITY. 25
active as an independent member. Monk and Montague were soon to be removed by their peerages to the other House.

One great business in which the Parliament had been engaged before his Majesty's arrival was that of Pardon or Revenge. The basis for proceedings in this business was furnished by that Declaration, dated from Breda, April 4, and entitled His Majesty's Gracious Declaration to all his Loving Subjects which had been one of the documents brought over by Greenville to Monk, and which, after having been kept in reserve till the fit moment, had been produced in the two Houses on the 1st of May with such immense effect (Vol. V. pp. 696-698). Monk's advice having been that his Majesty should promise the freest and widest in- demnity possible, and Hyde and his associates abroad having concurred, this was one portion of the Declaration : —

{{cquote|And, to the end that the fear of punishment may not engage any, conscious to themselves of what is past, to a perseverance in guilt for the future, by opposing the quiet and happiness of their country in the restoration both of King, Peers, and People to their just, ancient, and fundamental rights. We do, by these presents, declare, — That We do grant a Free and General Pardon, which We we ready, on demand, to pass under Our Great Seal of England, to all Our subjects, of what degree or quality soever, who within forty days after the publishing hereof shall lay hold upon this Our grace and flavour, and shall by any public act declare their doing so, and that they return to the loyalty and obedience of good subjects : exepting only such persons as shall hereafter be excepted by Parlia- men — these only to be excepted. Let all Our subjects, how faulty soever, rely upon the word of a King, solemnly given by this present Declaration, that no crime whatsoever, committed against Us or our Royal Father before the publication of this, shall ever rise in judgment, or be brought in question, against any of them, to the least endamagement of them, either in their lives, liberties, or estates, or (as far forth as lies in Our power) so much as to the prejudice of their reputations by any reproach or term of distinc- tion from the rest of Our best subjects: We desiring and ordaining that henceforth all notes of discord, separation, and difference of Parties, be utterly abolished among all Our subjects ; whom We invite

26 Life of Milton and history of his time.
and conjure to a perfect union amoung themselves under our protection. }}

As this Declaration was published in London on the 1st of May by order of the Houses, all who chose to avail themselves of it before the 10th of June were to be safe, with the exception of such as might be implied in the passage in Italics. Who the excepted culprits were to be depended on the Parliament itself. The two Houses were to make the the exceptions, and not the King or his Councillors.

The business had begun in the Commons on the 9th of May, the day after the proclamation of his still absent Majesty. "Mr. Finch reports a Bill of General Pardon, " Indemnity and Oblivion, which was this day read the first " time," is the record in the Commons Journals. The second was on the 12th, when a significant indication was given where the exceptions would lie. Passages from the Journals of the Ramp concerning the late King's Trial were read, and also a Journal of the Proceedings at the Trial itself Naturally this caused a scene. Divers members present, who had been among the King's Judges, "did severally express" how far they were concerned in the said proceeding, and "their sense thereon." Happy those who could say that, though named among the Commissioners for the Trial, they had never sat in the Court, or had discontinued their sittings before the fatal close. For it was the actual Regicides the House was now in search of, first of all, as the necessary exceptions from the General Indemnity, and these Regicides were now voted to be such of the King's Judges as had been present at the last sitting of the Court and the pronouncing of the sentence on Saturday the 27th of January, 1648-9 whether they had or had not signed the subsequent death- warrant of Monday the 29th. The debate, having adjourned, was resumed on the 14th of May, with very definite farther results. It was then resolved "That all those persons who sat who sat in Judgment upon the late King's

QUEST OF THE REGICIDES. 27
Majesty when the sentence was pronounced for his con- demnation be forthwith secured," — a resolution which, though absolute in the wording, could apply, of course, only to such of them as were still alive; also that Mr. John Cook, who had been the solicitor or prosecuting counsel at the Trial, and Messrs. Andrew Broughton and John Phelps, who had been the clerks of the Court, and Edward Dendy, who had been the sergeant-at-arms, should be forthwith secured; also that the two executioners of the King, if they were discoverable, should be secured, with specification on chance of a certain person named Matthew, who had boasted of being one of them and of having received £300 for the work; also that Cornet Joyce, of Holmby House celebrity, should be secured; and, finally, "That the number of Seven, "of those who sat in judgment when sentence was given "upon the late King*s Majesty, be the number who shall be "excepted, for life and estate, out of the Act of General "Pardon and Oblivion." These Resolutions were unanimous. They amounted to this: — that, while all the Regicide Judges were to be branded as infamous, and all the survivors of them, and six or seven persons more, were to be secured, to await consideration of the penalties to be inflicted on them, it was the desire of the House that the number of the surviving Regicide Judges to be proceeded against capitally should be restricted to seven, and that the rest should be reserved for minor punishments. There was no security so far that other culprits, not among the Regicide Judges, e. g. the additional six or seven above-named, might not be thought worthy of death for their particular shares in the great crime.

At this stage it may be well to enumerate the Regicide Judges present at the sentence in Westminster Hall on Saturday, Jan. 27, 1648-9. They were sixty-seven in all, of whom twenty-three were now dead. In the following list they are arranged alphabetically, save that the first four are put in a group by themselves. An asterisk prefixed to a name denotes the aggravation of having been not only one

28 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIMES.
of the sixty-seven present at the sentence, but also one of the fifty-nine who signed the death-warrant two days after : —

Two most positive Regicides are here omitted. These are Thomas Challoner, and Cromwell's kinsman, Richard In- goldsby, commonly called Dick Ingoldsby. The reason is

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE COMMONS 29
that the Commons had now defined the Regicides to be those Judges who had been present at the sentence, and Challoner and Ingoldsby were in the peculiar predicament of having signed the death-warrant without having been present at the sentence. Challoner had been present almost every day of the trial, including that sitting in which the sentence had been agreed to ; nay, he had been in his place on the very day of the sentence; but he had been absent at the moment when it was pronounced, — to compensate for which he had signed the death-warrant. Ingoldsby, it is believed, had signed the death-warrant without having been present at the trial at all. How it was to fare with Challoner in the circumstances we shall see very soon. That Ingoldsby was to escape without any punishment whatever was a foregone conclusion even now. And no wonder. Regicide though he was, had he not amply purchased his pardon by his gallant capture of Lambert and suppression of the last struggle of the Republic, and had he not been thanked for that service by the House itself not three weeks ago? There could be no thought now of penal procedure in his case. He was even to be exceptionally recommended to his Majesty's favour ; and, though the awkward fact of his name on the death- warrant was to be remembered jocularly against him to the end of his life, he had his famous explanation ready, and could turn off the laugh. see note, Vol III. pp. 720-721. [Footnote: The original of this Warrant, a parchment eighteen inches wide and ten inches deep, is in the possession of the House of Lords, having been produced before that body by Colonel Hacker in 1660, and then retained. Mr. William J. Thorns, who has minutely inspected it, made it the subject of a curious and interesting inquiry in Notes and Queries, July 6 and July 13, 1872. He observes that the date of the Warrant itself, and the words "upon Saturday last" for the day of the sentence, are written over erasures and in a different hand from the rest, and that the word "Thirtieth" for the day of execution is inserted in a space too large for it; and, for this and other reasons, he arrives at the conclusion that we see the document now in its second state, and that a good number of the signatures were not attached to it on the 29th, but had been attached to it on an earlier day when it was in its first state. His conjecture, on the whole, is that it had been expected, at the private meeting of the Court on Friday the 26th, when the sentence was agreed upon, that it might be pronounced that same day, and executed the next day (Saturday the 27th), and that a warrant to that effect had then been drawn up and signed; but that, this idea having been abandoned, for whatever reason, and the Sentence not having been pronounced till Saturday, it was thought better, at the meeting on Monday the 29th, still to use the first Warrant with its signatures, only with the dates altered, and with additional signatures then obtained, than to write out a fresh warrant and apply for second signatures from absentees who had signed the first.—It is noteworthy that, though sixty-seven of the Commissioners had, as we have seen, virtually constituted themselves "the Regicides" by being present in Westminster Hall on Saturday when the Sentence was pronounced, and then standing up in assent to it, nine of these did not attach their names to the Warrant. They were Francis Allen, Thomas Andrews, General Hammond, Edmund Harvey, William Heveningham, Cornelius Holland, John Lisle, Nicholas Love, and Colonel Matthew Tomlinson. Subtract these nine from the sixty-seven, and the number of the signers to the Warrant ought to be fifty-eight. But they are fifty-nine. Who, then, is the fifty-ninth ? Cromwell's young kinsman, Colonel Richard Ingoldsby, who, though a member of the Court, had attended none of its meetings till precisely that of the 29th, the date of the Warrant. Here comes in Clarendon's famous story, a distortion of some convenient rigmarole of Ingoldsby's own in later times. Ingoldsby, says Clarendon, "always abhorring the action in his heart," had purposely kept away from every meeting of the Court, till, chancing to look into the Painted Chamber on the fatal 29th, he was clutched by Cromwell, dragged to the table on which the Warrant lay, and compelled to sign it, Cromwell forcibly holding his hand and tracing the letters for him, with loud laughter at the joke! More by token, as Clarendon reports him, if his name on the Warrant "were compared with what he had ever writ himself," the difference would be seen! Unfortunately, Mr. Thoms, who has made this comparison, vouches that no difference can be detected, and that the name "Rich. Ingoldsby" in the Warrant "is as bold and free as signature can be," and could never have been written by a hand held by another's. Ex uno omnes. In the hard straits that were coming eleven years hence, there were to be others of the signers of the Warrant, besides Ingoldsby, who were to aver that they did it under compulsion, Cromwell and Henry Marten sitting beside each other, smearing each other's faces with ink in their fun, and overbearing the scrupulous with jeers or threats. The simple fact I believe to be (and this I do believe) that Cromwell was anxious that the Warrant should be well signed, and reasoned, or perhaps remonstrated, with some waverers, as he had done with young Hammond of the Isle of Wight in a similar case two months before. Cromwell was now in his fiftieth year.]

With the list of the sixty-seven before them, the Commons advanced a step on the 15th of May. They at once dis- tinguished the four at the top of the list from the rest, for reasons perfectly obvious ; and, these four being dead and beyond the reach of punishment personally, they excepted them from the Bill of Pardon and Oblivion by the method of posthumous Attainder for High Treason. This involved the absolute and immediate forfeiture of all the property possessed by them at the date of their treason, and also the " corruption of their blood," or the stoppage of all titles, properties, or rights that might come from them, or through

30 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
them, to their descendants. Accordingly, it was formally resolved "That John Bradshaw, deceased, late sergeant-at- " law be one of those that shall, by Act of Parliament, be at- " tainted of high treason for the murthering of the late King's " Majesty," and similarly for " Oliver Cromwell, deceased," " Henry Ireton, deceased," and "Thomas Pride, deceased ;" — each attainder to date from the 1st of January, 1648-9. This specification of four of the sixty-seven having been made by the House itself, the Bill of Pardon and Oblivion was referred, for the rest, to a committee for consideration and report. Much depended on the composition of this committee. It consisted of fifty-two members, and included Annesley, Prynne, Lord Commissioner Tyrrel, Lord Commissioner Widdrington, Glynne, Maynard, Matthew Hale, Lord Howard, Sir Anthony Irby, and Mr. Heneage Finch. Having ap- pointed the committee, the House turned to other matters for a while, taking care, however, on the 17th of May, to pass comprehensive resolutions empowering sheriffs and other officers to search for and seize all or any of the forty-four Regicide Judges that were still living, and also to seize the estates, real or personal, of all the sixty-seven, living or dead ; with an accompanying resolution requiring the Council of State to stop all the ports, so as to prevent the escape of the fugitives. The House of Lords, when asked to concur with these resolutions, demurred somewhat to the one which vested powers in the Council of State, regarding that body as temporary and anomalous ; but this did not prevent the most energetic action of the police by the order of the Lords too. The Regicides were hunted for most diligently. Harrison had been already captured in Staffordshire, and on the 21st of May he was committed to the Tower.

The Committee on the Indemnity Bill were still engaged with it when the King crossed from the Hague to Dover in Montague's fleet, journeyed thence to Canterbury and Rochester, and made his great entry into London on the 29th of May. After his Majesty was in London, he himself,

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE COMMONS. 31
or Hyde for him, or the Junto and the Courtiers generally, might have something to do privately with the farther progress of the Bill, and with the suggestion of the persons that ought to be excepted.

Publicly, however, the business went on still within the Commons. On the 31st of May, the second day after the King's arrival, Mr. Heneage Finch, from the Committee, re- ported several amendments to the Bill ; these and other amendments, some of them originating in the House itself, were discussed that day, and on the 1st, 2nd, and 4th of June ; and on the 5th of June the House was in a position to put the question " That the Seven Persons who by former order " are to be excepted out of the Act of General Pardon for life "and estate be named here in this House." The question having been carried unanimously in the affirmative, one of the seven to be so excepted was 'at once named. He was Thomas Harrison. No more were named that day ; but next day the other six were named and agreed to in this order — William Say, John Jones, Thomas Scott, Cornelius Holland, John Lisle, and John Barkstead. Of these only Jones, in addition to Harrison, was yet in custody ; most had es- caped, or were to escape, to the continent. The tale of the seven surviving Regicide Judges to be proceeded against capitally was now complete. The roll of the doomed, however, was not yet closed; for on the 7th of June it was resolved that John Cook, Andrew Broughton, and Edward Dendy should, in respect of their prominent, though subordinate, parts at the King's trial, be in the extreme class of those excepted both for life and estate, and also that the two executioners " who were upon the scaffold in a disguise " should be in the same extreme class. About these two the House had been making every inquiry. One hears no more of the person called Matthew, suspected on the 14th of May; but William Lilly the astrologer had, by order of the House of June 2, been examined by a committee as to his know- ledge of the subject, and the report from this committee had been read to the House by Prynne, June 6. What it was we do not learn from the Journals: but we have Lilly's own

32 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
account of the evidence he gave. "The next Sunday but "one after Charles the First was beheaded," says Lilly, " Robert Spavin, secretary unto Lieutenant- General Cromwell, " invited himself to dine with me, and brought Anthony " Peirson and several others along with him to dinner. Their " principal discourse all dinner-time was only who it was that " beheaded the King. One said it was the common hangman ; " another, Hugh Peters ; others were nominated, but none " concluded. Robert Spavin, so soon as dinner was done, " took me to the south window. Saith he, ' These are all " mistaken ; they have not named the man that did the fact ; " it was Lieuenant-Colonel Joyce. I was in the room when " he fitted himself for the work — stood behind him when he " did it — when done, went in again unto him. There 's no " man knows this but my master [Cromwell], Commissary " Ireton, and myself.' ' Doth not Mr. Rushworth [then "Army Secretary] know it?' said I. 'No, he doth not,' " saith Spavin. The same thing Spavin since had often "related to me when we were alone." Substantially this had been Lilly's information to Prynne ; who, says Lilly, " did with " much civility make a report hereof to the House." Accord- ingly, next day (June 7), after Mr. Annesley had reported the examination of another witness, Leonard Watson, touching the person who executed the late King, there was a repetition of the order of May 14 for the arrest of Joyce, with an order for the arrest also of Hugh Peters. There could be no more popular candidate for one of the executionerships, if not for the executionership-in-chief, than this unfortunate preacher. It was with delight that the town heard of his probable in- dictment in that character; and this rhyme was at once concocted for the newspapers, —

' The best man next to Jupiter "Was put to death by Hugh Peter.'

In the House itself the notion that Peters had struck the blow was too ludicrous for serious belief; but it seems to have occurred to them that the rhyme, if not true in the literal sense, might be construed in another, and that, in any case

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE COMMONS. 33
the arrest of the notorious parson would be universally satis- factory. Really, as far as one can see, the order for the arrest of Peters, at this stage at least, came about by the accident of Lilly's babble in the Committee.

On the same 7th of June on which there were the five additional exceptions for life and the order for the arrest of Joyce and Peters there were two other incidents in the history of the Act of Indemnity. One was the completion of a resolution by the Commons in these words : " Resolved " and declared by the Commons in Parliament assembled " that they do by this their public act, for and in behalf of " themselves and every one of them, and of all the Commons " of England, of what quality or degree soever they be, — ex- " cepting only as is, or shall hereafter be, excepted by this " Parliament in an Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity, " and Oblivion, now under consideration, — lay hold upon his " Majesty's free and general Pardon, in his late gracious " Letters and Declaration granted, tendered, or expressed." The other was the issue of a Proclamation by the King, recommended by the two Houses, and dated June 6, requiring all the surviving Regicide Judges not already in custody, forty in number, with Cook, Broughton, and Phelps, to sur- render themselves within fourteen days to the Speaker of the Lords, the Speaker of the Commons, the Lord Mayor of London, or some Sheriff, " under pain of being excepted from any pardon or indemnity for their respective lives and estates." Both these incidents might bear a merciful construction. By the first the House had, with the exception we have put in italics, taken the whole nation under its wing, many of

VOL. VI. D

34 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
its own culpable members included, assuring them that they were safe. The other might be interpreted as a distinct pledge by the King that those of the Regicides that should surrender in terms of the Proclamation would fare the better for their confidence in his clemency.

Still, in that phrase of the Commons which we have put in italics, a vast deal was left dubious. It left several questions open. In the first place, what was to be the fate of the thirty-seven Regicide Judges still living, over and above the seven that had been selected capitally, and what was to be the posthumous dealing with the nineteen dead, over and above the four it had been decided to attaint in chief? In the second place, were any others not yet named to be classed especially as Regicides and dealt with as such? As the House had marked its determination to seek its chief victims from among those immediately concerned in any way with the King's death, and had consequently doomed Cook, Broughton, Dendy, and the two executioners, if they could be found out, to the same gibbet with the seven selected Regicide Judges themselves, might they not now enlarge their definition of the Regicides by bringing in some of those of the Judges who, though not present at the actual sentence, had taken some active previous part in the Trial, and also some others who had officiated at the Trial, though not as Judges? If so, how many more were to be so counted as Regicides? Then, apart altogether from the fate of those implicated in the one crime of the regicide, there was the farther question of the selection of victims from the community at large, on account of the notoriety of their actings, whether civil or military, through the time of the Republic, the Protectorate, and the Anarchy. There could be no general security till that question also was decided.

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE COMMONS. 35
On the 8th and 9th of June there was some farther light in the Commons on all these questions. On the first of those days, " a question being propounded, That the number of " twenty and no more (other than those that are already ex- " cepted, or sat as Judges upon the late King's Majesty) " shall be excepted out of the Act of General Pardon and " Oblivion, for and in respect only of such pains, penalties, " and forfeitures, not extending to life, as shall be thought " fit to be inflicted on them by another Act, intended to be " hereafter passed for that purpose," there were two divisions. On the previous question, " whether the question should be put? " there were 160 Yeas against 131 Noes ; and, the ques- tion itself having been put, there were 153 Yeas against 135 Noes. In other words, it was carried, though not by a large majority, that from the general community, apart from the Regicides, the number of victims to be selected should be limited to Twenty, and the punishments of these should not extend to death. But, next day, it became evident that, as regarded the Regicides still to be designated, the House was in a mood of severity. On a report from Prynne, who had been in his element in a committee for studying all the records of the King's Trial, it was found that eleven of the King's Judges, in addition to the sixty-seven who had been present at the pronouncing of the sentence, had taken such a part in the trial by sitting in the Court once, twice, or oftener, that it would be a farce not to include them among the Regicides. The eleven, here arranged alphabetically, were these : —


 * James Challoner : present at three sittings of the Court continuously, though not after Jan. 22.
 * Thomas Challoner : present at six sittings, including that of the 26th Jan., where the sentence was agreed to, and present also on the actual sentence-day, though not at the moment ; also a signer of the death-warrant.
 * John Dove : at one sitting only, but it was that at which the sentence was agreed on.
 * John Fry (dead) : six sittings continuously, to that of Jan. 25, at which the sentence was rough-drafted.
 * Sir James Harrington : twice present.

36 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME
Robert Wallop : three sittings, of which that of Jan. 23 was the last.
 * Francis Lassels : three times present continuously, but not after Jan. 22, — i.e. same as James Challoner.
 * Thomas Lister : one sitting only, and that the first.
 * Sir Henry Mildmay: four sittings continuously, including those at which the sentence was rough-drafted and finally agreed on.
 * William, Lord Monson : five sittings, including that of agreement on the sentence.
 * Sir Gilbert Pickering : three sittings, but not after Jan. 23.

Besides the fifty-six Regicide Judges, thirty-seven of them living, that had been left in suspense out of the total of sixty- seven already reckoned, there were now, therefore, these eleven, of whom ten were alive, to be treated as also Regicides. Then and there, in a series of Resolutions, the House disposed of all of both sets. In one Resolution, fifty-two out of the former fifty-six, including thirty-four of those living and eighteen of those dead, were named together for exception from the Indemnity in respect of all pains and penalties, not capital, that it might be thought right to inflict upon them by another Act. The four thus left out were Lord Grey of Groby, among the dead, and John Hutchinson, Adrian Scroope, and Matthew Tomlinson, among the living. Influence was being exerted for the family of Lord Grey of Groby, and it was resolved not to except him " as to his own estate," i. e. to leave his family in possession of what property had been really his. Hutchinson, who was a member of the House, had been expressing his repentance, and had won sympathy; and, while it was resolved to expel him from the House, and also to declare him incapable of bearing any office of trust in future, there was a separate resolution that, " in respect of his signal repentance," he should be subject to no fine, and no forfeiture out of any part of his estate " not pur- chased from, or belonging to, the public." Adrian Scroope had sent in a humble petition to the House, in consideration of which it was resolved that, by " paying a year's rent of his lands in lieu of a fine," he should be exempt from farther fine or loss of estate. Tomlinson, for recent good conduct, had been virtually condoned since the 17th of May, when the

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE COMMONS. 37
Commons omitted him singly from the list of Regicides to be apprehended and the Lords concurred. — But what of the new eleven ferreted out by Prynne, to be added to the former list ? By separate resolutions, eight of these were at once put in the same class with the fifty-two excepted in every respect not capital. These were James Challoner, Thomas Challoner, Fry (dead), Harrington, Lister, Mildmay, Lord Monson, and Pickering. The remaining three were treated differently. The case of Dove, on his humble petition, was referred to a committee ; Lassels, who was a member of the House, was expelled and declared incapable of any public trust, but was admitted, by a majority of votes, to the benefit of the General Pardon on payment of a fine of one year's value of his estate ; and Wallop, also a member of the House, was required to appear at next sitting. — The same oppor- tunity was taken of disposing of the case of John Phelps, the other clerk of the Court at the King's trial. Though he had escaped being conjoined with his fellow-clerk Broughton in exception for life, it was voted now that he should be among those amenable to any penalty short of death.

On Monday the 11th of June Wallop appeared in the House according to order. There was no such favour for him as for his fellow-members Hutchinson and Lassels. Expelled the House and declared incapable of public trust, he was reserved moreover for all penalties that might be thought fit, short of death, and taken at once into custody 2. The state of matters in the House of Commons, as regarded the Regi- cides, then stood thus : — Eighty-four persons in all, living or dead, had been classed as Regicides : to wit, the sixty-seven judges who had been present at the pronouncing of the sen- tence and the eleven who had taken a culpable part in the trial, with four of the court-officers at the trial, and the two executioners, whoever they were. Of these eighty-four the votes had been that four, who were dead, should be pun- ished by the most absolute posthumous attainder, twelve of the living should be punished capitally (seven of the King's

38 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
judges, three of the court- officers at the Trial, and the two executioners), sixty-two should stand excepted in every respect not capital (viz. forty-two of the judges yet living, with nineteen of the dead judges and one of the court- officers), one should have his case farther considered (Dove), three should be admitted to the benefit of the Pardon on cer- tain conditions (Hutchinson, Lassels, and Scroope), and two unconditionally (Grey of Groby among the dead, and Matthew Tomlinson among the living). For the forty-two of the living judges excepted from death-punishment much might depend, however, on their alacrity in surrendering themselves according to the King's Proclamation. As that had been dated June 6, the term of fourteen days would expire on the 20th, or, with allowance of a day for the publication, on the 21st. For those who did not surrender it might go worse than had been arranged.

The Regicides having been disposed of, it remained for the House to select the twenty out of the general community deserving to be regarded as prime, or all but prime, culprits, and so to be conjoined with the main mass of the Regicides by being also excepted from the Pardon in all particulars not extending to life. This difficult and intricate business, begun on Monday the 11th of June, was pursued daily till Monday the 18th, as follows : — On the 11th, ex-Speaker Lenthall and Sir Henry Vane were put among the Twenty. There w T as a letter from Monk in Lenth all's behalf; but it went against Lenthall notwithstanding, by 215 votes to 126, Clarges one of the tellers in his favour. There was no division in Vane's case. — On the 12th, a William Burton, better known then than now, was made one of the Twenty. Sergeant Richard Keble was named for another, but the question was not put. — On the 13th, Oliver St. John, Alderman John Ireton, Sir Arthur Hasilrig, Colonel William Sydenham, and Colonel John Desborough, were added to the list, the only division being in the case of Sydenham, who lost by 147 to 106.— On the 14th, Bulstrode Whitlocke, who had presented a humble petition, went through the ordeal and came off by a vote of 175 to 134 not to put the question. After all, this mode of

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE COMMONS. 39
escape might amount only to a respite. Daniel Axtell was at the same time unanimously made one of the Twenty, in recollection perhaps that he had been with Lambert in the last rising for the Republic, but also of the fact that he had commanded the guard in Westminster Hall during the King's trial. — On the 15th, William Butler, one of Cromwell's major- generals, was named ; but such interest had been made for him that, after two divisions, he escaped by 160 to 131. A John Blackwell of Mortlake, the reasons for whose unpopu- larity might need research, was added without hesitation. — On the 16th, Lambert and Alderman Christopher Pack were unanimously added, as was also Sergeant Keble now, on second thoughts ; while Sir William Roberts escaped by one vote only. It was now Saturday, and the House in one week had settled on only thirteen of the proposed Twenty. — On that same Saturday, in evidence of the fact that, in look- ing about for a suitable Twenty, the demerits of various stray persons besides those that have been named had come duly to mind, and had been much discoursed of and canvassed, there is a memorable entry in the journals. The last piece of business that day, it appears, consisted of two consecutive orders and a resolution appended. The orders were (1) that his Majesty should be moved to issue his Royal Proclamation for the calling in of all copies of John Milton's Eikonoklastes and his first Pro Popdo Auglicano Defensio, and of all copies of John Goodwin's Obstmctors of Justice, with other books of which the House would prepare a schedule, in order that all might be burnt by the hands of the hangman, and (2) that Mr. Attorney-General Geoffrey Palmer should be instructed to institute immediate proceedings, by indictment or information, against Milton and Goodwin for their defences of the Regicide in the books named. The appended Resolution was that Milton and Goodwin should be forthwith taken into custody by the Sergeant at Arms. In relation to Milton there will be subsequent investigation of this incident. We note it now in its proper chronological place as an occurrence in the week of deliberations by the Commons concerning the twenty persons in the general community that were to be excepted from the

40 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
Pardon in all respects save that of life. It happened precisely at that point of their deliberations when they had chosen thirteen of the Twenty and had seven more to choose. In their ranging for suitable persons, one sees, they had naturally thought of the two most conspicuous literary defenders of the Regicide. — Hyde and the Privy Council were growing im- patient with the slow course of the Indemnity Bill in the Commons; and on Monday the 18th Mr. Secretary Morrice delivered a written message to the House from his Majesty. In very gracious terms, it urged expedition with the Indem- nity Bill. That day, accordingly, the House completed the Twenty by adding Charles Fleetwood, John Pyne (called " The King of the West " and described by his enemies as " a great tyrant" there), Richard Dean (not the Regicide of that name, but another, represented as " an Anabaptist "), Major Richard Creed (with Lambert in the last rising), Philip Nye (the famous Independent preacher), John Goodwin (now separated from Milton and taken by himself), and Ralph Cobbet (with Lambert in his last rising, but remembered also as the officer who had brought Charles I. from the Isle of Wight). The nominations appear in the Journals as all unanimous, except Creed's, in favour of whom there were two divisions without success. There is evidence, however, both in the Journals and elsewhere, that this day's debate was very vehement, and that, as only seven of the Twenty then remained to be chosen, there was a competition for their nominations correspondingly keen. There had even been motions by Prynne, Lord Falkland, and others, for debarring members of Republican or Oliverian connexions from the vote on such an occasion ; and, when that idea was set aside, there were various proposals of names, with arguments for and against each. Prynne was the most ruth- less and reckless in his nominations. It was he that proposed Fleetwood, and secured him in spite of some defence by military members. He actually proposed Richard Cromwell, but was not seconded in that instance ; he then proposed Major Salway, but only to be met by arguments for Salway which, with a petition from himself, saved him. Philip Jones was similarly saved, by his own petition and the intervention

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE COMMONS. 41
of Mr. Annesley and Mr. Finch. Bulstrode Whitlocke had again a narrow escape. Prynne was eager for including him after all, and was supported by some ; but the defences of Attorney-General Palmer, Sir Geoge Booth, and others, brought Whitlocke off a second time. Richard Dean was nominated by Clarges ; John Goodwin by Prynne : Nye by Sir William Wylde, who denounced him as a fellow that had enriched himself hugely in the troubles, while others attacked his conduct as one of Oliver's triers of church-pre- sentees, and one speaker insisted that he ought to be made a special example by being excepted capitally. Judge Thorpe was proposed in competition with Cobbet for the last place, and, to make room for him, it was suggested that Cobbet also might be reserved for trial for his life ; but, the House not rising to this pitch of severity in Cobbet's case either, Thorpe had to be dropped. — The notion, however, of excepting some capitally, over and above the twenty reserved for any penalties short of the capital one, had struck the House as convenient. They were at the end of their Twenty, and yet there were several left over that they longed to include somehow. "Twenty and no more" had been the wording of their original Reso- lution of June 8, in prospect of the only exceptions they were to make from the Bill of Indemnity in addition to the direct mass of the positive Regicides. Without heeding that, they ended their sitting of Monday, June 18, their Journals tell us, as follows: — "The information of William " Young, of Piellcrochun in the County of Pembroke, Doctor " of Physic, concerning Hugh Peters, was read : Resolved, " That William Hewlet be excepted out of the Act of General " Pardon and Oblivion ; Resolved, That Hugh Peters be ex- " cepted out of the Act of General Pardon and Oblivion." In the Hewlet here mentioned, an old Parliamentary soldier who had risen to captain's rank, the House thought they had found one of the King's executioners at last ; and, if they were riffht, their resolution in his case was onlv a confirma- tion of a previous resolution by inserting his name in one of two blank spaces there. But Peters was clearly a supernu- merary. He was not one of the outstanding Regicide Judges

42 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
that alone remained to be added in the class of the positive Regicides when the House passed their resolution for twenty and no more beyond that class; nor had he been included in that Twenty ; nor was there any relic now in the House of the absurd belief, which might have justified his conjunction with Hewlet, that he had been one of the two executioners. What then? Was not Dr. Young's information from Pembroke- shire to the effect that Peters, when dangerously ill at Plymouth on his return from Ireland, and attended by Dr. Young, had told him that " he and Oliver Cromwell, when " the said Cromwell went from the Parliament unto the Army " in 1648, did, in a field on this side Ware, none being present " besides, contrive and design the death of his late Majesty, with " the change of the Government ?" What evidence could be clearer ? Could not one see the very field, and Cromwell and Peters talking in the middle of it, and not a soul else on the horizon ? In such an extraordinary case why should there not be a twenty-first man ? Why should not Peters, who was yet skulking somewhere, but sure to be captured, be con- joined with Hewlet, and left to the law among the capital exceptions? That, at any rate, was what the House did. His real crime was that he was Hugh Peters.

One would have expected Thurloe to be among the twenty excepted. He had been under arrest, by order of the Commons, on a special charge of high treason, since May 15, when a small committee of the House, including Annesley and Prynne, had been appointed for his examination. He had been found very reasonable, and willing to be of any use to the King's government that would not be dishonourable to himself. The understanding, therefore, had come to be that he should suffer no very severe punishment. Still the Commons had inserted into the Bill a special clause for putting some mark of disgrace upon him.

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE COMMONS. 43
For yet another three weeks the Bill dragged through the Commons. There had to be adjustments of the wording to bring it into coherence ; and amendments and provisos still suggested themselves. Thus, after reconsideration of various particulars on June 19, 22,27, 29, and 30, and when the Bill was in the stage of the third reading, there was an exciting and com- plex debate, from July 2 to July 7, over certain provisos moved by one member or another in order to make the Bill even then more stringent and revengeful. One unknown member had put in a proviso for disabling all who had sat in high courts of justice since 1648, all Cromwell's major-generals and decimators, and all who had petitioned against the King. Prynne strenuously supported the proviso, and others were for extending it so as to include all who had sat in Parliament in 1647 and 1648, or had been active in any way through the Protectorate ; and it required all the exertions of Annesley, Finch, Clarges, and Matthew Hale, to quench this "hand- grenado thrown into a barrel of gunpowder." Then there was a proviso for causing all in office through the Protectorate to refund their salaries, — a worse hand-grenado than the last, inasmuch as the punishment it threatened would have been worse to many than inclusion among the Twenty. Prynne, of course, spoke for the proviso, which was opposed and scouted by Sir Thomas Widdrington, Clarges, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and others, and set aside by 180 votes to 151. Yet other provisos, tending to the disablement of large classes of persons, were set aside by the steadiness of the moderate members ; and, though minor alterations and additions were agreed to, the Bill emerged at last on the 9th of July, ready for one other important proviso, the addition of which had been rendered necessary by circumstances. — Before the ex- piring of the fourteen days allowed by the King's Proclamation, twenty of the Regicides till then at large had been reported to the House as having surrendered themselves, in this order, — Heveningham, Wayte, Mayne, Peter Temple, Isaac Penning- ton, Alderman Tichbourne, George Fleetwood, James Temple, Sir John Bourchier, Owen Rowe, Robert Lilburne, Scroope, Garland, Harvey, Henry Smith, Henry Marten, Sir Hardress

44. LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
Waller, Lord Monson, Ludlow, and Carew. Wogan had also surrendered, though after the proper date ; Downes, Milling- ton, and Potter are heard of as having surrendered ; and Dixwell had announced himself as ill, but as intending to surrender. Only eleven of the Regicide Judges apart from the seven capitally prejudged seem now to have remained at large. It was deemed proper that these should suffer for their contumacy; and, accordingly, almost the last proviso added to the Bill on the 9th of July was one removing them from the second class of the excepted, and putting them into the first or extreme class, who were to be excepted for life as well as for estate. They were Daniel Blagrave, William Cawley, Miles Corbet, John Dixwell, William Goffe, John Hewson, Sir Michael Livesey, Nicholas Love, John Okey, Valentine Walton, and Edward Whalley. It would seem that Dixwell had changed his mind, and that Wogan's late surrender had been accepted. — All was now complete ; and on the 11th of July the Bill passed the Commons, and was sent up to the Lords.

The Lords took their own time over the Bill, examining it in gross and in detail from their own point of view, which was by no means that of the Commons. No sooner had it been brought up by Mr. Annesley than there was a request to the Commons for all the documents concerning the King's Trial ; and, on the first reading of the Bill, on July 12, there was a sign already that at least one of the " twenty " of the Commons would fare worse in the Lords. Axtell had been talking imprudently in his prison, saying that " Monk's reign would be short," that the King and Council " would involve the kingdom again in blood," &c. ; and it happened that, just as Axtell's good friend reported this to the Council, there came also a letter from Ireland, written by an old servant of Charles I, expressing surprise that Axtell was to escape with life, when the writer could testify that he had heard him incite his soldiers in Westminster Hall to cry out

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE LORDS. 45
for the King's execution. The letter was sent by the King- to the Lords, and there read with effect. But it was after the second reading- of the Bill, on July 17, when the Lords went into Committee of the whole House upon it, with Lord Roberts for chairman, that the procedure became practical. On report from the Committee by Roberts on the 20th, it was agreed that all the Regicide Judges, sentencers or signers of the death-warrant, should be excepted from the Indemnity ; and on the 23rd the House had the two fatal lists before them, — that of the sixty-seven sentencers and that of the fifty- nine signers. Then, to make their meaning more exact, they ordered that Colonel Hutchinson's name should be struck out of both documents, agreeing with the Commons that he de- served pardon ; and, Ingoldsby's name also being regarded as deleted from the warrant, there remained sixty-six sentencers, of whom fifty-six were also signers, while Thomas Challoner, as the only signer who had not been a sentencer, was put in a corner of the list of sentencers as virtually one of them. Thus, in the reckoning of the Lords, there were sixty-seven Regicide Judges ; regarding whom they could come to no other conclusion than that they should be " absolutely ex- cepted " from the Bill, whereas the Commons had put only twenty-two in that extreme category, viz. the four dead and seven living originally named, and the eleven afterwards added because they had persisted in absconding after the King's Proclamation. In the afternoon sitting of the same day, however, it was agreed by the Lords to spare Tomlinson, though not without a protest by the Earl of Lichfield and Lord Maynard. This reduced the number to sixty-six. The lists before the House hitherto were the most authentic that could be had ; but, on intimation that Colonel Francis Hacker, who was a prisoner in the Tower, could produce the original death-warrant, on which he had acted on the dreadful day, with all the names attached in autograph, it was ordered that Hacker should be examined on the subject. On the 24th it was reported that Hacker said the parchment was still extant, but that it was in the country, and could only be obtained by send- ing his wife to fetch it ; also that, on being questioned who the

46 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
actual executioner was, he said he believed him to have been of the rank of a major in the army, but did not know his name. The same day John Rushworth was brought into the House and interrogated, but could give no information to the point. — Bv this time the feeling- in the Commons was that the Lords were very dilatory. It had been hoped that they would accept the Bill very much as the Commons had sent it up ; but their Lordships were inquiring into all afresh, as if bent on shaping an entirely new Bill of their own. There had been messages from the Commons urging expedition ; and on July 27 his Majesty himself appeared among the Lords and made an earnest speech to the same effect. He reminded their Lordships of his large promises of pardon in his Declara- tion from Breda, quoting the entire paragraph textually ; he hinted that, but for those promises and the very breadth of the wording of them, neither he nor their lordships might have been where they now were ; and he exhorted them to pass the Indem- nity Act ' ' without other exceptions than of those who were immediately guilty of that murder." Their Lordships thanked his Majesty, and moved that he would be pleased to cause his speech to be printed ; but, having thus given him the benefit of whatever popularity might accrue from his inter- ference, they persevered in their own course. — Hacker's poor wife had brought the terrible parchment from the country ; Hacker had delivered it to the Lieutenant of the Tower ; and on the 31st it was in their Lordships' House, where it has remained ever since. On that day and the next there was reconsideration of the case of Matthew Tomlinson. His name was not on the death-warrant ; but, as one of the sentencers, and as the colonel in chief charge of the King between his sentence and his execution, ought he not after all to be included among the Regicides ? On evidence pro- duced that the dead King himself had spoken of Tomlinson as one who had treated him with civility and respect in his last hours, it was finally agreed to show him favour and to omit his name from the list of sentencers. This was on Aug. 1 ; on which day also the House resolved, on report from Roberts, that Hacker, Vane, Hasilrig, Lambert, and

THE INDEMNITY BILL IN THE LORDS. 47
Axtell, should be " wholly excepted " from the Bill, thus adding Hacker and Axtell to the list of the unpardonable Regicides, and conjoining with them three general culprits whom the Commons had placed among the twenty reserved for penalties not capital. As Axtell also had been put among these twenty by the Commons, there remained but sixteen of that body whom the Lords agreed to consider not ab- solutely unpardonable. These the Lords proposed to deal with in a different way from that which the Commons had designed. On August 2 it was resolved, on report from Roberts, " That " if any of these persons following, — viz. William Lenthall, " esquire, William Burton, Oliver St. John, Colonel William " Sydenham, Colonel John Desborough, John Blackwell of " Mortlake, Christopher Pack, alderman, Richard Keble, " Charles Fleetwood, John Pyne, Richard Dean, Major " Richard Creed, Philip Nye, clerk, John Goodwin, clerk, " Colonel Ralph Cobbet, and John Ireton, alderman, — shall " hereafter accept or exercise any office, ecclesiastical, civil, or " military, or any other public employment, within this " Kingdom, Dominion of Wales, Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, " or Ireland, then such person or persons as do so accept or " execute as aforesaid shall, to all intents and purposes of law, " stand as if he or they had been totally excepted by name in " this Act." Whether intentionally or not, this brand of perpetual incapacitation upon the sixteen might prove a less severe punishment for some of them than might have been awarded if they had been reserved, as the Commons had proposed, for penalties, not extending to death, to be fixed by a future Act. On Aug. 4 and Aug. 6, at all events, there were two slight relapses into mercy ; for it was agreed, on consideration of the expressed repentance of Thomas Lister and Sir Gilbert Pickering, and of the fact that their part in the King's Trial had been small, to cancel their names from the list of Regicides and give them the full benefit of the Act. But on the 7th the House proposed four additional capital victims, in a second (?) John Blackwell, a Colonel Croxton, a William Wyberd, and an Edmund Waring, selected, by private agreement, from among those who had

48 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
sat in the courts that had sent the Duke of Hamilton, the Earl of Holland, and Lord Capel to the scaffold in March 1648-9, and the Earl of Derby in October 1651. On the 8th there was a resolution freeing- Thurloe from penalties altogether ; but on the 9th there was exactly such a final sweep of indiscriminate vindictiveness as Prynne and others had demanded in the Commons when the Bill was leaving that House. It took the form of a resolution " That all " those that sat in any High Court of Justice shall be made "uncapable of bearing any office, ecclesiastical, civil, or "military, within the Kingdom of England, and Dominion " of Wales, and that all such persons that have sat in any " High Court of Justice shall be liable to such further " penalties as by any future Act of Parliament shall be in- " fiictecl upon them, not extending to life." It was intended, though not here expressed, that the resolution (which, it will be observed, brought back some of the sixteen for penalties besides incapacitation) should not apply to Ingoldsby, Tomlinson, Lister, or Pickering, who had already been con- doned otherwise. There were yet some concluding adjust- ments ; but on the 10th the Bill, as amended, passed the Lords, and went back to the Commons for their con- currence.

There was a debate of two days in the Commons over the amendments of the Lords (Aug. 11 and 13). Some of the amendments were accepted, — e. g. that condoning Thurloe entirely, that removing Lister and Pickering from the list of excepted Regicides, and that adding Hacker to their number. A more difficult question was that of adopting the proposal of the Lords to brand sixteen of the " twenty " with perpetual incapacitation, instead of reserving them to be dealt with in a special Act inflicting other penalties. By a division of 197 to 102 it was agreed, however, to concur with the Lords here too, though adding Lister and Pickering to the sixteen. — But on the question of transferring the remaining four of the twenty, viz. Vane, Hasilrig, Lambert, and Axtell, to the list of capital

DIFFERENCES ON THE INDEMNITY BILL. 49
exceptions, the Commons stood firm. They negatived that amendment, adhering- to their own more merciful intention for the four. No wonder, either, that there was a resolute opposition to that amendment of the Lords which decreed capital penalties to all the surviving- King's Judges who had been sentencers or signers of the death-warrant, except the three specially condoned. It proposed the capital condem- nation of forty-three in this class, whereas the Commons had been content with seven originally, though they had at the last added eleven more for their contumacy in absconding after the King's Proclamation. Some were for concurring with the Lords ; but others pleaded the honour of the House for the lives of all it had already voted to save, and a large majority, including- Annesley and Sir George Booth, argued that the honour of the King himself, as well as that of the House, was pledged for at least the lives of all the sentencers and signers of the death-warrant who had come in on the Proclamation. These, it would seem, were reckoned now as only twenty-one, — Carew, Downes, George Fleetwood, Garland* Harvey, Heveningham, Robert Lilburne, Henry Marten, Mayne, Millington, Pennington, Potter, Rowe, Adrian Scroope, Smith, James Temple, Peter Temple, Tichbourne, Sir Hardress Waller, Wayte, and Wogan. Ludlow, who had surrendered, had again absconded ; and old Sir John Bourchier had died since his surrender, testifying to the Regicide, it is said, on his deathbed, " It was a just act, and all good men will own it." For the twenty-one named the House resolved to adhere to their previous votes, repeating expressly their stipulation that Adrian Scroope's penalty should be limited to a year's value of his lands. The proposal of the Lords for four additional capital victims from among the judges of the Royalist peers was negatived with some indignation. Was it seemly that the blood of the mere Peerage should be mingled at such a moment with that of the King? Had the Commons asked for victims on account of misdeeds or insults to their House ? Finally, on the complex proviso of the Lords for incapacitating all that had sat in any High Court of Justice through the interregnum, and also for inflicting

VOL. VI. E

50 LIFE OP MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
penalties on such by a separate Act, the Commons also dis- agreed with the Lords. They negatived the second clause of the proviso, reserving such culprits for penalties ; and they voted to accept the first clause if worded as follows : " Provided "likewise that all those who, since the 5th of December, 1648, " did give sentence of death upon any person or persons in " any of the late illegal and tyrannical high courts of "justice in England or Wales, or signed the warrant for the " execution of any person there condemned (except Colonel " Richard Ingoldsby and Colonel Matthew Tomlinson) shall "be, and are hereby, made incapable of bearing any office, "ecclesiastical, civil, or military, within the kingdom of " England or dominion of Wales, or of serving as a member "in any Parliament after the 1st day of September, 1660." The Bill then went back to the Lords.

There had to be four Conferences between the two Houses, — Aug 17, 21, 22, 25, — with speeches and reasonings at each, besides debates in the Houses themselves in the intervals, before they could come to agreement. The Lords gave up their demand for four additional capital victims for the slain peers, and they accepted also the modification of the pro- viso for those who had sat in high courts of justice ; but they stood to their determination to make Vane, Hasilrig, Lambert, and Axtell capital exceptions, and also to their determination to deal capitally with all the Regicides on their list (the sentencers and signers), except Ingoldsby, Tomlinson, and Hutchinson. On these two questions there was a keen controversy. — That of the four culprits on general grounds was first decided. It was decided on the 24th of August, and chiefly in consequence of a suggestion thrown out by Chancellor Hyde, who had managed the third conference for the Lords and reasoned in defence of their severe policy with all his lawyerly skill. Vane, Hasilrig, Lambert, and Axtell, he had contended, were " persons of a mischievous activity," such criminals that the Lords could not consent to record a punish- ment against them less than capital ; but their lordships would

CONFERENCES ON THE INDEMNITY BILL. 51
join with the Commons, if they pleased, in a petition to his Majesty that, if they should be capitally condemned, he would spare their lives. This was far from satisfactory to many in the Commons, but it had such an effect that they debated on the four severally. Axtell was easily given up, as a kind of assessor of the Regicide. There was a fight for Vane, in which Holies took a brave part ; but Vane was given up too. For Lambert the chief speaker was Sir George Booth, the very man whose Cheshire insurrection for the King had been crushed by Lambert ; but Lambert too was given up. Finally came Hasilrig's turn. There was more speaking for and against in his case than in any of the others. On one side were Mr. Tomkins, Lord Ancram, and Sir Roger Palmer, reminding the House of his evil actings and his evil speak- ings. Was it not he that had stirred up the vote for no more addresses to the King in the Isle of Wight, saying to the Speaker, " Sir, shall we believe that man of no faith ?" Had he not said to Sir Roger Palmer not long ago that, if Charles II. did come in, he knew the consequence for himself " It was but three wry mouths and a swing ? " Let him have what he had expected ! On the other hand, Annesley, Ashley Cooper. Colonel Birch, and others, spoke for him, adducing also Monk's opinion in his favour. When it went to a divi- sion, there were 141 votes for Hasilrig to 116 against him ; and so he was saved. There had been no division in the cases of Vane and Lambert ; but it was agreed, on a motion by Mr. Pierrepoint, going beyond Hyde's suggestion, to petition the King that they should not be tried for their lives. No one had anything more to say for Daniel Axtell. — Only the question of the Regicides now remained. Not all Hyde's special pleading could convince the Commons that the King was not bound in honour to make a difference in favour of those who had come in on his Proclamation. Otherwise they had been " snared " ; all argument to the contrary by Ilvde or anyone else was but ingenious sophistication. But Prynne and a few more were for agreeing entirely with the Lords, — Prynne, in especial, standing up, with his obdurate ghastly face and the cowl over the spots where his ears had been, and

JE 3

52 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
speaking for agreement. He had been for excepting- all at first, he said, and was so still ; such miscreants ought not to live ; by sparing these men would not the nation itself incur the guilt of the Regicide ? The wave of generous feeling overwhelmed Prynne, if it could not silence him; and Hyde had to be ready with another of his " expedients." It was propounded at the fourth conference, and was to the effect that the Commons should agree with the Lords as to all the Regicides, so that all might be tried for their lives, but that there should be a special clause in favour of stopping execu- tion of the capital sentence in the eases of those who had " rendered themselves upon an opinion that they might safely do so." He professed not to know their names, and so had left a blank for them in the clause as it had been drafted. That same day (Aug. 25), the Lords having acquiesced in the decision of the Commons respecting Hasilrig and in their other desires, the Commons reluctantly agreed to Hyde's com- promise about the Regicides, appointing a committee to ascertain which of them were entitled to the benefit of the saving clause, and at the same time to see to the verbal coherence of the whole Bill. This committee reported on the 28th. Then the House, transferring Sir John Bourchier to the list of the dead Regicides, and also distinctly reiterating their vote that the dead Lord Grey of Groby's name should be omitted from the Bill, so that his representatives might not suffer in property, agreed, on the other hand, to recant one of their own former resolutions of mercy. Though they had voted for condoning Adrian Scroope, so far as to take him out of the list of exceptions in the Bill altogether, and allow him to escape with a mulct of one year's value of his estates, there had been such reports to them of private dis- courses of Scroope since the King's return, and such remon- strances with them on their extraordinary charity to him, that they now flung him overboard. They would not even return him among those who had surrendered themselves, but, by omitting him, reduced the number of such to exactly twenty. Even these, it seems, were too many for the Lords ; for, when the Bill was carried up to them that day by sergeant

THE INDEMNITY BILL PASSED. 53
Glynne, in the name of the Commons, as now complete, they requested yet another conference. At this conference they objected to two of the names. They objected to including Sir Hardress Waller among- those to have the benefit of the saving clause, on the ground that he had " absented himself since his coming in." On explanation, they accepted him ; but in the case of another of the twenty they were obstinate. This was John Carew. It was admitted that he had surren- dered himself; but it was pointed out that he had done so before the Proclamation had gone out. The Commons could only return to their own House to vote on the subject. For insisting that Mr. Carew should have the benefit of the saving clause in his peculiarly hard circumstances there were 70 votes, against 80 for leaving him to his fate. This concluded the whole business. It was still the 28th of August, and Mr. Holies was instructed to carry the Bill up again to the Lords as absolutely finished this time, and to request their Lordships to move his Majesty to come to their House and give his assent to it next day. Mr. Holies brought back word immediately that it should be so.

On Wednesday the 29th of August his Majesty did appear in the Lords, and, the Commons having been summoned, did give his assent to the Bill, and then address the two Houses in a speech concerning it and other matters. From that day, all not excepted in the "Act of Free and General Pardon, Indemnity, and Oblivion " might consider themselves safe and might breathe freely. It was even expressly provided in the Act that there should be penalties on any sheriff or other officer that should molest any person not excepted in the Act for anything pardoned or discharged in it, that for three years there should be penalties on the use of any words of reproach or disgrace " tending to revive the memory of the late differences," and that the construction of the Act in any dubious case should always be to the advantage of the accused. We may now, therefore, recapitulate the exceptions as ex- pressed in the Act itself : —

54 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTOEY OF HIS TIME.
I. Four Dead Regicides excepted in chief : — These were Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, John Bradshaw, and Thomas Pride, now enumerated in that order.

II. Twenty more Dead Regicides excepted : — They were Francis Allen, John Alured, Thomas Andrews, John Blakiston, Sir John Bourchier, Sir William Constahle, Bart., Sir John Dan- vers, Richard Dean, Humphrey Edwards, Isaac Ewer,' John Fry, Thomas Hammond, Thomas Horton, Sir Thomas Mauleverer, Bart., John Moore, Sir Gregory Norton, Bart., Peregrine Pelham, William Purefoy, Anthony Stapley, and John Venn. The " lands, tene- ments, goods, chattels, rights, trusts, and other the hereditaments " of these were to be subject to such " pains, penalties, and for- feitures " as should be expressed and declared by another Act of Parliament, which should also confirm the Attainder of the four already named.

III. Thirty Living Regicides, with two unnamed, abso- lutely excepted : — These comprised twenty-two of the Regicide Judges, — to wit, John Barkstead, Daniel Blagrave, John Carew, William Cawley, Thomas Challoner, Gregory Clements, Cornelius Holland, JVIiles Corbet, John Dixwell, William Goffe, Thomas Harrison, John Hewson, John Jones, John Lisle, Sir Michael Livesey, Nicholas Love, Edmund Ludlow, John Okey, William Say, Thomas Scott, Adrian Scroope, Valentine Walton, and Edward Whalley ; together with Daniel Axtell, Francis Hacker, John Cook, Andrew Broughton, Edward Dendy, William Hewlet, Hugh Peters, and those two persons " who, being disguised by frocks and visors, did appear upon the scaffold erected before Whitehall." Hewlet and Peters, whether on their own account, or to stand for the two executioners in default of the real men, were huddled with the Regicides.

IV. Nineteen Living Regicides excepted with a Saving Clause : — They were John Downes, George Fleetwood, Augustine Garland, Edmund Harvey, William Heveningham, Robert Lil- burne, Henry Marten, Simon Mayne, Gilbert Millington, Isaac Pennington, Vincent Potter, Owen Rowe, Henry Smith, James Temple, Peter Temple, Robert Tichbourne, Sir Hardress Waller, Thomas Wayte, and Thomas Wogan. The saving clause ran that, whereas these persons had surrendered on the King's Proclamation of June 6, wherein they had been named, and " do pretend thereby " to some favour, upon some conceived doubtful words in the said " Proclamation," it was part of the Act that, if they or any of them should be " legally attainted for the horrid treason and murther aforesaid," then nevertheless their execution should be "suspended " until his Majesty, by the advice and assent of the Lords and "Commons in Parliament, shall order the execution, by Act of " Parliament to be passed for that purpose."

V. Six more of the Living Regicides excepted, but not capitally : — These were the five judges deemed most culpable,

ABSTRACT OF THE INDEMNITY BILL. 55
for the part they had taken in the trial, though not present at the sentence nor signers of the death-warrant — to wit : James Challoner, Sir James Harrington, Sir Henry Mildmay, Lord Monson, and Robert Wallop, with John Phelps, one of the clerks of the Court. They were " reserved to such pains, penalties, and forfeitures, not extending to life," as might be settled by another Act.

VI. Two Regicides excepted, but for Incapacitation only : — These were John Hutchinson and Francis Lassels, neither of whom was to hold thenceforth any office of trust, civil or military, in the kingdom, and the second of whom, moreover, was to pay to the king " one full year's value of his estate."

VII. Two Non-Regicides wholly excepted : — These were Lambert and Sir Henry Vane. The agreement of the two Houses to petition for their lives was understood, but does not appear in the Act.

VIII. One Non-Begicide excepted, but not capitally : — This was Sir Arthur Hasilrig, reserved for " such pains, penalties, and forfeitui'es, not extending to life," as might be settled by another Act.

IX. Eighteen Persons to be under perpetual brand op Incapacitation: — These were: — among the Republicans and Oli- verians of military note, Charles Fleetwood, John Desborough, William Sydenham, Ralph Cobbet, and Richard Creed ; with ex- Speaker Lenthall, Oliver St. John, Christopher Pack, Alderman John Ireton, William Burton, John Blackwell of Mortlake, Eichard Keble, John Pyne, and Eichard Dean, among civilians, and Thomas Lister and Sir Gilbert Pickering, transferred by grace from the list of Eegicides ; and with Philip Nye and John Goodwin to represent the prime offenders among the Oliverian and Eepublican clergy. If any of them should accept or exercise any office of trust in England, Wales, or Berwick-on-Tweed, he was to forfeit all benefit of the Act, and might suffer capitally.

X. A Definite number more incapacitated by description, but not by name:— These were all persons (Colonel Richard Ingoldsby and Colonel Matthew Tomlinson honourably excepted) by whose sentence or warrant in any pretended High Court of Justice since Dec. 5, 1648, any one had been capitally condemned or executed. They were to be excluded for ever from all public offices and from sitting in Parliament.

XL Miscellaneous Exceptions : — There Avere to be excepted, moreover, all who had committed murders, piracies, or other great crimes, distinctly unconnected with the civil wars or politics; also all who had assisted " in the plotting, contriving, or designing of the great and heinous rebellion of Ireland " ; also all offences com- mitted " by any Jesuit, Seminary, or Romish priest whatsoever," contrary to the statute of Elizabeth against such ; also all menial servants of his Majesty who had sold or betrayed his secrets. Also, though there was to be the most general confirmation of all

56 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
rights of property acquired by purchase, gift, or conveyance, through the troubles, this was not to apply to acquisition of lands of the king or queen, or of the lands of archbishops, bishops, deans, and deans and chapters. This last exception was in accordance with resolutions to which the Parliament had come independently while the Indemnity Bill was in progress. " Because, in the continued " distractions of so many years and so many great revolutions," the King had said in his Breda Declaration, " many grants and pur- " chases of estates have been made to and by many officers, soldiers, " and others, who are now possessed of the same, and who may be " liable to actions at law upon several titles, we are likewise willing " that all such differences, and all things relating to such grants, " sales, and purchases, shall be determined in Parliament." Accord- ingly, a "Bill of Sales "had been introduced into the Commons, which had occasioned stormy discussion (July 11), and was not yet perfected, but the purport of the proceedings in which, so far as they had gone, was that, while all Crown lands were to revert to the Crown without compensation, and arrangements would have to be made by the possessors of Church lands before they could retain them, other properties were to remain undisturbed.

Along- with the great Indemnity Bill, his Majesty gave his assent to five other Bills. One was " An Act for a perpetual Anniversary Thanksgiving- to be observed and kept on the 29th of May," the day of his Majesty's entry into London ; another was " An Act for the Confirmation of Judicial Proceedings," intended to prevent question of rights depending on decisions of law-courts under the late Governments ; a third was " An Act for the restraining the taking of excessive Usury," i.e. for limiting interest on borrowed money to six per cent.; a fourth was a private Act for naturalising two foreigners ; and the fifth was " An Act for the speedy provision of Money for disbanding and paying off the Forces of this Kingdom both by Land and Sea." This last represents the progress that had been made in one department of the greatest question, next to the Indemnity Bill, that had been occupying the Parliament hitherto, the question of Supply and Revenue.

SUPPLY AND REVENUE. 57
It had been resolved to disband the Army and reduce the Navy to a few ships, so as to save a vast cost monthly ; but that could not be done without providing for payment of arrears. It was also intended that, whereas the revenue of the Crown in the time of Charles I. had been about £900,000 a year, about £250,000 of which came from illegal sources, or sources not now available, the present king's revenue should be £200,000 a year, and all valid; but how to carry this intention into effect was no easy financial problem, and all that had been actually voted for Charles since he came in was a subsidy for life of the customs of tonnage and poundage. Meanwhile, for disbanding the Army and Navy, Parliament had reverted to the rough old device of a poll-tax, — every Duke to pay £100, every Marquis £80, every Earl £60, and so down to Esquires at £10 each, and thence again downwards to a shilling from every labouring person over sixteen years, and sixpence from every one under that age, not a pauper. It was an Act embodying that proposal that had now been submitted to his Majesty along with the Indemnity Bill ; and the spirit in which his Majesty, or Hyde for him, received the Act appears from one of the pas- sages in his speech. " For your Poll Bill" he said, " I do " thank you as much as if the money were to come into my " own coffers, and wish with all my heart that it may amount " to as great a sum as you reckon upon. If the work be well " and orderly done to which it is designed, I am sure I shall " be the richer by it in the end ; and, upon my word, if I had " wherewithal, I would myself help you. ... I am so con- " fident of your affections that I will not move you in anything " that relates immediately to myself; and yet I must tell you " I am not richer, — that is, I have not so much money in my " purse as when I came to you. The truth is I have lived " principally ever since upon what I brought with me ; which " was indeed your money, for you sent it to me, and I thank " you for it. The weekly expense of the Navy eats up all " you have given me by the Bill of tonnage and poundage. " Nor have I been able to give my brothers one shilling since " I came into England, nor to keep any table in my house,

58 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
" but what I eat at myself. And that which troubles me " most is to see many of you come to me at Whitehall and " to think that you must go somewhere else to seek your " dinner." If this was written for his Majesty by Hyde, it contrasts oddly with Hyde's own account of the same subject written for posterity. " And thus the King's house," writes Hyde, immediately after describing the formation of the Ministry of which he was the head, " quickly appeared in its " full lustre, the eating and drinking very grateful to all " men, and the charge and expense of it much exceeding the " precedents of the most luxurious times, and all this before " there was any provision of ready money or any assignation " of a future fund." He adds that tradesmen were ready to deliver their goods upon trust, and that Charles was plunging into his first year of debt most recklessly. The speech, how- ever, may not have been written by Hyde.

Next to the Indemnity question, that of Supply and Revenue, we have said, was the most important that had yet occupied the Parliament. On a still more vast and momentous question they had touched once or twice, but with little or no effect. This was the question of the Church.

The most enormous blunder of the Presbyterians in their Restoration of Charles had been in letting him in absolutely without conditions. The intention at first had been to neog- tiate with him at Breda or the Hague on the basis of some such conditions as those offered to his father in the Treaty of Newport in the Isle of Wight in 1648, preventing a return to Prelacy and securing the permanence of a Presbyterian Church-establishment. There can be little doubt that Charles, in his anxiety to recover his kingdoms, would then have assented to almost any terms whatsoever, leaving it to chance whether he should feel himself bound by them or not after- wards. But the hurricane of popular impatience at home, and Monk's advice at last, had swept aside the proposals of definite negotiation made by Matthew Hale and others ; and,

The cirtJKCH QtEStiON. 59
when Charles was in England, it was with ho othel- pledge in Church-matters than was contained in one passage of his voluntai'y Declaration from Breda. " And, because the pas- " sion and uncharitableness of the times," said that document, " have produced several opinions in Religion, by which men " are engaged in parties and animosities against each other, — " which, when they shall hereaifter uriitfe in a freedom of Con- " versation, will be composed, or better understood, — We do " declare a Liberty to Tender CbnsoieneBS, and that no man " shall be disquieted or called in qnestion for differences of " opinion in matter of Religion which do not disturb the peace "of the Kingdom, land that We shall be ready to consent to " sucTi an Act of Parliament as, upon mature 'deliberation, " shall be offered to TJs, for the fall grantihg that In- " dulgence." It must have been ii delight to Hyde to haVe been able to manage this difficulty of the Rtestotatioii in a manner so vague. Of all the King's eounsello¥s, the fexiled bishops included, Bot one had so firmly settled with himself as Hyde had done thait the restoration -of the King should involve the restoration also of Episcopacy and the Old Church of England in its fullest form. _rrom this purpose he had neveY swerved, and -it was a wonder to Lord Colepepper and others that be was so 'tenacious on a subject about which -they were coBiparatively indiffeirefnt. As for Charles hiniself, there were reasons why he should view the -tnatter differently from HydCj even while taking Hyde's advice. Whe'thet the Protestantism of the British Islands should be episcopal or non-episcopal can have been a question of small concern on its own intrinsic account to one who, for a year at least already, if not for six years, had been secretly a Roman Catholic. So far as Hyde was aware of this fact, it must have added to his difficulties ; but it was a consolation that the King was not so mtich of a Papist after all, or of a reli- gionist of any kind, as to go out of his senses for the Papacy, or for anything else that might be detrimental to his own interests. With such an easy erypto-Catholic on the throne, one might succeed in restoring that system of Anglican High Episcopacy, resting on the doctrine of the Apostolical Succes-

60 LIFE OF MILTON AND HISTORY OF HIS TIME.
sion of Bishops, which the genuine Roman Catholics thought a worse abortion than Presbyterianism itself ^-

Charles having come in without conditions, and with a positive intimation of his personal preference for episcopal forms, all that the Presbyterians could expect was what they now called a Compeehension, i. e. the settlement of the Church in such a way that any Episcopacy to be set up in it should be a very limited Episcopacy indeed, like that sketched by Usher in his fanjous "Model" of 1641, abandoning the theory of Episcopacy by divine right, and reducing bishops to mere presidents of the synods of presbyters (Vol. II. pp. 229, 230). In this way they hoped that the great body of the Presbyterian ministers in Cromwell's Established Church might be able to remain within the Establishment, not bound to use the Liturgy or other ceremonies contrary to their consciences, while room for the readmission of such of the surviving old Anglican and Liturgical clergy as it might be necessary and proper to restore to their livings would easily be obtained by the ejection of the most troublesome of those Baptists or other Independents the conjunction of whom with the Presbyterians in the Church-Establishment had been only by Cromwell's wiU. About such sectaries there was not much concern among the Presbyterians. They had been accepted into the Establishment as very question- able brethren, and their ejection might be a good riddance now ; or, if any provision was to be made for their future, it was to come in the form of a Toleration out of the Establish- ment, whereas the present question was Comprehension, or the amicable blending of Episcopalians and Presbyterians within the Establishment. Towards this end there had been much fresh studying of Usher's Model, which indeed had been again a good deal before the public since 1658, when there was some notion that Cromwell himself might give

1 Pari. Hist. IV. 17 ; Clarendon, 779 ; of Worcester ; and as early as June

Burnet, 1. 126—127 and 158, II. 449— 1653 Hyde in Paris had teen very

451 and 471 ; Neal, IV. 231—236 ; Hal- anxious to contradict tlie rumours that

lam, II. 344. There had been efforts to Charles had changed his religion (see

convert Charles to Eoman Catholicism Macray's Calendar of Clarendon Papers,

from the time of his first residence in under date June 6, 1653). France after his escape from the Battle