roundly against him, yet (I heare) ye proofs are so broken, as they will not make a full and cleare evidence., the worst in all that business is, that it reflects on your Majestie, as if you had given some instruccions concernI ing y stirring up ye army to petition y° Parliament. hope it will appear that your Majestie's intencions were only to reteyne y° army in their duty and dependance on your Majestie."

The tone of the letter is a curious example of the want of confidence his adherents felt in Charles. It is clear that Nicholas was quite unaware of the nature of the letters referred to, and thought it perfectly possible that the King might have imprudently sanctioned the plot in which the Parliament pronounced it treason to participate.

O'Neille extricated himself from his embarassing position by escaping from the Tower in woman's clothes, and when a few months later the King raised his standard O'Neille returned to England and accepted a commission as Lieutenant Colonel of Horse under Rupert.

At different times during the war we find traces of him. In 1643 he accompanied the Earl of Antrim to Ireland and superintended the dispatch of 1,500 men to the Marquis Montrose, who with their aid set up his standard in Scotland, and won back half that nation to the King. At Marston he led Prince Rupert's regiment of foot, and in 1658 he accompanied the Marquis of Ormonde in disguise to London and remained there some time, holding meetings with the Royalists and sounding them as to the prospect of a successful rising against Cromwell. After the restoration the following entry in

Pepys' diary seems to imply that O'Neille was a person of some account. "July 3rd, 1662, dined with the officers of the Ordnance, where Sir W. Compton, Mr. O'Nealle, and other great persons were."

The surrender of Bristol by Prince Rupert is the subject of the finding of the Council of war, held at Newark, on 21st October, 1645.

On 14th June the battle of Naseby had been fought. Although the forces engaged in it were not so numerous as those which contended at Marston, the consequences of the defeat was far more momentous. Marston deprived the Marquis of Newcastle of the north of England. Naseby cost Charles his kingdom. The defeat was complete and crushing; every regiment lost its colors; the royal standard and those of the Palatine Princes were captured; nearly 6,000 men were slain or taken prisoners; 8,000 stand of arms, ammunition, stores, and above all the secret correspondence of the King fell into the hands of the enemies, while the King and Prince Rupert with difficulty fled to Hereford.

At length the time had arrived when brave men acknowledged that the struggle was hopeless. Even Rupert bowed his hitherto tameless spirit and vainly counselled peace. "If I were desired," he said in a letter to the Duke of Richmond dated 28th July, "to deliver my opinion what other wayes the King should take, this should be my opinion, which your Lordship may declare to the King. His Majesty hath now no way left to preserve his posterity, kingdom, and nobility, but by a treaty."

There were, it is true, a few evil councillors left

H

who still urged the King to continue his resistance; chief among these men was Lord Digby, but even he, while insisting upon his own views, thus describes the feeling of the Royalists. "These hopes, I am confident, the condition of our business itself will bear, would the humours of our own party bear them with patience. But, alas! my Lord, we must not expect it, there is such an universal weariness of the war, despair of a possibility for the King to recover, and so much of private interest grown from these upon everybody, that I protest to God I do not know four persons living besides myself and you that have not already given clear demonstration, that they will purchase their own, and, as they flatter themselves, the kingdom's quiet, at any price to the Kingto the Church-to the faithfulest of his party; and to deal freely with you, I do not think it will be in the King's power to hinder himself from being forced to accept such conditions as the rebels will give him, and that the next news that you will hear, after we have been one month at Oxford, will be, that I and those few others, who may be thought by our counsels to fortify the King in firmness to his principles shall be forced or torn from him."

If, however, the King resolved to throw a last cast for empire he should at least have perservered in some decided and manly policy. Several courses were open to him; none were free from danger, few presented much prospect of ultimate success; a daring spirit, however, would have risked the evil they menaced, on the chance however remote, of winning the results they promised as the guerdon of success. Three distinct lines of action were open to Charles. In Devon and Cornwall Goring still commanded 7,000 or 8,000 men; the presence of

the King would have kindled into enthusiasm the decaying loyalty of the West, he would have controlled the mad excesses of his profligate General, and composed the differences which threatened to disintegrate his armies. Such action was full of peril. The conquering forces of Fairfax, and the invincible ironsides of Cromwell would certainly have swept down upon the King and his last army-and slight would have been the chances of the Western levies when opposed to those veteran and unconquered battalions. Even now every post bore him tidings of some fresh disaster, and, from the fatal hour when his power was shattered at Naseby, each day that dawned seemed charged with messages of humiliation and loss. What then were his chances of success? The Scotch army was at Hereford, Goring had failed to save Bridgewater; and while the King pondered over a Western Campaign the defeat at Lamport stamped the impulse with a boding whisper of defeat. It was a desperate venture and Charles could not resolve to face it. The alternative which had its advocates and advantages was to rouse the loyal inhabitants of Wales; to gather an army in the mountains of Carmarthen and the fertile plains of Monmouth, and beneath the sheltering walls of Ragland to marshall them for a new campaign. The King determined to follow out this policy, and it was in truth well suited to his character and temperament. The great influence of the Marquis of Worcester and his son, impaired though it was by the religion they professed, had enormous weight in Monmouth and the surrounding counties. They had made sacrifices for the royal cause unparalleled even in the history of that period of generous self oblivion; they were the natural leaders of a people who were loyal as well as warlike; and amid the stately

terraces and towers of Ragland, Charles could for a moment forget that he was a fugitive, and persuade himself that with another effort he could re-win his kingdom and his crown.

Charles was no coward; he proved his courage on occasions where danger beset him, and neither in battle nor in retreat did he ever disgrace himself or his royal lineage by shrinking, when they were forced upon him, from peril, anxiety, or risk. Nevertheless his mind was not cast in a heroic mould, and the course which promised present ease, and offered a fair prospect for the future, had far greater attractions for him than more daring and vigorous action. Thus the King accepted the hospitality of his great feudatory, and feasted, hunted, and held his court in Ragland. The noblemen and gentry of the counties round resorted to him there and pledged their faith to him anew, and promised to recruit the ranks which had been so grievously thinned by folly, improvidence, and war.

Such promises could have deceived no one who dispassionately appraised their worth. The counties from which this new army was to spring had already been drained of a large part of its youth and vigour; regiments had gone forth from thence to serve through arduous campaigns, only to be decimated at Marston, or destroyed at Naseby; and it was as unreasonable to expect a repetition of these efforts, as to look for the physical strength of youth in the enfeebled frame of the aged Marquis. The country in fact was worn out, and could not have redeemed the promises made for it to the King even if it had the will to do so, and his cause had been surrounded with the prestige of success.