1647.] CONCLUSION OF HOSTILITIES. 483 present day reiterated against the Scots. There are no doubt many circumstances in the affair which have a suspicious appearance. It seems certain that they would not have gotten so large a sum from the parliament as they did if the person of the king had not been in their hands, and they probably took advantage of this circumstance to insist on their demands. But there are no sufficient grounds for charging them with inviting him to their camp with this design; they did not give him up till they had no choice but that or war; they acted under the advice of the friends of monarchy in the English parliament; they stipulated in the most express terms for the safety of his person; nay, to the very last, if he would have given them satisfaction on the subject of religion, they would have declined surrendering him. Like the monarch himself, they were unhappily situated; but we do not think that they can be justly charged with the guilt of having sold their king. Still every friend to Scotland must wish that the event had not occurred +. The civil war, after a duration of nearly four years, was now at an end. Oxford, Worcester, and other places had surrendered; the old marquess of Worcester defended Ragland castle against Fairfax and five thousand men, but he was obliged at last to open his gates (Aug. 19); and two days later Pendennis castle in Cornwall also surrendered. Harlech castle in North Wales was the last to submit (Mar. 30, 1647). Favourable terms were granted in all cases, and the articles were honourably observed. Much and justly as intestine warfare is to be deprecated, we may look back with pride to this civil contest, unexampled in the history of the world. It does not, like the civil wars of other countries, disgust us by details of butcheries and other savage atrocities; all was open and honour * "If it be not admitted they sold him," says sir P. Warwick, "it must be confessed they parted with him for a good price." †The remarks of Lingard on this subject are candid and just. See also those of Laing and Hallam. able warfare; a generous humanity for the most part was displayed on both sides; and those who were finally victorious, to their honour, sent none of the vanquished to the scaffold. While awarding praise we cannot in justice pass over the catholic nobility and gentry of England. Urged by an impulse of generous loyalty, as appears to us, rather than by any cold calculations of interest, they ranged themselves on the side of the king, though they knew but too well that he was at all times ready to sacrifice them, and that they were the persons on whom the vengeance of the parliament would fall most heavily; in the royal cause they wasted their estates, and shed their blood; and dead must he be to generous feeling who honours not the names of the marquesses of Worcester and Winchester, sir Marmaduke Langdale, and the other catholic nobles and knights who fought on the side of royalty in the civil contest. Montrose on receiving orders from the king laid down his arms and retired to the continent. Ormond had by the royal command concluded a peace with the Irish catholics, but the nuncio and the clergy having assembled at Waterford declared it void (Aug. 6). The nuncio then assumed the supreme power, and at the head of the united armies of Preston and Owen O'Neal* advanced against Dublin. As Ormond had wasted the country they were obliged to retire, but he was well aware that it must fall into their hands if not relieved from England. The king was now a captive, and powerless; the Irish catholics were entirely ruled by their tyrannical priesthood, and nothing short of the extirpation of protestantism and the English interest would content them. To avert this calamity Ormond entered into treaty with the parliament, and he agreed (Feb. 22, 1647) to put Dublin and the other garrisons into their hands. The sequestration was taken off * Preston was the general of the catholics of the English blood, O'Neal of the Ulster Irish. 1647.] DEATH OF ESSEX. 485 from his own estate, and he had permission given him to reside for some time in England. The presbyterian system was at this time established by ordinance of parliament; each parish was to have its minister and lay elders; a number of adjoining parishes were to form a classis with its presbytery of ministers and elders; several classes a province with its assembly; and finally, a national assembly over all. But the system never came into full operation except in London and Lancashire; the parliament could not be brought to allow of the divine right of presbytery; they greatly limited the power of the keys, and they allowed of appeals from the ecclesiastical courts. In their zeal for uniformity, hatred of toleration, lust of power, and tyrannical exercise of it, the presbyterian clergy fell nothing short of the prelatical party who had been their persecutors *. The moderate party in parliament lost at this time a great support by the death of the earl of Essex (Sept. 14). He died in consequence of overheating himself in the chase of a stag in Windsor-forest. He was buried with great state in Westminster-abbey (Oct. 22); the members of both houses, the civil and military officers, and all the troops in London attending the funeral. * Milton in various parts of his prose works is extremely and justly severe on them. 486 CHAPTER IX. CHARLES I. (CONTINUED). 1647-1649. The parliament and army.-Seizure of the king;-his treaties with Cromwell and Ireton;-flight from Hampton-court.-Change of conduct in Cromwell and Ireton.-Second civil war.-Defeat of Hamilton.-Surrender of Colchester.-Treaty at Newport.-King seized again by the army.-Pride's Purge.-Proceedings of the parliament.-Trial of the king;-his execution; -character.-Reflections. THE presbyterians were still, as we have seen, the more numerous party in parliament. The main strength of the other party lay in the army, in which, since the new model, the spirit of fanaticism had under the auspices of Cromwell greatly increased: for the English presbyterian clergy, less zealous or less prudent than their Scottish brethren, had preferred the enjoyment of good livings to the toils of a military life; the regiments therefore were without chaplains; the officers, and soon the privates, took on them the offices of praying and preaching; goodness of memory and volubility of speech were regarded as inspiration; spiritual pride soon followed, and they regarded themselves alone as the godly, the saints who were to possess the earth. The parliament saw the danger likely to result from the continuance in arms of a body of men animated with fanaticism and formidable by discipline. To reduce their number was therefore the first object. As the royalists were utterly crushed and the Scots withdrawn, they proposed that a moderate force should be retained to preserve the peace in England, a sufficient army be sent to reduce Ireland, and the remainder be disbanded. To this arrange ment the army had an invincible repugnance. The service in Ireland, however flattering to their fanatic spirit, promised only toil, privation and danger, and they looked for 1647.] PARLIAMENT AND ARMY. 487 ward in preference to the quiet enjoyment of their pay in England. The habits of a military life had rendered their former plodding pursuits distasteful to them, particularly to the officers, many of whom had risen from very humble stations in society*. Cromwell too, now their actuating spirit, seems to have even then formed his plans for governing parliament by the army. The commons meantime voted (Mar. 8), that excepting the general there should be no further any officer of higher rank than colonel; that no member of the house should have a command, that all the officers should take the covenant and conform to the new form of church-government. It is quite evident that Cromwell was the person chiefly aimed at. But the parliament had unwisely suffered the pay of the army to fall into arrears, and thus furnished them with a plausible ground of complaint. The army on hearing of this vote suddenly broke up from their quarters about Nottingham and came to Saffron-Walden in Essex. Commissioners from the parliament met them there (22nd) on the subject of the service in Ireland; but the officers required to be previously satisfied on certain points, and a petition was meantime circulated for signatures through the army requiring an act of indemnity for all past actions, payment of arrears, exemption from impressment, pensions for the maimed and for widows, and pay till they should be disbanded. The parliament (30th) voted this petition to be mutinous, and forbade any further proceeding in it; but of this the soldiers took little heed. The army had at this time a parliament of its own; the * Colonel Pride for instance is said to have been a drayman, colonel Huson a cobler. We must not however on all occasions give implicit credit to the royalist writers in these matters. Thus they always say that Harrison had been a butcher, whereas the truth is that his father was a respectable grazier, and himself a member of one of the inns of court. Mrs. Hutchinson however says, (p. 315) that he was "but a mean man's son and of a mean education, and no estate before the war"; but a grazier must have been a mean man in the eyes of the daughter of sir Allen Apsley. She adds, that Harrison "had gathered an estate of 2000l. a year, besides engrossing great offices and encroaching upon his under-officers, and maintained his coach and family at a height as if they had been born to principality." |