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Execution Of King Charles.

A Popular History Of England

From the Earliest Times
To The Reign Of Queen Victoria

By
M. Guizot
Author of "The Popular History or France," etc.
Authorized Edition
Illustrated
Vol. III

New York
John W. Lovell Company
150 Worth Street, corner Mission Place

List Of Illustrations.

Volume Three.

Table Of Contents.

Guizot's
History Of England,
Vol. III.

From the Accession of James I.,
to the Expulsion of James II., 1603-1688.

History Of England.

Chapter XXII.
James I. (1603-1625).

Scarcely had the soul of Queen Elizabeth taken farewell of her body when a distant cousin of the great sovereign, Sir Robert Carey, posted to Scotland, being advised of her death by his sister, Lady Scrope, who formed part of the royal household. Cecil and the members of the council, outdistanced by the haste of the courtier, had at least the advantage, in despatching their emissaries to Edinburgh, of being able to announce to the king that he had been solemnly proclaimed in London a few hours after the death of Elizabeth. The wise promptitude of Cecil forestalled any foreign pretension. The only person who might have urged her rights to the throne, Lady Arabella Stuart, cousin-german of the King of Scotland by her father, and descending as he did, from Henry VII., was in good keeping. None thought of stipulating for a few guarantees in favor of the liberties of the country or for the reform of the abuses grown old with the royal power. The great men of the council expected the reward of their intrigues in favor of the new king, and public opinion saw with satisfaction the prospect of a union with Scotland, which promised to put an end to the continual wars between the two kingdoms. The Scots hoped to enrich themselves in England.

No one was more in need of such an opportunity than the king. His Majesty James VI. of Scotland, now also James I. of England, was so poor that he could not set out for his new kingdom until Cecil sent him money. He had, besides, no desire to encounter in death the sovereign whom he had so much dreaded during her lifetime, and the journey, begun on the 6th of April, proceeded so slowly that Elizabeth had for three weeks been sleeping in her tomb when her successor at length arrived, on the 3d of May, at Theobalds, in Hertfordshire, the country house of Sir Robert Cecil, where all the members of the council awaited him. On his way he had lavished the honor of knighthood upon all who had asked for it; since his departure from Scotland he had made a hundred and forty-eight knights. Cecil took advantage of the sojourn which the king made at Theobalds to completely gain his favor. Alone, among the colleagues of whom he was jealous, the Earl of Northumberland contrived to preserve his honors. Lord Cobham, Lord Grey, and especially Sir Walter Raleigh, were disgraced. The first concession granted to the wishes of the nation was the suspension of all the monopolies. This favor was proclaimed, on the 7th of May, upon the entrance of the king into the city of London. Severe measures with regard to hunting immediately followed the arrival of the monarch, who was passionately fond of that amusement.

The plague had broken out in London and delayed the coronation, but it did not hinder the conspiracies. The powerful hand of Elizabeth had been able to keep down, but could not prevent them. Her successor might disparage the wisdom and prudence of the government of the great queen who had raised him to his throne; but he was destined to see his authority often threatened and disowned. He began by making himself a dangerous enemy in depriving Raleigh not only of his place in the council, but of the honors and monopolies which constituted his fortune. The favor which the king manifested naturally enough to his Scottish friends made other malcontents. The Catholics, at first allured by the promises of James, saw him turn to the side of the Anglican Church. "I make the judges," he said joyfully during his journey from Scotland to England; "I make the bishops. By God's wounds, I can do as I please, then, with the law and the Gospel." He necessarily inclined to the side of power. Raleigh, Cobham, and Grey, supported for some time by the Earl of Northumberland, still an enemy of Cecil, found support among the priests and lesser Catholic gentlemen, to whom the Puritans allied themselves. The conspirators proposed to take possession of the person of the king, to induce him, it was said, to change his ministers. Before the day fixed upon, all the conspirators were arrested. Sir Walter Raleigh and Lord Cobham were conducted to the Tower. The plague delayed the judgment as it had delayed the coronation. The trial of Raleigh was, besides, difficult to conduct. Cecil took all the care that the matter deserved. Lord Cobham, in cowardly alarm, betrayed his accomplice. Both were accused of having sought to assassinate James in order to raise to the throne Lady Arabella Stuart. Raleigh defended himself in person with all the intelligence, all the animation, all the indomitable courage of which he had so many times given proof during his adventurous life. He was nevertheless condemned as well as Lord Cobham and Lord Grey. All three were pardoned when Cobham and Grey were already upon the scaffold. The tragic adventures of Sir Walter Raleigh were not yet at an end.

The king hunted in peace since the conspirators, who had so greatly alarmed him, were in the Tower. He also indulged in the pleasure of theological polemics. As long as he was King of Scotland he was obliged to accept the yoke of the Puritans. Happy to escape from them, he pursued them in his new kingdom with bitter rancor. Suddenly smitten with the episcopacy, he discussed personally with the doctors favorable to Presbyterian principles. "No bishops, no king," exclaimed James, who did not leave his adversaries time to reply. Then, making use of the prerogative which he so resolutely claimed, he gave orders to all his subjects to conform themselves to the ordinances, doctrines, and ceremonies of the Church of England, authorizing the bishops to dismiss from their livings those of the clergy who refused to obey. More than three hundred pastors were thus deprived suddenly of their functions as well as their means of subsistence. A great number proceeded abroad; others remained in their country, and the spies, formerly exclusively commissioned to ferret out the Catholics who dared to hear mass, added to this duty that of discovering the secret meetings which the dismissed pastors often held even in their former parishes. King James was preparing by religious persecution that great Puritan party which was to contribute so powerfully to the overthrow of his son.

Parliament assembled on the 19th of March, 1604, and the leaven of opposition which had already appeared under Elizabeth, was not wanting in the first relations of the new sovereign with the representatives of his people. The contested election of Mr. Goodwin marked the commencement of the struggle. The Commons had the audacity to complain of some abuses, and they did not prove themselves generous in voting supplies. King James was profoundly imbued with the doctrine which he had promulgated in a pamphlet entitled, The true Law of free Monarchies, namely, that the king has the right of commanding, and the subject the duty of obeying. He pronounced as soon as possible the dissolution of Parliament; but the Commons had, nevertheless, time to call the royal attention to the Papists, recommending them to all the rigor of the laws. The bishops and the Puritans were agreed upon this point. The enormous fines regularly imposed upon the Catholics for their absence from the established worship, were exacted with a severity that filled the coffers of the king while ruining numerous families. James had claimed all the arrears for one year. The wealthy Papists were threatened with judicial prosecutions. They knew the sentence beforehand. Many ransomed their lives by the payment of large sums. The king began to hunt again, and forbade any one to speak to him of business on the days which he devoted to that pastime. The counties which he honored with his presence groaned under the burden. One of the hounds of his Majesty appeared one morning bearing upon his neck a petition addressed to him conceived thus: "Good Medor, we beg you to speak to his Majesty, who hears you every day and does not listen to us, that he may kindly return to London to his business, for our provisions are exhausted, and we shall have nothing left to give him to eat." The king laughed and remained where he was; but matters were preparing in London to recall him.

Among the Catholics ruined by the successive exactions which they had suffered was Robert Catesby, a renegade in his youth, but who returned with zeal to the faith of his fathers, and had since then engaged in all the Catholic intrigues. Weary of persecution, and seeing no hope of relief either in the anterior promises of the king, or in the influence of Spain which had been counted upon to some extent, he conceived the atrocious project of causing all the persecutors to perish at a blow—King, Lords, and Commons, upon the opening of Parliament convoked for the 7th of February, 1605. Prudent and circumspect, he sought accomplices. Thomas Winter, a gentleman and a Catholic like himself, formerly employed by Spain in the Low Countries, only consented to enter into the plot after having asked the Spaniards if they had no longer any hope. Upon his return from Ostend, with a reply in the negative, he brought back a former comrade, Guy Fawkes, a soldier of fortune, resolute and fanatical like the two other conspirators. Seven persons in all were bound by the most solemn oath, and the plotters set to work in a house which they had taken beside Whitehall, under the name of Percy, one of the conspirators, an officer of the royal household. They reckoned upon digging a mine which was to extend beneath the Houses of Parliament. "No one set to work to dig or to transport the powder who was not a gentleman," said Fawkes, in his examination. "While the others worked I acted as sentinel, and the work was stopped if any passer-by appeared." The stores were deposited at Lambeth, on the other side of the river. They were brought in small quantities as the subterranean passage progressed.

The Gunpowder Plot Discovered.

Twice the work was suspended: the prorogation of Parliament was prolonged—at first until the month of October, then until November. The conspirators, who were no longer pressed for time, separated in order not to arouse suspicion. At the end of May the work was completed. They had been able to take a cellar which extended beneath the floor of the House of Lords. Thirty-six barrels of powder were deposited therein; but to these minds, agitated by dark designs and burdened with a weighty secret, idleness was fatal. They were, besides, nearly all without resources, and the successive delays brought about in their enterprise placed them in a great embarrassment. The want of money induced Catesby, still the prime mover in the plot, to admit among the conspirators two rich men upon whom he thought he could rely. One, Sir Everard Digby, promised to invite to a great hunting expedition all the Catholic gentlemen, members of Parliament, whose lives it was desired to save. The other, Tresham, a relative of Catesby, and already compromised with him in certain intrigues, undertook to provide the necessary funds; but scarcely had he taken the oath when the confidence with which Catesby had hitherto been animated suddenly failed him. He became dispirited: day and night he felt himself haunted by the most sinister forebodings.

All was ready; Prince Charles, the second son of King James, was to be proclaimed by Catesby at Charing Cross at the moment of the destruction of Whitehall. Tresham was to depart in a ship freighted for that purpose, and repair to Flanders to invoke the assistance of the Catholic powers. Guy Fawkes was entrusted to set fire to the mine. The general meeting-place was at Dunchurch. The uneasiness of the greater number of the accomplices was concerning their friends, whom they were afraid of making the victims of their enterprise. Catesby had, it was said, taken steps for keeping a great number of Catholics away from Whitehall. "But were they as dear to me as my own son, they should be blown up with the rest rather than cause the affair to fail," he added. Meanwhile, on the 26th of October, ten days before the opening of Parliament, Lord Monteagle, father-in-law of Tresham, received a letter in a disguised hand, enjoining him not to repair to Whitehall on the 5th of November. "The Parliament will receive a terrible blow," said the anonymous writer, "and yet they shall not see who hurts them."

Lord Monteagle immediately carried the warning to Cecil. On the morrow the conspirators learnt that they were betrayed. Nothing happened, however, to show that the mine had been discovered. Guy Fawkes recognized all his secret marks again, and, notwithstanding the growing uneasiness engendered by the information received, Guy Fawkes continued to mount guard in the cellar. The other conspirators waited the event with the courage of insanity. On the 4th, in the daytime, Fawkes was at his post when the Earl of Suffolk, High Chamberlain, entrusted with the preparations for the opening of Parliament, appeared at the door of the cellar. He cast a careless look around him. The barrels of powder were hidden beneath a heap of wood and fagots. "Your master has made great provision of fuel," he said to Fawkes, who had represented himself as the servant of Percy, and he quitted the dangerous cellar. Fawkes hastily gave intimation to Percy, who had remained in London, then he returned to his mine. At two o'clock in the morning he was arrested.

All the conspirators had taken to flight. Catesby still hoped to rouse the Catholics to insurrection, but none responded to the appeal. On the 7th of November they were assembled together in a house at Holbeach, upon the borders of Staffordshire, being resolved to perish to the last man in defending themselves. Sir Robert Walsh, sheriff of Worcester, caused the residence to be surrounded by his troops. There was no means of escaping, the house had already been fired. "Stay, fool!" cried Catesby to Winter, "we will die together." Both grasped their swords and sprang upon the assailants. They were immediately killed. Several others perished likewise. Sir Everard Digby was arrested, as well as other less distinguished conspirators. Tresham had remained quietly in London, counting upon his treachery to save him. He was arrested and taken to the Tower with his accomplices.

Guy Fawkes had, meanwhile, been questioned by the king himself. Indomitable even in the ruin of his hopes and the mortal peril in which he was situated: "How could you bear the thought of causing my children and so many innocent persons to perish?" said King James. "For desperate ills there must be desperate remedies," replied the bold conspirator. "Why did you collect so much powder?" asked a Scottish courtier. "I had purposed to cause all the Scots to be blown as far as Scotland," Fawkes said gravely. He was several times put to the torture, always refusing to tell the names of his accomplices. He was assured they had fled and were arrested. "It is useless then to name them," maintained Fawkes, "they have named themselves." It was through Bates, a servant of Catesby, that the complicity of the Jesuits Greenway and Garnet was discovered. Tresham had also given evidence against them, but being attacked in his prison with a serious illness he retracted his accusations, and died on the 23d of December, not without some suspicion of poison.

Greenway had succeeded in escaping; but Garnet, a provincial of the order of Jesuits, was arrested with Oldcorne, one of his own order. Both were submitted to torture; both finally confessed their knowledge of the plot, which, they said, they had often opposed, the order of Pope Paul V. being to suffer all and to win by patience the crown of life. In spite of the skill and eloquence of Garnet the two Jesuits suffered death; but Garnet was not executed till the 3d of May. All the conspirators who had fallen into the hands of justice had expiated their crime on the 30th of January. Oldcorne died at the end of February.

The terror which the plot occasioned, the horror excited in all classes of society, of which we still find the traces in the custom of burning in the streets upon the 5th of November, an effigy that bears the name of Guy Fawkes, fell upon the Catholics, who were persecuted in a mass with fresh rigor, even though they were strangers to the conspiracy. It was Parliament that urged the king into this fatal path. The ministers were obliged to moderate the ardor of the members who had been threatened with being blown into the air with his Majesty.

Royal visits amused James, and relieved him for awhile from the anxieties which his people occasioned him. The King of Denmark, brother-in-law of the King of England, who had married Anne of Denmark, and the Prince of Vaudemont, of the House of Guise, spent a few weeks in England, setting the courtiers an example of debauchery which did not prevent James from continuing to discuss all the theological questions of the time, in writing or by word of mouth, with Catholics as well as Puritans. He would always cause his adversaries to be thrown into prison when their reasons became too powerful, a resource especially valuable when it happened, as in 1607, an insurrection broke out during the discussions. A question had arisen, as in the days of Edward VI., of the right of enclosure. The people of Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, and Leicestershire, claimed, with arms in their hands, the pasturage of waste lands. When the king was assured that it was not a plot of his theological antagonists, the insurrection was soon repressed, without revealing the extreme weakness of the government and the indolence of the king as well as of his ministers.

Parliament rejected the favorite project of James, who desired to unite not only the two crowns, but the two nations of England and Scotland by common laws and a common religion. The plan was good and useful, but premature. Scotland rejected it angrily, fearing to be subjected to England. The latter rejected it with disdain, asserting that the beggars of Scotland already came to England in sufficiently numerous bands, without its being necessary to make Englishmen of them. The subsidies were not voted. The king, dissatisfied, abandoned his proposals; but for two years he did not convoke Parliament. It was necessity alone which compelled him, in 1610, to claim the co-operation of his people in filling the treasury. Cecil, who had become successively Lord Cranborne and Earl of Salisbury, now sat at the Treasury and proposed enormous subsidies to the Commons; but Parliament presented a petition of grievances, and refused to vote anything without being assured of the redress of its wrongs. Negotiations were carried on for several months. Parliament at length granted a greatly reduced subsidy, without having obtained all that it demanded in return. A weak, indolent monarch, often indifferent concerning the most important affairs, James was as obstinate when it was a question of his prerogative as he was in matters of theology. Cecil died, it is said, of the sorrows and vexations which Parliament had compelled him to endure in the two sessions of 1610 and 1611. He expired on the 24th of May, 1612. Cunning and avaricious as his father, he had not always given proof of that greatness of purpose and firmness of resolve which made Burleigh the worthy minister of Queen Elizabeth.

While the king was discussing with the Dutchman Conrad Vorstein, upon the nature and attributes of the divinity, demanding of the States of Holland the banishment of his adversary, Lady Arabella Stuart, whose name had so often served as a watchword for conspiracies, without her ever having been implicated in them herself, for the first time in her life had become a plotter. Her object, however, was simply to marry William Seymour, grandson of the Earl of Hereford, to whom she had been attached from infancy. When the secret was discovered, the princess was imprisoned at Lambeth, and her husband thrown into the Tower. She saw him, however, sometimes, and being forcibly removed to Durham, she contrived to escape. Seymour also fled from his prison. Both desired only to live together abroad; but the husband alone reached a free country. The poor Lady Arabella was arrested aboard the vessel which was taking her across the Channel, and consigned to the Tower for the remainder of her life. She lost her reason and died in 1615, long forgotten even by those who had dreaded her name.

The favorites of James I. succeeded each other in the royal household without intermission, often arousing the jealousy of the queen. These favorites were loaded with riches and honors while they were all-powerful, abandoned and forgotten when they were replaced by others, unless they possessed some dangerous secret. Robert Carr or Ker, of an old Border family, had recently taken possession of this envied position, when Cecil died, in 1612. Still young, but having already become Viscount Rochester, a member of the Privy Council, and Knight of the Garter, he was created Lord Chamberlain, and fulfilled the functions of Secretary of State, thanks to the assistance of one of his friends, Sir Thomas Overbury, who was destined to pay dearly for the honor. Sinister rumors soon began to circulate concerning Rochester himself.

Prince Henry, the eldest son of James, was the idol of the people. Handsome, well formed, brave, bold, and skillful in all bodily exercises, he had, it was said, chosen the Black Prince for his model, and was studying the science of war with more pleasure than letters and theology. The pedantry of his father was odious to him, and he did not scruple to blame his actions. A great admirer of Sir Walter Raleigh, who was still imprisoned in the Tower, he often said that no other king than his father would keep such a bird in a cage. "He has become a man too soon to live long," it was said among the people. Yet the greatest hopes were founded on him. His life was regular, and his opinions appeared to incline to the side of the Puritans, the real party of the people, who looked upon him as the liberator promised by the Scriptures. King James was afraid of his son. "Will he bury me alive?" he said, when he heard of the multitude which surrounded the young prince. He endeavored, meanwhile, to marry his son, first to the Infanta of Spain, then to the Princess Christine of France; but the negotiations proceeded slowly, and the English people flattered themselves with hopes of a Protestant alliance, like that which had recently been concluded for the young Princess Elizabeth, betrothed to the Count Palatine Frederick V. This prince had arrived in England, on the 16th of October, 1612, for the celebration of the marriage, when Prince Henry, who had been for some time ill, suffered a sudden relapse. He was weak, and appeared to be in a state of stupor. An energetic will still triumphed, however, over the disease. He raised himself several times, appeared in public and dined with the king. But the strength of the young man was declining rapidly. His physicians were not agreed as to the nature of the illness. On the 5th of November, the king was informed of the desperate condition of his son. The prince was in London; but the king, dreading the sorrow which awaited him, immediately set out for Theobalds, of which Cecil had formerly given up the ownership to him, and awaited the event from afar. The prince died on the 6th of November, 1612, amidst general grief, mingled with indignation. Rochester was everywhere accused of having poisoned the prince, although the accusation had no appearance of foundation. Henry had grown too rapidly, and had not strength to bear the attacks of a putrid fever. The king did not manifest for his son the same regret as his people. He immediately resumed for Prince Charles the negotiations of marriage begun for Prince Henry, and celebrated, on the 13th of February, 1613, the nuptials of his daughter with a pomp and splendor which were to be the only satisfaction of the young princess, who was prematurely destined to suffer from the difficulties and trials of the regal state.

The king was more than ever embarrassed for money. He endeavored to contract loans; he re-established and increased all the monopolies; he sold to all comers the honors of knighthood, a new intermediate order between the nobility and the common people, which was soon after to take the title of "baronetage;" but the avidity of the courtiers, the prodigality of the king, in ministering both to his own pleasures and to those of his favorites, as well as old debts which oppressed him, exhausted all resources. It was necessary to have recourse to Parliament. Sir Francis Bacon, formerly a dependent of the Earl of Essex, afterwards his accuser, one of the greatest minds and the most despicable characters in a period accustomed to such contrast, made a promise to James to undertake the task of making Parliament obey. Rochester, who had become Earl of Somerset, joined him. They were called with regard to this the undertakers. The Commons assembled in ill-humor. They had received intelligence of the audacious project formed to constrain them. They consulted the Lords upon the right of the king to establish various taxes. The Upper House refused the conference, but the subsidies were not voted. The king caused Parliament to be warned that he would dissolve it if it did not fulfill its task, the only one for which it was convoked. Parliament replied that it would not vote as long as the grievances were not redressed. It was dissolved, not to be called for six whole years. Parliament had not voted a single act, but it had powerfully contributed to establish that independence of the House which was soon to strike the death-blow to absolute power in England.

The star of a new favorite who was destined to have a hand in the work of shaking the foundations of the throne had already become visible above the horizon. George Villiers, known in history under the name of Buckingham, had begun to take the place of the Earl of Somerset in the heart of the king. The latter had recently married the Countess of Essex, who had been separated by divorce from her husband, the son of the unfortunate favorite of Queen Elizabeth. Somerset and his wife were accused by the public voice of having imprisoned, then poisoned an old friend of theirs, Sir Thomas Overbury. The growing favor of Villiers gave to the enemies of the declining favorite courage to denounce him to the king. The great judge Coke, rival of Bacon, adopted the low calumny circulated against Somerset, and accused him also of having poisoned Prince Henry. Several accomplices were arrested and the assassination of Overbury was proved; but the connivance of Somerset remained doubtful. Justice proceeded against him slowly and as though regretfully; the tone of the earl was often haughty; the king intervened in his favor: the favorite had been initiated into many important secrets. Bacon conducted the affair with consummate prudence and ability. The countess was separately condemned to death. Somerset being declared guilty in his turn, was pardoned, as was his countess: and the earl received royal gifts even after retirement to his country seat, which was soon afterwards granted to him as a prison. Either through fear or from a lingering affection, James I. did not abandon his former favorite, notwithstanding his growing passion for a new face. George Villiers was henceforth to reign undividedly over the father as well as the son. Prince Charles had assumed the title of Prince of Wales; his friendship for Villiers equalled that of the king.

Fourteen years had passed since James had quitted Scotland, and he had never visited his hereditary kingdom; he had no money for that purpose; but the States of Holland, free from the war with Spain since the recognition of their independence in 1609, had recently paid their debts to England, and the journey to Scotland was resolved upon. The king besides had a great task to achieve there; he was laboring to establish religious uniformity among his subjects. Twelve years previously he had undertaken to found the episcopacy in Scotland. Persecution, imprisonment, exile had by degrees disposed of the chiefs of the resistance. Welch and Decry, condemned to death, then to banishment, had retired abroad. Old Andrew Melvil, called to London for a conference, and forcibly detained, as his nephew had already been, had left the latter in his prison in Scotland, where he died. At this period Melvil was living at Sedan, ever indomitable in his aversion to the episcopacy and his support of the rights of a free-born Scot. James had in Scotland an agent as able as he was unscrupulous. Sir George Hume, whom he had made Earl of Dunbar, succeeded at length, partly by intimidation, partly by corruption, in imposing silence upon the Scottish clergy. Two courts of high commission still more tyrannical than those of London, were sitting at St. Andrew's and Glasgow when the king arrived in Scotland, in 1617. Parliament presented for the royal sanction the bill which definitively constituted the episcopal Church; but a remonstrance from the clergy arrested the arm of the king as he extended the sceptre to give the authority of law to the project; the bill was withdrawn, the episcopacy was held to be established by the royal prerogative, and the refractory were cited before the high commission. Calderwood went to swell the band of Scottish exiles upon the Continent, and the people, deprived of the religious form which pleased them and to which they were accustomed, allowed their resentment to slumber until the day when the Covenant was to protest against the work of the father as developed by the son.

King James had been much vexed in Scotland by the strict observance of the "Sabbath." When he set out to return to England, he composed a work to which he gave the authority of law, under the title of The Book of Sports. Under the pretext of regulating the pleasures permitted on Sunday, this new ordinance forbade the respectful observances which marked among the Puritans the rest of the seventh day. The Book of Sports was ill received by the majority of the population. They refused to be merry by compulsion, and the new arm, more dangerous to royalty than to the Puritans, lay in the arsenal of despotism, until Archbishop Laud subsequently drew it forth for his own injury as well as that of his master.

At the moment of leaving Scotland, the king had raised Bacon to the dignity of Keeper of the Seals and had entrusted extensive powers to him. This royal favor had turned the brain of the illustrious lawyer, who had affected the dignity of king during the absence of the legitimate monarch. Upon his return, however, Bacon resumed his accustomed humility in presence of the great men of the land. After waiting for two days at the door of Villiers, who had become Duke of Buckingham, he at length obtained admission, and threw himself prostrate before the favorite, kissing his feet. He did not rise until he had obtained his pardon. "I was obliged to kneel myself before the king to make him revoke your disgrace," said the haughty favorite to the repentant magistrate. The disgrace had reference especially to the part which Bacon had played in a project of marriage for the brother of Villiers with the grand-daughter of Coke. The union was accomplished, but Coke only gained by the sacrifice of his grand-daughter a place in the Council, while Bacon, reconciled with Buckingham, became Chancellor and Lord Verulam, thus adding fresh riches to the treasures which he dissipated as quickly as he acquired them.

Bacon was not the only person who sold justice and favor. Buckingham, his family, and his friends, were publicly trafficking in offices, posts, and titles, which were even imposed sometimes upon those who did not ask for them. The favorite was created a Marquis and appointed High Admiral, to the detriment of the aged Howard, formerly commander of the fleet that had vanquished the Armada. Trials, skillfully conducted by Bacon and Coke, added fines and confiscations to the produce of the malversations. All articles of primary necessity were the subject of monopolies. The people regretted Somerset, and still more the wise administration and economy of Queen Elizabeth.

Amidst the system of plunder which he tolerated, the king was still poor. He had for a moment hoped for a fresh source of wealth; Sir Walter Raleigh, still confined in the Tower, had succeeded in bringing to the knowledge of the king the details of a gold-mine, which he had formerly discovered in Guiana. Raleigh was quite ready to direct an expedition, promising to pay all expenses himself and asking from the king nothing but his liberty. A fifth of all the profits was to belong to the Crown. James hesitated for a long time. He dreaded the valor of Raleigh, which might involve him in a war with Spain; but the skillful adventurer contrived to purchase the good-will of the favorite. Raleigh issued forth from the Tower, free, but not pardoned. Protesting his pacific intentions with regard to the Spaniards, he set sail on the 28th of March, 1617, as King James was preparing to start for Scotland.

From the moment of its departure misfortune attended the expedition of Raleigh: sickness decimated his crews and stretched him upon a bed of suffering. He found the Spaniards warned of his approach and disposed to oppose his progress. The little squadron which he commissioned to ascend the river Oronoco, in search of the gold-mine, was attacked by the Spaniards of the town of St. Thomas; in return, the English captured and burnt down the town.

Sir Walter Raleigh.

The son of Raleigh was killed, the crews mutinied, and the expedition returned without gold and almost without soldiers. Sir Walter Raleigh, distracted with grief and anger, flew into a passion with Captain Kemyss, who commanded the detachment; his old friend, in despair, killed himself. Other captains abandoned their unfortunate chief. The sailors were in revolt, those who remained urged Sir Walter to return to former methods, and to overrun the sea and the coasts with them in order to seize and pillage the Spanish ships and settlements. Raleigh resisted, not without some efforts and relapses. He set sail, however, for England. When he landed in the month of June, 1618, he learnt that a warrant of arrest had been issued against him. Spain had complained of the capture of St. Thomas. The governor, who had been killed, was a relative of Gondomar, the ambassador in England; the latter had raised the cry of piracy and made threats of royal vengeance. The moment was fatal to Raleigh. James was negotiating for the marriage of his son with the Infanta, Donna Anna, daughter of Philip III. He was resolved to please Spain at any price. Raleigh was soon lodged in the Tower once more. "The guilty man is in our hands," wrote Buckingham to Gondomar, "and we have seized his ships; if it please the king your lord, his Majesty will punctually fulfill his engagements, by sending the criminals to suffer their punishment in Spain, unless he should find it more satisfactory and exemplary that the chastisement should be inflicted upon them in England." Philip III. deigned to entrust this business to King James.

Raleigh was still under the weight of the old sentence of death pronounced against him fifteen years previously, without which it would have been difficult to convict him this time of a crime involving capital punishment. "Your recent offences have roused the justice of his Majesty," declared the great judge Montague; "May God have mercy on your soul!" Weak and ill as he was, Raleigh defended himself with as much skill as complacency. He asked for a short delay, in order to put his affairs in order. "Not," he said, "that I desire to gain a minute of existence. Old, sick, and dishonored, and approaching my end, life has become wearisome to me." It was, indeed, the expression of supreme weariness in this man, who had always loved life more than he had dreaded death, even according to the statements of his enemies. The respite was refused. Lady Raleigh, on going to say farewell to her husband, announced to him that she had obtained the favor of receiving his body after the execution. The hideous punishment of traitors had been commuted. Raleigh was to be beheaded. "Well done, Bess," he said, smiling; "it is fortunate that you will be able to dispose in death of a husband whom you have not always had when alive at your disposal." He had cast aside, by an effort of his powerful will, all the ambitious projects, all the romantic, adventurous, strange ideas, which still crowded in his brain. The greatness of his soul, often darkened during lifetime by many faults and even vices, was freed from the dark mist at the hour of death. On the 29th of October he was calm, grave, pious. He received the sacrament before walking to the scaffold, erected at Westminster. An immense crowd surrounded it. He addressed the people and made a long speech, protesting his innocence. The morning was cold. It was proposed to the condemned man that he should warm himself for an instant before the fatal moment. "No," said Raleigh, "it is the day of my ague; if I were to tremble presently, my enemies will say I quake for fear. It were better to have done with it." He knelt, uttering aloud a beautiful prayer. He touched the axe, "'Tis a sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases," he said, and he laid his head upon the block. The executioner delayed. "What do you fear?" exclaimed Raleigh; "strike." His head fell immediately. The great soldier, the illustrious sailor, the statesman, the scholar, the incomparable adventurer, was not yet sixty-seven years of age. King James had truckled to Spain, and had added one more stain to his name.

One of the most implacable of the judges who were the instruments of the ruin of Raleigh was already threatened in his exalted seat. At the beginning of 1621 the king was compelled to convoke a Parliament, to obtain the subsidies which he needed. His son-in-law, the Elector-Palatine, placed by the Protestant faction on the throne of Bohemia, had imprudently accepted that offer without measuring the opposition which was about to be raised against him on the part of the Catholics of the Empire. He was now in danger of being driven from Bohemia, and deprived at the same time of his hereditary states. The Lower Palatinate had been attacked by the Catholic armies. James hesitated, lamented, cursing the ambition of his son-in-law, which had placed this business upon his shoulders; but he had already sent a small army corps to his assistance, and promised larger reinforcements. Parliament alone could place him in a position to keep his promises.

Parliament had no objection to this war, popular in England as a Protestant crusade; but it desired to set a price upon its liberality, and demanded that several retainers of monopolies should be tried, who had unworthily abused their scandalous privileges. From Sir Giles Mompesson and Sir Francis Mitchell, they soon came to the Attorney-General, Sir Henry Yelverton, and from him to one of the judges of the court of prerogatives, to the Bishop of Llandaff, convicted of having sold or bought justice. The vengeance of the Commons aimed even higher still: the Chancellor Bacon had said that corruption was the vice of the time. He had been profoundly smitten with it, and was to bear a signal punishment for his offences. On the 21st of March, 1621, the commission of Parliament entrusted with the inquiry into abuses in the matter of justice accused the Lord Chancellor, viscount of St. Alban's, upon twenty-two personal counts, while at the same time he was reproached with his connivance at offences of the same nature among his subordinates.

Bacon had hitherto resolutely denied the deeds with which the public voice reproached him; but the blow was too bold and the accusations too plainly specified for him to be able to resist the evidence any longer. His eloquence, the marvellous resources of his mind, the brilliancy of his genius, all failed him with the decline of court favor. He felt himself abandoned by the king, who had never had any liking for him, the servility of Bacon not succeeding in veiling his intellectual superiority. The Duke of Buckingham coveted his offices for some of his own dependents. The great chancellor was stricken with sickness, he took to his bed and asked for time to prepare his defence. It was not a defence, but a general confession which he caused to be presented on the 24th of April to the House of Lords. Being pressed with questions, he avowed one after another all the shameful actions of which he was accused, palliating them as well as he was able and asking mercy of his judges. "The poor gentleman," wrote a contemporary, "elevated formerly above pity, has now fallen below it; his tongue, which was the glory of his time for eloquence, is like a forsaken harp hung upon the willow, while the waters of affliction flow over upon the banks." The abasement was complete. The Lords had spared this great criminal the humiliation of appearing at their bar, but a deputation repaired to his residence in order to cause the authenticity of the writing and the circumstantial confession to be certified. "It is my act, my hand, my heart. Oh my Lords, spare a broken reed!" sobbed the great philosopher, the brilliant genius, the profound thinker who is still one of the glories of England. Moral character had been lacking to these intellectual gifts.

Bacon was condemned to lose all his offices and to pay a fine of forty thousand pounds sterling, which was remitted by the king, for he was in no condition to discharge it. His imprisonment was commuted into exile within his estates. It was forbidden him during his lifetime to approach the court, to sit in Parliament, or to serve his country in whatever capacity it might be.

No punishment could be more bitter to Bacon. Confined to his country seat, he revised his former works, his Essays, his Novum Organum, or New Philosophy, his two books on the Progress of Science. He caused them to be translated into Latin; he even wrote a History of Henry VII.; but his heart was still in court and in public life. He only asked to reappear upon that scene from which he had been so ignominiously expelled, and he harassed the King, Prince Charles, and the Duke of Buckingham with his petitions. None gave ear to him, none replied to him; his temper became embittered, his health became impaired, and this great mind, fallen so low, was extinguished in 1626, five years after his disgrace. He died at the age of sixty-five.

The affairs of the Elector-Palatine, who had become King of Bohemia, were becoming more and more serious. The five thousand Englishmen sent by King James, ill-paid and poorly commanded, had rendered little service. The embassies with which he importuned all the powers interested exerted no influence. The throne of Bohemia, like the hereditary states of Prince Frederick, had been taken from him, and, driven from Germany, he had been compelled to take refuge at the Hague with his wife and children, there to live upon a pension allowed him by the Dutch; but his father-in-law, King James, had conceived a project which was, he thought, calculated at least to re-establish his son-in-law in the Palatinate. He counted in this affair upon the influence of Spain.

In spite of the national opposition to a Catholic marriage for the heir to the throne, and notwithstanding the recent petitions of Parliament to this effect, King James, who had moreover quarrelled with the House of Commons and had caused several of its members to be arrested, continued his negotiations with Philip IV. for the marriage of Prince Charles with the Infanta, Donna Maria. For nearly twenty years the King of England had, in common with Spain, dreamed of this alliance, which he at length regarded as on the point of being realized. The scheme had been proposed more than once in the shape of a union between Prince Henry with the Infanta Anne; the prince had died and the Infanta had married the King of France. The King of Spain, Philip III., had at first appeared favorable to the marriage, but on his death-bed he recommended his son Philip IV. to make his sister an empress by uniting her to her cousin the Emperor Ferdinand. King James did not know of the last wish of the dying king, but he hoped to find the new Spanish sovereign more accommodating than his father. After endless negotiations and journeys to and fro, after Catholic pretensions on the part of Spain, and displays of pecuniary avidity on that of King James, who threatened to break off everything, an almost complete understanding had been arrived at in the month of January, 1623: the Infanta was to preserve the free exercise of her religion; the English Catholics were to enjoy a practical, if not legal, toleration; the payments of the dowry of two millions of crowns were arranged, the dispensation of Rome was expected, and people spoke of celebrating the marriage by proxy through the ambassador forty days after the arrival of that important document. Everything appeared propitious. Lord Digby, Earl of Bristol, ambassador at Madrid, wrote to the king, "I do not wish to inspire by uncertain reasons a vain hope in your Majesty, but I can inform you that the court of Spain openly manifests its intention of giving you real and prompt satisfaction. If this is not really their design, they are more false than all the devils in hell, for they could not make more protestations of sincerity nor more ardent vows."

The Spaniards could scarcely be absolved from the reproach of double-dealing in this affair; for notwithstanding appearances, the two negotiations in favor of the Elector-Palatine and the Prince of Wales did not make progress. The towns of the Palatinate, which still held out for their hereditary prince, were falling by degrees into the hands of the emperor without Spain intervening in any manner, and the dispensation of Rome did not arrive. A strange and chivalrous project suddenly arose in the mind of Prince Charles, suggested, it is said, by Buckingham, who had himself conceived it upon a proposal of the Duke Olivarez, first and all-powerful minister in Spain. Why not go himself to Madrid to conquer and bring back the Infanta? Why not put an end to this interminable negotiation by the act of an amorous, headstrong prince? King James consented to the scheme after much hesitation and even after tears. He had the matter at heart; his self-love was at stake. The prince set out secretly, accompanied by Buckingham.

The undertaking was hazardous, and it appeared even more so than it was. When it was known in England that the prince had departed, and with what object, the emotion and uneasiness were great. Public agitation communicated itself to the king. "Do you think," he said to his keeper of the seals, Bishop Williams, "that this knight-errant journey will succeed?" "Sire," said the bishop, "if my Lord Marquis of Buckingham treat the Duke Olivarez with great consideration, remembering that he is the favorite in Spain, and if the Duke Olivarez is very polite and careful towards my Lord Marquis of Buckingham, remembering that he is the favorite in England, the prince your son may pay his addresses happily to the Infanta; but if the duke and the marquis mutually forget what they both are, it will be very dangerous for the design of your Majesty. God will that neither one nor the other will fall into that error."

The far-seeing good sense of the bishop keeper of the seals had not deceived him. The whims and vanity of Buckingham encountering the Spanish haughtiness, were to be as a rock to this frail bark. The undertaking had succeeded well: the prince and the favorite had traversed Paris and France under an incognito, which was penetrated on several occasions, and they had arrived safe and sound at Madrid on the 17th of March, 1623, "more gay than they had ever been in their lives." This chivalrous freak, the imprudent straightforwardness of the proceeding for a moment appeared to seduce the Spaniards. "It only remains for us to throw the Infanta into his arms," Count Olivarez exclaimed, and the prince, putting aside all mystery, was sumptuously received at the court of Spain, admitted to the presence of the Infanta, and entertained with hopes of a speedy triumph. Appearances were soon to give way to reality. The months elapsed, the Prince of Wales and Buckingham were still at Madrid. The demands of Pope Gregory XV. became every day more extensive, and the situation more treacherous. The three sovereigns reciprocally demanded an act of respect for religious liberty, which in the main and on principle neither of them recognized nor intended to grant. The King of England wished his son to marry a Catholic princess, while remaining exclusively Protestant himself, his son, and his people. The King of Spain desired that his daughter and all her personal servants should remain openly Catholics, while living in a Protestant family and among a Protestant people, while he himself absolutely excluded all Protestants from his realm. The Pope claimed for the Catholics of England full liberty of conscience, while peremptorily refusing the same privilege to the Protestants throughout his dominions, and called upon the King of England to return, together with his people, to the yoke of the only true and sovereign Church.

So many conflicting and obstinate pretensions could not be reconciled. King James yielded as much as he could; he signed the articles of toleration with regard to the Catholics which were demanded of him, publicly so far as public opinion in England grudgingly permitted; secretly in respect of that which concerned the influence to be exerted upon Parliament on the subject of penal laws. He even sent (to his son and Buckingham) a blank signature, which approved in advance all that they might concede. Matters proceeded from bad to worse; the first surprise at the proceeding of the Prince of Wales had subsided. There was no longer any hope of seeing Charles become a Catholic. "I have come to Spain to seek a wife and not a religion," he said frankly. The views of the English and Spanish favorites had clashed upon several occasions. Buckingham, irritated at not having succeeded immediately in an undertaking which his foolish vanity had suggested, altered his mind, and no longer urged the completion of the project. Nothing had been broken off, but everything remained in suspense, and King James as well as England had for more than six months been demanding the return of the absent Prince of Wales. "I care neither for the marriage nor for aught else, provided I fold you once more in my arms," wrote the king to his son and the favorite. "God grant it! God grant it! God grant it! Amen! amen! amen!" There was a tender separation in appearance, at least, between the royal persons. The two favorites were more bitter. "I remain for ever," said Buckingham to Olivarez, "the servant of the King of Spain, the queen, the Infanta, and I will render to them all the good offices in my power. As to you, you have so often thwarted and disobliged me that I make you no declaration of friendship." "I accept your words," dryly replied the Count Duke. "If the prince had come here alone he would not have gone away alone," it was said in Madrid. He embarked at Santander, on the 28th of September, and landed, on the 5th of October, at Portsmouth, amidst the acclamations and transports of joy of all England. This time, Buckingham was of the same opinion as the people of England, and he henceforth exerted all his influence toward preventing this marriage for which he had toiled so long, and which Spain at length appeared to seriously desire. In the month of January, 1624, the Earl of Bristol was recalled from Spain, where he had loyally served the king his master, and made a mortal enemy in the Duke of Buckingham. The sumptuous preparations for the nuptials were suspended. The Infanta renounced the title of Princess of Wales, which she already bore, and war with Spain became imminent. King James, who detested war, and who had striven for so many years for a union with Spain, was greatly dejected. "War," he said, "will not restore the Palatinate to my son-in-law." The Protestant passion of England and the ill-humor of Buckingham, fomented by the tardiness and the demands of the Pope and Spain, had triumphed. Parliament, convoked with regret in 1624, immediately offered substantial supplies, and the rigorous laws against the Catholics, suspended for a moment, were applied with more severity than ever. Alliances began to be formed against the House of Austria in Germany and in Spain. France, Savoy, Denmark, Sweden, united with England and Holland, which latter country having already resumed the war with its perpetual enemies, it was a question of nothing less than completely delivering the soil of the Low Countries from the presence of the Spaniards and retaking the Palatinate. The English troops, placed under the orders of Prince Maurice of Nassau, were defeated. The prince died at the Hague. The Count of Mansfeldt, then the great adventurer in war, came to seek in England the reinforcements which had been promised him. The soldiers were inexperienced, the quarters unhealthy; before arriving at the frontiers of the Palatinate half the troops were unfit for service. The Elector-Palatine was not yet upon the point of recovering his states.

While England was thus raising the standard of the Protestant war, King James was negotiating another Catholic marriage. He had long kept the court of Spain in suspense, pretending successively to seek for his two sons the hand of a French princess. When the affair decisively miscarried at Madrid, he turned again towards Paris. Cardinal Richelieu was more resolute and his designs were grander than those of Olivarez. "The marriage of the Princess Henrietta-Maria with the King of England, and the league of the Protestant states under the patronage of the King of France were necessary to the greatness of France and to his own power." He had formed a league against the House of Austria, and consolidated it by promising the sister of Louis XIII. to the Prince of Wales. A secret act, securing to the English Catholics not only toleration, but more liberty and immunity, was signed on the 12th of December, 1624, by King James and the Prince of Wales. The preparations were already begun for receiving the French princess in London, when King James fell ill and died on the 6th of April, 1625, at the age of fifty-eight. He had been twenty-two years king of England. His foolish pretensions to absolute power, his religious tyranny, his bad and weak policy had prepared the storm which was to burst upon the head of his son.

Chapter XXIII.
Charles I. And His Government (1625-1642).

King James I. had wearied his people, who had learned to despise him. King Charles I. ascended the throne amidst the hopes of his people. He was already respected, and his subjects were disposed to have confidence in him. He immediately convoked a Parliament. When, on the 18th of June, 1625, the two Houses assembled at Westminster, Parliament, as well as the king, was as yet ignorant of the profound hostility which separated a sovereign imbued with all the notions of absolute power which had been developed half a century previously upon the Continent, and a people who, on their part, had made progress and who now claimed to take part in the affairs of the country and in their own government.

The struggle was not long in beginning. It was to the king that all the petitions and remonstrances of the House of Commons were addressed, but Parliament looked to everything and claimed to reform all abuses. The supplies necessary for sustaining the war against Spain were withheld during the examination of grievances. They had only been partially voted when the king, young and impatient, wearied by delays and complaints, pronounced the dissolution of Parliament, and had recourse to a loan to procure money.

The loan succeeded ill, and the enterprise against Cadiz, which had rendered it necessary, having miscarried, the king found himself compelled to convoke another Parliament, which it was hoped would be found more docile; but at the court of Charles, and in his closest intimacy, lived a man, the favorite of the son as well as of the father, to whom the English people attributed the dissensions which separated them from their sovereign. The Commons arrived in London, resolved to overthrow Buckingham. The king protected him and angrily rejected the accusations which were presented. Two of the commissioners entrusted with the impeachment—Sir John Eliot and Sir Dudley Digges—were placed in the Tower for insolent words. On the 15th of June, 1626, the second Parliament of the reign of Charles I. was dissolved like the first, and the monarch felt himself king.

He was resolved to govern alone, but he had no money. The war with Spain and Austria weighed heavily upon his finances. Buckingham, animated by personal spite against Cardinal Richelieu, involved his master in a struggle with France, in the interests of threatened Protestantism. It was thought that the heart of the English people would be regained, and its purse everywhere opened by announcing an expedition for the deliverance of La Rochelle, which was besieged. Buckingham himself was to command it.

Distrust was felt towards the favorite and his zeal for the Protestant cause. The new loan supplied little money; the tax called ship-money, imposed for the first time upon the ports and seaside districts, produced fewer vessels, armed and equipped, than had been hoped for, and the expedition sent to the assistance of La Rochelle failed miserably. Buckingham, who had effected a descent upon the island of Ré, was unable to take possession of it. He lost many men, and returned to England after this sanguinary blow, more hated and despised than ever. "All the known or possible resources of tyranny were exhausted." The king and the favorite, haughty as they were, felt the necessity of becoming reconciled with the people. A fresh Parliament was convoked, on the advice of Buckingham, as was everywhere announced.

Parliament assembled on the 17th of March, 1628. It numbered in its midst nearly all the men who, in their counties, had resisted the royal tyranny or exactions. The language of the king, on opening the session, was haughty and threatening. He had wavered, but he desired to raise himself in his own eyes as well as those of the world by an especially regal attitude. The Houses did not trouble themselves about threats. They too were animated by a passionate and haughty resolve. Their purpose was to proclaim aloud their liberties and cause them to be recognized by the Government. The aged Coke, young Wentworth, destined shortly to serve the interests of absolute power under the name of Lord Strafford, Denzil Hollis, Pym, and many others, of different manners and sentiments, but united in the same patriotic desire, were at the head of the Parliamentary coalition. Less than two months after its assembling, on the 8th of May, 1628, the House of Commons had voted the famous political declaration known under the name of the Petition of Right. After some hesitation, the Upper House accepted it also. The petition was immediately presented to the king, who, after struggling in vain for several weeks, ultimately promised his assent.

Assassination Of Buckingham.

It was one of the misfortunes, perhaps the greatest misfortune of King Charles I., never to admit that a monarch owed his subjects, however refractory, truth and fidelity. He evaded replying to the Petition of Right, contenting himself with protesting his attachment to the Great Charter, and he forbade the House to meddle in future with state affairs.

The exasperation was great. Charles and Buckingham took alarm; they yielded. This Parliament which had but lately been thought of no use but to vote subsidies, was already treated with upon a footing of equality; the Petition of Right was again presented to the king, and he replied with the usual formula, always uttered in French: Soit droit fait comme il est désiré. But the abuses were not reformed; it was a question of applying the principles. The king collected the customs dues without the authority of Parliament. The conflict recommenced; the king wished to gain some respite without dissolving Parliament. He prorogued the Houses until the month of January, 1629. Before that period, on the 23rd of August, 1628, the Duke of Buckingham was assassinated by a disaffected officer, named Felton, and in the hat of the latter was found some writing which recalled to mind the recent remonstrance of the House. The king, indignant and disconsolate, returned noiselessly into the path of despotism which he had, for a moment, apparently forsaken. He lost a favorite odious to Parliament; he detached from the coalition of the Commons one of its boldest and most esteemed chiefs. Sir Thomas Wentworth, soon afterwards Lord Strafford, entered the council of the king, notwithstanding the entreaties of his friends. When the House again assembled, on the 20th of January, 1629, it learned that the evasive reply of the king to the Petition of Right had been affixed at the bottom of the petition. The printer had received orders to modify the legal text in this manner. The commissioners of the Commons, entrusted to verify the matter, did not mention it, as though blushing to disclose such a breach of faith; but their silence did not promise oblivion.

All the attacks against the abuses still subsisting recommenced. The king, on his part, endeavored to obtain the concession of the customs dues, which he claimed in advance and for all the duration of his reign, like the majority of his predecessors. The Commons remained immovable; the voting of the supplies was the sole efficacious arm which remained to them wherewith to fight against absolute power. The king spoke of proroguing the Houses again. The Commons caused their doors to be closed in order to deliberate without restraint. As preparations were being made for breaking them open, the Council were apprised that the members had retired, after having voted that the collecting of the customs duties was illegal, and that those who should raise them, or who should merely consent to pay them, were traitors to the country. On the 16th of March, 1629, Parliament was dissolved. A few days afterwards the king published a declaration, which ended in these terms: "It is spread abroad, with evil design, that a Parliament will soon be assembled. His Majesty has well proved that he had no aversion to Parliaments, but their last excesses have determined him against his wish to change his conduct. He will in future account it presumption for any to prescribe a time for convoking a new Parliament."

The king was about to endeavor to govern alone, after having attempted in vain to govern with his Parliament.

The English people did not rise in revolt. They were exasperated and distrustful, preoccupied with the political trials which everywhere awaited the leaders of the parliamentary resistance; but nowhere did they disregard the laws. At the beginning of his exercise of absolute power, Charles I. met no obstacle on the part of his subjects. It was his friends who soon caused embarrassment to his government. The capricious frivolity of Queen Henrietta Maria, her attachment to her favorites, ambitious and frivolous like herself, the court intrigues, and the division which was becoming greater and greater between these persons absorbed in pleasures and the serious part of the nation, which was passionately devoted to the affairs of this world and those of eternal life; such were the first obstacles which King Charles encountered. He had to assist him, however, the two ministers to whom he had given his confidence, Lord Wentworth and Bishop Laud.

In forsaking the national party, to which he belonged, for hatred to Buckingham rather than from personal or fixed principles, Wentworth had embraced the royal cause with all his heart. "With an intellect too great to confine itself to domestic intrigues, and a pride too passionate to bow to the proprieties of the palace, he gave himself up enthusiastically to business, braving all rivalries as he shattered all resistance, ardent in extending and strengthening the royal authority, which had become his own, but assiduous at the same time in re-establishing order, in repressing abuses, in subjugating private interests which he deemed illegitimate, in serving the general interests which he did not fear." A friend of Wentworth, Laud, who was soon nominated Archbishop of Canterbury, had, with less worldly passions and with sincere piety, carried to the Council the same dispositions and the same designs. He had less understanding than his colleague, and "pursued incessantly with an activity, indefatigable but narrow, violent, and harsh, whatever fixed idea dominated him, with all the transport of passion and the authority of duty."

Such counsels would necessarily enter before long into contention with the court. Strafford (we give him the title under which he is known in history, although he did not yet bear it) went to Ireland, where he re-established order in the country and in the finances, so that kingdom, but lately a source of great expenditure, furnished revenues to the king. Laud was commissioner of the treasury, and endeavored to apply the same rules to the resources of the royal treasury in England; but the prodigality of the queen, the somewhat disdainful generosity of the king, who easily granted pensions, and the sumptuous life of the court, exhausted the resources of the arbitrary but regular government of the two ministers. The central power was weak and impotent, foreign politics were ill-directed, and the king was little regarded upon the Continent. Barbary Corsairs ventured into the British Channel, and as far as St. George's Channel, landing, pillaging the houses, and making prisoners. The merchant navy in vain asked for protection; the royal fleet was unarmed and ill equipped. Everywhere money was wanted; recourse was had to ever-increasing exactions. Strafford convoked the Irish Parliament, and contrived to chain it to his feet like a docile slave. The king forbade him to assemble it again, for both he and the queen dreaded the mere name of Parliament. There, as elsewhere, the able, skillful, and foreseeing minister suffered under the yoke of feeble incompetence. Monopolies reappeared, affecting trade in all commodities: justice was sold, and everything furnished matter for litigation, out of which there was no escape but by payment of money. Absolute government continued without power, while its mean tyranny and administrative abuses weighed upon all classes of the nation. The country gentlemen especially were incessantly a mark for the rigors of authority, and saw grow up beside them, in every village, a new power. Laud enrolled the Anglican Church in the service of his king. He thus brought him a faithful and numerous militia. Charles, sincerely pious and Protestant, notwithstanding the weaknesses charged against him with regard to the Catholics, ardently confided himself to this army which came to his assistance. The alliance between the king and the Church soon became close and irrevocable.

It was the Puritans, as the dissenting sects were then called, who bore the burden of this alliance. Laud insisted upon establishing everywhere an absolute conformity in the rites and ceremonies which he modified without scruple in the Roman Catholic spirit. Everywhere where the conscience of the Anglican ministers was opposed to these innovations, they were dismissed from their livings. The churches which they went forth to found in France, Holland, and Germany, did not even secure to them the liberty of their faith. Laud claimed to extend his jurisdiction upon the Continent, and pursued them with his tyranny upon the foreign soil on which they sought to establish themselves.

The numerous refugees who were driven from their country by religious persecution, and who had obtained charters for the free exercise of their national worship in England, found these charters abolished. Absolute conformity with the Anglican rite was required by the Archbishop, supported by the royal power. Imprisonment and exile overtook the delinquents on all hands.

The anger and terror of the English people were becoming great. The Reformation had been, in England, of a double nature. Interested and worldly on the part of the king and the great noblemen, it had been earnest, sincere, profound, among the nation properly so called, and it had always leaned to the side of the Puritans. The novelties introduced by Laud into the worship agitated minds and consciences alike. The Catholics rejoiced, and the Pope thought himself in a position to cause a Cardinal's hat to be offered to the Archbishop; but the latter only wished to secure the supremacy of the Anglican Church and of the bishops in the Anglican Church. When he caused the office of high treasurer to be given to Juxon, Bishop of London, Laud exclaimed in excess of his joy, "Now that the Church subsists and supports itself unassisted, all is consummated; I can no more."

He had done enough, for he had brought the Anglican Church to the brink of the abyss, and had prepared for it grievous trials.

For some time disaffection had been increased among all classes of society. The weakness and incapacity of the government in general, notwithstanding the efforts of Strafford and Laud, the pecuniary exactions and religious tyranny attacked and exasperated all citizens; numerous emigrations had begun; men passionately attached to their faith went to seek upon the Continent, and even in America, the liberty of worship which was refused to them in their own country. Obscure and unknown sectaries had been the first to adopt the refuge of exile; by degrees men of greater consideration followed their example. When an order of the royal council forbade emigration, a ship anchored in the Thames already bore the future heroes of the revolution of England, ready to expatriate themselves in order to escape an odious government. It was the hand of the king himself which retained in England Pym, Haslerig, Hampden, and Oliver Cromwell.

The wrath of the people did not yet burst forth, but it began to be heard in suppressed tones; the assemblages of nonconformists increased everywhere under different names. The Independents or Brownists were the most numerous of those who separated themselves openly from the Anglican Church, and all the vigilance of Laud did not suffice to disperse the faithful, nor his severity to punish them. Numerous pamphlets circulated among the people of an insolent and vigorous kind. They were bought eagerly, and the rigors of the star chamber did not succeed in arresting the smugglers who brought them from Holland, and the pedlars who spread them throughout the country. It was resolved to make a great example; a lawyer, a theologian, and a physician, Prynne, Burton, and Bastwick, were arrested at the same time, and, after an iniquitous trial, were condemned to the pillory, to lose their ears, and to pay an enormous fine. Their imprisonment was to be for life.

The populace of London thronged around the pillory, when the three condemned men, pale and bleeding, were fixed there. Their courage did not falter for a moment, and their sufferings served their cause better than all their writings. A libeller by profession, John Lilburne, condemned to a punishment of the same kind, received at the hands of the nation the same impassioned, albeit still silent sympathy. The whole country was moved, but it awaited a chief who should give the signal of legal resistance—a name around which the scattered forces might range themselves. It was for John Hampden that this honor was reserved.

Grave and irreproachable in conduct, Hampden was also a man of substance. He lived peacefully in Buckinghamshire, esteemed and honored by all. He was known to be adverse to the government, but not violently so, and when, in 1636, the king was desirous of collecting ship-money, which was illegal without the authorization of Parliament, Hampden was rated at twenty shillings only. He refused to pay, being determined to carry the question personally before the courts. The trial was conducted with moderation on the part of the accused as well as on that of the counsel and judges. No insult to the government, no violence towards Hampden, but justice was deaf to legal argument, and Hampden was condemned. The court congratulated itself upon the judgment which gave a sanction to arbitrary power. It did not foresee that the name of Hampden was about to serve as a rallying-point to all malcontents and all conspiracies. The party of resistance now began its existence.

The outburst came sooner and with more violence in Scotland. King James had succeeded in founding the episcopate there against the wish and notwithstanding the traditional habits of the people, passionately attached to the Presbyterian system; but the new bishops had been prudent and had attempted nothing, either against the clergy whom the people loved, or against the worship to which they were accustomed. Charles I. and Laud were more bold. By degrees the bishops had raised their heads; secure of being acknowledged and supported, they had become imbued with the doctrine of the divine right of the episcopate, and had taken a place in political councils. The Archbishop of St. Andrew's was chancellor of Scotland, the Bishop of Ross was about to become treasurer, nine bishops sat in the privy council. On the 23d of July, 1637, the Anglican litany was suddenly put in force in the cathedral at Edinburgh.

When the astonished people heard these accents, which were strange to their ears and which they regarded as savoring of Popery, a profound emotion took possession spontaneously of the whole assembly. An old woman threw her footstool at the head of the officiating clergyman; sedition sprang up in the streets. Repression did not calm the agitation. From Edinburgh it spread into all the counties of Scotland. Every day the privy council and the municipal council were besieged by a numerous, earnest, and ardent mob; by gentlemen, farmers, townsmen, artisans, peasants, who complained of the innovations introduced into their worship. Upon being ordered to retire, they gave way without violence, but the petitioners came back in greater numbers on the morrow. Everywhere resistance was being organized, and when a royal order was at length promulgated, prohibiting any assemblage under pain of treason, the Lords Hume and Lindsay, both peers of the Realm, following in the steps of the herald who read the royal proclamation, caused to be affixed to the walls a protest which they had signed in the name of their fellow-citizens. The same care was taken in all places in which the king's proclamation was made public. Six weeks after the imprudent and arbitrary act of Charles, the whole of Scotland was confederated under a solemn pledge called the "Covenant," a profession of religious faith, and a national protest against the new liturgy which the Government wished to impose upon the public. The king and Laud had roused the Scottish nation to rebellion against them.

Charles was both astonished and indignant. Imbued with all the principles which flourished on the Continent respecting the royal dignity and authority, he looked upon resistance as a crime of the lower classes, and marvelled to see noblemen and gentlemen united in the same feeling and serving the same cause. He immediately resolved to have recourse to force in order to chastise the rebels, but he required time to raise an army. The Marquis of Hamilton, despatched into Scotland to negotiate with the Covenanters, promised all that was desired, and authorized the assembling of a general synod, wherein all the controverted questions might be discussed. The assembly met at Glasgow; but the Scots, distrusting with good cause so much condescension, soon perceived that Hamilton was merely endeavoring to delay matters. At the moment when the synod was preparing to accuse the bishops, the marquis suddenly declared its dissolution. At the same time it learned that war was imminent, and that a body of troops raised in Ireland by Strafford was about to land in Scotland. The king was preparing to chastise his rebellious subjects, and Hamilton returned precipitately to London, while the synod, without troubling itself about its dissolution, continued its deliberations and abolished the episcopate.

The Scottish Covenanters did not confine themselves to mere words or even to serious and impassioned utterances. They raised troops. The Scots who were serving upon the Continent and one of their best officers, Alexander Lesley, formerly in the service of Gustavus Adolphus, were induced to come over and defend their country. The Scottish people addressed to the English, their brothers, a declaration intended to expound their grievances. Before the common beliefs and opinions which now united the two peoples the old national hatred disappeared. When the king arrived at York with all his court, and his general, the Earl of Essex, entered Scotland, the two armies communicated with each other fraternally. The soldiers were more disposed to embrace than to fight. The royal troops did not begin the struggle. Lord Holland, who commanded the first corps, fell back without a struggle. Negotiations were soon resorted to, and peace was concluded at Berwick on the 18th of June, 1639, without a musket having been fired. The disbanding of the two armies was resolved upon, as well as the convocation of a synod and a Scottish Parliament; but the treaty did not affect the root of the difficulties, and the situation remained the same. It was a suspension of arms, not a peace.

Both parties felt this. The Scots disbanded their troops, but maintained the staff officers. Charles summoned Lord Strafford from Ireland to his assistance; this was announcing a predetermination to abandon a conciliatory policy. "It is necessary," said the earl, "to bring back all these people to their senses with the lash." The conditions of peace with the Scots, ill-defined and scarcely reduced to writing, gave occasion to interminable discussions. Parliament and the synod assembled at Edinburgh, raised every day fresh pretensions. War was resolved upon in the royal council, but a pretext was necessary. A letter, addressed by the Scottish chiefs to Louis XIII., with the simple title, To the King, fell into the hands of Strafford. The support of the foreign monarch was being invoked. Charles I., indignant himself, thought that his indignation would be shared by all his people. He needed money wherewith to fight the Scots; his coffers were empty, and he had exhausted every means, legal and otherwise, of obtaining resources. He determined upon his course, and convoked a Parliament.

Great was the astonishment in England. Time had calmed public excitement. The king, in his own person, had governed ill, but people remembered the impediments which the last Parliament had placed in the way of the royal administration; they desired more prudence and moderation in the newly-elected members. The former leaders of the liberal party re-entered the House; but they found themselves surrounded by a sensible and moderate knot of men, resolved to abolish abuses without violence and without insult. They desired neither to alienate the king nor to trouble the repose of the country. Charles himself was animated by the same spirit towards Parliament.

The power of circumstances easily triumphs over good intentions. Upon the reading of the letter of the Scots to the King of France the House remained cold; and thus the arm upon which the king had reckoned failed him when within his grasp. Charles had decided for war, and demanded supplies, but the House was resolved to cause the redress of grievances to be passed before voting the taxes. Parleyings were again of no avail; the king began to grow angry; Parliament was still calm, hurrying on its discussion, but without departing from its pacific resolutions. At length the king caused the House to be informed that if they would vote twelve subsidies, payable in three years, he would abandon the system of demanding ship-money without the approbation of Parliament. The sum was enormous, they became alarmed and angry, but the House would not sever their connection with the king. They were about to proceed to the voting of some subsidies without fixing the amounts, when Sir Henry Vane, a favorite of Queen Henrietta Maria, who had been raised against the wish of Strafford to the post of secretary of state, rose from his seat, and announced that, without adopting the entire message, the vote was useless; for the king would not accept a reduction of his demands. The anger and amazement of the Commons were at their height, when, on the morrow, at the moment of opening the sitting, the king caused them to be summoned to the Upper House, and announced the dissolution of Parliament; it was on the 5th of May, 1640; the Houses had assembled on the 13th of April.

Strafford had succeeded better than his master; he had obtained from the Irish Parliament all that he had demanded, and the voluntary subscriptions which he instigated, brought to the royal treasury nearly three hundred thousand pounds sterling. Vexations of all kinds resumed their course; the policy was to get money at all costs. Strafford impelled the king towards despotism; it was necessary either to conquer or die. Twice the earl fell seriously ill; but he raised himself from his bed when scarcely recovered, and set out with the king for the army of Scotland, which he was to command.

The Scots did not wait for his arrival. They entered England, and defeated at Newburne the first English army which they encountered. It was an easy matter; the war was still less popular among the English people than it was with Parliament, and the secret negotiations between the Scottish generals and the chiefs of the malcontents in England were re-echoed among the soldiers. When Strafford assumed the command of the army, he found it undisciplined and disaffected. The two camps confronting each other were really animated by the same feelings as well as the same beliefs. An action took place upon the banks of the Tyne, insignificant in itself, but the Scots crossed the river, and Strafford was compelled to fall back upon York, leaving the enemy masters of the north of England. The anger of the king was powerless in presence of the popular passion. All the authority and ardor of the general could not make the soldiers fight against those whom they called their brothers, and Charles felt a dread of the energy of Strafford's policy. The negotiations between the two armies continued without regard to the king and notwithstanding the protestations of loyalty of the Scots. The cry of peace began to be associated with the word Parliament.

The king dreaded Parliaments. He endeavored to escape from the dilemma by convoking at York the great council of the peers of the realm, a feudal assembly, fallen into disuse for four centuries past. The peers had not yet assembled when two petitions, one from the City of London and the other signed by twelve of the most powerful noblemen, formally demanded the convocation of a real Parliament. The king no longer resisted. The great council of the peers nominated a commission entrusted to negotiate with the Scots. As a preliminary, it was decided that the two armies should remain on foot, both to be paid by the king. It was found necessary to provide for this expense by a loan, and the signatures of the sixteen commissioners were added to that of the king to guarantee the objects for which it was to be raised. Charles departed for London, weary and sad. The whole of England was ardently engaged in the elections, of which the importance was felt. Everywhere the candidates of the court were rejected. The assembling of the new Parliament was fixed for the 3d of November, a fatal date, it was said, for Laud. The Parliament assembled upon the same day under Henry VIII. had begun by overthrowing Wolsey, and had ended with the destruction of the abbeys. Laud refused to alter the date of the convocation. He was, like his master, weary of the struggle, and he abandoned himself, without further resistance, to the chances of a future as yet veiled in obscurity.

Parliament was opened, and scarcely had the king quitted Westminster when his friends—small in number among the Commons—were enabled to assure themselves that the public wrath was greater still than had been foreseen. The dissolution of the last Parliament had caused the cup to overflow. Charles, imbued with haughty ideas of absolute power, had desired to govern alone. In principle Parliament did not claim sovereignty, but it felt its strength, and was resolved to exert it. The monarch was foredoomed to defeat.

The session began with a long and complete enumeration of grievances. The abuses of tyranny were numerous, and all were brought to light. Monopolies, ship-money, arbitrary arrests, venality of justice, exactions of the bishops, the proceedings of the courts of exception—nothing was spared. Before considering the redress of wrongs, it was voted that the complaints were legitimate; they rained down from all quarters, and more than forty committees spent many days in receiving the petitions which came from the counties. Everywhere lists were drawn up of "delinquents," a name which was given to the agents of the crown who had taken part in the execution of the measures complained of. Before any resolution was made against these numerous guilty persons, they found themselves suddenly in danger of being summoned before the House, and condemned to a fine, imprisonment, or confiscation. All the servants of the king were thus placed at the mercy of their enemies. Once inscribed upon the list of "delinquents," no man could enjoy an instant's repose.

The explosion of the new power was sudden and terrible. Strafford had foreseen it. He begged the king to absolve him from appearing before Parliament. "I cannot," Charles answered him, "do without your counsels here. As truly as I am king of England, you incur no danger; they shall not touch a hair of your head." Strafford was not reassured. He set out, however, still bold and resolved to strike the first blow. He was not allowed time to do so: on the 9th of November he arrived in London ill; on the 11th, upon the motion of Pym, the House of Commons charged him with high treason. "The least delay may ruin all," the latter said. "If the earl has communication but once with the king, Parliament will be dissolved; besides, the House only impeaches, and will not judge." Strafford arrived at this moment in the House of Lords, but his impeachment had preceded him there. The door was closed; the earl caused it to be opened, and he was entering the House when his colleagues called out to him to withdraw. He stopped, looked around him, and obeyed after a few seconds' hesitation. Being recalled an hour afterwards, he was enjoined to kneel at the bar. There he learned that the House had admitted the impeachment of the Commons. On the same evening he was conducted to the Tower, whither Laud was conveyed not many days afterwards.

Some other important personages were accused with Strafford; but it was upon the latter that there was concentrated the vengeance of the triumphant party. Scotland and Ireland united themselves with England to overwhelm him with the proofs of his arbitrary rule. For nothing less than this league of three nations against the imprisoned minister could satisfy the feeling of hatred and apprehension among the people.

The House of Commons was henceforth master of the Government; commissioners taken from its midst alone had the right of administering the supplies which it voted, and the loans which it decreed in its own name. Political reforms, important and radical, succeeded each other almost without discussion, upon a simple exposition of grievances. The courts of exception were all abolished, and triennial Parliaments were voted. If the king failed in this duty, twelve peers of the kingdom assembled at Westminster were empowered to summon the Houses without his concurrence. Parliament could not be dissolved or adjourned without the approbation of the two Houses, at least for fifty years after its assembling. The king accepted the bill with ill-humor; but he attempted no resistance. He hoped, and he had some reason for hoping, for divisions among his enemies.

There was agreement upon political questions. Hampden, Pym, Hollis, Stapleton, moderate leaders of the Commons, were followed by Cromwell and Henry Martin, more violent, but as yet obscure. The divergences of feeling were made manifest when religious ground was touched. The question of the episcopacy, passionately attacked by the numerous Presbyterians in the House, was not yet resolved upon, and among the nation opinions were as various and conflicting as in the House. The friends of the king advised him to attach himself to the more moderate of the political chiefs, and to take advantage of the religious discussions which occupied the party. Secret negotiations were opened up; but, at the same time, through the intercession of the queen, Charles received proposals from a number of officers of the army, dissatisfied with the favor which Parliament manifested towards the Scots. Various advices, all menacing for the House, were discussed without any great effect and without any efficacious remedy. The king listened to all and often accorded his approbation. He even consented to affix the initial of his name to the petition which the army was to deposit upon the table of the Houses. The petition was not presented; but the chiefs of the popular party were apprised of it. Silently and without breaking off their negotiations with the king, they resolutely adopted a determination to unite themselves with the fanatical Presbyterians, and to ruin Strafford. The trial of the earl began.

The Commons of England were the prosecutors, supported by the commissioners of Scotland and Ireland. Eighty peers were present as judges. The bishops, yielding to the desire of the Commons, excused themselves against their wish. The king and queen were there, "in a closed gallery, eager to see all, but concealing, the one his anguish, the other her curiosity." The crowd of spectators was immense.

The accused arrived without suffering any insult from the multitude. "As he passed, his frame prematurely bent slightly by sickness, but with the proud and brilliant look that had distinguished his youth, all raised their hats, and he bowed courteously, looking upon this attitude of the people as of good augury." He was full of hope and did not doubt the happy issue of his trial. He was soon undeceived.

For seventeen days he sustained his cause without aid against thirteen accusers. The most odious impediments embarrassed his defense; but the earl manifested neither bitterness nor anger. He simply claimed his right, thanking his judges if they consented to recognize it, forbearing from complaining of their refusal, and replying to his enemies that they were provoked to anger by the delay arising from his skillful resistance. "It is as much my business, I think, to defend my life, as for any other to attack it." The Commons trembled with rage, for Strafford was gaining the ascendancy. The examination into the facts cleared the earl of the charge of high treason. The text of the law, and the steadfast ability of the accused had triumphed over all the obstacles opposed to the defense. Sir Arthur Haslerig proposed to declare Strafford guilty by an act of Parliament, and to condemn him by a bill of attainder. This proceeding was more violent and arbitrary than the greater number of the acts with which Strafford was so loudly reproached; but passion easily blinds even the most sincere. The bill, resting upon certain notes of Strafford delivered by the son of Sir Henry Vane, at once obtained a first reading. This time, Strafford was accused of having advised the king to make use of the army of Ireland to subjugate England. "Some thought they sacrificed law to justice, others, justice to necessity."

The regular trial meanwhile continued. Before his counsel began to speak to the question of right, Strafford summed up his defense himself with admirable eloquence. "My Lords," he said in conclusion, "your ancestors have carefully bound with the chains of our statute law, these terrible accusations of high treason; do not be ambitious of being more learned in the art of killing than our fore-fathers. Let us not awaken those sleeping lions to our destruction, by raking up a few musty records that have lain by the walls so many ages forgotten or neglected. I have troubled you, my Lords, longer than I should have done; were it not for the interest of those pledges that a saint in heaven left me … (at these words he stopped, burst into tears, and immediately raising his head, continued) I would not give myself so much trouble to defend this body already falling into decay, and burdened with so many infirmities, that of a truth I have little pleasure in bearing the burden of it any longer … (he stopped, as if in search of an idea): My Lords (he resumed), you will pardon my infirmity of weeping, I should have added, but am not able, therefore let it pass. And so, my Lords, even so, with all tranquillity of mind, I freely submit myself to your judgment, and whether that judgment be of life or death, Te Deum laudamus."

Compassion and admiration moved the most implacable enemies of the earl. Pym, in agitation, sought in vain for the paper upon which he had written his reply. None gave ear to him, and the accuser hastened to conclude his speech, vexed and confused by his involuntary emotion.

It was necessary at all cost to come to an end with an enemy so able and powerful, even when a prisoner—such was the force of his courage and eloquence. The second reading of the bill of attainder was hastened on; the most able and distinguished lawyers contended against it; the infuriated Commons desired to prevent the Lords from listening to the advocates of Strafford. The Lords resisted, and heard the pleadings, but the Lower House did not present itself, but four days subsequently, on the 21st of April, 1641, the bill was definitively passed. Fifty-nine members alone voted against it.

The king was disconsolate and profoundly anxious. He had himself exposed Strafford to this danger. "Be assured," he wrote to him, "upon my word as a king, that you shall suffer nothing, either in your life, or your fortune, or your honor." Negotiations and conspiracies were tried alternately, or at one and the same time. Attempts were on foot to pacify the chiefs of the Commons, or to obtain in the House of Lords a majority in favor of the earl. Enormous offers were made to the Governor of the Tower, Sir William Balfour, to allow the prisoner's escape. All collapsed in the face of official fidelity and popular passion. The king at length caused the two Houses to be summoned, and admitting the faults of the earl, promised that he would never employ him, even in the humblest office. He declared, however, that never would any reason, or any threat, make him consent to his death.

Charles presumed too much upon his courage. He did not yet know how completely the hatred of the Commons against Strafford was under the control of courage and ability. Popular violence was added to Parliamentary prosecutions. The Upper House, to which the bill of attainder had been carried, was besieged every day by a furious multitude, crying, "Justice! justice!" The Lords were insulted and summoned to declare themselves. Pym had for a long while held in reserve what he knew of the manœuvres of the court and the officers, to excite the army against Parliament; he published an account of this matter. Some of the accused persons fled, and terror spread in the House as well as among the people. It was decreed that all the ports should be closed, and that all letters coming from abroad should be opened. In remembrance of the conspiracy of Guy Fawkes, a rumor was circulated that the House was undermined, and the people hastened to Parliament to ascertain or to share its dangers. Meanwhile the two Houses united themselves by a vow for the defence of the Protestant religion and the public liberties. It was even attempted to impose the same pledge upon all citizens. In vain the Lords struggled against the rising tide; they endeavored to modify the bill of attainder. This the Commons refused; they were determined to obtain their complete vengeance. The Upper House yielded. Thirty-four of the Lords who had been present at the trial absented themselves; twenty-six voted for the bill, fourteen against; nothing was now wanting but the acquiescence of the king.

Charles still resisted. His affection and his honor were equally shocked. Hollis, brother-in-law of Strafford, advised the king to go himself and present to the Houses the petition of the earl, demanding a respite. He promised to induce his friends in the House to content themselves with banishment; but the queen beset him with her apprehensions. She did not like Strafford; she was terrified by the riots; she wished to fly, to embark, and return to France. The king listened, troubled and undecided. He convoked the privy council, then the bishops. Juxon alone advised him to follow his conscience; all the others persisted that Charles should sacrifice an individual to a throne; his conscience as a man to his conscience as a king. The Earl of Essex had said shortly before, "The king is obliged to conform both in regard to his person and his conscience to the advice and conscience of Parliament." His servants were repeating to him under another form this harsh truth, when Charles received a letter from Strafford himself. "Sire," wrote the Earl, "after a long and hard struggle, I have taken the only resolution which becomes me. Every private interest should give way to the prosperity of your sacred person and of the commonwealth. In passing this bill I beseech you to remove the obstacle to a blessed agreement between you and your subjects. Sir, my consent shall more acquit you herein to God than all the world can do besides. To a willing man there is no injury done, and as by God's grace I forgive all the world with a calmness and meekness of infinite contentment to my dislodging soul, that in your goodness you would vouchsafe to cast your gracious regard upon my poor son and his three sisters less or more, and no otherwise than as their (in present) unfortunate father may hereafter appear more or less guilty of this death."

On the morrow Strafford learnt in his prison that the king had given his assent to the fatal bill. He did not reply, but raising his hands toward heaven muttered this passage of the Psalm: "Put not your trust in princes nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation."

It was on the 10th of May. On the morrow, the 11th, the Prince of Wales presented himself before Parliament with a letter from the king ending with these words: "If he must die it were charity to reprieve him till Saturday." Without taking heed of this last and miserable effort of Charles in favor of his great servant, the House appointed the morrow for the execution.

Strafford issued forth on foot from his prison, outstripping the guards as though he were marching at the head of his army: He declined the coach which the Governor of the Tower offered him, being afraid of the violence of the people. "No, Master Lieutenant," he said, "I dare look death in the face, and I hope the people too. I care not how I die, whether by the hand of the executioner or by the madness and fury of the people. If that may give them better content it is all one to me." Having arrived before the window of Laud's prison, he stopped. The old archbishop, informed on the previous evening of what was about to happen, stretched out his arms to bless the condemned man; but, agitated and enfeebled, he swooned and fell. "Farewell, my lord," said Strafford, as he went away, "God protect your innocence." He knelt upon the scaffold; then, raising himself, he addressed the immense crowd which surrounded him. "I wish," he said, "to this kingdom all the prosperity on earth; alive, I have always done so; dying, it is my only wish. But I implore each of those who listen to me to consider earnestly, with his hand upon his heart, whether the beginning of the reformation of a kingdom should be written in characters of blood. Think of it in returning to your homes. God forbid that the least drop of my blood fall upon any of you! But I fear that you are in a bad way." He knelt again, then shook hands with the friends who accompanied him. "I have nigh done," he said, "one stroke will make my wife husbandless, my dear children fatherless, and my poor servants masterless. But let God be to them all in all." He prepared himself to receive the fatal blow. "I thank God," he continued, "I am no more afraid of death, nor daunted with any discouragement arising from any fears, but do as cheerfully put off my doublet at this time as ever I did when I went to bed." He called to the executioner and gave the signal. "God save the king," exclaimed the executioner, showing the head to the people. Shouts of triumph answered him; but some were silent, and many people returned to their houses sad, uneasy, and almost doubting the justice of the act which they had so ardently desired.

The feeble policy of the king had missed its mark, as a policy of that kind always does. The death of Strafford had not removed the obstacle in the way of a reconciliation between the king and his subjects. In accepting the bill which struck down the most illustrious of his servants, Charles had at the same time, and almost without taking heed of the step he was taking, sanctioned a bill which prohibited any dissolution of Parliament without the approbation of the two Houses. But a mutual understanding, far from being re-established, became every day less possible between the king and the people. The power which the Commons had wrested piece by piece from the sovereign appeared to impel them more and more towards tyranny. Political reform was accomplished, but religious reform remained to be effected. Notwithstanding the moral enfeeblement of the Anglican Church, it retained its position. It was henceforth against this object that the confused and often antagonistic efforts of a great number of the chiefs of the Commons and the people were directed; but on the religious question their union was not so complete as when they stood on purely political ground, and the bold innovators were uneasy in the very midst of their success.

Charles suddenly announced an intention of setting out for Scotland, where his presence had, he said, become necessary for the execution of the treaty of peace. At the same time the queen prepared to make a journey to the Continent. The House took alarm; they dreaded the passing of the king through the army, which was being disbanded and was known to be disaffected; they feared the secret manœuvres of the queen among the absolute sovereigns. They asked Charles to delay his departure; they implored the queen to remain in England: both consented. The disbanding of the army was in vain hurried on by promising the soldiers the arrears of their pay. Money was borrowed, plate was melted down to meet this enormous expenditure. The operation was not completed when the king at length departed on the 10th of August. The House adjourned on the 27th. A committee, at the head of which was Hampden, was sent to Scotland to remain with the king, in order to watch over the interests of Parliament.

This measure was prudent and effective. Charles passed through the English and Scottish armies without daring to stay long; but his attempts to influence the officers meanwhile engaged the attention of Lord Holland, who was entrusted with the disbandment. He wrote on this matter with uneasiness to the Earl of Essex in London. On arriving in Edinburgh the king accorded to the Parliament and Church of Scotland all the religious and political concessions which they demanded. He attended the Presbyterian worship with a pious gravity which touched the Scots. He appeared to have regained in favor and confidence that ancient kingdom of his fathers, which had formerly risen in its entirety against the tyranny which attempted to interfere with its faith. The chiefs of the Covenanters themselves were received with eager good grace. Distrustful people in Scotland, anxious lookers-on in England, in vain endeavored to penetrate the mystery of this conduct.

Suddenly it became known that the two most influential of the great lords in the Scottish Parliament, Hamilton and Argyll, had left Edinburgh with their friends, and retired into the country to escape the danger of arrest. The king loudly complained of the conjectures which were in circulation; Parliament ordered an inquiry. The proceedings were in secret; the committee declared, without any particulars, that there was no claim on the side of the king for any reparation nor ground for any alarm on the part of the fugitives. The latter resumed their seats in Parliament, and the public knew nothing of what had happened.

Nothing was known, but the object of the journey of Charles to Scotland had failed. He had thought of collecting upon the spot such proofs of the correspondence of the English malcontents with the Covenanter chiefs of Scotland that the judges could not help declaring guilty of high treason those leaders of the Commons who had caused, by their intrigues, the invasion of their country. He intended to hurl against them the accusation which Strafford had not had time to prepare. The hopes of the king were sustained by his correspondence with a young and impetuous nobleman, the Earl of Montrose, formerly attached to the Covenant, but who had now given himself up body and soul to the royal cause. In Scotland the king had found Montrose in prison, suspected by Argyll; but the prison bolts were drawn now and then. Montrose had come by night to see Charles; he had inspired him with some uneasiness concerning Hamilton and Argyll, asserting that their papers would furnish the proofs which the king sought. The arrest of the two noblemen was agreed upon, when the latter frustrated the scheme by publicly quitting Parliament and the city. Far from ridding himself of them, Charles was compelled to load his enemies with favors: Hamilton was made a duke, Argyll a marquis, Lesley, the general of the Scottish troops, became Earl of Leven. But these indications did not deceive Hampden; he knew all, and informed his London friends of the fact. The period of adjournment of the Houses was drawing to an end.

Great was the terror among the Parliamentary leaders when the proof was forthcoming of the vindictive rancor of the king. They consulted with uneasiness upon the conduct to be observed. The Scottish Parliament had wisely suppressed the affair. The English Parliament could not make use of it to agitate the people. Ireland undertook this task.

On the 1st of November, 1641, it was suddenly learned that an immense insurrection had broken out in Ireland, threatening the most imminent danger to the Protestant religion and the Protestants of the country. The Catholics had everywhere risen, chiefs and people, claiming the liberty of their faith, vaunting the name of the queen and even of the king, setting up a commission signed, it was said, by the latter, and announcing the design of delivering Ireland and the throne from the tyranny of the English Puritans. On the very eve of the day on which the conspiracy was to break out it was accidentally discovered and quelled in Dublin. Throughout the country it had met with no obstacle. Murders, fires, horrible and nameless crimes, it is said, were rife throughout Ireland. Everywhere Protestants were massacred without resistance. The Government, disarmed by Strafford and the crown, was powerless before a half-savage people eager to avenge in one day centuries of outrage and misfortune. The Earl of Leicester, nominated viceroy in place of Strafford, had not yet arrived. To oppose so terrible a storm the English Government had in Ireland only two judges of no ability, of no credit, whose Presbyterian zeal alone had caused them to be invested with that difficult employment.

England uttered a prolonged cry of terror and rage; every Protestant considered himself attacked in common with his brothers of Ireland. The king, who was a stranger to the insurrection, hastened to communicate to Parliament the news which had reached him in Scotland, placing the affair in the hands of the Commons and entrusting them with the repression, partly to rid himself of all complicity, partly to avoid in the eyes of his Catholic subjects, whom he had not encouraged, but whom he was in no hurry to restrain, the responsibility for the severities to which they might be compelled to submit.

The leaders of the Commons were not much more eager than the king to stamp out the Irish insurrection. It furnished them with the popular agitation and general uneasiness of which they stood in need in order to continue their work. They eagerly took possession of the power which the king offered them; but their efforts against the Irish insurgents were more ostentatious than sincere, and more noisy than efficacious. The Protestants of Ireland were left in the hands of their enemies. All speeches and acts were directed towards England; the moment for striking the great blow had come.

Shortly after the opening of Parliament, in the month of November, 1640, a committee was chosen to prepare, with an exposition of grievances, a solemn remonstrance to the king; but political reforms had been so rapid, and the king had so completely given way before the growing power of Parliament, that the majority of the grievances had in reality disappeared, when, on the morrow of the insurrection of Ireland, amidst the popular excitement, the committee received orders to resume and complete its work without delay. The remonstrance but lately intended for the king became a sombre exposition addressed to the people, retracing all the past evils, and all those which yet subsisted, the wrong-doings of the king, the virtues of Parliament, and the dangers which faith and liberty incurred as long as the nation should not be unreservedly devoted to the House of Commons, which was alone capable of saving them from Popery, the bishops, and the king.

So much violence, without fresh pretexts, or any direct or apparent aim, raised numerous murmurs. The ever-growing pretensions of Parliament began to create, even in its midst, a party of resistance, favorable, in a certain measure, to the threatened royal power. The popular chiefs endeavored to quiet the distrust and exasperation, asserting that they only wished to intimidate the court and to thwart its intrigues, and that the remonstrance being once adopted it would not be promulgated. They asked for the vote towards the end of a sitting, at the moment when the House, being fatigued, was thinking of separating. Lord Falkland, Hyde, Colepepper—the friends of the king, as they were called—demanded that there should be a postponement until the morrow. "Why," said Cromwell to Falkland, "do you so greatly desire this delay?" "Because it is too late to-day, and because there will certainly be a debate." "A light debate," replied Cromwell impassively. The discussion began on the morrow; sides were taken. For the first time two national parties were at contention. It was no longer the court and the country; the good citizens were divided; both sides found support in public interests and opinions. There were discussions; there was vehement speaking. Hour after hour passed by; the sitting had opened at three o'clock; it was midnight. The delicate or ailing members, and the old men had all retired. "This," said Sir Benjamin Rudyard, "will be the verdict of a famished jury." When the vote was taken, a hundred and fifty-nine members adopted the remonstrance, against a hundred and forty-eight who voted against it.

The result had scarcely been announced when Hampden rose and demanded that the remonstrance should be printed. "We said so," it was exclaimed on the other side, "you wish to take from the Lords their legitimate share of authority; you desire to walk alone and arouse the people to insurrection." "I protest, I protest," exclaimed Mr. Palmer, and his friends followed his example. Protests were usual in the House of Lords; they were not in the Commons. Indignation was felt at this new proceeding, and the disturbance increased; several members had already placed their hands upon their swords. Hampden addressed the House, deploring the sad disorder, and proposing to adjourn the discussion to the morrow. This was agreed to. "Well," said Lord Falkland to Cromwell, on leaving, "has it been debated?" "I will take your word another time," replied Cromwell, and he added in a lower tone: "If the remonstrance had been rejected, I would have sold all I have the next morning, and never would have seen England more, and I know there are many honest men of the same resolution." The printing of the remonstrance was voted on the morrow without any disturbance, almost without discussion, by a majority of twenty-three. The return of the king, to whom it was first to be presented, was the only event waited for in order to publish it.

He arrived, and was magnificently received by the city of London, the new lord mayor, Richard Gourney, being devoted to him. Already confident in the movement which manifested itself in his favor, he allowed his new hopes to be revealed at the first moment, by withdrawing from the Commons the guard which the Earl of Essex had given to them for their safety in his absence.

The remonstrance was immediately presented to Charles; he listened patiently to the reading of it. "Does the House intend to publish this declaration?" he asked. "We are not authorized to answer the questions of your Majesty." "Well, I suppose you do not either expect my reply at once; I will send it to you as soon as the importance of the affair will allow." The leaders of the Commons did not wait for the royal reply before proposing to the Houses what were no longer reforms, but innovations. A bill relating to the pressing of soldiers, another to the militia, a third excluding the clergy, of whatever grade they might be, from all civil offices, were presented and adopted in a few days by the Lower House. The remonstrance was published on the 14th of December. Popular ardor, from day to day more impassioned, corresponded with the new attitude of the leaders of the opposition. The aspect of affairs was undergoing a change; to the unanimous movement of the nation succeeded the strife of parties; to reform, revolution. Parliament asked to have its guard back again; but the multitude which thronged around Westminster, the committees formed in all places for the defence of liberty and the faith, represented a militia more formidable than all the soldiers, all busy in proclaiming with loud voice the common danger.

The king did not stand alone before this bold and persevering effort of the popular reformers. Among the most esteemed members of the House of Commons who had fought against tyranny, a certain number, and these of the best, were brought back to the crown by the dread of innovations and excesses. Charles resolved to secure the attachment of the chiefs of this growing royalist party—Mr. Hyde, Sir John Colepepper, and Lord Falkland. The latter did not please him; he had little esteem for the king, and a great effort of his friends was necessary in order to induce him to enter publicly into his service. He allowed himself to be overcome by the solicitations of Charles himself, constrained by necessity; but when he accepted the office of secretary of state, it was with a profound sense of discouragement and as a victim to a devotion without affection and without hope. These three friends undertook the difficult task of directing the affairs of the king in the House, and the former promised to attempt nothing without their advice.

Charles could no more keep his word with his friends than with his enemies. He drew courage from the adhesion of the gentlemen attached by tradition to the throne, who arrived with clamor from their counties to offer to the king their service. Every day struggles took place in the streets, and particularly around Westminster, between the partisans of the king—the "cavaliers" as they were called, and the "roundheads," a name which the cavaliers themselves gave to the citizens, on account of the contrast which the short hair of the Puritans presented to the long ringlets of the gentlemen. The bill for the exclusion of the bishops, still in suspension in the Upper House, was the special cause of outbreaks. The bishops every day ran the risk of their lives in going and taking their seats, and they were obliged in order to leave Westminster, to hide themselves in the carriages of some popular noblemen. The House of Commons did not reply to the complaints of the Lords against the disturbance excited at its doors: "We need all our friends," said the leaders; "God forbid that we should prevent the people obtaining thereby that which they are right in desiring." At the same time the Commons decreed that as the king persisted in refusing their guard, each of the members was entitled to bring an armed servant and to keep him at the door. Blood was shed incessantly around Westminster Palace.

The bishops adopted their course, a strange and frivolous one in so grave a situation; they resolved to absent themselves, while protesting by anticipation against all bills which might be adopted during their retirement, as not being invested with the necessary assent of all the members of Parliament. This declaration, signed by twelve bishops, being communicated to the king, was approved by him; he seized it as a pretext which might one day permit him to annul the acts of the indomitable Parliament against which he was struggling without success. He did not speak of the matter to his new councillors; but, on the same day, the keeper of the great seal carried, by his orders, the protest of the bishops to the Upper House, who sent it immediately to the Commons.

The surprise of the Lords and the anger of the Commons were great, and the popular leaders immediately contrived to find therein a new weapon. The impeachment of the bishops was suddenly proposed and resolved upon; they had designed to determine the fate of Parliament itself, and to destroy it by separating themselves from its debates; they were conducted to the Tower, upon the vote of the Upper House, which received the indictment of the Commons. The point was urged further. The king had taken the government of the Tower from Sir William Balfour, to entrust it to a cavalier. Sir Thomas Lunsford, a man little esteemed and very violent. The nomination of a new governor was demanded. Lord Digby, formerly animated with a patriotic zeal but now become the most intimate confidant of the king, was denounced for having said that Parliament was not free. The Commons again claimed their right to have a guard.

Charles did not lose his temper at so many proofs of growing distrust; he nominated as governor of the Tower, Sir John Byron, a man esteemed by all, and he replied to the inquiries of the House: "We do engage to you solemnly on the word of a king, that the security of all and every one of you from violence is and ever shall be with as much our care as the preservation of ourselves and our children," but he refused the guard. The House caused the militia of London to be mustered, and bodies of troops were placed in different parts of the city.

The instinct of the popular leaders had not deceived them concerning the apparent moderation of the king. On the same day, the 3rd of January, 1642, Sir Edward Herbert, the attorney-general of the crown, appeared in the House of Lords, and there, in the name of the king, charged with high treason, Lord Kimbolton and Messrs. Hampden, Pym, Hollis, Strode, and Haslerig, all five members of the House of Commons, for having attempted to destroy the fundamental laws of the kingdom, to deprive the king of his legal power, and to provoke war against him. Such was the substance of the accusations unfolded at length. Sir Edward Herbert demanded at the same time that the House should secure the accused.

Lord Kimbolton rose. "I am ready," he said, "to obey all the orders of the House; but, since my accusation is public, I demand that my justification may be public also." Silence reigned in the Hall, nobody spoke. Lord Digby leaned towards Lord Kimbolton. "How deplorably," he said, "the king is advised. I shall be very unfortunate if I do not learn whence this comes." He left as if to hasten after news. The advice had emanated from him.

A message from the Lords immediately warned the Commons. The servants of the five accused members hastened at the same time to give notice that the king's men were affixing seals to the locks at their residences. While the Lower House was asking for conference with the Lords, a herald at arms entered the Hall. "In the name of the king, my master," he said, "I come to request the speaker to consign into my hands the five gentlemen, members of the House, whom his Majesty has commanded me to arrest for high treason." None stirred, the accused members remained in their places. The speaker enjoined the herald to withdraw, and a committee nominated without opposition repaired to the palace of the king to say that to so grave a message the House could only reply after mature examination. Two ministers. Lord Falkland and Sir John Colepepper, formed part of the deputation. They had known nothing of the projects of the king. The Lords joined with the Commons in demanding a guard for Parliament. "I will reply to-morrow," the king said in his turn.

On the morrow, the House opened its sitting at one o'clock. The five members arrived among the first; they preserved silence, being fully informed of what was being prepared; they were surrounded; they were questioned. The agitation was at its height when there was a rush to announce that the king, accompanied by a retinue of four hundred cavaliers, all armed, had arrived at the House, and that he was coming in person to arrest the accused. The House at once urged the five members to withdraw. Pym, Hollis, Hampden, Haslerig went out immediately; it was found necessary to thrust Mr. Strode outside by the shoulders. The House was seated and silent. The king approached, accompanied only by his nephew, the Prince Palatine; he entered the hall; all the members rose, bareheaded. The king cast a rapid glance around him; the seats of the five members were empty. "Mr. Speaker," he said, "with your permission, I will borrow your chair for a moment. Gentlemen, I am sorry for this occasion of coming to you. … I expected from you obedience and not a message. … I come to see whether any of the accused are here; as long as they shall sit in this house, I cannot hope that it will return into the good path which I sincerely desire it to be in. … Mr. Speaker, where are they?" The speaker fell upon his knees. "Under the good pleasure of your Majesty, I have not here either eyes to see or tongue to speak except so much as the House, of which I am the servant, chooses to command me; I humbly implore your Majesty to forgive me." "Well, since I see that the birds have flown," said the king, "I expect that you will send them to me as soon as they return. But I assure you, on the word of a king, I never did intend any force, but shall proceed against them in a fair and legal way. I do not wish to disturb you any longer. I repeat to you, I expect you to send them to me as soon as they shall re-enter the Hall, otherwise I will take means to find them." He left. The House had remained motionless. Cries of "Privilege! privilege!" emanated from some corners of the Hall; then an adjournment until the morrow took place. All the members were eager to know what was being done and said without.

The people were as much agitated as the House, and the cavaliers as energetic as their master. The projected political manœuvre had been the object of their most ardent and haughty wishes; the check they experienced was bitter. The king persisted in his design, but without knowing how to accomplish it. The five members had retired to the city, where the citizens had spontaneously taken to arms. Charles resolved to proceed on the morrow to claim the accused men at the hands of the common council.

The mob thronged upon his passage with grave, sombre looks. Some voices resounded with the threatening cry of "Privilege! privilege!" The whole nation adopted as their own grievance the violated privileges of the Commons. The language of the king towards the common council was mild and conciliatory. He promised to act in all things according to the law, but he claimed the five members, and he did not obtain them. The aldermen of the city looked as grave as the multitude which encumbered the streets. The king returned to his palace foiled and angry.

The House adjourned for six days, declaring that after the attack upon its privileges, it could not sit in safety without a guard. But a committee had been established in the city, close to the house inhabited by the five accused members. The latter were consulted upon all the resolutions, and they even came several times and sat with the committee, which was open to all the members of the House. Popular anger increased from hour to hour, and its alliance with the House became closer. The adjournment of Parliament was about to expire. The king learnt that the five members were to be brought back in triumph to Westminster by the trainbands and the people. He could not endure to see his enemies pass in front of his palace. The queen had for a long time implored him to go away. The nobility of the counties promised aid and security. Away from this city of London, delivered from the roundheads, far from Parliament, the king would be free, and what could Parliament do without the king? It was resolved to go at first to Hampton Court; but orders were given to secure a more remote refuge in case of need. The Earl of Newcastle, faithfully attached to the king, set out for the north, where his influence was predominant, on the 10th of January. On the eve of the reassembling of the Commons, Charles, accompanied only by his wife, his children, and a few servants, quitted London and that palace of Whitehall which he was never to see again, except on his way to the scaffold.

It was time for the king to fly from London if he wished to avoid the triumph of Parliament. On the 11th of January, the Thames was covered with boats armed for war, bringing back to Westminster the five members. A fleet of vessels, adorned with flags, followed them. Along the shore marched the soldiery of London, bearing at the end of their pikes the last declaration of Parliament.

Queen Henrietta Maria.

The Commons were sitting at Westminster, awaiting their colleagues, and as soon as the five members had entered the Hall, the sheriffs were introduced, the House wishing to address its thanks to the City. The gates of Westminster were besieged by an enthusiastic and triumphant crowd; in its midst were a retinue of four thousand gentlemen or freeholders of Buckinghamshire, all on horseback, bringing a petition to Parliament against the Papist lords and bad advisers of the crown. They bore inscribed upon their hats a vow to live and die with Parliament. The breeze of popular favor favored every sail. The leaders of the Commons contrived to take advantage of it. It was voted, in a few hours, that no member could be arrested without the authorization of the House, that Parliament should be free to sojourn wherever it should think proper. Skippon, the commander of the soldiery of London, was entrusted to watch the approaches to the Tower, still governed by Sir John Byron, whose dismissal was demanded by the House. The governor of Portsmouth was forbidden to receive into his town troops or supplies without the order of Parliament. Sir John Hotham was sent to Hull, an important town and the real key to England in the north. It was declared that the kingdom was threatened and that it should be placed in a state of defence. The Lords refused to consent to this vote, but the Commons had attained their object; the people had been apprised of the danger.

The king was warned as well as the people, and he knew that his project of waging war would not take his enemies unawares. Away from London, where at every moment he had suffered humiliations and defeats, he no longer came into contact with any but his servants, faithful, and often confident of success. With the influence which they enjoyed in their counties his cavaliers found once more their joyful arrogance and valiant ardor. On all sides Charles was urged to declare war, and small isolated enterprises formed a prelude to hostilities. Two hundred cavaliers, commanded by Lunsford, had already repaired to Kingston, near London, the depot of the warehouses of the county; but Parliament adopted its measures, and Lunsford, with his cavaliers, proceeded towards Windsor, whither the king had transported himself. He did not reckon upon staying there long; the queen was secretly preparing to depart, carrying off the crown jewels, in order to make purchases of arms and supplies in Holland. Under the pretext of conducting to the Prince of Orange, the little Princess Henrietta Maria, whom he had married six months before, she was also to negotiate with the sovereigns of the Continent, from whom assistance might be hoped for. It was at York that the king reckoned upon establishing his quarters while awaiting succor. In order to veil his designs, he invited the Houses to make a summary of their grievances, promising to set them right immediately and thus put an end to their discussions.

The Upper House received the message with joy. Even among the popular lords, many were afraid of the struggle which was only at its beginning, and which they wished to see ended. They immediately proposed for the assent of the Commons some hasty thanks to the king; but the Lower House had no confidence in royal promises; it demanded that the king should first consent to consign the command of the Tower, the strongholds, and the soldiery to men enjoying the confidence of Parliament. The Lords rejected this amendment, but thirty-two votes among them had supported it, and the Commons presented their petition alone. As regards the Tower and the fortresses, the king absolutely refused; as regarded the soldiery, his reply was evasive and vague; he wished to gain time.

The Commons, however, knew that they had no time to lose, and the leaders excited among the people a new and keen emotion. They were easily aroused to insurrection; from all counties, from all classes, merchants, artisans, and even women, came numberless petitions, demanding reform of the Church, the punishment of Papists, the repression of malevolents. The multitude stopped at the gate of Westminster. "The Upper House impedes everything," it was said. "We have never doubted the House of Commons," cried the workmen; "but let them give us the names of those who prevent harmony between the good Lords and Commons, and we will see to it." Fear began to overcome the timid; the popular Lords more and more took up the cause of the Lower House. "Whoever refuses to join the Commons in the matter of the soldiery is an enemy of the state," said the Earl of Northumberland. Some few Lords withdrew, others altered their minds, and the bill regarding the soldiery, as well as that for the exclusion of the bishops, was at length voted by the two Houses. Once more the Commons triumphed.

Charles now announced to Parliament the approaching departure of the queen, and, to soften the irritation which he dreaded, he officially abandoned the prosecution of the five members, and nominated as governor of the Tower Sir John Conyers, who had been designated by the Commons; but when the bill for the exclusion of the bishops was presented to him, he was agitated and perplexed. His conscience opposed the acceptance. His best advisers, with the exception of Hyde, urged him to consent to it. The ordinance respecting the soldiery, which the leaders held in reserve, was more important in their eyes, for it completely disarmed the king. He could not refuse everything; the bishops were vanquished and in prison. … The king continued to hesitate; the queen intervened; she did not trouble herself in any way concerning the bishops, and feared that the House might oppose her departure. She supplicated, wept, flew into a passion, and, as usual, the king yielded, sorrowfully, regretfully, but he authorized commissioners to sign in his name, and set out to accompany his wife as far as Dover, where she was to embark.

The Commons were of the same opinion as Colepepper, and made a stand at the question of the soldiery even more than at that of the bishops. They followed the king with their messages as far as Dover, and on his return, having insisted upon a prompt sanction of the ordinance which they sent him, the king replied vaguely, but ill-humoredly, being exasperated by the persistent distrust of the Commons, as though his concessions had been sincere. On arriving at Greenwich, he there found his son, the Prince of Wales, whom the Marquis of Hertford, his tutor, had brought, notwithstanding the prohibition of the House. Being reassured as to the fate of his wife and children, he at length replied to Parliament, consenting to entrust the soldiery to the commanders who were designated, except in large towns, but preserving the right of dismissing them. He thereupon set out for York.

The Houses received the reply of the king as a formal refusal. At Theobalds, and at Newark, fresh messages reached him, haughty at first, then marked by a certain emotion, betraying itself in spite of the firmness of the language. The king was implored to return to London, and to come to an understanding with his people. Upon the brink of an unknown future, dark and troublous, all hesitated and reciprocally endeavored each to influence the other. The negotiations came to no issue, and they were carried on without hope of arriving at any result. Negotiations, however, continued. It was on behalf of the public, of the whole nation, rather than of an immediate and present adversary that the opposition contended. It was in the name of the liberties of old England, of the traditional rights of the people, invaded by royal tyranny, that the resistance of Parliament had begun; it was now in the name of the traditional rights of the crown, attacked by the innovations of Parliament, that the royalist party, every day stronger and more ardent, defended their cause. The ardor of men's minds was immense; the movement universal, strange, irregular. In London, in York, in all the great towns of the kingdom, pamphlets, periodicals, irregular journals increased in numbers, and were circulated in all directions. Amidst this outburst of views of all parties, and in the face of an appeal of so novel a kind, to the opinion of the people—even while the principle of national sovereignty in opposition to the divine right of kings had taken possession of all minds and was the foundation of all proceedings—the statutes, traditions, customs, were incessantly invoked as the only legitimate tests of the discussion. Revolution was everywhere in progress, though no one dared to say so, or even avow it to himself.

The situation became day by day more violent and more strained. A great number of members of Parliament had left London, many had joined the king at York. The Houses in their turn entered upon the path of tyranny. Lord Herbert and Sir Ralph Hopton, having raised their voices in favor of the king, one was placed in the Tower, the other censured and threatened; the royalist petitions were suppressed. Cromwell, as yet not very conspicuous in the House, but more involved than any other in the plots of the revolution, brought special ability to bear upon tracing out and denouncing the royalist conspiracies.

An unexpected incident widened irreparably the abyss which was opening up between the two parties: the king, on the 23d of April, asked Sir John Hotham, governor of Hull, to resign the town to him. Already the Duke of York and the Prince Palatine had entered it under the pretext of spending a day there. Already the mayor and some citizens were marching towards the gates, to open them to his Majesty, who was arriving at the foot of the ramparts. Hotham ordered them to return to their homes, and he appeared upon the wall, surrounded by his officers. The king summoned him to open the gates. Sir John fell upon his knees, apologizing for his resistance. He had, he said, taken an oath to Parliament. "Kill him! kill the traitor!" exclaimed the cavaliers who surrounded the king; "cast him down!" But the officers of Sir John were more resolute than he. The king was compelled to withdraw, and on the same day he addressed a message to Parliament, asking justice for such an offense.

Parliament approved of the act of its governor in all respects, saying that the strongholds and arsenals had been formerly confided to the king for the safety of the kingdom, and that the same reason might now command the Houses to seize them. This was a declaration of war. Thirty-two Lords and sixty-five members of the Commons, Mr. Hyde among others, set out for York. The Chancellor caused the great seal to be given over to the king, and made his escape on the morrow. Each party was about to make the last effort for sustaining the struggle. None foresaw how far it was to go, nor what misfortunes and crimes were to signalize the civil war which was now about to commence.

Chapter XXIV.
Charles I. And The Civil War.

War was resolved upon by the Parliamentary leaders as well as by the king. Preparations were being made with ardor on both sides; but all official relations were not yet broken off between the monarch and his subjects. The Houses, however, now negotiated with Charles I. on the footing of one power with another. They sent to York, as their permanent ambassadors at the court of the king, a committee of rich and consequential men well known in the northern provinces, commissioned to render an account to Parliament of all that took place under their eyes. The situation was difficult and unpleasant. The commissioners maintained their ground with firmness and resolution.

Even at York, in the presence of the king, the resistance of the country made itself felt. Charles had been desirous of raising a guard, and had applied to the gentry of the neighborhood; they had assembled in great numbers, but when it was desired to inscribe their names, fifty refused to enroll themselves. At their head was Sir Thomas Fairfax, young as yet, but already a resolute and sincere patriot. The freeholders and farmers claimed the right of discussing the affairs of the country with the gentlemen. The king convoked a great assemblage upon Heyworth Moor; it was numerous and animated, more than forty thousand men had hastened thither, but soon intelligence reached the king that a petition was being circulated in the ranks, imploring his Majesty to abandon all thoughts of war and come to an agreement with Parliament. Charles would not receive the petition. He hastened to say a few hesitating words, and was withdrawing precipitately, when young Fairfax, suddenly kneeling before his horse, deposited the document upon the pommel of his saddle. The king urged his steed violently forward, and ran against the bold petitioner without compelling him to give way.

The royal partisans who arrived from London having officially severed their connection with Parliament, were struck painfully with the contrast which they observed between the bold efficiency of the Parliamentary government and the ostentatious feebleness which reigned around the king. Charles was poor. He had no money and had appealed to the zeal of his servants; but the resources which reached him were inconsiderable, and the sums which the queen enabled him to keep out of the sale of the crown jewels scarcely sufficed for daily wants. Parliament had also appealed to the popular patriotism. A loan was announced, and the sums received in ten days, the plate, the jewels offered to the public service, so greatly exceeded the expectations, that the poor women who brought their wedding-rings or the gold pins out of their hair, often waited for a long time until time was found for receiving them. Squadrons of cavalry began to be formed.

The majority of Parliament, delivered from the royalist members who had joined the king at York, voted nineteen propositions of reconciliation, which were sent to Charles as a supreme ultimatum. It was the complete subjugation of the crown to Parliament. Even as regarded the education and marriage of the children of the king, nothing was henceforth to be decided without the formal approbation of the Houses. Upon reading these propositions, the king's countenance flushed deeply. "Should I grant these demands," he said, "I may be waited on bareheaded, I may have my hand kissed; the title of Majesty may be continued to me, and the king's authority signified by both Houses may still be the style of your commands; I may have swords and maces carried before me, and please myself with the sight of a crown and sceptre (though even these twigs would not long flourish when the block upon which they grew was dead), but as to true and real power, I should remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king." And he broke off the negotiation.

Parliament had only waited for this. Civil war was put to the vote and immediately decided on. The Houses seized upon all the public revenues for their benefit; the counties had orders to hold themselves ready at the first signal. The Earl of Essex was nominated commander of the army of Parliament, and the most illustrious men of the popular party, Lord Kimbolton, Lord Brook, Hampden, Hollis, Cromwell, received command of regiments.

All was ready in London, as in York. The assemblages of the partisans of the king or Parliament, the tours of the king in the counties of the north to encourage his friends or repress their violence, the gentlemen raising bodies of troops on their estates, the soldiery forming in the name of Parliament, the roads covered with armed travelers, everything bore the impress of hostilities; but both parties hesitated to declare war, ready as they were to risk all to maintain their rights, both trembled before the responsibility of the future. The king at length took his resolve. On the 23d of August, he caused the royal standard to be set up at Nottingham. At six o'clock in the evening a small body of eight hundred horse surrounded Charles who caused his proclamation to be read by a herald. The standard bore the device: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." It was fixed at the summit of a tower. On the morrow the wind had blown it down. When it was desired to plant it in the ground in the level country, there was nothing to be found but rock, and it was necessary to scoop out a hole with daggers, and then to support by hand the tottering standard. All present were smitten with a deep depression. "What dark forebodings!" it was said.

The king awaited the result of his appeal, but the people did not rise. The army of Parliament was being formed at Northampton. "If they wish to attempt a bold stroke," said Sir Jacob Astley, major-general of the royal troops, "I do not answer for it but the king might be carried off from his bed." Charles was urged to open negotiations again. He yielded with reluctance, and sent to London four deputies who returned without success. A few days later, the king refused in his turn to receive a petition with which the commissioners of Parliament accompanying the Earl of Essex, were entrusted. It implored Charles to return to London, and, upon his refusal, it announced the intention to follow him everywhere, and "by battle or other means, to take away his Majesty, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, his two sons, from their perfidious councillors, and to bring them back to Parliament."

The king was then at Shrewsbury, more confident and better served. He had received numerous reinforcements, and, to equip them, the arms of the soldiery of several counties had been taken by force; the convoys intended for Ireland had been stopped. The Catholics sent money; some of them had even come down from London. The king had about twelve thousand men. At the head of his cavalry, his nephew, Prince Rupert, son of his sister, had already made himself dreaded by his daring and detested for his habit of pillage and his cruelty. The Earl of Essex appeared disposed to adhere to the terms of the petition of Parliament and content himself with following the king everywhere. Twenty thousand men marched under the orange banners of his house; but he had been for three weeks at Worcester without doing anything when Charles, emboldened by this inaction, took the course of marching upon London, in order to end the war at one stroke. Essex thereupon went back to defend Parliament.

The agitation was great in London, and fear soon gave way to anger. Parliament took defensive measures against the king, and redoubled its severity towards the malevolents. All the population proceeded to the hurriedly constructed fortifications. Barricades were raised in the streets. Night and day the assault was expected, when, on the 24th of October, in the morning, the rumor of a great battle was suddenly spread throughout the city. Contradictory and confused rumors were abroad, some announcing the complete victory of the king, others that of Essex. Parliament caused the shops to be closed, armed the soldiery, and required of each of its members a declaration of firm adhesion to the parliamentary general as well as to his cause. Upon the morrow only, Lord Wharton and Mr. Strode arrived in London with the official news of the battle which had taken place at Edgehill, in Warwickshire.

It was the Earl of Essex who commenced the struggle. The king was about to give the same order; he had been urged to try the fortune of war. Warwickshire was so hostile to his cause that the farriers fled, to avoid shoeing the horses of his troops. The cavalry of Parliament had been broken through by the onslaught of Prince Rupert, who had thereupon pursued the fugitives. Being arrested, however, by the regiment of Hampden, who arrived late with the artillery, the prince, compelled to retreat, had found the royal infantry destroyed, the Earl of Lindsay, generalissimo, mortally wounded and a prisoner, and the royal standard in the hands of the Parliamentarians. Charles, aided by his nephew, had desired to attempt a fresh charge; but the soldiers and horses were weary, and it was necessary to abandon the idea. Both armies encamped upon the battle-field. In the morning it was asked in the two camps whether the action would be recommenced. The king soon assured himself that the step was impossible. A great number of volunteers had already dispersed, a third of the infantry failed him. On the side of the Parliamentarians, the experienced soldiers, formed in the wars on the Continent, contested the opinion of Hampden and Hollis, who desired to give battle again. The Earl of Essex fell back upon Warwick, and the king removed his headquarters to Oxford, of all the great towns of the kingdom the most devoted to his cause. The two armies both claimed the victory and celebrated thanksgivings. London and Parliament found themselves delivered from the attack which they dreaded, but the king had cause to congratulate himself upon the state of his affairs. Many towns of which the Parliamentarians thought themselves assured had opened their gates to the royal troops. The king therefore came and established himself at Reading. Prince Rupert carried on, even in the environs of London, his pillaging incursions. The Houses became uneasy. Essex was told to draw nearer. When he arrived the king was at Colebrook, fifteen miles from London; there were despatched to him five deputies, who were well received. Upon their advice, Sir Peter Killigrew set out to negotiate for an armistice. But, while negotiating, the king continued to advance. He fell unexpectedly upon the quarters of Hollis, situated at Brentford, seven miles from the capital. Hollis valiantly resisted; the regiments of Hampden and Lord Brook, encamped in the environs, had time to arrive, and alone bore, for some hours, the whole brunt of the attack of the royal army. At the first sound of the cannon, Essex, who sat in the House, mounted his horse, gathered together all that he was able, and set out to succor his troops. The action had ceased when he arrived. The king occupied Brentford; but the fight had been animated, and he did not appear to be in haste to press forward.

London was equally exasperated and alarmed. It was at the moment when he had shown himself disposed to negotiate that the king had attempted a surprise. He wished (it was said) to take the city by storm and to deliver it up to pillage. Parliament took advantage of the terror and anger of the people. "Enroll," it was said to the apprentices, "and the time of your service shall reckon in your apprenticeship." The city supplied four thousand men taken from its trainbands and commanded by Skippon. "Come, my children, let us pray with all our heart, and fight with all our heart," he said, placing himself at the head of his troops; "remember that this is the cause of God, and He will bless you." Two days after the fight at Brentford, Essex reviewed twenty-four thousand men at Turnham Green, about a mile from the advanced posts of the royal forces.

The two armies thus confronted each other, but Essex still hesitated to assume the offensive. The Parliamentary officers urged him to proceed to the front. "Never," they said, "will the people be found so firmly assured and imperiously compelled to conquer." The general did not count much upon the people; he preferred to have time to make soldiers of them; he established himself everywhere upon the defensive, and the king retired to Oxford, where he took up his winter quarters.

Essex was not alone in his feelings of repugnance and hesitation. The popular party no longer marched forward with one same mind and one firm will as when it was a question of political reforms. Peace had numerous partisans who spoke more loudly every day. Strife was in the midst of Parliament, and this constant effort over itself deprived it of the leisure and energy necessary for actively urging forward the war. The greater part of the winter was passed without a single pitched battle.

The war continued meanwhile to be irregular and spontaneous. Great noblemen or plain gentlemen, confederations of towns and counties raised at their expense small corps, asked for a commission from king or Parliament, and warred against each other with ardor, but without violence and without cruelty, as men of a common origin, often of the same family, who did not wish to break off all amicable relations forever. Blood flowed and the country already suffered, but the bitterness of the antagonistic passions had not yet taken possession of the combatants. In the eastern, central, and southeastern counties, the most thickly peopled and the richest, the Parliamentarians were in the ascendant. The preponderance pertained to the king in the north, in the west, and in the south-west. London was surrounded by counties devoted to Parliament, which formed, as it were, a formidable girdle for it. At Oxford, the king found himself placed in an advanced post.

In the month of February (1643) the queen arrived, animated and confident. She had succeeded in interesting in the king's favor the States of Holland. The Stadtholder, her son-in-law, had helped her with all his resources. She brought four ships loaded with supplies and troops. Admiral Batten did not contrive in time to intercept the convoy which landed at Burlington. The town was immediately cannonaded. The queen saw the balls fall even in her apartment. She fled into the country and sheltered herself under a bank. Lord Newcastle went to seek her with a body of troops, to conduct her to York. She installed herself there, and a mass of Catholics soon hastened to enroll themselves under her flag. Henrietta-Maria made no haste to rejoin her husband; she liked to reign alone and to maintain with her caressing ardor the zeal of her partisans. Hamilton and Montrose came from Scotland to confer with her upon the means of attaching that kingdom to the cause of the king. Hamilton wished to win over Parliament. Montrose was desirous of making use of a corps of Irishmen under the orders of the Earl of Antrim, to subjugate and massacre the Presbyterian chiefs, rouse the highlanders, and take possession of the whole of Scotland. Intrigues with the Parliamentary commanders were carried on as much as conferences with the Royalists. Sir Hugh Cholmondeley promised to surrender Scarborough. Sir John Hotham appeared disposed to open the gates of Hull to the queen. Parliament began to grow uneasy.

The friends of peace took advantage of this moment to propose fresh negotiations. "It has been said in this House," said Sir Benjamin Rudyard, "that we were bound in conscience to finish the shedding of innocent blood; but who shall answer for all the innocent blood which is about to flow if we do not march to peace by the means of a prompt treaty?" His motion, which involved nothing less than the disbandment of the two armies as a preliminary of the negotiations, was rejected; but it was agreed to send to Oxford five commissioners entrusted to discuss, for twenty days at first, a suspension of arms, then a treaty. The committee, at the head of which was the Earl of Northumberland, set out from London on the 20th of March.

The king received the commissioners well, and their relations with the court were polite and courteous. The Royalists were magnificently treated at the residence of the Earl of Northumberland, who had caused his household to follow him; but when the negotiations were begun ill-feeling reappeared in full force. Neither the king nor Parliament had abated any of the conditions resolutely rejected before the war. One evening the emissaries of Parliament believed they had gained something; on the morrow morning, the written reply of Charles did not resemble his words of the previous day; his councillors and the emissaries of the queen had induced him to alter his resolve. Secret and personal intrigues did not succeed better than official negotiations. The king had promised his wife never to make peace without her approbation, and she angrily wrote to him to dissuade him from it. These manœuvres corresponded with the secret wishes of the king, who did not desire peace. He ended by offering to the negotiators to return to the Houses, if the latter were willing to transport the seat of Parliament at least twenty miles from London. Upon this message the Houses suddenly recalled their commissioners, and, by an order so pressing that they deemed themselves compelled to set out on the same day (April 15th), although it was late, and their travelling coaches were not ready.

On the same day the Earl of Essex took the field again. Hampden would have preferred that a hasty march should be made to Oxford, there to besiege the king. The earl refused this, even when he had taken Reading, an indispensable town for the safety of Parliament. Complaints were uttered concerning his delay and hesitation. The most violent among the leaders of the Commons spoke even of appointing a successor. Hampden, Fairfax, Lord Manchester, Sir William Waller, had obtained successes and rendered great services. Colonel Cromwell, already famous for his bold strokes, as fortunate as they were skillful, had done more still. He was lamenting one day with Hampden the inferiority of the Parliamentary cavalry, constantly defeated in the little engagements which had taken place with the cavaliers. "What would you?" said Cromwell; "your troops are most of them old, decayed serving-men and tapsters. Do you think that the spirits of such base and mean fellows will be ever able to encounter gentlemen that have honor and courage and resolution in them? I will raise men who have the fear of God before them, and I warrant you they will not be beaten." The levies of volunteers which he had formed, fanatical, proud, and severe of manner, engaged in the war for conscience sake, and under the orders of Cromwell from confidence in him. They already composed, at the opening of the campaign of 1643, a body of a thousand men, the germ and nucleus of the famous "Ironsides."

The bitter speeches against Essex came to no result. Complaints were made, but there was a disinclination to separate from him. The ill-will of the leaders, however, was manifested by the destitution in which the army was left, through the insufficiency of the resources and the irregularity of its pay. A royalist plot, upon the point of bursting forth in the city, was discovered: two of the conspirators only, Challoner and Tompkins, rich citizens of London, suffered the extreme penalty. Edmund Waller, a member of the House of Commons and already a famous poet, repurchased his life with cowardly revelations. Many important men were compromised, and while Parliament perceived that conspiracy was going on at its doors against its safety, successive disasters overtook its arms and placed its cause in peril.

A great loss—that of Hampden—was the signal for these reverses. A trifling encounter of cavalry had taken place on the 18th of June, in the plain of Chalgrave, a few leagues from Oxford. Prince Rupert defeated the Parliamentarians. Hampden was there. "I saw him," said a prisoner, "go away, contrary to his custom, from the field of battle before the end of the action. His head was bent low, his hands rested upon the neck of his horse; without doubt he is wounded." The people of Oxford were agitated, almost fearing to rejoice. The king sent one of his physicians, a country neighbor of Hampden, to know whether he did not want assistance. A thought of conciliation towards this powerful adversary had crossed the mind of Charles. Doctor Giles found Hampden dying: a bullet had shattered his shoulder. He was told, however, who had sent to enquire after him, and with what intention. A violent agitation seized the wounded man. He wished to speak, but death had already frozen his tongue; he expired a few instants afterwards. When he was no longer to be feared, the people rejoiced in Oxford; while in London, and in nearly all the kingdom, the grief was as violent as it was profound.

"Never had man inspired so much confidence in a people. Whoever belonged to the national party, no matter in what degree or for what motives, counted upon Hampden for the success of his wishes. The more moderate believed in his wisdom, the more passionate in his patriotic devotion, the more honest in his uprightness, the more intriguing in his skill. Prudent and reserved, while ready to brave all perils, he who had never yet been wanting suddenly disappointed all hopes. A marvellous good fortune, which forever placed his name in the high position assigned to it by the expectation of his contemporaries, and perhaps saved his virtue as well as his glory, from the rocks whereon revolutions impel and shatter their noblest favorites!"

Death of Hampden.

The people wept; they soon began to tremble. Everywhere the Parliamentary generals were beaten by the royalist chiefs. The enemies of Essex, by allowing his army to suffer, had reckoned upon the successes of his rivals. Fairfax had been beaten on the 30th of June at Atherton Moor. Sir John Hotham was upon the point of surrendering Hull to the queen. Lord Willoughby could no longer defend Lincolnshire against Lord Newcastle. The confederation of the eastern states, the great bulwark of Parliament, seemed about to be broken up. In Cornwall, where the command was in the hands of the most faithful and best servants of the king, the Marquis of Hertford, Sir Bevil Grenville, Sir Ralph Hopton, the peasants hereditarily attached to their lords had followed them to the war, as in France the Vendéans were to follow the nobles a hundred and fifty years later. Like them they seized upon the batteries, assaulting them with their staves. Sir William Waller there lost two battles in one week. Everywhere the cities opened their gates to the king. Bristol, the second stronghold in the kingdom, surrendered at the first attack. The queen had rejoined the king, bringing three thousand men and some cannon, upon that same plain of Keynton, where, in the preceding year, the two parties had for the first time come to blows. Charles and his wife returned to Oxford in triumph, and Sir William Waller came back to London without troops.

Amidst so many disasters, Essex had not stirred, imputing his inaction to those very persons who reproached him with it. He caused the Upper House to be advised to sue for peace from the king. "If this proceeding does not bring about a treaty," he said, in conclusion, "it will be necessary, I think, to beg his Majesty to go away from this scene of slaughter, and then, in one day, the two armies must settle the dispute." A few days earlier the overtures of Essex might, perhaps, have been well received; but the king had recently declared officially that the individuals still assembled at Westminster, after the retirement of so many members, no longer formed two real Houses, that they had lost all legal existence, and no longer deserved the name of Parliament. He forbade all his subjects to obey this set of traitors and sedition-mongers. Parliament, thus attacked, voted the formation of a committee entrusted to ask assistance of the Scots, and the House of Lords declared that it would not address any proposal for peace to the king until he should have revoked his proclamation against the legality of Parliament.

It was not merely votes and declarations that were relied upon. The army of Essex received reinforcements and supplies; the formation of a new army began in earnest in the eastern counties; it was to be placed under the command of Lord Manchester, with Cromwell as lieutenant-general. In Hull, Lord Fairfax succeeded Sir John Hotham, arrested by order of the Commons before he had been able to accomplish his treason. Religious services increased in London. The wives and mothers of the combatants filled the churches; every morning, at beat of drum, a crowd of citizens, men and women, rich and poor, issued forth in a mass to work at the fortifications.

The effort was great and general, but it was not more than necessity demanded; for the successes of the king continued, and the desire for peace began to spring up again in the minds of the majority of the Lords, with the gleam of hope revealed by a fresh proclamation of the king, more skillful and more agreeable than the preceding one. On the 5th of August the Upper House transmitted to the Commons pacific proposals which they had voted on the previous day, declaring in a sufficiently haughty tone that it was time to put an end to the calamities of the country. The leaders of the Commons grew alarmed. Peace, thus demanded, was a defeat. They had not been able to prevent the House from taking into consideration the proposals of the Lords. They called the people to their assistance; a riotous assemblage demanded with loud cries the continuation of the hostilities. The vote was doubtful in the Commons; a first scrutiny gave the majority to the partisans of peace. The party of war demanded a fresh examination; they carried this proposal at length, but with a majority of seven votes only. On the morrow, a crowd of women who besieged the gates of Westminster, demanding peace, could only be dispersed by a charge of cavalry; two corpses remained upon the ground.

The triumph of the popular leaders was complete, but it was stained with those frauds and acts of violence with which they had but recently so bitterly reproached the king. Six members of the Upper House quitted London, to repair to the court of Charles. Northumberland retired to his castle. The Commons were soon about to find themselves alone; they were astonished and uneasy, for the most impetuous sectaries and the most violent demagogues began to give themselves free play. "If the king will not lend himself to every demand," wrote a pamphleteer, "he must be extirpated, he and his race, and the crown must be entrusted to some one else." Henry Martyn supported the pamphlet, attacked before the House. "Without doubt," he said, "the ruin of a single family is better than that of many." "I demand," exclaimed Sir Nevil Poole, "that Mr. Martyn be summoned to say of what family he speaks." "Of the king and his children," replied Martyn, without hesitating. The most violent spirits in the House had not yet gone to the length of proclaiming their hopes aloud. Martyn was suffered to be placed in the Tower without resistance, and was excluded from Parliament.

The danger, however, became too pressing to admit of division among the party. The king laid siege to Gloucester, the only stronghold which still arrested him in his march upon London, or impeded the free communication of the royal armies. Common sense gained the ascendant over party hatreds. The moderate understood that before negotiating it was necessary to conquer; the fanatics recognized the truth, that to gain a victory it was for them to serve, for their rivals to command. Essex and his friends regained everywhere the authority of which they had but recently been deprived, and the more impassioned of their adversaries omitted nothing in assuring them of the confidence of Parliament and the country. The week had scarcely passed when the earl set out at the head of fourteen thousand men, to proceed by forced marches to the relief of Gloucester, which city the king had been closely blockading for a fortnight.

Charles had not found even in his most illustrious servants the intelligence and ready disinterestedness which inspired the leaders of the popular party. Lord Newcastle, victorious in Yorkshire, refused to rejoin the king under the walls of London. "As long as Hull shall not be taken," he said, "I cannot leave this part of the country." Hull was in the hands of Fairfax, and the king could not or dared not undertake to attack London unaided. He thought he had secret understandings with the town of Gloucester, and resolved to lay siege to it. A garrison of fifteen hundred men alone defended the town; but the inhabitants were devoted to Parliament, and replied to the order to surrender, "We hold this town for the service of his Majesty and his posterity. We consider ourselves obliged to obey the orders of his Majesty, as they are transmitted to us by the two Houses of Parliament; consequently with the help of God, we will guard the said town with all our might." For twenty-six days they had kept their word, when the king learnt that the Earl of Essex was approaching.

Every means, both warlike and peaceful, was tried to arrest him. Prince Rupert hastened to place himself before him with his cavalry; the king made proposals for peace to him. Essex did not fight, still pressing on his march, and he replied to Charles, "Parliament has not commissioned me to negotiate, but to deliver Gloucester. I will do it, or I will leave my body under the walls." As he deployed his army on the morrow, the 5th of September, upon the hills of Prestbury, two leagues from the besieged town, the sight of the quarters of the king in flames informed him that he had accomplished his task without striking a blow. Charles had raised the siege of Gloucester.

It was not to avoid a combat that the cavaliers had abandoned an investment of which they were weary. Gloucester being revictualled, the Earl of Essex turned back towards London; but on arriving before Newbury, on the 19th of September, he perceived that the enemy had preceded him, and that a battle was inevitable. The action began at daybreak. Valiant was the fighting upon both sides; "the Royalists therein felt the hope of redeeming a reverse which had suspended the course of their triumphs; the Parliamentarians, the desire not to lose, when so near the goal, the fruit of a triumph which had put an end to so many reverses." The soldiery of London manifested the most brilliant courage. At nightfall, both parties maintained their positions. Essex, however, had gained ground, and was preparing to resume the action at daybreak; but the enemy withdrew during the night, and the road was free. On the 22d Essex and his army arrived at Reading, henceforth sheltered from all danger.

The royal army had suffered losses which cast down the courage of the chiefs and the soldiers. More than twenty officers of distinction had fallen; among others, and first of all, Lord Falkland, the honor of the royalist party. "Still a patriot, although proscribed in London, still respected by the people, although a royal counsellor at Oxford, nothing made it incumbent on him to seek the field of battle, but he sought danger with a painful ardor. Profoundly saddened by the evils which he contemplated and those which he foresaw, ill at ease amidst a party whose successes and reverses he almost equally dreaded, his temper had become embittered, he had grown taciturn and gloomy. 'Peace! peace!' he often exclaimed amidst the conversations of his friends; then he relapsed into his despondency. On the morning of the combat he had attired himself carefully, according to his former custom, for some time abandoned, and, as he was urged to remain at his residence, 'No,' he said, 'too long has all this been breaking my heart; I hope that I shall be out of it before it is night,' and he went and joined the regiment of Lord Byron as a volunteer. He fell at the beginning of the action, being dead before his fall was noticed. His friends, Hyde especially, preserved an inconsolable remembrance of him. The courtiers learnt, without any great emotion, the death of a man who had been a stranger to them. Charles manifested decent regrets, and felt himself more at ease in council."

Joy reigned supreme in London. While Essex was re-entering the city with his triumphant troops, it became known that Vane had concluded with the Scots, under the name of "a solemn league" or "covenant," a close alliance, which was sworn to both in Edinburgh and in London. The Presbyterian leaders and people were at the summit of their wishes. Their general had conquered, and their natural allies, the Scots, were coming to their aid. They took advantage of this situation of affairs to exert their religious tyranny; the assemblage of theologians received orders to prepare a scheme of ecclesiastical government, and committees were formed to examine, in each county, the doctrine and conduct of the clericals. Those who had escaped the persecutions of Laud against the nonconformists, now succumbed to the Presbyterian inquisitions. Some few even, who had resumed possession of their livings since the fall of the episcopacy, found themselves again prosecuted. More than two thousand clergymen were expelled from their parishes, and the Anabaptists, the Brownists, and the Independents, were thrown into prisons, where their tyrants had but recently groaned with them. Archbishop Laud, forgotten for three years past in his imprisonment, was summoned to the bar of the Upper House, to reply to the accusation of the Commons, the triumphant Presbyterians bringing the weight of their vengeance and their fears to bear upon adversaries of all parties.

They hastened, for the ground trembled beneath their feet. It was too much to cope, on the one hand, with the Royalists, and on the other with the religious or political Independents, who every day became more numerous and more bold. In religious matters, the Presbyterians admitted neither discussion nor liberty. They looked upon their doctrinal and ecclesiastical system as the only law and the only government permitted and revealed by the word of God. In politics they were moderate. They liked the monarchy while fighting against the king; they respected the prerogative while laboring to subjugate the crown; and they obeyed old customs as much as new requirements, without knowing precisely whether they were proceeding by means of the reforms which they had prosecuted for three years with so much ardor. The leaders themselves came from different sides, and were not all animated by the same desires. Hesitation began to discover itself among them: Rudyard no longer appeared in Parliament, except at rare intervals. St. John and Pym treated the Independents gently; the lords quitted Westminster by degrees and withdrew to their estates, when they did not proceed to rejoin the king. On the morrow of the battle of Newbury, ten lords only sat in the Upper House; they were, for the Presbyterians, an incumbrance rather than a support; the popular movement became every day more estranged from the high aristocracy, separated from the Presbyterians by the religious fanaticism of the latter. Revolution succeeded reform.

The new party had grown in the shadow of the Presbyterian power; but from the first it had set up a very different flag. Liberty was the basis of the structure that liberty yet so misunderstood and so often dishonored by the very persons who demanded it. "Whatever may have been the boldness of their ventures, neither the politicians nor the devotees of the new party were a prey to vague desires, to unlimited pretensions. No precise design regulated their course, no historical or legal act comprised the limits of their belief. It was this very belief which they wished, at all costs, to set forth. Proud of its elevation, of its holiness, of its daring, they awarded to it the right of judging all, of ruling all; and taking it solely for their guide, the philosophers sought with indefatigable ardor, the truth; the enthusiasts, the Lord; the libertines, success. All could find therein full satisfaction for their schemes and hopes. The double policy of the Presbyterians did not hinder the progress of those free spirits who claimed to shake off all impediments and remake the world in their own fashion. Hostility increased every day between the new party of the Independents, impelled by the breeze of revolution as well as by popular favor, and the old Presbyterian party, triumphant and everywhere in power, but hesitating and uneasy in the very midst of its victories."

At Oxford, divisions among the enemy were not unknown, and men of ability would have been ready to profit by them: but in vain were secret negotiations carried on sometimes with the Presbyterians, sometimes with the Independents; the plots were neither active nor efficacious, and they displeased the king even while he tolerated them. He had less repugnance in negotiating with other enemies, odious to England and his people. He was in treaty with the Irish rebels, with the ferocious Papists who had put Ireland to fire and sword, now organized by the great council which had been formed at Kilkenny. When Charles heard of the negotiations of the Scotch with Parliament, and when he saw that a fresh kingdom was about to slip from his grasp, he hastened to come to an end with the Irish. The Protestant army, commanded by the Earl of Ormond, which had always remained faithful to the royal cause, was disbanded; its regiments crossed the sea and joined the army of the king. A truce of one year was concluded with the rebels; Ireland was abandoned to the Papists. It was a terrible blow struck in England to the traditional respect which many people still preserved towards the king. His duplicity, his tedious falsehoods, the haughty tone of his protests, his decided tendency towards Roman Catholicism, all this recurred to the recollection of the people, and his name, hitherto treated with respect amidst the most bitter strife of the contending parties, was no longer spared from insult.

Charles was deeply offended at the violence which was manifested towards him. His timid and easily offended dignity was shocked at the idea that people should dare to judge him according to his acts. He sent for Hyde. "I desire to dissolve Parliament," he said. "The act by which I promised only to do so with their own consent, is, I am assured, null and void; for I could not thus abolish the prerogatives of the crown, but rather desire to make use of them. Let a proclamation be prepared which shall declare the Houses dissolved from this time, and expressly forbid them from reassembling, or any one, whosoever he may be, from recognizing or obeying them." Hyde listened, surprised and grieved. "I cannot imagine," he said, "that your Majesty's forbidding them to meet any more at Westminster will prevent one man the more going there, and, nevertheless, the kingdom will, without doubt, take violent umbrage at it. It was the first powerful reproach they corrupted the people with against your Majesty, that you intended to dissolve this Parliament, and in the same way repeal all the other acts made by that Parliament, whereof some are very precious to the people. As your Majesty has always disclaimed any such thought, such a proclamation now would confirm all the jealousies and fears so excited, and trouble many of your true subjects. I implore your Majesty to reflect well before further pressing this project."

All the members of the council spoke like Hyde, and the king abandoned his project, not without ill-humor. It was necessary, however, to do something. Some one proposed, since the name of Parliament exercised such a dominion over the people, to convoke at Oxford all the members of the two Houses who had quitted Westminster, and thus to oppose to the factious and mutilated Parliament a real and legal Parliament, since the king would form part of it. The proposal displeased the king, who detested the very name of parliament. The queen was still more opposed to it; but the royalist party received the measure with ecstasy, and no one dared to withdraw it. The Parliament of the king was convoked at Oxford for the 22nd January, 1644.

On the same day, at Westminster, a kind of muster of the Houses took place. Twenty-two lords still sat in the Upper House, and two hundred and eighty members of the Commons responded to their names. A certain number were absent in the service of the country and by order of Parliament. One of its oldest and most useful leaders had recently been taken from them. "Pym had died on the 8th of December, after a sickness of a few days. A man of a less brilliant renown than Hampden, in the secret councils as well as the public acts of the House, he had not rendered less important services. Firm, patient, and shrewd, skilled in pursuing an enemy, in directing a debate, or an intrigue, in fomenting the anger of the people, in engaging or retaining in his cause the great lords who were in a state of uncertainty, he was, moreover, an indefatigable member of the greater number of the committees, the customary chief mover of decisive measures, always ready to undertake onerous and dreaded duties; indifferent, in short, to labor, to mortifications, to fortune, to glory, and placing in success his sole ambition. The House felt its loss, and rendered the greatest honors to his memory. He was buried at Westminster."

The new Parliament had attempted to establish relations with Essex. It received from the Earl of Forth, commander-in-chief of the army of the king, a packet which it consigned in a sealed cover to the Upper House. After an examination by a committee of the two Houses, the papers were sent to Oxford without any answer. A demand for a safe-conduct for the deputies whom the king desired to send to London was not better received. "My Lord," replied Essex, "when you ask for a safe-conduct in order that these gentlemen may repair, on behalf of the king, to the two Houses of Parliament, I will do, with all my heart, what shall be in my power to contribute to all that is desired by all good men—the re-establishment of an amicable understanding between his Majesty and his faithful and only council, the Parliament."

The king was delighted to find his adversaries so untractable; his hopes lay entirely in war and nowise in negotiations. The assembly of Oxford, consisting of forty-five Lords and a hundred and eighteen members of the Commons, obtained however a slight concession from him. The name of Parliament had not, in the first message rejected by Essex, been applied to the House at Westminster. A letter of the king was addressed "to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament assembled at Westminster;" but he spoke of the Lords and Commons assembled at Oxford as of their equals. A trumpeter from Essex brought the reply of the Houses. "The letter of your Majesty," it ran, "gives us, as to peace, the saddest thoughts. The persons now assembled at Oxford, and who, against their duty, have deserted your Parliament, are therein placed in the same rank as the latter, and this Parliament itself, convoked according to the fundamental laws of the kingdom, authorized to continue to sit by a special law sanctioned by your Majesty, finds itself denied even its name. We cannot betray in this manner the honor of the country entrusted to our keeping, and it is our duty to make known to your Majesty that we are firmly resolved to defend and maintain, at the risk of our fortunes and our lives, the just rights and the full powers of Parliament."

The assembly of Oxford did not long resist. Henceforth, without hope of conciliation, and consequently without object, it continued to sit until the 16th of April, still faithful to the king, voting a few loans, and addressing long and bitter reproaches to the Houses of Westminster; but timid, inactive, and careful to manifest in presence of the court its ardent desire for legal order and peace. When their adjournment was at length pronounced, the king rejoiced with the queen at being delivered from this mongrel Parliament, the haunt of cowardly and seditious motions.

Charles counted upon war; but the campaign about to open presented itself under grievous aspects. All the small engagements which had taken place during the winter had turned to the advantage of the Parliamentarians. The Earl of Newcastle had been compelled by Fairfax to shut himself up in York. Parliament possessed five armies: those of the Scots, Essex, and Fairfax, were paid at the expense of the public treasury; those of Manchester and Waller were supported by the Eastern and Southern counties commissioned to recruit them. Under the name of Committee of the Two Kingdoms, a committee of the Chambers, composed of seven lords, fourteen members of the Commons, and four Scottish commissioners, was invested with almost absolute power over the war and foreign relations. The measures of Parliament were every day becoming more regular and energetic. Weakness and want of discipline, on the contrary, increased in the camp of the king.

Battle Of Marston Moor.

Suddenly it became known at Oxford that the army of Essex, strengthened by that of Waller, was advancing to besiege the town. The troops of Fairfax and Manchester and the Scots were to assemble under the walls of York, and besieged that town in common. The two great towns and the two great armies of the royalists, the king and Lord Newcastle, were thus attacked at once by all the forces of Parliament. Such was the simple and bold plan which the committee of the two kingdoms had adopted.

The queen took alarm. She was in expectation of a child, but she was anxious not to be delivered within a besieged town. The evil effect of her departure was represented to her without success; she flew into a passion, wept, implored. She set out at length for Exeter, determined to proceed to France in case of danger. Her husband never saw her again.

A month later, at the end of May, Oxford was almost completely surrounded. A considerable reinforcement of militiamen coming from London, was about to put Essex in a position to complete the investment. The danger was so urgent that one of the faithful councillors of the king proposed to him to surrender to the earl. "It may be," said Charles in indignation, "that I may be found in the hands of the Earl of Essex, but I shall be dead." A week afterwards the army and Parliament learnt that the investment of Oxford had become useless, for the king had escaped.

On the 3d of June, accompanied by the Prince of Wales, and leaving in the town the Duke of York with all his court, the king had issued forth from Oxford. Passing between the two hostile camps, and, joining a corps of light troops who awaited him upon the northern side, he rapidly placed himself out of reach. Seventeen days subsequently, while Waller was pursuing him in Worcestershire and Essex was advancing towards Lyme, which Prince Maurice kept besieged, Charles, bold and determined for the first time, reappeared in Oxford, and placing himself once more at the head of his troops, vigorously resumed the offensive. On the 29th of June he defeated, in Buckinghamshire, at Cropredybridge, the army of Waller, which had advanced to cut off his road to London. At rest upon this point, he resolved to pursue Essex, who had appeared before the walls of Exeter, and might terrify the queen, who had been delivered of a child two days before. One of the armies which had but recently kept him a prisoner was destroyed; the other, it seemed, would soon share its fate. Satisfied with his triumph, the king addressed from Evesham a message to the Houses, in which, without giving to them the name of Parliament, he made pacific protestations and offered to reopen negotiations; he then pursued his march towards the west.

Before his message arrived in London everything had assumed a different aspect. Fresh actors had entered upon the scene, the battle of Marston Moor, fought by the three armies of Fairfax, Manchester, and the Scots, against Prince Rupert and Lord Newcastle, had annihilated the royalist party in the north. York could not delay surrendering. Neither the defeats of Waller nor the former triumphs of Essex were thought of any longer.

It was on the evening of the 2d of July, from seven to ten o'clock, at Marston Moor, that the battle had taken place which brought about these great results. At the approach of Prince Rupert the Parliamentary generals had raised the siege of York and proceeded towards him to arrest his progress. They had not succeeded; the prince had entered the town without striking a blow. The Parliamentarians retired; but notwithstanding the counsels of Lord Newcastle, Rupert followed them. When the two armies met, it was five o'clock in the evening; they spent two hours in sight of each other without engaging. "What position does your Highness intend for me" asked Newcastle of the prince. "I do not count upon making the attack before to-morrow morning," said Rupert; "you may rest until then." The earl retired and shut himself up in his coach. Scarcely was he settled there, when the firing informed him that the battle had begun; he ran thither, without command, at the head of a few volunteer gentlemen like himself. The most complete disorder reigned on the plain. The two armies were fighting helter-skelter, without leaders and without discipline: Parliamentarians and Royalists, horsemen and foot-soldiers, were wandering about the field of battle, seeking their corps, fighting upon meeting the enemy, but without result as well as without general purpose. The right wing of the Parliamentarians wavered under a charge of the Royalists; the Scottish cavalry took to flight. They were pursued, and a rumor of the victory of Prince Rupert spread as far as Oxford, where bonfires were lighted. But, as usual, the cavaliers had suffered themselves to be carried away by their ardor. When they returned to the field of battle, they found their positions occupied by the enemy. The cavalry of Prince Rupert had given way before the squadrons of Cromwell; the infantry of Manchester had completed his defeat. The Parliamentarians had not pursued their adversaries, but had hastened to secure the field of battle. The combat which took place between the two victorious corps ended to the advantage of the Ironsides, a name given upon this occasion to the soldiers of Cromwell. Three thousand corpses strewed the field. Sixteen hundred Royalists were prisoners.

Rupert and Newcastle re-entered York in the middle of the night. Without seeing each other, they merely exchanged messages. "I have resolved," the prince sent word, "to set out this morning with my cavalry and what I have left of my infantry." "I start at once," Newcastle said, "and I am going to cross the sea to retire to the Continent." Both kept their word. York capitulated at the end of a fortnight.

Never had Parliament achieved so brilliant a success, and it was to the Independents that they owed it. The Scots, those allies whom the Presbyterians had brought from so far, had fled disgracefully. The day of the Lord was at length coming, thought the enthusiasts. "My Lord," said Cromwell to Lord Manchester in their camp intercourse, "place yourself decisively with us, say no longer that we must hold ourselves in readiness for peace, or spare the House of Lords, or fear the refusals of Parliament. What have we to do with peace and the nobility? It never will be well with England till you are called plain Mr. Montague. If you will stick firm to honest men, you shall find yourself at the head of an army which shall give law both to king and Parliament."

The audacious counsels of Cromwell were not to serve the purpose of Lord Manchester; but himself and his party were nearing the goal of their hopes, for Essex had recently been vanquished.

More and more occupied in the west, the general-in-chief of the Parliamentary armies had allowed himself to be allured by easy successes. As he approached Exeter, the queen sent to ask for a safe-conduct, in order to proceed to Bath to recover from her accouchment. "If your Majesty wishes to repair to London," he replied, "not only will I give you a safe-conduct, but I will accompany you myself. It is there that you will receive the best advice and the most efficacious cares for the restoration of your health. For any other place I cannot accede to your desires without consulting Parliament." Essex might be dispirited, and disgusted even with the cause he had embraced; he could not fail in fidelity. Stricken with terror, the queen fled to Falmouth, where she embarked for France.

Upon the advice of several of his officers, Essex entered Cornwall. The population were hostile to him, and the king was pressing him closely. He asked for reinforcements and counselled that Waller should effect a diversion upon the rear of the royal army. The committee of the two kingdoms was earnest, agitated, ordered public prayers, and commanded Waller and Middleton to march to the aid of the general. "Let money and men be sent to me," wrote Waller; "God is my witness that it is not my fault if I do not go more quickly; if the money does not come, I shall go without money." He did not depart. Middleton moved his army forward, but stopped at the first obstacle. Essex remained alone.

Abandoned by Parliament, the general was ardently sought after by the Royalists, who were incapable of believing that a man of his rank could earnestly serve any other cause than theirs. The king wrote him on the 6th of August, at his headquarters at Lestwithiel, a letter full of esteem and promises, urging him to restore peace to his country. It was Lord Beauchamp, nephew of the earl, who brought the royal missive. "I have but one counsel to give to the king, that is to return to his Parliament." Charles did not persist, but many cavaliers around him desired peace, and were beginning to shake off the exclusive yoke of the royal will. They resolved to offer to the earl their personal guarantee for the promises of the king. A rough draft of a letter, signed by Lords Wilmot and Percy, commanders of the cavalry and infantry, circulated among the officers. The king concealed his ill-humor. His nephew. Prince Maurice, like the Earl of Brentford, commander-in-chief of the royal army, signed the proposals of negotiation addressed to the hostile general. The king had authorized the proceeding. "My Lords," replied Essex, "you have been careful to express, in the first lines of your letter, in virtue of what authorization it has been addressed to me. I have received from Parliament which I serve no authority to negotiate, and I could not lend myself to it without a breach of trust. I am, my Lords, your very humble servant, Essex."

It remained but to fight with the redoubled ardor which arises from vexation. The Parliamentary general was hemmed in on all sides by the royalist forces. Skirmishes took place every day, without great result. Provisions were becoming scarce in the army of Parliament. The Royalists had come so near that they could see all that went on in the camp. Essex resolved to endeavor to reach the port of Fowey. The cavalry, under orders of Sir William Balfour, spent the night between the two divisions of the royal army; but the infantry became involved in narrow roads, where they advanced slowly; they were pursued by all the army of the king: they had lost their baggage; they spoke aloud of capitulating. Essex could not submit to so great a disgrace; he reached the coast with two officers, threw himself into a boat and made sail for Plymouth, leaving his army under the orders of Major-General Skippon. The soldiers were discouraged, the officers discontented: the king caused unexpected terms to be proposed to them; the capitulation was accepted. The artillery, provisions, and arms remained in the hands of the Royalists. The men were reconducted to the quarters of the Parliamentarians. They had saved their lives and liberty, but without arms and without a leader they traversed, under the escort of the cavaliers, the counties which they had but recently overrun as conquerors. Their general had fled from this humiliation; he did not endeavor to escape the justice of his country; he wrote to Parliament, on arriving at Plymouth, "It is the most severe blow which our cause has ever sustained. I desire nothing so much as to be put upon my trial; such disasters should not be suppressed."

The English Parliament was worthy to have descended from the old Roman Senators contending against Hannibal. Instead of placing Essex upon trial, the formation of a new army for his use was immediately set about. The imminence of the peril rallied to his party those men who were uncertain, and the leaders of the Independents, able and patient, were in no hurry to throw light upon the causes which had brought about the defeat of the earl. Manchester and Waller received orders to join the army of Essex. When the king, confident from his successes in Cornwall, and glad to learn that at the instigation of Montrose, war had broken out in Scotland, commenced his movements towards London, he encountered by the way imposing forces. The army of Essex was there, but its general was wanting. The earl, disheartened and ill, had remained in London. The assurances of the confidence of Parliament had not sufficed to rouse him from his dejection: battle was given in his absence on the 29th of October, once more before Newbury.

The action was long and desperate. The soldiers of Essex performed on this occasion prodigies of valor to retake the cannon which they had lost in Cornwall; but they remained uncertain, and both sides claimed the victory. The king abandoned his designs upon London, and withdrew towards Oxford, where he counted upon taking up his winter quarters. Cromwell reproached the Earl of Manchester with having attacked without vigor, and with having but feebly followed up his advantages. The struggle became more resolute every day between the Presbyterians and the Independents—between the partisans of peace and those who desired war at any price. Of these latter, Cromwell was becoming the acknowledged leader.

Essex and his friends resolved to attempt a great effort. They urged the committee of the House which, for six months, had worked with the Scotch commissioners, to prepare the proposals for peace. In a few days these proposals were presented to the Houses, discussed and adopted. On the 20th of November, nine commissioners set out to present them to the king. They found him at Oxford, and on the first day the insults of the cavaliers towards the Parliamentarians threatened to bring about personal encounters between the emissaries of the Parliament and the partisans of the king. "Have you power to negotiate?" asked Charles of Lord Denbigh. "No, Sire, our mission is limited to presenting to your Majesty the proposals, and to soliciting your answer in writing." "Well; I will remit it to you (he replied) as soon as I am able." The commissioners waited for three days. The proposals of Parliament were not conciliatory; they involved a veritable abdication of the royal power. When the commissioners from Parliament were at length summoned before the king, he consigned a sealed document to them, saying, "This is my answer; take it to those who have sent you." Lord Denbigh in vain endeavored to ascertain what the document contained; the king would not give to the Houses the name of Parliament. "Your duty is to take my answer, were it only the ballad of Robin Hood." "The matter which has brought us, Sire, is a trifle more serious than a ballad." "I know it; but you told me that you had no power to negotiate. My memory is as good as yours; you were only charged to remit the proposals to me. A post-boy would have done as much in the matter as you." The conversation became more and more bitter. The commissioners set out on their return, without obtaining from the king an admission that his message was addressed to Parliament. He only asked for a safe-conduct for the Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Southampton. They proceeded to London, and conferences were resolved upon; these were to take place at Uxbridge. Forty commissioners, twenty-three in the name of Parliament, and seventeen in the name of the king, were to discuss that peace which was every day becoming more the object of all the desires as well as the only hope of the Presbyterians.

The Independents knew this well, but they also knew the passionate pride and the deceptions of the king, and the fanaticism and haughtiness of the Parliamentarians. While dreading the pacific conferences which might have caused the triumph of their rivals, they occupied themselves in preparing for war. Cromwell made a great speech condemning the division of power and the slowness of the military operations. "If the army be not put into another method, and the war more vigorously prosecuted, the people can bear the war no longer, and will enforce you to a dishonorable peace. Let us waive a strict inquiry into the causes of these things; let us apply ourselves to the remedy which is most necessary. And I hope we have such true English hearts and zealous affections towards the general weal of our mother-country, as no members of either House will scruple to deny themselves and their own private interest for the public good, nor account it to be a dishonor done to them whatever Parliament shall resolve upon." "There is but one way to end the matter," said Zouch Tate, an obscure fanatic, "each of us must freely sacrifice himself. I propose that no member of either House shall, during the war, enjoy or execute any office or command, civil or military, and that an ordinance be brought in accordingly."

After the first moment of astonishment, a violent discussion arose. It was in the Houses that lay all the strength of the Presbyterians, until then the real leaders of the revolution. The "self-denying" ordinance deprived them of the executive power and created an army of strangers to Parliament. They did not deceive themselves as to the pretended disinterestedness which had inspired the proposals of Cromwell and his friends. "There is some talk here of self-denial," they said; "it will be the triumph of personal envy and interest." But this time public opinion was with the Independents. The Presbyterian party was worn-out and discredited. Notwithstanding their real strength in the House of Commons, the ordinance was voted and sent up to the House of Lords on the 21st of September.

In voting the proposal of Zouch Tate, the Upper House abandoned the remnant of power which it still retained, for nearly all its members were affected. While they deliberated, the political leaders of the party in the House of Commons increased the concessions to the religious prejudices, as well as to the malignant resentments of the multitude. Long-forgotten prosecutions were resumed. Archbishop Laud, imprisoned for four years, was condemned by a simple ordinance of the two Houses, illegal even according to the traditions of Parliamentary tyranny. He died with pious courage, filled with scorn for his adversaries and with uneasiness for the future of the king. Sir John Hotham and his son, accused of having plotted to deliver to the king the town of Hull; Lord Macguire, who had fomented the Irish insurrection, and Sir Alexander Carew, governor of the island of St. Nicholas, who had relaxed his zeal in favor of the royalist conspiracies, expiated their transgressions by capital punishment. At the same time, the litany of the Church of England, hitherto tacitly tolerated, was definitively abolished. A book entitled Directions for Public Worship received instead the sanction of Parliament, which no longer refused anything to the fanatics whose support it claimed. The House of Lords did not deceive their hopes. On the 15th of January, 1645, it rejected the self-denying ordinance.

A few days later, on the 29th of January, the negotiations at Uxbridge were at length opened. The king had consented to accord to the Houses at Westminster the name of Parliament. "If I had had in my council," he wrote to the queen, "two persons of my own opinion, I should never have yielded." The negotiators wished for peace, with the exception of Vane, St. John, and Prideaux, who formed other projects.

The will of men soon yields to the irresistible force of circumstances. Each of the Parliamentary factions had its private interest. The two parties endeavored to secure power in case peace should be concluded. Theological discussions inflamed the political negotiations. The conferences, begun with mutual good-will and courtesy, soon became bitter and difficult to manage. On each side, the ebullition of popular passions aggravated the difficulties. An obscure minister arriving from London, preached in the parish church of Uxbridge, in presence of a numerous gathering. "No good must be expected from those men," he said, speaking of the Royalists; "they have come from Oxford with their hearts full of blood. They only wish to divert the people until they may be able to cause them some great evil. There is as great a distance between this treaty and peace as between earth and heaven." The people were convinced that in his heart the king did not wish for peace.

His councillors were as distrustful as the mob. The end of the negotiations was approaching. Some concession which might at length cause the scale to turn was insisted upon at the court of Charles. He gave way to entreaties, and promised to propose to Parliament a certain number of leaders of the army, among whom were Cromwell and Fairfax. The friends of peace were joyful. Lord Southampton, who had negotiated the whole affair, was preparing to depart for Uxbridge, in order to announce the favors accorded by his Majesty. When he presented himself at the king's quarters to receive his final instructions, Charles had altered his mind and withdrawn his promise. News of a victory achieved in Scotland by Montrose, over the army commanded by Argyle, had revived all his high hopes. The conferences at Uxbridge were broken up, on the 22nd of February, without having brought about any result. The Presbyterian leaders, sorrowful and dejected, returned to Westminster, to convince themselves personally that their adversaries had contrived to make profitable use of the time during their absence. The military reorganization was effected. A single army, mustering twenty-one thousand men, was henceforth to maintain the struggle. On the 15th of February, the command of this army had been entrusted to Fairfax, for whom Cromwell had answered in public to Parliament, in secret to the parties. The almost constant successes of the young general, besides, spoke for him. He had already received the official compliments of the speaker in the House of Commons, in the midst of which body he had been introduced.

The Presbyterian leaders in vain attempted to recover from this defeat. Their friends even were becoming weary of the constant efforts necessary to support them. The Marquis of Argyle had arrived from Scotland; bitterly resolved to wipe out the remembrance of his defeat at Inverlochy, he made use of his influence to turn aside the Scottish commissioners from a longer opposition. "We must yield to necessity," he said; "this division places everything on sufferance." The vote which had consigned to Fairfax the effective power, had preserved Essex in his command, as well as Manchester and Waller. The earl resolved to give in his resignation. He rose, on the 1st of April, in the Upper House, with a written paper in his hand, for he could not make a speech. "My Lords," he said, "having received this great charge, in obedience to the commands of both Houses, and taken their sword into my hand, I can with confidence say that I have for this now almost three years faithfully served you, and I hope without loss of honor to myself, or prejudice to the public. I see by the now coming up of these ordinances that it is the desire of the House of Commons, that my commission may be vacated. I return my commission into those hands that gave it me, wishing it may prove as good an expedient to the present distempers as some will have it believed. My Lords, I know that jealousies cannot be avoided, yet wisdom and charity should put such restraints thereto as not to allow it to become destructive. I hope that this advice from me is not unseasonable, wishing myself and my friends may, among others, participate the benefit thereof. This proceeding from my affection to Parliament, the prosperity whereof I shall ever wish from my heart, what return soever it may bring me, I being no single example in that kind of that fortune I now undergo."

Manchester and Waller followed the example of Essex. The Upper House, delivered from an obligation of fidelity which weighed upon it, hastened to adopt the scheme of remodelling the army, and on the morrow a fresh self-denying ordinance, slightly different from the first, though tending towards the same result, was voted by the two Houses. The power was now definitively displaced. It passed from the hands of Parliament into those of the army.

Fairfax encountered little difficulty on the part of the officers and soldiers called upon to serve under his orders. Essex loyally advised his friends, Cromwell hastened to proceed to preach submission to the battalions of the Ironsides. As he had fully resolved, he was not long separated from them. Towards the end of April, Fairfax was about to open the campaign, when Cromwell arrived at Windsor to kiss, he said, the hand of the general and to bring his resignation to him. "I have just," Fairfax said, "received from the Committee of the Two Kingdoms orders enjoining you to proceed immediately, with a few squadrons, to the road from Oxford to Worcester to intercept communications between Prince Rupert and the king." Cromwell immediately set out. Three brilliant skirmishes and the capture of the town of Blechingdon signalized his march. Parliament voted that Cromwell should retain his command for forty days longer. Three other members of the House of Commons, distinguished officers, received the same instructions, doubtless in order that Cromwell should not appear to be alone excepted from the operation of the law.