Chapter II (2)

Here was wormwood for the Presbyterians; and over this 14th Article, and one or two subsequent articles, settling farther details of the superiority of the proposed Parliamentary Commissioners over the Church Courts, and also reserving the appeal of ecclesiastical questions to Parliament, they prepared to fight a most strenuous battle. The Assembly, the City Corporation, the City ministers in their Sion College conclave, and the Scottish Commissioners, all flew to arms. Their first hope was with the Lords; and _them_ they nearly conquered. On the 13th of March there was a long debate in that House on the whole Ordinance, and especially its 14th Article; and, out of twenty-one Peers present, _nine_ were so opposed to that Article that, before the vote was taken, they begged leave to be allowed to register their protest if the vote went against them. These Peers were the Earls of Essex, Manchester, Warwick, Bolingbroke, and Suffolk, and Lords Willoughby, Roberts, Dacres, and Bruce. There were, however, _twelve_ Peers in favour of the Erastian Article: viz. the Earls of Northumberland, Kent, Pembroke, Salisbury, Denbigh, Nottingham, Stamford, and Middlesex, and Lords North, Howard of Escrick, Wharton, and Grey of Wark. Pour of the minority, viz. Essex, Manchester, Bolingbroke, and Bruce, did then protest, on the ground that they considered the institution of Parliamentary Commissioners apart from the Church Courts inconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant. The entire Ordinance, with insignificant amendments, thus passed the Lords; and, the Commons having accepted the amendments, it became law on the 14th of March. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Feb. 27, and March 3, 5, and 14, 1645-6; and Lords Journals, March 13 and 14.]

Was it, then, such a mongrel Presbytery as this, an Erastian Presbytery, a Presbytery controlled and policed by Parliamentary Commissioners, that was to be set up in England? Not if the Presbyterian clergy of England, with all Scotland to aid them, could prevent it! "We, for our part [the Scottish Commissioners]," writes Baillie, March 17, "mind to give in a remonstrance against it; the Assembly will do the like; the City ministers will give the third; but that which, by God's help, may prove most effectual is the zeal of the City itself. Before the Ordinance came out, they petitioned against some materials of it. This both the Houses voted to be a breach of their privilege, to offer a petition against anything that is in debate before them, till once it be concluded and come abroad. This vote the City takes very evil: it's likely to go high betwixt them. Our prayers and endeavours are for wisdom and courage to the City." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 361.] Within a fortnight, however (March 31), Baillie writes, in a postscript to the same letter, in a much more downcast mood. "The leaders of the people," he says, "seem to be inclined to have no shadow of a King, to have liberty for all Religions, to have but a lame Erastian Presbytery, to be so injurious to us [the Scots] as to chase us home with the sword. ... Our great hope on earth, the City of London, has played _nipshot_ [_i.e._ miss-fire or burnt priming]: they are speaking of dissolving the Assembly." [Footnote: Ibid. II. 362.]--To understand this wail of Baillie's we have again to turn to the Journals of the Commons.

Having passed the all-conclusive Ordinance for Presbytery, the two Houses had resolved to stand on their dignity, and resent the attempted dictation of the City, the Sion College conclave, the Assembly, and the Scottish Commissioners. They had already, as Baillie informs us, made a beginning, while the Ordinance was yet in progress, by voting a petition of the City against some parts of it to be a breach of privilege. At this, as late as March 17, the City was in proper dudgeon, and vowed that Parliament should hear from it again on the subject. Before a fortnight had elapsed, however, there was a wonderful change. News had come to London of Hopton's final surrender to the New Model in Cornwall, of the defeat of Astley in Gloucestershire with the last shred of the King's field-force, and in fact of the absolute ending of the war, except for the few Royalist towns and garrisons that had yet to make terms. In the midst of the universal joy, why dwell on a difference between the City and Parliament as to the details of the Presbyterian mechanism? Accordingly, on Friday, March 27, divers Aldermen and others were at the door of the House of Commons, not to remonstrate farther this little difference, but to beg that the House would "so far honour" the City as to dine with the Corporation at Grocers' Hall on the following Thursday, being Thanksgiving Day, after the two usual sermons! The House was most gracious, and accepted the invitation; and this restoration of good feeling between Parliament and the City was probably the "nipshot" or miss-fire which Baillie lamented on the 3lst.--The City being out of the business for the time, it was easier for the Parliament to deal with the other parties. To the Scottish Commissioners hints were conveyed, as politely as possible, that Parliament would prefer having less of their valuable assistance in the governing of England. With the Westminster Assembly and the London Divines there was less ceremony. The Assembly _had_ drawn up a Petition or Remonstrance against the Articles of the conclusive Ordinance of March 14, providing for an agency of Parliamentary Commissioners to aid and supervise the Church judicatories. "The provision of Commissioners," they said, "to judge of scandals not enumerated appears to our consciences to be contrary to that way of government which Christ hath appointed in his Church, in that it giveth a power to judge of the fitness of persons to come to the Sacrament unto such as our Lord Jesus Christ hath not given that power unto;" and they added that the provision was contrary to the Solemn League and Covenant, and besought Parliament to cancel it and put due power into the hands of the Elderships. This Petition, signed by the Prolocutor, one of the Assessors, and the to Scribes of the Assembly, was presented to the two Houses, most imposingly, March 23, When Baillie wrote his lamentation he did not know the precise result, but he guessed what it was to be.

It was worse than Baillie could have guessed. After much inquiry and consultation about the Assembly's Petition, the Commons, on the 11th of April 1646, came to two sharp votes. The first was on the question "Whether the House shall first debate the point concerning the Breach of Privilege in this Petition;" and it was carried in the affirmative by 106 _Yeas_, told by Evelyn of Wilts and Haselrig, against 85 _Noes_, told by Holles and Stapleton. The question was then put "Whether this Petition, thus presented by the Assembly of the Divines, is a Breach of Privilege of Parliament;" and on this question, the tellers on both sides being the same, 88 voted _Yea_ and 76 _No_: _i.e._ it was carried by a majority of 12 that the Assembly, in their Petition, had been guilty of a grave political offence, for which they might be punished individually, by fine or imprisonment or both. No such punishment, of course, was intended. It was enough to shake the rod over the Assembly. A Committee, including Haselrig, Henry Marten, the younger Vane, and Selden, was appointed to prepare a Narrative on the whole subject, with a statement of the particulars; and this Narrative, ready April 21, was discussed clause by clause, and adopted. It is a striking document, quiet and tight in style, but most pungent in matter. It begins with an assertion of the supremacy of Parliament in all matters whatsoever; it recites the specific purposes for which the Assembly had been called by Parliament, and the limitations imposed upon it by the Ordinance to which it owed its being; and it proceeds to this rebuke: "The Assembly are not authorized, as an Assembly, by any Ordinance or Order of Parliament, to interpret the Covenant, especially in relation to any law made or to be made; nor, since the Law passed both Houses concerning the Commissioners, have [the Assembly] been required by both or either of the Houses of Parliament, or had any authority before from Parliament, to deliver their opinions to the Houses on matters already judged and determined by them. Neither have they the power to debate or vote whether what is passed as a Law by both Houses be agreeing or disagreeing to the Word of God, unless they be thereunto required." On the day on which the Narrative containing this passage of rebuke was adopted (April 21) a Committee was appointed to communicate it, with the appertaining Vote of the Commons, "in a fair manner," to the Assembly. Actually, on the 27th of April the communication was made most ceremoniously, and from that day the Assembly knew itself to be under curb. [Footnote: For the facts of this and the preceding paragraph the authorities are Commons and Lords Journals, March 23, 1645-6, and Commons Journals of April 1, 3, 8, 11, 16, 18, 21, and 24, 1646. The Lords Journals give the Assembly's Petition; the Narrative of the Commons is in their Journals for April 21.--It is strange, in modern times, to note the frequency with which the Parliament, and even the popular party in it, resorted to the fiction of Breach of Privilege in order to quash opposition to their proceedings. Sometimes, as in the Vote about the City Petition recently mentioned, it was the Breach of Privilege to assume to know what was going on in Parliament or petition against any measure while it was pending; at other times, as now, it was a Breach of Privilege to question by petition a measure already determined. In the present case, however, the Commons seem to have founded on the fact that the Assembly, "as an Assembly," had transgressed its powers. Individually, they seem to say, the Divines might have petitioned, but not as an Assembly, the creature of the Parliament whose acts they censured.]

Not only under curb, but thrown to the ground, and baited with sarcasms and interrogatories! Thus, on the 17th of April, six days after the Vote of Breach of Privilege, but four days before the Vote and the accompanying Narrative had been communicated officially to the Assembly, there was finally agreed upon by the Commons that Declaration as to their true intentions on the Church question which had been in preparation since February 3, and in this Declaration there was a double-knotted lash at the prostrate Assembly. Parliament, it was explained, had adopted most of the Assembly's recommendations as to the Frame of Church-government to be set up, with no exception of moment but that of the Commissioners; in which exception Parliament had only performed its bounden duty, seeing it could not "consent to the granting of an arbitrary and unlimited power and jurisdiction to near 10,000 judicatories to be erected in this kingdom." Farther it was announced that Parliament reserved the question of the amount of toleration to be granted under the new Presbyterial rule to "tender consciences that differ not in fundamentals of Religion." But there was more to come. Selden and the Erastians, and Haselrig, Vane, Marten, with the Independents and Free Opinionists, had been nettled by those parts of the Assembly's Petition which assumed that the whole frame of the Presbyterian Government scheme by the Assembly was _jure divino_. They resolved to put the Assembly through an examination about this _jus divinum_. On the 22nd of April, therefore, there was presented to the House, by the same Committee that had prepared the Narrative of the Breach of Privilege, a series of nine questions which it would be well to send to the Assembly. "Whether the Parochial and Congregational Elderships appointed by Ordinance of Parliament, or any other Congregational or Presbyterial Elderships, are _jure divino_, and by the will and appointment of Jesus Christ; and whether any particular Church- government be _jure divino_, and what that government is?"--such is the first of the nine queries; and the other eight are no less incisive. They were duly communicated to the Assembly; it was requested that the Answers should be precise, with the Scripture proofs for each, in the express words of the texts; every Divine present at a debate on any of the Queries was to subscribe his name to the particular resolution he might vote for; and the dissentients from any vote were to send to Parliament their own positive opinions on the point of that vote, with the Scripture proofs. Selden's hand is distinctly visible in this ingenious insult to the Assembly. [Footnote: Commons Journals, April 17 and April 22, 1646; Baillie, II. 344.] It was a more stinging punishment than adjournment or dissolution would have been, though that also had been thought of, and Viscount Saye and Sele had recommended it in the Lords.

In the midst of these firm dealings of the Parliament with the Assembly, Cromwell was back in London. He was in the House on the 23rd of April 1646, and received its thanks, through the Speaker, for his great services. He probably brought a train of his young Cromwellians with him (Ireton, Fleetwood, Montague, &c.) to swell the number of Recruiters that had already taken their seats. In the course of May, at all events, there were Houses of 269, 241, 261, 259, and 248, and the Recruiters had so increased the strength of the Independents and Erastians that a relapse into the policy of ultra-Presbyterianism and No Toleration appeared impossible. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 369, and Commons Journals for several days in May 1646.]

NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING--AT NEWCASTLE: THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THE SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON.

Suddenly, by the King's flight to the Scottish Army at Newark (May 5), and by the retreat of that army, with the King in their possession, to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13), the whole condition of things was changed. The question between Independency and Presbyterianism, and the included question of Toleration or No Toleration, were thrown, with all other questions, into the crucible of the negotiations, between the English and the Scots, round the King at Newcastle.

It was known that the strife between the Independents and the Presbyterians had long been a solace to Charles, and a fact of great importance in his calculations. Should he fail to rout both parties and reimpose both Kingship and Episcopacy on England by force of arms, did there not remain for him, at the very worst, the option of allying himself with that one of the parties with which he could make the best bargain? Now that he had been driven to the detested alternative, he had, it appeared, though not without hesitation, and indeed partly by accident, given the Presbyterians the first chance. He had done so, it was true, in a circuitous way, but perhaps in the only way open to him. To have surrendered himself to the English Presbyterians was hardly possible; for, had he gone to London with that view, how could the Presbyterians of the Parliament and the City have protected him, or kept him to themselves, when the English Army that would then instantly have closed round London was an Army of Independents? By placing himself in the hands of the Scottish Army, had he not cleverly avoided this difficulty, receiving temporary protection, and yet intimating that it was with the Presbyterians that he preferred to treat? So, in fact, the King's flight to the Scots was construed by the English Presbyterians. They were even glad that it had fallen to the Scots to represent for the moment English Presbyterianism as well as Scottish, advising Charles in his new circumstances, and ascertaining his intentions. And the Scots, on their part, it appeared, had accepted the duty.

Hardly was the King at Newcastle when there were round him not only General Leven, Major-general Leslie, and the Earls of Lothian, Balcarres, and Dunfermline, all of whom had chanced to be at Newark on his reception there, but also other Scots of mark, expressly sent from Edinburgh and from London. The Earl of Lanark was among the first of these. Argyle himself, who had been excessively busy in Scotland and in Ireland since the defeat of Montrose, thought his presence now essential in England, and hastened to be with his Majesty. The Chancellor Loudoun made no delay, but was off from London to Newcastle on the 16th of May. Above all, however, it was thought desirable that Alexander Henderson should be near his Majesty at such a crisis. Accordingly, some days before Loudoun's departure, Henderson had taken leave of his brother-divines, Baillie, Rutherford, and Gillespie, with Lauderdale and Johnstone of Warriston, in their London quarters at Worcester House, and, though in such a state of ill-health as to be hardly fit to travel, had gone bravely and modestly northwards to the scene of duty. How much was expected of him may be inferred from a jotting in one of Baillie's letters just after he had gone. "Our great perplexity is for the King's disposition," wrote Baillie on the 15th of May: "how far he will be persuaded to yield we do not know: I hope Mr. Henderson is with him this night at Newcastle." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 370 _et seq._]

The immediate object of the Scots round Charles was to induce him to take the Covenant. That done, they had little doubt that they would be able to bring him and the English Parliament amicably together.--Charles, however, at once showed by his conduct that the current interpretation of the meaning of his flight to the Scots had been too hasty. It was not because he wanted to bargain with the Presbyterians as against the Independents that he had come to the Scots; it was because he had the more subtle idea that he might be able to bargain with the Scots as such against the English as such. He hoped to wrap himself up in the nationality of the Scots; he hoped to appeal to them as peculiarly their sovereign, born forty-six years before in their own Dunfermline, once or twice their visitor since, always remembering them with affection, and now back among them in his distress. [Footnote: On the verge of a wooded dell or glen close to the burgh of Dunfermline, in Fife, there still stands one fine length of ruined and ivy-clad wall, the remains of the palace in which, on the 19th of November 1600, Charles I. was born. The dell, with the adjacent Abbey, is sacred with legends and stony memorials of the Scottish royal race, from the days of Malcom Canmore and his Queen Margaret.] Of course, in such a character, concessions to _their_ Presbyterianism would have to be made; but these concessions had all, in fact, been made already, and involved no new humiliation. It was about Episcopacy in England, his English coronation oath, his English sovereignty, that he was mainly anxious; and what if, from his refuge among the Scots, and even with the Scots as his instruments, he could recommence, in some way or other, his struggle with the English? Charles did labour under this delusion. When he had come among the Scots it was actually with some absurd notion that Montrose, who still lurked in the Highlands, might be forgiven all the past and brought back, as one of his Majesty's most honoured servants, though recently erratic, into the society of Argyle, Loudoun, Lanark, and the rest of the faithful. [Footnote: See in Rushworth (VI. 266-7) a Letter of the King's to the Marquis of Ormond in Ireland, dated from Oxford, April 13, 1646, and explaining his reasons for his then meditated flight to the Scots. "We are resolved to use our best endeavours, with their assistance," says Charles, speaking of the Scottish Army, "and with the conjunction of the forces under the Marquis of Montrose and such of our well-affected subjects as shall rise for us, to procure, if it may be, an honourable and speedy peace." At the same time (April 18) Charles had written to Montrose himself to the same effect. The infatuation that could believe in the possibility of such a combination was monstrous.]--A day or two among the Scots had undeceived him. They repudiated at once any supposed arrangement with him arising out of the negotiations of Montreuil; they repudiated expressly the notion that they could by possibility have been so false to the English Parliament as to have pledged themselves to a separate treaty. Charles, they maintained, had come among them voluntarily and without any prior compact. Most willingly, however, would they do their best for him in the circumstances. If he would declare his renunciation of Episcopacy and acceptance of Presbyterianism for England, and especially if he would do this in the best mode of all, by personally taking the Covenant, then they did not doubt but a way would be opened for a final treaty with England in which they could assist.

Perforce Charles had now to disguise the real motive of his coming among the Scots, and let the interpretation at first put upon it continue current. Not, of course, that he would take the Covenant, or in any way commit himself even now to Presbytery. But, while he stood firm against the proposal that he should himself take the Covenant (which would have been to abjure Episcopacy personally), and while he refrained from committing himself to an acceptance of Presbytery for his English realm, he does not appear to have objected to the impression that on this second matter he might yield to time and reason. And so, while writing in cipher to Queen Henrietta Maria, complaining of the "juggling" of the Scots, because they would not break with the English Parliament in his behalf, and while urging the Queen in the same letters to press upon Cardinal Mazarin, and through him on the Pope, the scheme of a restitution of Episcopacy in England by Roman Catholic force, on condition of "free liberty of conscience" for the Catholics in England and "convenient places for their devotions," he was patiently polite to the Presbyterians around him, and employed part of his leisure in penning, from the midst of them, letters of a temporizing kind to the two Houses of Parliament, and the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of London. The letter to the City (May 19) was short and general, but cordial. That to the Parliament (May 18) was a proposal of terms. A speedy settlement of the Religious Question by the wisdom of Parliament with the advice of the Assembly (no word of Episcopacy or Presbytery, but some compromise with Presbytery implied); the Militia to be as proposed in the Treaty of Uxbridge-- _i.e._ to be for seven years in the hands of Parliament, and after that a fresh agreement to be made; Ireland to be managed as far as possible as Parliament might wish: such were his Majesty's present propositions. [Footnote: Letters of Charles numbered XXV. XXVI. and XXVII. (pp. 39-43) in Mr. Bruce's _Charles I. in_ 1646; Parl. Hist. III. 471 _et seq._] He would be glad, however, to receive those of Parliament.

There was a Presbyterian ecstasy in London on the receipt of these letters. The Corporation, which had, to Baillie's grief, so inopportunely played "nipshot" in the end of March, and left the Assembly and Sion College to bear the brunt, now hastened to make amends. Headed by Alderman Foot, a famous City orator, they presented, May 26, a Remonstrance to both Houses of Parliament, couched in terms of the most unflinching Presbyterianism, Anti-Toleration, and confidence in the Scots. "When we remember," they said, "that it hath been long since declared to be far from any purpose or desire to let loose the golden reins of discipline and government in the Church, or to leave private persons or particular congregations to take up what form of divine service they please; when we look upon what both Houses have resolved against Brownism and Anabaptism, properly so called; when we meditate upon our Protestation and Covenant; and, lastly, when we peruse the Directory and other Ordinances for Presbyterial government; and yet find private and separate congregations daily erected in divers parts of the city and elsewhere, and commonly frequented, and Anabaptism, Brownism, and almost all manner of schisms, heresies, and blasphemies, boldly vented and maintained by such as, to the point of Church-government, profess themselves to be Independents: we cannot but be astonished." After more complaints, they end with petitions for Presbyterian Uniformity, the suppression of Independent congregations, the punishment of Anabaptists and other sectaries, strict union with the Scots, &c., all to be combined with immediate "Propositions to his Majesty for settling a safe and well-grounded Peace." There was but one meaning in this. The City was the mouthpiece; but in reality it was the united ultra- Presbyterianism of the City, the Assembly, Sion College, and some of the Presbyterian leaders in Parliament, trying to turn the King's presence with the Scots into an occasion for any practicable kind of peace whatsoever that would involve the overthrow of Independency, the Sects, and Toleration. The House of Lords bowed before the blast, and returned a gracious answer. The Commons, after two divisions, of 148 to 113, and 151 to 108, in favour of returning some kind of answer, returned one which was curt and general. The divisions indicate the gravity of the crisis. The Independents, thinned perhaps in numbers by the action of the Newcastle peace-chances upon weaker spirits, but with Cromwell, Haselrig, and Vane as their leaders, formed now what was avowedly the Anti-Scottish party, profoundly suspicious of the doings at Newcastle, and taking precautions against a treaty that should be merely Presbyterian. The Presbyterians, on the other hand, with Holles, Stapleton, and Clotworthy as their chiefs, were as avowedly the Pro-Scottish party, anxious for a peace on such terms as the King might be brought to by the help of the Scots. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 474-480; Lords Journals, May 26, 1646; Commons Journals of same date; Whitlocke's Memorials (ed. 1853), II. 27.]

Through June the struggle of the parties was continued in this new form. At Newcastle the Scottish Commissioners, with Henderson among them, were still plying the King with their arguments for his acceptance of the Covenant and Presbytery. To these, in their presence, he opposed only the most stately politeness and desire for delay; but in his letters to the Queen he characterized them as "rude pressures on his conscience." The phrase is perfectly just in so far as there was pressure upon him to accept Presbytery and the Assembly's Directory of Worship for himself and his family, and it might win our modern sympathies even beyond that range but for the evidences of incurable Stuartism which accompanied it. He amuses the Queen in the same letters with an analysis he had made of the Scots from his Newcastle experience of their various humours. He had analysed them into the four factions of the "Montroses" or thorough Royalists, the "Neutrals," the "Hamiltons," and the "Campbells" or thorough Presbyterians of the Argyle following. He estimates the relative strengths of the factions, and has no doubt that the real management of Scotland lies between the Hamiltons, leading most of the nobility, and the Campbells, commanding the votes of the gentry, the ministers, and the burghs; he refers individual Scots about him to the classes to which he thinks, from their private talk, they belong respectively; he tells how they are all "courting" him, and how he is behaving himself "as evenly to all as he can;" and his "opinion upon this whole business" is that they will all have to join him in the end, or, which would be quite as satisfactory to himself and the Queen, go to perdition together. What could be done with such a man? Quite unaware of what he was writing about them, the Scots were toiling their best in his service. There were letters from Edinburgh (where the General Assembly of the Kirk had met Jun. 3) to Newcastle and London; there were letters from Newcastle to Edinburgh and London; there were letters from London back to Newcastle and Edinburgh. And still, in the English Parliament, the Pro-Scottish party laboured for the result they desired, and the Anti-Scottish or Independent party maintained their jealous watch. Pamphlets and papers came forth, violently abusive of the Scottish nation; and more than once there were discussions in the Commons in which Haselrig and the more reckless Independents pushed for conclusions that would have been offensive to the Scots to the point of open quarrel. It did not seem impossible that there might be a new and most horrible form of the Civil War, in which the English Army and the Independents should be fighting the Scottish Army and the Presbyterians. [Footnote: King's Letters, xxix.-xxxiv. in Bruce's _Charles I. in_ 1646; Baillie, II. 374-5; Acts of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for 1646. Parl. Hist. III. 482-488; and Commons Journals of various days in May and June, when there were divisions.]

What mainly averted such a calamity was the prudent behaviour of the much-abused Scots. Anxious as they naturally were to save their Scottish Charles from too severe a reckoning from his English subjects, and very desirous, as was also natural, that the issue of the present dealings with him should be one favourable to Presbytery and Religious Conformity, they do not seem to have permitted these feelings to disturb their sense of obligation to the English Parliament, and of a general British responsibility. That this was the case arose, I believe, from the fact that Argyle had come to England to take the direction, and that he imparted a deep touch or two of his own to their purely Presbyterian policy. It is interesting, at all events, to have a glimpse of the great Marquis at this point, not as a fugitive from Montrose, not in the military character which suited him so ill, but in his more proper character as a British politician. He had been at Newcastle for some time, "very civil and cunning," as the King wrote to the Queen; but on the 15th of June he went to London. He was received there with the greatest respect by the English Parliament. A Committee of 20 of the Lords and 40 of the Commons, composed indifferently of Presbyterians and Independents, was appointed to meet him in the Painted Chamber to hear the communication which, it was understood, he desired to make. Accordingly, to this Committee, on the 25th of June, the Marquis addressed a speech, which was immediately printed for general perusal. Here are portions of the first half of it, with one or two passages Italicised which seem peculiarly pregnant, or peculiarly characteristic of Argyle himself:--

"MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN,--Though I have had the honour to be named by the Kingdom of Scotland in all the Commissions which had relation to this Kingdom since the beginning of the war, yet I had never the happiness to be with your lordships till now; wherein I reverence God's providence, that He hath brought me hither at such an opportunity, when I may boldly say it is in the power of the two Kingdoms, yea I may say in your lordships' power, to make us both happy, if you make good use of this occasion, by settling of Religion and the Peace and Union of these Kingdoms. .. .As the dangers [in the way of the first enterprise, 'Reformation' or the 'settling of Religion'] are great, we must look the better to our duties; and the best way to perform these is to keep us by the Rules which are to be found in our National Covenant,--principally the Word of God, and, in its own place, the Example of the best Reformed Churches; and in our way we must beware of some rocks, which are temptations both upon the right and left hand, so that we must hold the middle path. Upon the one part we should take heed not to settle lawless liberty in Religion, whereby, instead of uniformity, we should set up a thousand heresies and schisms; which is directly contrary and destructive to our Covenant. _Upon the other part, we are to look that we persecute not piety and peaceable men who cannot, through scruple of conscience, come up in all things to the common Rule; but that they may have such a forbearance as may be according to the Word of God, may consist with the Covenant, and not be destructive to the Rule itself, nor to the peace of the Church and Kingdom._--As to the other point, the Peace and Union of these Kingdoms [here the mutual good services of the two Kingdoms since 1640 are recited]: let us hold fast that union which is so happily established betwixt us; and let nothing make us again two who are so many ways one; all of one language, in one island, all under one King, one in Religion, yea one in Covenant; so that, in effect, we differ in nothing but in name (as brethren do): _which I wish were also removed, that we might be altogether one, if the two Kingdoms think fit_.... I will forbear at this time to speak of the many jealousies I hear are suggested; for, as I do not love them, so I delight not to mention them: only one I cannot forbear to speak of,--as if the Kingdom of Scotland were too much affected with the King's interest. I will not deny but the Kingdom of Scotland, by reason of the reigns of many kings, his progenitors, over them, hath a natural affection to his Majesty, whereby they wish he may be rather reformed than ruined: _yet experience may tell that their personal regard to him hath never made them forget that common rule, 'The Safety of the People is the Supreme Law._'"

Altogether Argyle's speech in the Painted Chamber, June 25, 1646, produced a great impression in London; and, as he remained in town till the 15th of July, he was able to deepen it, see all sorts of people, and make observations. He may not have met Cromwell at this time, who was away all June looking after the siege and surrender of Oxford, and the marriage, in that neighbourhood, of his eldest daughter Bridget to General Ireton; but be must have renewed acquaintance with Vane. He renewed acquaintance, at all events, with an older friend--no other than the Duke of Hamilton, recently released from his captivity in Cornwall, and now again busy with affairs. He also took his place in the Westminster Assembly for a few days by leave of the parliament. [Footnote: King's Letter xxii. in Bruce's _Charles I, in_ 1646; Baillie, II. 374-378; Lords Journals, June 23 and July 7, and Commons Journals, June 25; and Parl. Hist. III. 488-491, where Argyle's Speech is reprinted from the original edition, published by authority, at London, by Laurence Chapman, June 27, 1646.]

Part of Argyle's purpose in coming to London had been to co-operate with the resident Scottish Commissioners there in moderating as much as possible, or at least delaying, the _ultimatum_ which the English Parliament were preparing to send to the King. For, though the Parliament had taken small notice hitherto of the King's letters from Newcastle, they had been anxiously constructing such an _ultimatum_. in the form of a series of Propositions exhibiting in one viev, all the terms which they required Charles to accept at once and completely if he would retain the sovereignty of England. Without being much influenced, apparently, by the appeals of Scottish Commissioners for moderation and clemency to the King in the purely English portions of this document, and having the perfect concurrence of these Commissioners in the other portions, Parliament did at length complete it, and, on the 14th of July, send it to Charles. The document is remembered by the famous name of "The Nineteen Propositions," and was altogether most comprehensive and stringent. All the late Royal Acts and Ordinances were to be annulled; the King was to take the Covenant and consent to an Act enjoining it afresh on all the subjects of the three kingdoms; he was to consent to the abolition of Episcopacy, root and branch, in England, Wales, and Ireland; he was to approve of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly, and of the establishment of Presbytery as Parliament had ordained or might yet ordain; he was to surrender to Parliament the entire control of the Militia for 20 years, sea-forces as well as land- forces; he was to let Parliament have its own way in Ireland; and he was to submit to various other requirements, including the outlawing and disqualification of about 120 persons of both nations named as Delinquents--the Marquis of Newcastle, the Earls of Derby and Bristol, Lords Cottington, Digby, Hopton, Colepepper and Jermyn, with Hyde, Secretary Nicholas, and Bishops Wren and Bramhall, in the English list, and the Marquises of Huntly and Montrose, the Earls of Traquair, Nithsdale, Crawford, Carnwath, Forth, and Airlie, Bishop Maxwell, and MacDonald MacColkittoch, in the Scottish list. As bearers of these fell Propositions to the King the Lords appointed the Earls of Pembroke and Suffolk, and the Commons appointed four of their number. These six persons were at Newcastle on Thursday the 23rd of July; and the next day they had their first interview with the King, Argyle and Loudoun being also present. The rough Pembroke took the lead and produced the Propositions. Before letting them be read, Charles, who had had a copy in his possession privately for some time, asked Pembroke and the rest whether they had powers to treat with him on the Propositions or in any way discuss them. On their answering that they had no such powers, and had only to request his Majesty's _Ay_ or _No_ to the Propositions as they stood, "Then, but for the honour of the business," said the King testily, "an honest trumpeter might have done as much." Recovering himself, he listened to the Propositions duly read out, and then said he was sure they could not expect an immediate answer in so large a business. They told him that their instructions were not to remain in Newcastle more than ten days, and so the interview ended. Charles, in fact, in anticipation of their coming, had been planning how to act. "All my endeavours," he had written to the Queen, "must be the delaying of my answer till there be considerable parties visibly formed; to which end I think my proposing to go to London, if I may be there with safety, will be the best put-off, if (which I believe to be better) I cannot find a way to come to thee." And so, day after day, though it was the effort of all who had access to him, and especially of Argyle and Loudoun, to persuade him to accept the inevitable, he remained stubborn. When the Commissioners at length told him they must return to London, all the answer they could obtain from him was a letter, dated Aug. 1, and addressed to the Speaker of the House of Peers _pro tempore_, in which he said a positive and immediate answer was impossible, but offered to come to London or its neighbourhood to treat personally, if his freedom and safety were guaranteed, and also to send for the Prince of Wales from France. With this answer the Commoners left Newcastle on Sunday, Aug. 2, and they reported their success to the two Houses on Wednesday, Aug. 12. And here, so far as the King is concerned, we shall for the present stop. [Footnote: King's Letters, xxxiv.-xl. (June 24--July 3) in Bruce's _Charles I. in_ 1646; Baillie, II. 379; Lords Journals, July 11, and Commons Journals, July 6; Rushworth, VI. 309-321; and Parl. Hist. III. 499-516. Both Rushworth and the Parl Hist. give the text of the nineteen Propositions.]

PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZING OF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE.

Not the less, while the two Houses had thus been watching the King at Newcastle and corresponding with him, had they been acting as the real Government of England without him.

The King's flight to the Scots having, as we have seen, turned the balance once more in favour of Presbyterianism, the combined Erastians and Independents had not been able to keep Parliament steady to that mood of sharp mastership over the Assembly and the London Divines in which we left it in the months of March and April (_antè_, pp. 407-411). It had been necessary to make a compromise in that question of "The Power of the Keys" on which the Parliament and the Assembly had been so angrily at variance. The compromise was complete in June. On the 3rd of that month the two Houses agreed on an Ordinance modifying, in a somewhat complicated fashion, their previous device of Parliamentary Commissioners to assist and control the Congregational Elderships. Instead of the contemplated sets of Commissioners in each ecclesiastical Province, there was now to be one vast general Commission for all England, consisting of about 180 Lords and Commoners named (Cromwell, Vane, and everybody else of any note among them); which Commissioners, or any nine of them, should be a Court for judging of non-specified offences, after and in conjunction with the Congregational Elderships, with right of reference in certain cases to Justices of the Peace, and with the reserve of a final appeal from excommunicated persons to Parliament itself. It does not very well appear why this arrangement, as Erastian in principle as that which it superseded, should have pleased the London Presbyterians better. Perhaps it was made palatable by an accompanying increase of the list of scandalous offences for which the Elderships were to be entitled to suspend or excommunicate without interference by the Commissioners. At all events, when Parliament again required the London ministers and congregations by a new Ordinance (June 9) to proceed in the work which had been interrupted, and elect Elders in all the parishes of the province of London, there was no reluctance. At a meeting at Sion College, June 19, the London ministers, the Assembly Presbyterians in their counsels, agreed to proceed. They contented themselves with a paper of _Considerations and Cautions_, explaining that the Parliamentary Rule for Presbyterianism was not yet in all points satisfactory to their consciences. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 3 and 9, 1646; Baillie, II. 377; Neal's _Puritans_ (ed. 1795) III. 106.]

Nothing now hindered the establishment of Presbytery in London; and, actually, through the months of July and August 1646, while the King was making his solitary personal stand for Episcopacy at Newcastle, the Presbyterian machinery was coming into operation in the capital. "Matters here," writes Baillie, July 14, "look better upon it, blessed be God, than sometimes they have. On Sunday, in all congregations of the city, the Elders are to be chosen. So the next week church-sessions in every paroch; and twelve Presbyteries within the City, and a Provincial Synod, are to be set up, and quickly, without any impediment that we apprehend. The like is to be done over all the land." On the 13th of August Baillie was able to report that the Elders had been elected in almost all the parishes, and approved by the Triers; and he adds, "We expect classical meetings speedily." These "classical meetings," or meetings of the twelve London Presbyteries and the two Presbyteries of the Inns of Court, were somewhat later affairs, and the crowning exultation of the first meeting of the Provincial Synod of London did not come for some months; but from August 1646 the city of London was ecclesiastically a Scotland condensed.--Though there was, and continued to be, a general Presbyterian stir throughout England, only in Lancashire was the example of London followed in effective practice. The division of that shire into classes or Presbyteries was already under consideration, with the names of the persons fit to be lay-elders in each Presbytery. There were to be nine Presbyteries. Manchester parish, Oldham parish, and four other parishes, were to form the first; Rochdale parish came into the second; Preston parish into the seventh; Liverpool did not figure by name as a distinct Lancashire parish at all, but it had one minister, Mr. John Fogg, and he was put into the fifth Presbytery. The names of all the Lancashire ministers thus classified, and of the Lancashire gentlemen, yeomen, and tradesmen, to the number of some hundreds, thought fit to be lay-elders in the different Presbyterial districts, may be read yet in the Commons Journals. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 378 and 388; Neal, III. 307-310 (List of classes or Presbyteries of London). The division of Lancashire into Presbyteries is given in the Commons Journals, Sept. 15,1646. See also Halley's "Lancashire: its Puritanism and Nonconformity" (1869), Vol. I. pp. 432 et seq., where there are many details concerning the first introduction of the Presbyterial system into Lancashire. According to Dr. Halley, the system was set up more rigidly in Lancashire than in London itself, chiefly in consequence of the activity and energy of Richard Heyricke, or Herrick, M.A., warden of the Collegiate Church, Manchester. He was one of the Divines of the Westminster Assembly (see Vol. II. p. 510); but he had returned to Lancashire, prefering Presbyterian leadership in that county to second rank in London.]

The compromise in the matter of "The Power of the Keys" having been accepted, with such practical consequences, the Assembly might consider the long and laborious business of _The Frame of Church Government_ out of its hands, and laid on the shelf of finished work beside the _New Directory of Worship_ concluded and passed eighteen months before. It was free, therefore, to turn to the other great pieces of business for which it had been originally called: viz. _The Confession of Faith_ and _The Catechisms_. Notwithstanding interruptions, good progress had already been made in both. Incidentally, too, the Assembly had concluded a work which might be regarded as an appendage to their Directory. They had discussed, revised, and finally approved Mr. Rous's Metrical Version of the Psalms, referred to them by Parliament for criticism as long ago as Nov. 1643. Their revised copy of the Version for the purposes of public worship had been in the hands of the Commons since Nov. 1645; the Commons had ratified the same, with a few amendments, April 15, 1646; and it only wanted the concurrence of the Lords to add this "Revised Rous's Psalter" (which Rous meanwhile had printed) to the credit of the Assembly, as a third piece of their finished work. The Lords were too busy, or had hesitations in favour of a rival Version by a Mr. William Barton, so that their concurrence was withheld; but that was not the fault of the Assembly. Rous's Psalter, therefore, as well as the Directory and the Frame of Government being done with, what was to hinder them longer from the Confession and Catechisms? Only one impediment-- those dreadful _jus divinum_ interrogatories which the Parliament, by Selden's mischief, had hung round their necks! Here also a little management sufficed. "I have put some of my good friends, leading men in the House of Commons," says Baillie, July 14, "to move the Assembly to lay aside our Questions for a time, and labour that which is most necessar and all are crying for, the perfecting of the Confession of Faith and Catechise." The order thus meritoriously procured by Baillie passed the Commons July 22. The Assembly, in terms of this order, were to lay aside other business, and apply themselves to the _Confession of Faith_ and _Catechisms_. And so at this point the Assembly had come to an end of one period of its history and entered on a second. As if to mark this epoch in its duration, the Prolocutor, Dr. Twisse, had just died. He died July 19, 1646, and there is a record of the fact in the Commons Journals for that same July 22 on which the Assembly was ordered to change the nature of its labours. Mr. Herle was appointed his successor. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 378-9; Commons Journals, July 22, 1646; and Mr. David Laing's Notices of Metrical Versions of the Psalms in Appendix to Baillie, Vol. III. pp. 537-540.]

DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON.