Chapter I: Charles in His Captivity (3)

Moderate or not, the Army's _ultimatum_ obtained but an unfriendly hearing in the two Houses; and, between the 22nd and the 28th of May, Fairfax having meanwhile returned to the Army, they issued their opposed _ultimatum_ in a sharp series of orders. The entire army of Foot was to be disbanded, willing or unwilling, on the terms fixed: Fairfax's own regiment at Chelmsford on June 1, Hewson's at Bishop's Stortford on June 3, Lambert's at Saffron Walden on June 5, and so on regiment by regiment, each on a named day and at a named place, a Committee of the two Houses to be present at each disbanding, and Skippon also to be present to enlist such of the disbanded men as would go to Ireland. These orders reached Fairfax at Bury St. Edmund's in Suffolk, to which he had removed his head-quarters. They threw the Army into an ungovernable uproar, which subsided in a day or two into an ominous calm. For a great resolution had been taken. The Agitators, at a meeting on Saturday, May 29, had drawn up a petition to Fairfax for a speedy Rendezvous of the whole Army at one place for united action; and a council of officers, to the number of 200, with Ireton among them, had declared themselves on the same day to the same effect. They advised Fairfax to grant the Rendezvous, telling him that, if he did not, the men would hold one themselves and it was sure then to end in tumult. Fairfax had taken the advice; and in the last days of May orders were out for the "contraction of the Army's quarters" by drawing the dispersed regiments closer together, and for a general "Rendezvous" at Kentford Heath, close to Newmarket, on Friday the 4th of June. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 582-588, and Rushworth, VI. 494-500.] Fairfax, with whatever hesitation, had thus thrown in his lot with the Army. Skippon, though he had accepted the Irish Field-Marshalship, almost repented having done so, and was one at heart with his old comrades. Of the other officers only a small minority, whether from Presbyterian predilections or out of mere respect for authority, wavered towards Parliament. The chief of these were Colonels Harley, Herbert, Fortescue, Sheffield, Butler, Sir Robert Pye, and Graves, this last being the Colonel in charge of the King at Holmby. On the other side, round Fairfax, and sustaining him, were Generals Ireton and Hammond, as next in rank; with Whalley, Rich, Okey, Rainsborough, Robert Lilburne, Sir Hardress Waller, Robert Hammond, Lambert, Hewson, Ewer, Kelsay, Ingoldsby, Pride, Axtell, Jubbs, Desborough, and other Colonels, Lieutenant-Colonels, and Majors, among whom is not to be forgotten the enthusiast Harrison, back from Ireland just at the right moment. But what of Fleetwood and Cromwell, left in their places in the House of Commons? Which way they would go nobody could doubt; but the question was whether they might not be seized as hostages by the Presbyterians and detained in London. As far as Fleetwood was concerned, the danger was over on the 2nd of June; on which day he had leave from the House "to go into the country," and went we can imagine whither. For Cromwell the danger was greater. He too, however, had made his arrangements. On the evening of the 3rd of June, or early on the following morning, just in time to avoid the arrest and impeachment which Holles and the Presbyterians were preparing for him, he rode quietly out of London in the direction of the Army. As far as can be ascertained, he had waited purposely to cover Fleetwood's departure, and be himself the last army-man to leave the Commons. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 2; Whitlocke, May 31; Rushworth, VI. 464-8 and 495; Holles 85, 86; Clar. 611; Godwin, II. 311, 312. Cromwell's so-called "Flight to the Army" is an incident made much of by Royalist and Presbyterian writers, and Clarendon's account of it and what preceded it is a perfect jumble of incompatible dates and confused rumours. What all those writers (Holles, Clement Walker, Clarendon, Baxter, Burnet, &c.) wanted to make out, and really succeeded in transmitting as a fact, was that Cromwell's whole conduct through the dispute between the Army and Parliament, up to the moment of his flight, had been a tissue of the profoundest craft and hypocrisy. He had pushed on the policy of disbandment in the Parliament on the one hand, and on the other he had fomented the mutiny in the Army through the Agitators; to lull suspicion when it was roused, he had at the last moment protested in the House in the presence of Almighty God that he knew the Army would lay down their arms; and not till his flight was the whole depth of his dissimulation known! On these statements, and the disposition of mind that could invent them or believe in them, see Mr. Carlyle's impressive words (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, I. 220-222). The real facts are to be gathered or inferred from the Commons Journals. Cromwell had been in London through February, March, and April, while the votes for disbandment, &c. were passed, unable to resist those votes, but anxious to prevent a rupture, and doing his best to that end: and not till after his return from his mission of mediation to the Army (May 21), or even till after the Army's resolution for a Rendezvous (May 29), were his hopes of a reconciliation utterly gone.]

The general Rendezvous of the Army was duly held, as appointed, near Newmarket, in Cambridgeshire, on Friday the 4th of June. There were present seven foot-regiments and six regiments of horse--a full representation of the Army, though not the whole. There was the utmost display of resolution. One great general Petition was agreed to; a solemn engagement was drawn up and signed by officers and soldiers; Fairfax rode from regiment to regiment, addressed each, and was received with outcries of applause. The proceedings were not over on the 4th, but protracted themselves into the next day. On that day it was that a strange excitement or suspense, which had been visible in all faces from the very beginning of the Rendezvous, in consequence of news then received, was relieved by the arrival of farther news. "Joyce has done it! Joyce has done it!" were the words that might then have been heard through the assembled Army, caught up and repeated by group after group of talking soldiers over the heath. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 504-512.]

Who was Joyce, and what had he done? These questions take us back to the King at Holmby.--His Majesty, watching the course of the struggle between the Parliament and the Army, had at last, on the 12th of May, sent in his long-deferred Answer to the Nineteen Propositions. It was substantially the Draft which he had submitted to the Queen and the Earl of Lanark in the preceding December, but had suppressed (_antè_, pp. 505-6). He offered the surrender of the Militia for ten years, and assent to Presbytery for three years, but with a reserve of the Liturgy for himself and his household, and the right of adding twenty divines to the Westminster Assembly to assist in the final settlement of the Church- question. The clause about a toleration for tender consciences, inserted in the former Draft as a bait for the Independents, was now totally omitted. In other words, Charles had thought the moment favourable for re-opening negotiations with the Presbyterians. The reception of his Letter by Parliament had been encouraging. It had been read in the Lords, May 18; and it had then been carried in that House by a majority of 15 to 9 that his Majesty should be brought at once from Holmby to some place nearer London, for the convenience of treating with him. Oatlands in Surrey had been named, and the concurrence of the Commons requested. Actually on May 21, the very day when Cromwell and Fleetwood returned to the Commons from their mission to the Army, the matter had been mentioned in that House. Although no decision had been come to, the Independents and the Army had taken alarm. Colonel Graves, commanding the guard at Holmby, was a Presbyterian; some of those everlasting Scottish Commissioners were back in London, in their old quarters at Worcester House; nay, one of them, the Earl of Dunfermline, had obtained leave from the two Houses (May 13) to visit the King at Holmby! What might not be in agitation under this proposal of a removal of the King to Oatlands? What so easy as for the Presbyterians, with Colonel Graves for their agent, to secure the King wholly to themselves, and so, having bargained with him on their own terms, to invite back the Scots and defy the Army? Such had been questions gossiped over in the Army at the very time when for other reasons the resolution was taken for a general Rendezvous. This very danger of some Presbyterian plot for removing the King from Holmby was an additional reason for the Rendezvous and the contraction of the Army's quarters. But the Rendezvous was not enough. Simultaneously with the Rendezvous, and to turn it to full account, something else was necessary. What that was had also been discussed among the Agitators with every precaution of secrecy; select parties of troopers from different regiments had been told off for the enterprise; and a George Joyce, once a tailor, but now cornet in Fairfax's lifeguard, had been appointed to take the lead. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates given; and Parl. Hist. III. 577-581, containing the King's Letter.]

As early as Wednesday June 2, or two days before the Rendezvous at Newmarket, there had been a suspicious appearance of parties of horse gathering to a body near Holmby. That night there was no doubt about it; and Colonel Graves, who had reasons for thinking that he was their main object, had just made his escape, when, about one in the morning of June 3, the troopers were in the park and meadows surrounding the house. Before daylight they were within the gates, Graves's men having let them in and at once fraternized with them. The whole of that day was spent by the troopers, Joyce acting as their spokesman, in a parley with the Commissioners in charge of the King--viz.: Lord Montague of Boughton, Sir John Coke, Mr. Crewe, and General Browne--the King meanwhile aware of what was going on, but keeping his privacy. Messengers had been sent off from the Commissioners to London; where, accordingly, on Friday the 4th, there was great excitement in the two Houses. That same morning the news was known in the Army at Newmarket, just before the proceedings of the Rendezvous began, not much to the surprise of some there perhaps, but certainly to the surprise of Fairfax himself. He could not then countermand the Rendezvous; but at once he detached Whalley and his horse-regiment, to gallop to Holmby, take Colonel Graves's place, and see that no harm was done. By that time, however, Joyce had completed his business. Passing from his first topic with the Commissioners, which had been Colonel Graves and his plot, he had insisted on seeing the King; had compelled the Commissioners late at night on the 3rd to introduce him into his Majesty's bedchamber; had there apologized, talked with his Majesty, answered his questions, and distinctly informed him that he had authority from the Army to carry him away from Holmby. The King, amused and interested, as it seemed, rather than displeased, had taken the night to think over the matter; and by six o'clock next morning he had left his chamber, and was again in colloquy with Joyce, who had his troopers all mounted and ready where they could be seen. His Majesty did not seem disinclined to go, but was naturally inquisitive as to the authority by which Joyce acted. Had he a commission from Fairfax? Mr. Joyce could not say he had. Had he any commission at all? "_There_ is my commission, your Majesty," said Joyce at last, pointing to his mounted troopers. "A fair commission and well-written," said the King, smiling: "a company of as handsome, proper gentlemen as ever I saw in my life." In short, as there was no help for it, he supposed he must go. And so, actually, after vain protests and solemn threats by the Commissioners, and especially by General Browne, to all which Joyce listened unmoved, the party did set off at a trot from Holmby, about two o'clock in the afternoon of June 4, with Joyce at their head, and the King in their charge, accompanied by the Commissioners. The Scottish Earl of Dunfermline, who had witnessed much of the affair, had posted off to London, The Rendezvous at Newmarket was then going on. [Footnote: Original accounts of Joyce's conduct at Holmby and abduction of the King are (1) Letters of the Commissioners from Holmby, June 3 and 4, and from Childersley June 8, addressed to Manchester as Speaker of the Lords, and given in the Lords Journals; (2) Fairfax's Letters to Speaker Lenthall, of June 4 and 7, in the Commons Journal giving Fairfax's account of the information he had collected, and of his own proceedings in consequence; (3) A very curious and interesting contemporary account called "_An Impartial Narration, &c._," reprinted by Rushworth in five folio pages (VI. 513-517). On reading this paper, one soon finds, from lapses from the third into the first personal pronoun, that the writer is Joyce himself. The narrative, though by a man stiff at the pen and rather elated by the importance of his act, appears perfectly trustworthy, and supplies, many particulars. Clarendon's version of the incident is very loose and inaccurate. He huddles into one day what was really an affair of two, &c.]

Joyce having given the King the option, within a certain extent, of the place to which he would be conveyed, his Majesty himself had suggested Newmarket. Thither, accordingly, they were bound. The evening of the 4th brought them to Huntingdon, where his Majesty rested that night in the mansion-house of Hinchinbrook, once the property of Cromwell's uncle, Sir Oliver, but now of Colonel Edward Montague. Next day (Saturday, June 5) they were again on their march for Newmarket, when they were met, about four miles from Cambridge, by Whalley and his regiment of horse. Joyce, of course, then retired from the management. Whalley, in accordance with his instructions, was willing to convey the King and the Commissioners back to Holmby; but this his Majesty positively declined. Till there should be farther deliberation, therefore, his Majesty was quartered at the nearest convenient house, which chanced to be Sir John Cutts's at Childersley, near Cambridge. Here he remained over Sunday the 6th and Monday the 7th. Meanwhile both in London and at Newmarket the commotion was boundless. The full news had reached the two Houses on Saturday the 5th. Next day, though it was Sunday, they re-assembled for prayer and business; but nothing practical could be thought of; all was panic, passing into a mood of submissiveness to the Army. The only show of anger, even in words, up to the mark of the occasion, was in a paper given in to a Committee of the two Houses by the Scottish Commissioners, with a speech in their name by the Earl of Lauderdale. The Scottish nation had been insulted; its resentment might be expected; it would co- operate at once with the Parliament for "the rescuing and defending his Majesty's person," &c.! It was easier for the Scottish Commissioners to speak in this strain than for the Parliament to take corresponding action. The opportunity was now wholly with the Army. That they would adopt Joyce's deed, and take the full benefit of it, could not be doubted; or, if it could, the procedure of Fairfax at once put an end to the doubt. On Saturday and Sunday he was lifting his Rendezvous from Newmarket; by Monday the 7th he had brought his army bodily round about Cambridge, so as to encircle the King; and on that day he, Cromwell, Treton, and Hammond, with Whalley, Waller, Lambert, and other chief officers, were assembled in interview with the King and the Commissioners at Childersley House. No persuasion could induce his Majesty to go back to Holmby. Much of the conversation turned on Joyce's daring act and his authority for it; and Joyce, having been called in, underwent a long examination and cross-examination on this point. Very little could be got out of him, except that he had had no commission from Fairfax, and yet that he considered his authority perfectly sufficient. Let the question, he said, be put to the Army itself whether they approved of what he had done, and, if three-fourths or four-fifths did not approve with acclamations, he would be hanged with pleasure. The Commissioners thought Joyce deserved hanging in any case; but the King, who had taken a liking for him, told him that, though it was a great treason he had done, he might consider himself pardoned. Joyce having then withdrawn, and the King, having consented to remain with the Army, it was agreed that he should be conveyed to Newmarket next day. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of June 5 and 6; Parl. Hist. III. 591-594; Rushworth, VI. 545- 550, with the previously-mentioned "Impartial Narration" of Joyce. To this day nothing more is positively known of the real origin of the scheme of the King's abduction than Joyce allowed himself to reveal. We have Fairfax's own solemn word "as in the presence of God" that he was utterly ignorant of the transaction till it was over; and in the same Letter (June 7) he "dares be confident" the officers and the body of the Army were equally ignorant. Royalist and Presbyterian writers attribute the act directly to Cromwell. It was planned, says Holles, at a meeting at Cromwell's house in London, May 30; and Clarendon and others lay stress on the fact that the very day of Cromwell's flight from London "was the day of Joyce's appearance at Holmby. The Presbyterian Major Huntingdon, Cromwell's own Major, afterwards distinctly declared, Aug. 1648, that Joyce had his instructions from Cromwell, and that Joyce himself averred this to excuse himself from Fairfax's displeasure (Parl. Hist. III. 967-8). I suspect that, whatever Cromwell and Ireton may have privately sanctioned, the thing was managed among the Agitators; and it does not seem impossible that the original design was to seize Graves at Holmby, quash his supposed plotting there with Lord Dunfermline, and take possession of the King for the Army without removing him. As to the abduction, Joyce may have been left a discretion.]

Before we pass on, with the King, into the third stage of his captivity, we have to report briefly the progress that had been made, during his stay at Holmby, in one or two matters of public concern, not directly involved in the feud between the Parliament and the Army.

In April 1647, there had been a vigorous resumption of the Church- question in the Commons, in consequence of the Report of a Committee on obstructions which had arisen to the Presbyterian settlement. There was great sluggishness all over the country in establishing elderships and classes; returns from counties were deficient; even in London the Provincial Synod had not yet met! To remove these obstructions various orders were passed, the Lords concurring (April 20-29). The most important of these was one for the immediate meeting of the FIRST PROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF LONDON. It met in the Convocation House of St. Paul's, on Monday, May 3, 1647, and consisted of 108 representatives of the London classes or Presbyteries, in the proportion of three ministers and six lay-elders from each. Dr. Gouge, of Blackfriars, was chosen Prolocutor or Moderator of this first Synod, and the term of the Moderatorship and of the Synod itself was to be for half a year, or till November 1647; after which the Second Synod, similarly elected, was to meet, with a new Moderator; and so on, every six months, Synod after Synod, in Presbyterian London for ever. Of the First Synod, under Dr. Gouge, we need only say that they arranged to meet twice a week, and that, with the leave of the Parliament, they transferred their meeting-place from St. Paul's to Sion College. The discussions there may have been a little crippled by the fact that the new Presbyterian Church of England was not yet provided with an authorized _Confession of Faith_. The text of such a document, as prepared by the Westminster Assembly, had been before the two Houses since Dec. 1646 (_antè_, p. 512); the Lords on the 16th of February had urged the Commons in almost reproachful terms to quicken their pace in that business; the Commons on the 22nd of April had at length roused themselves so far as to order the Westminster Assembly to send in the Scriptural proofs which they had been preparing according to a previous order; but, though on the 29th of April these proofs were actually received and the Assembly thanked, it was not till the 19th of May that the Commons did begin, Math printed copies of the Confession before them, to examine the work, paragraph by paragraph. On that day and May 28 they considered and passed, without division, and apparently without much debate, the three first chapters of the Confession--viz.: Chap. I. _Of the Holy Scriptures_ (ten paragraphs); Chap. II. _Of God and the Holy Trinity_ (three paragraphs); Chap. III. _Of God's Eternal Decrees_. The next chapter, entitled _Of Creation_, was to be proceeded with punctually on Wednesday next, June 2; but, when that day came, Fairfax's orders for the Army Rendezvous were out, Joyce was prowling about Holmby, and the "Creation" had to be postponed. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of the days given (also a curious entry in Commons Journals of April 27); Rushworth, VI. 476; Neal, III. 356-358.]

A matter on which the Parliament had been intent for some time was the purgation and regulation of the University of Oxford. If Parliamentary purgation had been found necessary for Cambridge three years before (_antè_, pp. 92-96), how much more was this process needed in Oxford, always the more Prelatic University of the two, and recently, as the King's head-quarters through the Civil War, more deep-dyed in Prelacy than ever! Where but in Oxford, amid courtiers and cavaliers, had ex- bishops, Anglican doctors, and other dangerous persons, found house-room for the last few years? Whence but from the colleges at Oxford had come all the Prelatic sermons, pamphlets, and squibs against the Parliament, the Covenant, and Presbytery, including the official Royalist newspaper, the _Mercurius Aulicus_, edited by Mr. John Birkenhead and a society of his brother-wits? Accordingly, since the surrender of Oxford in June 1646, punishment for the University had been in preparation. For various reasons, however, it had been administered first in a didactic form. Preachers of the right Presbyterian type had been sent down to Oxford by authority in Aug. 1646; and these had been followed by such a rush of volunteer zealots of all varieties that the loyal Oxford historian, Anthony Wood, shuddered to his life's end at the recollection. "Hell was broke loose," he says, "upon the poor remnant" of the scholars, so that most of them "did either leave the University or abscond in their respective houses till they could know their doom." That doom came at length in the form of an Ordinance of the two Houses for the Visitation of the University (May 1, 1647). It empowered twenty-four persons, not members of Parliament, among whom were Sir Nathaniel Brent, William Prynne, and thirteen other lawyers, the rest being divines, to visit Oxford, inquire into abuses and delinquencies, impose the Covenant on Heads of Houses, Fellows, &c., and report the results to a standing Committee of both Houses, consisting of twenty-six Peers and fifty-two of the Commons. Under this Ordinance the Visitors issued a citation to the Heads of Houses and others to meet them in the Convocation House at Oxford on the 4th of June. That was the day of the Army Rendezvous and of the King's abduction; beyond which point we do not go at present. Suffice it to say that there was to be a most strenuous resistance by the Oxonians, headed by their Vice-Chancellor Dr. Fell. [Footnote: Wool's Fasti Oxon. II 100-1 and 106-7; Lords Journals, May 1; Neal, III. 395 _et seq._]

THIRD STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: THE KING WITH THE ARMY, JUNE-NOV. 1647.

Effects of Joyce's Abduction of the King--Movements of the Army: their Denunciation of Eleven of the Presbyterian Leaders: Parliamentary Alarms and Concessions--Presbyterian Phrenzy of the London Populace: Parliament mobbed, and Presbyterian Votes carried by Mob-law: Flight of the two Speakers and their Adherents: Restoration of the Eleven--March of the Army upon London: Military Occupation of the City: The Mob quelled, Parliament reinstated, and the Eleven expelled--Generous Treatment of the King by the Army: His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton--The Army's _Heads of Proposals,_ and Comparison of the same with the _Nineteen Propositions_ of the Parliament--King at Hampton Court, still demurring privately over the _Heads of Proposals,_ but playing them off publicly against the _Nineteen Propositions:_ Army at Putney--Cromwell's Motion for a Recast of the _Nineteen Propositions_ and Re-application to the King on that Basis: Consequences of the Compromise: Intrigues at Hampton Court: Influence of the Scottish Commissioners there: King immoveable--Impatience of the Army at Putney: Cromwell under Suspicion: New Activity of the Agitatorships: Growth of Levelling Doctrines among the Soldiers: _Agreement of the People--_ Cromwell breaks utterly with the King: Meetings of the Army Officers at Putney: Proposed Concordat between the Army and Parliament: The King's Escape to the Isle of Wight,

The effects of Joyce's abduction of the King from Holmby may be summed up by saying that for the next five months the Army and the Independents were in the ascendant, and the Presbyterians depressed. There were to be vibrations of the balance, however, even during this period.

What the Presbyterians dreaded was an immediate march of the Army upon London, to occupy the city and coerce Parliament. With no wish to resort to such a policy so long as it could be avoided, the Army-leaders, for a time, kept moving their head-quarters from spot to spot in the counties north and west of London, now approaching the city and again receding, and paying but slight respect to the injunctions of the Parliament not to bring the Army within a distance of forty miles. On the 10th of June there was a Rendezvous 21,000 strong at Triplow Heath, near Royston; thence, on the 12th, they came to St. Alban's, only twenty miles from London, spreading such alarm in the City by this movement that guards were posted, shops shut, &c.; and they remained at St. Alban's till the 24th, when they withdrew to Berkhampstead. Through this fortnight negotiations had been going on between the Army-leaders and Parliamentary Commissioners who had been sent down expressly; letters had also passed between the Army-leaders and the City; and certain general "Representations" and "Remonstrances" had been sent forth by the Army, penned by Ireton and Lambert, but signed by Rushworth in the name of Fairfax and the whole Council of War. In these it was distinctly repeated that the Army had no desire to overturn or oppose Presbyterian Church- government as it had been established, and only claimed Liberty of Conscience under that government; but there were also clear expressions of the opinion that a dissolution of the existing Parliament and the election of a new one on a more popular system ought to be in contemplation. Nay, till the time should come for a dissolution, one thing was declared essential. In order that the existing Parliament might be brought somewhat into accord with public necessities and interests, and so made endurable, it must be purged of its peccant elements. Not only must Royalist Delinquents who still lurked in it be ejected, but also those conspicuous Presbyterian enemies of the Army who had occasioned all the recent troubles! That there might be no mistake, eleven such members of the House of Commons were named--to wit, Holles, Stapleton, Sir William Lewis, Sir John Clotworthy, Sir William Waller, John Glynn, Esq., Anthony Nichols, Esq. (original members), and Sir John Maynard, Major-general Massey, Colonel Walter Long, and Colonel Edward Harley (Recruiters). This Army denunciation of eleven chiefs of the Commons, dated from St. Alban's June 14, had greatly perplexed the House; but in the course of their debates on it they recovered spirit, and in a vote of June 25 they stood out for Parliamentary privilege. As there had been votes of the two Houses about bringing the King to Richmond for a treaty, and other more secret signs of Presbyterian activity, the Army then again applied the screw. They advanced to Uxbridge, some of the regiments showing themselves even closer to the City (June 26). This had the intended effect. The eleven consented to withdraw from their places in the Commons, for a time at least (June 26); votes favourable to the Army were passed by both Houses (June 26-29); and, though these were mingled with others not quite so satisfactory, the Army had no pretext for a severer pressure. They withdrew, therefore, to Wycombe in Bucks. Here, at a Council of War (July 1), a Commission of ten officers (Cromwell, Ireton, Fleetwood, Lambert, Rainsborough, Sir Hardress Waller, Rich, Robert Hammond, Desborough, and Harrison) was appointed to treat farther with new Commissioners of the Parliament (the Earl of Nottingham, Lord Wharton, Vane, Skippon, &c.). Then surely all seemed in a fair way. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 591-662; Rushworth, VI. 545-597; Godwin, II. 323-354; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 226-232.]

While Parliament, however, was thus yielding to the Army, the dense Presbyterianism of the City and the district round was more reckless and indignant. Whatever Parliament might do, the great city of London would be true to its colours! Accordingly, in addition to various Petitions already presented to the two Houses from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, all of an anti-Army character, a new one in the same sense, but purporting to be simply "for payment of the soldiery and a speedy settlement of the Nation," was presented July 2. A public and responsible body like the Common Council could express itself only in such general terms; but the Presbyterian "young men and apprentices of the City," the number of whom was legion, and whose ranks and combinations could easily be put in motion by the higher powers, were able to speak out boldly. On the 14th of July a Petition, said to be signed by 10,000 such, was presented to both Houses, praying for strict observance of the Covenant, the defence of his Majesty's person and just power and greatness, the disbandment of the Army, the thorough settlement of Presbyterian Government, the suppression of Conventicles, and defiance to the crotchet of Toleration. This audacious document having been received even with politeness by the Lords, and only with cautious reserve by the Commons, the City was stirred through all its Presbyterian depths, made no doubt it could control Parliament, and grew more and more violent to that end. Crowds came daily to Palace Yard and Westminster Hall, signifying their anger at the seclusion of the Presbyterian Eleven, and at all the other concessions made to the Army and the Independents. What roused the City most, however, was the acquiescence of Parliament in a demand of the Army that the Militia of London should be restored to the state in which it had been before the 27th of April last. On that day the Common Council, in whose trust the business was, had placed the direction of the Militia in a Committee wholly Presbyterian, excluding Alderman Pennington and other known Independents; and what was desired by the Army was that Parliament, resuming the power, should bring back the Independents into the Committee. An Ordinance to that effect had no sooner passed the two Houses,--carried in the Commons by a majority of 77 to 46 (July 22), and accepted by the Lords without a division (July 23), --than the City broke out in sheer rebellion. By this time there had been formed in the City and its purlieus a vast popular association, called "A Solemn Engagement of the Citizens, Officers, and Soldiers of the Trained Bands and Auxiliaries, Young Men and Apprentices of the Cities of London and Westminster, Sea-Commanders, Seamen, and Watermen, &c. &c.," all pledged by oath to an upholding of the Covenant and the furthering of a Personal Treaty between King and Parliament, without interference from the Army. A copy of this Engagement, said by Presbyterian authorities to have been signed by nearly 100,000 hands, with an accompanying Petition in the same sense, which had been addressed by the Engagers to the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, was brought before both Houses on the 24th of July. They declared it insolent and dangerous, and adjudged all who should persevere in it guilty of high treason. That day was Saturday, and the next day's Sabbath stood between the Houses and the wrath they were provoking. But on Monday the 26th they were called to a mighty reckoning. A Petition came in upon them from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council, praying for a revocation of the Militia Ordinance of the 23rd, and enclosing Petitions to the same effect which the Common Council had received from "divers well-affected Citizens" and from the "Young Men, Citizens and others, Apprentices." That was not all. Another Petition came in, from "the Citizens, Young Men, and Apprentices" themselves, complaining of the "pretended Declaration" of the 24th against their Engagement, and of the seclusion of the Eleven. Even that was not all. While the Petitions were under consideration, the Young Men, Citizens, and Apprentices, with Seamen, Watermen, Trained-Bands, and others, their fellow-Engagers, were round the Houses in thousands in Palace Yard, and swarming in the lobbies, and throwing stones in upon the Lords through the windows, and kicking at the doors of the Commons, and bursting in with their hats on, all to enforce their demands. The riot lasted eight hours. Speaker Lenthall, trying to quit the House, was forced back, and was glad to end the uproar by putting such questions to the vote as the intruders dictated. The unpopular Ordinance of the 23rd and the Declaration of the 24th having thus been revoked under mob- compulsion, the Houses were allowed to adjourn. They met next day, Tuesday the 27th, but only to adjourn farther to Friday the 30th. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 664-723; Lords and Commons Journals; Whitlocke, II. 182-185.]

When the Houses did re-assemble on that day, their appearance was most woe-begone. Neither Manchester, the Speaker of the Lords, was to be found, nor Lenthall, the Speaker of the Commons; there were but eight Lords in the one House; and the benches in the other were unusually thin. Nevertheless they proceeded in all due form. Each House elected a new Speaker--the Peers Lord Willoughby of Parham for the day, and the Commons Henry Pelham, Esq., M.P. for Grantham, in permanence; each took notice of its absentees, and commanded their immediate re-attendance--the Commons also restoring the Eleven, Ly special enumeration, to their places; and each went on for six or seven days, transacting business or trying to transact it. A good deal of the business related to military preparations to make good the position the City had taken. Sir William Waller and General Massey, two of the Eleven, were added to a Committee for consultation with the City Committee of the Militia; this City Committee was empowered to choose a commander-in-chief and other commanders of the London forces; and, when the Committee named Massey for the command-in- chief, and Waller for the command of the Horse, the Houses gave their cordial assent. In short, the two Houses, as they met during this extraordinary week from July 30 to Aug. 5, consisted mainly of a forlorn residue of the most fanatical Presbyterians in each, regarding the riots of the 26th as a popular interposition for right principles, and anxiously considering whether, with such a zealous London round them, and with Massey, Waller, Poyntz, and perhaps Browne, for their generals, they might not be able to face and rout the Army of Fairfax. There may, however, have been some who remained with the residuary Houses on lazier or more subtle principles. The restored Eleven, with Sir Robert Pye, Sir Robert Harley, and a few other typical Presbyterians, certainly led the business of the Commons in this extraordinary week; but among those that remained in that House how are we to account for Selden? [Footnote: Lords and Common Journals, July 30-Aug. 5, 1647.]

The City-tumults, intended as such a brave stroke for Presbytery, had been, in fact, a suicidal blunder. Manchester and Lenthall, the missing Speakers, though themselves Presbyterians, had withdrawn in disgust from the dictation of a London mob of mixed Presbyterian young men and Royalist intriguers, and had been joined by about fourteen Peers, some of them also eminently Presbyterian, and a hundred Commoners, mostly Independents. Deliberating what was to be done, these seceders had resolved to place themselves under the protection of Fairfax, make common cause with him and the Army, and act as a kind of Parliamentary Council to him until they could resume their places in a Parliament free from mob-law. Meanwhile Fairfax, acting for himself, was on the march towards London. On the day of the tumults in London his headquarters had been as far off as Bedford; but, starting thence on the 30th of July, he had reached Colnbrook on Sunday Aug. 1. Next day he came on to Hounslow; and here it was that, at an imposing Review of his Army, horse, foot, and artillery, over 20,000 strong, the seceding Peers and Commoners came in, and were received by the soldiers with acclamations, and cries of "_Lords and Commons, and a Free Parliament_!" Only ten miles now intervened between the Army and the Common Council of the City of London consulting with their Militia commanders at Guildhall, and somewhat less than that distance between the Army and the presumptuous fragment of the two Houses at Westminster. Both these bodies, but especially the citizens, had begun to come to their senses. The tramp, tramp, of Fairfax's approaching Army had cooled their courage. At Guildhall, indeed, as Whitlocke tells us, whenever a scout brought in the good news that the Army had halted, the people would still cry "_One and all_;" but the cry would be changed into "_Treat, Treat_" a moment afterwards, when they heard that the march had been resumed. At Hounslow, therefore, Fairfax received the most submissive messages and deputations, with entreaties to spare the City. His reply, in effect, was that the City need fear no unnecessary harshness from the Army, but that the late "prodigious violence" had brought things into such a crisis that the Army must and would set them right. Nothing more was to be said: the rest was action. On the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 4, a brigade of the Army under Rainsborough, which had been despatched across the Thames to approach London on the south side, was in peaceable possession of the borough of Southwark, and had two cannon planted against the fort on London Bridge till the citizens thought good to yield it up. That day and the next other defences on the Thames, eastwards and westwards, were seized or surrendered. On Friday the 6th, Fairfax with his main Army, all with laurel-leaves in their hats, and conducting the Lords and Commoners in their coaches, marched in from Hammersmith by Kensington to Hyde Park, where the Lord Mayor and Aldermen joined them, and so to Charing Cross, where the Common Council made their obeisances, and thence to Palace Yard, Westminster. There the two Speakers were ceremoniously reinstated, the Houses properly reconstituted, and Fairfax and the Army thanked. Finally, on Saturday the 7th, the grand affair was wound up by another deliberate march of the Army through the main streets of the City itself, all the more impressive to the beholders from the perfect order kept, and the abstinence from every act, word, or gesture, that could give offence. The Tower was made over to Fairfax on the 9th; and his head-quarters for some time continued to be in London or its immediate neighbourhood. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 723-756; Whitlocke, II, 187-193; Godwin, II. 371-387.]

By the Army's march through the City events were brought back so far into the channel of regular Parliamentary debate, but with Independency naturally more powerful than ever. All acts done by the two Houses during the week's Interregnum of riot were voted null; and there were measures of retaliation against those who had been most prominent in that Interregnum. Six of the culpable Eleven--viz. Holles, Stapleton, Sir William Waller, Clotworthy, Lewis, and Long--having fled abroad together, had been chased at sea and overtaken, but let escape; and Stapleton had died at Calais immediately after his landing. Massey had gone to Holland, with Poyntz; but Glynn and Maynard, remaining behind, were expelled the House, impeached, and sent to the Tower (Sept. 7). Seven out of the nine Peers who had formed the Lords' House through the wrong-headed week were similarly impeached and committed--viz. the Earls of Suffolk, Lincoln, and Middlesex, and Lords Willoughby, Hunsdon, Berkeley, and Maynard. The Lord Mayor and four Aldermen were disabled, impeached, and imprisoned (Sept. 24); several officers of the City Trained Bands were called to account; and one result of inquiries respecting culprits of a lower grade was an order by the Commons (Sept. 28 and Oct. 1) for the arrest and indictment for high treason of twelve persons, most of them young men and apprentices, ascertained to have been ringleaders in the dreadful outrage on the two Houses on the 26th of July. As there was a "John Milton, junior" among these young rioters, one would like to have known whether they were found and how they fared. In truth, however, nothing very terrible was intended by such indictments and arrests. As the Army's treatment of the conquered City had been studiously magnanimous, so what was chiefly desired by the leaders now in power was that, by the removal from public sight of persons like the Seven in the one House, the Eleven in the other, and their City abettors, there might be a Parliament and Corporation reasonably in sympathy with the Army. As respected the Parliament, this object had been attained. From the reinstatement of the two Houses by Fairfax, Aug. 6, on through the rest of that month and the months of September and October, what we see at Westminster is a small Upper House of from half-a-dozen to a dozen Peers, most of them moderately Presbyterian, but several of them avowed Independents, co- operating with a Commons' House from which the Presbyterians had withdrawn in large numbers, so that the average voting-attendance ranged from 90 to 190, and the divisions were mainly on new questions arising among the Independents themselves. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates given, and generally from Aug. 6 to the beginning of November.-- The Peers who formed the Lords' House through this period were the Earl of Manchester (Speaker), the Earls of Northumberland, Pembroke (whose error in remaining in the House through the week of intimidation had been condoned), Kent, Salisbury, Mulgrave, Nottingham, and Denbigh, Viscount Saye and Sele, and Lords Wharton, Grey of Wark, Howard of Escrick, and Delawarr, with occasionally Lords Montague, North, and Herbert of Cherbury. In the Commons I find one division (Sept. 25) when only 41 voted, and another (Nov. 3) when the number rose to 264. At a call of the House, Oct. 9, note was taken of about 240 absentees; and of these 59, whose excuses were not considered sufficient, were fined 20_l._ each. A good few of these were Independents.]

It was on these two Houses that the duty devolved of hammering out, if possible, a new Constitution for England that should satisfy the Army and yet be accepted by the King.

It had been a halcyon time with his Majesty since he had come into the keeping of the Army. He was still a captive, but his captivity was little more than nominal. Subject to the condition that he should accompany the Army's movements, and not range beyond their grasp, he had been allowed to vary his residence at his pleasure. From his own house or hunting- lodge at Newmarket, whither he had gone from Childersley (June 7), he had made visits in his coach or on horseback to various noblemen's houses near; thence he had gone to his smaller hunting-seat at Royston; thence (June 26) to the Earl of Salisbury's mansion at Hatfield; thence (July 1) to Windsor; thence (July 3) to Lord Craven's at Caversham, near Beading; thence (July 15) to Maidenhead; thence (July 20) to the Earl of Bedford's at Woburn; thence to Latimers in Bucks, a mansion of the Earl of Devonshire; and so by other stages, always moving as the Army moved, till, on the 14th of August, he was at Oatlands, and on the 24th at his palace of Hampton Court. At all these places the freest concourse to him had been permitted, not only of Parliamentarian noblemen and gentlemen, and Cambridge scholars desiring to pay their respects, but even of noted Royalists and old Councillors, such as the Duke of Richmond. His three young children--the Duke of York, the Princess Elizabeth, and the Duke of Gloucester--had been brought to see him, in charge of their guardian the Earl of Northumberland, and had spent a day or two with him at Caversham, to the unbounded delight of the country-people thereabouts. But, what was the most agreeable change of all for Charles, he had been permitted, since his first coming to the Army, to have his own Episcopal chaplains, Dr. Hammond, Dr. Sheldon, and others, in constant attendance upon him. These civilities and courtesies had been partly yielded to him by the personal generosity of the Army chiefs, Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton, acting on their own responsibility, partly procured for him by their mediation with the Parliament. There had been grumblings in the Houses, indeed, at the too great indulgence shown to his Majesty in his choice of chaplains and other company. [Footnote: Herbert's Memoirs (ed. 1813), pp. 37-49; Godwin, II. 349-361.]

What one dwells on as most interesting in the changed circumstances of his Majesty is that, amid all the concourse of people round him, it was Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, and the other Army chiefs, that could now come closest to him for purposes of real conference. They were now, indeed, frequently with him, conversing with him, studying him face to face, considering within themselves whether it would be possible after all to come to an arrangement with that man. In their interviews with him they were most studious of external respect, though Cromwell and Ireton, it seems, never offered to follow Fairfax in the extreme ceremony of kissing the royal hand. The King, on his side, showed them every attention, and would be "sometimes very pleasant in his discourse with them." What was to come of it all? [Footnote: Herbert, 36, 37; Clar. 614.]

The meetings of the Army-chiefs with Charles were not purposeless. Since he had been in their keeping they had been carefully drawing up, and putting into exact expression, certain _Heads of Proposals_, to be submitted both to him and to Parliament as a basis for Peace, better in its own nature, and certainly more to the mind of the Army, than those _Nineteen Propositions_ of July 1646 which had hitherto been the vexed subject of debate. What these _Heads of Proposals_ were, or came to be in their complete shape, we know from a final redaction of them put forth on the 1st of August when the Army was at Colnbrook on its march upon refractory London. The document is signed by Rushworth, "by the appointment of his Excellency Sir Tho. Fairfax and the Council of War," but the penning is Ireton's, and probably much of the matter too. It is a document of consummate political skill and most lawyerlike precision. It consists of sixteen Heads, some of them numerically subdivided, each Head propounding the Army's desires on one of the great questions in dispute between the nation and the King. Biennial Parliaments in a strictly guaranteed series for the future, each to sit for not less than 120 days and not more than 240, and the Commons House in each to have increased powers and to be elected by constituencies so reformed as to secure a fair and equable representation of population and property all over England: this is the substance of the first Head. Entire control by Parliament of the Militia for ten years, with a voice in subsequent arrangements, and farther, for security on this matter, the exclusion from places of public trust for the next five years of persons who had borne arms against the Parliament, unless in so far as Parliament might see fit to make individual exceptions: such is the provision under the second Head. Of the remaining Articles, one or two refer to Ireland, and others to law-reforms in England. Articles XI.-XIII. treat of the Religious Question, and are remarkably liberal. They say nothing about Episcopacy or Presbytery as such, but stipulate for the abolition of "all coercive power, authority and jurisdiction of Bishops and all other ecclesiastical officers whatsoever extending to any civil penalties upon any," and also for the repeal of all Acts enforcing the Book of Common Prayer, or attendance at church, or prohibiting meetings for worship apart from the regular Church; and they expressly stipulate for non- enforcement of the Covenant on any. In other words, the Army, as a whole, neither advised an Established Church, nor objected to one, nor would indicate a preference for Presbytery or Episcopacy in the rule of such a Church, but stood out, in any case and all cases, for Liberty of Religious Dissent. How far they went on this negative principle may be judged from the fact that they do not haggle on even the Roman Catholic exception, but hint that, so far as it might be necessary to discover Papists and Jesuits and prevent them from disturbing the State, other means than enforced church-attendance might be devised for that end. Article XIV. proposes the restoration of the King, Queen, and their issue, to full "safety, honour, and freedom," when the preceding Articles shall have been settled, and with no limitation of the regal power except as therein provided. The remaining two Articles appear therefore supernumerary. One refers to Compositions by Delinquents, and urges a generous relaxation of the rates on such, so as not to ruin people for past faults. So also the last Article recommends a general Act of Oblivion of past offences, and a restoration of all Royalists to their full civil rights and privileges, after composition, or, in cases of good desert, without composition, with only the exception provided in the second Article.