Note 363 — Chapter X

Clarendon, vi. 155. He is very absurd in imagining that any of the parliamentary commissioners would have been satisfied with "an act of indemnity and oblivion."

That the parliament had some reason to expect the king's firmness of purpose to give way, in spite of all his haggling, will appear from the following short review of what had been done. 1. At Newmarket, in June 1642, he absolutely refused the nineteen propositions tendered to him by the Lords and Commons. 2. In the treaty of Oxford, March 1643, he seems to have made no concession, not even promising an amnesty to those he had already excluded from pardon. 3. In the treaty of Uxbridge, no mention was made on his side of exclusion from pardon; he offered to vest the militia for seven years in commissioners jointly appointed by himself and parliament, so that it should afterwards return to him, and to limit the jurisdiction of the bishops. 4. In the winter of 1645, he not only offered to disband his forces, but to let the militia be vested for seven years in commissioners to be appointed by the two houses, and afterwards to be settled by bill; also to give the nomination of officers of state and judges pro hâc vice to the houses. 5. He went no farther in substance till May 1647; when he offered the militia for ten years, as well as great limitations of episcopacy, and the continuance of presbyterian government for three years; the whole matter to be afterwards settled by bill on the advice of the assembly of divines, and twenty more of his own nomination. 6. In his letter from Carisbrook, Nov. 1647, he gave up the militia for his life. This was in effect to sacrifice almost everything as to immediate power; but he struggled to save the church lands from confiscation, which would have rendered it hardly practicable to restore episcopacy in future. His further concessions in the treaty of Newport, though very slowly extorted, were comparatively trifling.

What Clarendon thought of the treaty of Newport may be imagined. "You may easily conclude," he writes to Digby, "how fit a counsellor I am like to be, when the best that is proposed is that which I would not consent unto to preserve the kingdom from ashes. I can tell you worse of myself than this; which is, that there may be some reasonable expedients which possibly might in truth restore and preserve all, in which I could bear no part."—P. 459. See also p. 351 and 416. I do not divine what he means by this. But what he could not have approved was, that the king had no thoughts of dealing sincerely with the parliament in this treaty, and gave Ormond directions to obey all his wife's commands, but not to obey any further orders he might send, nor to be startled at his great concessions respecting Ireland, for they would come to nothing. Carte's Papers, i. 185. See Mr. Brodie's remarks on this, iv. 143-146. He had agreed to give up the government of Ireland for twenty years to the parliament. In his answer to the propositions at Newcastle, sent in May 1647, he had declared that he would give full satisfaction with respect to Ireland. But he thus explains himself to the queen: "I have so couched that article that, if the Irish give me cause, I may interpret it enough to their advantage. For I only say that I will give them (the two houses) full satisfaction as to the management of the war, nor do I promise to continue the war; so that, if I find reason to make a good peace there, my engagement is at an end. Wherefore make this my interpretation known to the Irish." Clar. State Papers. "What reliance," says Mr. Laing, from whom I transcribe this passage (which I cannot find in the book quoted), "could parliament place at the beginning of the dispute, or at any subsequent period, on the word or moderation of a prince, whose solemn and written declarations were so full of equivocation?" Hist. of Scotland, iii. 409. It may here be added that, though Charles had given his parole to Colonel Hammond, and had the sentinels removed in consequence, he was engaged during most part of his stay at Carisbrook in schemes for an escape. See Col. Cooke's "Narrative," printed with Herbert's Memoirs; and in Rushw. Abr. vi. 534. But his enemies were apprised of this intention, and even of an attempt to escape by removing a bar of his window, as appears by the letters from the committee of Derby House, Cromwell, and others, to Col. Hammond, published in 1764.