Note 319 — Chapter X

Rushw. Abr. v. 582, 594. This, as well as some letters taken on Lord Digby's rout at Sherborn about the same time, made a prodigious impression. "Many good men were sorry that the king's actions agreed no better with his words; that he openly protested before God with horrid imprecations that he endeavoured nothing so much as the preservation of the protestant religion and rooting out of popery; yet in the meantime, underhand, he promised to the Irish rebels an abrogation of the laws against them, which was contrary to his late expressed promises in these words, 'I will never abrogate the laws against the papists.' And again he said, 'I abhor to think of bringing foreign soldiers into the kingdom,' and yet he solicited the Duke of Lorrain, the French, the Danes, and the very Irish, for assistance." May's "Breviate of Hist. of Parliament" in Maseres's Tracts, i. 61. Charles had certainly never scrupled (I do not say that he ought to have done so) to make application in every quarter for assistance; and began in 1642 with sending a Col. Cochran on a secret mission to Denmark, in the hope of obtaining a subsidiary force from that kingdom. There was at least no danger to the national independence from such allies. "We fear this shall undo the king for ever, that no repentance shall ever obtain a pardon of this act, if it be true, from his parliaments." Baillie, ii. 185. Jan. 20, 1646. The king's disavowal had some effect; it seems as if even those who were prejudiced against him could hardly believe him guilty of such an apostasy, as it appeared in their eyes. P. 175. And, in fact, though the catholics had demanded nothing unreasonable either in its own nature or according to the circumstances wherein they stood, it threw a great suspicion on the king's attachment to his own faith, when he was seen to abandon altogether, as it seemed, the protestant cause in Ireland, while he was struggling so tenaciously for a particular form of it in Britain. Nor was his negotiation less impolitic than dishonourable. Without depreciating a very brave and injured people, it may be said with certainty that an Irish army could not have had the remotest chance of success against Fairfax and Cromwell; the courage being equal on our side, the skill and discipline incomparably superior. And it was evident that Charles could never reign in England but on a protestant interest.