Volume 3 / Book 4 — CHAPTER I.

CHARLES IN HIS CAPTIVITY.

Charles himself becomes now the central object. For now, one may say, he was left to think and act wholly for himself, and to work out by his own cogitations and conduct the rest of the long problem between him and his subjects. From this point, therefore, one follows him with a more sympathetic interest than can be accorded to any part of his previous career. When his captivity began (which may be said to have been when the Scots withdrew with him to Newcastle, May 1646) he was forty-five years and six months old. His hair was slightly grizzled; but otherwise he was in the perfect strength and health of a man of spare and middle-sized frame, whose habits had been always careful and temperate.

Henrietta-Maria was nine years younger than her husband. For two years they had not seen each other, her co-operation during that time having been given from her residence at or near Paris. There her effort had been to induce the French Queen Regent and Cardinal Mazarin to interfere actively for Charles, with or without the help of the Pope; and, when she had not succeeded in that, she had contented herself with sending to Charles from time to time her criticisms of his procedure and her notions of the kind of arrangement he ought to try to make with his subjects in the last extremity. The influence she had acquired over him was so great that these missives were perfectly efficient substitutes for her black eyes and French-English tongue when she had been with him. Unfortunately, however, the co-agency with his absent Queen to which he thus felt himself obliged, and to which indeed he had solemnly pledged himself, had become the more perplexing because, in the particular of greatest practical moment to both, he and she tended different ways. Of the two main concessions involved in any possible treaty with the Parliament, that of the abandonment of Episcopacy and that of the surrender of the Militia, Charles was most tenaciously predetermined against the first. It was a matter of conscience with him. Next to the death of Strafford, the thing in his past life which caused him the most continued private remorse was his assent, in Feb. 1641-2, to the Bill excluding Bishops from Parliament: whatever happened, he would sin no more in that direction. He would consent to any restriction of his kingly power in the Militia and other matters, rather than do more in repudiation of Episcopacy. Nay, he had reasoned himself into a belief that the course thus most to his conscience would be also the most expedient. Buoying himself up with a hope that, though Parliament demanded both concessions, they might let him off with one, he was of opinion that kingly power in the Militia and other matters might be more easily fetched back by a retained Episcopacy than a lost Episcopacy could be restored by any remnant of his power in the Militia. With Queen Henrietta-Maria the reasoning was different. To her, a Roman Catholic, back now among her co- religionists, what were all the disputes of British Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Independents, but battles of kites and crows? If her husband's kind of Protestant Church could have been retained, that of course would have been well; but, as things were, she had no patience with those scruples of conscience for which he would sacrifice the most substantial interests of himself and his family. His main object ought to be to retain as much of real kingly power as possible, to be enjoyed by himself and her, and transmitted to their descendants; and might not this be attained by a frank concession to the English of the Presbyterian settlement, only with a personal dispensation to the King if he desired it very much, a reservation of liberty for the Roman Catholics of Ireland and England, and, of course, a toleration for the Queen herself in her private Roman Catholic worship?

Actually, with all the King's firmness within himself on the Episcopacy question, the Queen's influence had so far prevailed as to bring him into a position where her views rather than his had chances in their favour. That he was now a captive at all, that he was still in Great Britain to maintain passively the struggle in which he had failed actively, was very much the Queen's doing. Again and again since the blow of Naseby, or at least since Montrose's ruin at Philiphaugh, it had been in the King's mind to abandon the struggle for the time, and withdraw to Holland, Denmark, or some other part of the Continent. That he had not, while the sea was open to him, adopted this course, was owing in part to his own irresolution, but very considerably to his dread of the Queen's displeasure. She did not want him to be on the Continent with her, a dependent on her relatives of the French Court or on the Dutch Stadtholder; she wanted him to remain in Britain and struggle on, somehow, anyhow. Nay, she had devised a particular way for him, and almost compelled him to it. A flight to the Scots and a pact with them on the basis of some acceptance of their Presbyterianism even for England: this was the course which she had urged on him ever since his defeat by Parliament had become certain; this was the course she had arranged for him by causing the French Court to send over Montreuil to negotiate for his reception among the Scots; and, though things had not turned out quite as she expected, and the Scots had shown no disposition to save Charles from the tremendous Nineteen Propositions of the English Parliament, still she did not regret that the course had been taken. It was for the King now to extricate himself from the Nineteen Propositions by his utmost ingenuity, and she did not doubt that this would be most easily done by adhering to the Scots, humouring them in all those parts of the Propositions that related to Presbytery, and evading or refusing the rest. [Footnote: For this and last paragraph see Charles I. in 1646, Introduction by Mr. Bruce, and the King's own Letters passim; Clar. 591-600 (Hist.) and 961 (Life); Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th ed.), II. 182-188, with notes.]

Irritating as the Queen's conduct in the main had been to Hyde, Hopton, and others of the Royalist exiles, there were particulars of selfishness in it which positively disgusted them. Having persisted in her determination that the Prince of Wales should reside with herself, and nowhere else, she had carried that point, as she did every other, with Charles; and since July the Prince, as well as his infant sister, the Princess Henrietta-Maria, had been under her charge. Rather than accompany the Prince to Paris, and undertake the responsibility of advising him in matters in which it would be necessary to detach him from his mother, Hyde, Hopton, and Lord Capel had remained in Jersey, happy for a time in their mutual society, and Hyde, as he tells us, passing the pleasantest hours of his life in the composition of parts of his History. Others of the King's late counsellors, such as Cottington, the Earl of Bristol, and Secretary Nicholas, had domiciled themselves in Rouen, Caen, or elsewhere in France, away from Paris. But round the Queen, in Paris or at St. Germains, there had gathered not a few of the exiles, gratifying the King more, as it proved, by this compliance than the others did by their prudery. Among these were Lord Jermyn, Lord Digby, Lord Percy, Lord Wilmot, and even Lord Colepepper, though he had at first agreed with Hyde in opposing the removal of the Prince from Jersey. Conspicuous in the same group of refugees was the veteran Thomas Hobbes, Not that he had gone to Paris at that time, as the others had done, in the mere course of Royalist duty. He had been there for several years on his own account, that he might be out of the turmoil of affairs at home, and free to pursue his speculations in quiet, with the relaxation of walks about Notre Dame and the Sorbonne, and much of the agreeable company of M. Gassendi. But the Prince could not be without a tutor, and Hobbes was chosen to instruct him in mathematics and whatever could be brought under that head. If what Clarendon says is true, the philosopher must have had curious remarks to make on the relations between his royal pupil and his mother, and on that lady's own behaviour. Though the Prince was sixteen years of age, she governed him with a high hand. "He never put his hat on before the Queen," says Clarendon; "nor was it desired that he should meddle in any business, or be sensible of the unhappy condition the royal family was in. The assignation which was made by the Court of France for the better support of the Prince was annexed to the monthly allowance given to the Queen, and received by her and distributed as she thought fit; such clothes and other things provided for his Highness as were necessary; her Majesty desiring to have it thought that the Prince lived entirely upon her, and that it would not consist with the dignity of the Prince of Wales to be a pensioner to the King of France. Hereby none of his Highness's servants had any pretence to ask money, but they were contented with what should be allowed them; which was dispensed with a very sparing hand; nor was the Prince himself ever master of ten pistoles to dispose as he liked. The Lord Jermyn was the Queen's chief officer, and governed all her receipts; and he loved plenty so well that he would not be without it, whatever others suffered who had been more acquainted with it." In this last sentence there is an insinuation of more than meets the eye. Henry Jermyn, originally one of the members for Bury St. Edmunds in the Long Parliament, and created Baron Jermyn by Charles (Sept. 8, 1643) for his conspicuous Royalism, had long been the special favourite of the Queen and the chief of her household; after Charles's death he became the Queen's second husband by a secret marriage; and so cautious a writer as Hallam does not hesitate to countenance the belief that his relations to the Queen were those of a husband while Charles was yet alive. [Footnote: Clar. 594-602 and 640; Hallam, Const. Hist. (10th ed.), II. 183 and 188, with footnotes; and Letters of the King, to the Queen, numbered xxvii., xxviii., xxxii., xxxv., and xxxviii. in Brace's Charles I. in 1646. In the last of these letters, dated Newcastle, July 23, Charles writes:—"Tell Jermyn, from me, that I will make him know the eminent service he hath done me concerning Pr. Charles his coming to thee, as soon as it shall please God to enable me to reward honest men. Likewise thank heartily, in my name, Colepepper, for his part in that business; but, above all, thou must make my acknowledgments to the Queen of England (for none else can do it), it being her love that maintains my life, her kindness that upholds my courage; which makes me eternally hers, CHARLES R."]

Such were Charles's circumstances, such was his real isolation, when his captivity began. It was to last all the rest of his life, or for more than two years and a half. The form and place of his captivity were indeed to be varied. There were to be four stages of it in all, the first only being his detention among the Scots at Newcastle. At the point which we have reached in our narrative, viz. the conclusion of the Civil War, three months of this first stage of the long captivity (May-August 1646) had already elapsed. We have now, therefore, to follow the King, with an eye also for the course of events round him, through the remainder of this stage of his captivity, and through the three stages which succeeded it.

FIRST STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: STILL WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE: AUG. 1646—JAN. 1646-7.

Balancings of Charles between the Presbyterians and the Independents—His Negotiations in the Presbyterian direction: The Hamiltons his Agents among the Scots—His Attempt to negotiate with the Independents: Will Murray in London—Interferences of the Queen from France: Davenant's Mission to Newcastle—The Nineteen Propositions unanswered: A Personal Treaty offered—Difficulties between the Scots and the English Parliament—Their Adjustment: Departure of the Scots from England, and Cession of Charles to the English—Westminster Assembly Business, and Progress of the Presbyterian Settlement.

Three months of Scottish entreaty and argumentation had failed to move Charles. He would not take the Covenant; he would not promise a pure and simple acceptance of Presbytery; and to the Nineteen Propositions of the English Parliament he had returned only the vaguest and most dilatory answer.

The English Parliamentarians, as a body, were furious, and the milder of them, with the Scots, were in despair. "We are here, by the King's madness, in a terrible plunge," Baillie writes from London, Aug. 18; "the powerful faction desires nothing so much as any colour to call the King and all his race away." In another letter on the same day he says, "We [the Scots in London] strive every day to keep the House of Commons from falling on the King's answer. We know not what hour they will close their doors and declare the King fallen from his throne; which if they once do, we put no doubt but all England would concur, and, if any should mutter against it, they would be quickly suppressed." And again and again in subsequent letters, through August, September, and October, the honest Presbyterian writes in the same strain, breaking his heart with the thought of the King's continued obstinacy. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 389 et seq.]

It must not be supposed that Charles was merely idle or inert in his obstinacy. In the wretched phrase of those who regard politics as a kind of game, he was "playing his cards" as well as he could. What was constantly present to his mind was the fact that his opponents were a composite body distracted by animosities among themselves. He saw the Presbyterians on the one wing and the Independents on the other wing of the English or main mass, and he saw this main mass variously disposed to the smaller and very sensitive Scottish mass, to whose keeping he had meanwhile entrusted himself. Hence he had not even yet given up the hope, which he had been cherishing and expressing only a month before his flight to the Scots, that he "should be able so to draw the Presbyterians or the Independents to side with him for extirpating one the other, that he should really be King again." [Footnote: From a letter to Lord Digby, dated March 26, 1646, quoted by Godwin (II. 132-3) from Carte.] He could not now, of course, pursue that policy in a direct manner or with the expectation of immediate success. But he could pursue it indirectly. He could extract from the Nineteen Propositions the two main sets of concessions which they demanded—the concession of Presbytery and what went along with that, and the concession of the Militia and what went along with that; and, holding the two sets of concessions in different hands, he could alternate between that division of his opponents which preferred the one set and that which preferred the other, so as to find out with which he could make the best arrangement. By a good deal of yielding on the Episcopacy question, coupled with a promise to suppress Sects and Heresy, might he not bribe the Scots and Presbyterians to join him against the Independents? By a good deal of yielding on the Militia question, coupled with a promise of Toleration for the Sects, might he not bribe the Independents to join him against the Presbyterians, and perhaps even save Episcopacy? Which course would be the best? Might not that be found out most easily by trying both?

In accordance so far with the advices from France, Charles had begun with the Presbyterian "card," and had played it first among the Scots. We have seen the classification he had made of the Scots, from his observation of them at Newcastle, into the four parties of the Montroses, the Neutrals, the Hamiltons, and the Campbells. The Montroses, or absolute Royalists, were now nowhere. After having lurked on in his Highland retreat, with the hope of still performing some feat of Hannibal in the service of his captive Majesty, Montrose had reluctantly obeyed the orders to capitulate and disband which had been sent to him as well as to all the Royalist commanders of garrisons in England, and, without having been permitted the consolation of going to Newcastle to kiss his Majesty's hand, had embarked, with a few of his adherents, at Stonehaven, Sept. 3, in a ship bound to Norway. The first of the four parties of Scots in the King's reckoning of them being thus extinct, and the second or Neutrals making now no separate appearance, the real division, if any, was into the Hamiltons and the Campbells. The division was not for the present very apparent, for Hamilton and his brother Lanark had not been ostensibly less urgent than Argyle and Loudoun that his Majesty would accept the Nineteen Propositions. But underneath this apparent accord his Majesty had discerned the slumbering rivalry, and the possibility of turning it to account. He had regained the Hamiltons. When the Duke, indeed, came to Newcastle in July to kiss the hand of his royal kinsman from whom he had been estranged, and by whose orders he had been in prison for more than two years, the meeting had been rather awkward. Both had "blushed at once." But forgiveness had passed between them; and, though the King in his letters to the Queen continued to speak of the "bragging" of the Hamiltons, and of his "little belief" in them, the two black-haired brothers did not know that, but were glad to hear themselves again addressed familiarly by the King as "Cousin James" and "Lanark." Through these Hamiltons might not a party among the Scots be formed that should be less stiff than Argyle, Loudoun, and the others were for concurrence with the English in all the Nineteen Propositions? The experiment was worth trying, and in the course of September the King did try it in a very curious manner.

The Duke of Hamilton, who had meanwhile paid a visit to Scotland, had then returned to Newcastle at the head of a new deputation from the Committee of the Scottish Estates, charged with the duty of reasoning with his Majesty. Besides the Duke, there were in the deputation the Earls of Crawford and Cassilis, Lords Lindsay and Balmerino, three lesser barons, and three burgesses. They had had an interview with the King, and had pressed upon him the Covenant and the Nineteen Propositions by all sorts of new arguments, but without effect. The next day, however, they received a communication from his Majesty in writing. After expressing his regret that his conversation with them the day before had not been satisfactory, he explains more fully an arrangement which he had then proposed. Whatever might be his own opinion of the Covenant, he by no means desired from the Scots anything contrary to their Covenant. But was it not the main end of the Covenant that Presbyterial Government should be legally settled in England? Well, he was willing to consent to this after a particular scheme. "Whereas I mentioned that the Church- government should be left to my conscience and those of my opinion, I shall be content to restrict it to some few dioceses, as Oxford, Winchester, Bristol, Bath and Wells, and Exeter, leaving all the rest of England fully under the Presbyterian Government, with the strictest clauses you shall think upon against Papists and Independents." In other words, Charles offered a scheme by which Presbytery and Episcopacy should share England between them on a strict principle of non-toleration of anything else, Presbytery taking about four-fifths, and Episcopacy about one-fifth. He argues eagerly for this scheme, and points out its advantages. "It is true," he says, "I desire that my own conscience and those that are of the same opinion with me might be preserved; which I confess doth not as yet totally take away Episcopal Government: but then consider withal that this [scheme] will take away all the superstitious sects and heresies of the Papists and Independents; to which you are no less obliged by your Covenant than the taking away of Episcopacy." How far this scheme of the King was discussed or even published does not appear. It was one which the Scottish Commissioners collectively could not even profess to entertain; and, however well disposed Hamilton may have been privately to abet it, he dared not give it any countenance openly. [Footnote: Authorities for this and the last paragraph are— Napier's Montrose, 631 et seq.; Burnet's Lives of the Hamiltons (ed. 1852), 359-375; Rushworth, VI. 232, and 327-329; King's Letters l. and lxiii. in Brace's Charles I, in 1646. The remarkable Paper of the King proposing a compromise between Episcopacy and Presbytery is given entire both by Rushworth and by Burnet It is not dated, but is one of several letters given by both these authorities as written by the King in September 1646. Burnet, who had a copy before him in Lanark's hand, notes the absence of the date. In a postscript to the letter, however, as given in Rushworth, the King says: "I require you to give a particular and full account hereof to the General Assembly in Scotland;" and in Burnet's copy the words are "to the General Assembly now sitting in Scotland." This phrase would refer the Paper to some time between June 3 and June 18 when the Assembly was last in session, its next meeting not being till August 4, 1647. In that case the Paper must have been delivered not to the deputation mentioned in the text, but to the prior deputation from Scotland. of which Lanark was one (antè, pp. 412-418), This is possible; but it does not lessen the significance of the document in connexion with the King's dealings with the Hamiltons in September, The extant copy of the Paper seen by Burnet was in Lanark's hand; it must therefore have been mainly through the Hamiltons that Charles wanted to feel the pulse of Scotland respecting his proposal; and the proposal, if first made in June, must have been a topic between the King and the Hamiltons in subsequent months. Altogether, however, I suspect, the proposal did not go far beyond the King and the Hamiltons, I have found no distinct cognisance of it in Baillie or in the Acts of the Assembly of 1646.]

And so, with a heavy heart, Hamilton, in the end of September, returned to Scotland. Foreseeing the King's ruin, he had resolved to withdraw altogether from the coil of affairs, and retire to some place on the Continent. In vain did his brother Lanark fight against this resolution; and not till he had received several affectionate letters from the King did he consent to remain in Britain on some last chance of being useful. Actually, from this time onwards, Hamilton and Lanark, though not yet daring a decidedly separate policy from that of Argyle and his party in Scotland, did work for the King as much as they could within limits. He continued to correspond with both, but chiefly with Lanark.

Not the less, while the King was trying to bargain with the Presbyterians through the Hamiltons, was he intriguing in the opposite direction. His agent here was a certain Mr. William Murray, son of the parish-minister of Dysart in Scotland, and known familiarly as Will Murray. He had been page or "whipping-boy" to Charles in his boyhood, had been in his service ever since, had been recently in France, but had returned early in 1646. His connexions with the King being so close, and his wiliness notorious, he had been arrested by Parliament and committed to the Tower as a spy; and it had cost the Scottish Commissioners some trouble—Baillie for one, but especially Gillespie, who was related to Murray by marriage—to procure his release on bail. This having been accomplished in August, he had been allowed to go to his master in Newcastle, the Scottish Commissioners vouching that he would use all his influence to bring the King into the right path. He had been well instructed by Baillie as to all the particulars of the duty so expected from him, not the least of which, in Baillie's judgment, was that he should get the King to dismiss Hobbes from the tutorship of the Prince at Paris. Once with the King, however, Murray had forgotten Baillie's lectures, and relapsed into his wily self. "Will Murray is let loose upon me from London," the King writes to the Queen Sept. 7; but on the 14th he writes that Murray has turned out very reasonable, and that, though he will not absolutely trust him, the rather because he is not a client of the Hamiltons, but "plainly inclines more to Argyle," yet he hopes to make good use of him. On the 2lst we hear of "a private treaty" he has made with Murray; and the result was that, in October, Murray, created Earl of Dysart in prospect, was back in London on a secret mission, the general aim of which was the conciliation of the Independents. On the condition that the King should surrender on the Militia question, give up the Militia even for his whole life, would the Parliamentary leaders consent to the restoration of a Limited Episcopacy after three or five years? It was a dangerous mission for Murray, "so displeasing that it served only to put his neck to a new hazard;" and he was obliged to keep himself and his proposals as much within doors as he could. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 391-396, and Appendix to same vol., 509, 510; Burnet's Hamiltons, 378; and Hallam, II. 187-8, and Notes.] To the Queen at Paris her husband's continued hesitation on the Episcopacy question seemed positively fatuous. Her letters, as well as Jermyn's and Colepepper's, had not ceased to urge bold concession on that question, and a paction with the Scots for Presbytery. Now, accordingly, their counsels to this effect became more emphatic. The Queen thought the King perfectly right in refusing his personal signature to the Covenant, and advised him to remain steady to that refusal, and also to his resolution not to let the Covenant be imposed upon others; she was moreover sure that he ought not to abandon Ireland or the English Roman Catholics to the mercies of Parliament; but, with these exceptions, she would close with the Scots and Presbyterians in the matter of Church- government, if by that means she could save the Militia and the real substance of kingly prerogative. "We must let them have their way in what relates to the Bishops," she wrote to Charles, Oct. 9/19; "which thing I know goes quite against your heart, and, I swear to you, against mine too, if I saw any one way left of saving them and not destroying you. But, if you are lost, they are without resource; whereas, if you should be able again to head an army, we shall restore them. Keep the Militia, and never give it up, and by that all will come back—(Conservez-vous la Militia, et n'abandonnez jamais, et par cela tout reviendra)." Colepepper, always rough-speaking, used more decided language. Nothing remained for the King, he wrote, but a union with the Scottish nation and the English Presbyterians against the Independents and Anti-monarchists; and to secure such a union Episcopacy must go overboard. His Majesty's conscience! Did his Majesty really believe that Episcopacy only was jure divino, and that there could be no true Church without Bishops? If so, Colepepper personally did not agree with him, and doubted whether there were six Protestants in the world that did. "Come," he breaks out at last, "the question in short is whether you will choose to be a King of Presbytery, or no King and yet Presbytery or perfect Independency to be." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 389 et seq.; Rushworth VI. 327 et seq.; Clarendon, 605; Hallam, II. 185-6; and Queen's Letter in the original French in Appendix to Mr. Bruce's Charles I. in 1646.]

It was not only by letter that such counsels from France reached Charles. Bellievre, who had succeeded Montreuil as French ambassador in England, and had been much with the King at Newcastle, plying him with the same counsels, had reported to Mazarin that some person of credit among the English exiles should be sent over, expressly to reason with Charles on the all-important point. They seem to have had some difficulty at Paris in finding a proper person for the mission. To have sent Hobbes, even if he would have gone, would have been too absurd. Hobbes a successor of Alexander Henderson in the task of persuading the King to accept Presbytery! The person sent, however, was the one next to Hobbes in literary repute among the Royalist exiles, the one most liked by Hobbes, and oftenest in his company. He was no other than the laureate and dramatist Will Davenant, known on the London boards by that name for a good many years before the war, but now Sir William Davenant, knighted by the King in Sept. 1643 for his Army-plotting and his gallant soldiering. He was over forty years of age, and had just turned, or was turning, a Roman Catholic in Paris, or perhaps rather a Roman Catholic Hobbist. Clarendon, with a sneer at Davenant's profession of play-writer, makes merry over the choice of such an agent by the Queen, Jermyn, and Colepepper, and relates the result with some malice. Arrived at Newcastle late in September, or early in October, Davenant had delivered his letters to the King, and proceeded to argue according to his instructions. Charles had heard him for a while with some patience, but in a manner to show that he did not like the subject of his discourse. Determined, however, to do his work thoroughly, Davenant had gone on, becoming more fluent and confidential, It was the advice of all his Majesty's friends that he should yield on the question of Episcopacy! "What friends?" said the King. "My Lord Jermyn," replied Davenant. His Majesty was not aware that Lord Jermyn had given his attention to Church questions. "My Lord Colepepper," said Davenant, trying to mend his answer. "Colepepper has no religion," said the King, bluntly; and then he asked whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer (i.e. Clarendon himself, then Sir Edward Hyde) agreed with Colepepper and Jermyn. Davenant could not say he did, for Sir Edward was not in Paris with the Prince, as he ought to have been, but in Jersey: and he proceeded to convey from the Queen some insinuations to Hyde's discredit. The King, Clarendon is glad to tell, had defended him, and said he had perfect trust in him, and was sure he would never desert the Church. Something of the wit, or of the Roman Catholic Hobbist and freethinker, had then flashed out in the speech of the distressed envoy. He "offered some reasons of his own in which he mentioned the Church slightingly." On this the King had blazed into proper indignation, given poor Davenant "a sharper reprehension than he ever did to any other man," told him never to show his face again, and frowned him to the door. And so, says Clarendon, "the poor man, who had indeed very good affections," returned to Paris crestfallen. [Footnote: Clar. 606, and Wood's Ath. III. 801, 805. The King's Letters mention Davenant's presence at Newcastle and the purport of his argument, but without tolling of any such scene between him and Davenant as Clarendon describes. Davenant had not arrived at Newcastle Sept. 26, but was there Oct. 3. He was back in Paris in November.]

Perturbed by the Queen's difference from him on the matter he had most at heart, and saddened by the failure of his own schemings in opposite directions, Charles appears to have sunk for a time into a state of sullen passiveness, varied by thoughts of abdication or escape. By December, however, he had again roused himself. By that time, Will Murray having returned to him with fresh suggestions from London, he had made up his mind to send to the English Parliament an Answer to their Nineteen Propositions in detail. He had prepared such an Answer, and on the 4th of December he sent a draft of it to the Earl of Lanark in Edinburgh. In this draft he goes over the Propositions one by one, signifying his agreement where it is complete, or the amount of his agreement where it is only partial. In such matters as the management of Ireland, laws against the Roman Catholics, &c., he will yield to Parliament; but he would like an act of general oblivion for Delinquents. In the matter of the Militia his offer is to resign all power for ten years. In the matter of the Church he offers his consent to Presbytery for three years, as had been settled by Parliament, with these provisions—(l) that there be "such forbearance to those who through scruple of conscience cannot in everything practise according to the said rules as may consist with the rule of the Word of God and the peace of the kingdom;" (2) "that his Majesty and his household be not hindered from that form of God's service which they have formerly done;" and (3) that he be allowed to add twenty persons of his own nomination to the Westminster Assembly, to aid that body and Parliament in considering what Church-government shall be finally adjusted after the three years' trial of Presbytery. Altogether, the concessions were the largest he had yet offered, and an elated consciousness of this appears in the letter which conveyed the Draft to Lanark for the consideration of him and his friends in Scotland. Only on one point is he dubious. The clause promising a toleration for scrupulous consciences may not please the Scots! He explains, however, that that clause had been inserted "purposely," to make the whole "relish the better" with the English Independents, and adds, "If my native subjects [the Scots] will so countenance this Answer that I may be sure they will stick to me in what concerns my temporal power, I will not only expunge that clause, but likewise make what declarations I shall be desired against the Independents, and that really without any reserve or equivocation." This was Charles all over!—Alas! Lanark's reply was unfavourable. The Toleration clause, he wrote, was but one of the stumbling-blocks. As far as he could ascertain Scottish opinion, he dared not "promise the least countenance" to the King's proposals about the Church, omitting as they did all mention of the Covenant, and contemplating an entire re-opening of the debate on Presbytery. Nor was it from Lanark only that the Draft met discouragement. From the Queen, to whom also a copy had been sent, the comments that came, though from a point of view different from Lanark's, were far more cutting. The surrender of the Militia for ten years amazed her. "By that you have also confirmed them the Parliament for ten years; which is as much as to say that we shall never see an end to our misfortunes. For while the Parliament lasts you are not King; and, for me, I shall never again set foot in England. And with this shift of your granting the Militia you have cut your own throat (Et avec le biais que vous avez accordé la Milice, vous vous este coupé la gorge)." On the promised concession with respect to Ireland she remarks: "I am astonished that the Irish do not give themselves to some foreign king; you will force them to it at last, seeing themselves made a sacrifice."—The result was that, though the terms of Charles's draft Answer got about, and he was in a manner committed to them, the message which he did formally send to Parliament, on the 20th of December, was quite different from the Draft. It explained that, though he had bent all his thoughts on the preparation of a written Answer to the Nineteen Propositions, "the more he endeavoured it he more plainly saw that any answer he could make would be subject to misinformations and misconstructions." He repeats, therefore, his earnest desire for a personal treaty in London. [Footnote: Burnet's Hamiltons, 381-389 (for the interesting correspondence between the King and Lanark); King's Letters, liii.-lxii. in Bruce's Charles I. in 1646, and Queen's Letters in Appendix to the same: Rushworth, VI. 393; and Parl. Hist. III. 537.]

Meanwhile, quite independently of the King, his messages, or his wishes, matters had been creeping on to a definite issue. For four months now there had been a most intricate debate between the Scots and the English Parliament on the distinct and yet inseparable questions of the Disposal of the King's Person and the Settlement of Money Accounts. Though the reasoning on both sides on the first question was from Law and Logic, it was heated by international animosity. Lord Loudoun was the chief speaker for the Scottish Commissioners in the London conferences; the great speech on the English side was thought to be that of Mr. Thomas Challoner, a Recruiter for Richmond in Yorkshire; but the speeches, published and unpublished, were innumerable, and a mere abstract of them fills forty pages in Rushworth. Not represented by so much printed matter now, but as prolix then, was the dispute on the question of Accounts. The claim of the Scots for army-arrears and indemnity was for a much vaster sum than the English would acknowledge. This item and that item were contested, and the Accounts of the two nations could not be brought to correspond. Not even when the Scots consented to a composition for a slump sum roughly calculated was there an approach to agreement. The Scots thought 500,000_l_. little enough; the English thought the sum exorbitant. Equally on this question as on the other it was the Independents that were fiercest against the Scots and the most careless of their feelings; and again and again the Presbyterians had to deprecate the rudeness shown to their "Scottish brethren." And so on and on the double dispute had wound its slow length between the two sets of Commissioners, the English Parliament looking on and interfering, and the Scottish Parliament, after its meeting on the 3rd of November, contributing its opinions and votes from Edinburgh. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 322-372.]

To Charles in Newcastle all this had been inexpressibly interesting. A rupture between the English and the Scots, such as would occasion the retreat of the Scots into their own country, carrying him with them, was the very greatest of his chances; and it was in the fond dream of such a chance that he had procrastinated his direct dealings with the English Parliament. But from this dream there was to be a rude awakening. It came in December, precisely at the time when he was corresponding with the Queen and Lanark over his proposed compromises on all the Nineteen Propositions. Already, indeed, there had been signs that the dispute between the two nations was working itself to an end. By laying entirely aside the question of the Disposal of the King's person, and prosecuting the question of Accounts by itself, difficulties had been removed and progress made. It had been agreed that the sum to be paid to the Scots should be 400,000_l._ in all, one-half to be paid before they left England, and the rest in subsequent instalments; and actually on the 16th of December the first moiety of 200,000_l._ was off from London in chests and bags, packed in thirty-six carts, to be under the charge of Skippon in the North till it should be delivered to the Scots. Yes! but would it ever be delivered to the Scots? Not a word was in writing as to the surrender of the King by the Scots, but only about their surrender of the English towns and garrisons held by them; and, so far as appeared, the money was to be theirs even if they kept the King. Here, however, lay the very skill of the policy that had been adopted. Instead of persisting in the theoretical question of the relative rights of the two nations in the matter of the custody of the King, and wrangling over that question in its unfortunate conjunction with a purely pecuniary question, it had been resolved to close the pecuniary question by putting down the money in sight of the Scots as undisputedly theirs on other grounds, and allowing them to decide for themselves, under a sense of their duty to all the three kingdoms, whether they would let Charles go to Scotland with them or would leave him in England. Precisely in this way was the issue reached. But oh! with what trembling among the Scots, what wavering of the balance to the very last! Dec. 16, the very day when the money left London, there was a debate in the Scottish Parliament or Convention of Estates in Edinburgh, the result of which was a vote that the Scottish Commissioners in London should be instructed to "press his Majesty's coming to London with honour, safety, and freedom," for a personal treaty, and that resolutions should go forth from the Scottish nation "to maintain monarchical government in his Majesty's person and posterity, and his just title to the crown of England." This vote, passing over altogether the question of the surrender of the King, and pledging the Scots to his interests generally, was a stroke in his favour by the Hamilton party in the Convention, carried by their momentary preponderance. But the flash was brief. There was in Edinburgh another organ of Scottish opinion, more powerful at that instant than even the Convention of Estates. This was the Commission of the General Assembly of the Kirk, or that Committee of the last General Assembly whose business it was to look after all affairs of importance to the Kirk till the next General Assembly should meet. The Commission then in power, by appointment of the Assembly of June 1646, consisted of eighty-nine ministers and about as many lay-elders; and among these latter were the Marquis of Argyle, the Earls of Crawford, Marischal, Glencairn, Cassilis, Dunfermline, Tullibardine, Buccleuch, Lothian, and Lanark, besides many other lords and lairds. It was in fact a kind of ecclesiastical Parliament by the side of the nominal Parliament, and with most of the Parliamentary leaders in it, but these so encompassed by the clergy that the Hamilton influence was slight in it and the Argyle policy all- prevailing. Now, on the very day after that of the Hamilton resolutions in Parliament for the King (Dec. 17), and when Parliament was again in debate, the Commission spoke out. In "A Solemn and Seasonable Warning to all Estates and Degrees of Persons throughout the Land" they proclaimed their view of the national duty. Nothing could be more dangerous, they said, than that his Majesty should be allowed to come into Scotland, "he not having as yet subscribed the League and Covenant, nor satisfied the lawful desires of his loyal subjects in both nations;" and they therefore prayed that this might be prevented, and that, in justice to the English, to whom the Scots were bound by the Covenant, the King should not be withdrawn at that moment from English influence and surroundings. This opinion of the Commission at once turned the balance in the Convention. The resolutions of the previous day were rescinded; and on that and the few following days it was agreed, Hamilton and Lanark protesting, that nothing less than the King's absolute consent to the Nineteen Propositions would be satisfactory, and that, unless he made his peace with the English, he could not be received in Scotland. When the letters with this news reached Charles at Newcastle, he was playing a game of chess. He read them, it is said, and went on playing. He had a plan of escape on hand about the time, and the very ship was at Tynemouth. But it could not be managed. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 389-393; Burnet's Hamiltons, 389-393; Baillie, III. 4, 5; Parl. Hist. III. 533-536.]

January 1646-7 was an eventful month. On the 1st it was settled by the two Houses that Holdenby House, usually called Holmby House, in Northamptonshire, should be the King's residence during farther treaty with him; and on the 6th the Commissioners were appointed who should receive him from the Scots, and conduct him to Holmby. The Commissioners for the Lords were the Earls of Pembroke and Denbigh and Lord Montague; those for the Commons were Sir William Armyn (for whom Sir James Harrington was substituted), Sir John Holland, Sir Walter Earle, Sir John Coke, Mr. John Crewe, and General Browne. On the 13th these Commissioners set out from London, with two Assembly Divines, Mr. Stephen Marshall and Mr. Caryl, in their train, besides a physician and other appointed persons. On the 23rd they were at Newcastle. On the whole, the King seemed perfectly content. When the English Commissioners first waited on him and informed him that they were to convey him to Holmby, he "inquired how the ways were." On Saturday, Jan. 30, the Scots marched out of Newcastle, leaving the King with the English Commissioners, and Skippon marched in. Within a few days more, the 200,000_l._ having been punctually paid, and receipts taken in most formal fashion, as prescribed by a Treaty signed at London Dec. 23, the Scots were out of England. The Scottish political Commissioners (Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Messrs. Erskine, Kennedy, and Barclay) had left London immediately after the conclusion of the Treaty. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Jan. 7 and 12, 1646-7; Rushworth, VI. 393-398; Parl. Hist. III. 533-536; Burnet's Hamiltons, 393-397. Burnet has a curious blunder here, and founds a joke on it. Before the Scottish Commissioners left London, he says, there was a debate in the Commons as to the form of the thanks to be tendered to them. It was proposed, he says, to thank them for their civilities and good offices, but the Independents carried it by 24 votes to strike out the words good offices and thank them for their civilities only. "And so all those noble characters they were wont to give the Scottish Commissioners on every occasion concluded now in this, that they were well-bred gentlemen." On turning to the Commons Journals for the day in question (Dec. 24, 1646), one finds what really occurred. It was reported that Loudoun, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, were about to take their leave, and that they desired to know whether they could do any service for the English Parliament with the Parliament of Scotland. The vote was on the question whether thanks should be returned to them for all their civilities and for this their last kind offer. The Independents (Haselrig and Evelyn, tellers) wanted it to stand so; the Presbyterians (Stapleton and Sir Roger North, tellers) wanted an addition to be made, i.e., I suppose, wanted some particular use to be made of the offer of the Commissioners to convey a message to the Scottish Parliament. Actually it was carried by 129 to 105 that the question should stand as proposed by the Independents; and, the Lords concurring next day, the Commissioners were thanked in those terms.]

With the Scottish lay Commissioners, there returned to Scotland at this time a Scot who has been more familiar to us in these pages than any of them. For a long time, and especially since Henderson had gone, Baillie had been anxious to return home. Having now obtained the necessary permission, he had packed up his books, had taken a formal farewell of the Westminster Assembly, in which he had sat for more than three years, had received the warmest thanks of that body and the gift of a silver cup, and so, in the company of Loudoun and Lauderdale, had made his journey northwards, first to Newcastle, thence to Edinburgh, and thence to his family in Glasgow. On the whole, he had left the Londoners, and the English people generally, at a moment when the state of things among them was pleasing to his Presbyterian heart. For, both in the Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly, notwithstanding the engrossing interest of the negotiations with and concerning the King, there had been, in the course of the last five months, a good deal of progress towards the completion of the Presbyterian settlement. Thus, in Parliament, there had been (Oct. 9) "An Ordinance for the abolishing of Archbishops and Bishops within the Kingdom of England and the Dominion of Wales, and for settling their lands and possessions upon Trustees for the use of the Commonwealth." It was an Ordinance the first portion of which may seem but the unnecessary execution of a long-dead corpse; but the second portion was of practical importance, and prepared the way for another measure (Nov. 16), entitled "An Ordinance for appointing the sale of the Bishops' lands for the use of the Commonwealth." Then in the Westminster Assembly there had been such industry over the Confession of Faith that nineteen chapters of it had been presented to the Commons on Sept. 25, a duplicate of the same to the Lords Oct. 1, and so with the residue, till on Dec. 7 and Dec. 12 the two Houses respectively had the text of the entire work before them. The Houses had not yet passed the work, or permitted it to be divulged, but had only ordered a certain number of copies to be printed for their own use; nay they had, with what seemed an excess of punctiliousness, required the Assembly to send in their Scriptural proofs for all the Articles of the Confession; but still, when Baillie left London, that great business might be considered off the Assembly's hands. A good deal also had been done in the Catechisms by the Assembly; and, if the Assembly's revised edition of Rous's Metrical Version of the Psalms had not received full Parliamentary enactment, that was because the Lords still stood out for Mr. Barton's competing Version. It was satisfactory to Baillie that, on his return to Scotland, he could report to his countrymen that so much had been done for the Presbyterianizing of England. There were, indeed, drawbacks. Both in London and in Lancashire, where the machinery of Presbytery was already in operation, the procedure was a little languid; and in other parts of England, "owing to the sottish negligence of the ministers and gentry of the shires more than the Parliament," they were wofully slow in setting up the Elderships and the Presbyteries. Even worse than this was the unchecked abundance of Sects and Heresies throughout England, and the prevalence of the poisonous tenet of Toleration. An Ordinance for the suppression of Blasphemies and Heresies, which had been occupying a Grand Committee of the Commons through September, October, November, and December, had not yet emerged into light. These were certainly serious causes of regret to Baillie, but his mood altogether was one of thankfulness and hope. "This is the incomparably best people I ever knew if they were in the hands of any governors of tolerable parts," had been his verdict on the English in a letter of Dec. 7, when he was preparing to take leave of them. An Ordinance against Heresies and Blasphemies would make them perfect, and till that came were there not substitutes? Had not a number of the orthodox ministers of London put forth a famous treatise, called Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici, arguing for the Divine Right of Presbytery in a manner which left nothing to be desired? The Second Part of Baillie's own Dissuasive from the Errors of the Time, published just as he was leaving London (Dec. 28, 1646), and intended as a parting-gift to the English, might also do some good! And, though he himself was no longer to sit in the Westminster Assembly, had he not left there his excellent colleagues, Samuel Rutherford and George Gillespie? [Footnote: Baillie, II. 397-403, 406-7, 410-416, and III. 1-5; Rushworth, VI. 373-388; Parl. Hist. III. 518; Commons and Lords Journals of dates given; Neal's Puritans III. 350-51.]

SECOND STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: AT HOLMBY HOUSE: FEB. 1646-7—JUNE 1647.

The King's Manner of Life at Holmby—New Omens in his favour from the Relations of Parliament to its own Army—Proposals to disband the Army and reconstruct part of it for service in Ireland—Summary of Irish Affairs since 1641—Army's Anger at the proposal to disband it—View of the State of the Army: Medley of Religious Opinions in it: Passion for Toleration: Prevalence of Democratic Tendencies: The Levellers— Determination of the Presbyterians for the Policy of Disbandment, and Votes in Parliament to that effect—Resistance of the Army: Petitions and Remonstrances from the Officers and Men: Regimental Agitators—Cromwell's Efforts at Accommodation: Fairfax's Order for a General Rendezvous— Cromwell's Adhesion to the Army—The Rendezvous at Newmarket, and Joyce's Abduction of the King from Holmby—Westminster Assembly Business: First Provincial Synod of London: Proceedings for the Purgation of Oxford University.

Holmby or Holdenby House in Northamptonshire had been built by Lord Chancellor Hatton in Elizabeth's time, but afterwards purchased by Queen Anne for her son Charles while he was but Duke of York. It was a stately mansion, with gardens, very much to the King's taste. It was not till the 16th of February that he arrived there, the journey from Newcastle having been broken by halts at various places, at each of which crowds had gathered respectfully to see him, and poor people had begged for his royal touch to cure them of the king's evil. Near Nottingham he had been met by General Fairfax, who had dismounted, kissed his hand, and then turned back, conveying him through that town, and conversing with him. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 398; Whitlocke (ed. 1853), II. 115; Sir Thomas Herbert's Memoirs of the last Two Years of the Reign of King Charles I..(1813), 13-15. Herbert was a kinsman and protégé of the Pembroke family, who had travelled much in the East, published an account of his travels, and had acquired quiet and æsthetic tastes. He had been in various posts of Parliamentary employment, procured for him by Philip, Earl of Pembroke; but, having accompanied that Earl when he went to Newcastle as one of the Commissioners to take charge of the King, he had attracted the King's regard, so that, on the dismissal of some of the King's attendants at Holmby, he was selected to be one of the grooms of the bedchamber. He remained faithfully with the King to his death, cherished his memory afterwards, was made a baronet by Charles II. after the Restoration, and died in 1681. Two or three years before his death he wrote, at a friend's request, the above-mentioned Memoirs, containing interesting reminiscences and anecdotes of Charles in his captivity. They were reprinted in 1702 and again in 1813 (see a memoir of Herbert in Wood's Ath. IV. 15-42).]

During the four months of the King's stay at Holmby his mode of life was very regular and pleasant. The house and its appurtenances, being large, easily accommodated not only the King and all his permitted servants, but also the Parliamentary Commissioners and their retinue, besides Messrs. Marshall and Caryl, Colonel Graves as military commandant, and the under- officers and soldiers of the guard. The allowance of Parliament for the King's own expenses was 50_l._ a day, so that "all the tables were as well furnished as they used to be when his Majesty was in a peaceful and flourishing state." At meal-times the Commissioners always waited upon his Majesty, and the two chaplains were generally also present. It was almost his only complaint that Parliament persisted in keeping these two reverend gentlemen about him, and would not let him have chaplains of his own persuasion. But, though he declined the religious services of Messrs. Marshall and Caryl, and said grace at table himself rather than ask them to do so, he was civil to them personally, and allowed such of his servants as chose to attend their sermons. On Sundays Charles kept himself quite retired to his private devotions and meditations, and on other days two or three hours were always spent in reading and study. Among his favourite English books were Bishop Andrewes's Sermons, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Herbert's Poems, Fairfax's Tasso, Harrington's Ariosto, Spenser's Faery Queene, and, above all, Shakespeare's Plays, his copy of the Second Folio Edition of which is still in extant, with the words "Dum spiro spero: C. R." written on it by his own hand. But he read also in Greek and Latin, and fluently in French, Italian, and Spanish. At dinner and supper he ate of but a few dishes, and drank sparingly of beer, or wine and water mixed by himself. He disliked tobacco extremely, and was offended by any whiff of it near his presence. His chief relaxations were playing at chess after meals, and walking much in the garden; but, not unfrequently, as he was fond of bowls and there was no good bowling-green at Holmby, he would ride to Lord Spencer's house at Althorp, about three miles off, or even to Lord Vaux's at Harrowden, nine miles off, at both of which places there were excellent bowling-greens and beautiful grounds. In these rides, of course, he was well attended and watched, but still not so strictly but that a packet could sometimes be conveyed to him by a seeming country- bumpkin on a bridge, or a letter in cipher entrusted to a sure hand. Always through the night at Holmby a light was kept burning in the King's chamber, in the form of a wax-cake and wick inside a large silver basin on a low table by the bed, on which also were placed the King's two watches and the silver bell with which he called his grooms. This custom had begun at Oxford and had become invariable. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 452-4; Parl. Hist. III. 551 and 557-9; Clar. 608; but chiefly Herbert's Memoirs, 15-25, 61-65, 124-126, and 131. It is remarkable that Herbert, who mentions the other favourite English books of Charles named in the text, does not mention Shakespeare; for Charles's copy of the Second Folio, now in the Royal Library at Windsor, was given to Herbert himself by Charles before his death, and bears, in addition to the inscription in Charles's hand, this in Herbert's, "Ex dono Serenissimi Regis Car. servo suo humiliss. T. Herbert" (Lowndes by Bohn, 2,257). Herbert mentions that Dum spiro spero was a favourite motto with Charles, inscribed by him on many books. But that Shakespeare was a prime favourite of Charles we have Milton's authority in the well-known phrase in the [Greek: Gakonoklastæs]—"one whom we well know was the closet companion of these his solitudes, William Shakespeare."]

Of course there were continued negotiations between Charles and the Parliament. Anything done in this way, however, during the four months of the stay at Holmby, hardly deserves notice. For at that time there was a huge new clouding of the air in England, pregnant with no one knew what changes, and making the postponement of conclusions between the King and the Parliament quite natural on both sides. All the world has heard of the extraordinary quarrel between the Long Parliament and its own victorious Army.

The war being over, and the troublesome Scots out of England at last, what remained but to disband the Parliamentarian Army, and enter on a period of peace, retrenched expense, and renewed industry? This was what all the orthodox politicians, and especially all the Presbyterians, were saying. In the very act of saying it, however, they faltered and explained. By disbanding they did not mean complete disbanding; some force must still be kept up in England for garrison duty, as a police against fresh Royalist attempts; they meant the disbanding of all beyond the moderate force needed for such use; nay, they did not even then mean actual disbanding of all the surplus; they contemplated the immediate re- enlistment and re-organization of a goodly portion of the surplus for service in another employment. What that was, who needed to be told? Did there not remain for England a tremendous and long-postponed duty beyond her own bounds? Now at length, now at length, was there not leisure to attend to the case of unhappy Ireland?

Unhappy Ireland! Her history at any time is hard to write; but no human intellect could make a clear story of those five particular years of triple distractedness which intervene between the murderous Insurrection of 1641-2 (Vol. II. pp. 308-314) and the beginning of 1647. One can but note a few points.

Through the first year or more of the Insurrection there seemed to be but two parties in Ireland. There was the vast party of the Insurgents, or Confederates, including the whole Roman Catholic population of the island, both the old Irish natives, who had mainly begun the Rebellion, and the Catholics of English descent who had joined in it. Gradually the mere spasmodic atrocity of the first Rebels had been changed into something like an organized warfare, commanded in chief by Generals Preston and Owen Roe O'Neile, while the political conduct of the Rebellion and the government of Confederate Ireland had been provided for by the assembling at Kilkenny of a Parliament of Roman Catholic lords, prelates, and deputies from towns and counties, and by the appointment by that body of county-councils, provincial councils, and a supreme executive council. The other party in Ireland was the small Protestant party, consisting of the mixed English and Scottish population of certain districts of the east and north coasts, with the surviving Protestants from other parts amongst them, and with Dublin and other strongholds still in their possession. At their head ought to have been the Earl of Leicester, Stafford's successor in the Irish Lord-Lieutenancy. But, as Leicester had been detained in England by the King, the management had devolved on the Lords Justices and Councillors resident in Dublin, and on their military assessor, James Butler, 12th Earl of Ormond, who had been Lieutenant-General of the Irish forces under Strafford. In fact it was this able Ormond that had to fight the Rebellion. Though supplies and forces, with some good officers, were sent over from England, and a special army of Scots under General Monro had been lent to the English Parliament for service in Ulster, it was still Ormond that had to direct in chief. His success had been very considerable.

In the course of 1643, however, after the Civil War had begun in England, Ireland and the Rebellion there had become related in a strangely complex manner to the struggle between the King and the Parliament. Whatever share the King may have had, through the Queen, in first exciting the Roman Catholics, he had come to regard the Irish distraction as a magazine of chances in his favour. If he could get into his own hands the command of the Protestant forces employed in putting down the Rebellion, he would have an army in Ireland ready for his service generally, and the policy would then be to come to an arrangement with the Roman Catholic Insurgents, so as to free that army, and perhaps the Insurgents too, for his service in England. Now, though the Lords Justices and most of the Councillors in Dublin were Parliamentarian in their sympathies, Ormond was a Royalist, of a family old in Ireland, far from fanatical in his own Protestantism, and with many relatives and friends among the Roman Catholics. Willing enough, therefore, to fight on against the Confederates, he was yet as willing, on instructions from Oxford, to make an arrangement with them in the King's interests. Actually, on the 15th of September, 1643, he did make a year's truce with the Rebels, which permitted the despatch of some portions of his own force, mixed with Irish Roman Catholics, to the King's assistance in England. Vehement had been the outcry of the English Parliamentarians over this breach of the King's compact with them to leave the conduct of the Irish war wholly to the Parliament; and from that moment there were two Protestant powers or trusteeships for the management of the Irish Rebellion. Ormond, made a Marquis, and raised to the Lord-Lieutenancy in Leicester's place (Jan. 1643-4), was trustee for the King, and continued to rule in Dublin, bound by his truce. In other parts of Ireland, however, the war was maintained in the interests of Parliament and by instructions from London—in Munster by Lord Inchiquin; in Connaught by Sir Charles Coote; and in Ulster by Monro and his Scots, in conjunction with English officers and advisers. So the imbroglio had gone on, a mere chaos of mutual sieges and skirmishes in bogs, and Ireland in fact, through the stress of the Civil War at home, all but abandoned to herself in the meantime. The Confederates were stronger after the end of Ormond's year of truce than they had been before; and in 1645 they were up again against Ormond, as well as against Inchiquin, Coote, and Monro. They had already received help from France and Spain, and in Oct. 1645 there arrived among them no less than a Papal nuncio, Archbishop Rinuccini, with a retinue of other Italians, to take possession of the tumult in the name of his Holiness, and regulate it sacerdotally. In this complexity Ormond had still kept his footing. He had kept it even in the midst of a sudden shock given to his Vice-royalty by Charles himself.

Without Ormond's knowledge, Charles had been trafficking for months with the Confederate Irish Catholics through another plenipotentiary. In Jan. 1645-6 it came out, by accident, that the Roman Catholic Earl of Glamorgan, to whose presence in Ireland for some months no particular significance had been attached, had been treating, in Charles's name, for a Peace with the Confederates on the basis not merely of a repeal of all penal laws against their Religion, but even of its establishment in Ireland. All Britain and Ireland were aghast at the discovery, and even Ormond reeled. Recovering himself, however, he did what he could to save Charles from the results of his own double-dealing. Glamorgan was imprisoned for a time, with tremendous threats; all publicity was given to Charles's letters authorizing proceedings against him as "one who either out of falseness, presumption, or folly, hath so hazarded the blemishing of his Majesty's reputation with his good subjects, and so impertinently framed these Articles out of his own head;" and meanwhile Charles's letters of consolation to Glamorgan, with his thanks, and promises of "revenge and reparation," remained private.

One consequence of the Glamorgan exposure, happening as it did when the King had been all but completely beaten in England, was a resolution of Parliament that Irish affairs should be managed thenceforward not by the mere Committee for these affairs meeting at Derby House, Westminster, and communicating with Inchiquin, Coote, and others in Ireland, but by "a single person of honour," in fact a Parliamentary Lord-Lieutenant. For this high post there was chosen Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle, M.P. for Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight. This was partly a tribute to Lord Lisle's own zeal and to service he had already rendered in Ireland, partly a compliment to his father, the Earl of Leicester, whom Charles had displaced from the Lord-Lieutenancy to make way for Ormond. Accordingly, from April 1646, while Ormond remained in power for Charles at Dublin, it was in the name of Lord Lisle, as "Lord Lieutenant-General," that all commissions for Parliament respecting Ireland were issued. Lord Lisle, however, had not gone over to Ireland, but had been waiting till he could take troops with him. It remained, therefore, for Ormond to do what he finally could in Ireland for the fallen King. He had been in negotiation with the Confederates for a Peace on more respectable terms than Glamorgan's, and yet valuable for the King; and though, after Charles's flight to the Scots, letters had come from Newcastle (June 11) countermanding previous instructions, Ormond had persevered. On the 28th of July, 1646, Ormond's Articles of Peace with the Irish Rebels were signed at Dublin and published for general information. They promised the repeal of all acts against the Roman Catholic Religion in Ireland, and admission of Roman Catholics to a proportion of all places of public trust; and the recompense was to be an army of 10,000 Irish for his Majesty's assistance in England. The indignation among the Parliamentarians in Ireland, and throughout England and Scotland, was immense, and Ormond was the best-abused man living. Fortunately for him, he was extricated from the consequences of his own Treaty. The Papal Nuncio disowned it as insulting to the Church after Glamorgan's; the Roman Catholic clergy gathered round the Nuncio; there were riots wherever it was proclaimed; excommunications were thundered against its adherents; the Confederate Commissioners who had made the Treaty were imprisoned; the Nuncio himself became generalissimo, and, with Owen Roe O'Neile's army on one side of him and General Preston's on the other, declared war afresh against Ormond, and marched in his robes upon Dublin. For Ormond then there remained one plain duty. To save English rule and the existence of Protestantism in Ireland, he must hand over Dublin and the entire management of the war to the English Parliament. Having procured the King's full consent, he began a treaty with Parliament to this effect in Nov. 1646. As he was staunch in his desire to make the best bargain for the King he could, he was in no hurry; so that in February 1646-7, when the King was taken to Holmby, Ormond was still in Dublin, going on with the Treaty. In reality, however, by that time Ireland was as good as transferred to the Parliament. They had acted on the knowledge. Dec. 23,1646, "Resolved that this House doth declare that they will prosecute and carry on an offensive war in Ireland for the regaining of that kingdom to the obedience of the kingdom of England;" Jan. 4, 1646-7, "Resolved that an Ordinance be forthwith prepared and brought in for establishing and settling the same Form of Church- government in the kingdom of Ireland as is or shall be established in the kingdom of England;" such were two momentous votes of the Commons when the King was about to leave Newcastle. Nay, on the 28th of January, when the Scots were handing over the King to the English, Lord Lisle had left London for Ireland to assume his Lord-Lieutenancy. A new sword of State had been made for him; his Irish Council, of nine members at £500 a year each, had been nominated; and, at his special request, Major Thomas Harrison of the New Model had accompanied him. [Footnote: Authorities for the summary of Irish affairs from 1641 to 1647 given in the text are— Rushworth, VI. 238-249; Clar. 641, and at various other points; Whitlocke under Jan. 25 and 28 and March 9, 1646-7; Godwin, I. 245 et seq., and II. 102 et seq.; Commons Journals of dates given, with other entries from Dec. 1646 to Feb. 1646-7; and Carte's Ormond. Carte's large book is of some value from the abundance of information that was at his disposal, but is intrinsically silly.]

What could Lord Lisle do without troops? Now was the time for England to perform fully for "the gasping and bleeding Island" that duty of which, with all the excuse of her own pressing needs, she had been long too negligent. Now was the time to revenge the massacre of 1641, and re- subject Ireland to English rule and the one only right faith and worship. And were not the means at hand? An army of 25,000 or 30,000 Englishmen was now standing idle: why not disband and cashier part of them, and recast the rest into a new army for the service of Ireland? The question was obvious and natural to all; but it was put most loudly by the Presbyterians, because of a peculiar interest in it. They had never liked the Army of the New Model; all its victories had not reconciled them to it, or made them cease to regret the Army of the Old Model, That had been a respectable army, with the Earl of Essex at its head; this was an army of Independents, Sectaries, Tolerationists. Might not the disbanding of this army be so managed as to be at once a deliverance of England from a great danger and the salvation of Ireland? What was necessary in the process was to get rid of Cromwell, his followers among the officers, and the most peccant parts of the soldiery, so as to leave a sufficient mass to be re-formed, with additions, into an army of the Old Model type, the command of which might be given to Fairfax if he would take it, or perhaps to honest Skippon, or, best of all, to Sir William Waller.

This had been the understanding between the English Presbyterians and their Scottish friends since the close of the war. [Footnote: In a letter of Baillie's October 2, 1646, he expects "the Sectarian Army disbanded and that party humbled."] There was, however, another party likely to have a voice in the business. This was the Army itself.

Never under the sun had there been such an army before. It was not large according to our modern ideas of armies: only some 25,000 or 30,000 men, four-fifths of them foot-soldiers and the rest horse-troopers and dragoons. But imagine these all hardy men, thoroughly drilled and disciplined, and conscious that it was they who had done the work, they who had fought the battles, they who had saved England. Imagine farther that this Army had somehow come to be constituted, through its entire mass, on Cromwell's extraordinary principle, announced by him to Hampden at the beginning of the war, that the power of an army depends ultimately on the "spirit," or intrinsic moral mood, of the individuals composing it. Imagine that the atoms of this army were all "men of a spirit," men who had not fought as hirelings, but as earnest partakers in a great cause. Imagine them, if you like, as an army of fanatics. This phrase, however, might mislead, unless qualified.

The common conception of an army of fanatics is that of an army mad for one set of tenets. Now the Parliamentary Army was really, as the Presbyterians called it, an Army of Sectaries. It was a miscellany of all the forms of Puritan belief known in England, with forms of belief included that were not Puritan. The much largest proportion, after Presbyterians, of whom there were many, and ordinary Independents, of whom there were more, were Sectaries of the fervid and devout sorts, such as Baptists, Old Brownists, and Antinomians, with mystical Millenaries and Seekers, all passionately Scriptural, saturated with the language and history of the Old Testament, and zealously Anti-Romanist and Anti- prelatic; and these, on the whole, were the men after Cromwell's heart. Such, among others, was Harrison—whom Baxter, who had seen much of him, classes at this time among the Anabaptists and Antinomians, telling us "he would not dispute at all [with Baxter], but he would in good discourse very fluently pour out himself in the extolling of Free Grace, which was savoury to those that had right principles, though he had some misunderstandings of Free Grace himself:" a man, adds Baxter, "of excellent natural parts for affection and oratory, but not well seen in the principles of his Religion; of a sanguine complexion; naturally of such a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity, as another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too much;" and whom Baxter had once heard, in a battle, when the enemy began to flee, "with a loud voice break forth into the praises of God, with fluent expressions, as if he had been in a rapture." But there were also in the army Sectaries of a cooler or easier order— Arminians, Anti-Sabbatarians, Anti-Scripturists, Familists, and Sceptics. Hardly a form of odd opinion mentioned in our conspectus of English Sects in a former chapter but had representatives in the Army; nay, new speculative oddities had broken out in some regiments; and it may be doubted whether even in the English mind of our own time there is any form of speculation so peculiar as not to have had its prototype or lineal progenitor in that mass of steel-clad theorists contemporary with the Westminster Assembly. Nor did each man keep his theory to himself. There were constant prayer-meetings in companies and regiments, and meetings for theological debate; troopers or foot-soldiers off duty would expound or harangue to their fellows in camp, or even from the pulpits of parish-churches when such were convenient; whenever the Army halted there was a hum of holding-forth. There were army-chaplains, it is true, and some of them, such as Peters, Dell, and Saltmarsh, great favourites; but, on the whole, the regular cloth was in disrepute: those who belonged to it were spoken of as the Levites or priests by profession; the need for such a profession was voted obsolete; and any man was held to be as good for the preaching office as any other, if he had the preaching gift. And with the respect for ordination had vanished the respect for most of the regular Church-forms and symbols. Not only did preaching officers and troopers, when they chanced to enter parish-churches, often eject the regular ministers from the pulpits, and hold forth themselves instead—in which kind of practice Colonel Hewson and Major Axtell are reported to have been conspicuous; but the contempt for established decencies of worship had vented itself, at least in occasional instances, in very profane humours. Soldiers had scandalized country-congregations by sitting with their hats on during prayer and singing; and Hewson's men were said once to have kept possession of a parish-church for eight days, having a fire in the chancel, and smoking tobacco ad libitum. Such were, doubtless, mere excesses here and there, which would have been rebuked by the more serious men who formed the bulk of the Army; but it is quite certain that even among these that extreme kind of Independency had become common which repudiated a National Church of any kind whatsoever, nay denied that there was any Church on earth at all, any system of spiritual ordinances visibly from God, anything but a great invisible brotherhood of Saints, walking in this life's darkness, passionately using meanwhile this symbol and that to feature forth the unimaginable, glad above all in the great glow of the present Bible, but expecting also, each soul for itself, rays and shafts from the Light beyond. Of this kind of indifferency to all competing forms of external worship, and even of doctrine, combined with either a mystical and dreamy piety, or a wildly-fervid enthusiasm, Dell and Saltmarsh, among the army- chaplains, seem to have been the most noted exponents; but it was really a modification of that which is already known to us as the Seekerism of Roger Williams. At all events, that absolute doctrine of Toleration which Roger Williams had propounded, and which was logically inseparable in his mind from Independency at its purest, had found its largest discipleship in the Parliamentary Army. Toleration to some extent was the universal Army tenet; even the Presbyterians of the Army, with some exceptions, had learnt to be Tolerationists in some degree. But a very full principle of Toleration had possessed most, and the most absolute possible principle was avowed by many. "If I should worship the Sun or Moon. like the Persians, or that pewter-pot on the table, nobody has anything to do with it," one sectary had been heard to say; and some even had "justified the Irish Rebellion," on the ground that the Irish "did it for the liberty of their consciences and for their country." If this last extreme application of the Toleration doctrine did actually come from the mouth of a sectary serving in the Army (which is not quite clear from the report), it must be regarded, I suspect, as one of those eccentricities of mess-table debate which, when Baxter talked of them to Colonel Purefoy, vouching that he had heard such things himself, that officer indignantly refused to credit, saying, "If Noll Cromwell should hear any soldier speak but such a word, he would cleave his crown." Precisely the Toleration doctrine, however, was that in which Cromwell himself was most thorough-going and most distinctly the representative of the whole Army. Even Baxter, after his two years of army-chaplaincy, spent in observing the medley of sects around him and combating their errors, could not refer Cromwell with positive certainty to any one of the Sects. He seemed most for the Anabaptists, Antinomians, and Seekers, but "did not openly profess what opinion he was of himself." But on Toleration of Religious Differences he was explicit and decided. All that were most to his mind in the Army "he tied together by the point of Liberty of Conscience, which was the common interest in which they did unite." [Footnote: This description of the Parliamentary Army is a digest of the best knowledge I have been able to form from various readings in contemporary books and study of Army documents; but particulars of it are from Baxter's Autobiography (1696), Part I. 52-57, and Edwards's Gangræna, Parts II. and III. passim. The good, though narrow and hypochondriac, Baxter may be thoroughly relied on for whatever he vouches as a fact known to himself; otherwise, cum grano. Edwards has to be put into the witness- box and cross-examined unmercifully, not as a wilful liar, but as an incredibly spiteful collector of gossip for the Presbyterians. After all, many of the so-called ribaldries and profanities reported by him of the Army Sectaries turn out innocent enough, or only very rough jokes, as when a soldier told a godly old woman that, if she did not believe in universal redemption, she would be damned. Perhaps his most horrible story is that of some soldiers taking a horse into a village church in Hunts and baptizing him in all due form at the font, giving him the name of Esau because he was hairy. The story, with a certificate of its truth by seven of the villagers, will be found in Gangræna, Part III. 17, 18. But, if the atrocity ever did occur, its date, according to Edwards himself, was June 2, 1644, i.e. in the time of the Old Model Army, to which the very objection of Cromwell and others was that it did not consist sufficiently of "men of a spirit."]

There were three reasons why this extraordinary Army should object to being disbanded:—(1) They had large and long-deferred claims upon the Parliament for arrears of pay, compensation for losses, provision for the wounded and disabled and for widows and orphans, indemnity also for illegal or questionable acts done in the time of war. Was the Army to let itself be disbanded without due security on these points? (2) There was the unsettled question of Religious Toleration. The whole drift of things in the Parliament and in the Westminster Assembly seemed to be to a uniform and compulsory Presbyterianism; and was that a prospect to which the Army, or nine-tenths of it, could look forward placidly? The Army did not want to undo the Presbyterian settlement as already decreed, but they were unwilling to disband before a Toleration under that settlement had been arranged. (3) Over and above these two reasons, and in powerful conjunction with them, was another. The Army, although an Army, had not ceased to regard itself as a portion of the English people; nay, it had come to regard itself as a select portion of that people, whose opportunities of thinking and reasoning on political affairs had been peculiarly good. It had come to be, in its own belief, an organ of political opinion, representing wishes and feelings of large parts of the population which were not represented in Parliament, and representing these in the form of conclusions for the future more radical and more definite than any that Parliament alone was ever likely to work out. In short, those democratic ideas the prevalence of which in the Army had so surprised Baxter when he first joined it had now become paramount. It was not only that the Army had formed views more severe than those of the Presbyterians as to the proper terms of the settlement to be made with the King; it was that the Army thought the present the time for discussing the whole subject of the constitution of the country. The House of Lords, for example! Whether there should be a Peerage at all, legislating in a separate House by mere hereditary right, might be a very fair question, and was one on which the Army had pretty decided opinions But that the House of Lords then sitting—not the assembled Peerage of England at all, but a mere fifth-part of that Peerage, in the shape of some twenty-eight persons meeting from day to day, sometimes as few as half-a-dozen of them at a time, and not only partaking with the other House in the legislation, but often obstructing that House, thwarting it, throwing out its measures,—that this should continue who would maintain? No! the House of Lords must go, and the sole House in England must be the other House, the "House of Representers." But here too there was room for improvement. The House of Commons then sitting was numerically substantial enough, now that it had been Recruited; and no one could look back on the great things which the House had done without gratitude and admiration. But were there not signs of exhaustion, debility, and wrong- headedness, even in that House, arising partly from its long independence of the People, partly from the imperfect system of suffrage under which it had been elected. Only in an imperfect sense could the existing House be called a "House of Representers;" and, as soon as should be convenient, it must be dissolved and succeeded by a House fully deserving that name. For the election of such a House there must be a reform of the details of the electoral system, including the abolition of such anomalies as the return of one-twelfth of the whole House by the single and remote county of Cornwall, and a redistribution of seats in accordance with the proportions of population and property in the various parts of England. All these ideas, and many more, anticipating with surprising exactness the Parliamentary Reform movements of much later times, were agitating the Parliamentary Army while the King was in his captivity at Holmby. Pamphlets from London, actively circulated among the regiments, aided the discussion and supplied it with topics and catch- words. Especially popular among the soldiers, and keeping up their excitement more particularly against the House of Lords, were the pamphlets that came from John Lilburne and an associate of his named Richard Overton.—Lilburne, whom we left in October 1645, just released from the short imprisonment to which he had been committed by the Commons (antè, p. 390), had gone on again in his old pugnacious way, till, by Prynne's contrivance, he found himself in the clutches of the Lords. Called before that House, in June 1646, for a Letter he had printed, called The Just Man's Justification, he had amazed the Peers by conduct such as they had never seen before. He had refused to kneel, refused to take off his hat, refused to hear the charges against him, stopped his ears while they were read, denied the jurisdiction of the Peers, stamped at them, glared at them, told them his whole mind about them, appealed to the Commons as the sole power in the State, and altogether behaved like a mad ox. They had consequently fined him £4,000, and committed him to Newgate for seven years. For similar offences to the Peers, and similar contumacy when charged with them, Richard Overton, a printer and assiduous publisher of pamphlets, had also been sent to prison two months afterwards (Aug. 1646). There was considerable sympathy with both among the Londoners, and the Independents in the Commons had taken up Lilburne's case and procured the appointment of a Committee on it. Nor even in Newgate, it appears, had he been debarred the use of pen and ink; for, in addition to his former pamphlets, there had come from him fiercer and fresh ones—Anatomy of the Lords' Tyranny, London's Liberty in Chains, The Free Man's Freedom, The Oppressed Man's Oppressions, The Resolved Man's Resolution, &c. These were the pamphlets of Lilburne which, together with Overton's, one of which was An Arrow Shot into the Prerogative Bowels of the Arbitrary House of Lords, were popular with the common soldiers of the Parliamentary Army, and nursed that especial form of the democratic passion among them which longed to sweep away the House of Lords and see England governed by a single Representative House.—Baxter, who reports this growth of democratic opinion in the Army from his own observation, distinctly recognises in it the beginnings of that rough ultra-Republican party which afterwards became formidable under the name of THE LEVELLERS. All the while, however, there was also a quiet formation, in some of the superior and more educated minds of the Army, of sentiments essentially Republican, but more reserved and tentative in the style of their Republicanism. Among these minds too it had become a question whether a mere settlement with the King even on the basis of the Nineteen Propositions would suffice, and whether the hour had not come for organic changes in the Constitution of England. Perhaps the leader of Army thought in this direction was Cromwell's son-in-law Ireton. [Footnote: Baxter ut supra; Gangræna, part III. passim; Lords Journals, June 10, 11, 23, and July 11, 1646 (Lilburne's case), and Aug. 11 (Overton's); Godwin, II. 407 et seq.; Wood's Ath. III. 353] That the English Presbyterians, bereft now even of that overrated support which had been afforded them by the presence of a Scottish Army in England, should have rushed into a struggle with the English Army, such as it has been described, without trying so much as a compromise on the Toleration question, is one of the greatest examples of political stupidity on record. They seem to have calculated mainly on the fact that they had a majority in Parliament. Of the few Lords forming the Upper House they could count nearly all as decidedly with them. In the Commons, too, where the balance had always been more nearly equal, Presbyterianism had of late been gaining force. Why it had been so is not very obvious. The latest Recruiters may have been politicians of a more Presbyterian type than the earlier ones; and of these earlier Recruiters some who had come in as Independents may have veered round. Men whose opinions are not very decided tend naturally to the winning side, and the King's flight to the Scots and their long possession of him had put Presbyterianism in the likelihood to win. However it had happened, the Presbyterians had of late been preponderating in the Commons. In a vote on Sept. 1, 1646, affecting the relations of the Parliament to the Scots, the Presbyterians had beaten the Independents by 140 to 101; in another vote on Dec. 25, on the question whether the words "according to the Covenant" should be added to a Resolution, the Yeas or Presbyterians had beaten by 133 to 91; and in an interesting vote on Dec. 31, on the question whether the words "or expound the Scriptures" should be added to a Resolution forbidding unordained persons to preach, the Yeas or Presbyterians had beaten by no fewer than 105 to 57. In this last vote Cromwell was one of the Tellers for the Noes or Independents. In testing divisions these numbers may be taken as representing the relative strengths of the two parties in the end of 1646 and the beginning of 1647. But, even with a considerable majority in the Commons, and with the Lords all but wholly a Presbyterian House, the confidence of the Presbyterians in confronting the Army can be accounted for only by reckless leadership. Holles and Stapleton, their most forward men in the Commons, appear to have been men of but ordinary faculty and decidedly rash temper, incomparably inferior to their great opponents. One argument they had, of which they did not fail to make the most. The City of London was eminently and staunchly Presbyterian; and would that great city, the central money-power of the nation, allow the Government to be dictated to by an Army of Sectaries? [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given, with divisions generally between Aug. 1646 and Feb. 1646-7; Godwin, II. 263 et seq.]

The struggle, long foreseen, began actually in the first two months and a half of the King's stay at Holmby, i.e. in February, March, and April, 1646-7. The gauntlet was thrown down by Parliament. Feb. 19, in an unusually full House, it was carried by 158 (Holles and Stapleton tellers) against 148 (Haselrig and Evelyn tellers), that no force of Foot beyond what was necessary for garrisons should be kept up in England, but only a certain force of Horse. On the 5th of March there came a vote on the important question who should be the Commander-in-chief of the retained Army, and so jealous had the Presbyterians become even of Fairfax, because of his connexion with the existing Army, that the Independents, though going for him to a man, carried his appointment but by a majority of 12. Subsequent resolutions, carried without division, were that no member of the House should hold a military command (Cromwell's Self-denying Ordinance cleverly repeated against himself), that no officer in the future Army under Fairfax should be above the rank of Colonel, and that all officers should take the Covenant; and when, on the farther and more outrageous proposition, that all officers must conform to the Presbyterian Church-government, the Independents forced a division; they lost by 108 Noes (Haselrig and Evelyn), against 136 Yeas (Holies and Stapleton). By additional Resolutions of March 29 and April 8 the arrangements were completed. It was formally resolved that all the Foot of the existing Army not required for the garrisons should be disbanded, and that the future Army of Horse under Fairfax should consist of nine regiments of 600 each, or 5,400 in all, recruited out of the existing Army or otherwise. The Colonels for the nine re- modelled regiments were named, some of them cavalry Colonels of the existing Army, but not all. Cromwell's own regiment, or the regiment that should be built out of any safe shred of it with other materials, was to go to the Presbyterian Major Huntingdon.——So much for England and Wales; but what of the new Army for Ireland? That also had been arranged for. March 6, it was voted by the Commons that the Army for Ireland should consist of 8,400 foot, 3,000 horse, and 1,200 dragoons, to be recruited as far as possible from the existing English Army. But how about the command of this Army and the government of Ireland while it should be serving there? Lord Lisle, then in Ireland as Lord-Lieutenant for the Parliament, was one of Cromwell's disciples, and had been appointed by Cromwell's influence. It would not do to leave him in command. Fortunately, he had been appointed but for a year; and, to avoid re-appointing him, it was resolved (April 1) that the previous vote of the Houses for the management of Ireland through "a single person of honour" should be rescinded, and that, while the Civil Government should revert to the two Lords-Justices in Dublin, the military command should be in the hands of a Field-Marshal, attended by Parliamentary Commissioners. Sir William Waller was named for this Field-Marshalship; but the Presbyterians did not go to the vote for him; and Skippon, then at Newcastle, and unaware of the honour intended for him, was unanimously chosen (April 2). The Presbyterian Massey was to be his Lieutenant- General. As an inducement to officers and soldiers of the English Army to re-enlist for the Irish service, high pay was promised, with an option of taking part of it in the valuable form of Irish lands. [Footnote: Commons Journals of the dates given.]