[1646 A.D.] the moderate party were dejected at this event. The arrangements having been effected respecting the Scottish arrears, it was voted (Sept. 18) that the king's person should be disposed of as the two houses should think fit, but that no dispute on this subject should interfere with the treaties or the return of the Scots army. The Scottish commissioners strongly asserted the right of their nation to a share in the disposal of the king.

In November the Scottish parliament met; Hamilton, who was now at liberty, exerted himself strongly in favour of the king; all were of opinion that he should accept the propositions, but Charles was immovable on the subject of the church. A vote was notwithstanding obtained (Dec. 16) to maintain his personal freedom and right to the English throne. The general assembly, however, having declared it unlawful to support him while he refused to assent to the covenant, and the parliament, being aware of the madness of engaging in a war with England, and advised by Holles and the leading Presbyterians there that the surrender of the king was the only means of causing the Independent army to be disbanded, who were the great enemies of the king and of peace; they accordingly gave him up to commissioners sent to receive him (Feb. 1, 1647). Charles gladly left the Scots, and he was conducted to one of his mansions named Holdenby or Holmby House near Althorpe, in Northamptonshire.

CHARLES A CAPTIVE IN ENGLAND

Charles himself said that he "was bought and sold," and the charge of selling their king has been down to the present day reiterated against the Scots. There are no doubt many circumstances in the affair which have a suspicious appearance. It seems certain that they would not have gotten so large a sum from the parliament as they did if the person of the king had not been in their hands, and they probably took advantage of this circumstance to insist on their demands. But there are no sufficient grounds for charging them with inviting him to their camp with this design; they did not give him up till they had no choice but that or war; they acted under the advice of the friends of monarchy in the English parliament; they stipulated in the most express terms for the safety of his person; nay, to the very last, if he would have given them satisfaction on the subject of religion, they would have declined surrendering him. Like the monarch himself, they were unhappily situated; but we do not think that they can be justly charged with the guilt of having sold their king.

The civil war, after a duration of nearly four years, was now at an end. Oxford, Worcester, and other places had surrendered; the old marquis of Worcester defended Raglan Castle against Fairfax and five thousand men, but he was obliged at last to open his gates (Aug. 19); and two days later Pendennis Castle in Cornwall also surrendered. Harlech Castle in North Wales was the last to submit (Mar. 30, 1647). Favourable terms were granted in all cases, and the articles were honourably observed. Much and justly as intestine warfare is to be deprecated, the English may look back with pride to this civil contest, unexampled in the history of the world. It does not, like the civil wars of other countries, disgust us by numerous butcheries and other

"If it be not admitted they sold him," says Sir P. Warwick, "it must be confessed they parted with him for a good price." [Gardiner points out how gladly the Scotch would have protected Charles had he been willing to comply with what they felt to be just and due their creed. He thinks that the Scots "get less than justice" in the accounts of this transaction, as Charles' one idea in taking refuge with them was to get the two nations at war.]

[1646 A.D.]

savage atrocities; all was open and honourable warfare; a generous humanity for the most part was displayed on both sides; and those who were finally victorious, to their honour, sent none of the vanquished to the scaffold. While awarding praise we cannot in justice pass over the Catholic nobility and gentry of England. Urged by an impulse of generous loyalty, as appears to us, rather than by any cold calculations of interest, they ranged themselves on the side of the king, though they knew but too well that he was at all times ready to sacrifice them, and that they were the persons on whom the vengeance of the parliament would fall most heavily; in the royal cause they wasted their estates, and shed their blood; and dead must he be to generous feeling who honours not the names of the marquesses of Worcester and Winchester, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, and the other Catholic nobles and knights who fought on the side of royalty in the civil contest.

Montrose on receiving orders from the king laid down his arms and retired to the continent. Ormonde had by the royal command concluded a peace with the Irish Catholics, but the nuncio and the clergy having assembled at Waterford declared it void (Aug. 6). The nuncio then assumed the supreme power, and at the head of the united armies of Preston and Owen O'Neil' advanced against Dublin. As Ormonde had wasted the country they were obliged to retire, but he was well aware that it must fall into their hands if not relieved from England. The king was now a captive, and powerless; the Irish Catholics were entirely ruled by their priesthood, and nothing short of the extirpation of Protestantism and the English interest would content them. To avert this Ormonde entered into treaty with the parliament, and he agreed (Feb. 22, 1647) to put Dublin and the other garrisons into their hands. The sequestration was taken off from his own estate, and he had permission given him to reside for some time in England.

The Presbyterian system was at this time established by ordinance of parliament; each parish was to have its minister and lay elders; a number of adjoining parishes were to form a classis with its presbytery of ministers and elders; several classes a province with its assembly; and finally, a national assembly over all. But the system never came into full operation except in London and Lancashire; the parliament could not be brought to allow of the divine right of presbytery; they greatly limited the power of the keys, and they allowed of appeals from ecclesiastical courts. In their zeal for uniformity, hatred of toleration, lust of power, and tyrannical exercise of it, the Presbyterian clergy fell nothing short of the prelatical party who had been their persecutors. The moderate party in parliament lost at this time a great support by the death of the earl of Essex (Sept. 14). He died in consequence of overheating himself in the chase of a stag in Windsor Forest. He was buried with great state in Westminster Abbey (Oct. 22); the members of both houses, the civil and military officers, and all the troops in London attending the funeral.

Gardiner ascribes the military downfall of Charles to two facts: in the first place his cause appealed to the cavalier and aristocratic elements, while the great middle class and trade elements, the farmers and yeomen either kept aloof or sided against him; in the second place, he offended the English by his incessant appeals for aid, to the Welsh (who made up a large part of his army at Naseby), to the Irish, French, Lorrainers, Dutch and Scotch. Cromwell on the other hand stood for the national spirit.a

'Preston was the general of the Catholics of the English blood, O'Neil of the Ulster Irish.

Nobody now could foretell the course of events; either extreme seemed possible, the abolition or the restoration of the crown, the exclusive predominance of one creed or the toleration of many, the continuation of parliament or its diminution, the complete sway of the army or its combination with other forces, the maintenance of existing laws or social resolution. - VON RANKE.

FROM this period, the supreme authority openly acknowledged by the people of England, was no longer divided, according to local feeling or circumstances, between the king and the parliament. The condition of the sovereign became in effect that of a private person, and the two houses exercised the functions of an independent commonwealth. But these powers were too recent in their origin, and the parties who wielded them were too little agreed among themselves, to allow of their working without hindrance or disorder. The Puritan spirit, with its ardent love of freedom up to a certain point, and its lamentable intolerance with respect to everything beyond it, still animated the Presbyterian body in both kingdoms; while the Independents, as they gradually rose into importance, by the sagacity which they brought to the management of public affairs, hardly less than by their exploits in the fields, became more fixed and definite in their demands on the side of the rights of conscience, and of a more equal liberty.

The army under Fairfax, consisting of twenty-two thousand men, was made up almost entirely from the Independents, and greatly outnumbered the Presbyterians, who were in arms under Massey and Poyntz. The Independents could also boast at this juncture of a small majority on many questions even in the house of commons; but the city was still mostly Presbyterian, and found its great ally in the Scottish army, which, by possessing the king's person, had become capable of negotiating with increased authority.

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Added to which, as a further element of probable discord, the royalists, though scattered, were by no means extinct. The number of the slain in the late struggle was comparatively small, and the passions of those who survived the conflict must have been rather exasperated than allayed by what had befallen them.

The struggle between the Presbyterians and Independents in the commons, which, during the present year, had appeared, in some important instances, to be in favour of the former, had not been such uniformly. A motion which required that part of the army under Fairfax should embark for Ireland was defeated by a majority of ninety-one to ninety; and a resolution to disband the troops under Massey, consisting mostly of Presbyterians, was carried in the commons, and executed by Ludlow, with the concurrence of Fairfax, notwithstanding a remonstrance against it by the lords. But the two parties were so nearly balanced in the commons during this year, that questions affecting either were rarely carried by a majority of more than eight or ten votes; and some instances of understood compromise were necessary that the ordinary business of government might proceed.

Another matter which served to manifest the power of the Independents in public affairs at this juncture, was the settlement of the exact form in which the Presbyterian government should be established. The Independents, as we have before remarked, were opposed to any civil establishment of religion; and those who aided them in their present struggle, without being strictly of their opinion in that respect, were careful that the mode of its establishment should be such as to give a secure ascendency to the civil power. Nothing, however, could be more unacceptable to the Presbyterian clergy than such doctrines, inasmuch as their principles taught them to regard the secular establishment of religion as the first duty of a state; and, at the same time, to assert their own pure independence of the civil power, even while looking to it for protection and endowments, and for the force with which to maintain their particular species of dominion.

There was a bill against blasphemy which this party endeavoured to carry in 1646, and which they succeeded in passing two years later, the provisions of which bespeak a frightful spirit of intolerance, reminding us very forcibly of the many similar decrees which occur in the pages of ecclesiastical history, and which were made the ground of proceedings so disgraceful to Christianity. By this act, any denial of the Trinity, of the proper deity or humanity of Christ, of his death as an atonement for the guilty, of his freedom from sin, of his resurrection, of the general rising from the dead, of the day of judgment, or of the authenticity of the canonical scriptures - was declared to be a capital offence! Many less considerable heresies are named as to be punished by other penalties. The authors of this enactment had imbibed the sentiment that truth must be one; that to themselves pertained the rare felicity of having discovered it; and that the more consistent evidence of their hallowed attachment to its interests was in the adoption even of such means with a view to its support. Thus the reasoning which had descended from Bonner to Laud, passed from the latter to the men who brought him to the block!

By the influence of the Independents, which operated to delay the act concerning blasphemy, the commons were induced to pass several of the most important of the propositions that had been rejected by the king, in the shape of ordinances - a proceeding which gave them the force of acts of parliament without waiting for the royal sanction. This republican principle was acted upon with respect to those parts of the propositions which related to the abolition of episcopacy, and the sale of the bishops' lands; to a justification of the

[1647 A.D.] proceedings in parliament in both kingdoms since the commencement of hostilities; to the appointment of the great officers of state by the parliament; and to its retaining the command of the forces during the next twenty years.

THE ARMY VERSUS PARLIAMENT

The surrender of the king by the Scots, which was viewed with much satisfaction by the English Presbyterians, both as it would materially reduce the expenditure of the government, and as it seemed, by placing the king in their hands, to confer on them the power of dictating the conditions of a settlement, was soon found to have placed the affairs of the kingdom, as a matter at issue, between an unarmed Presbyterian majority in the parliament and the capital, and the Independent minority of the lower house, sustained by nearly the whole strength of the army. On the departure of the Scots, the Presbyterians ceased to have a military force in which they could confide; and it accordingly became their great object to disband the army under Fairfax, which, they well knew, had been for some time governed by principles and passions most hostile to their plans. It was given out, with this view, that the war had reached its close, and that the time for returning to a peace establishment had arrived.

Nor was this considered a difficult work to perform. The Presbyterians in the city, in the fullness of their confidence, prepared a petition to be presented to the two houses, which prayed that no person disaffected to the covenant should be promoted to, or allowed to retain, any public trust; that persons not duly ordained should be no more suffered to preach, nor the meetings of separate congregations be tolerated; and that an ordinance should be passed to put down all heresies and schisms, by visiting their abettors with exemplary punishments.

It was agreed that Fairfax should retain his office as commander-in-chief. But it was also voted that every officer under his command should take the covenant, and conform to the government of the church as established by ordinance; that no commander of a garrison should remain a member of parliament; and that all offices above that of a colonel should be abolished, excepting, of course, the rank of commander-in-chief. The object of the Presbyterians in these votes was to purify the army generally from its leaven of independency, and to compel Cromwell, and other formidable opponents, such as Ludlow, Hutchinson, Ireton, and Algernon Sidney, to relinquish their connection either with the army or with the parliament. With the votes already mentioned was another, which ordered an immediate embarkation of a great part of the army under Fairfax to serve against the insurgent Catholics in Ireland. At the same time, the discussions in parliament with respect to the payment of arrears, were attended with so many difficulties and delays as to warrant suspicion of a design to elude the just demands of the army even in that respect.

The crisis between the Presbyterians and the Independents was now at hand. The latter found themselves called upon to submit to a yoke under the name of Presbyterianism, hardly less oppressive than they had fought against under the name of prelacy. They saw every practicable slight cast upon their leaders; their boasted liberty of conscience about to be wrested from them; their dismission meditated, even without a just settlement of their pecuniary claims on the power which they had protected and established at the hazard of their lives; and, above all, one division of their strength on the eve of being