1646-71

Fall of Exeter and Oxford. End of the war 335

of their own countrymen. Exeter, cut off from all hope of deliverance, capitulated on April 9; and in a few weeks Pendennis Castle was the only Royalist stronghold in the west. Chester had surrendered to Brereton two months earlier; and the Parliamentarians were masters of South Wales. The Irish levies had to remain in their own country because there was no port where they could be landed. The King still hoped to collect a force at Oxford, with which he might take the field; but Astley, one of his best soldiers, when bringing 3000 men from Worcester, was attacked at Stow-on-the-Wold on March 21; and, though numbers were about equal, his men laid down their arms. A month later, Charles left the city on his way to the Scots. Oxford was invested on May 11, and opened its gates on June 24. The Duke of York was sent to London as a prisoner, but Rupert and Maurice were allowed to go abroad. Other places soon followed the example of Oxford. With the surrender of Raglan Castle to Fairfax (August 19) the work of the New Model army came to an end; and the war might be said to be finished, though the King's flag was still kept waving at Harlech till March, 1647.

The secret of the success of the New Model army was that it was well paid and well found. This made it possible to maintain strict discipline, and to carry on a continuous campaign of more than fifteen months without marauding or mutiny, and without serious losses from desertion. The Royalists themselves admitted the contrast between their soldiers and those of the Parliament, though they put the best face on it: "In our army we have the sins of men (drinking and wenching), but in yours you have those of devils, spiritual pride and rebellion."

CHAPTER XI

PRESBYTERIANS AND INDEPENDENTS

(1645-9)

WE must at this point return to consider the tangled negotiations which were due to the position resulting from the military events that we have sketched, to the growing divergence between the forces whose union had gained the victory, and last, but not least, to the character of the King, who strove to recover by tortuous diplomacy at least a portion of what he had lost in the field. The chief parties in the game were now the King, intent mainly on preserving the Episcopalian Church and his control over the armed forces of the State; the Parliament, pledged to Presbyterianism, but still more anxious to retain command of the army and to reduce the Crown to impotence; the Scots, resolved on the establishment of Presbyterianism in both kingdoms, but indifferent to other English demands. These three elements do not, however, exhaust the list. Behind the English Parliament stood the English army, now mainly composed of Independents - not as yet playing a leading part in negotiation, but resolved on obtaining liberty of conscience, whatever form of Church government might issue from the strife, and forming a growing body of opinion which no other party could ignore. In the background were the Irish Catholics, with whom Charles negotiated throughout; the English Royalists, who, though beaten, decimated, and half-ruined, were ready, if the opportunity came, to renew the struggle; and France, which, under the government of Mazarin, and assiduously plied by Queen Henrietta, was anxious-if such an object could be gained without military intervention — to see Charles come to his own again. The whole history of the three years from December, 1645, to January, 1649, is the history of one long, complicated, and futile intrigue, interrupted by a second civil war, and ending in the death of the King. The main stages of this conflict are marked by the flight of the King to the Scots; his surrender to the Parliament; his seizure at Holmby House, and the march of the army on London; the Engagement and the Vote of No Addresses; the second Civil War; Pride's Purge; and the scaffold at Whitehall.

1645-6]

Scottish negotiations with the King

337

As the struggle between Cavalier and Roundhead became more and more unequal, the King found fresh ground of hope in the disagreements of his enemies. The successes of the New Model army had strengthened the Independents. After Naseby, Cromwell had pressed on Parliament their claim to toleration: "I beseech you," he wrote to the Speaker, "not to discourage them"; and again, after the capture of Bristol, "from brethren in things of the mind we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason." The Presbyterians fought hard to maintain their ascendancy and to restrain the vagaries of the sects. In the House of Commons they had, as a rule, the majority. But nearly 150 new members had been added to the House to fill vacancies; and it was now made up of groups rather than of parties. The House of Lords was also mainly Presbyterian, but it gradually became of less and less account.

The Scots soon began to scent danger, both from the English Parliament and the English army. They distrusted the somewhat unsteady Presbyterianism of the former; they feared still more the growing Independency of the latter. But they had hopes of the King, and, not reckoning on his stubborn adherence to the Episcopalian system, believed that the conditions they could offer would be more acceptable than those that would be enforced by the English Parliament and army. Within a month of the battle of Naseby, some Scottish lords tried to open a negotiation with Charles, but found him unwilling to go beyond what he had offered at Uxbridge. Two months later, after Montrose's final defeat at Philiphaugh, the Scottish Commissioners made more official overtures. Their anxiety for peace was not diminished by the fact that Parliament was slow to discharge its obligations towards the Scottish army, whose pay was much in arrears.

In the autumn of 1645 Parliament took some steps towards the establishment of the Presbyterian system, especially in London, which was becoming strongly Presbyterian; but it was not till the following March that this policy was extended to the kingdom at large. Even then, it was not the Scottish system, pure and simple, that they intended to introduce, but one which the Scots stigmatised as Erastian, and which would have kept ecclesiastical control in lay hands, while allowing some measure of toleration to the sects. The Independents, on their part, demanded full liberty of conscience. On the initiative of the Lords, Parliament tried to satisfy them by appointing a committee (November) to consider means of "accommodation." The Independents, however, opened secret negotiations with the King; and Parliament was driven (December) to consider propositions for peace. The discovery of a plot hatched by certain noblemen at Oxford, who, enraged at the rejection. of the Independent overtures by the King, offered to hand him over to Parliament, forced the King to take a step forward. He expressed his willingness to negotiate, and proposed to come to Westminster for

C. M. H. IV.

22

338 French Intervention.-Parliamentary offers [1645-6

the purpose. Parliament, however, declined to admit the proposal, until the bases of an agreement should have been laid down.

Meanwhile the French Government had intervened. Mazarin had become uneasy at the progress of Parliament; and, as a check upon it, he wished to renew the old relations between France and Scotland, and to induce Charles to throw himself on the support of the Scots. With this object he accredited an agent to them, Jean de Montreuil, who arrived in London in August. Terms of agreement were drawn up by the Scottish Commissioners; and in January, 1646, Montreuil went to Oxford to urge the King to accept them and to join the Scottish army before Newark. The Queen, at first unwilling to negotiate, on account of the hope she nourished of active assistance from abroad, subsequently threw her weight into the same scale. The Scottish terms were practically a renewal of the Uxbridge Propositions, with the additional demand that Charles should take the Covenant. His answer was that he would rather lose his crown than his soul. His objection was not wholly religious, for, like his father, he held that "the nature of Presbyterian government is to steal or force the crown from the King's head." Beyond toleration for the Presbyterians in England he could not be induced to go, nor would he throw over Montrose.

During these secret negotiations with the Scots, the King made offers to the Parliament, proposing to restore the Church to the condition in which it had been under Elizabeth respecting doctrine and ceremonial, and to grant full liberty of conscience, including even the use of the Directory recently drawn up by the Assembly of Divines at Westminster; but he would make no promises about Ireland or the militia. These propositions were considered on January 16; but various discoveries prevented Parliament from paying serious attention to them. Lord Digby's correspondence, captured at Sherburn, had made the Houses aware of the King's dealings with the Scottish lords in the previous August, and of his attempts to secure help from Holland, Denmark, France, and Ireland. In January they learned of the offers made by the Scots, and of negotiations carried on by Sir Kenelm Digby in the Queen's name with the Pope, which were to result in an expedition of several thousand French soldiers paid by the French clergy. They also learned, and published to the world, the treaty concluded by Glamorgan in Ireland, in which he pledged the King to all that the Pope's nuncio, Rinuccini, thought fit to demand, in order to obtain 10,000 Irish for service in England. Charles disavowed Glamorgan; but the affair helped to confirm what Rinuccini spoke of as "the common belief of his inconstancy and untrustworthiness."

Influenced by a sense of common danger and by the pressure of Montreuil, the Scots now modified their terms, withdrawing their demand that Charles should take the Covenant, or accept all the Uxbridge Propositions (March 19). Parliament having again refused to let the

1646] Charles surrenders.-Newcastle Propositions 339 King come to Westminster, he now offered to join the Scots at Newark. The Scots engaged to receive him, on a vague promise about Presbyterianism, trusting to enforce more definite terms when they had him in their power. Time was pressing, for Fairfax had done his work in the west, and was approaching Oxford. Charles made overtures to the Parliamentary General; but, as these met with no response, he set out from Oxford, on April 27, disguised and accompanied by only two attendants. After approaching London, as if still uncertain what to do, he turned northward, and put himself into Scottish hands at Southwell on May 5. Two days later, Newark having surrendered at the King's orders, the Scottish army retired, with their prisoner, upon Newcastle.

Meanwhile, fortress after fortress had fallen; and, with the surrender of Oxford (June 24, 1646), the war was practically over. Parliament had already voted (May 19) that the Scottish army was no longer needed, and should be paid off; but nine months were to pass before they surrendered their prize. Charles' reception in the Scottish camp was by no means what he expected. On his arrival he found himself a prisoner. He declared that he was "barbarously treated." His captors disavowed the assurances which had been given to him through Montreuil, and declared that he had come to their camp without any agreement whatever. He had expressed his willingness to be instructed in their Church principles, and he was taken at his word. They pressed him to sign the Covenant, or at all events consent to the establishment of Presbyterianism in all three kingdoms. They made him send orders to his garrisons to capitulate, and to Montrose to lay down his arms. Nevertheless, the terms they offered were far better, politically speaking, than those on which the Parliament insisted. Argyll wished to establish a form of Presbyterianism, which, in England at least, might be elastic in system and not intolerant in practice, and to restore the monarchy on a constitutional basis. But Argyll was a statesman; the majority of his colleagues were less open to compromise. Still, if Charles could have frankly accepted Presbyterianism, he would have had the Scots at his back. It is to his credit, if it was his misfortune, that he remained firm on the essential point.

In July Parliament had formulated its terms; and, at the end of that month, Parliamentary Commissioners arrived in the north, to discuss what were afterwards known as the Newcastle Propositions. These included a demand that Charles should take the Covenant, allow it to be enforced on all his subjects, and accept a reformation of the Church on that basis, with stringent laws against recusants. Parliament was to control the army and navy for twenty years, and after that time to arrange for their future administration. All high officials were to be named by Parliament. Many Royalists were to be proscribed; and the rebellion in Ireland was to be put down as Parliament should direct. What place was left for the King in these conditions it is hard to see. An intolerant