THE INDEPENDENTS CHECKED. 179 LIII. 1647 pendents, indeed, were now ready to protest against CHAP. the violence of the mob, but whilst the Independents urged the House to affirm that all votes passed in the absence of the legitimate Speakers were null and void, the Presbyterians wished merely to expunge them from the journals, on the ground that if they were once admitted to have been without force from the beginning, the members who had assented to them might be called in question for having taken part in an unconstitutional action.1 When at the close of the debate the question was put for declaring the votes to have been null and void, the Ayes rang loudly out, whilst the Noes of the Presbyterians were few and feeble. In the insolence of victory an Independent member called for a division, for no other reason, it would seem, than to reveal the weakness of the other party. If the Presbyterians were too depressed to shout, they were not too depressed to vote, and to the astonishment of all present the division gave to the Independents a bare majority of one, the votes being 95 to 94. A worse disappointment was in store for the Independents. Three members who had retired into a committee-room to avoid voting with either side were discovered and brought into the House. As they had been present when the question was put, they were ordered to vote, and all three gave their voices for the rejection of the Independent resolution, which was therefore lost by a majority of two. On the following day the Presbyterians rejected, by a largely increased majority of 34, another resolution which implied approbation of the recent proceedings of the army.3 1 A Perfect Summary, E. 518, 19. 2 C.J. v. 270; Dr. Denton to Sir R. Verney, Aug. 12, Verney 3 C.J. v. 271. MSS. a bare majority for the Indepen CHAP. 1647 Aug. 10. Increase of the Presbyterian majority. A fresh appeal to force In less than a week after the entry of the army into London, the instrument which it chose to call a free Parliament had broken in its hands. The last vote left officers and soldiers exposed to the penalties of the law, and it was therefore followed by a cry for a fresh and more stringent application of force. "If things are current thus," said an Independent demanded. member, "it is high time for us to betake ourselves to the strongest power and the longest sword." 1 A party in the army was ready to resort to extreme measures. A few days before Berkeley had view of the asked Rainsborough what would happen if The Heads of the Proposals were accepted by the King and rejected by the Houses. "If they will not agree," answered Rainsborough, "we will make them," and of this all the officers present at the time signified their approval.2 Rainsborough's situation. Aug. 13. The persist. It soon appeared that the Commons had no intenCommons tion of abandoning their hostile attitude. On the 13th a resolution sent down from the Lords, for making the Presbyterian Militia Committee answerable for its recent action, was rejected by a majority of 25, on the ground that it had no legal existence after its re-establishment by the mutilated Parliament,3 whilst on the same day they passed, by a still larger majority of 40, an Ordinance for repealing, not annulling, the votes of the Houses in the absence of the Speakers.* On the following day, to counteract the effect of these proceedings, the Agitators presented a petition to Fairfax. The attempt of the army, they asserted, 6 to secure to the honourable members of Parliament 1 Dr. Denton to Sir R. Verney, Aug. 12, Verney MSS. 2 Berkeley's Memoirs, 36 3 See p. 170. 4 C.J. v. 273. A PURGE PROPOSED. 6 181 CHAP. 1647 Aug. 14. The call for a that discharged their trust,' the possibility of sitting as a free and legal Parliament' had failed through the unexpected intrusion of those usurpers' who had formerly taken part in the mischievous proceedings Agitators of a pretended Parliament. As a remedy they pro- purge. proposed that all and every person that have sat in that pretended Parliament, or adhered to them or their votes when the free legal Parliament was by violence suspended, might immediately be declared against as persons incapable of sitting or voting in this Parliament.'1 The House, in short, to employ a phrase at this time coming into vogue, was to be purged of those members who hindered the views of the army from prevailing. Aug. 16. Flight of six of the eleven The petition of the Agitators had, at least, the effect of finally convincing most of the eleven members of the hopelessness of their position. On members. August 16 five of them-Stapleton, Lewis, Waller, Clotworthy, and Long-availed themselves of passports given them by the Speaker to take shipping for France. They were, however, stopped by a frigate, and brought before Batten, who, as Vice-Admiral, commanded the fleet in the Downs. Batten, who was notoriously friendly to the Presbyterians, readily left them at liberty to go where they would. They therefore pursued their voyage to Calais, where Stapleton died, as some thought, of the plague. A few days later Holles made his way safely to St. Malo. Of the other five, Nichols was under arrest; Glyn, Harley, and Sir John Maynard preferred to face the worst in England; whilst Massey, who was 1 The humble address of the Agitators, Aug. 14, E. 402, 8. 2 A Perfect Diurnal, E. 518, 21; Perfect Occurrences, E. 518, 23. See, however, A true relation of Captain Batten, E. 404, 38; A short and true Narrative, E. 409, 3. LIII. 1647 CHAP specially inculpated as having been concerned in raising and disciplining the City forces, had escaped with Poyntz to Holland as soon as he discovered that resistance was hopeless.1 Aug. 17. The Commons of giving way, 2 In the House of Commons itself, the threats of the Agitators produced an irritation which stiffened show signs the resistance of the Presbyterian majority. On the 17th, a proposal of the Independents to declare that the House had been under coercion from July 26 to August 6 was rejected, though it is true that it was only rejected by a majority of three. During the next day or two the majorities fluctuated in a surprising manner. By this time the imthe army. patience of the army was growing beyond restraint. On the 18th the Army Council met at Kingston, where they drew up a declaration fully supporting the petition of the Agitators,3 and even gave orders for a forward movement of the army towards Westminster to support the demand for the purging of the House. Those who cried loudest for immediate action found a warm supporter in Cromwell,* Impa tience of Aug. 18 The Army Council supports the Agitators. Cromwell eager to purge the House. 1 He and Poyntz left behind them a Declaration (E. 401, 12), published on Aug. 9. 2 C.J. v. 275, 277-279. 3 Declaration of the Council of the Army, Aug. 18, L.J. ix. 391. 4 "The army," wrote Fairfax in Short Memorials (Somers's Tracts, v. 393), "marched nearer London; and at Windsor after two days' debate in a council of war, it was resolved to remove all of the house whom they conceived did obstruct (as they called it) the public settlement. "I was pressed to use all expedition in this march, but here I resolved to use a restrictive power, when I had not a persuasive; and when the Lieutenant-General and others did urge me to sign orders for marching, I still delayed it, as ever dreading the consequences of breaking Parliaments, and at a time when the kingdom was falling into a new war, which was so near that my delaying three or four days giving out orders, diverted this humour of the army from being statesmen to their more proper duty as soldiers. This I write to show ... CROMWELL AND FAIRFAX. who had been driven out of all regard for constitutional propriety by the recent proceedings of the Presbyterians in the House. "These men," he said, "will never leave till the army pull them out by the ears, "1 and on another occasion, after complaining bitterly of the sway borne by Holles and Stapleton in the affairs of the kingdom, he added words which gave bitter offence to his detractors. "I know nothing to the contrary," he said, "but that I am as well able to govern the kingdom as either of them." 2 183 CHAP. LIII. 1647 resists. Cromwell Cromwell's main obstacle lay with Fairfax, who Fairfax refused to participate in his design of purging the House, and who postponed from day to day the order for the march on which the Army Council had decided. Cromwell determined to take the matter into his own prepares hands. On the 20th, when the Ordinance for de- to act. claring the proceedings of Parliament in the absence of the Speakers null and void was again brought forward, he ordered a regiment of cavalry to take up a position in Hyde Park, so as to convey the impression that he intended to use it, if necessary, against the House of Commons. He then, leaving how by providence a few days of delay secured the Parliament above a year from the violence which soon after was offered them." If this took place more than a year before Pride's purge, it must have happened before Dec. 6, 1647. If it took place at Windsor it must have happened after Nov. 19. Between these two dates, however, no proposal to purge the House was made. Fairfax is, however, very loose about details, and the story may safely be placed here, when a proposal to purge was actually made. 1 This story is told by Ludlow, who assigns it to a much earlier date; but his regardlessness for chronology is well known, and the observation is not only far more likely to have been made at a time when Cromwell really advocated a purge, but the placing it at this date is strongly countenanced by a passage in Huntington's Sundry Reasons, p. 8, E. 548, 3. 2 Ib. This was said at Kingston; therefore between Aug. 11 and 27. |