The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649 / Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time

by David Masson

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.]