Charles was at first treated by Colonel Hammond with great leniency, and again employed the time on his hands in negotiation. As the army had restored unity to itself, he sought to obtain its concurrence to a personal treaty, and sent Berkeley to Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton, at Windsor. On his way there he fell in with Cornet Joyce, who carried off the king from Holmby, who informed him of an ominous proposition discussed by the Agitators, namely, to bring the king to trial; not, he said, with any design of putting him to death, but to prove on evidence who really bore the blame of the war. This prelude too truly prefigured the interview itself. Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton received Berkeley with severe aspects and distant coldness, and told him that they were but the servants of the Parliament, and referred him to it. He was not prevented by this, however, from sending a secret message to Cromwell, reminding him of his promises, and letting him know that he had secret instructions from the king to him. But Cromwell had now had convincing proofs of the king's duplicity; he refused to receive the letters, informed Berkeley that he would do all in his power towards effecting a real peace, but was not disposed to risk his head for the king's sake. Repulsed here, Charles applied to Parliament, which sent him four propositions as the basis of agreement, namely, that his Majesty should concur in the Bill for settling the militia; should recall all the proclamations, oaths, etc., against Parliament; should disqualify all peers made since the renewal of the Great Seal from sitting in the House of Peers; and should pass a Bill for the adjournment of Parliament being placed in the power of the Houses themselves. These Bills were sent by Commissioners to Carisbrooke; but the Scottish Commissioners, who dreaded the acceptance of them as rendering the English Parliament independent of the League and Covenant, hastened there, too, with a modified treaty of their own. Charles, thus encouraged, refused the four Bills; the Commissioners kissed hands and returned, and Charles signed the proposals of the Scots, which guaranteed the independence of their own religion, on condition of finding an army of forty thousand men for the restoration of the king.
Charles was not left long in ignorance of the effect of his refusal of the Parliamentary proposals, and of the discovery of his secret treaty with the Scots. Colonel Hammond received orders to take every measure for the safe keeping of the king, and for preventing the lurking of suspicious vessels in Southampton Water, as it was known that a ship had been engaged by the queen to carry off Charles and land him at Berwick, in readiness to co-operate with the Scottish movement. Hammond dismissed Ashburnham, Legge, and Berkeley, with all other Royalists, from the island; sent away a vessel, supposed to be the very one engaged by the queen; and put the king under strict surveillance and a double guard. He was no longer an apparently free guest, but a close prisoner.
This treatment only doubled his determination to escape. Ashburnham, Berkeley, and Legge, though banished from the island, kept saddle-horses on the coast ready, in case of the king's escaping from Carisbrooke; and his friends from all quarters corresponded with him, and their letters were conveyed to him by Henry Firebrace, who was in some employment in the castle, and was occasionally engaged by one of the warders to take his place before the king's chamber-door, when he put the correspondence entrusted to him through a crevice of the door. The whole island resented the incarceration of the king, and there were loud threats of rising and liberating him by force. One Captain Burley was mad enough to make the attempt. At midnight a drum was beaten. Burley put himself at the head of a rabble in Newport, without, as reported, having a single musket among them, and was speedily taken and executed.
On the 3rd of January, 1648, the two Houses discussed the relations with the king, and in the Commons the plainest Republican sentiments were avowed. The refusal of the four Bills by the king was deemed convincing proof that no possibility was left of ever coming to agreement with him. Sir Thomas Wroth declared that kings of late had conducted themselves more like inmates of Bedlam than anything else, and that he did not care what government was set up if it were not by kings or devils. Ireton contended that the relation of king and subjects implied mutual bonds and duties; the king was to protect the people, and the people to maintain the king in his duty, but that Charles had abandoned his duty, had ceased to protect his people, nay, had made war on them, and therefore had annulled the compact; that, seeing this, the army was resolved to stand by the Parliament for the establishment of national right. Cromwell, after many had proceeded in a like strain, asserted that it was time to fulfil the wearied expectation of the people, and to show that they could govern and defend the kingdom by their own power, and to decide that there was nothing to be hoped from a man whose heart God had hardened in obstinacy. In fact, in Parliament, almost as much as in the army, a large party had come to the conclusion that it was odious in the sight of God to be governed by a king.
The result was a vote that Parliament would make no further applications or addresses to the king, nor receive any message from him, except by full consent of both Houses, under penalty of high treason. The Lords concurred in the vote, and a public declaration was circulated to that effect; and it was also agreed that the Committee of Public Safety should again sit and act alone, without the aid of any foreign coadjutors. This was a plain hint to the Scots that Parliament knew of their late treaty. Hitherto they had formed part of the Committee of both kingdoms, so that they had shared the government of England. This was withdrawn; the Scots therefore demanded the payment of the last one hundred thousand pounds due to them by the treaty of evacuation, and announced their intention to retire on receiving it.
This decided step of Parliament, and the rigour with which Charles was guarded, put the Scots, the Presbyterians, the Royalists all on the alert. They stirred up everywhere a feeling of commiseration for him, as harshly and arbitrarily used; it was represented that the vote of non-address amounted to a declaration that all attempts at reconciliation were at an end, and that the Independents meant to give effect to the doctrines of the army and put the king to death. These efforts were productive of a rapidly and widely spreading sentiment in the king's favour, and soon formidable insurrections were on foot. The king himself omitted no means of attempting his escape. By his plans his second son, the Duke of York, had made his escape from the care of the Earl of Northumberland in female attire, and got to Holland. Towards the end of March Charles tried to escape out of the window of his chamber. A silken cord was prepared to let him down; and, to prove the safety of the descent, Firebrace forced himself between the iron stanchions of the window and let himself down; but the king, in essaying to follow, stuck fast, and, after violent efforts, found it impossible to get through. Cromwell announced to Hammond, in a letter still extant, that Parliament was informed that aquafortis had been sent down to corrode this obstructing bar; that the attempt was to be renewed during the coming dark nights, and that Captain Titus and some others about the king were not to be trusted. At the same time he informed him that the Commons, in reward of his vigilance and services in securing and keeping the king, had raised his pay from ten to twenty pounds a week, had voted him one thousand pounds, and settled upon him and his heirs five hundred pounds per annum.
The reaction in favour of the king now began to discover itself on all sides. Charles published an appeal to the nation against the proceedings of Parliament, which seemed to cut off all further hope of accommodation. Parliament issued a counter-statement, and numerous rejoinders were the consequence—the most able from the pen of Hyde, the Chancellor, and Dr. Bates, the king's physician. Whilst these elements of strife were brewing in England, the Duke of Hamilton, released from Pendennis Castle and restored to the favour of the king, returned to Scotland, and the Marquis of Ormond to Ireland, to muster forces to operate with a simultaneous rising in England. The Scottish muster proceeded with vigour, though stoutly opposed by the Duke of Argyll, and the work of revolt commenced in March, in Wales. Poyer, the Mayor of Pembroke, and governor of the castle, declared for the king, and at the summons of Fairfax refused to yield up his command. Powell and Langherne, two officers of disbanded regiments, joined him, and many of their old soldiers followed them. The Royalists ran to arms, eight thousand men were soon afoot in the Principality, Chepstow and Carnarvon were surprised, and Colonel Fleming was killed. Cromwell was despatched to reduce these forces at the head of five regiments. He quickly recovered Carnarvon and Chepstow, defeated Langherne, and summoned Poyer to surrender. But Pembroke stood out, and was not reduced till July, though Colonel Horton encountered Langherne at St. Fagan's, near Cardiff, and completely routed him.
Meanwhile, in other quarters insurrections broke out. On the 9th of April a mob of apprentices and other young fellows attacked the train-bands in Moorfields, struck the captain, took his colours, and marched with them to Westminster, crying, "King Charles! King Charles!" There they were attacked and dispersed, but they rallied again in the City, broke open houses to obtain arms, and frightened the mayor so that he took refuge in the Tower. The next day Fairfax dispersed them, but not without bloodshed. Soon after three hundred men from Surrey surrounded the Parliament houses, cursing the Parliament, insulting the soldiers, and demanding the restoration of the king. They were not repulsed without some of them being killed. Similar outbreaks took place in Norwich, Thetford, Canterbury, and other places. Pontefract Castle was surprised by eighty cavaliers, each with a soldier mounted behind him.
