A history of England

by Charles Oman

The Scots were delighted to have Charles in their hands, and proposed to restore him to his throne if he would promise to take the Covenant and impose Presbyterianism on England. This demand hit the king on a point where his conscience was fixed and firm; he would never sell the Church to its foes, so he temporized and dallied with the Scots' proposals, but would not accept them. Disgusted at his refusal, the Covenanters resolved to surrender him to the English Parliament. After stipulating for the payment of all the arrears of the subsidies which were owed them for their services in England, they gave up the king to his enemies—a proceeding which contemporary opinion called "selling their master for £400,000" (January, 1647).

Even yet Charles had not abandoned all hope; he knew that his victorious enemies were much divided among themselves, and thought that by embroiling them with one another he might yet secure good terms for himself.

Presbyterians and Independents.

The two parties which split the Parliament were the Presbyterians and the Independents. The former, of whom we have heard so much already, were desirous of organizing all England into a Calvinistic Church on the model of the Scottish Kirk; they were as intolerant as Laud himself in the matter of conformity, and intended to force the whole nation into their new organization. Papists, Episcopalians, and Nonconformists of every kind were all to be driven into the fold. This plan did not please the "Independents"—a party who consisted of men of all sorts and conditions, who only agreed in disliking a State Church and a compulsory uniformity. Some of the Independents were wild sectaries—Anabaptists, Levellers, and Fifth-Monarchy-men, who held the strangest doctrines of an immediate Millennium. Others were men who merely insisted on the responsibility of the individual for his own conscience, and thought that the State Church, with its compulsory powers, was a mistake, coming between God and man where no mediator was required. Hence the watchword of the Independents was the toleration of all sects, and they steadfastly resisted the Presbyterian doctrine of forced conformity. The Independents were very strong in the army, and Cromwell, the coming man, was a pillar of their cause. On the other hand, the Presbyterians had a decided majority among the members of the Parliament.

Parliament offers terms to Charles.

As representing the party of toleration, the Independents were quite prepared to leave Episcopalians alone, and it was therefore with them, rather than with the rigid and bigoted Presbyterians, that the king hoped to be able to ally himself. But it was the Presbyterians who swayed the House, and had possession of Charles's person; with them, therefore, he had to treat. The Parliamentary majority did not yet dream of abolishing the monarchy; they were bent on two things—on tying the present king's hands so tightly that he should never again be a danger to the common weal, and on forcing him to consent to the establishment of Presbyterianism as the State religion. The former was a rational end enough, for Charles could never be trusted; the latter was a piece of insane bigotry, for the Presbyterians were a mere minority in the nation, far outnumbered by the Episcopalians and the Independents. The "Propositions" of the Parliament took the form of a demand that Charles should surrender all claim to control the militia, the fleet, and taxation, for twenty years; that he should take the Covenant himself, assent to its being forced on all his subjects, and order the persecution of all Romanists. [42] He was also to assent to the outlawing of his own chief supporters in the civil war.

Now Charles had declared long ago that he would never sacrifice his crown, his Church, or his friends, and in captivity he did his best to keep his vow. But his method was not to give a steady refusal, and bid his enemies do their worst. He answered their demands by long counter-propositions, flagrant evasions, and endless hair-splitting on every disputed point. Where he might have appeared a martyr, he chose to stand as a quibbling casuist. The Parliament kept him in easy and honourable confinement at Holmby House, in Northamptonshire, while the negotiations were in progress, and he was so carelessly guarded that he was able to keep up secret correspondence with all kinds of possible allies—the King of France, the Scots, and the chiefs of the Independent party.

Parliament and the army.

But while king and Commons were haggling for terms, a new difficulty arose. The Presbyterian majority in Parliament were anxious to disband the army, both because of the expense of its maintenance, and still more because they knew it to be a stronghold of their enemies, the Independents. In March, 1647, they issued an ordinance for the dismissal of the whole force save a few regiments destined to suppress the Irish rebellion. But the "New-Model" refused to be dismissed; it hated Presbyterians, and it had learnt to look upon itself as a truer representative of the Puritan party than an out-of-date House which had been sitting more than seven years. Instead of disbanding, the army began to organize itself for resistance, and each regiment named two deputies, or "agitators," as they were called, to form a central military committee. This was done with the approval of Fairfax and Cromwell, the leaders of the host. The movement was natural, but quite unconstitutional; still more so was the next step of the soldiery. An officer named Joyce, with the secret sanction of the agitators and of Cromwell also, rode to Holmby with 500 men, seized the king's person, and took him to Newmarket, where the head-quarters of the army lay.