The condition of the king during this whole winter was to the last degree disastrous and melancholy. As the dread of ills is commonly more oppressive than their real presence, perhaps in no period of his life was he more justly the object of compassion. His vigor of mind, which, though it sometimes failed him in acting, never deserted him in his sufferings, was what alone supported him; and he was determined, as he wrote to Lord Digby, if he could not live as a king, to die like a gentleman; nor should any of his friends, he said, ever have reason to blush for the prince whom they had so unfortunately served.[**] The murmurs of discontented officers, on the one hand, harassed their unhappy sovereign; while they overrated those services and sufferings which they now saw must forever go unrewarded.[***] The affectionate duty, on the other hand, of his more generous friends, who respected his misfortunes and his virtues as much as his dignity, wrung his heart with a new sorrow, when he reflected that such disinterested attachment would so soon be exposed to the rigor of his implacable enemies. Repeated attempts which he made for a peaceful and equitable accommodation with the parliament, served to no purpose but to convince them that the victory was entirely in their hands. They deigned not to make the least reply to several of his messages, in which he desired a passport for commissioners.[****]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 141. It was the same Astley who, before
he charged at the battle of Edgehill, made this short
prayer: “O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day.
If I forget thee, do not thou forget me,” And with that rose
up and cried, “March on, boys!” Warwick, p. 229. There were
certainly much longer prayers said in the parliamentary
army; but I doubt if there were so good a one.
** Carte’s Ormond, vol. iii. No. 433.
*** Walker, p. 147
**** Rush, vol. vii. p. 215, etc.
At last, after reproaching him with the blood spilt during the war, they told him that they were preparing bills for him; and his passing them would be the best pledge of his inclination towards peace: in other words, he must yield at discretion.[*] He desired a personal treaty, and offered to come to London, upon receiving a safe-conduct for himself and his attendants: they absolutely refused him admittance, and issued orders for the guarding, that is, the seizing of his person, in case he should attempt to visit them.[**]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 217, 219. Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 741.
** Rush, vol. vii. p 249. Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 741.
A new incident, which happened in Ireland, served to inflame the minds of men, and to increase those calumnies with which his enemies had so much loaded him, and which he ever regarded as the most grievous part of his misfortunes. After the cessation with the Irish rebels, the king was desirous of concluding a final peace with them, and obtaining their assistance in England: and he gave authority to Ormond, lord lieutenant, to promise them an abrogation of all the penal laws enacted against Catholics; together with the suspension of Poinings’s statute, with regard to some particular bills which should be agreed on. Lord Herbert, created earl of Glamorgan, (though his patent had not yet passed the seals,) having occasion for his private affairs to go to Ireland, the king considered that this nobleman, being a Catholic, and allied to the best Irish families, might be of service: he also foresaw that further concessions with regard to religion might probably be demanded by the bigoted Irish; and that, as these concessions, however necessary, would give great scandal to the Protestant zealots in his three kingdoms, if would be requisite both to conceal them during some time, and to preserve Ormond’s character by giving private orders to Glamorgan to conclude and sign these articles. But as he had a better opinion of Glamorgan’s zeal and affection for his service than of his capacity, he enjoined him to communicate all his measures to Ormond; and though the final conclusion of the treaty must be executed only in Glamorgan’s own name, he was required to be directed in the steps towards it by the opinion of the lord lieutenant. Glamorgan, bigoted to his religion, and passionate for the king’s service, but guided in these pursuits by no manner of judgment or discretion, secretly, of himself, without any communication with Ormond, concluded a peace with the council of Kilkenny, and agreed, in the king’s name, that the Irish should enjoy all the churches of which they had ever been in possession since the commencement of their insurrection, on condition that they should assist the king in England with a body of ten thousand men. This transaction was discovered by accident. The titular archbishop of Tuam being killed by a sally of the garrison of Sligo, the articles of the treaty were found among his baggage, and were immediately published every where, and copies of them sent over to the English parliament.[*] The lord lieutenant and Lord Digby, foreseeing the clamor which would be raised against the king, committed Glamorgan to prison, charged him with treason for his temerity, and maintained that he had acted altogether without any authority from his master. The English parliament, however, neglected not so favorable an opportunity of reviving the old clamor with regard to the king’s favor of Popery, and accused him of delivering over, in a manner, the whole kingdom of Ireland to that hated sect. The king told them, “that the earl of Glamorgan, having made an offer to raise forces in the kingdom of Ireland, and to conduct them into England for his majesty’s service, had a commission to that purpose, and to that purpose only; and that he had no commission at all to treat of any thing else, without the privity and direction of the lord lieutenant, much less to capitulate any thing concerning religion, or any property belonging either to church or laity.”[**] Though this declaration seems agreeable to truth, it gave no satisfaction to the parliament; and some historians, even at present, when the ancient bigotry is somewhat abated, are desirous of representing this very innocent transaction, in which the king was engaged by the most violent necessity, as a stain on the memory of that unfortunate prince.[***] [16]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 239.
** Birch, p. 119.
*** See note P, at the end of the volume.
Having lost all hope of prevailing over the rigor of the parliament, either by arms or by treaty, the only resource which remained to the king was derived from the intestine dissensions which ran very high among his enemies. Presbyterians and Independents, even before their victory was fully completed, fell into contests about the division of the spoil; and their religious as well as civil disputes agitated the whole kingdom.
The parliament, though they had early abolished Episcopal authority, had not, during so long a time, substituted any other spiritual government in its place; and their committees of religion had hitherto assumed the whole ecclesiastical jurisdiction; but they now established, by an ordinance, the Presbyterian model in all its forms of congregational, classical, provincial, and national assemblies. All the inhabitants of each parish were ordered to meet and choose elders, on whom together with the minister, was bestowed the entire direction of all spiritual concerns within the congregation. A number of neighboring parishes, commonly between twelve and twenty, formed a classis; and the court which governed this division was composed of all the ministers, together with two, three, or four elders chosen from each parish. The provincial assembly retained an inspection over several neighboring classes, and was composed entirely of clergymen: the national assembly was constituted in the same manner; and its authority extended over the whole kingdom. It is probable, that the tyranny exercised by the Scottish clergy, had given warning not to allow laymen a place in the provincial or national assemblies; lest the nobility and more considerable gentry, soliciting a seat in these great ecclesiastical courts, should bestow a consideration upon them, and render them, in the eyes of the multitude, a rival to the parliament. In the inferior courts, the mixture of the laity might serve rather to temper the usual zeal of the clergy.[*]
But though the Presbyterians, by the establishment of parity among the ecclesiastics, were so far gratified, they were denied satisfaction in several other points on which they were extremely intent. The assembly of divines had voted Presbytery to be of divine right: the parliament refused their assent to that decision.[**] Selden, Whitlocke, and other political reasoners, assisted by the Independents, had prevailed in this important deliberation. They thought, that had the bigoted religionists been able to get their heavenly charter recognized, the presbyters would soon become more dangerous to the magistrate than had ever been the prelatical clergy. These latter, white they claimed to themselves a divine right, admitted of a like origin to civil authority: the former, challenging to their own order a celestial pedigree, derived the legislative power from a source no more dignified than the voluntary association of the people.
* Rush. vol. vii. p. 224.
** Whitlocke, p. 106. Rush. vol. vii. p. 260, 261.