While the forces were employed in all quarters, the parliament regained its liberty, and began to act with its wonted courage and spirit. The members who had withdrawn from terror of the army, returned; and infusing boldness into their companions, restored to the Presbyterian party the ascendant which it had formerly lost. The eleven impeached members were recalled, and the vote by which they were expelled was reversed. The vote, too, of non-addresses was repealed; and commissioners, five peers and ten commoners, were sent to Newport in the Isle of Wight, in order to treat with the king.[*] He was allowed to summon several of his friends and old counsellors, that he might have their advice in this important transaction.[**] The theologians on both sides, armed with their syllogisms and quotations, attended as auxiliaries.[***] By them the flame had first been raised; and their appearance was but a bad prognostic of its extinction. Any other instruments seemed better adapted for a treaty of pacification.
When the king presented himself to this company, a great and sensible alteration was remarked in his aspect, from what it appeared the year before, when he resided at Hampton Court. The moment his servants had been removed, he had laid aside all care of his person, and had allowed his beard and hair to grow, and to hang dishevelled and neglected. His hair was become almost entirely gray, either from the decline of years, or from that load of sorrows under which he labored; and which, though borne with constancy, preyed inwardly on his sensible and tender mind. His friends beheld with compassion, and perhaps even his enemies, “that gray and discrowned head,” as he himself terms it, in a copy of verses, which the truth of the sentiment, rather than any elegance of expression, renders very pathetic.[****] Having in vain endeavored by courage to defend his throne from his armed adversaries, it now behoved him, by reasoning and persuasion, to save some fragments of it from these peaceful, and no less implacable negotiators.
The vigor of the king’s mind, notwithstanding the seeming decline of his body, here appeared unbroken and undecayed. The parliamentary commissioners would allow none of his council to be present, and refused to enter into reasoning with any but himself. He alone, during the transactions of two months, was obliged to maintain the argument against fifteen men of the greatest parts and capacity in both houses; and no advantage was ever obtained over him,[v] This was the scene above all others in which he was qualified to excel. A quick conception, a cultivated understanding, a chaste conclusion, a dignified manner; by these accomplishments he triumphed in all discussions of cool and temperate reasoning.
* Clarendon, vol. v. p. 180. Sir Edward Walker’s Perfect
Copies p. 6.
** Sir Edward Walker’s Perfect Copies, p. 8.
*** Sir Edward Walker’s Perfect Copies, p. 8, 38.
**** Burnet’s Memoirs of Hamilton.
v Herbert’s Memoirs, p. 72.
“The king is much changed,” said the earl of Salisbury to Sir Philip Warwick: “he is extremely improved of late.” “No,” replied Sir Philip, “he was always so: but you are now at last sensible of it.”[*] Sir Henry Vane, discoursing with his fellow-commissioners, drew an argument from the king’s uncommon abilities, why the terms of pacification must be rendered more strict and rigid.[**] But Charles’s capacity shone not equally in action as in reasoning.
The first point insisted on by the parliamentary commissioners, was the king’s recalling all his proclamations and declarations against the parliament, and the acknowledging that they had taken arms in their own defence. He frankly offered the former concession, but long scrupled the latter. The falsehood, as well as indignity of that acknowledgment, begat in his breast an extreme reluctance against it. The king had, no doubt, in some particulars of moment, invaded, from a seeming necessity, the privileges of his people: but having renounced all claim to these usurped powers, having confessed his errors, and having repaired every breach in the constitution, and even erected new ramparts in order to secure it, he could no longer, at the commencement of the war, be represented as the aggressor. However it might be pretended, that the former display of his arbitrary inclinations, or rather his monarchical principles, rendered an offensive or preventive war in the parliament prudent and reasonable, it could never in any propriety of speech, make it be termed a defensive one. But the parliament, sensible that the letter of the law condemned them as rebels and traitors, deemed this point absolutely necessary for their future security; and the king, finding that peace could be obtained on no other terms, at last yielded to it. He only entered a protest, which was admitted, that no concession made by him should be valid, unless the whole treaty of pacification were concluded.[***]
* Warwick, p. 324.
** Clarendon. Sir Edward Walker, p. 319
*** Walker, p. 11, 12, 24.
He agreed that the parliament should retain, during the term of twenty years, the power over the militia and army, and that of levying what money they pleased for their support. He even yielded to them the right of resuming, at any time afterwards, this authority, whenever they should declare such a resumption necessary for public safety. In effect, the important power of the sword was forever ravished from him and his successors.[*]
He agreed that all the great offices, during twenty years should be filled by both houses of parliament.[**] He relinquished to them the entire government of Ireland, and the conduct of the war there.[***] He renounced the power of the wards, and accepted of one hundred thousand pounds a year in lieu of it.[****] He acknowledged the validity of their great seal, and gave up his own.[v] He abandoned the power of creating peers without consent of parliament. And he agreed, that all the debts contracted in order to support the war against him, should be paid by the people.
So great were the alterations made on the English constitution by this treaty, that the king said, not without reason, that he had been more an enemy to his people by these concessions, could he have prevented them, than by any other action of his life.