Moderate or not, the Army's ultimatum obtained but an unfriendly hearing in the two Houses; and, between the 22nd and the 28th of May, Fairfax having meanwhile returned to the Army, they issued their opposed ultimatum in a sharp series of orders. The entire army of Foot was to be disbanded, willing or unwilling, on the terms fixed: Fairfax's own regiment at Chelmsford on June 1, Hewson's at Bishop's Stortford on June 3, Lambert's at Saffron Walden on June 5, and so on regiment by regiment, each on a named day and at a named place, a Committee of the two Houses to be present at each disbanding, and Skippon also to be present to enlist such of the disbanded men as would go to Ireland. These orders reached Fairfax at Bury St. Edmund's in Suffolk, to which he had removed his head-quarters. They threw the Army into an ungovernable uproar, which subsided in a day or two into an ominous calm. For a great resolution had been taken. The Agitators, at a meeting on Saturday, May 29, had drawn up a petition to Fairfax for a speedy Rendezvous of the whole Army at one place for united action; and a council of officers, to the number of 200, with Ireton among them, had declared themselves on the same day to the same effect. They advised Fairfax to grant the Rendezvous, telling him that, if he did not, the men would hold one themselves and it was sure then to end in tumult. Fairfax had taken the advice; and in the last days of May orders were out for the "contraction of the Army's quarters" by drawing the dispersed regiments closer together, and for a general "Rendezvous" at Kentford Heath, close to Newmarket, on Friday the 4th of June. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 582-588, and Rushworth, VI. 494-500.] Fairfax, with whatever hesitation, had thus thrown in his lot with the Army. Skippon, though he had accepted the Irish Field-Marshalship, almost repented having done so, and was one at heart with his old comrades. Of the other officers only a small minority, whether from Presbyterian predilections or out of mere respect for authority, wavered towards Parliament. The chief of these were Colonels Harley, Herbert, Fortescue, Sheffield, Butler, Sir Robert Pye, and Graves, this last being the Colonel in charge of the King at Holmby. On the other side, round Fairfax, and sustaining him, were Generals Ireton and Hammond, as next in rank; with Whalley, Rich, Okey, Rainsborough, Robert Lilburne, Sir Hardress Waller, Robert Hammond, Lambert, Hewson, Ewer, Kelsay, Ingoldsby, Pride, Axtell, Jubbs, Desborough, and other Colonels, Lieutenant-Colonels, and Majors, among whom is not to be forgotten the enthusiast Harrison, back from Ireland just at the right moment. But what of Fleetwood and Cromwell, left in their places in the House of Commons? Which way they would go nobody could doubt; but the question was whether they might not be seized as hostages by the Presbyterians and detained in London. As far as Fleetwood was concerned, the danger was over on the 2nd of June; on which day he had leave from the House "to go into the country," and went we can imagine whither. For Cromwell the danger was greater. He too, however, had made his arrangements. On the evening of the 3rd of June, or early on the following morning, just in time to avoid the arrest and impeachment which Holles and the Presbyterians were preparing for him, he rode quietly out of London in the direction of the Army. As far as can be ascertained, he had waited purposely to cover Fleetwood's departure, and be himself the last army-man to leave the Commons. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 2; Whitlocke, May 31; Rushworth, VI. 464-8 and 495; Holles 85, 86; Clar. 611; Godwin, II. 311, 312. Cromwell's so-called "Flight to the Army" is an incident made much of by Royalist and Presbyterian writers, and Clarendon's account of it and what preceded it is a perfect jumble of incompatible dates and confused rumours. What all those writers (Holles, Clement Walker, Clarendon, Baxter, Burnet, &c.) wanted to make out, and really succeeded in transmitting as a fact, was that Cromwell's whole conduct through the dispute between the Army and Parliament, up to the moment of his flight, had been a tissue of the profoundest craft and hypocrisy. He had pushed on the policy of disbandment in the Parliament on the one hand, and on the other he had fomented the mutiny in the Army through the Agitators; to lull suspicion when it was roused, he had at the last moment protested in the House in the presence of Almighty God that he knew the Army would lay down their arms; and not till his flight was the whole depth of his dissimulation known! On these statements, and the disposition of mind that could invent them or believe in them, see Mr. Carlyle's impressive words (Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, I. 220-222). The real facts are to be gathered or inferred from the Commons Journals. Cromwell had been in London through February, March, and April, while the votes for disbandment, &c. were passed, unable to resist those votes, but anxious to prevent a rupture, and doing his best to that end: and not till after his return from his mission of mediation to the Army (May 21), or even till after the Army's resolution for a Rendezvous (May 29), were his hopes of a reconciliation utterly gone.]
The general Rendezvous of the Army was duly held, as appointed, near Newmarket, in Cambridgeshire, on Friday the 4th of June. There were present seven foot-regiments and six regiments of horse—a full representation of the Army, though not the whole. There was the utmost display of resolution. One great general Petition was agreed to; a solemn engagement was drawn up and signed by officers and soldiers; Fairfax rode from regiment to regiment, addressed each, and was received with outcries of applause. The proceedings were not over on the 4th, but protracted themselves into the next day. On that day it was that a strange excitement or suspense, which had been visible in all faces from the very beginning of the Rendezvous, in consequence of news then received, was relieved by the arrival of farther news. "Joyce has done it! Joyce has done it!" were the words that might then have been heard through the assembled Army, caught up and repeated by group after group of talking soldiers over the heath. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 504-512.]
Who was Joyce, and what had he done? These questions take us back to the King at Holmby.—His Majesty, watching the course of the struggle between the Parliament and the Army, had at last, on the 12th of May, sent in his long-deferred Answer to the Nineteen Propositions. It was substantially the Draft which he had submitted to the Queen and the Earl of Lanark in the preceding December, but had suppressed (antè, pp. 505-6). He offered the surrender of the Militia for ten years, and assent to Presbytery for three years, but with a reserve of the Liturgy for himself and his household, and the right of adding twenty divines to the Westminster Assembly to assist in the final settlement of the Church- question. The clause about a toleration for tender consciences, inserted in the former Draft as a bait for the Independents, was now totally omitted. In other words, Charles had thought the moment favourable for re-opening negotiations with the Presbyterians. The reception of his Letter by Parliament had been encouraging. It had been read in the Lords, May 18; and it had then been carried in that House by a majority of 15 to 9 that his Majesty should be brought at once from Holmby to some place nearer London, for the convenience of treating with him. Oatlands in Surrey had been named, and the concurrence of the Commons requested. Actually on May 21, the very day when Cromwell and Fleetwood returned to the Commons from their mission to the Army, the matter had been mentioned in that House. Although no decision had been come to, the Independents and the Army had taken alarm. Colonel Graves, commanding the guard at Holmby, was a Presbyterian; some of those everlasting Scottish Commissioners were back in London, in their old quarters at Worcester House; nay, one of them, the Earl of Dunfermline, had obtained leave from the two Houses (May 13) to visit the King at Holmby! What might not be in agitation under this proposal of a removal of the King to Oatlands? What so easy as for the Presbyterians, with Colonel Graves for their agent, to secure the King wholly to themselves, and so, having bargained with him on their own terms, to invite back the Scots and defy the Army? Such had been questions gossiped over in the Army at the very time when for other reasons the resolution was taken for a general Rendezvous. This very danger of some Presbyterian plot for removing the King from Holmby was an additional reason for the Rendezvous and the contraction of the Army's quarters. But the Rendezvous was not enough. Simultaneously with the Rendezvous, and to turn it to full account, something else was necessary. What that was had also been discussed among the Agitators with every precaution of secrecy; select parties of troopers from different regiments had been told off for the enterprise; and a George Joyce, once a tailor, but now cornet in Fairfax's lifeguard, had been appointed to take the lead. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates given; and Parl. Hist. III. 577-581, containing the King's Letter.]
As early as Wednesday June 2, or two days before the Rendezvous at Newmarket, there had been a suspicious appearance of parties of horse gathering to a body near Holmby. That night there was no doubt about it; and Colonel Graves, who had reasons for thinking that he was their main object, had just made his escape, when, about one in the morning of June 3, the troopers were in the park and meadows surrounding the house. Before daylight they were within the gates, Graves's men having let them in and at once fraternized with them. The whole of that day was spent by the troopers, Joyce acting as their spokesman, in a parley with the Commissioners in charge of the King—viz.: Lord Montague of Boughton, Sir John Coke, Mr. Crewe, and General Browne—the King meanwhile aware of what was going on, but keeping his privacy. Messengers had been sent off from the Commissioners to London; where, accordingly, on Friday the 4th, there was great excitement in the two Houses. That same morning the news was known in the Army at Newmarket, just before the proceedings of the Rendezvous began, not much to the surprise of some there perhaps, but certainly to the surprise of Fairfax himself. He could not then countermand the Rendezvous; but at once he detached Whalley and his horse-regiment, to gallop to Holmby, take Colonel Graves's place, and see that no harm was done. By that time, however, Joyce had completed his business. Passing from his first topic with the Commissioners, which had been Colonel Graves and his plot, he had insisted on seeing the King; had compelled the Commissioners late at night on the 3rd to introduce him into his Majesty's bedchamber; had there apologized, talked with his Majesty, answered his questions, and distinctly informed him that he had authority from the Army to carry him away from Holmby. The King, amused and interested, as it seemed, rather than displeased, had taken the night to think over the matter; and by six o'clock next morning he had left his chamber, and was again in colloquy with Joyce, who had his troopers all mounted and ready where they could be seen. His Majesty did not seem disinclined to go, but was naturally inquisitive as to the authority by which Joyce acted. Had he a commission from Fairfax? Mr. Joyce could not say he had. Had he any commission at all? "There is my commission, your Majesty," said Joyce at last, pointing to his mounted troopers. "A fair commission and well-written," said the King, smiling: "a company of as handsome, proper gentlemen as ever I saw in my life." In short, as there was no help for it, he supposed he must go. And so, actually, after vain protests and solemn threats by the Commissioners, and especially by General Browne, to all which Joyce listened unmoved, the party did set off at a trot from Holmby, about two o'clock in the afternoon of June 4, with Joyce at their head, and the King in their charge, accompanied by the Commissioners. The Scottish Earl of Dunfermline, who had witnessed much of the affair, had posted off to London, The Rendezvous at Newmarket was then going on. [Footnote: Original accounts of Joyce's conduct at Holmby and abduction of the King are (1) Letters of the Commissioners from Holmby, June 3 and 4, and from Childersley June 8, addressed to Manchester as Speaker of the Lords, and given in the Lords Journals; (2) Fairfax's Letters to Speaker Lenthall, of June 4 and 7, in the Commons Journal giving Fairfax's account of the information he had collected, and of his own proceedings in consequence; (3) A very curious and interesting contemporary account called "An Impartial Narration, &c.," reprinted by Rushworth in five folio pages (VI. 513-517). On reading this paper, one soon finds, from lapses from the third into the first personal pronoun, that the writer is Joyce himself. The narrative, though by a man stiff at the pen and rather elated by the importance of his act, appears perfectly trustworthy, and supplies, many particulars. Clarendon's version of the incident is very loose and inaccurate. He huddles into one day what was really an affair of two, &c.]
Joyce having given the King the option, within a certain extent, of the place to which he would be conveyed, his Majesty himself had suggested Newmarket. Thither, accordingly, they were bound. The evening of the 4th brought them to Huntingdon, where his Majesty rested that night in the mansion-house of Hinchinbrook, once the property of Cromwell's uncle, Sir Oliver, but now of Colonel Edward Montague. Next day (Saturday, June 5) they were again on their march for Newmarket, when they were met, about four miles from Cambridge, by Whalley and his regiment of horse. Joyce, of course, then retired from the management. Whalley, in accordance with his instructions, was willing to convey the King and the Commissioners back to Holmby; but this his Majesty positively declined. Till there should be farther deliberation, therefore, his Majesty was quartered at the nearest convenient house, which chanced to be Sir John Cutts's at Childersley, near Cambridge. Here he remained over Sunday the 6th and Monday the 7th. Meanwhile both in London and at Newmarket the commotion was boundless. The full news had reached the two Houses on Saturday the 5th. Next day, though it was Sunday, they re-assembled for prayer and business; but nothing practical could be thought of; all was panic, passing into a mood of submissiveness to the Army. The only show of anger, even in words, up to the mark of the occasion, was in a paper given in to a Committee of the two Houses by the Scottish Commissioners, with a speech in their name by the Earl of Lauderdale. The Scottish nation had been insulted; its resentment might be expected; it would co- operate at once with the Parliament for "the rescuing and defending his Majesty's person," &c.! It was easier for the Scottish Commissioners to speak in this strain than for the Parliament to take corresponding action. The opportunity was now wholly with the Army. That they would adopt Joyce's deed, and take the full benefit of it, could not be doubted; or, if it could, the procedure of Fairfax at once put an end to the doubt. On Saturday and Sunday he was lifting his Rendezvous from Newmarket; by Monday the 7th he had brought his army bodily round about Cambridge, so as to encircle the King; and on that day he, Cromwell, Treton, and Hammond, with Whalley, Waller, Lambert, and other chief officers, were assembled in interview with the King and the Commissioners at Childersley House. No persuasion could induce his Majesty to go back to Holmby. Much of the conversation turned on Joyce's daring act and his authority for it; and Joyce, having been called in, underwent a long examination and cross-examination on this point. Very little could be got out of him, except that he had had no commission from Fairfax, and yet that he considered his authority perfectly sufficient. Let the question, he said, be put to the Army itself whether they approved of what he had done, and, if three-fourths or four-fifths did not approve with acclamations, he would be hanged with pleasure. The Commissioners thought Joyce deserved hanging in any case; but the King, who had taken a liking for him, told him that, though it was a great treason he had done, he might consider himself pardoned. Joyce having then withdrawn, and the King, having consented to remain with the Army, it was agreed that he should be conveyed to Newmarket next day. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of June 5 and 6; Parl. Hist. III. 591-594; Rushworth, VI. 545- 550, with the previously-mentioned "Impartial Narration" of Joyce. To this day nothing more is positively known of the real origin of the scheme of the King's abduction than Joyce allowed himself to reveal. We have Fairfax's own solemn word "as in the presence of God" that he was utterly ignorant of the transaction till it was over; and in the same Letter (June 7) he "dares be confident" the officers and the body of the Army were equally ignorant. Royalist and Presbyterian writers attribute the act directly to Cromwell. It was planned, says Holles, at a meeting at Cromwell's house in London, May 30; and Clarendon and others lay stress on the fact that the very day of Cromwell's flight from London "was the day of Joyce's appearance at Holmby. The Presbyterian Major Huntingdon, Cromwell's own Major, afterwards distinctly declared, Aug. 1648, that Joyce had his instructions from Cromwell, and that Joyce himself averred this to excuse himself from Fairfax's displeasure (Parl. Hist. III. 967-8). I suspect that, whatever Cromwell and Ireton may have privately sanctioned, the thing was managed among the Agitators; and it does not seem impossible that the original design was to seize Graves at Holmby, quash his supposed plotting there with Lord Dunfermline, and take possession of the King for the Army without removing him. As to the abduction, Joyce may have been left a discretion.]
Before we pass on, with the King, into the third stage of his captivity, we have to report briefly the progress that had been made, during his stay at Holmby, in one or two matters of public concern, not directly involved in the feud between the Parliament and the Army.
In April 1647, there had been a vigorous resumption of the Church- question in the Commons, in consequence of the Report of a Committee on obstructions which had arisen to the Presbyterian settlement. There was great sluggishness all over the country in establishing elderships and classes; returns from counties were deficient; even in London the Provincial Synod had not yet met! To remove these obstructions various orders were passed, the Lords concurring (April 20-29). The most important of these was one for the immediate meeting of the FIRST PROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF LONDON. It met in the Convocation House of St. Paul's, on Monday, May 3, 1647, and consisted of 108 representatives of the London classes or Presbyteries, in the proportion of three ministers and six lay-elders from each. Dr. Gouge, of Blackfriars, was chosen Prolocutor or Moderator of this first Synod, and the term of the Moderatorship and of the Synod itself was to be for half a year, or till November 1647; after which the Second Synod, similarly elected, was to meet, with a new Moderator; and so on, every six months, Synod after Synod, in Presbyterian London for ever. Of the First Synod, under Dr. Gouge, we need only say that they arranged to meet twice a week, and that, with the leave of the Parliament, they transferred their meeting-place from St. Paul's to Sion College. The discussions there may have been a little crippled by the fact that the new Presbyterian Church of England was not yet provided with an authorized Confession of Faith. The text of such a document, as prepared by the Westminster Assembly, had been before the two Houses since Dec. 1646 (antè, p. 512); the Lords on the 16th of February had urged the Commons in almost reproachful terms to quicken their pace in that business; the Commons on the 22nd of April had at length roused themselves so far as to order the Westminster Assembly to send in the Scriptural proofs which they had been preparing according to a previous order; but, though on the 29th of April these proofs were actually received and the Assembly thanked, it was not till the 19th of May that the Commons did begin, Math printed copies of the Confession before them, to examine the work, paragraph by paragraph. On that day and May 28 they considered and passed, without division, and apparently without much debate, the three first chapters of the Confession—viz.: Chap. I. Of the Holy Scriptures (ten paragraphs); Chap. II. Of God and the Holy Trinity (three paragraphs); Chap. III. Of God's Eternal Decrees. The next chapter, entitled Of Creation, was to be proceeded with punctually on Wednesday next, June 2; but, when that day came, Fairfax's orders for the Army Rendezvous were out, Joyce was prowling about Holmby, and the "Creation" had to be postponed. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of the days given (also a curious entry in Commons Journals of April 27); Rushworth, VI. 476; Neal, III. 356-358.]
A matter on which the Parliament had been intent for some time was the purgation and regulation of the University of Oxford. If Parliamentary purgation had been found necessary for Cambridge three years before (antè, pp. 92-96), how much more was this process needed in Oxford, always the more Prelatic University of the two, and recently, as the King's head-quarters through the Civil War, more deep-dyed in Prelacy than ever! Where but in Oxford, amid courtiers and cavaliers, had ex- bishops, Anglican doctors, and other dangerous persons, found house-room for the last few years? Whence but from the colleges at Oxford had come all the Prelatic sermons, pamphlets, and squibs against the Parliament, the Covenant, and Presbytery, including the official Royalist newspaper, the Mercurius Aulicus, edited by Mr. John Birkenhead and a society of his brother-wits? Accordingly, since the surrender of Oxford in June 1646, punishment for the University had been in preparation. For various reasons, however, it had been administered first in a didactic form. Preachers of the right Presbyterian type had been sent down to Oxford by authority in Aug. 1646; and these had been followed by such a rush of volunteer zealots of all varieties that the loyal Oxford historian, Anthony Wood, shuddered to his life's end at the recollection. "Hell was broke loose," he says, "upon the poor remnant" of the scholars, so that most of them "did either leave the University or abscond in their respective houses till they could know their doom." That doom came at length in the form of an Ordinance of the two Houses for the Visitation of the University (May 1, 1647). It empowered twenty-four persons, not members of Parliament, among whom were Sir Nathaniel Brent, William Prynne, and thirteen other lawyers, the rest being divines, to visit Oxford, inquire into abuses and delinquencies, impose the Covenant on Heads of Houses, Fellows, &c., and report the results to a standing Committee of both Houses, consisting of twenty-six Peers and fifty-two of the Commons. Under this Ordinance the Visitors issued a citation to the Heads of Houses and others to meet them in the Convocation House at Oxford on the 4th of June. That was the day of the Army Rendezvous and of the King's abduction; beyond which point we do not go at present. Suffice it to say that there was to be a most strenuous resistance by the Oxonians, headed by their Vice-Chancellor Dr. Fell. [Footnote: Wool's Fasti Oxon. II 100-1 and 106-7; Lords Journals, May 1; Neal, III. 395 et seq.]
THIRD STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: THE KING WITH THE ARMY, JUNE-NOV. 1647.
Effects of Joyce's Abduction of the King—Movements of the Army: their Denunciation of Eleven of the Presbyterian Leaders: Parliamentary Alarms and Concessions—Presbyterian Phrenzy of the London Populace: Parliament mobbed, and Presbyterian Votes carried by Mob-law: Flight of the two Speakers and their Adherents: Restoration of the Eleven—March of the Army upon London: Military Occupation of the City: The Mob quelled, Parliament reinstated, and the Eleven expelled—Generous Treatment of the King by the Army: His Conferences with Fairfax, Cromwell, and Ireton—The Army's Heads of Proposals, and Comparison of the same with the Nineteen Propositions of the Parliament—King at Hampton Court, still demurring privately over the Heads of Proposals, but playing them off publicly against the Nineteen Propositions: Army at Putney—Cromwell's Motion for a Recast of the Nineteen Propositions and Re-application to the King on that Basis: Consequences of the Compromise: Intrigues at Hampton Court: Influence of the Scottish Commissioners there: King immoveable—Impatience of the Army at Putney: Cromwell under Suspicion: New Activity of the Agitatorships: Growth of Levelling Doctrines among the Soldiers: Agreement of the People— Cromwell breaks utterly with the King: Meetings of the Army Officers at Putney: Proposed Concordat between the Army and Parliament: The King's Escape to the Isle of Wight,