These Heads of Proposals of the Army strike one as not only inspired by a far wiser and deeper political philosophy than the Nineteen Propositions of the Parliament, but really also as magnanimously considerate of the King in comparison. They are so generous that we can account for them only by supposing that the Army-chiefs were really prepared for a fresh trial of government by King, Lords, and Commons, with the security against renewed despotism furnished by the Article about the Militia, combined with the Article for a succession of Biennial Parliaments. Two things are to be observed, however. One is that the Heads of Proposals were tendered for the English kingdom alone, "leaving the terms of Peace for the kingdom of Scotland to stand as in the late [Nineteen] Propositions of both kingdoms, until that kingdom shall agree to any alteration." But farther, even as respected England, there was no promise by the Army that the King could avoid the establishment of Presbytery. Things had gone so far in that direction, and the majority seemed so determined in it, that the Army neither could nor did desire to resist a Presbyterian establishment, were it persevered in by Parliament. Only they were resolved that the creed, discipline, or worship of that establishment, or of any other, should not be compulsory either on the King or on any of his subjects. [Footnote: See the Heads of Proposals complete in Parl. Hist. III. 738-745, and Rushworth, VII. 731-736 (the paging in this vol. beginning p. 731). Sufficient attention has not been paid by historians, except perhaps Godwin (II. 373-378), to this great document. Even Godwin resorts to the extraordinary hypothesis the Proposals were not in good faith, but only a Machiavellian device of Cromwell and Ireton for detaching Charles from the Presbyterians and bringing him over to the Army, who could then laugh at him and the Proposals too. Godwin remarks in particular that, as Ireton, who penned the Proposals, was "the most inflexible Republican that ever existed," his self-repression in drawing up such a document, accepting restored Royalty, and casting away the chance of a Republic, must have been colossal. In Royalist historians of the seventeenth century this kind of reasoning was natural, but one is surprised to find it affecting a mind so able and candid as Godwin's. There is no reason to doubt that, when the Heads of Proposals were settled, they expressed the real and deliberate conclusions of the Army chiefs as to those terms the honest acceptance of which by Charles would satisfy them. Nay, the publication of them was a service to Charles, by instructing the nation generally on a better means of dealing with him than the Nineteen Propositions. See Denzil Holles's amazed opinion of them as "a new platform of government, an Utopia of their own." (Memoirs, p. 176 et seq.). As for Ireton's suppression of his Republicanism, Ireton's Republicanism, like other people's, probably grew.]
The Army Proposals, or the main substance of them, had been the subject of conversations between Charles and the Army-chiefs, and even of a formal conference between him and them, on or about July 24, when he was at Woburn. He had fumed and stormed at the Proposals, telling the deputation he would have Episcopacy established by law, the Army could not do without him, its chiefs would be ruined if they had not his support, and so on. The secret of this behaviour seems to have been that Charles was at that moment building great hopes on the recent demonstrations of the City of London in favour of a Personal Treaty with him in the Presbyterian interest, and was even aware of the attempted revolution then about to break forth in the form of the London tumults. It says much for the forbearance of the Army-leaders that they did not withdraw the Proposals after this first rejection of them by the King. On the contrary, they were resolved that the King should still have the option of agreeing with them; they modified them in some points to suit him; and they were willing that the whole world should know what they were. Hence the formal redaction of them into the Paper of Aug. 1, at Colnbrook. Copies of the Paper were then and there delivered to the Parliamentary Commissioners with the Army; and it was with that Paper carried before it that the Army continued its march into London. Accordingly, on the first day of the meeting of the reconstituted Houses (Aug. 6), the Army's Heads of Proposals were officially tabled in both (in the Commons by Sir Henry Vane), in order that the Houses might, if they saw fit, adopt them in future dealings with the King, instead of the Nineteen Propositions. [Footnote: Major Huntingdon's Paper accusing Cromwell, Parl. Hist. III. 970; Sir John Berkley's Memoirs of Negotiations (1699), reprinted in Harleian' Miscellany, IX 466-488; Godwin (quoting Bamfield), II. 378-380; Parl. Hist. III. 737; Commons Journals, Aug. 6. There is evidence that, between the submission of the Proposals to the King at Woburn on or about July 24 and their complete redaction for publication Aug. 1; additions had been made to accommodate the King. Such additions may have been the two supernumerary Articles providing for lenity to compounders and a general Act of Oblivion.]
September and October were the months of the complicated negotiation thus arising. The King was then at Hampton Court, whither he had removed Aug. 24, and where he was surrounded by such state and luxury that it seemed as if the old days of Royalty had returned. Not only had he his chaplains about him, and favourite household servants brought together again from different parts of England; not only could he ride over when he liked to see his children at the Earl of Northumberland's seat of Sion House; but, as if an amnesty had already been passed, Royalists of the most marked antecedents, some of them from their places of exile abroad, were permitted to gather round him, permanently or for a day or two at a time, so as to form a Court of no mean appearance. Such were (in addition to the Duke of Richmond) the Marquis of Hertford, the Earls of Southampton and Dorset, Lord Capel from Jersey, Sir John Berkley and Mr. Legge and Mr. Ashburnham from France, and, not least, the Marquis of Ormond, now at last, by his surrender of Dublin to Parliament, free from his long duty in Ireland. Save that Colonel Whalley and his regiment of horse kept guard at Hampton Court, "captivity" was hardly now a word to be applied to Charles's condition. Whalley's horse, it is true, were but the outpost at Hampton Court of the greater force near at hand. On the 27th of August, or three days after the King had removed to Hampton Court, the Army's head-quarters had been shifted to Putney, and they continued to be at Putney all the while the King was at Hampton Court. From Hampton Court to Westminster is twelve miles, and Putney lies exactly half way between; and the complex problem then trying to work itself out may be represented to the memory by the names and relative positions of these three places. At Westminster was the regular Parliament, moving for that policy which could command the majority in a body of mixed Presbyterians and Independents of various shades, with Army officers among them; at Putney midway was the Army, containing its military Parliament, of which the generals and colonels were the Upper House, while the under-officers, with the regimental agitators, were the Commons; and at Hampton Court, in constant communication with both powers, and entertaining proposals from both, was Charles with his revived little Court. Scotland in the distance must not be forgotten. Her emissaries and representatives were on the scene too, running from Parliament to Hampton Court and from Hampton Court to Parliament, as busy as needles, but rather avoiding Putney. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 789 et seq.; Herbert, 47-51.]
A very considerable element, indeed, in the now complex condition of affairs was the interference from Scotland. As the Presbyterian Rising in London had occasioned great joy in Scotland, so the collapse of that attempt had been a sore disappointment. Baillie's comments, written from Edinburgh, where he chanced to be at the time, are very instructive. The impression in Edinburgh was that there had been great cowardice among the London Presbyterians, and stupid mismanagement of a splendid opportunity. Had the Parliament put on a bolder front, had the City stood to their "brave Engagement," had Massey and Waller shown "any kind of masculous activity," and above all had not Mr. Stephen Marshall and seventeen of the London ministers with him separated themselves at the critical moment from the body of their brethren, and put forth a childish Petition disavowing all sympathy with the tumults, what a different ending there might have been! As it was, "a company of silly rascals" (Fairfax's Army to wit) had "made themselves masters of the King and Parliament and City, and by them of all England." So wrote Baillie privately, and the public organs of Scottish opinion had spoken out to the same effect. There had been Letters and Remonstrances from the Scottish Committee of Estates to the reconstituted English Parliament, severely criticising the general state of affairs in England, and complaining especially of the monstrous insolence of the Army in possessing themselves of the King, and the expulsion at their instance of the eleven Presbyterian leaders from the Commons. Were not these acts, though done in England, outrages on Scotland as well, and against the obligations of the Covenant? The England with which Scotland had consented to league herself by the Covenant was a very different England from that which seemed now to be coming into fashion—an England in which constituted authority seemed to be at an end, and an Army ruled all! And what an Army! An Army of Sectaries, driving on for a principle of Liberty of Conscience which would lead to a "Babylonish confusion," and impregnated also (as could be proved by extracts from their favourite pamphlets) with ideas actually anti-monarchical and revolutionary! So, in successive letters, from Aug. 13 onwards, the Scottish Government remonstrated from Edinburgh, intermingling political criticisms with special complaints, which they had a better right to make, of insults done by officers and soldiers of Fairfax's Army to the Scottish envoys in England, and especially to the Earl of Lauderdale. Nor was the Scottish Kirk more backward. The regular annual Assembly of the Kirk had met at Edinburgh Aug. 4; and in a long document put forth by that body Aug. 20, in the form of "A Declaration and Brotherly Exhortation to their Brethren of England," the anarchy of England on the religious question is largely bewailed. "Nevertheless," they say, after recounting the steps of the happy progress made by England to conformity with Scotland in one and the same Presbyterian Church-rule, "we are also very sensible of the great and imminent dangers into which this common cause of Religion is now brought by the growing and spreading of most dangerous errors in England, to the obstructing and hindering of the begun Reformation: as namely (besides many others) Socinianism, Arminianism, Anabaptism, Antinomianism, Brownism, Erastianism, Independency, and that which is called, by abuse of the word, Liberty of Conscience, being indeed liberty of error, scandal, schism, heresy, dishonouring God, opposing the truth, hindering reformation, and seducing others; whereunto we add those Nullifidians, or men of no religion, commonly called Seekers." [Footnote: Baillie, III. 9- 22; Acts of Scottish General Assembly of 1647; Rushworth, VII. 768-771; and correspondence of Scottish Commissioners in Lords Journals of Aug. and Sept. 1647. For the escapade of Stephen Marshall and his friends, referred to by Baillie, see Neal, III. 375-6. While these few of the city ministers disavowed the tumults, the Westminster Divines as a body merely mediated in a neutral style to avoid bloodshed (Commons Journals, Aug. 2).]
Great as was the influence of the Army on the Parliament it had reinstated, the extreme Tolerationism of the Army Proposals would have made their chance hopeless with that body even if left to itself. But with such blasts coming from Scotland, and repeated close at hand by the key-bugles of Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners in London, the Parliament did not dare even to consider the Proposals. To have done so would have been at once to sever the two nations, enrage the Scots, and drive them to no one could tell what revenge. To fall back on the Nineteen Propositions was, therefore, the only possible policy. Accordingly, on the 7th of September, the Nineteen Propositions, with but one or two slight alterations, were again ceremoniously tendered to Charles on the part of the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners conjointly. They desired his answer within six days at the utmost. "Six or sixteen, it was equal to him," he said to the Earl of Pembroke, who presented them; and in fact his Majesty's Answer, dated Hampton Court, was returned Sept. 9. It was that he retained all his former objections to those now familiar Propositions, and that, having seen certain "Proposals of the Army," to which "he conceived his two Houses not to be strangers," he was of opinion that they would be "a fitter foundation for a lasting Peace." In other words, though Charles had rejected the Army Proposals when first offered to him, he now played them against the Nineteen Propositions, ironically asking the Parliament not to persevere in terms of negotiation that might be regarded as obsolete, but to agree to a Treaty with him on the much better terms which had been suggested by their own Army, but which apparently they wanted to keep out of sight. This for England; and, for what concerned Scotland, he would willingly have a separate Treaty with the Scottish Commissioners, if they chose, on those parts of the Nineteen Propositions which were of interest to the Scottish nation. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 796, 802-3, and 810-11; and Lords Journals, Sept. 8 and Sept. 14.]
Parliament was in a dilemma. Was Charles to be taken at his word? Were the Nineteen Propositions to be flung overboard, and the Army Proposals publicly brought forward instead? The Presbyterian dread of Toleration, if not Presbyterianism itself, was still too strong in the Parliament, and the prospect of a rupture with the Scots was still too awful with many, to admit of such a course. What was actually done, after twelve days of hesitation and consultation, appears from three entries in the Commons Journals of Sept. 21, Sept. 22, and Sept. 23, respectively. Sept. 21: "Resolved, That the King, in this Answer of the 9th Sept., given at Hampton Court, hath denied to give his consent to the Propositions: "such is the first entry. The second, on the following day, runs thus:" The question being put, That the House be forthwith resolved into a Grand Committee, to take into consideration the whole matter concerning the King, according to the former order, the House was divided. The Yeas went forth: (Lieut.-General Cromwell, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for the Yea) with the Yea 84; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Rainsborough, tellers for the No) with the No 34; so that the question passed with the affirmative." On the following day, accordingly, we find "The question was propounded, That the House will once again make application to the King for those things which the Houses shall judge necessary for the welfare and safety of the kingdom; and, the question being put, Whether this question shall be now put, the House was divided: (Sir Arthur Haselrig, Sir John Evelyn of Wilts, tellers for the Yea) with the Yea 70; (Sir Peter Wentworth, Colonel Marten, tellers for the No) with the No 23: so that the question passed with the affirmative." As far as one can construe what lies under these entries, the state of the case was this:—By the King's new rejection of the Nineteen Propositions (the Army-chiefs aware of the rejection beforehand and much approving [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs, Harl. Misc. IX. 478. "We [Berkley, Ashburnham, &c.] gave our friends in the Army a sight of this [the King's] Answer the day before it was sent, with which they seemed infinitely satisfied.">[), the Presbyterians were checkmated. Unless they would vote the King dethroned, they had no move left. The power of moving then lay with the Independents. Now the more strenuously Republican of these, including Colonel Rainsborough and Henry Marten, were for not using the power, either because they desired to break with Charles entirely, or because they wanted to shut up him and Parliament together to the Army Proposals absolutely. Cromwell, however, though faithful to the Army Proposals as the plan ideally best, was not prepared to take the responsibility of bringing on the crash at once. Might there not be a temporizing method? Might not the two Houses be asked to cease thinking of the Nineteen Propositions as a perfected series to which they were bound in all its parts and items, and to go over the whole business afresh, selecting the most essential questions of the Nineteen Propositions and expressing present conclusions on these in new Propositions to be offered to the King? Haselrig, Evelyn of Wilts, and others of the Independent leaders, agreeing with this view, and a good few of the Presbyterians perhaps accepting it gladly in their dilemma, Cromwell divided the Commons upon it, and obtained his decisive majority of Sept. 22, confirmed by the as decisive majority of the next day. [Footnote: Commons Journals of days named.]
The Lords having concurred, Sept. 30, in this motion for a new application to the King, and the Scottish Commissioners having been duly informed, the two Houses went on busily, framing the new Propositions, and, where any differences arose, adjusting them at conferences with each other. By the 28th of October a good many important propositions had been agreed to; but, on the whole, one does not see that the terms for Charles were to be much easier by this route than they had been by the other. In one matter, however, the Commons had proposed a change. On the 13th of October, a committee having reported on that one of the intended Propositions which concerned Church-government, and the resolution before the House being that the King be asked to give his consent to the Acts for settling the Presbyterian Government, Cromwell had forced the House to three divisions. First he tried to limit the term of such settlement to three years, and lost in a small House by a minority of 35 to 38; then he insisted that some limit of time should be mentioned, and won by 44 to 30; then he proposed that seven years should be the term, and lost by 33 to 41, Finally it was agreed that the Presbyterian Settlement to which the King's consent should be asked should be till the end of the Parliament next after that then sitting. But on the same day and the following the question of Toleration also came up, and with these results: Toleration to be granted of separate worship for Nonconformists of tender consciences, but not for Roman Catholics, nor any toleration of the use of the Book of Common Prayer, nor of preaching contrary to the main principles of the Christian Religion, nor yet of absence on the Lord's day from worship and hearing of the word of God somewhere. This was all the amount of Toleration that Cromwell and the Independents even in October 1647, with an Army at Putney all aflame for Toleration, could extract from the reluctant Commons at Westminster. The Lords appear to have hesitated about even so much as this; for it was not till the 2nd of November that the two Houses came to an understanding on the subject, and even on the 9th of that month the Lords wanted some additional security in the form of a "Proposition for suppressing innovations in Religion." [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of dates named; and Rushworth, VII. 843-4 and 853-4.]
Here, to bring the history of the English Church-question to a period for the present, we may notice one or two contemporary incidents.——On Saturday, Oct. 2, the Commons had resumed their examination of the Westminster Assembly's Confession of Faith, at the point where they had left off that work in the preceding May, viz. at Chap. IV. "Of Creation," (antè, p. 545). They passed that chapter and also the first paragraph of Chap. V., "Of Providence," that day, and resolved to continue the business next Wednesday and punctually every following Wednesday till it should be despatched. But Wednesday after Wednesday came; other business was too pressing; and so the matter hung. This was the more inconvenient because on the 22nd of October the Assembly presented to the two Houses their Larger Catechism completed. It was ordered that 600 copies should be printed for consideration, and that matter too lay over. In the midst of such delays in Parliament it was something on the credit side that the SECOND PROVINCIAL PRESBYTERIAN SYNOD OF LONDON duly met in Sion College on the 8th of November, with Dr. Seaman for Moderator. It was, indeed, time now for English Presbyterianism to be walking alone. Gillespie, one of the two Scottish Divines left last in the Westminster Assembly, had returned to Scotland in the preceding August; and on the 9th of November it was announced in the Lords that Mr. Rutherford too was going. In bidding farewell to his brethren of the Assembly he took care to have it duly recorded in their books that the Scottish Commissioners, all or some, had been present to that point and had constantly taken part in the proceedings. The Assembly was still to linger on, he meant to say, but its best days were over. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of the dates given; and Neal, III. 354 and 358-9.]
There was no greater mystery all this while than the conduct of Cromwell and Ireton. Since the King had come to Hampton Court he had been in continual intercourse with them, either in direct conferences, or by messages through Mr. Ashburnham and others. The intercourse had been kept up even after Cromwell's motion of Sept. 22 for re-approaching the King on the whole question in a Parliamentary way, and while Cromwell was constantly attending the House and taking part in the proceedings consequent on his motion. [Footnote: "Sir, I pray excuse my not- attendance upon you. I feared to miss the House a day, where it's very necessary for me to be." So wrote Cromwell to Fairfax Oct. 13, the very day of his three divisions of the House on the duration of Presbytery, and of the compromise there on Toleration (Carlyle's Cromwell, f. 239).] What did it all mean? We have little difficulty now in seeing what it meant. Cromwell, even while urging on the re-application to the King in a Parliamentary way, had not given up hope that the King might be constrained into an extra-Parliamentary pact on some basis like that of the Army Proposals. Might not Charles be wise now in the extremity to which he saw himself reduced, and accept the prospect, which the Army scheme held out, of a restoration of his Royalty, under inevitable constitutional restrictions, but those less galling in many respects, and especially in the religious respect, than the restrictions demanded by Parliament? Such, we can see now, were the reasonings of Cromwell and Ireton, and to such an end were their labours directed. But the world at the time was suspicious and saw much more. What the English Presbyterians and the Scots saw was Cromwell wheedling his Majesty into the possession of himself and his Sectaries, so as to be able to overthrow Parliament and Presbytery immediately, and then reserve his Majesty for more leisurely ruin. What the Royalists round the King saw was more. A blue riband, the Earldom of Essex, the Captaincy-general of all the forces, the permanent premiership in England under the restored Royalty, and the Lieutenancy of Ireland for his son-in-law Ireton—how could the Brewer resist such temptations? Mean rumours of this kind ran about, or were mischievously circulated, till they affected the Army itself and roused suspicions of Cromwell's integrity even among his own Ironsides. It was not only that Colonel Rainsborough, who had opposed Cromwell's motion for re-opening negotiations with Charles, had since then stood out against his policy of conciliation, and had been joined by other officers, such as Colonel Ewer. Despite this opposition in the Council of the chief officers at Putney, Cromwell and Ireton still ruled in that body. But among the inferior officers and the Agitatorships a spirit had arisen outgoing the control of the chiefs, critical of their proceedings, and impatient for a swifter and rougher settlement of the whole political question than seemed agreeable to Cromwell. [Footnote: Berkley's Memoirs (Harl. Misc.) 476, 478; Holles, 184; Baxter, Book I. p.60; Clar. 620; Godwin, II. 400 et seq. See also Major Huntington's Paper of Accusations against Cromwell and Ireton in Aug. 1648 (Parl. Hist. III. 966-974). Duly interpreted, it is very instructive.]
At Putney the Army, having little to do, had resolved itself into a great daily debating-society, holding meetings of its own Agitatorships and receiving deputations from the similar but civilian Agitatorships that had sprung up in London. Hence a rapid increase among the common soldiers of the political school of THE LEVELLERS. Of this school John Lilburne, still in his prison in the Tower, but with the freedom of pen and ink there, was now conspicuously one of the chiefs. "That the House of Commons should think of that great Murderer of England (meaning the King), for by the impartial Law of God there is no exemption of Kings, Princes, Dukes, Earls, more than cobblers, tinkers, or chimney-sweepers;" "That the Lords are but painted puppets and Dagons, no natural issue of Laws, but the mushrooms of prerogative, the wens of just government, putting the body of the People to pain,"—such were opinions and phrases collected from Lilburne's and other pamphlets by the Scottish Government as early as Aug. 13, and then publicly presented in the name of Scotland for the rebuke of the English Parliament and the horror of the whole British world. In such phrases we have the essence of the doctrine of the Levellers, as distinct from the more tentative Democracy of many contemporary minds. The Army Proposals of Aug. 1 were not for a total subversion of the English Constitution of King, Lords, and Commons, but only for a great limitation of the Royal Power, a reduction also of the power of the House of Lords, a corresponding increase of the power of the Commons or Representative House, and a broader basing of that House in a popular suffrage. But, now that the King had rejected the Proposals, the Levelling Doctrine burst up from its secret beds, and rushed more visibly through the whole Army. There began to be comments among the Agitators on the dilatoriness of Cromwell, and especially on his coquettings with the King. "I have honoured you, and my good thoughts of you are not yet wholly gone, though I confess they are much weakened," Lilburne had written to Cromwell Aug. 13, kindly offering him a chance of redeeming his character, but otherwise threatening to pull him down from all his "present conceived greatness" before he was three months older. Cromwell not having mended his ways, Lilburne had been endeavouring to fulfil his threat; and by the end of October there was a wide-spread mutiny through the regiments at Putney. The Army, having its own printers, had by that time made its designs known in two documents. One, entitled The Case of the Army, was signed by the agents of five regiments, Cromwell's and Ireton's own included (Oct. 18); the other, entitled An Agreement of the People (Nov. 1), emanated from the same regiments and eleven others. Both documents pledged the regiments not to disband until the Army had secured its rights; and among these rights were the speedy dissolution of the existing Parliament, and the reconstitution of the Government of England in a single Representative House, elected by a reformed system of suffrage, and meeting biennially. This House was to be supreme in all matters, except five specified fundamentals which were to be regarded as settled ab initio beyond disturbance or even reconsideration by any corporate authority whatever. One of them was absolute freedom to all "in the matter of Religion and the ways of God's worship"; but this was not to prevent the State from setting up any "public way of instructing the Nation, so it be not compulsive." In fact, here was the accurate essence of the Army Proposals over again, only distilled to a higher strength and more fiercely flavoured. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 769, 770, 845-6, and 859, 860; Godwin, II. 423-428, and 436-450. One of the numerous incredible and contradictory hypotheses about Cromwell is that it was he who, while in treaty with the King for a restoration of his Royalty, was all the while, by his secret grip of the Army-Agitatorships, hounding them on in their ultra democratic tendencies. The Levelling Principle itself would be a useful force in his hands, and he could well consent to being abused by the Agitators while they were really working for his ends!!]