At first the notion was to pursue the King to the Isle of Wight with the whole series of Propositions which the Houses had so carefully drawn out for presentation to him at Hampton Court. Here, however, they encountered the most obstinate opposition from the Scottish Commissioners. The mood of these gentlemen (Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, Sir Charles Erskine, Hugh Kennedy, and Robert Barclay), sufficiently irritable before the King's flight from Hampton Court, was now that of the Thistle in full bloom. The King, they declared, had done right in fleeing from the hard usage of the English. Could his Majesty be expected to endure longer the insults, terrors, indignities, to which he had been of late subjected, ending actually in danger to his life from the ruffians of an ill-managed Army? Moreover, was not Charles also the sovereign of Scotland! Could the Scottish nation be expected to bear the contempt shown it in these "tossings" to and fro of their King, aggravated by the studied neglect of all the previous Remonstrances of the Scottish Commissioners and Estates on this very subject? No! let those Propositions which the English Parliament had been preparing be thrown aside, and let the King be invited to come to London, in safety and honour, for a Personal Treaty with Parliament, in which all might be "voluntary and free"!—Partly to please the angry Scottish Commissioners, partly to shake them off if they would not be pleased, the two Houses did make an alteration in their procedure. Instead of the entire prepared series of Propositions, or rather as antecedent to them, it was resolved to send to the King "Four Bills," embodying the Propositions "absolutely necessary for present security." Bill 1 was for the power of Parliament over the Militia for twenty years, or longer if necessary; Bill 2 was for confirmation of all acts of the Parliament in the late war; Bill 3 was for the cancelling of all Peerages conferred by the King since the beginning of the war, and the creation of new Peers only with consent of the two Houses; and Bill 4 was for giving the two Houses the right of adjournment at their own pleasure.—This change of procedure was first proposed in the Lords Nov. 25 (fifteen Peers present); there were divisions on it in the Commons Nov. 26 and 27, in the last of which it was carried by 115 to 106 (an unusually full House) to concur generally with the Peers in the matter; and then, after debates and conferences on details, the Bills, as above indicated, passed the Commons finally Dec. 11, and the Lords finally Dec. 14. It was also then arranged that the Earl of Denbigh and Lord Montague, for the Lords, and Mr. John Bulkeley, Mr. John Lisle, Mr. John Kemp, and Mr. Robert Goodwin, for the Commons, should be the Commissioners for carrying the Four Bills, and the Propositions too, so far as not superseded by the Bills, to the King in the Isle of Wight. They were to require his Majesty's consent to the Four Bills within ten days at the utmost; but the remaining Propositions were to be delivered to his Majesty only as containing matters on which the Houses would send another Commission to treat with him after he had assented to the Four Bills. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. II. 799-804 and 823-826; Lords and Commons Journals of days named; also (for a special Letter of the Scottish Commissioners) Lords Journals, Nov. 18. For this Letter Charles thanked Lanark, saying, "Seriously, it is as full to my sense as if I had penned it myself." Burnet's Hamiltons, 416.]
If the two Houses had resorted at first to this changed method of procedure with any idea of pleasing the Scots, they had found reason to abandon that idea. The very day the Four Bills were finally passed (Dec. 14), the Scottish Commissioners, knowing well enough privately what they were, applied formally to the Committee of the Two Kingdoms for a copy of them. This being reported to the Commons, a discussion ensued, and Mr. Selden (particularly active about this time, and at any rate always eager for a brush with the Scots) was appointed chairman of a Committee to prepare an Answer. The Answer, adopted by the Commons Dec. 16, was taken up by Mr. Selden to the Lords the same day, and by them adopted also. It was to the effect that, as it was against the custom of the English kingdom to communicate Bills ready for the King's assent to "any other whomsoever" until his Majesty's reply had been received, the Four Bills could not be communicated to the Scottish Commissioners, but that, as for the rest, it was intended to send these Bills to the King on Monday next, together with those Propositions of which the Scottish Commissioners were already cognisant, and that, if the Scottish Commissioners desired to add any Propositions concerning Scotland, they had better make haste. As if to increase the irony of this Answer, there was frankly included in it a copy of the Instructions to the English envoys as to their procedure both with the Bills concealed from the Scots and the Propositions known to them. Matter and manner both, the Answer drove the Scottish Commissioners mad. There may be yet read in the Lords Journals of Dec. 18 the Reply, in nineteen printed folio columns, which they thundered in upon the two Houses. We do not see such documents now-a-days, and even then it was a marvel. The whole soul of Scotland, past and present, seemed to launch itself upon the Londoners in this tremendous lecture, issued from Worcester House "by command of the Commissioners for the Parliament of Scotland," and signed by John Chiesley, their clerk. After a hint of the indebtedness of England to the Scots for some years past, there was a recapitulation of all the recent acts of contumely sustained by Scotland at the hands of the English, followed by a summary of the reasons for preferring the Scottish plan of a free Personal Treaty with the King to the English plan of prosecuting him with peremptory and ready-made Propositions. But, as the English Parliament had communicated to the Scottish Commissioners their new set of Propositions (though not the Four Bills), there was a criticism of these Propositions, from the Scottish point of view, collectively and seriatim. The largest criticism was on the Religious question. Nearly one half of the entire document was occupied with this subject. Was not the Religious question the main one, the unum necessarium, deserving the first place in any national negotiation? Yet was it not made secondary in the Propositions, brought in anywhere in the middle of them, as if to show that the two Houses did not really care much about it, and would not be so stiff in it as in matters of civil import? Tenacious in one's own concerns, and "liberal in the matters of God"! Again, not a word in the Propositions, or hardly a word, respecting the Solemn League and Covenant itself, a vow that had been sworn to with uplifted hands by nearly the whole generation of living Englishmen! Oh! what an omission was that! Was the Covenant to be voted out of date, and buried in the ashes of oblivion? But, apart from the Covenant, how did the Propositions treat the cause of Presbyterial government in England and of conformity of Church-rule in the two kingdoms? Most miserably! No pressing of Presbytery to full purity and completeness, but rather a cynical acquiescence in the imperfect Presbytery that had already been set up, and a glee in not being committed even to that beyond three years! Finally, even this Presbytery was turned into a present mockery by an accompanying concession to the cry for Liberty of Conscience! The Commissioners had never desired that "pious and peaceable men should be troubled because in everything they cannot conform themselves to Presbyterial government;" but they did "from their very souls abhor such a general and vast Toleration" as one of the Propositions seemed to provide. Unless they were mistaken, it was a Toleration to "all the sectaries of the time," whether they were "Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians, Familists, Erastians, Brownists, Separatists, Libertines, or Independents;" yea it extended to "those Nullifidians the Seekers, to the new sect of Shakers, and divers others;" and, though it professed not to include "Antitrinitarians, Arians, and Antiscripturists," where was the security that these might not at least print and publish their blasphemies and errors? "Our minds are astonished, and our bowels are moved, &c.!"—There is a story of an irascible and fluent man who, after a torrent of abusive words addressed to a cool-tempered friend with whom he had a difference, was brought to a stop by the calm request of his friend that he would be so good as to repeat his observations. Something of the kind happened now. The reply of the two Houses to the portentous Paper of the Scottish Commissioners was that its length prevented immediate attention to it; but that they were sensible of the "aspersions" it cast upon them, and begged that such might be "forborne for the future." This drew from the Commissioners a shorter letter (Dec. 20), in which they disavowed any intention of disrespect, and assigned the gravity of the crisis as a reason why their expressions had been "more pathetique than ordinarily." Nevertheless from that moment the connexion between the English Parliament and the Scottish Commissioners was totally severed. [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals of Dec. 15- 21.]
What had become of the third party concerned, the English Army?—The general Rendezvous resolved on by the Council of War at Putney, in consequence of the Concordat between the Army and Parliament (antè, p. 573), had been cleverly changed into a tripartite Rendezvous, or distribution of the regiments into three brigades, to be reviewed on different days and at different places. The first of these Reviews was held near Ware in Herts, Nov. 15, the very day on which the King's arrival in the Isle of Wight was known. At the head of each of seven regiments then present according to order there was read a Remonstrance by Fairfax, pointing out the evils of relaxed discipline, condemning the recent excesses of the Agitators and their attempts to make the men disaffected to their officers, declaring the resolution of himself and the chief officers to maintain all the Army's just rights, but protesting that he could not continue to head an Army which was mutinous, and requiring therefore that the officers and men of each regiment should subscribe an engagement of future obedience, As nothing was said in the document about either King or House of Lords, but mention only made of a guarantee of future Parliaments and a Reformed Representative House, no offence was given to the Democratic instincts of the regiments, and they at once acquiesced in what was but a fit soldierly compact. There were, however, two regiments on the field that had come without orders—Colonel Harrison's horse-regiment and Colonel Robert Lilburne's foot-regiment. They had come in a wild state of excitement, with copies of the Agreement of the People stuck in their hats. John Lilburne, recently released from the Tower, had come down to Ware to see the result. It was decisive, but not in the way John had expected. Harrison's regiment, on being reasoned with by Fairfax and the other officers, at length good-humouredly gave way, tore the mutinous emblem from their hats, and broke into cheers. Lilburne's, which had driven away most of its officers, remained sulky and vociferous, till Cromwell, riding up to them, ordered them also to remove that thing from their hats, and, on their refusing, had fourteen of them dragged from the ranks, three of these tried on the spot and condemned to death, and one of the three shot. After this turn given to the first Review, the others passed off pleasantly enough, and all that was farther needed was the minor punishment of one or two of the mutineers among the common soldiers, with temporary restraint or rebuke for Colonel Rainsborough, Colonel Ewer, Major Scott, Major Cobbet, and Lieutenant Bray, the officers who had been most implicated in the revolt.—So, at the expense of but one life, had a dangerous Mutiny been quelled, and the ultra- Democrats of the Army taught the lesson of the Concordat. That lesson was that, in the opinion of Cromwell and Ireton as well as of Fairfax, it was best for England that the Army should still serve the constituted authority of Parliament, and not raise any political banner of its own. No sooner had this lesson been taught, however, than Cromwell and Ireton had hastened to obliterate all traces of the occasion there had been for teaching it. Their intention had not been to struggle with the Democratic spirit itself, but only with its mutinous manifestation; and they knew, in fact, that the political tenets of the poor fellow whom it had been necessary to shoot remained, and would remain, not the less the tenets of two-thirds of the Army. Accordingly, through November and December the great aim of Cromwell and Ireton, in the new Army head-quarters at Windsor, had been to soothe ruffled spirits and restore harmony. Rainsborough, Ewer, Scott, and the other ultra-Democratic officers had been restored to their places, with even studied respect; and strong recommendations had gone to Parliament that Rainsborough, who, before the Mutiny, had been named for the post of Vice-Admiral of the Fleet (in recollection of his original profession), should be confirmed in that high appointment. At Windsor there had been Army-dinners and great prayer-meetings of officers and men, in which Cromwell and Ireton took a conspicuous part, winning all back by their zeal and graciousness into a happy frame of concord, which the Parliamentary Commissioners with the Army described as "a sweet and comfortable agreement, the whole matter of the kingdom being left with Parliament." And so, while the two Houses were arranging to send their Four Bills and the Propositions to the Isle of Wight, the Army only looked on approvingly. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 791-799 and 805-822; Godwin, II. 462-8; Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 254; Rushworth, VII. 951.]
On Friday, Dec. 24, the Earl of Denbigh and the other Commissioners of the two Houses arrived in the Isle of Wight and delivered the Four Bills and the Propositions to his Majesty. Next day (Christmas Day) Loudoun, Lanark, Lauderdale, and the other Scottish Commissioners, arrived, and delivered to his Majesty, in the name of the Kingdom of Scotland, a Protest against the English Bills and Propositions. For the day or two following, these Scottish Commissioners were more with his Majesty than the English Commissioners; but on the 28th the English Commissioners received from him in writing his Answer to the two Houses. It was utterly unfavourable, declining to assent to the Bills or anything else except after a complete and deliberate Treaty, and assigning the Protest of the Scottish Commissioners as a sufficient reason for this had there been no other. With this Answer the English Commissioners returned to London, and it was read in both Houses on the 3lst. The effects were extraordinary. On the 3rd of January, 1647-8, it was resolved in the Commons, by a majority of 141 to 92, that no farther applications or addresses should be made to the King by that House, that no addresses or applications to him by any person whatsoever should be made without leave of the Houses under the penalties of High Treason, that no messages from the King should be received, and that no one should presume to bring or carry such. On the 15th the Lords agreed in these Resolutions, only Manchester and Warwick dissenting out of sixteen Peers present. Negotiation was thus declared to be at an end; and the Army, delighted with the news, burst into applauses of Parliament, and vowed to live or die with it in the common cause.
One consequence of what had occurred was the dissolution of the peculiar body which, under the name of "The Committee of the two Kingdoms," had hitherto exercised so much power, and been in fact a common executive for the Parliaments of England and Scotland (antè, p. 41). As Scotland had broken off from England, this body had become an absurdity; and so, on the same days on which the two Houses adopted the No-Address Resolution, they resolved "That the powers formerly granted by both Houses to the Committee of both Kingdoms, relating to the kingdoms of England and Ireland, be now granted and vested in the members of both Houses only that are of that Committee." In other words, Lords Loudoun and Lauderdale and the other Scottish Commissioners were no longer wanted in England, and might go home. These gentlemen, being themselves of the same opinion, sent a letter to the Lords, Jan. 17, intimating that they were about to take their leave. With great civility the Lords sent Manchester and Warwick "to wish them a good journey," assure them that any arrears of business between England and Scotland would be attended to, and express a desire for "the continuance of the brotherly union and good correspondency between the two nations." Actually, a few days afterwards, the Commissioners left London; and on the 29th the Houses appointed six Commissioners of their own to follow them to Edinburgh, and allay, if possible, any ill feeling that might be caused there by their representation of recent occurrences.
Had the two Houses known all, their politeness would have been less! It had not been only to give in a protest in the name of Scotland against the English Bills and Propositions that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had made their Christmas journey to Carisbrooke in the wake of the English Commissioners. The King had been in correspondence with them for some time before on the subject begun with them at Hampton Court; and, when they came to Carisbrooke, they had brought with them not only the Protest against the English Bills, but also a secret document of a more momentous nature, prepared for the King's signature. Actually on the 26th of December, or two days before the English Commissioners were dismissed with the unfavourable Answer to the English Parliament, this document had been signed in Carisbrooke Castle by the King on the one part, and by Loudoun, Lauderdale, and Lanark on the other. Not daring to bring it out of the island with them, the Commissioners, Clarendon says, had it wrapt up in lead and buried in a garden whence they could recover it afterwards. And little wonder! It was A SECRET TREATY BETWEEN CHARLES AND THE SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS, in which his Majesty bound himself, on the word of a King, to confirm the Covenant for such as had taken it or might take it (without forcing it on the unwilling), also to confirm Presbyterian Church-government and the Westminster Directory of Worship in England for three years (with a reservation of the Liturgy, &c., for himself and his household), and moreover to see to the suppression of the Independents and all other sects and heresies; while the Scots, in return, were to send an Army into England for the purpose of restoring him, on these conditions, to his full Royalty in that kingdom! Thus at last Charles had made a conclusive Treaty with one section of his adversaries; and, as Queen Henrietta Maria had always advised, it was with the Scots, all but absolutely on their own terms of the abolition of Episcopacy and the establishment of strict Presbytery in England!! [Footnote: Lords and Commons Journals; Parl. Hist. III. 827-837; Burnet's Hamiltons (for correspondence between the King and Lanark) 412-423; Stevenson's Hist. of the Church of Scotland, ed. 1840, p. 586 (for Loudoun's account of the substance of the Treaty); Clarendon, 634-637. Clarendon's account of the Treaty is full; and, though he condemns it as "monstrous," he gives the apology that had reconciled the King to it in his despair. It was that Lanark, Loudoun, and Lauderdale had themselves argued that the Treaty would turn out mere waste paper. After the Scottish Army should be in England, and the Royalists in England roused, "there would be nobody to exact all those particulars, but everybody would submit to what his Majesty should think fit to be done!">[
Until the decisive rupture with Parliament on the Four Bills, Charles had been permitted to range about the Isle of Wight very much at his pleasure, and the concourse of visitors to him had been as free as at Hampton Court. From the moment of the rupture, however, all was changed. Aware that an escape abroad was now meditated by Charles, and warned by some stir about Carisbrooke itself for the King's rescue, Colonel Hammond had at once taken precautions, but implored Parliament at the same time either to remove the King to some other place or else to discharge himself from an office the burden of which he found insupportable. With this last request Parliament did not comply, and Hammond had to continue in his painful trust, obeying the instructions sent him. His Majesty was not to be allowed any longer to ride about the island, or to receive unauthorized visitors; he was to be restrained to Carisbrooke Castle and the line round it; Ashburnham, Legge, and other suspicious persons in his service, including his chaplains Hammond and Sheldon, were to be dismissed; and his remaining household were to be under very strict regulation. These instructions having been carried into effect, Charles's life in the Isle of Wight from January 1647-8 onwards was one of straiter captivity and seclusion than he had experienced even at Holmby. He had the liberty only of the Castle and its precincts; which, however, were sufficiently large and convenient for the exercise of walking, with "good air and a delightful prospect both to the sea and land." For his solace and recreation in his favourite game, the barbican of the Castle, a spacious parading ground beyond the walls but within the line, was converted by Hammond into "a bowling-green scarce to be equalled," at one side of which there was built "a pretty summer-house for retirement." This at vacant hours became the King's chief resort both forenoon and afternoon, there being "no gallery, nor rooms of state nor garden," within the Castle walls. Occasionally, notwithstanding the strict guard, some poor stray creature troubled with scrofula, who had come to the Isle of Wight for the Royal touch, would contrive to beguile the sentries and obtain admission to the barbican. As at Holmby, however, the King had his set times in-doors for his devotions and for reading and writing; and his favourite books, catalogued and placed in the charge of Mr. Herbert, were again in request. Though he still declined the services of any Presbyterian clergyman, he rather liked the society of young Mr. Troughton, the governor's chaplain, and had arguments with him daily on theological points. Once, when a half-crazed minister, nicknamed Doomsday Sedgwick, came all the way from London to present him with a book he had written, suitable for his comfort and entitled "Leaves from the Tree of Life for the healing of the Nations," he ordered him to be admitted, received the book, glanced at some pages of it, and then returned it to the author with the observation that surely he must need some sleep after having written a book like that. And so day by day the routine flowed on, and always at night the wax-lamp was kept burning in the silver basin close to his Majesty's bed. [Footnote: Lords Journals, Dec. 31, 1647, and of subsequent dates; Herbert's Memoirs of the Last Years of Charles, 57- 67 and 95-98; Wood's Ath. III. 894-6. Doomsday Sedgwick was not Obadiah Sedgwick of the Assembly, but William Sedgwick of Ely.]
The Treaty with the Scots could not remain long secret. No sooner had the Scottish Commissioners who had framed it returned to Edinburgh than they were obliged to let the substance of it become known. This was done in the Committee of Estates on the 15th of February, when Loudoun and Lauderdale formally reported the result of their visit to the Isle of Wight. Then ensued a most perplexed agitation in Scotland on the whole subject. THE ENGAGEMENT, as the Secret Treaty was called, was universally discussed, and with great diversity of opinion. In the Committee of Estates, the Hamiltons, who had been the real authors of the Engagement, carried all their own way. Nay in the Parliament, or full Convention of the Estates, which met on the 2nd of March, the majority went passionately with the Hamiltons. Four-fifths of the nobles went with them; more than half the lairds; and nearly half the burgesses, including most of the representatives of the larger Scottish towns. These were the HAMILTONIANS or ENGAGERS. Not the less in Parliament itself was there a strong opposition party, headed by Argyle, Eglinton, Lothian, Cassilis, and some half-dozen other nobles, aided by Johnstone of Warriston; and, as this party rested on the nearly unanimous support of the Scottish clergy, it had a powerful organ of expression, apart from Parliament, in the Commission of the Kirk. It was argued, on their side, that the Commissioners to the Isle of Wight had exceeded their powers, that the conditions made with Charles were too slippery, that he had in reality evaded the Covenant, and that, though Scotland might have a just cause for war against the English Sectaries, no good could come of a war, nominally against them, in which Presbyterians would be allied with Malignants, Prelatists, and perhaps even Papists. Declarations embodying these views were published by the Commission; the pulpits rang with denunciations of the Engagement; petitions against it from Provincial Synods and Presbyteries of the Kirk were poured in upon Parliament; had the entire population been polled, the PROTESTERS or ANTI-ENGAGERS would have been found in the majority. Even Loudoun detached himself from the Hamiltons, and publicly, in the High Church of Edinburgh, submitted to ecclesiastical rebuke, professing repentance of his handiwork. Nevertheless the Hamiltons persevered; two-thirds of the Parliament adhered to them; and by the end of April 1648 it was understood, not in England only, but also on the Continent, that an Army of 40,000 Scots was to be raised somehow, in spite of Argyle and the Scottish clergy, for an invasion of England in the King's behalf. The Army was to be commanded in chief by the Duke of Hamilton himself, with the Earl of Callander for his Lieutenant-general. [Footnote: Baillie, III. 24-46; Stevenson, 582-595; Burnet's Hamiltons, 424-435.] Thus out of the Scottish Engagement with the King in the Isle of Wight there grew what is called THE SECOND CIVIL WAR, It was a much briefer affair than the first. That had spread over four years; but the real substance of this was to be crushed into as many months (May-Aug. 1648). The military story of these months shall concern us here only in so far as it is interwoven with the political narrative.
The Engagement with the Scots had been communicated to Queen Henrietta Maria at St. Germains, and gradually, with more or less precision, to all those dispersed Royalists, at home or abroad, who might be expected to take leading parts in co-operation with the promised Scottish invasion. The programme, so far as it could be settled, was something after this fashion:—(1) Risings were to be promoted in all parts of England and Wales, to coalesce at last, if possible, into a great general rising in which London should be involved. All the conditions seemed favourable for such an attempt. Not only in every county were there eager and revengeful remains of the old Episcopal Royalism, but the tendency even of the Presbyterians throughout England had been of late decidedly Royalist. The Presbyterians had never been anti-monarchical in theory; and large numbers of them had begun of late to pity the King, and to question whether the excessively hard terms imposed upon him by Parliament were altogether necessary. Even if he were to be restored to larger powers in some things than might be quite desirable, would not that be better than continuing in the present state of uproar and confusion, with a Democratic Army fastened vampire-like on the land, preying on its resources, and poisoning its principles? For people in this state of mind the promised invasion of the Scots in Charles's behalf was the very pretext needed. Much of the Presbyterianism of England, including the City of London, might be whirled, along with the readier Old Royalism, into a rising for the King. To promote and manage risings in particular districts, however, there must be leaders authorized from St. Germains. Such leaders were found among eminent Royalists either already in England or able to transfer themselves thither without delay. In the North, where immediate co-operation with the Scots would be necessary, Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Sir Philip Musgrave were to be the chief agents; and for the West, the Midlands, and the South, there were the Earl of Norwich (formerly Lord Goring), the Earl of Peterborough, Lord Byron, Lord Capel, and others. The young Duke of Buckingham, and his brother Lord Francis Villiers, who had not been concerned in the first Civil War, being then but boys and on their travels abroad, had recently returned to their great estates in England, and were anxious to figure as became the name they bore. Strangely enough, in the midst of all these, as the commissioned generalissimo of the King's forces in England when they should be in the field, was to be the Earl of Holland. His veerings in the first war had not been to his credit; but his long seclusion had done him good; he had always been in favour with the Queen; and his Parliamentary and Presbyterian connexions were an advantage. (2) There was to be a gathering of all the Royalist exiles to accompany or follow the Prince of Wales in a landing on the British shores. As early as Feb. 8, when only the vaguest rumour of the Scottish Engagement can have been in circulation on the Continent, the report from the Hague had been that it would be "no wonder to see 10,000 merry souls, then lying there, and cursing the Parliament in every cup they drank, venturing over to make one cast more for the King." Certain it is that in the following months there was a stir in all the nests of English refugees in France and Holland, and in the Channel Islands. Not only Prince Rupert, Percy, Wilmot, Jermyn, Colepepper, Ormond, and others round the Queen and the Prince in Paris, but the Earl of Bristol, Lord Cottington, Secretary Nicholas, and others, in Rouen or Caen, and Hopton and Hyde in Jersey, were all in motion. Money was the great want; they were all so wretchedly poor; but that difficulty might be overcome so far as to make an expedition to England at least possible. Mazarin might lend help; or, if he did not, the Prince of Orange, the husband of Charles's eldest daughter, and now Stadtholder of Holland, might be expected to do all he could for his father-in-law consistently with the limited powers of his Stadtholdership. A Dutch port might be more convenient than a French one for the embarkation of the refugees collectively or in detachments. Most would be bound for England; but the true sphere of some, as for example Ormond, would be in Ireland. For the Prince of Wales himself what was specially destined by the Queen was a voyage to Scotland. It was by being among the Scots personally till their Army could be got ready, and either remaining in Scotland afterwards or accompanying the Army into England, that his Royal Highness would be of most use. On this point the Queen was emphatic. [Footnote: Clarendon, Book XI., where the pre-arrangement of the new Civil War from head-quarters, and the parts assigned to different persons, are set forth more lucidly, and with better information, than anywhere else. Dates are deficient, but the sketching is masterly. See also Rushworth for Feb., March, and April, 1648.]
Such being the programme, what was the performance? It did not quite come up to the programme, but it was sufficiently formidable.