Meanwhile, in utter disgust at this protracted play of negotiation between Parliament and the King in the Isle of Wight, there had been forming itself that other agency which was to interpose irresistibly, and hurry all to a real catastrophe.
The reader knows the nature of the paction between the Parliament and the Army-chiefs which we have taken the liberty of calling by the name of The Concordat (antè, pp. 573-4, 583-4). It was the agreement of the Army-chiefs, in Nov. 1647, to suppress for the time the democratic manifestations of the Army and its pretensions to political dictation, leaving the conduct of affairs wholly to Parliament. This Concordat, as we saw, though it saved the country from the peril of an immediate democratic revolution, was theoretically a clumsy one. The political views of the Army were singularly clear and direct. A strictly constitutional government of King, Lords, and Commons, with a large increase of the power of the Commons, guaranteed Biennial Parliaments, and a thoroughly Reformed System of Representation—such had been the ideal of the Army-chiefs in their Heads of Proposals of August 1647; the Levellers had gone a good deal farther in their Agreement of the People in Nov. 1647, and had proposed the abolition of hereditary privileges, and the concentration of supreme power in a single Representative House; but in both documents alike Liberty of Conscience and Worship was laid down as axiomatic, with a demand that it should be so recognised in the future law of England, for the benefit of Episcopalian and Papist no less than of Presbyterian, Independent, and Sectary. How could an Army burning with these notions bind itself to be the silent servant of a Parliament whose behaviour hitherto, on the religious question generally, and on the political question very often, had been so muddled and fatuous? Better surely for the Army to raise its own political flag and coerce Parliament into the right way! That this had not been done had been owing partly to the unwillingness of Cromwell, Ireton, and the other chiefs to take the responsibility all at once of heading a movement in which the Levelling Principle would be let loose, but partly also because hopes had been conceived that the balance in Parliament had been turned in favour of the Independents. For several months, accordingly, the Army had not repented of the Concordat. Especially in January 1647-8, when the two Houses broke off their abortive Treaty with the King on the Four Bills, and passed their No- Address Resolutions, their boldness won renewed confidence from the Army. But, in the succeeding months, when the rumour of the Scottish Engagement with the King began to rouse Royalists and Presbyterians alike for a new war, and the absent Presbyterians of the Commons came back to their places to turn the votes, and these votes tended to a renewed Treaty with the King on the basis of a strict Presbytery, the disbandment of the Army, and the suppression of Sects,—then what could the Army do but spurn the Concordat? Like their own previous dealings with the King himself in the hope of winning him over, had not this Concordat been, after all, but a piece of carnal and crooked policy? To hold certain beliefs in the heart, and yet to consent to be the dumb instrument of those whose views were wholly different, or only half the same, could not be right in a reasoning body of free men, merely because they were called an Army! What had become of Cromwell's principles, avowed so frequently that the whole Army had them by heart—the principle "That every single man is judge of just and right as to the good or ill of a kingdom," and the principle "That the interest of honest men is the interest of the kingdom"? Nay, had not the Levellers had more of the real root of the matter in them than it had been convenient to allow, and had not the poor fellow who had been shot as a mutineer at the Rendezvous at Ware been in some sense a martyr? Now, at all events, would it not be necessary that at least something of the spirit of the Levellers, some of those proposals of theirs which had been lately suppressed as harsh and premature, should be revived with new credit, and adopted into the general creed of the Army?
That such self-reproaches for past mistakes, and such questionings as to the course of future duty, had become universal in the Army before the outbreak of the Second Civil War, is proved by very abundant evidence, but nowhere more strikingly than in the record of the famous Prayer- meeting of the Officers, with Cromwell among them, held at Windsor Castle in March or April 1648. Adjutant-general Allen, the writer of this record, had a vivid recollection of this meeting eleven years afterwards, and could then look back upon it as an undoubted turning-point in the history of the Army and of the nation. At that time, he says, the Army was "in a low, weak, divided, perplexed condition in all respects" and there were even some who, in the prospect of the Scottish invasion and a new war at such vast odds, argued that the Army ought to resist no longer, but break up, and change the policy of collective action into one of individual passive endurance. Others, however, still thought that more remained to be done in the way of active duty, and it was at their instance that the meeting was called. It lasted three days, and with most remarkable results. The first day was spent in prayer for light as to the causes of God's renewed anger and their own perplexities. On the second day Cromwell proposed, as the best method of inquiry among themselves, that they should all simultaneously engage in silent retrospection, both upon their own past "ways particularly as private Christians," and also upon their "public actions as an Army." If they should each and all be led, in such retrospection, to fasten on some one precise point of time as that at which the Lord had withdrawn His former countenance and things had begun to go wrong, might there not be a lesson in that unanimity? And lo! on the third day it was so. They had all, in their silent review of the past, fastened on one and the same point, as that at which their departure from the straight path of truth and simplicity had begun. It was a point beyond their Concordat with the Parliament, and lay among those prior negotiations of the Army-chiefs with the King personally out of which the Concordat had seemed a natural escape. It lay, says Allen, in "those cursed carnal conferences our conceited wisdom, our fears, and want of faith, had prompted us, the year before, to entertain with the King and his Party." And with this unanimous agreement on the question where the steps of error had begun there came a unanimous consent as to the right course of future duty. "We were led and helped," says Allen, "to a clear agreement amongst ourselves, not any dissenting, That it was the duty of our day, with the forces we had, to go out and fight against those potent enemies which that year in all places appeared against us…; and we were also enabled then, after serious seeking His face, to come to a very clear and joint resolution, on many grounds at large there debated amongst us, That it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for that blood he had shed and mischief he had done to his utmost against the Lord's Cause and People in these poor Nations." [Footnote: See Allen's striking narrative (written in 1659) quoted at length in Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 263-266.]
This momentous resolution of the Army Officers, formed at Windsor most probably in April 1648, or just before Cromwell went off to suppress the Royalist rising in Wales, had lain dormant, but not wholly secret, in the bosom of the Army through all the four months of the renewed Civil War (May-Aug.). Not till the war was over, however, was the resolution formally announced. Even then it was done gradually. The first hints came from those Independents in the Commons who were in the confidence of the Armychiefs. In the debates preceding the Treaty of Newport some of these Independents had spoken with significant boldness, Mr. Thomas Scott for one declaring that "a peace with so perfidious and implacable a prince" was an impossibility; and, in fact, the Treaty was carried by the Presbyterians against the implied protest of the Independents. Then, just as the Treaty was beginning, there was presented to the House (Sept. 11) an extraordinary document purporting to be "The humble Petition of Thousands of well-affected Persons inhabiting the City of London, Westminster, the Borough of Southwark, Hamlets, and places adjacent." This Petition, said to have been penned by Henry Marten, was not merely a denunciation of the Treaty; it was a detailed democratic challenge. It proclaimed the House of Commons to be "the Supreme Authority of England," and declared that it was for this principle, and nothing short of this, that England had fought and struggled for six years; and, after a severe lecture to the House for its pusillanimity in never yet having risen to the full height of this principle, it enumerated twenty-seven things which were expected from it when it should do so. Among these were the repudiation of any sham of a power either in the King or in the Lords to resist the will of the Commons, the passing of a Bill for Annual Parliaments, the execution of justice on criminals of whatever rank, the "exemption of matters of Religion and God's worship from the compulsive or restrictive power of any authority upon earth," and the consequent repeal of the recent absurd Ordinance "appointing punishments concerning opinions on things supernatural, styling some Blasphemies, others Heresies." Such a Petition, signed by about 40,000 persons, in or near London, hitherto pre-eminently the Presbyterian city, was a signal for similar Petitions from other parts. On the 30th of September there came a Petition in the same sense from "many thousands" of the well-affected in Oxfordshire, and on the 10th of October there were Petitions from Newcastle, York, and Hull, and from Somerset. [Footnote: Parl. Hist, III. 1005-11; Whitlocke, II. 413, 419.]
These civilian Petitions having prepared the way, the Army itself spoke out at last. Since Sept. 16 the headquarters of the Army had been at St. Alban's; and it was thence that on the 18th of October letters from Fairfax announced to the House of Commons that Petitions from the Officers and Soldiers of different regiments had been presented to him, or were in preparation, some of which were of a political nature. One, in particular, from General Ireton's regiment, called for "impartial and speedy justice" upon public criminals, and demanded "that the same fault may have the same punishment in the person of King or Lord as in the poorest Commoner." Such petitions to Fairfax appear to have dropped in upon him from regiment after regiment at St. Alban's during the next fortnight. One Petition, however, heard of in London Oct. 30, was from Colonel Ingoldsby's regiment, then in garrison at Oxford. It also demanded "immediate care that justice should be done upon the principal invaders of our liberties, namely the King and his party;" it demanded, moreover, that "sufficient caution and strait bonds should be given to future Kings for the preventing the enslaving of the people;" and it went on to say that, as the Petitioners were almost past hope of these things from Parliament, and regarded the Treaty then in progress as a delusion, they could only pray his Excellency to "re-establish a General Council of the Army" to consider of some effectual remedies. This, in fact, was the practical conclusion on which the whole Army was bent, and to which all the regimental Petitions pointed. If Fairfax had yet any hesitations about complying, they must have been ended by what occurred in Parliament immediately afterwards. Not only were the two Houses still looking for some last chance from the Treaty of Newport, and extending the time of the Treaty again and again in the vain chose of this last chance; but in another matter, which lay wholly in their own power, their "half- heartedness" became apparent. At the very time when the Independents of London and other places, and the several regiments of Fairfax's Army, were calling for exemplary justice on the chief Delinquents in the late war, what were the punishments with which the Presbyterian majority in the Parliament proposed to let off those of the Delinquents who were then in custody? For the Duke of Hamilton (Earl of Cambridge in the English Peerage, and so liable to the pains of English treason) a fine of 100,000_l._, with imprisonment till it should be paid; and for the Earls of Holland and Norwich, Lord Capel, Lord Loughborough, and four others, simple banishment! Resolutions to this effect passed the Commons Nov. 10, and were sent up for the approval of the Lords. The Army, though prepared for almost anything from the "half-heartedness" of the Parliament, heard of this last exhibition of it with positive "amazement." What else, it was asked, now remained than that the Army itself as a whole should step forward, call its masters to a reckoning, and either compel them to be the instruments of a better policy, or take affairs into its own hands? Fairfax, with all his prudence, could not decline the responsibility: and accordingly a General Council of the Officers of the Army was held at St. Alban's under his presidency. It had sat about a week when (Nov. 16) a GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE, to be presented to the House of Commons, was unanimously adopted. [Footnote: Rushworth, VII. 1297-8, 1811-12, and 1830; Commons Journals, Nov. 10 1618, Whitlocke, II. 436.]
This GRAND ARMY REMONSTRANCE of Nov. 1648 is another of those documents from the pen of Ireton which deserve to be rescued from the contemporary lumber with which they are associated, and to be carefully studied on account of their supreme interest in English History. The document is of most elaborate composition, and of a length about equal to fifty pages of this volume; for, in fact, though formally addressed to the House of Commons, it was intended as a kind of Pamphlet to the English nation, setting forth the Army's views in a reasoned shape, and the programme of action on which they had resolved:—There is first an exposition of the rule Salus Populi lex suprema, a rule admitted to be capable of abuse and misapplication, but declared nevertheless to have a real meaning. Then there is a review of the relations between the Parliament and the Army from the time of what we have called the Concordat. Fain, it is added, would the Army have seen that Concordat perpetual; most reluctant were they to break it. But what had happened? Had not Parliament itself lapsed from those honest No-Address Resolutions of ten months ago which expressed the true sense of the Concordat? Had they not, within a few months after passing those Resolutions, utterly forgotten them, and run after that wretched rag of delusive hope called "A Personal Treaty with the King"? Nay, though events had again proved that the fears that had partly swayed them in this direction were groundless—though the Lord had again laid bare His arm, and that small Army which they had ceased to trust and had well-nigh deserted and cast off, had been enabled to shiver all the banded strength of a second English Insurrection, aided by an invasion from Scotland—even after this rebuke from God, were they not still pursuing the same phantom of an Accommodation? Here the Remonstrants argue the whole subject most earnestly. Having laid down the principle that in every State the care of all matters of public concern must be in a Supreme Representative Council or Parliament, freely elected by the whole people, they maintain that any Kingship or other such office instituted in any State must be regarded as a creation of such Supreme Council for special ends and within special limits, and that any one holding such office who shall have been proved to have perseveringly abused his trust, or sought to convert it into a personal possession, may justly be called to account. They appeal to the entire recollection of Charles's reign whether he had not been such a false King, a cause of woe and war from first to last, a functionary guilty of the highest treason. But, if the past could be considered alone, and there were reasonable chance for the present and the future, they would not be relentless. "If there were good evidence of a proportionable remorse in him, and that his coming in again were with a new or changed heart," then, they say, "his person might be capable of pity, mercy, and pardon, and an accommodation with him, with a full and free yielding on his part to all the aforesaid points of public and religious interest in contest, might, in charitable construction, be just, and possibly safe and beneficial." But no such ground for charity, leniency, or tenderness had been afforded by Charles. Even now, while actually treating with the Parliament after his complete second ruin, was he not the same man as ever, dissembling, prevaricating, secretly expecting something from Ormond and the Irish Rebels? If such a man were restored to power, under whatever bonds, promises, guarantees, the consequences were but too obvious. All the credit, all the huzzas, of the new situation would be his; he would figure for a while as the Father of his People, the Restorer of would be forgotten, or would be remembered only as implicated in the confusion that had ceased; and in a short time there would be parties, factions, divisions, and the beginnings of a new spider-web of Court-government and Absolutism. "Have you not found him at this play all along? And do not all men acknowledge him most exquisite at it?" So the Remonstrance proceeds, page after page, in long, complex, wave-like sentences, every sentence vital, and the whole impressing one with the grave seriousness of spirit, and also the political thoughtfulness, with which it was drawn up.—Towards the end come the specific demands which the Army made on the Commons, and which they were resolved to enforce. These are divided into two sets:—I. Immediate Demands. These are five. First of all, it is demanded "That the capital and grand author of our troubles, the Person of the King, by whose commissions, commands, or procurement, and in whose behalf and for whose interest only, of will and power, all our wars and troubles have been, with all the miseries attending them, may be specially brought to justice for the treason, blood, and mischief he is therein guilty of." Next it is demanded that a limited time be set wherein the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York may return to England and render themselves: with the proviso that, if they do not so return, they are to be declared incapable for ever of any government or trust in the kingdom, and are to be treated without mercy as enemies and traitors if ever afterwards they are found in England; and also that, if they do return within the limited time, their cases are to be severally considered, and their past delinquencies (the Prince's being greatest, and "in appearance next unto his father's") either remitted or remembered for penalty as may be found fit; but that in any case all the estates and revenue of the Crown be sequestered for a good number of years, and applied to public uses, with reserve of a reasonable provision for the Royal Family and for old Crown- servants. Then it is demanded that a competent number of the King's chief instruments in the two Civil Wars may be brought, with him, in capital punishment. With this satisfaction to justice the Remonstrants would be content; and they recommend that there should be moderate and clement treatment of other Delinquents willing to submit, but with perpetual banishment and the confiscation of estates for those of them who should remain obdurate. Finally, the special claims of the Army are brought forward, and it is demanded that there shall be full payment of their damages and arrearages.—II. Prospective Demands. These point to the future Political Constitution of England. Under this head the Army demand (1) a termination of the existing Parliament within a reasonable time; (2) a guaranteed succession of subsequent Parliaments, annual or biennial, to be elected on such a system of suffrage and of redistribution of constituencies as should make them really representative of the whole people; (3) the temporary disfranchisement and disqualification of the King's adherents; and (4) a strict provision that Parliament, as the representative body of the people, should henceforth be supreme in all things, except such as would requestion the policy of the Civil War itself, and such as might trench on the foundations of common Right, Liberty, and Safety. In this last provision it is definitely stipulated as a necessary item that, should Kingship be kept up in England, it should be as an elective office merely, every successive holder of which should be chosen expressly by Parliament, and should have no veto or negative voice on laws passed by the Parliament. [Footnote: See the entire Remonstrance (well worth reading) in Parl. Hist. III. 1077]
This vast document, signed officially by John Rushworth, "by the appointment of his Excellency the Lord General and his General Council of Officers," was brought to the Commons, with a brief note from Fairfax himself, on Monday, Nov. 20. It was presented in all form by a deputation of officers, consisting of Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-colonels Kelsay, Axtell, and Cooke, and three Captains. The House was thunderstruck, and for some hours there was a high and fierce debate. Some of the Independents among the members spoke manfully in favour of the Remonstrance; others were for temporizing; but the more resolute Presbyterians, among whom Prynne was conspicuous, resented the Remonstrance as an insolence "subversive of the law of the land and the fundamental constitutions of the kingdom," and protested that "it became not the House of Commons, who are a part of the Supreme Council of the Nation, to be prescribed to, or regulated and baffled by, a Council of Sectaries in Arms." Nothing of all this appears in the Journals of the House, but only this entry: "Ordered, That the debate upon the Remonstrance of the General and his General Council of Officers be resumed on Monday next." That "Monday next" was the 27th of November, the very day on which the Houses had agreed that the negotiations with the King at Newport should finally cease. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Nov. 20, 1648; Whitlocke, same date; Parl. Hist. III. 1127-8 (where extracts are given from a contemporary account of the in the Mercurius Pragmaticus).]
Cromwell, it is to be remembered, was not at this time in the immediate scene of action. After his victory over Hamilton at Preston (Aug. 17-19), he had remained in the north, to recover Berwick and Carlisle from the Scots, dispose of the remnant of the Scottish invading forces under Monro, and take such other measures against the Scottish Government as that no more should be feared from that quarter.
His task had been easy. The "Engagement" with the King, and the consequent invasion of England by a Scottish army in the King's interest, had been, as we know (antè, p. 589), the acts only of the Scottish party then in power, the party of Hamilton and Lanark; and they had been vehemently opposed and disowned by the party of Argyle and Loudoun, backed by the popular sentiment and by nearly the entire body of the Scottish clergy. When, therefore, the news of the disaster at Preston reached Scotland, the "Anti-Engagers" rose everywhere against the Government of the existing Committee of Estates, assailed it with reproaches and execrations, and prepared to call it to account. Lanark, who had been left as the chief of the Government after the capture of his brother, endeavoured for a while to hold his ground. He recalled Monro and the relics of the Scottish army from England, and took the field with their joint forces. Meanwhile, the zealous Covenanting peasantry of the western shires, nicknamed Whigs or Whigamores, having obeyed the summons of Argyle, Loudoun, and the Earls of Eglinton and Cassilis, and marched eastward to assist their brethren round Edinburgh, the forces of the Anti-Engagers had swelled into an army of more than 6,000 men, the command of which was assumed by old Leslie, Earl of Leven, with David Leslie under him. For some time the two armies, or portions of them, moved about in East Lothian, and between Edinburgh and Stirling; there were some skirmishes; and a conflict seemed imminent. In reality, however, most of the noblemen of the Committee of Estates had no heart for the enterprise into which Lanark was leading them. They saw it to be desperate, not only from the strength of the Whigamore rising in Scotland itself, but also because Cromwell was at hand in the north of England, in communication with Argyle and the other Whigamore chiefs, and ready to cross the borders for their help, if necessary. Accordingly, after some negotiation, a Treaty was arranged (Sept. 26). By the terms of this Treaty, Monro was to return to Ireland with his special portion of the troops; but otherwise both armies were to be disbanded, Lanark and all who had been concerned with him in the Engagement retiring from all places of trust, and the government of Scotland to be confirmed in the hands of Argyle and the Whigamores, who had already constituted themselves the new Committee of Estates de facto.
Although this arrangement had been effected without Cromwell's direct interference, he was actually in Scotland when it was made, having crossed the Tweed on the 2lst of September with an army of horse and foot. The next day he had been met by Argyle, Lord Elcho, and others, as a Deputation from the new Committee of Estates, bearing letters signed in the name of the Committee by their Chancellor Loudoun. The new Government of Scotland most handsomely surrendered to Cromwell the towns of Carlisle and Berwick, with apologies for the conduct of their predecessors in having seized them; and Cromwell, delaying some days about Berwick to see all duly performed there, was able to write letters thence to Fairfax and Speaker Lenthall (Oct. 2), praising Argyle and Elcho, and announcing that there was a very good understanding between "the Honest Party of Scotland" and himself. It was involved in this understanding, however, that Cromwell should visit Edinburgh, and add the weight of his personal presence to the re-establishment of the Argyle Government on the ruins of that of the Hamiltons. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, therefore, he did enter Edinburgh, with his officers and guard, and with Sir Arthur Haselrig in their company. They were escorted into the city with all ceremony by the authorities, and lodged by them in Moray House in the Canongate, the finest mansion at hand for their reception. For four days the people of Edinburgh, waiting in crowds outside Moray House, had the opportunity of studying the features of the great English Independent as he came out or went in, passing the English sentries on guard at the gate. For the Whigamore nobles and those select citizens, including the magistrates and city clergy, who had the privilege of calling on him, the opportunities were, of course, still closer; and on the fourth day (Saturday, Oct. 7) there was a sumptuous banquet in the Castle to him and his officers, at which the old Earl of Leven presided, and the Marquis of Argyle and other lords of the Committee of Estates were present.