And so, having dispatched the commissioners, Monk continued his colloquies with Clarges, such privileged persons as the physician Dr. Barrow and the chaplain Dr. Gumble being admitted to some of them, but only Clarges fathoming Monk's intentions, and he but in part. When the Independent ministers and other envoys arrived, there was a conference at Holyrood House at which they made speeches, Monk listening, but keeping his own mouth shut. Once, indeed, when Mr. Caryl warned him that war and bloodshed, if begun, would be "laid at his door," he burst out against Lambert and his party, saying they had begun the war, and, if they continued in their course, he would "lay them on their backs." While the Independent ministers were yet in Edinburgh, doing their best, there was a more welcome advent in the person of Colonel Morgan (Nov. 8). He had been lying ill of gout at York, but had recovered so far as to be able to come to Edinburgh as a kind of messenger to Monk from Lambert. He delivered his message punctually enough, but told Monk he was glad to be with him again, and would follow him implicitly whatever he did, being "no statesman" himself. Monk was vastly pleased, looking on Morgan, it is said, as worth more than all the 140 officers he had lost. Morgan had, moreover, brought important communications from Yorkshire, which led Monk to dispatch Clarges and Talbot thither to establish an understanding with Lord Fairfax.1
1: Phillips, 667-669; Skinner, 138-140.
Meanwhile Monk's three Commissioners had arrived at York and been in parley with Lambert. Finding that the question of the restitution of the Rump was involved in their instructions, he passed them on to London, having stipulated for a truce till the result should be known. On the 12th of November the Commissioners were in London; and on the 15th, after three days of consultation at Wallingford House, a treaty of nine Articles was agreed to, and signed by them on the part of Monk and the Army in Scotland, and by Fleetwood on the part of the Wallingford-House Council. There was great delight in Whitehall over this result, and the Tower cannon proclaimed the happy reconciliation between Monk and the Government. But Monk's Commissioners had been too hasty, or had been outwitted; and Clarges, who arrived in London that day, had come too late to stop them and spin out the time. A pledge of both parties against Charles Stuart or any single-person Government was in the forefront of the Treaty; and the rest of the Articles simply admitted Monk and the officers of the Scottish Army to a share in the Government as then going on, and in certain arrangements which the Committee of Safety and the Wallingford-House Council had been already devising on their own account. Monk received the news at Haddington on the evening of Nov. 18; he returned to Edinburgh next day, "very silent and reserved"; but that day it was resolved by him, in consultation with some of his chief officers and with Dr. Barrow, to disown the Treaty—not, indeed, by actual rejection of any of the Articles, but on the plea that several things had been omitted and that there must be farther specification. For this purpose it was proposed that two Commissioners on Monk's part should be added to the former three, and that five Commissioners from the Army in England should meet these and continue the Treaty at Alnwick or some other indifferent place near Scotland. When this answer reached London, Whitlocke, who had all along, as he tells us, protested that Monk's object was delay only and "that the bottom of his design was to bring in the King," repeated more earnestly his former advice that Lambert should be pushed on to immediate action. "His advice was not taken," says Whitlocke, "but a new Treaty consented to by Commissioners on each part, to be at Newcastle." From about the 20th of November that was Lambert's headquarters, while Monk, having left a portion of his forces behind him for necessary garrison purposes in Scotland, came on from Edinburgh to establish himself at Berwick with the rest. He was there before the end of the month. In the beginning of December 1659, therefore, the two Armies were all but facing each other,—Monk's consisting now of about 6000 foot and 1400 horse and dragoons, and Lambert's of between 4000 and 5000 horse and about 3000 foot: the excess in horse giving Lambert a great superiority. At Monk's back, moreover, there was no effective support in case of failure, unless by that arming of the Scots which he was unwilling to risk, while to back Lambert there were about 20,000 more regulars in England, besides a militia of 30,000, not to speak of the forces in Ireland, and the regiments in Flanders. Between the two Armies all that intervened to prevent conflict was the Treaty to be resumed at Newcastle. Monk magnified the importance of that, but took great care to postpone it. Wilkes, Clobery, and Knight, had not returned from London, and were rather slow to do so and face Monk after their blunder; and the two new Commissioners had not yet been appointed. Meanwhile letters and messages passed between the two Armies, and there were desertions from the one to the other.1
1: Skinner, 146-158; Phillips, 670-672; Whitlocke, IV. 373-377.
All this while the London Government of the Committee of Safety had been attending as well as they could to such general business as belonged to them in their double capacity of supreme executive and temporary deliberative. For, at the constitution of the body on the 26th of October, it had been agreed that they should not only exercise the usual powers of a Council of State, but should also prosecute that great question of the future form of the Government of the Commonwealth which had occupied the late Rump. They were to prosecute this question in conference, if necessary, with the chief Army officers and others; and, if they should not come to a conclusion within six weeks, the question was to return to the Wallingford-House Council itself.1
1: Letter of M. de Bordeaux to Mazarin of date Nov. 6, 1659 (i.e. Oct. 28 in English reckoning), in Appendix to Guizot, II. 274-278.
In the matter of foreign relations the Committee of Safety had little to do, the arrangements of the late Rump for withdrawing from foreign entanglements still holding good for the present. Meadows, who had become tired of his agency with the two Scandinavian powers, no longer such an inspiring office as it had been under the Protectorate, had asked the Rump more than once to recall him. He had remained in the Baltic to as late as October, but was now back in London, anxious about his own future and about his arrears of salary. If the present Government should succeed, there might possibly be a revival of the Cromwellian policy of co-operation with Charles Gustavus, and then the services of Meadows might be again in request; but meanwhile Algernon Sidney and the other plenipotentiaries sent by the Rump into the Baltic, though checking the heroic Swede and scorned by him in return, might represent the only policy yet possible. Downing, though also much exercised by the rapid turns of affairs, and thinking of scoundrel-like means for securing himself, does not seem to have been so dissatisfied with his position at the Hague as Meadows was with his in the Baltic. He had come to London early in November; a sub-committee of the Committee of Safety had been appointed to receive his report on present relations with the United Provinces; and he was waiting for re-credentials. The Dutch Ambassador Nieuport, we may add, was still in London, as also the French Ambassador M. de Bordeaux, and other inferior foreign residents, but all meanwhile as mere on-lookers.—One inquires with most interest about Ambassador Lockhart. Since August, he had been at or near St. Jean de Luz, on the borders between France and Spain, charged, as Ambassador for the Rump, with the business of endeavouring to have the English Commonwealth included in the great Treaty then going on between Mazarin and the Spanish minister Don Luis de Haro, so that, when peace had been definitely concluded between France and Spain, there might be peace also between Spain and the Commonwealth. There he had been received, with the utmost respect by Mazarin and with all courtesy by Don Luis de Haro, both of them friendly enough to the purpose of his mission for reasons of their own. It was found, however, that the Peace between France and Spain was a matter of sufficient complication and difficulty in itself; and so, though it was not finally concluded and signed till the end of November, when it took the name of The Treaty of the Pyrenees, and secured, among many other things, the marriage of Louis XIV. with the Spanish Infanta, Lockhart, knowing all to be settled, had taken his farewell. He was in London on the 14th of November, in the very crisis of the negotiation between Monk and the new Government, but remained only a fortnight. Till Peace with Spain should be concluded by some means, his true place was at Dunkirk, for the recovery of which Spain would now certainly wrestle, while France would also bid high for the acquisition. He left London for Dunkirk on the 1st of December, the issue between Monk and the new Government still undecided.—While Lockhart was on the scene of the great negotiation between Mazarin and Luis de Haro on the Spanish border, there had been the surprise of the arrival there of no less a person than Charles II. himself. In August we left him waiting anxiously at Calais, ready to embark for England on the due explosion there of the great pre-arranged insurrection of the old Royalists and new Royalists. He had lingered about the French coast for some time; but, when the revolt of Sir George Booth had collapsed, the notion of a new residence in Brussels after another of his failures had become disagreeable to him. He did go to Brussels, but only to conceive the idea of a trip, half of pleasure, half of speculation, to the scene of the great diplomatic conferences. Might not his interests be considered in the Treaty? Mazarin, who had no wish to see him at the conferences, declined to give him a passport; but he risked the journey incognito, with Ormond, the Earl of Bristol, and one or two other attendants, going by a long and circuitous route, and finding much amusement by the way. As they approached their destination, there was an unlucky separation of the party into two, Ormond going on ahead for inquiries and appointing a place for their reunion. But for some days Charles and the Earl of Bristol were lost. Ormond, who had missed them at the appointed place, had gone on to Fontarabia, a small frontier town of Spain, and the residence of Don Luis de Haro during the Treaty, just as St. Jean de Luz, two or three miles off, but in the French territory, was the residence of Mazarin. Sir Henry Bennet, the Ambassador for Charles at the Spanish Court, was already there; and he, and Ormond, and Don Luis himself, were in no small anxiety. At length it appeared that the fugitives, on false information that the Treaty was already concluded, had gone into Spain on their own account, bound for Madrid itself, and had got as far as Saragossa. Fetched back to Fontarabia, they were received with all politeness and state by Don Luis. But, though they remained some time, the Treaty was so far settled that Charles found that nothing could be done for his interests through that means. Mazarin, indeed, resenting his intrusion, and his passage through France without leave, refused to see him, and gave orders also that Sir Henry Bennet should not be admitted. With only general assurances of good wishes from the Spanish minister, a present of 7000 gold pistoles for "the expenses of his journey," and promises of farther consideration of his case when there should be opportunity, Charles returned through France by Paris, and was back in Brussels in December, just about the time when Lockhart was back in Dunkirk. They had been crossing each other's paths and were again near neighbours.—Although the late Rump Government had taken some alarm at Charles's visit to Fontarabia, and had made remonstrances on the subject of his passage through France, it was now known that there was no danger of action for Charles either by France or by Spain. The danger, indeed, was of a more subtle and incalculable kind, and within the Commonwealth itself. We have seen how naturally the baulked Cromwellianism of the epoch of the dissolution of Richard's Parliament and the overthrow of his Protectorate tended to transmute itself into Stuartism, and how much of the strength of Sir George Booth's insurrection consisted of new Royalism so produced. What we have now to add is that every baulked or defeated cause in succession within the Commonwealth yielded in the same way potential capital for Charles. The cause of Charles was like an ultimate refuge for all the disappointed and destitute. Those who had not already been driven into it were ruefully or gladly looking forward to it. Even among the extreme Rumpers or pure Republicans, now maddened by Lambert's coup d'état, there were some, Colonel Herbert Morley for one, who were feeling cautiously for ways and means of forgiveness at Brussels. Nay, in the present Committee of Safety and in the Wallingford-House Council associated with it, there were some fully prepared, should this experiment also fail, to help in a restoration of the Stuarts rather than go back into the Republican grasp of Scott, Neville, and Hasilrig. There was a vague common cognisance of this convergence of so many separate currents to one final reservoir. It showed itself in mutual accusations of that very tendency of which all were conscious. Every party of Commonwealth's men accused every other party of a design to bring the King in, and every party so accused repudiated the charge with such strength of language as to beget the suspicion, "The Lady protests too much, methinks." On the other hand, the uneasy common consciousness disposed people to be practically somewhat tolerant. When no one knew what might happen to himself, why should he indict his neighbour for treason? On some such ground it may have been, as well as to try to win grace with the Presbyterians or new Royalists, that the present Government did not proceed with the trials of the lords and gentlemen committed for high treason for their concern in the late Insurrection, but released all or most of them. Lords Northampton, Falkland, Herbert, Howard, and others had been released November 1, and Sir George Booth himself was set at liberty on the 9th of December.1
1: Thurloe, VII. 708, 727, 743, 753-4, 775, and 802; Whitlocke, IV. 369, 377, and 378; Clarendon, 872-877; Guizot, I. 211-215; Letters of M. de Bordeaux, in Appendix to Guizot, II. 288, 294, and 298; Order Books of Council of State, Aug. 23 and Oct. 13, 1659.
In the matter of a new Constitution for the future the procedure of the Committee of Safety had been not uninteresting. On the 1st of November they had referred the subject to a sub-committee, consisting of Vane, Whitlocke, Fleetwood, Ludlow, Salway, and Tichbourne; and on this sub-committee Ludlow did consent to act. In fact, however, the General Committee and the Wallingford-House Council kept along with the Sub-Committee in the great discussion.1
1: Whitlocke, IV. 368-369, and Ludlow, 736. Whitlocke does not here name himself as one of the sub-committee, though he names the others; but Ludlow names him distinctly, and Whitlocke's words afterwards (e.g., p. 376) show him to have been an active member.