We know too little of this excellent man, whose talents, however, and early pursuits do not seem to have particularly qualified him for public life. It is evident that he did not plunge into the loyal cause with all the zeal of his friend Hyde; and the king doubtless had no great regard for the counsels of one who took so very different a view of some important matters from himself. Life of Clarendon, 48. He had been active against Strafford, and probably had a bad opinion of Laud. The prosecution of Finch for high treason he had himself moved. In the Ormond Letters, i. 20, he seems to be struck at by one writing from Oxford, June 1, 1643: "God forbid that the best of men and kings be so used by some bad hollow-hearted counsellors, who affect too much the parliamentary way. Many spare not to name them; and I doubt not but you have heard their names."
[272] It appears by the late edition of Clarendon, iv. 351, that he was the adviser of calling the Oxford parliament. The former editors omitted his name.
[273] Parl. Hist. 218. The number who took the covenant in September 1643, appears by a list of the long parliament in the same work (vol. ii.) to be 236; but twelve of these are included in both lists, having gone afterwards into the king's quarters. The remainder, about 100, were either dead since the beginning of the troubles, or for some reason absented themselves from both assemblies. Possibly the list of those who took the covenant is not quite complete; nor do I think the king had much more than about sixty peers on his side. The parliament, however, could not have produced thirty. Lords' Journals, Jan. 22, 1644. Whitelock, p. 80, says that two hundred and eighty appeared in the House of Commons, Jan. 1644, besides one hundred absent in the parliament's service; but this cannot be quite exact.
[274] Rushworth Abr. v. 266, and 296; where is an address to the king, intimating, if attentively considered, a little apprehension of popery and arbitrary power. Baillie says, in one of his letters, "The first day the Oxford parliament met, the king made a long speech; but many being ready to give in papers for the removing of Digby, Cottington, and others from court, the meeting was adjourned for some days."—i. 429. Indeed, the restoration of Cottington, and still more of Windebank, to the king's councils, was no pledge of protestant or constitutional measures. This opposition, so natural to parliaments in any circumstances, disgusted Charles. In one of his letters to the queen, he congratulates himself on being "freed from the place of all mutinous motions, his mongrel parliament." It may be presumed that some of those who obeyed the king's summons to Oxford were influenced less by loyalty than a consideration that their estates lay in parts occupied by his troops; of course the same is applicable to the Westminster parliament.
[275] Baillie, 441. I can find no mention of this in the Journals; but, as Baillie was then in London, and in constant intercourse with the leaders of parliament, there must have been some foundation for his statement, though he seems to have been inaccurate as to the fact of the vote.
[276] Parl. Hist. 299, et post; Clarendon, v. 16; Whitelock, 110, etc.; Rushw. Abr. v. 449, etc.
[277] It was impossible for the king to avoid this treaty. Not only his Oxford parliament, as might naturally be expected, were openly desirous of peace, but a great part of the army had, in August 1644, while opposed to that of Essex in the west, taken the extraordinary step of sending a letter to that general, declaring their intentions for the rights and liberties of the people, privileges of parliament, and protestant religion against popish innovations; and that on the faith of subjects, the honour and reputation of gentlemen and soldiers, they would with their lives maintain that which his majesty should publicly promise in order to a bloodless peace; they went on to request that Essex, with six more, would meet the general (Earl of Brentford) with six more, to consider of all means possible to reconcile the unhappy differences and misunderstandings that have so long afflicted the kingdom. Sir Edward Walker's Historical Discourses, 59. The king was acquainted with this letter before it was sent, but after some hands had been subscribed to it. He consented, but evidently with great reluctance, and even indignation; as his own expressions testify in this passage of Walker, whose manuscript here, as in many other places, contains interlineations by Charles himself. It was doubtless rather in a mutinous spirit, which had spread widely through the army, and contributed to its utter ruin in the next campaign. I presume it was at the king's desire that the letter was signed by the general, as well as by Prince Maurice, and all the colonels, I believe, in his army, to take off the appearance of a faction; but it certainly originated with Wilmot, Percy, and some of those whom he thought ill affected. See Clarendon, iv. 527, et post; Rushw. Abr. v. 348, 358.
[278] The king's doctors, Steward and Sheldon, argued at Uxbridge that episcopacy was jure divino; Henderson and others that presbytery was so. Whitelock, 132. These churchmen should have been locked up like a jury, without food or fire, till they agreed.
If we may believe Clarendon, the Earl of Loudon offered in the name of the Scots, that if the king would give up episcopacy, they would not press any of the other demands. It is certain, however, that they would never have suffered him to become the master of the English parliament; and, if this offer was sincerely made, it must have been from a conviction that he could not become such.
[279] Rushworth, Whitelock, Clarendon. The latter tells in his life, which reveals several things not found in his history, that the king was very angry with some of his Uxbridge commissioners, especially Mr. Bridgman, for making too great concessions with respect to episcopacy. He lived, however, to make himself much greater.