[280] Whitelock, 133.
[281] The creed of this party is set forth in the Behemoth of Hobbes; which is, in other words, the application of those principles of government which are laid down in the Leviathan, to the constitution and state of England in the civil war. It is republished in Baron Maseres's Tracts, ii. 565, 567. Sir Philip Warwick, in his Memoirs, 198, hints something of the same kind.
[282] Warburton, in the notes subjoined to the late edition of Clarendon, vii. 563, mentions a conversation he had with the Duke of Argyle and Lord Cobham (both soldiers, and the first a distinguished one) as to the conduct of the king and the Earl of Essex after the battle of Edgehill. They agreed it was inexplicable on both sides by any military principle. Warburton explained it by the unwillingness to be too victorious, felt by Essex himself, and by those whom the king was forced to consult. Father Orleans, in a passage with which the bishop probably was acquainted, confirms this; and his authority is very good as to the secret of the court. Rupert, he says, proposed to march to London. "Mais l'esprit Anglois, qui ne se dement point même dans les plus attachés a la royauté, l'esprit Anglois, dis-je, toujours entêté de ces libertéz si funestes au repos de la nation, porta la plus grande partie du conseil à s'opposer à ce dessein. Le prétexte fut qu'il étoit dangereux pour le roy de l'entreprendre, et pour la ville que le Prince Robert l'exécutâst, jeune comme il étoit, emporté, et capable d'y mettre le feu. La vraie raison étoit qu'ils craignoient que, si le roy entroit dans Londres les armes à la main, il ne prétendist sur la nation une espèce de droit de conquête, qui le rendist trop absolu." Révolut. d'Angleterre, iii. 104.
[283] Rushworth Abr. iv. 550. At the very time that he was publicly denying his employment of papists, he wrote to Newcastle, commanding him to make use of all his subjects' services, without examining their consciences, except as to loyalty. Ellis's Letters, iii. 291, from an original in the Museum. No one can rationally blame Charles for anything in this, but his inveterate and useless habit of falsehood. See Clarendon, iii. 610.
It is probable that some foreign catholics were in the parliament's service. But Dodd says, with great appearance of truth, that no one English gentleman of that persuasion was in arms on their side. Church History of Engl. iii. 28. He reports as a matter of hearsay, that, out of about five hundred gentlemen who lost their lives for Charles in the civil war, one hundred and ninety-four were catholics. They were, doubtless, a very powerful faction in the court and army. Lord Spencer (afterwards Earl of Sunderland), in some remarkable letters to his wife from the king's quarters at Shrewsbury, in September 1642, speaks of the insolency of the papists with great dissatisfaction. Sidney Papers, ii. 667.
[284] It cannot be doubted, and is admitted in a remarkable conversation of Hollis and Whitelock with the king at Oxford in November 1644, that the exorbitant terms demanded at Uxbridge were carried by the violent party, who disliked all pacification. Whitelock, 113.
[285] Baillie, ii. 91. He adds, "That which has been the great snare to the king is the unhappy success of Montrose in Scotland." There seems indeed great reason to think that Charles, always sanguine, and incapable of calculating probabilities, was unreasonably elated by victories from which no permanent advantage ought to have been expected. Burnet confirms this on good authority. Introduction to Hist. of his Times, 51.
[286] Whitelock, 109, 137, 142; Rushw. Abr. v. 163. The first rat (except indeed the Earls of Holland and Bedford, who were rats with two tails) was Sir Edward Dering, who came into the parliament's quarters, Feb. 1644. He was a weak man of some learning, who had already played a very changeable part before the war.
[287] A flagrant instance of this was the plunder of Bristol by Rupert, in breach of the capitulation. I suspect that it was the policy of one party to exaggerate the cruelties of the other; but the short narratives dispersed at the time give a wretched picture of slaughter and devastation.
[288] Clarendon and Whitelock passim; Baxter's Life, pp. 44, 55. This license of Maurice's and Goring's armies in the west first led to the defensive insurrection, if so it should be called, of the club-men; that is, of yeomen and country people, armed only with clubs, who hoped, by numbers and concert, to resist effectually the military marauders of both parties, declaring themselves neither for king nor parliament, but for their own liberty and property. They were of course regarded with dislike on both sides; by the king's party when they first appeared in 1644, because they crippled the royal army's operations, and still more openly by the parliament next year, when they opposed Fairfax's endeavour to carry on the war in the counties bordering on the Severn. They appeared at times in great strength; but the want of arms and discipline made it not very difficult to suppress them. Clarendon, v. 197; Whitelock, 137; Parl. Hist. 379, 390.