[341] Baillie's letters are full of this feeling, and must be reckoned fair evidence, since no man could be more bigoted to presbytery, or more bitter against the royalist party. I have somewhere seen Baillie praised for his mildness. His letters give no proof of it. Take the following specimens: "Mr. Maxwell of Ross has printed at Oxford so desperately malicious an invective against our assemblies and presbyteries, that, however I could hardly consent to the hanging of Canterbury or of any jesuit, yet I could give my sentence freely against that unhappy man's life."—ii. 99. "God has struck Coleman with death; he fell in an ague, and after three or four days expired. It is not good to stand in Christ's way."—P. 199.
Baillie's judgment of men was not more conspicuous than his moderation. "Vane and Cromwell are of horrible hot fancies to put all in confusion, but not of any deep reach. St. John and Pierrepont are more stayed, but not great heads."—P. 258. The drift of all his letters is, that every man who resisted the jus divinum of presbytery was knave or fool, if not both. They are, however, eminently serviceable as historical documents.
[342] "Now for my own particular resolution," he says in a letter to Digby, March 26, 1646, "it is this. I am endeavouring to get to London, so that the conditions may be such as a gentleman may own, and that the rebels may acknowledge me king; being not without hope that I shall be able so to draw either the presbyterians or independents to side with me for extirpating the one or the other, that I shall be really king again." Carte's Ormond, iii. 452; quoted by Mr. Brodie, to whom I am indebted for the passage. I have mentioned already his overture about this time to Sir Henry Vane through Ashburnham.
[343] Clarendon, followed by Hume and several others, appears to say that Ragland Castle in Monmouthshire, defended by the Marquis of Worcester, was the last that surrendered; namely, in August 1646. I use the expression appears to say, because the last edition, which exhibits his real text, shows that he paid this compliment to Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, and that his original editors (I suppose to do honour to a noble family), foisted in the name of Ragland. It is true, however, of neither. The North Welsh castles held out considerably longer; that of Harlech was not taken till April 1647, which put an end to the war. Whitelock.
Clarendon, still more unyielding than his master, extols the long resistance of his party, and says that those who surrendered at the first summons obtained no better terms than they who made the stoutest defence; as if that were a sufficient justification for prolonging a civil war. In fact, however, they did the king some harm; inasmuch as they impeded the efforts made in parliament to disband the army. Several votes of the Commons show this; see the Journals of 12th May and 31st July 1646.
[344] The resolution to disband Fairfax's regiment next Tuesday at Chelmsford passed 16th May 1647, by 136 to 115; Algernon Sidney being a teller of the noes. Commons' Journals. In these votes the house, that is, the presbyterian majority, acted with extreme imprudence; not having provided for the payment of the army's arrears at the time they were thus disbanding them. Whitelock advised Hollis and his party not to press the disbanding; and on finding them obstinate, drew off, as he tells us, from that connection, and came nearer to Cromwell. P. 248. This, however, he had begun to do rather earlier. Independently of the danger of disgusting the army, it is probable that, as soon as it was disbanded, the royalists would have been up in arms. For the growth of this discontent, day by day, peruse Whitelock's Journal for March and the three following months, as well as the Parliamentary History.
[345] It was only carried by 159 to 147, March 5, 1647, that the forces should be commanded by Fairfax. But on the 8th, the house voted without a division, that no officer under him should be above the rank of a colonel, and that no member of the house should have any command in the army. It is easy to see at whom this was levelled. Commons' Journals. They voted at the same time that the officers should all take the covenant, which had been rejected two years before; and, by a majority of 136 to 108, that they should all conform to the government of the church established by both houses of parliament.
[346] Clar. State Papers, ii. 365. The army, in a declaration not long after the king fell into their power, June 24, use these expressions: "We clearly profess that we do not see how there can be any peace to this kingdom firm or lasting, without a due provision for the rights, quiet, and immunity of his majesty, his royal family, and his late partakers."—Parl. Hist. 647.
[347] Hollis censures the speakers of the two houses and others who fled to the army from this mob; the riot being "a sudden tumultuous thing of young idle people without design." Possibly this might be the case; but the tumult at the door of the house, 26th July, was such that it could not be divided. Their votes were plainly null, as being made under duress. Yet the presbyterians were so strong in the Commons that a resolution to annul all proceedings during the speaker's absence was lost by 97 to 95, after his return; and it was only voted to repeal them. A motion to declare that the houses, from 26th July to 6th August, had been under a force, was also lost by 78 to 75. Journals, 9th and 17th August. The Lords, however, passed an ordinance to this effect; and after once more rejecting it, the Commons agreed on August 20, with a proviso that no one should be called in question for what had been done.
[348] These transactions are best read in the Commons' Journals, and Parliamentary History, and next to those, in Whitelock. Hollis relates them with great passion; and Clarendon, as he does everything else that passed in London, very imperfectly. He accounts for the Earl of Manchester and the Speaker Lenthal's retiring to the army by their persuasion that the chief officers had nearly concluded a treaty with the king, and resolved to have their shares in it. This is a very unnecessary surmise. Lenthal was a poor-spirited man, always influenced by those whom he thought the strongest, and in this instance, according to Ludlow (p. 206) persuaded with difficulty by Haslerig to go to the army. Manchester indeed had more courage and honour; but he was not of much capacity, and his parliamentary conduct was not systematic. But upon the whole it is obvious, on reading the list of names (Parl. Hist. 757), that the king's friends were rather among those who staid behind, especially in the Lords, than among those who went to the army. Seven of eight peers who continued to sit from 26th July to 6th of August 1647, were impeached for it afterwards (Parl. Hist. 764), and they were all of the most moderate party. If the king had any previous connection with the city, he acted very disingenuously in his letter to Fairfax, Aug. 3, while the contest was still pending; wherein he condemns the tumults, and declares his unwillingness that his friends should join with the city against the army, whose proposals he had rejected the day before with an imprudence of which he was now sensible. This letter, as actually sent to Fairfax, is in the Parliamentary History, 734, and may be compared with a rough draught of the same, preserved in Clarendon Papers, 373, from which it materially differs, being much sharper against the city.