Constitutional History of England, Henry VII to George II. Volume 2 of 3

by Henry Hallam

[349] Fairfax's "Memoirs" in Maseres's Collection of Tracts, vol. i. p. 447. "By this," says Fairfax, who had for once found a man less discerning of the times than himself, "I plainly saw the broken reed he leaned on. The agitators had brought the king into an opinion that the army was for him." Ireton said plainly to the king, "Sir, you have an intention to be the arbitrator between the parliament and us; and we mean to be so between your majesty and the parliament."—Berkley's "Memoirs," ibid. p. 360.

This folly of the king, if Mrs. Hutchinson is well informed, alienated Ireton, who had been more inclined to trust him than is commonly believed. "Cromwell," she says, "was at that time so incorruptibly faithful to his trust and the people's interest, that he could not be drawn in to practise even his own usual and natural dissimulation on this occasion. His son-in-law Ireton, that was as faithful as he, was not so fully of the opinion, till he had tried it, and found to the contrary, but that the king might have been managed to comply with the public good of his people, after he could no longer uphold his own violent will; but upon some discourses with him, the king uttering these words to him, 'I shall play my game as well as I can,' Ireton replied, 'If your majesty have a game, you must give us also the liberty to play ours.' Colonel Hutchinson privately discoursing with his cousin about the communications he had had with the king, Ireton's expressions were these: 'He gave us words, and we paid him in his own coin, when we found he had no real intention to the people's good, but to prevail, by our factions, to regain by art what he had lost in fight.'"—P. 274.

It must be said for the king that he was by no means more sanguine or more blind than his distinguished historian and minister. Clarendon's private letters are full of strange and absurd expectations. Even so late as October 1647, he writes to Berkley in high hopes from the army, and presses him to make no concessions except as to persons. "If they see you will not yield, they must; for sure they have as much or more need of the king than he of them."—P. 379. The whole tenor, indeed, of Clarendon's correspondence demonstrates that, notwithstanding the fine remarks occasionally scattered through his history, he was no practical statesman, nor had any just conception, at the time, of the course of affairs. He never flinched from one principle, not very practicable or rational in the circumstances of the king; that nothing was to be receded from which had ever been desired. This may be called magnanimity; but no foreign or domestic dissension could be settled, if all men were to act upon it, or if all men, like Charles and Clarendon, were to expect that Providence would interfere to support what seems to them the best, that is, their own cause. The following passage is a specimen: "Truly I am so unfit to bear a part in carrying on this new contention [by negotiation and concession], that I would not, to preserve myself, wife, and children from the lingering death of want by famine (for a sudden death would require no courage), consent to the lessening any part, which I take to be in the function of a bishop, or the taking away the smallest prebendary in the church, or to be bound not to endeavour to alter any such alteration."—Id. vol. iii. p. 2, Feb. 4, 1648.

[350] Parl. Hist. 738. Clarendon talks of these proposals as worse than any the king had ever received from the parliament; and Hollis says they "dissolved the whole frame of the monarchy." It is hard to see, however, that they did so in a greater degree than those which he had himself endeavoured to obtain as a commissioner at Uxbridge. As to the church, they were manifestly the best that Charles had ever seen. As to his prerogative and the power of the monarchy, he was so thoroughly beaten, that no treaty could do him any substantial service; and he had, in truth, only to make his election, whether to be the nominal chief of an aristocratical or a democratical republic. In a well-written tract, called "Vox Militaris," containing a defence of the army's proceedings and intentions, and published apparently in July 1647, their desire to preserve the king's rights, according to their notion of them, and the general laws of the realm, is strongly asserted.

[351] The precise meaning of this word seems obscure. Some have supposed it to be a corruption of adjutators, as if the modern term adjutant meant the same thing. But I find agitator always so spelled in the pamphlets of the time.

[352] Berkley's Memoirs, 366. He told Lord Capel about this time that he expected a war between Scotland and England; that the Scots hoped for the assistance of the presbyterians; and that he wished his own party to rise in arms on a proper conjuncture, without which he could not hope for much benefit from the others. Clarendon, v. 476.

[353] Berkley, 368, etc. Compare the letter of Ashburnham, published in 1648, and reprinted in 1764, but probably not so full as the MS. in the Earl of Ashburnham's possession; also the Memoirs of Hollis, Huntingdon, and Fairfax, which are all in Maseres's Collection; also Ludlow, Hutchinson, Clarendon, Burnet's Memoirs of Hamilton, and some despatches in 1647 and 1648, from a royalist in London, printed in the appendix to the second volume of the Clarendon Papers. This correspondent of Secretary Nicholas believes Cromwell and Ireton to have all along planned the king's destruction, and set the levellers on, till they proceeded so violently, that they were forced to restrain them. This also is the conclusion of Major Huntingdon, in his Reasons for laying down his Commission. But the contrary appears to me more probable.

Two anecdotes, well known to those conversant in English history, are too remarkable to be omitted. It is said by the editor of Lord Orrery's Memoirs, as a relation which he had heard from that noble person, that in a conversation with Cromwell concerning the king's death, the latter told him, he and his friends had once a mind to have closed with the king, fearing that the Scots and presbyterians might do so; when one of their spies, who was of the king's bedchamber, gave them information of a letter from his majesty to the queen, sewed up in the skirt of a saddle, and directing them to an inn where it might be found. They obtained the letter accordingly, in which the king said, that he was courted by both factions, the Scots presbyterians and the army; that those which bade fairest for him should have him; but he thought he should rather close with the Scots than the other. Upon this, finding themselves unlikely to get good terms from the king, they from that time vowed his destruction. Carte's Ormond, ii. 12.

A second anecdote is alluded to by some earlier writers, but is particularly told in the following words, by Richardson, the painter, author of some anecdotes of Pope, edited by Spence. "Lord Bolingbroke told us, June 12, 1742 (Mr. Pope, Lord Marchmont, and myself), that the second Earl of Oxford had often told him that he had seen, and had in his hands, an original letter that Charles the First wrote to his queen, in answer to one of hers that had been intercepted, and then forwarded to him; wherein she had reproached him for having made those villains too great concession, viz. that Cromwell should be lord lieutenant of Ireland for life without account; that that kingdom should be in the hands of the party, with an army there kept which should know no head but the lieutenant; that Cromwell should have a garter, etc.: That in this letter of the king's it was said, that she should leave him to manage, who was better informed of all circumstances than she could be; but she might be entirely easy as to whatever concessions he should make them; for that he should know in due time how to deal with the rogues, who, instead of a silken garter, should be fitted with a hempen cord. So the letter ended; which answer as they waited for, so they intercepted accordingly; and it determined his fate. This letter Lord Oxford said he had offered £500 for."

The authenticity of this latter story has been constantly rejected by Hume and the advocates of Charles in general; and, for one reason among others, that it looks like a misrepresentation of that told by Lord Orrery, which both stands on good authority, and is perfectly conformable to all the memoirs of the time. I have, however, been informed, that a memorandum nearly conformable to Richardson's anecdote is extant, in the handwriting of Lord Oxford.