It is possible that this letter is the same with that mentioned by Lord Orrery; and in that case was written in the month of October. Cromwell seems to have been in treaty with the king as late as September; and advised him, according to Berkley, to reject the proposals of the parliament in that month. Herbert mentions an intercepted letter of the queen (Memoirs, 60); and even his story proves that Cromwell and his party broke off with Charles from a conviction of his dissimulation. See Laing's note, iii. 562; and the note by Strype, therein referred to, on Kennet's Complete Hist. of England, iii. 170; which speaks of a "constant tradition" about this story, and is more worthy of notice, because it was written before the publication of Lord Orrery's Memoirs, or of the Richardsoniana.
[354] Ashburnham gives us to understand that the king had made choice of the Isle of Wight, previously to his leaving Hampton Court, but probably at his own suggestion. This seems confirmed by the king's letter in Burnet's Mem. of Dukes of Hamilton, 326. Clarendon's account is a romance, with little mixture probably of truth. Ashburnham's Narrative, published in 1830, proves that he suggested the Isle of Wight, in consequence of the king's being forced to abandon a design he had formed of going to London, the Scots commissioners retracting their engagement to support him.
[355] Parl. Hist. 799.
[356] Jan. 15. This vote was carried by 141 to 92. Id. 831. And see Append. to 2nd vol. of Clar. State Papers. Cromwell was now vehement against the king, though he had voted in his favour on Sept. 22. Journals, and Berkley, 372. A proof that the king was meant to be wholly rejected is, that at this time, in the list of the navy, the expression "his majesty's ship," was changed to "the parliament's ship." Whitelock, 291.
The four bills were founded on four propositions (for which I refer to Hume or the Parliamentary History, not to Clarendon, who has mis-stated them) sent down from the Lords. The lower house voted to agree with them by 115 to 106; Sidney and Evelyn tellers for the ayes, Martin and Morley for the noes. The increase of the minority is remarkable, and shows how much the king's refusal of the terms offered him in September, and his escape from Hampton Court, had swollen the commonwealth party; to which, by the way, Colonel Sidney at this time seems not to have belonged. Ludlow says, that party hoped the king would not grant the four bills (i. 224). The Commons published a declaration of their reasons for making no further addresses to the king, wherein they more than insinuate his participation in the murder of his father by Buckingham. Parl. Hist. 847.
[357] Clarendon, whose aversion to the Scots warps his judgment, says that this treaty contained many things dishonourable to the English nation. Hist. v. 532. The king lost a good deal in the eyes of this uncompromising statesman, by the concessions he made in the Isle of Wight. State Papers, 387. I cannot, for my own part, see anything derogatory to England in the treaty; for the temporary occupation of a few fortified towns in the north can hardly be called so. Charles, there is some reason to think, had on a former occasion made offers to the Scots far more inconsistent with his duty to this kingdom.
[358] Clarendon; May, "Breviate of the Hist. of the Parliament," in Maseres's Tracts, i. 113; Whitelock, 307, 317, etc. In a conference between the two houses, July 25, 1648, the Commons gave as a reason for insisting on the king's surrender of the militia as a preliminary to a treaty, that such was the disaffection to the parliament on all sides, that without the militia they could never be secure. Rush. Abr. vi. 444. "The chief citizens of London," says May, 122, "and others called presbyterians, though the presbyterian Scots abominated this army, wished good success to these Scots no less than the malignants did. Whence let the reader judge of the times." The fugitive sheets of this year, such as the "Mercurius Aulicus," bear witness to the exulting and insolent tone of the royalists. The chuckle over Fairfax and Cromwell, as if they had caught a couple of rats in a trap.
[359] April 28, 1648; Parl. Hist. 883.
[360] June 6. These peers were the Earls of Suffolk, Middlesex, and Lincoln, Lords Willoughby of Parham, Berkley, Hunsdon, and Maynard. They were impeached for sitting in the house during the tumults from 26th of July to 6th of August 1647. The Earl of Pembroke, who had also continued to sit, merely because he was too stupid to discover which party was likely to prevail, escaped by truckling to the new powers.
[361] June 8.