[370] C. Journals; Whitelock, 168. The borough of Southwark had just before petitioned for a new writ, its member being dead or disabled.
[371] That the House of Commons, in December 1645, entertained no views of altering the fundamental constitution, appears from some of their resolutions as to conditions of peace: "That Fairfax should have an earldom, with £5000 a year; Cromwell and Waller baronies, with half that estate; Essex, Northumberland, and two more be made dukes; Manchester and Salisbury marquises, and other peers of their party be elevated to higher ranks; Haslerig, Stapylton, and Skippon to have pensions." Parl. Hist. 403; Whitelock, 182. These votes do not speak much for the magnanimity and disinterestedness of that assembly, though it may suit political romancers to declaim about it.
[372] Commons' Journals, May 4 and 18, 1647. This minority were not, in general, republican; but were unwilling to increase the irritation of the army by so strong a vote.
[373] Commons' Journals; Whitelock, 271; Parl. Hist. 781. They had just been exasperated by his evasion of their propositions. Id. 778. By the smallness of the numbers, and the names of the tellers, it seems as if the presbyterian party had been almost entirely absent; which may be also inferred from other parts of the Journals. See October 9, for a long list of absentees. Haslerig and Evelyn, both of the army faction, told the Ayes, Martin and Sir Peter Wentworth the Noes. The house had divided the day before on the question for going into a committee to take this matter into consideration, 84 to 34; Cromwell and Evelyn telling the majority, Wentworth and Rainsborough the minority. I suppose it is from some of these divisions that Baron Maseres has reckoned the republican party in the house not to exceed thirty.
It was resolved on Nov. 6, 1647, that the King of England, for the time being, was bound in justice and by the duty of his office, to give his assent to all such laws as by the Lords and Commons in parliament shall be adjudged to be for the good of the kingdom, and by them tendered unto him for his assent. But the previous question was carried on the following addition: "And in case the laws, so offered unto him, shall not thereupon be assented unto by him, that nevertheless they are as valid to all intents and purposes as if his assent had been thereunto had and obtained, which they do insist upon as an undoubted right."—Com. Jour.
[374] Ludlow says that Cromwell, "finding the king's friends grow strong in 1648, began to court the commonwealth's party. The latter told him he knew how to cajole and give them good words, when he had occasion to make use of them; whereat, breaking out into a rage, he said they were a proud sort of people, and only considerable in their own conceits."—P. 240. Does this look as if he had been reckoned one of them?
[375] Clarendon says that there were many consultations among the officers about the best mode of disposing of the king; some were for deposing him, others for poison or assassination, which, he fancies, would have been put in practice, if they could have prevailed on Hammond. But this is not warranted by our better authorities.
It is hard to say at what time the first bold man dared to talk of bringing the king to justice. But in a letter of Baillie to Alexander Henderson, May 19, 1646, he says, "If God have hardened him, so far as I can perceive, this people will strive to have him in their power, and make an example of him; I abhor to think what they speak of execution!"—ii. 20. Published also in Dalrymple's Memorials of Charles I., p. 166. Proofs may also be brought from pamphlets by Lilburne and others in 1647, especially towards the end of that year; and the remonstrance of the Scots parliament, dated Aug. 13, alludes to such language. Rushw. Abr. vi. 245. Berkley indeed positively assures us, that the resolution was taken at Windsor in a council of officers, soon after the king's confinement at Carisbrook; and this with so much particularity of circumstance that, if we reject his account, we must set aside the whole of his memoirs at the same time. Maseres's Tracts, i. 383. But it is fully confirmed by an independent testimony, William Allen, himself one of the council of officers and adjutant-general of the army, who, in a letter addressed to Fleetwood, and published in 1659, declares that after much consultation and prayer at Windsor Castle, in the beginning of 1648, they had "come to a very clear and joint resolution that it was their duty to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for the blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to his utmost, against the Lord's cause and people in these poor nations." This is to be found in Somers Tracts, vi. 499. The only discrepancy, if it is one, between him and Berkley, is as to the precise time, which the other seems to place in the end of 1647. But this might be lapse of memory in either party; nor is it clear, on looking attentively at Berkley's narration, that he determines the time. Ashburnham says, "For some days before the king's remove from Hampton Court, there was scarcely a day in which several alarms were not brought him by and from several considerable persons, both well affected to him and likely to know much of what was then in agitation, of the resolution which a violent party in the army had to take away his life. And that such a design there was, there were strong insinuations to persuade." See also his Narrative, published in 1830.
[376] Somers Tracts, v. 160, 162.
[377] Sept. 11. Parl. Hist. 1077; May's "Breviate" in Maseres's Tracts, vol. i. p. 127; Whitelock, 335.