[378] Nov. 17. Parl. Hist. 1077; Whitelock, p. 355. A motion, Nov. 30, that the house do now proceed on the remonstrance of the army, was lost by 125 to 58 (printed, 53 in Parl. Hist.). Commons' Journals. So weak was still the republican party. It is indeed remarkable that this remonstrance itself is rather against the king, than absolutely against all monarchy; for one of the proposals contained in it is that kings should be chosen by the people, and have no negative voice.
[379] The division was on the previous question, which was lost by 129 to 83.
[380] No division took place on any of the votes respecting the king's trial.
[381] Ludlow, i. 267.
[382] Hutchinson, p. 303.
[383] The king's manners were not good. He spoke and behaved to ladies with indelicacy in public. See Warburton's Notes on Clarendon, vii. 629, and a passage in Milton's Defensio pro populo Anglicano, quoted by Harris and Brodie. He once forgot himself so far as to cane Sir Henry Vane for coming into a room of the palace reserved for persons of higher rank. Carte's Ormond, i. 366, where other instances are mentioned by that friendly writer. He had in truth none who loved him, till his misfortunes softened his temper, and excited sympathy.
An anecdote, strongly intimating the violence of Charles's temper, has been rejected by his advocates. It is said that Burnet, in searching the Hamilton papers, found that the king, on discovering the celebrated letter of the Scots covenanting lords to the King of France, was so incensed that he sent an order to Sir William Balfour, lieutenant-governor of the Tower, to cut off the head of his prisoner, Lord Loudon; but that the Marquis of Hamilton, to whom Balfour immediately communicated this, urged so strongly on the king that the city would be up in arms on this violence, that with reluctance he withdrew the warrant. This story is told by Oldmixon, Hist. of the Stuarts, p. 140. It was brought forward on Burnet's authority, and also on that of the Duke of Hamilton, killed in 1712, by Dr. Birch, no incompetent judge of historical evidence; it seems confirmed by an intimation given by Burnet himself in his Memoirs of the Duke of Hamilton, p. 161. It is also mentioned by Scott of Scotstarvet, a contemporary writer. Harris, p. 350, quotes other authorities, earlier than the anecdote told by Burnet; and upon the whole, I think the story deserving credit, and by no means so much to be slighted as the Oxford editor of Burnet has thought fit to do.
[384] Clement Walker, Hist. of Independency, Part II. p. 55.
[385] Clarendon, Collier, and the high church writers in general, are very proud of the superiority they fancy the king to have obtained in a long argumentation held at Newcastle with Henderson, a Scots minister, on church authority and government. This was conducted in writing, and the papers afterwards published. They may be read in the King's Works, and in Collier, p. 842. It is more than insinuated that Henderson died of mortification at his defeat. He certainly had not the excuse of the philosopher who said he had no shame in yielding to the master of fifty legions. But those who take the trouble to read these papers, will probably not think one party so much the stronger as to shorten the other's days. They show that Charles held those extravagant tenets about the authority of the church and of the fathers, which are irreconcilable with protestantism in any country where it is not established, and are likely to drive it out where it is so.
[386] The note on this passage, which, on account of its length, was placed at the end of the volume in the two first editions, is withdrawn in this, as relating to a matter of literary controversy, little connected with the general objects of this work. It is needless to add, that the author entertains not the smallest doubt about the justness of the arguments he had employed.—Note to the Third Edition.