But the result of this message was not what the King had expected it to be. Having consulted Mr. Pelham, one of the two Members of Parliament for the town, Sir John Hotham caused the bridges to be drawn up, the gates to be closed, and the walls to be lined with soldiers. The Mayor and townsfolk were ordered to keep within their houses.
It was eleven o’clock in the morning when the King, with a bodyguard of some three hundred soldiers, arrived before the Beverley Gate, where only three years before he had received such a cordial welcome. Now, when he commanded Sir John Hotham to open the Gate, he was met with a polite refusal. The Governor was very sorry to have to disobey the King’s command, but ‘he durst not open the gates to him, being intrusted by the Parliament with the safety of the town.’
King Charles I. at the Beverley Gate, Kingston-upon-Hull, A.D. 1642.
To the offer of the King, that he would leave all his train outside the Gate, with the exception of twenty horse, the Governor proved equally unresponsive.
From eleven o’clock till four o’clock the parleying of King and Governor went on. Then the King ‘retired to a little house without the walls, and after an hour’s stay returned’ and demanded a final answer. Would Sir John Hotham admit the King to ‘a town and fort of our own, wherein our own magazine lay;’ or would he forthwith be proclaimed a traitor?
Sir John chose the latter alternative, and was at once proclaimed guilty of high treason by the King’s heralds. Then the King withdrew to Beverley, and the first act of open hostility between Parliament and King was ended. The Great Civil War had, in fact, begun.
XXII.
HOW HULL WAS TWICE BESIEGED.
The events of April 23rd, 1642, were immediately followed by the sending of letters to Parliament. Sir John Hotham forwarded an account of how he had obeyed the orders of Parliament to the best of his ‘understanding and utmost endeavours, though with some hazard of being misconceived by His Majesty’; while the King wrote demanding that ‘his said town and magazine might be immediately delivered up unto him, and that such severe exemplary proceedings should be taken against those persons who had offered him that insupportable affront, as by the law was provided.’
To the King’s letter no reply was given. But in reply to that of Sir John Hotham a deputation of members was sent to thank him and the soldiers under him for their services. Two warships were ordered to sail immediately to Hull under the command of the Earl of Warwick; and the following resolutions were passed by the two Houses:—