other, represented his taking of the covenant as an essential condition; while Montrose and his English counsellors contended that it would exasperate the Independents, offend the friends of episcopacy, and cut off all hope of aid from the Catholics, who could not be expected to hazard their lives in support of a prince sworn to extirpate their religion.[1]
While the question was yet in debate, an event happened to hasten the departure of Charles from the Hague. Dr. Dorislaus, a native of Holland, but formerly a professor of Gresham College, and recently employed to draw the charge against the king, arrived as envoy from the parliament to the States.[a] That very evening, while he sat at supper in the inn, six gentlemen with drawn swords entered the room, dragged him from his chair, and murdered him on the floor.[2] Though the assassins were suffered to escape, it was soon known that they were Scotsmen, most of them followers of Montrose; and Charles, anticipating the demand of justice from the English parliament, gave his final answer to the commissioners, that he was, and always had been, ready to provide for the security of their religion, the union between the kingdoms, and the internal peace and prosperity of Scotland; but that their other demands were irreconcilable with his conscience, his liberty, and his honour. They
[Footnote 1: Clar. iii. 287-292. Baillie, ii. 333. Carte, Letters, i. 238-263. In addition to the covenant, the commissioners required the banishment of Montrose, from which they were induced to recede, and the limitation of the king's followers to one hundred persons.—Carte, Letters, i. 264, 265, 266, 268, 271.]
[Footnote 2: Clarendon, iii. 293. Whitelock, 401. Journals, May 10. The parliament settled two hundred pounds per annum on the son, and gave five hundred pounds to each of the daughters of Dorislaus.—Ib. May 16. Two hundred and fifty pounds was given towards his funeral.—Council Book, May 11.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. May 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. May 19.]
acknowledged that he was their king; it was, therefore, their duty to obey, maintain, and defend him; and the performance of this duty he should expect from the committee of estates, the assembly of the kirk, and the whole nation of Scotland. They departed with this unsatisfactory answer; and Charles, leaving the United Provinces, hastened to St. Germain in France, to visit the queen his mother, with the intention of repairing, after a short stay, to the army of the royalists in Ireland.[1]
That the reader may understand the state of Ireland, he must look back to the period when the despair or patriotism of Ormond surrendered to the parliament the capital of that kingdom.[a] The nuncio, Rinuccini, had then seated himself in the chair of the president of the supreme council at Kilkenny; but his administration was soon marked by disasters, which enabled his rivals to undermine and subvert his authority. The Catholic army of Leinster, under Preston, was defeated on Dungan Hill by Jones, the governor of Dublin, and that of Munster, under the Viscount Taafe, at Clontarf, by the Lord Inchiquin.[2][c] To Rinuccini
[Footnote 1: Balfour, iii. 405; and the Proceedings of the Commissioners of the Church and Kingdoms of Scotland with his Majestie at the Hague. Edinburgh, printed by Evan Tyler, 1649.]
[Footnote 2: Rushworth, 833, 916. In the battle of Dungan Hill, at the first charge the Commander of the Irish cavalry was slain: his men immediately fled; the infantry repelled several charges, and retired into a bog, where they offered to capitulate. Colonel Flower said he had no authority to grant quarter, but at the same time ordered his men to stand to their arms, and preserved the lives of the earl of Westmeath, Lieutenant-General Bryne, and several officers and soldiers who repaired to his colours. "In the mean time the Scotch colonel Tichburn, and Colonel Moor, of Bankhall's regiments, without mercy put the rest to the sword." They amounted to between three and four thousand men.—Belling's History of the late Warre in Ireland, MS. ii. 95. I mention this instance to show that Cromwell did not introduce the practice of massacre. He followed his predecessors, whose avowed object it was to exterminate the natives.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1649. July.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1649. August 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1649. Nov. 13.]