[Sidenote a: A.D. 1647. Dec. 18.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1647. Dec. 24.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1647. Dec. 28.]
as a part of the agreement, before the whole was concluded.[1]
Aware of the consequences of his refusal, Charles had resolved to anticipate the vengeance of the parliament by making his escape the same evening to a ship which had been sent by the queen, and had been waiting for him several days in Southampton Water; but he was prevented by the vigilance of Hammond, who closed the gates on the departure of the commissioners, doubled the guards, confined the royal captive to his chamber, and dismissed Ashburnham, Berkeley, Legge, and the greater part of his attendants.[2] An attempt to raise in his favour the inhabitants of the island was instantly suppressed, and its author, Burley, formerly a captain in the royal army, suffered the punishment of a traitor. The houses resolved[a] (and the army promised to live and die with them in defence of the resolution)[3] that they would receive no additional message from the king; that they would send no address or application to him; that if any other person did so without leave, he should be subject to the penalties of high treason; and that the committee of public safety should be renewed to sit and act alone, without the aid of foreign coadjutors. This last hint was understood by the Scots: they made a demand of the hundred thousand pounds due to them by the
[Footnote 1: Journals, ix. 575, 578, 582, 591, 604, 615, 621. Charles's
Works, 594. Memoirs of Hamiltons, 334.]
[Footnote 2: Ashburnham, ii. 121. Berkeley, 387, 393.]
[Footnote 3: On Jan 11, before the vote passed, an address was presented from the general and the council of war by seven colonels and other officers to the House of Commons, expressive of the resolution of the army to stand by the parliament: and another to the House of Lords, expressive of their intention to preserve inviolate the rights of the peerage. Of the latter no notice is taken in the journals of the house.—Journ. v. Jan. 11. Parl. Hist. vi. 835.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1648. Jan. 3 and Jan. 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1648. Jan. 17.]
treaty of evacuation, and announced their intention of returning immediately to their own parliament.[1]
The king appeared to submit with patience to the[a] new restraints imposed on his freedom; and even affected an air of cheerfulness, to disguise the design which he still cherished of making his escape. The immediate charge of his person had been intrusted to four warders of approved fidelity, who, two at a time, undertook the task in rotation. They accompanied the captive wherever he was, at his meals, at his public devotions, during his recreation on the bowling-green, and during his walks round the walls of the castle. He was never permitted to be alone, unless it were in the retirement of his bedchamber; and then one of the two warders was continually stationed at each of the doors which led from that apartment. Yet in defiance of these precautions (such was the ingenuity of the king, so generous the devotion of those who sought to serve him) he found the means of maintaining a correspondence with his friends on the coast of Hampshire, and through them with the English royalists, the Scottish commissioners in Edinburgh, the queen at Paris, and the duke of York at St. James's, who soon afterwards, in obedience to the command of his father, escaped in the disguise of a female to Holland.[2]
[Footnote 1: The vote of non-addresses passed by a majority of 141 to 92. Journals, v. Jan. 3. See also Jan. 11, 15, 1648; Lords' Journals, ix. 640, 662; Rushworth, vii. 953, 961, 965; Leicester's Journal, 30.]