The Independents felt that any resistance would be fruitless; they assented to the introduction of the Scottish worship, the more so as in the preface to the new Directory some words were inserted which allowed rather less strictness in observance without surrendering anything in principle[401]. Parliament not merely gave its sanction to this new church order, but unequivocally accepted the forms of Presbyterian church government, insomuch that in the articles which were to be laid before the King, the subjection of all congregations to a system of provincial and national assemblies was made one of the conditions to which he must assent.
Had things come to this point the entire Scottish church system would have received legal validity in England also, and the Independents would have been obliged to disappear like the Episcopalians.
A.D. 1645.
The Negotiations at Uxbridge.
The object of the peace negotiations, which after much delay were at last agreed on, was not only a reconciliation with the King, but also the establishment of an ecclesiastical and political system complete at all points. The chief author of the articles produced was the man who long before had given the most consistency to the revolutionary movement in Scotland, Johnston of Warriston: he sketched them out in April 1644, carried them in the Committee, and then went with them to Scotland, where the Parliament made some few additions, especially the names of those who were not to be pardoned without the assent of Parliament. Through his influence the articles with these additions were accepted, first by the Committee unanimously, and then by the two Houses. In November they were laid before the King.
The introduction of Presbyterianism, by the acceptance of the Covenant itself, was insisted on in them more strictly than ever; they also retained the parliamentary control of the militia, and demanded a renewal of the war against the Irish[402]. What was thought of these proposals in the outer world is indicated by the observation of the French ambassador, that Charles I, if he accepted them, might as well discard the title of King; for under these conditions he would be scarcely more than the first man in a republic. Charles I’s motive for entering into negotiations, and even suggesting them through his own ambassadors, was mainly in order to allow no further ground for the rumour that he hated peace[403]. He hoped that by the discussion of the articles their inadmissibility would be made manifest.
In the conduct of the negotiations he played a very subordinate part: Parliament took care to keep the matter entirely in its own hands. It fixed the place of meeting at the small town of Uxbridge, which afforded none of the comforts A.D. 1645. of life: it limited the time to twenty days, in reckoning which, it was thought necessary expressly to provide that the intervening Sundays were not to be counted: it instructed its representatives (among whom we find, besides some Lords, and the peacefully-inclined Hollis and Whitelocke, Vane and St. John, the leaders of the dominant party) in what order the questions were to be taken, and ordered them not to depart in any material point from the contents of the original propositions.
The plenipotentiaries of both parties met at Uxbridge towards the end of January. The Parliamentarians occupied one part, the Royalists the other, of the little town, and divided the two inns between them: each party had its separate entrance to the old-fashioned building in which the meetings were held, and separate chambers to which they might retire.
At times however they met by the fireside, and the visits which they paid to one another now and then passed the limits of mere formality. One of the Parliamentary Lords, the Earl of Pembroke, admitted one day to Edward Hyde, Chancellor of the Exchequer, that the Lords regretted having gone so far; he besought the King to have pity on them, and to free them from the wicked men who now governed everything: if the King would only accept the conditions proposed to him, as soon as peace was concluded they would give him back all that he now surrendered, and make him once more a powerful King.
Counsels of this kind had formerly produced an impression on Charles I, but this was no longer the case. Concessions made in the hope of thereby gaining a party had been the occasion of his losing so much: he had long been convinced that nothing which had once passed into the hands of the Parliament was ever to be recovered from them[404].