Some offers of compromise were made by the royal plenipotentiaries. They would admit the limitation of the bishops’ power by a council of the lower clergy, and even by laymen, to be elected by this council, in each diocese: Parliament should regulate the spiritual jurisdiction in relation for instance to marriage: even a rent-charge on ecclesiastical revenues for A.D. 1645. ‘the maintenance of peace’ was suggested. Even this seemed to the King almost too much, and he declined to go a hair’s-breadth further, as he considered himself bound by his coronation oath to maintain the Church establishment. Once more appeared the political argument, that it was necessary for the power of the crown to retain the dependence upon it of the spiritual power. The right of the sword also, without which the crown would be a mere shadow, seemed to be a good ground for a King to fight on. Charles I agreed to the appointment of a commission for nominating the commanders, say for three years, but only on condition that half of it should be named by himself, and that the military power should hereafter return into his hands. This by no means satisfied the Parliamentary plenipotentiaries: they asked for the exclusive nomination of the commission by the two Houses of Parliament, and for a period of seven years; what was to be done in the future must be decided at the expiration of the time by parliamentary proceedings, and in no other fashion[405]. They added by way of explanation that the power of the sword, of peace and war, must always be exercised through the King and the two Houses of Parliament.
Two opposite systems were as it were brought into contact. Parliament desired to subject Church and State to its authority permanently: the King hoped by momentary concessions to gain the possibility of restoring in the future the ancient power of the crown: no agreement was possible. The affairs of Ireland were also discussed at Uxbridge[406]: but whereas the Parliament demanded the termination of the existing truce and a renewal of the war, the King sought to establish permanent peace there.
On the twentieth day of the negotiations (February 22) the meeting broke up. The Royal plenipotentiaries hastened to reach Oxford that evening, since their safe conducts expired with that day.
A.D. 1645.
Dissensions in Parliament. The Self-denying Ordinance.
Nothing would have been more desirable for the two parties who had been treating together, the Scottish Presbyterians and the Royalists, than to arrive at an accommodation.
At the time it was often asserted, even by statesmen like Mazarin, that the Presbyterian principles involved the destruction of the monarchy, and the introduction into England as well as Scotland of the republican institutions of the Netherlands[407]. This may however be contradicted with certainty. The Presbyterians wished to reduce the crown to an extremely small amount of power, but they had no wish to abolish it; neither their theory nor their necessities led to this. The Scots desired to see a King of Scottish extraction on the English throne, and they wished also that a system of spiritual and temporal government, such as they had extorted from the King, should be supreme in England also, if only to prevent the possibility of a reaction from thence influencing Scotland. They adhered to hereditary monarchy as a fundamental point: long and bitterly as they had contended against Charles I, they would not let him be overthrown.
The opinion has often been expressed, that if it was a crime to have taken up arms against Parliament, no one was guilty of it in a higher degree than the King himself, and that he had thus disqualified himself for the throne: and his two sons were liable to the same charge. The idea was started of offering the crown to the Elector Palatine, who in that case would more easily recover his own territories, for England would enter into a league with Spain to counterbalance the French, who were on the side of the King: or again of raising to the throne the third son of Charles I, Henry Duke of Gloucester, who was in the hands of the Parliament, and of bringing him up under the domination of a perpetual A.D. 1645. Parliament[408]. We find that Henry Vane, whose ideas went beyond Presbyterianism, betook himself to the Scottish camp, in order to arrange for one or other of these plans; but all his efforts were in vain.
No doubt this unbending attitude of the Scots strengthened the antipathy felt against them on other grounds. It was thought unendurable that a foreign nation should intrude into the counsels of England and seek to decide its fate. Their attempt to introduce in England the Presbyterian system of church government aroused still greater hostility. The Congregationalists, defeated in the Westminster Assembly, had no small following among the common people, and a very extensive one in the army: they most strenuously rejected the hierarchy which would result from the union of the Presbyterian clergy with the lay elders, and which would form an ecclesiastical tyranny as bad as that of the bishops. If things were allowed to run their course, it must be expected that these tendencies would invade the Lower House, and perhaps carry it away. Thus it would have been of inestimable value to the Scots to come to terms with the King, whereby their opponents would have been at once checkmated: it is strange that they did not make more effort.
The French ambassador more than once spoke on the subject with the Scottish commissioners Maitland and Loudon, and urged them to abate the hardness of the terms offered by them to the King. They required unconditionally only one concession, his acceptance of the Presbyterian system: there are necessities in politics which no negotiation can master. Since the union with England had been formed for the express purpose of thoroughly destroying Episcopacy in that country, the Scottish commissioners could not recede on that point. They sought to induce the ambassador to use his influence to get it admitted: they assured him that in that case they would moderate every other demand, that the King should recover his previous authority, and be granted a larger income, and that as great honour as ever should be paid to the Queen. A.D. 1645. Sabran reminded them that this depended not so much on their good will as on the English Parliament. They replied that the resistance of the Lower House to reasonable things would be advantageous to the King, and hinted that he would then have the Scots on his side. Unless the King gave way in the matter of religion, no peace, no result to any negotiations was to be expected, but if he would concede this a third party would at once be formed[409]. They reckoned not only on the friends of peace in the Lower House, but also, and with good reason, chiefly on the nobility of England, who, as we have seen, felt themselves threatened and endangered by the line of conduct which seemed to find favour in the Lower House.