[407] Instructions to Sabran. ‘Les Puritains, soit Anglais, Ecossais ou Irlandais, haissants la royauté et toute juste domination, n’essayeront pas seulement d’abattre celle de leur roi, mais de se lier avec les républiques voisins.’
[408] Sabran: ‘Innocent des troubles et des contraventions aux lois de l’état, qu’ils prétendent avoir été commises par LL.MM. Britanniques, par le prince de Galles et par tout le parti du roi, qu’ils déclarent criminel de l’état.’
[409] Sabran, Feb. 9, 1645. ‘Que le roi y consentant, toutes sortes de propositions seroient bientot accommodées au gré de S. M., sa dignité entière, ses revenus augmentées—que l’opposition aux choses raisonnables seroit avantageuse au roi de Gr. Br.:—qu’il n’y aura pas sans cela succès au traité ni suite de paix, et qu’avec celle elle se peut faire raisonnable.’
[410] General heads (St. P. O.): ‘That there is good reason to conceive that this backwardness and neglect in H. L. to take advantage against the King was out of a design or desire not to prosecute the war to a full victory.’
[411] Whitelocke’s Memorials 113.
[412] ‘That the members of Parliament who are officers, being of equal power in Parliament, will not be so obedient to your commands as others who have smaller interests.’ Speech of Whitelocke.
CHAPTER V.
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1645.
The King’s whole soul was weary of these painful and fruitless negotiations: yet even in the parliamentary assembly which he had once more gathered round him at Oxford, a resumption of them was urged, and proposals suggested, which seemed to the King base and seditious. He breathed more freely when this assembly also was dismissed, and he expressed himself contemptuously about it: he saw with pleasure Wilmot and Percy, who at that time were labouring for peace, quit his neighbourhood, and go to France to the Queen’s court[413].
He himself in the course of the discussions had not only strengthened himself in his own opinion, but came to lean more than ever in the other direction. He once told his wife, with whom he kept up continual deliberation as to the best course, that he was now determined, if he ever again obtained full possession of power, to repeal all penal laws against the Catholics, that if peace came it would be seen that he was the true friend of her friends, especially of the bishops, and that then he would take care, as she repeatedly urged, to get rid of this everlasting Parliament. It is clear that he meant to be thoroughly master.
Without being a born soldier or much of a general, Charles I had developed a taste for the camp. Military successes were the only ones which he had enjoyed for a long time: his victory over Essex filled him with a certain self-satisfaction. Always inclined to look on the favourable side of things, he A.D. 1645. reckoned in the impending campaign on a new series of successes, worthy of the good cause for which he was fighting. The mysterious ground of his hopes is worth remarking. He fully believed that hitherto the unjust execution of the Earl of Strafford had been visited on him, and not only on him but also on his opponents, who were equally guilty, but that now the innocent blood shed by them only in the execution of Laud, for which they were solely responsible, would bring down the wrath of God upon them[414],—notions which accurately mark the character of the religious beliefs which then dominated men’s minds; as though the secrets of divine things could be brought into such direct connexion with the complications of human affairs! Charles I lived in the conviction that he had committed a fault for which he was punished, but that he was the champion of a holy cause, to which God’s help could never be wanting: if this did but abide with him half as effectually as in former years, he would have a successful campaign.