At the beginning of April even Exeter capitulated: the Parliamentary army advanced towards Oxford, where there seemed nothing left for the King but to surrender. The war was virtually over. The attempt of Charles I to wrest back by force of arms from the Parliament the power which it had acquired had broken down.
This conclusion was exactly contrary to the results of the analogous undertaking of Henry IV in France. Henry IV had conquered the capital and the country, set aside the A.D. 1645. Estates, and laid the foundations for that royal power on which it was possible to raise the proudest monarchy of modern times. In England the forces which the King and his adherents could command were defeated in the country and crushed; the supreme authority was in the hands of the Parliament, with which the capital had hitherto been always in perfect accord.
FOOTNOTES:
[413] To the Queen, 13 March. King’s cabinet opened, No. 13: ‘I being now freed from the place of base and mutinous motions, that is to say, our mongrel Parliament here.’
[414] King’s cabinet opened, No. 20. Cp. his letters of May 12 and 31 in Mrs. Green, of May 14 in Halliwell ii. 380.
[415] Bossuet mentions the affair in his funeral oration on Henrietta Maria. The details of the transaction are still unknown.
[416] King’s cabinet opened, No. 11.
[417] The testimony of Sabran (20 April), ‘Les forces du parlement ont beaucoup plus reçu que donné de l’échec,’ may be set against the pamphlets of the Independents exaggerating their successes in the first movements of the campaign.
[418] Sabian 12/22 June. ‘Les sièges d’Oxford et de Borstall House ont peu duré et mal réussi: il en est revenu en une seule fois dimanche dernier 37 charettes de soldats blessés, et autres depuis.’
[419] In a letter to Lord Jermyn, Digby mentions his ‘advice to the King to have gone to Oxford from Daintry.’ Warburton iii. 135.