If the King could not be trusted—what then? Some of the bold words of Thomas Harrison flashed into his mind. Must they, could they, do without a king at all?
Oliver Cromwell did not think so; he was never a Republican: order and system were lovely to him, and both were involved, in his English heart, with the idea of a steadfast though constrained monarchy.
In anything else (where, indeed, was the model for anything else to be found in Europe, save perhaps in the peculiar constitution, founded under peculiar circumstances, of the United Provinces?) he foresaw the elements of constant anarchy, constant revolution....
Yet he had done with the King—finished with him with that complete definiteness of which his resolutions were supremely capable.
So Cromwell strove with his thoughts during the short ride to Putney where all the chiefs of the army were already in conclave.
Alone in the uncared-for splendour of another monarch the unhappy King stood, motionless, as his enemy had left him, and tried to measure the extent of his misfortune and to readjust his shattered plans.
He was still, as ever, incredulous of his ultimate defeat, but never before had he been so utterly at a loss for present action. The army was lost to him, that was clear; neither the Scots nor the Parliament were ready to receive him, the Queen had not been able to raise the foreign army, his son-in-law, the Prince of Orange, had been prevented by the States-General from sending troops to his assistance, Ormonde could do nothing in Ireland—that country was indeed lost to the royal cause, since the miserable affair of the Earl of Glamorgan—and Hamilton seemed powerless to fight the Campbell faction at Edinburgh.
"What shall I do?" muttered Charles. "What shall I do?"
His thoughts turned with even deeper longing than usual to the Queen in her exile; he believed that he might forsake everything and go to her; two things restrained him, sheer pride and the thought of his two children, the Princess Elisabeth and the Duke of Gloucester, who were in the hands of the Parliament and whom he would have to leave behind.
The Duke of York had already escaped to France, but the figures of these little children rose up and restrained his flight.