Charles thought that they, traitors and rebels as they were, were speeding to their own doom. Outwardly he played with them as he had done before; he referred himself, he said, wholly to them. Meanwhile he was sowing the seeds of another Civil War.
He had come to an agreement with the Scots whereby they were to unite with the English royalists against the Parliament, and he on his side was to suppress Sectaries and Independents and to establish presbytery for three years, himself retaining the Anglican form of worship. This agreement was signed secretly, wrapped in lead, and buried in the garden of Carisbrooke Castle.
Royalist risings broke out all over the country, particularly in Wales; mutinies were frequent in the still undisbanded, unpaid army; the struggle between Presbyterian and Independent was as sharp as it had ever been. Hamilton triumphed over the Argyll faction in the Scottish Parliament, raised an army 40,000 strong, and prepared to march across the Border "to deliver the King from Sectaries." Part of the fleet had revolted, gone to Holland, fetched the young Prince of Wales and Rupert, and was buccaneering round Yarmouth Roads. In Ireland the Marquess of Ormonde and the papal Nuncio were coming to some pact to unite against the Parliament, and the feeling of the sheer people of England was veering against the austere rule of the Puritan and coming again to the old known and tried idea of Kingship. "Why not," they asked, "a good peace with His Majesty?"
Cromwell and a few others knew why not; because the King was utterly impossible to deal with; because he did not admit that he, the King, could be dealt with, made party to a bargain or an agreement, like an ordinary man.
But in the minds of the common people, Charles did not get the blame nor they the credit of this attitude of his. Cromwell in particular had lost much of his prestige; the zealots blamed him for his conferences with the King, the moderates because they had not succeeded. He brought about meetings between the leaders of the two factions, Presbyterians and Independents, but quite uselessly—neither would yield a jot. Then the extreme men of the Parliament and the extreme men of the army were gotten together by his care to discuss the desperate state of affairs.
This conference resolved itself into a bitter and academic dispute on the various forms of government, each man backing himself by manifold quotations from Scripture.
"Wherefore," cried Cromwell, starting up impatiently, "do you argue which is best—monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy—when you are come here to find a remedy for the present evils?"
Thereat they began to reply together, tediously and idly, and Cromwell picked up the cushion from the chair on which he sat and hurled it at Ludlow's head, and before it could be flung back to him he ran down the stairs, thus ending the conference.
Soon after, the army came together at Windsor and, with prayers and tears and exhortations, besought God to tell them for what mistreading or fault all these turmoils and distresses had come upon them.
And the conclusion of these three days of mystic exaltation was that God was punishing them for their dealings with Charles Stewart, who was henceforth to be no more considered or dealt with, but treated as a delinquent and man of blood who would be, in good time, made to answer for his sins to men before he went to answer for them to God.