Meanwhile, Harrison had gone down to Hurst Castle and removed the King from that melancholy solitude to Windsor.
The now purged House of Commons, which consisted of a mere handful of Independent members, was nothing but the mouthpiece of the army, who were now the masters of the hour. In council they decided against bringing the King to trial if he could be brought by any means to reason, and Lord Denbigh was sent to Windsor again—once more and for the last time—to offer Charles terms.
The same terms—the abandonment of Episcopacy and of his own absolute sovereignty.
All illusion was at last stripped from the proceedings; no meaningless courtesies or formalities obscured the issue. The army were treating Charles as they would treat a vanquished enemy, and he at last saw it—saw there was no hope, no evasion possible, no succour at hand, no shift, no expedient to which he could turn; saw, too, for the first time, the sharp and bitter nature of the alternative of his refusal of these terms.
The army talked freely of his trial and death; there was barely a disguise given to the fact that Lord Denbigh gave him his choice between the Church of England, his Crown—and his life.
This struck not at the King's ambition or lust of power or love of authority, but at his conscience, for he believed as firmly that he was there to uphold the Divine ordinance in Church and State as Cromwell believed that God was mocked by Lawd's surplices, candles, and genuflexions.
On the gloomy day in the end of December when the return of Lord Denbigh with the King's answer was expected, Henry Ireton was with his father-in-law in his house in Drury Lane. Both men showed signs of the tremendous physical and spiritual stress they had lately undergone. Cromwell especially was haggard; the burden which he had assumed was no light one, nor was the responsibility he was about to undertake one which could be worn easily.
Up to the very last he had hoped that the King would give way. Lord Denbigh's journey had been on his recommendation, and he still clung to the possibility that Charles, now absolutely with his back against the wall, might make those concessions which would enable the army to spare him.
But the other and more likely alternative had to be faced.