Charles soon discovered that he was no longer governing, but governed. The Parliament negotiated with the Scots without consulting him or even taking him into its confidence. Eventually the Commons voted that £300,000 should be given to the King’s enemies, the Scots, as a “Brotherly Assistance”.
The King’s affairs kept going rapidly from bad to worse. We cannot here deal with the trials and the executions of Newcastle’s two friends, Strafford and Laud—for Laud also was a friend of Newcastle—or the Root and Branch Bill, or the Grand Remonstrance, or the Rebellion in Ireland which is said to have cost that country nearly half its population. We shall presently have enough to do with Newcastle himself without troubling ourselves about general politics; but it has been necessary to take a brief survey of them in so far as they led up to the most important events in Newcastle’s life.
In the years 1640 and 1641, the Queen showed more energy than the King, but she was equally, if not even more, injudicious. At about the period dealt with at the beginning of the last chapter, or even earlier, by way of obtaining the advice of a sage politician, she had listened, and persuaded Charles to listen, to the proposals of Newcastle’s profligate, and light-minded friend, Sir John Suckling. That courtier recommended the King to make use of his army in the North to re-establish and maintain his regal authority: as Strafford was in the Tower and Northumberland was still invalided, he suggested that Newcastle should be put in command of that army, and that he should bring it South, to overawe the Parliament and support the King. In addition to advising the use of force, Suckling personally endeavoured to raise loyal troops in support of the Crown. His efforts, however, did more harm than good to the King’s cause; his plot was discovered by the Parliament, he fled to France and he was declared a traitor.
Although there was no proof of Newcastle’s complicity in this plot, the fact that his appointment to command the army of the North was part of its scheme made the Parliament suspect him more strongly than ever.
The effect of all this was that the Queen was now even more hateful to the Parliament than was the King. The crisis arrived when five members of Parliament began to urge that the Queen, as the prime author of the encroachments upon the liberties of the subjects, should be formally impeached. The King still hesitated; but, according to the well-known story, the Queen said to him:[36] “Go, you coward! and pull these rogues out by the ears, or never see my face again”. The Queen told Lady Carlisle of this little episode, Lady Carlisle told Essex, Essex told others, and others told the five members, who made their escape in safety.
[36] Gardiner’s History, X, p. 136.
Urged on the one side by his councillors to use the utmost caution, on the other by his Queen to be a man and to put his foot down, the vacillating and nervous King, in a moment of spasmodic courage, threatened the Parliament; whereupon the Parliament threatened the King, who then practically ran away, leaving London on 10 January, 1642.
The first actual conflict between the King and the Parliament took place in relation to Newcastle. When Charles had left York, to meet the Long Parliament in London, he had sent all the ammunition and stores which he had accumulated for his war against the Scots, to Hull. He had foreseen the likelihood of a civil war, and he had privately given Newcastle a commission, appointing him governor of Hull; but he had told him not to use it unless he received further orders.
During the morning on which the King left London, early in January, 1642, one of his first acts was to dispatch orders to Newcastle, commanding him to make immediate use of that commission, and to hurry to Hull, as the Duchess says, “with all possible speed and privacy”. Of what followed she says:—
“Immediately upon the receipt of these his Majesties Orders and Commands, my Lord prepared for their execution, and about Twelve of the Clock at night, hastened from his own house when his Familie were all at their rest, save two or three Servants which he appointed to attend him. The next day early in the morning he arrived at Hull, in the quality of a private Gentleman, which place was distant from his house forty miles; and none of his Family that were at home, knew what was become of him, till he sent an Express to his Lady to inform her where he was.”