problem before the nation. Men had grown so familiar with inquiries into what had been, that they did not sufficiently trouble themselves to ask what ought to be. They consulted antiquity when they should have been providing for the future. They did not see that they had embarked on an unknown sea, where their old charts would avail them little.

184

Parliament no longer represents the nation. him.

April 1.

CHAPTER CV.

THE EVE OF THE CIVIL WAR.

IF both parties were equally impervious to new ideas on the supreme question of toleration, it was of little consequence that the existing constitutional formalities were better observed by the party which was about to support the King than by the party which continued to oppose Pym and his friends had been driven by the course of events to uphold the doctrine that Parliament and not the King was supreme in England. How could they hope to make it good unless the votes of Parliament embodied the national will? Yet it was now perfectly evident that this was no longer the case. Killigrew's suggestion that a deputation of Killigrew's members should be sent into each county to inquire into the opinion of the constituencies, on the ground that it was not the exacting of a law that made it in force, but the willing obedience to it,' was no doubt open to grave objections, but it touched the weak point of Pym's policy to the quick. It was Pym's part to assume that he had all England at his back. On March 29 directions were sent to Hotham to reinforce the garrison of Hull, and on April 2 the Commons voted that the munitions at April 2. Hull should be brought to London, though the vote was afterwards changed, at the instance of the Lords, to a request to the King to consent to their removal. On the other hand, a company of horsemen rode out of London on the 3rd

March 29. Hull to be secured.

1 D'Ewes's Diary, Harl. MSS. clxiii. fol. 58 b.

to join the King at York, and it was known that the Gentlemen Pensioners had obeyed a summons from Charles to attend his person in the North.

April 3. Help for the King.

Measures taken by Parliament.

On April 4 the Commons appointed a committee to prepare a declaration of their ecclesiastical policy; and on the same day the two Houses, finding that Charles had forbidden the appointment of Warwick to command the fleet, directed Northumberland to instal their nominee as Vice-Admiral in defiance of the King. The two resolutions had a closer connection than appears at first sight. The ecclesiastical policy of the Commons rendered necessary their preparations for war.1

2

The Lords had already agreed that the militia ordinance should be put in force even without the King's consent. On the 8th they sentenced Benyon to fine and imprisonApril 8. Benyon ment for his attempt to stir up resistance to the sentenced. militia ordinance under cover of the privileges of the City. The Lords in truth were no more than a shadow of their former selves. Many of the Royalist peers had given up the struggle and had ceased to attend in their places. In the division taken on Benyon's sentence there were but nineteen votes in the majority. The minority was composed of fourteen only.3

The Royalist

peers cease to attend.

April 5.

The Yorkshire petition.

Charles had, in the meanwhile, been listening alternately to his hopes and his fears. As yet there had been little to encourage him in the North. The bulk of the gentry showed little inclination to support him, and petitioned him to come to terms with Parliament. Charles, in his reply, assured them that all would be well if only Parliament would consider the message in which he had asked that its demands on ecclesiastical matters should be presented to him as a whole, and would agree to settle the militia by Bill instead of by ordinance.1

April 7. The King's

reply.

It would have been better for Charles if he could have been

April 8. The declara

tion of the Houses on

The outburst of

content to act persistently on these lines. feeling which had been to some extent revealed in the Kentish petition, had drawn from the Houses an announcement of the moderation of their desires and intentions with regard to the Church. Their only wish, they said, was for 'a due and necessary reformation of the government and liturgy of the Church,' and 'to take away nothing in the one or the other but what shall be evil and justly offensive, or at least unnecessary and burdensome, and, for the better effecting thereof, speedily to have consultation with godly and learned divines.' 1

Church

reform.

The course which prudence clearly dictated to Charles was to accept the hand thus held out to him, to endeavour to reduce to a minimum the changes which would be demanded, and to come to some compromise on the question of the militia. Yet, in order to make such an attempt possible, it was absolutely necessary that he should be able to inspire confidence in his sincerity, and should induce his subjects to believe that he was no longer the Charies who had dabbled in army plots the year before. Yet as if to render all hope of conciliation impossible, on the very day on which the resolution on the Church was accepted by the Lords a message was speeding southwards which revived all the old suspicions.

Charles declares that

he will go to

In this message Charles announced his resolution to go to Ireland to suppress the rebellion. For this purpose he intended to raise a guard of 2,000 foot and 200 horse and to arm them from the magazine at Hull. To remove Ireland. all misunderstanding he had ordered a Bill to be prepared for settling the militia, a Bill which, as it afterwards appeared, proposed that the command should be placed in the hands of the persons named in the Parliamentary ordinance, to be exercised for one year under the directions of the King signified by both Houses of Parliament, as long as he was in England, and under the directions of Parliament alone when he was beyond the sea.2

1 L. J. iv. 706.

2 Ibid. 709. The Bill has not been preserved, but its contents may be discovered from the subsequent discussions.

We may well believe that Hyde had no part in this unlucky message. No one who read it could doubt that Charles, His probable having been disappointed of the support which he had intentions. expected in the North, designed either to attach himself to the army which he intended to lead against the Irish insurgents, or even to avail himself in some way of those very insurgents whom he was professing to assail. In either case the relinquishment of the command of the militia for a single year would only tide over the time till he was ready to return from Ireland at the head of a body of devoted and victorious troops.

The Queen hopes for help from

That this strange scheme of a journey to Ireland had been concerted with the Queen there can be little doubt.2 In the spring of 1642, as much as in the spring of 1641, she was the centre of a wide-reaching plot for securing the Dutch; the co-operation in her favour of irreconcilably antagonistic forces. Her offer of the Prince of Wales to Frederick Henry as a son-in-law had made its expected impression, and the Prince of Orange had readily taken up her suggestion that Dutch ambassadors should be sent to England nominally to offer the mediation of the States between the King and Parliament, but in reality to pave the way for more direct assistance to be given, if it should prove necessary, to the Royal cause. It was true that the commercial aristocracy of the Province of Holland set itself strongly against this plan for entangling

Here is the opinion of a strong Royalist on it: "You may easily imagine how unsatisfied I am with the resolution His Majesty hath taken concerning Ireland, till I understand from you how it agrees with the sense you have of what is fit for him to do at this time . . . The King is resolved to take the Prince with him."-Grandison to Hyde, April 12, Clarendon MSS. 1588.

I will reply to your letter, where you say that if you can go to Ireland, and that the road by England is not safe, that you will go to Ireland by Scotland, which is a road that I apprehend extremely; for the troops who are going are entirely devoted to the Parliament, and they will hold you as a prisoner, if the Parliament please; thus you cannot join the army of the Catholics, nor approach Dublin by that road."-The Queen to On the suspicions of April 22, Venice Tran

the King, April 25, Letters of Henrietta Maria, 66.

May 5'

Parliament, see Giustinian to the Doge, April 15, scripts R. O.

25, May 2