Aug. 23. Advice of Nicholas. Of this wonderful scheme Charles's most faithful servants in England knew absolutely nothing. The confidential letters which he received from Nicholas pointed to a very different course of action. Let the King do all in his power to hasten the disbandment of the armies. By this he would make it evident that he had no intention of trusting to the employment of military force. Nicholas understood that the only path of safety for Charles lay in gaining the sympathies of his English subjects. Even in England there were symptoms that the tide of feeling, which had been running so strongly against Charles, was on the turn. Nothing was generally known of Possibility of a reaction in the wild projects which he had carried with him on England. his northern journey. What was known was that he had passed through both armies without appealing to them for English Puritans, and to accept religious toleration for the Irish Catholics. He never looked favourably on the cruelties exercised on them after the rebellion. As to the negotiation in general, it is placed beyond doubt by Rossetti's survey of the whole affair. The King, he says, had met with universal disobedience in England and Scotland. "L'Hibernia sola pareva che godesse qualche riposo, e per esser numerosa de' Cattolici si mostrava per conseguenza più fedele à S. Mtà. Vedendo dunque il Rè lo stato nel quale si trovava, si risolse di far il matrimonio c 1 Principe d' Oranges, di dove sperava haver aiuti di danari, et di gente, con valersi de' Cattolici, de' Protestanti, e di qualunque altro che industriosamente havesse potuto guadagnare al suo partito. Gli fu insinuato che l'Hibernia, come più Cattolica, e conseguentemente fedele, l'havrebbe servito, et in caso d'avvantaggio della Rel gion Cattolica, poteva egli similmente sperare altri aiuti, et all' hora furono introdotti i maneggi della libertà di conscienza, et anco dell' istessa sua conversione. Si applicò a quella, et a questa si voleva tempo a deliberare. Per tanto si cominciò a pensare all' Hibernia, si che sotto altri pretesti, vennero di là deputati, e secretamente si negotiò di permettere à loro la libertà di conscienza, quando fedelmente havessero voluto aderire al partito di S. Mtà. Rappresento ciò di certo a V. Emza, perche la Regina degnò di dirmelo, e più volte mi fu affirmato dal Padre Filippo, onde si proseguirono i trattati con diverse conditioni, parte delle quali non mi sono distintamente note poiche solo s'appartenevano al Rè, cioè di dar loro alcuni magazini e commodità, ma ho ben certezza di questa, che era la ermissione della libertà di conscienza."- Rossetti to Barberini, Jan. 23 1642, R. O. Transcripts. Feb. 2 Nicholas to the King, Aug. 23, Evelyn's Memoirs, ii. Part ii. 4. assistance. The natural result was that those of the Parliamentary leaders who had learned enough to predict evil were looked on as scared alarmists, who might have been trying to trouble the waters for their own ambitious ends. Other causes came to weigh in the balance against them. Never within the memory of man had the country been called on to bear such a pressure of taxation. Six subsidies had never before been granted in a single session, and after the six subsidies had come the poll-tax, the amount of which would not be far short of six subsidies more. The whole may perhaps be of taxation. estimated at somewhere about 800,000l. Payments were slowly and reluctantly made. That mere reluctance to meet taxation which had done so much to support the opponents of the King in the days of ship-money, had shifted round to the King's side now. There was a longing for peace, Great weight Aug. 30. The Scots' departure known in London. for a cessation of strife at hoine and abroad. On the 30th it was known in London that the Scots had really evacuated the northern counties. The news was received with a hearty feeling of relief. His Majesty, it seemed, had been maligned. He had no intention. of leading the Scottish army to dissolve his English Parliament and to enable him to pronounce its past legislation null and void.1 Of this change of feeling Charles was unable to take advantage. He was far away, scheming how to use that very violence which would make him most detestable to Effects of Charles's absence. Aug. 24. More ordi. his subjects. He was not even present to keep up that show of authority which might one day be converted into real power. The Houses were accustoming themselves to the issue of ordinances. On the 24th there was one directing certain counties to send their poll nances. As Giustinian puts it, the citizens abandoned their jealousy that the King was trying to persuade the Scots a secondare il corso delli generosi proponimenti che universalmente si crede portare nel petto la Maestà sua di scuoter cioè il giogo delle nuove leggi, et la continuatione di questo Parlamento in particolare, la qual gli toglie gli ornamenti del comando, et della esistimatione intieramente.'-Giustinian to the Doge, Sept. Ven. Transcripts, R. O. 3 13 Aug. 27. money direct to the Earl of Holland. On the 27th another appointed a day of thanksgiving for the peace. On the 30th yet another ordered a general disarmament of recusants. If Charles's language can be trusted he was more annoyed at the interference of Parliament with a permission which he had given to the Spanish ambassador to transport abroad 4,000 men of the Irish army, which was at last being broken up. The Commons insisted that it was unfitting to lend help to Spain against the Portuguese; and, to keep the balance even, they refused a similar permission to the French ambassador. Two months later they would have been glad enough to know that these trained soldiers were not in Ireland; but the motive of their refusal, in the face of their own obvious interest, deserves the highest respect.1 The Irish levies for Spain refused. ment voted. By this time a speedy adjournment had become an absolute necessity. The plague and the small-pox were raging in London and Westminster, and even the most earnest of Aug. 28. An adjourn members was thoroughly weary of the long and exciting work in which the House had been engaged. Most of the members, indeed, had already gone home without asking leave. About a dozen peers remained to represent the House of Lords, whilst some eighty remained constant to the call of duty in the Commons.2 On the 28th, when all danger appeared to be at an end in the North, it was arranged that the House should adjourn on September 8, to meet again on October 20. The day on which the adjournment was voted was indeed memorable in English history. It was the last time when the two parties into which the House of Commons nimity in the was divided loyally co-operated with one another. End of una Cemmons. Whatever had been done so far by the Long Parliament stood the test of time. The overthrow of the special courts, by which the prerogative had been defended under the udors and the first two Stuarts, together with the abandon 1 L. 7. iv. 381. Giustinian to the Doge, Sept. Ven. Transcripts, R. O. 13 ment by the King of all claim to raise taxes without the consent of Parliament, was accepted as the starting-point of the restored monarchical constitution in 1660. That the King and the Houses must from thenceforward work together, instead of working in antagonism, was the doctrine of Hyde and Falkland as well as of Pym and Hampden. The theory of Strafford, that in cases of necessity, of the existence of which the King was the sole judge, he could act in defiance of Parliament, was Beginning of without a single supporter. Yet from that moment of apparent unanimity dated the beginning of em strife. bittered strife. The war of tongues which ensued preceded but for a few short months the war of the sword. Laboriously, in the face of an angry and compact Opposition, the victorious party strove to embody its views in institutions which would last. It was all in vain. The ropes twisted of sand which were to bind the English people dropped into nothingness before the general resistance. What was the root of the mischief? Unanimity in face of the constitu Naturally historians have wearied themselves to find the key of this riddle. Was it, as has been said, that the leaders of the majority were too impatient, that they were in a hurry to obtain absolute control over the government, and that they did not give time to allow the results of the recent concessions to develop themselves peacefully? Was it that the leaders of the minority thought that enough had been done in the way of reform, and that Charles could be trusted to carry on the government constitutionally under changed conditions? Those who tional have studied the Parliamentary debates of the first fortnight after the commencement of the King's northern journey will be slow to adopt either of these conclusions. The men of one party were as ready as the men of the other to put pressure upon the Sovereign, to make preparations for securing the fortresses of the kingdom and for placing the military forces of the country in readiness for action at the bidding of the Houses. If no question other than the constitutional one had been at issue, or if the danger from Scotland had been a little more evident and had lasted a little longer, Lords and Commons would have passed with complete unanimity question. such a Militia Bill as that which was but the triumph of a party six months later, as surely as they had already concurred in supporting Pym's proposal for the substitution of counsellors approved by Parliament for counsellors selected by the King. The history of the next few years would, if the King had not yielded entirely, have resembled that of 1688. Charles would have been swept away by the uprising of a united people. There would have been no Civil War, because the courtiers, who would alone have stood by the King, would not have been sufficiently numerous to wage war against the nation. The re The rock of offence lay in the proposed ecclesiastical legislation of Parliament. It was not in the nature of things that religious questions should be allowed to slumber. ligious dif- For the mass of Englishmen, religious belief was ficulty. their only intellectual food, as religious books were their only literature. There were thousands for whom legal and constitutional arguments had but little attraction, who could throw their whole souls into an argument about Presbyterianism or Episcopacy, or about the comparative merits of various forms of worship. A great part of the intellect of the day had been occupied with these very subjects, and Laud and Williams, Milton and Chillingworth, had no peers amongst the writers of literary prose. The peculiarity of this ecclesiastical literature was that it was controversial in its nature. When its successful defence against Rome was over, the innate vigou of Protestantism showed itself in its variations. Free inquiry, rejected in theory by almost all Englishmen, silently pushed its way, and there was scarcely a possible form of Church worship or government which some Englishmen were not ready to defend. Under the most favourable circumstances the difficulty of moulding the ecclesiastical institutions so as to meet the new wants of the time would have required the most consummate prudence. The traditional belief of centuries, held alike by the zealot and the politician, was that religious liberty was but another name for anarchy, and that it was the duty of the State to see that no man was allowed to teach or to worship as seemed right in his own eyes. The difficulty would have been great in any circumstances, but it had been enormously |