CHAP.
LXVI.

1648

Opening
of the
Treaty of
Newport.

'whether the justice of God be likely to be satisfied, or His yet continuing wrath appeased by an act of oblivion.' 1

On the deliberations of either House this petition of the London Levellers had no influence whatever. The preparations for treating with the King were Sept. 18. rapidly pushed forward, and on September 18 the negotiation itself was opened at Newport, it being understood that it was to last forty days and no longer. Charles, liberated on parole from his confinement at Carisbrooke, was allowed to occupy the house of William Hopkins in the little town, whilst the actual meetings between himself and the commissioners were held in the Town Hall.

The Parliamentary

commissioners.

The recall of declarations,

The fifteen commissioners chosen by Parliament to conduct the negotiations had been selected from both parties; the most conspicuous amongst them being Northumberland, Holles, Say, and Vane. They were instructed to present each of the old Hampton Court propositions in order; the first containing a demand that Charles should withdraw all his declarations against Parliament. To the body of this proposition Charles made no objection, but he not unreasonably shrank from accepting a statement in the preamble to the effect that both Houses of Parliament' had been necessitated to undertake a war in their just and lawful defence.' On the 25th, however, he withdrew his opposition, stipulating that nothing to which he agreed should have any validity stipulates unless a complete understanding were arrived at on concession every point, and thus convincing himself that whatvalid with ever concessions he might make would be merely nominal. As Charles had himself no expectation agreement. that an understanding would ever be reached, he

Sept. 25, accepted by the

King.

Charles

that no

shall be

out a

complete

1 Parl. Hist. iii. 1,005.

2 See pp. 188-190.

A PROPOSED PURGE OF THE HOUSE.

was thus enabled to promise whatever he found convenient, without regarding himself as in any way bound by his words.1

473

CHAP.
LXVI.

1648

Sept. 26.

Debate

House of

on the

stipulation.

On the 26th there was a warm discussion in the House of Commons on the admission of this stipula- in the tion. As might have been expected, the Independents Commons protested against it as having a merely dilatory object. King's It happened, however, that the debate fell on a day fixed for a call of the House, when the Presbyterians trooped up in large numbers to avoid the fine imposed on absentees. Consequently their opponents did not even venture to divide against them; and an attempt made by the Independents to reopen the question in a thinner House on the 28th was promptly suppressed.2

It is

Sept. 28. accepted.

Sept. 21. Feeling of the

regiments

in the

North.

In the army, Charles's delay in accepting the first article caused the greatest irritation. The regiments at Newcastle and before Berwick were the first to appeal to Fairfax in support of the petition of the London Levellers, and their opinions were certain to find an echo in the ranks of Fairfax's army, the head-quarters of which were on September 21 removed to St. Albans. It was still more significant that Ireton Ireton abandoned the expectant attitude which he had main- purging tained in his conversation with Ludlow at Colchester, House, and urged Fairfax to put an end to the treaty by purging the House. On the 27th he wrote to Fairfax a long letter, in which he set forth his views, and in the end offered to resign his commission. It

...

1 Walker's Perfect Copies of all the Votes in the Treaty held at Newport, bound with his Hist. Discourses, 1-25; The King to the Prince of Wales, Nov. 6, Clar. St. P. ii. 425-31.

2 Merc. Pragmaticus, E. 465, 19.

The Moderate, E. 467, I.

This letter has not been preserved, but Mr. Firth tells me of a note written on a newsletter of Sept. 26 in the Clarke MSS. "Comm.

urges the

of the

Sept. 27, to resign mission.

and offers

his com

CHAP.
LXVI.

1648

His probable motives.

Ireton retires to Windsor.

is probable that the explanation of his change of view is to be found in the events passing at Newport and Westminster. Charles's long delay in sanctioning the withdrawal of hostile declarations must have struck Ireton as affording ground for an appeal to the people against a King whose heart was not set upon peace; whilst the vote of the Commons on the 26th, by which they accepted Charles's merely dilatory stipulation, was sufficient evidence that the Presbyterians were not to be trusted with the conduct of a negotiation in which they allowed themselves to be so easily befooled. As neither Ireton's views were adopted, nor his resignation accepted, it is to be presumed that Fairfax found sufficient support amongst the officers to resist Ireton's urgency, but was nevertheless induced to agree to some compromise,1 the exact nature of which cannot now be ascertained. Whatever may have been the reason of Ireton's withdrawing his resignation, he retired to Windsor for a time, either to dissociate himself from Fairfax's action, or simply to watch events till the interference for which he had been pleading should become inevitable.

...

Gen. Ireton wrote a long letter to Ld. Fairfax with reasons for laying down his commission, and desiring a discharge from the army, which was not agreed unto v[id]e l[ette]rs dated 27 Sept." In Mero. Pragmaticus of Oct 3 (E. 469, 19), there is a statement (Sign. Nn. 2) that there was a talk of petitioning Fairfax for a new purge and truly in Com. Ireton's opinion it is high time.' On the last page, indeed, a contrary disposition is attributed to Ireton, but this is evidently a mere rumour brought in when the newspaper was going to press, as it is contradicted in the following number, in which, under the date of Oct. 7, it is said that certain 'devilish letters' stirring up the army to resistance had their frame from Ireton, and countenance from his father Cromwell.'

6

1 Fairfax, it was alleged, was ready to stand to the agreement to be made between the King and both Houses, the consideration whereof is said now to be the true cause why Ireton left the head-quarters and

CHARLES SPINS OUT TIME.

475

СНАР,

LXVI.

1648

The question of Church govern

ment.

Aug. 29.

byterian

system

established

nance.

In the meanwhile the crucial question of Church government had been reached at Newport. On August 29, nearly three weeks before the opening Sept. 25. of the negotiations, Parliament had taken care to pass a comprehensive Ordinance, establishing a complete Presbyterian system without the slightest stain of toleration,' and the King was, therefore, met with The Presat least the semblance of an accomplished fact. In the first days of the treaty two of the Presbyterian by Ordi Commissioners, Holles and Grimston, being fully alive to the danger of military intervention, threw The Presthemselves on their knees before Charles, entreating urge him to yield at once all that was possible without not to wasting time in useless discussions. Vane, on the other hand, did his best to persuade Charles, through pleads for his Episcopalian supporters, to accept the scheme of toleration set forth in The Heads of the Proposals.2 Charles gave no heed to the pleadings of either party. The old thought of wearing out his adversaries by engaging them in mutual strife was ever present to his mind. Some, indeed, of his advisers recom

retired to Windsor.' Merc. Pragmaticus, E. 466, 11. "Can it be," writes Mr. Firth to me, "that Fairfax proposed standing by the treaty, that Ireton then proposed to resign-that Fairfax then promised, in order to induce Ireton to withdraw his resignation, to demand certain specified securities from the King-that Ireton accordingly withdrew it, and retired to Windsor to watch the progress of the negotiation, returning to head-quarters after it had failed?" Mr. Firth also suggests that Ireton may have obtained the consent of the extreme party to delay by representing to them that Fairfax would ultimately join them, and that his resignation was caused by the discovery that Fairfax insisted on defending the treaty made by the Houses with the King whatever it might be.

1 L.J. x. 461.

2 Burnet's Hist of his Own Time, i. 44. So much as appears in the text may, I think, fairly be accepted, but when Burnet adds that Vane made this proposal merely to spin out the time till Cromwell could return with his army, he appears to be attributing motives of the existence of which he had no means of knowing.

byterians

Charles

waste time. Vane

toleration.

mended him to grant all that was asked, and when he was again on the throne to break his promise, as having been made under duress; but Charles, though he had sometimes played with this idea, preferred a less direct method of gaining his ends.1

Accordingly, on the 25th, Charles had to listen to a proposal from the commissioners that he should assent to a whole string of acts, not only abolishing Episcopacy and the Prayer Book, and establishing the Presbyterian system and the Directory in their place, but also enjoining the taking of the Covenant on all persons in the realm, including himself.2

To this exorbitant demand Charles replied on the 28th by proposing his old expedient of a three years' Presbyterianism with toleration, not only for himself and those of his own judgment,' but also for any others who' could not 'in conscience submit them selves thereto.' To this he added a scheme for satisfying the purchasers of bishops' lands by granting them leases for ninety-nine years at low rents, thus avoiding the absolute alienation of Church property. As for the Covenant, he would neither swear it himself nor enjoin it on others. Then, taking up the second main point at issue, he declared himself ready to abandon the militia to Parliament, not, indeed, as he was asked to do, for twenty years, but for ten. He was, moreover, ready to allow the Houses to do as they pleased with Ireland, to appoint the chief officers under the Crown for ten years, and also to allow the City, for the like space of time, to control its own militia, and to have the custody of the Tower. He

1 A long letter of a Royalist in Newport (E. 464, 29) which makes this assertion looks very like a forgery. See, however, Grignon to Sept. 28, R.O. Transcripts.

Brienne, Oct. 8

2 Walker, 26.