While Fairfax and Cromwell were fighting the armies raised in the King’s name, the Parliament was once more negotiating with Charles I. In spite of the vote for no addresses, passed on January 17, 1648, April was not over before both Houses were discussing the reopening of negotiations. Petition after petition came from the City demanding a personal treaty with the King, and the House of Lords echoed the demand. The Lords were so zealous for a peace that when Hamilton and the Scots invaded England they refused to join the Lower House in declaring them enemies. The Commons, more cautious, insisted that the King should accept certain preliminaries before any treaty began, and refused to allow him to come to London to treat. At last the two Houses arrived at a compromise, and on August 1st it was agreed that there should be a personal treaty with Charles in the Isle of Wight. The Commissioners of Parliament met the King at Newport on September 18th, 208a couple of days before Cromwell entered Scotland. Charles consented to annul his former declarations against the Parliament, and to admit that they had undertaken the war “in their just and lawful defence.” He promised the establishment of the Presbyterian system for three years, and a limited Episcopacy afterwards. He even offered the control of the militia for twenty years and the settlement of Ireland in such fashion as Parliament should think best. The question whether these concessions were a sufficient basis for lasting peace is one on which modern historians have differed as much as contemporary politicians did. It is certain that the King was not sincere in making them. “To deal freely with you,” wrote Charles to one of his friends, “the great concession I made this day—the Church, militia, and Ireland—was made merely in order to my escape.... My only hope is, that now they believe I dare deny them nothing, and so be less careful of their guards.” The Presbyterian leaders argued and haggled in the hope of obtaining the permanent establishment of Presbyterianism, but the question whether any treaty would bind the King they neglected to take into account.
Meanwhile a dangerous excitement was spreading in the army. From an agreement between the Presbyterians and the Royalists, an Independent army had much to fear. The first result of the treaty would be a general disbanding. To be dismissed with a few shillings in his pocket, but without security for his arrears, or indemnity for his acts during the war, was the most a soldier could 209expect. If any sectary who had fought for the Parliament hoped that it would give him freedom to worship as his conscience dictated, the act against heresy and blasphemy, passed in May, 1648, had shown the futility of his hopes. Whether Episcopacy or Presbyterianism gained the upper hand, toleration would be at an end as soon as he laid down his arms. Add to this, that the soldiers were firmly convinced that the proposed treaty afforded no security for the political liberties of the nation. Once restored to his authority, Charles would, either by force or by intrigue, shake off the restrictions the treaty imposed, and rear again that fabric of absolutism, which it had cost six years’ fighting to overthrow. The renewal of the war had heightened their distrust of Charles, and embittered their hostility to him. The responsibility for the first Civil War had been laid upon the King’s evil counsellors; the responsibility for the second was laid upon the King himself. It was at his instigation, said the officers, that conquered enemies had taken up arms again, old comrades apostatised from their principles, and a foreign army invaded England. In a great prayer-meeting held at Windsor before they separated for the campaign, they pledged themselves to bring this responsibility home to the King. “We came,” wrote one of them, “to a very clear resolution, that it was our duty, if ever the Lord brought us back again in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for the blood he had shed, and mischief he had done to the utmost, against the Lord’s cause and people in these 210poor nations.” They were equally determined to punish the King’s instruments. At the close of the first war, the army had shown itself more merciful than the Parliament, but the second war made it fierce, implacable, and resolute to exact blood for blood. Fairfax’s execution of Lucas and Lisle, two royalist leaders taken at Colchester, “in part of avenge for the innocent blood they have caused to be spilt,” was a sign of this change of temper.
Cromwell shared this vindictive feeling towards the authors of the second war. When he took Pembroke, he excepted certain persons from the terms of the capitulation and reserved them for future punishment.
“The persons excepted,” he wrote to Parliament, “are such as have formerly served you in a very good cause; but being now apostatised, I did rather make election of them than of those who had always been for the King; judging their iniquity double, because they have sinned against so much light, and against so many evidences of Divine Providence going along with and prospering a just cause, in the management of which they themselves had a share.”
He was equally exasperated against those who had promoted the Scottish invasion.
“This,” he said, “is a more prodigious treason than any that hath been perfected before; because the former quarrel was that Englishmen might rule over one another, this to vassalise us to a foreign nation. And their fault that appeared in this summer’s business is certainly double to theirs who were in the first, because 211it is the repetition of the same offence against all the witnesses that God hath borne.”
The moral he drew from his victory at Preston was that Parliament should use it to protect peaceable Christians of all opinions, and punish disturbers of the peace of every rank.
“Take courage,” he told them, “to do the work of the Lord in fulfilling the end of your magistracy, in seeking the peace and welfare of this land—that all that will live peaceably may have countenance from you, and they that are incapable, and will not leave troubling the land, may speedily be destroyed out of the land. If you take courage in this God will bless you, and good men will stand by you, and God will have glory, and the land will have happiness by you in despite of all your enemies.”
When Cromwell returned from Scotland, he found the Parliament preparing to replace the King on his throne, and to content itself with banishing some dozen of the royalist leaders. Regiment after regiment of Fairfax’s army was presenting its general with petitions against the treaty and demands for the punishment of the authors of the war. Cromwell’s troops imitated their example, and in forwarding their petitions to Fairfax, their leader expressed his complete agreement with his soldiers.
“I find,” he wrote, “a very great sense in the officers ... for the sufferings and ruin of this poor kingdom, and in them all a very great zeal to have impartial justice done upon all offenders; and I do in all from 212my heart concur with them, and I verily think they are things which God puts into our hearts.”
On November 20, 1648, the army in the south sent Parliament a “Remonstrance,” demanding the rupture of the negotiations, and the punishment of the King as “the grand author of all our troubles.” Cromwell approved of this declaration, and told Fairfax he saw “nothing in it but what is honest, and becoming honest men to say and offer.” It would have been better, he thought, to wait till the treaty was concluded, before making their protest, but now that it had been made he was prepared to support it. The Newport treaty seemed to him to be a complete surrender to Charles. “They would have put into his hands,” he said later, “all that we had engaged for, and all our security would have been a little bit of paper.” No one knew better than Cromwell that a mere protest would not stop the Parliament, and he was ready to use force if necessary. The arguments by which he justified its employment are fully stated in his letter to his friend, Robert Hammond, whose scruples he sought to overcome.
Was it not true that the safety of the people was the supreme law? Was it not certain that this treaty would undo all that had been gained by the war, and make things worse than before the war began? If resistance to authority was lawful at all, was it not as lawful to oppose the Parliament as it was to oppose the King?
“Consider,” he urged, “whether this army be not a lawful power called by God to oppose and fight against 213the King upon some stated grounds; and being in power to such ends, may not oppose one name of authority for those ends as well as another name,—since it was not the outward authority summoning them that by its power made the quarrel lawful, but the quarrel that was lawful in itself.”
These, however, were but “fleshly reasonings,” and there were higher arguments. “Let us look into providences; surely they mean somewhat. They hang so together; have been so constant, so clear, unclouded.”
The victories God had given could not be meant to end in such a sacrifice of His cause and His people as “this ruining hypocritical agreement.” “Thinkest thou in thy heart that the glorious dispensations of God point to this?” The determination of the army to prevent the treaty was also God’s doing. “What think you of Providence disposing the hearts of so many of God’s people this way? We trust the same Lord who hath framed our minds in our actings is with us in this also.” There were difficulties to be encountered and enemies not few—“appearance of united names, titles, and authorities”; yet they were not terrified, “desiring only to fear our great God that we do nothing against His will.”
Briefly stated, Cromwell’s argument was that the victories of the army, and the convictions of the godly, were external and internal evidence of God’s will, to be obeyed as a duty. It was dangerous reasoning, and not less dangerous that secular and political motives coincided with the dictates of religious 214enthusiasm. Similar arguments might be held to justify not merely the temporary intervention of the army, but its permanent assumption of the government of England. Practical good sense and conservative instincts prevented Cromwell from adopting the extreme consequences of his theory; with most of his comrades the logic of fanaticism was qualified by no such considerations.
As Parliament continued the treaty without attending to their Remonstrance, the army determined to employ force. On December 1st, officers sent by Fairfax seized Charles at Newport and removed him to Hurst Castle in Hampshire. The next day, Fairfax and his troops occupied London. Undeterred, the House of Commons resolved by 129 votes to eighty-three that the King’s answers were a ground to proceed upon for the settlement of the kingdom. The same evening, the commanders of the army and the leaders of the parliamentary minority held a conference to decide what was to be done. On their march, the officers had declared their intention of dissolving the Long Parliament, and constituting the faithful minority a provisional government until a new Parliament could meet. But now, in deference to the wishes of their friends in Parliament, they resolved, instead, to expel the Presbyterian majority from the House, and to leave the Independent minority in possession of the name and authority of a Parliament. On December 6th, accordingly, Colonel Pride and a body of musketeers beset the doors of the House of Commons, seized some members as they sought to enter, and turned others back by 215force. The same process continued on the 7th, till forty-five members were under arrest, and some ninety-six others excluded.
Cromwell arrived at London on the night after “Pride’s Purge” began, and took his seat next day amongst the fifty or sixty members who continued to sit in the House. Like the rest of the officers, he had contemplated a forcible dissolution and the calling of a new Parliament. But seeing that a different plan had been adopted by his friends on the spot, he did not hesitate to accept it. He said, “that he had not been acquainted with this design, but since it was done he was glad of it, and would endeavour to maintain it.”
On the question of the King, a difference of opinion between Cromwell and the bulk of the officers soon showed itself. He approved of their seizure of Charles, and had no doubt of the justice of bringing him to trial. But he doubted the policy of the King’s trial and condemnation, if any other satisfactory expedient could be devised to secure the rights of the nation. It might be that the King’s deposition would be sufficient, or that he would at last make the concessions which he had hitherto refused. Of the discussions which went on in the council of officers during the next three weeks very little is known. There are vague rumours of a great division of opinion amongst them, of one party sternly insisting on the King’s punishment, of another willing to be content with his deposition or imprisonment. We get glimpses of Cromwell negotiating with lawyers and judges about the settlement of the 216nation, inspiring a final attempt to come to terms with Charles, and arguing that it would be safe to spare the King’s life, if he would accept the conditions now offered him. All these attempted compromises failed. The King preferred to part with his life rather than with his regal power, and unless he yielded no constitutional settlement was possible. So the military revolution, for a moment arrested in its progress, moved inevitably forward, and Cromwell went with it.
On December 23rd, Charles was brought to Windsor. “The Lord be with you and bless you in this great charge,” wrote Cromwell to the governor, sending him therewith minute instructions for the safe-keeping of his captive. On the same day, the House of Commons appointed a committee “to consider how to proceed in the way of justice against the King.” “If any man,” Cromwell is reported to have said, “had deliberately designed such a thing, he would be the greatest traitor in the world, but ‘the Providence of God’ had cast it upon them.”
Five days later an ordinance was introduced erecting a tribunal to try the King, to consist of three judges and a jury of 150 commissioners. On January 2, 1649, the ordinance was transmitted to the Lords, with a resolution declaring that “by the fundamental laws of this kingdom it is treason in the King of England for the time being to levy war against the Parliament and the kingdom of England.” The unanimous rejection of this ordinance, and the discovery that the judges would refuse the part assigned to them, did not make the Commons 217draw back. A new ordinance was brought in, creating a court of 135 commissioners, who were to act both as judge and jury, and omitting the three judges. Fresh resolutions declared the people the original of all just power, the House of Commons the supreme power in the nation, and the laws passed by the Commons binding without consent of King or Lords. This ordinance, or, as it was now termed, act, was passed on January 6, 1649. It set forth that Charles Stuart had wickedly designed totally to subvert the ancient and fundamental laws of this nation, and in their place to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government; that he had levied and maintained a cruel war against Parliament and kingdom; and that new commotions had arisen from the remissness of Parliament to prosecute him. Wherefore that for the future “no chief officer or magistrate whatsoever may presume to imagine or contrive the enslaving or destroying of the English nation, and to expect impunity for trying or doing the same,” the persons whose names followed were appointed to try the said Charles Stuart. On the 19th of January, the King was brought from Windsor to St. James’s, guarded by troops of horse.
Ever since the eighth, the commissioners for the King’s trial had been meeting in the Painted Chamber to settle their procedure. But nearly half of those named refused to accept the duty laid upon them. Some had fears for their own safety; some, political objections; others objected to the constitution or authority of the court. Algernon Sidney 218told his colleagues that there were two reasons why he could not take part in their proceedings. First, the King could not be tried by that court; secondly, that no man could be tried by that court. “I tell you,” answered Cromwell, with characteristic scorn of constitutional formulas, “we will cut off his head with the crown upon it.”
Nevertheless, the question of their authority was a question to which the court was bound to agree upon an answer. If a story told at the trial of the Regicides may be trusted, the commissioners were still at a loss for a formula on the morning of the 20th of January, when the trial began. As they sat in the Painted Chamber, news was brought that the King was landing at the steps which led up from the river.
“At which Cromwell ran to the window, looking on the King as he came up the garden; he turned as white as the wall ... then turning to the board said thus: ‘My masters, he is come, he is come, and now we are doing that great work that the whole nation will be full of. Therefore I desire you to let us resolve here what answer we shall give the King when he comes before us, for the first question he will ask us will be by what authority and commission we do try him?’ For a time no one answered. Then after a little space, Henry Marten rose up and said, ‘In the name of the Commons in Parliament assembled and all the good people of England.’”
About one o’clock the court adjourned to Westminster Hall. At the upper or southern end of the 219Hall, a wooden platform had been constructed, covering all the space usually occupied by the Courts of Chancery and King’s Bench. A wooden partition rising about three feet above the floor of this platform divided the court itself from the body of the Hall. On the lower side of this partition, running across the Hall from side to side, was a broad gangway fenced in by a wooden railing, and a similar gangway ran right down the Hall to the great door. Along the sides of the gangways, with their backs to the railings, stood a line of musketeers and pikemen, whose officers walked up and down the vacant space in the middle of the passages. The mass of the audience stood within the railed spaces between the sides of the Hall and the gangways, but on each side of the court itself, and directly overlooking it, were two small galleries, one above the other, reserved for specially favoured spectators. At the back of the court, immediately under the great window, sat the King’s judges, about seventy in number, ranged on four or five tiers of benches which were ............