PART IV—
CONFLICT

24—
The King and the Scots

Charles's coronation in Scotland, though accompanied by a certain amount of outward enthusiasm, had not really endeared him to the Scots while the Church ritual which accompanied his visit and the rumours of a new Prayer Book based upon the English aroused the deepest suspicion. But it was not only on religious matters that he had failed to satisfy his Scottish subjects. Having left Scotland at the age of three, he had not set foot on Scottish soil until thirty years later when his stay was short, even cursory. He had made no attempt to call a Scottish Parliament until 1628, three years after his accession, and this had been repeatedly prorogued until he went to Scotland in 1633. Then, and thereafter, there was little to appease the Scots in this cold, alien king who showed little evidence of his Scottish birth except for his accent — and this, evident enough to English ears, was nothing like the broad dialect of his father and his Scottish subjects.

James had not achieved the union of England and Scotland that he desired, but he had not been altogether unsuccessful in ruling Scotland from England. He was a Scot through and through, he had been King of Scotland for almost as long as he could remember and his reign had been remarkably successful. So, if he governed from a distance, he knew what he was doing, he had many Scots of his own generation and upbringing about him, and, above all, he had his own good sense and homely touch to guide him.

Even so, there were difficulties exacerbated by the constitutional position. The Scottish Parliament consisted of a single House dependent upon the King for its calling which meant, after 1603, that its very existence was dependent upon the summons of a king who normally lived in England. It had, moreover, very little power, initiative normally resting with the Privy Council, which consisted of office-

holders and others appointed, as in England, by the King — which meant, again, after 1603, by the King of England. When Charles became King this Privy Council consisted of 47 members, nearly half of whom were officers of state and of whom so few normally attended that it was difficult to form a quorum. Day-to-day government was carried on otherwise by a number of committees. This lack of firm government in Scotland did not appear important to Charles for, without his father's knowledge of Scotland or feel for its people, he determined to keep Scottish affairs in his own hands, relying increasingly, as he liked to do, upon one or two people. But he was without the benefit of the older generation of Scottish advisers and the man most frequently in his counsel was the Duke of Hamilton, whose ability was questioned by his contemporaries and whose ambition was thought to be too high and too much influenced by his dynastic closeness to the royal line. Sounder advice could have saved Charles from several gross errors of judgment.

As a result of numerous royal minorities in Scotland it was recognized that a monarch might, by an Act of Revocation, recall all grants of royal property made during his minority, provided this was done between his 21st and his 25th year. Since Charles was nearly twenty-six when he ascended the throne he had to act quickly and, characteristically, he acted with secrecy. The result was the Act of Revocation of October 1625 which not only took the Scots by surprise but was very sweeping. It revoked all gifts of royal or church land made to subjects in Scotland not, indeed, during his minority, for there had been no such period, nor even during his lifetime, but since 1540. Since the very existence of the Scottish nobility depended upon the vast amount of church lands they had acquired the intention was staggering. Although it was soon apparent that Charles would not proceed to confiscation, continued ownership was made conditional upon the payment of an annual rent so that the whole exercise became a way of instituting an annual land tax. Some land, indeed, was appropriated to the Scottish Church, which Charles considered to be lamentably ill-endowed, and for this he paid compensation from his English revenue. At the same time he instituted a much needed reform of tythe payment, which had often been taken by the landowner rather than the Church, and in many cases was able to substitute a regular money payment for the cumbersome and wasteful payment in kind. But what Charles thought of as reform was a further tightening of the screw on the Scottish nobility. The Act of Revocation and the accompanying

decrees meant to them a loss of prestige, a diminution of power, a reduction of income in respect of tythes foregone and annual rents to be paid. It was, said Sir James Balfour, 'the ground stone of all the mischief that followed after'. Charles was raising a hornet's nest in Scotland.

Seemingly oblivious of trouble he aimed a further blow by a decree intended, as he put it, to draw back into his care all the heritable offices of Scotland. This meant that many powerful nobles had to resign prestigious and profitable offices in the localties and receive them back, if at all, by favour instead of hereditary right. At the same time expenditure and taxation were mounting in Scotland. James had revised the Book of Rates so that merchants were liable to higher port duties. His visit in 1617 had to be paid for and it included repairs to several royal buildings that had fallen into disrepair since 1603; one reason for the delay of Charles's coronation in Scotland had been shortage of money to pay for the necessary further repair to royal residences. It was extraordinarily unperceptive, though typical, of Charles to have insisted nevertheless upon building a new Parliament House in Edinburgh before his coronation that would accommodate not only Parliament but the Court of Session and other courts. The building was planned on a steeply sloping site, it entailed the removal of three ministers' houses, and was correspondingly expensive. Then, after the creation of the new Archbishop of Edinburgh, he desired St Giles's church to become a cathedral. The partition walls that had divided the building into three churches were to come down and new churches built for the worshippers so deprived. At the same time Charles planned to increase ministers' stipends by a new assessment on house rentals. All this was a tremendous burden on Scottish people unused to such demands. It was small recompense that Charles made Edinburgh a City and formally designated it the capital of Scotland: its expenditure before 1625 had been under £51,000 a year; ten years later it was nearly £150,000.

Other, more subtle, causes of discontent were less easily perceived. Influence which, in a dozen different ways, might be acquired at Court, was difficult to achieve when the focal point was hundreds of miles away. From patronage and perquisites, from the profitable gossip of backstairs and chamber, the Scottish courtier was estranged, and he was acquainted only at second hand and after the lapse of time with those intangible developments at Court which led to favour here or disgrace there. A sense of estrangement persisted which, together

with the very real threats to property, political influence and religious worship, coalesced into open opposition.

In 1636 Charles published a Code of Canons which announced as obligatory the acceptance of the Service Book upon which the Scottish bishops had been working since his Coronation. When they published their work a year later it was seen to be basically the English Prayer Book in spite of a few substitutions such as 'Presbyter' for 'Priest'. It was to be introduced without the approval of either the Scottish Parliament or the Scottish Church Assembly. Instead, it was prefaced by a Proclamation enjoining its use by royal prerogative and it was handsomely bound and embellished with red lettering as well as the customary black type. Charles no doubt thought he was doing honour to the new Prayer Book, but to the Scots the substitution of such finery for their homely and familiar book was further evidence of the worship which Viscount Kenmure had described as 'idolatrous and anti-Christian'.

The new Prayer Book was first used on 23 July 1637 in St Giles's church in Edinburgh. The riot that ensued was probably prearranged, the women who created an uproar in the church, crying 'the mass is come amongst us!', were most likely there by design and could even have been apprentices in women's attire. The one who hurled a stool at the minister's head as he attempted to read from the Book was remarkably strong and rumour had it that if not an apprentice in disguise she had been specially brought in from the streets for the purpose. But part at least of the religious opposition that swept the country was sincere and the Scottish Council itself appeared to be surprised by its strength. Letters and petitions poured into them from all parts and from all kinds of people: 'the like hath not been heard in this kingdom', it was said. Charles's response was typical. 'I mean to be obeyed', he said. The years of personal rule, with his Privy Council a willing instrument and his Court only too ready to follow his lead, had accustomed him to getting his own way and strengthened that determination, or obstinacy as his mother had called it, that he frequently showed when crossed. It was the more evident now since he appreciated the fact that to give way in Scotland would weaken his position in England. He consequently ordered that no magistrate should hold office in Scotland unless he accepted the new Prayer Book.

Such orders had no effect upon what was virtually a united Scot-

land, and the people prepared to express that unity in a way they knew and had used before — by a covenant one with another. The document was signed by ministers, gentry, and nobility in Grey Friars church in Edinburgh on the two days 28 February and 1 March 1638. On the following day the people of Edinburgh flocked to the churchyard where the long Covenant was laid out on a tombstone for their signatures. They could hardly have read it before they signed but they were told that basically they were covenanting to preserve the true reformed religion against all innovation and that, in the words of the final paragraph, they were promising to 'defend the same and resist all those contrary errors and corruptions' to the utmost of their power.^[1]

For Charles it was deep humiliation. Compromise began to mix with obstinacy in the worst of all solutions. He maintained that he had no intention to innovate, he promised to introduce the Prayer Book in a fair and legal manner, but he insisted that the Covenant be withdrawn. Otherwise, as he said to Hamilton, he had no more power than a Doge of Venice. The Scots had no intention of abandoning the Covenant and Charles sent Hamilton to Scotland to negotiate. His frustration and anxiety began to show. If he had thought of war it was war in Europe or at sea for the recovery of the Palatinate, not a war against his Scottish subjects in order to secure religious conformity in his own kingdom. He lost his habitual interest in tennis, even hunting gave him little pleasure, he shortened the summer progress and it was noted that his face was drawn with worry.^[2]

On July 1 he at last took his Council into his confidence. The Catholic councillors were for firmness, even to the extent of war; others were hesitant. Northumberland wrote to Wentworth in Ireland that many of the people who were resisting ship money were as likely to support the Scots as the King. Charles sought legal opinion as to whether landowners in the North of England could be asked to arm at their own expense for the defence of the country. He had an affirmative answer and the nobility and gentry were charged with the number of horse they should bring in. He awaited Hamilton's report on the possibility of blockading the Scottish coast and he appointed a Council of Eight to advise him on Scottish affairs. On the advice of Hamilton he authorized the meeting of a Scottish Parliament and a Scottish Church Assembly. In September he offered a 'King's Covenant' in place of the National Covenant. It was turned down. He offered to limit the authority of the Scottish bishops. It was beyond his competence to do so, said the Scots. Instead the Scottish Assembly abolished

the Service Book, the Canons and Episcopacy itself, re-establishing full Presbyterianism while ordaining that the Covenant be taken by all Scotsmen.

Ten years of prudent finance had left the King with enough money to fight a Scottish war. Yet did he want to? It seemed he would have little choice. Early in 1639 the Scots chose Alexander Leslie, a soldier who had seen distinguished service in the German wars, as their General. He was 'an old, little, crooked soldier' whose deformity in no way detracted from a personality that could inspire his soldiers with respect and devotion, and an ability that could turn them into an organized fighting force. 'We are busy preaching, praying, drilling' wrote the army chaplain Alexander Baillie, who was as completely under Leslie's spell as any soldier.^[3] War appeared inevitable. Charles published a Proclamation in which he said that the very safety of England was at stake. 'The question is not now whether a Service Book is to be received or not, nor whether episcopal government shall be continued or presbyterial admitted, but whether we are their King or not.' Newcastle and Hull were put in a state of defence, Charles instructed the Lords Lieutenant to call out the trained bands, he made special provision for Henrietta-Maria in case of his death, instructed his Privy Council to keep her informed, and started for York. When he entered the city on 30 March 1639 the Covenanting Scots had already taken control of most of the cities in Scotland where any support for him lay: Edinburgh, Dumbarton, Dalkeith, even Aberdeen had been abandoned by his friends.

The nobility of the borders had not been so ready to answer the call to arms as Charles had hoped, but he nevertheless found himself in command of a force of some 18,000 foot and 3000 horse — whose fighting potential, however, appeared less than their numbers would indicate. The trained bands were virtually untrained; the pressed men followed the usual pattern. 'Our men are very raw, our arms of all sorts naught, our victual scarce, and provision for horses worse', wrote Sir Edmund Verney, the Knight Marshall, to his son on May 9.^[4] Money was scarce. The ship-money response had been abysmally small in the current year, possibly because of the general uncertainty, and of the £70,000 asked for only some £17,000 had come in. But in any case, Charles would not touch this. Henrietta-Maria had herself raised more from her Catholic friends — a sum of £20,000. In contrast Leslie's army of some 22,000 foot and 500 horse, hardly larger than the

English, had all the advantages of conviction, popular support, and the training which many of them had received in the continental wars.

Henrietta-Maria was unwell and nervous, lonely without the King, frightened at the possibility of battle, deriving little help from the presence of her mother and her French friend, Madame de Chevreuse. Only the previous January, with much pain, she had given birth to the baby girl, Catherine, who had lived but an hour or two. Charles had been all solicitude and her only comfort. Yet, even then, she had had thoughts for one of her favourites, the Earl of Holland, and begged the cavalry for him in the army command her husband was drawing up. Charles may have been surprised, even affronted, possibly aware of the foolishness of the choice, but it was not in his nature to refuse his wife's entreaty at such a time, and he gave Holland the command. It was unwise. Holland was militarily unknown, he had no experience of battle, and his appointment received little support. No less unwise was the appointment of Arundel as Commander-in-Chief. Again, he had no experience of war and had even less stomach than Holland for a fight. But he was Charles's senior Earl and his opposition to the Covenant was unquestioned. Hamilton had been put in command of a small fleet which it was hoped would be strong enough to interrupt Scottish commerce and to cause a diversion.

Charles advanced to Berwick. It was his first experience of war, his first taste of life under canvas.^[5] He enjoyed it. He rode from four in the morning till five in the evening at the head of his men, wearing out two horses as he rode from place to place to view their quarters. It was unfortunate that the somewhat amateurish campaign was accompanied by constant friction between the Protestant and Catholic elements in his central administration in Whitehall so that what might have been a healthy stiffening was lacking. On June 3 the Scots were at Kelso on the border; Holland, with 3000 foot and 300 horse, was ordered to drive them back. He found himself opposed by a vastly superior force of possibly as many as 10,000 men and he feared that more were waiting in ambush. Perhaps wisely, though with ignominy, Holland retreated without fighting. Two days later Leslie himself appeared at Dunse, some eleven or twelve miles on the Scottish side of the border and in sight of the English camp. Charles appeared more interested in the strategical possibilities than in the reality. He trained his telescope upon the enemy camp and stood viewing it for a long while. 'Come, let us go to supper', he remarked at last in copybook style, 'the number is not considerable.'^[6]

Charles had hoped that Wentworth might be able to send a small force from Ireland to threaten the Scots from the West. The Deputy found this impossible but was ready to pretend such a diversion by massing men at Carrickfergus as though ready for the crossing. He advised Charles to procrastinate for as long as possible while he assembled a larger force. The Scots had their own reasons for attempting negotiation. War, they feared, particularly if it were war fought on English soil, might well raise against them an English force that had more stomach for fighting than the army which now lay so near them. Charles was undoubtedly pleased when peace feelers reached him from Leslie's camp, and on June 6 six Scottish Commissioners and six English were sitting down together in Arundel's tent. Charles himself unexpectedly joined them, apparently enjoying the opportunity of demonstrating his dialectical skill.^[7] His wife, still a prey to nervous anxiety and egged on by Chevreuse, was thinking of hurrying to her husband's side to beg him not to expose himself to danger. But the evident lack of resources did more than her presence could have done to speed an agreement with the Scots and on June 18 the Treaty of Berwick was signed by which both sides agreed to disband their armies and Charles to call another Scottish Parliament and another Scottish Church Assembly.

Henrietta's joy was unbounded. But Charles did not immediately return home. Ten days after signing the Treaty he wrote to Wentworth from Berwick saying that he intended to be present at the new Scottish Assembly and Parliament: 'nothing but my Presence at this Time in that Country can save it from irreparable confusion', he wrote.^[8] But matters went differently. The Scots were slow in dissolving their Committees. They maintained that Charles had agreed to the abolition of episcopacy, which he resolutely denied. English royalists were attacked in Edinburgh and elsewhere. Charles sent for the Scottish leaders to meet him again at Berwick; only six turned up. Charles lost his temper with the Earl of Rothes, calling him an equivocator and a liar.^[9] Rothes retorted that if bishops remained in Scotland the Scots would enlarge their attack to include all bishops, in England and Ireland as well as in Scotland. Hamilton was instructed to act the spy and to gain the confidence of the Scottish Covenanters by any means. When Charles at last reached London, on August 3, he had far less confidence in his own ability to save the Scots than he had had when he wrote to Wentworth.

When the Scottish Assembly opened on August 12, without his

presence, it immediately abolished episcopacy and called upon every Scot to sign the Covenant. The Scottish Parliament, meeting on August 31, confirmed the abolition, remodelled its Committees in order to keep power in its own hands, instituted taxation to cover the cost of the war, took under its own nomination the governorship of the important castles of Edinburgh, Stirling and Dumbarton, and showed without a shadow of doubt its ability to rule in the absence of the King of England. It was prepared, nevertheless, to observe the form of obtaining the King's subsequent approval, and on November 7 the Earls of Loudon and Dunfermline reached London as Commissioners from Scotland directed to this end. Charles and his Council of Eight declined to treat and prorogued the Scottish Parliament until the following June.

Wentworth came to London on 22 September 1639. Charles had called him as early as June in a letter from Berwick desiring his 'Counsel and Attendance'. But, said Charles, do not come openly at my summons but pretend some other occasion of business. Rest assured, he said, that 'come when you will, ye shall be welcome to your assured friend Charles R.' Wentworth had not yet left when Henrietta-Maria's prettily worded request in French for his help and attendance reached him. He did not need a double summons. The utter scorn in which he held the Scots is apparent in every word he wrote: 'such insolency . . . is not to be borne by any rule of monarchy'. 'This is not a war of piety, for Christ's sake, but a war of liberty for their own unbridled, inordinate lusts and ambitions'.^[10]

Charles's friendship with Wentworth had developed in a formal way through many letters in which Charles signed himself affectionately. He had refused Wentworth the Earldom for which the Deputy asked at the end of 1634 but in such a way that it implied a promise of future reward. 'I acknowledge that noble minds are always accompanied by lawful ambitions', he wrote, 'and be confident that your services have moved me more than it is possible for any eloquence or importunity to do. So that your letter was not the first proposer of putting marks of favour on you.'^[11] But, he said, he would do things in his own time. Wentworth had to wait for five years, but when he arrived in England in the autumn of 1639 his presence was immediately felt and his reward came. He was created Earl of Strafford and promoted from Deputy to Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

The money saved during ten years of peace had been dissipated on

one short, ignominious campaign, and the overriding question was whether enough could be raised to support another army. The ship-money returns from some parts of the country were not discouraging: 'there is no grudging', wrote a correspondent to Cottington from Devon and reports from Hampshire were not dissimilar. But Charles still would not divert ship money from its purpose, though the imposition of a similar tax for the raising of land forces was considered; an excise was also suggested. But Strafford was firm in his advice that there was only one possible course of action — the calling of a Parliament. Charles was strongly and bitterly opposed. Laud and Hamilton sided with Strafford. With his success in Ireland a witness to his authority and ability Strafford's advice could hardly be ignored, and on 5 December 1639 Charles informed his Privy Council of his intention. The writs, summoning Parliament for 13 April 1640, went out in February. Before signing them Charles had obtained the assurance of his Council that if the Commons proved refractory the Lords would support him: as the Venetian Ambassador noted, he appeared to have little faith in the Parliament he was calling. He derived greater pleasure from drawing up the names of his Council of War which included, naturally, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.^[12]

Strafford showed his appreciation of the honours conferred upon him by heading a list of loans to the King with the princely sum of £20,000, secured upon the Northern recusancy fines which, as Lord President of the North, he collected. Members of the Privy Council and others followed with lesser sums to the total of £300,000 and Charles later asked his lower officials to contribute loans of £2000 apiece. In the spring Strafford was able to announce that the Parliament at Dublin had voted no less than thirteen subsidies to the King, which covered the contributions of the clergy and a backlog of uncollected tax. At the end of 1639 Charles was naming his commanders. Arundel was relieved of his post of Commander-in-Chief with little formality and Northumberland was put in his place with the double command of the navy and the land forces. Nor was Holland given longer shrift. His command of the cavalry went to Lord Conway, the son of James's Secretary of State, who had seen service in Europe. Strafford was named as Lieutenant General under Northumberland.

For the royal family the year 1640 dawned far happier than the previous one. Henrietta-Maria had recovered her health and gaiety. Charles was with her. He played long at cards in the evening, keeping

his secretaries waiting as they attended with papers for him to sign.^[13] He consented to perform in the new masque by Inigo Jones and Sir William Davenant — the Salmacida Spolia  — in which he appeared splendidly dressed on a throne of honour surrounded by his courtiers, having rescued his kingdom from Discord. He was rewarded by the Queen and her ladies, dressed as Amazons, who descended from heaven in a cloud. The performance on January 21 was so successful that it was repeated in February.

Early in April there was a most welcome diversion. Charles was one day standing before the fire in one of his drawing rooms at Whitehall, as he loved to do, with his courtiers round him, when the Archbishop of Canterbury entered followed by a nervous young man carrying a large box. It was young Nicholas Ferrar, the nephew of old Nicholas, and he brought with him the promised concordance for the Prince of Wales. The book was of green velvet, richly gilt and edged with gold lace. 'Here is a fine book for Charles indeed!', exclaimed the King, remarking that the Prince would reap a double benefit from its beauty and from the four languages in which it was written. He was even more amazed when young Nicholas presented him with a New Testament in twenty-six languages bound and written in the unmistakeable Little Gidding style. How could he possibly be familiar with so many tongues, the King wanted to know. Nicholas Ferrar was sent next day to deliver his book to the Prince personally. 'What a gallant outside!', exclaimed the young man and, dutifully turning over the leaves, 'Better and better', he remarked. The little Duke of York was not going to be left out. 'Will you not make me also such another fine book?' he asked, insistently demanding how long it would take. The courtiers laughed at the little boy's earnestness and Nicholas Ferrar promised to put the work in hand.

Charles meanwhile was talking with his courtiers about him, his own experience having led him to note the painful efforts of the young man to avoid stammering. 'What a pity it is', he remarked to the Archbishop, 'that the youth hath not his speech altogether so ready as his pen and great understanding is.' Laud remarked that it was that very impediment that had led him to turn to other things and make such a success of learning foreign languages. Holland said that he would do well to carry always some small pebbles in his mouth. 'Nay, nay', said the King, 'I have tried that, but it helps not. I will tell him that the best and surest way is to take good deliberation at first, and not to be too sudden in speech. And let him also learn to sing, that will do

well.' Charles arranged to send Nicholas to Oxford at his own charge and promised also to help with books and anything else he required, but the poor young man, who was not robust, sickened and died before he could take advantage of the opportunity.^[14]

The apparent contentment of the Court was cemented by the fact that the Queen was once more with child, and she was at her best when pregnant, in spite of the difficult births she had to endure. She and Charles even began to think in terms of marriage for their children. Chevreuse had made the daring proposition, to which Charles listened in all seriousness, that there should be a double wedding with Spain, their eldest son and daughter marrying the eldest daughter and son of the Spanish King. At the same time the Prince of Orange made a more formal proposal in January for the marriage of Elizabeth, their second daughter, to his only son. Either alliance would be profitable in terms of money, but as he pondered his children's usefulness in this respect and joined happily in his wife's diversions, Charles was also garrisoning the border fortresses, arranging an exchange with Holland of one hundred expert veteran soldiers for 200 raw recruits, and preparing for Parliament.

25—
The King and the Opposition

With a Court of some culture, with his art collections well-known and respected throughout Europe, with his own understanding of the arts recognized, his own physical prowess manifest, if not so much now in the tourney as in the hunting field, with his growing family evidence that the early rumours of physical inadequacy had been scotched, the shy, physically handicapped little boy had achieved something of the eminence of the Renaissance Prince he had always aspired to be. He had governed for ten years without a Parliament, his country prospered economically, his capital was being beautified, all over the country churches were being repaired, his social policy, he felt, benefited the poor. The only blot upon his achievement so far had been the Palatinate. But now his Scottish subjects threatened his stability and, if it had been in his nature to read the signs, he could have been warned also of a growing, coherent opposition to him from a wider section of his people.

Ten years without a Parliament had not reconciled the opposition that had so nearly toppled Buckingham, and the grievances of those years were not only not forgotten but many of them appeared to be perpetuated in a continuingly inept foreign policy, extravagance and inefficiency at the centre, patronage, spoils of office, and a Court still 'extravagant with superfluity'. More importantly, a dichotomy between Court and Country in which success, power and wealth resided at Court while the country gentleman was left deprived, even if not more marked than it had been in Buckingham's time, was being felt more acutely. At the same time a form of religion that was not generally acceptable was being prescribed with authoritarian certainty by a King and an Archbishop who appeared to have leanings towards the Catholic faith, influenced, so it was thought, by a Catholic Queen. These basic grievances were exacerbated by Charles's methods of

raising money in the absence of Parliament and by his social policy which interfered with vested interests.

Opposition to be effective requires a focal point, and in the absence of Parliament some other had to be found. To a large extent it was the Puritan movement itself that provided the focus: it gave unity of belief of organization, and of location as its members assembled in church or conventicle; of its nature it encouraged a 'seeking after truth' which implied talk, discussion, and a dependence upon the sermon and extempore prayer that enlarged the context of worship to embrace a broad area of discontent. Puritan ideas were spread beyond the preacher and the conventicle by the Bible in English, and by printing presses that evaded the censorship, and it had enough 'martyrs' to provide its own hagiography. The independent thinking that Puritanism encouraged embraced other activities, and in his business affairs the Puritan was as likely to oppose interference as in his religion.

The wide social and intellectual spread of the movement was initially one of its strengths. It comprised the poor and lowly, men of high estate, and people from all walks of life; Prynne, Lilburne, John Pym, John Hampden, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Saye and Sele, the Earl of Essex, the Duke of Bedford, were all opposition men on religious grounds alone. The desire for liberty had taken many of them to the New World whence their letters continued to encourage their friends at home and to point out the business opportunities, as well as the liberty of worship, that waited overseas. The increasing importance of colonial affairs, canalizing their religious and their economic interests, providing a focal point in the various committees and chartered companies which were formed, gave the opposition an opportunity.

In December 1630 Charles granted a charter of incorporation to the Governors and Company of Adventurers for the Plantation of the Islands of Providence, Henrietta, and the adjacent Islands. Henry, Earl of Holland was the first Governor of the Company, John Dilke, a merchant, was Deputy Governor, John Pym was Treasurer. Its members included Saye and Sele, Warwick, Robert, Lord Brooke, Richard Knightley, Oliver St John, John Hampden; a month later Sir Thomas Barrington was admitted and in May 1638 John Pym became Deputy Governor. Did it occur to Charles that he was incorporating a close group of Puritans? Did he connect their enterprise with the fact that it was founded less than two months after the dissolution of his third Parliament?

Holland's Court connections partly obscured the fact that he was

the brother of that 'curious Puritan' the Earl of Warwick, who combined a great deal of piracy on the high seas with his Puritanism and whose tenants in Essex were likely to follow his lead in any enterprise. Lord Saye and Sele was the largest landowner and a leading Puritan in the county of Oxfordshire, being particularly influential in the Banbury area; he had long since made his position clear in the statement that 'he knew no law besides Parliament to persuade men to give away their own goods'. Lord Brooke was a leading spirit with Lord Saye in the foundation of Saybrook, a Puritan colony on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, which was incorporated in 1632. Their associates included Sir Nathaniel Rich, Henry Darley, Henry Lawrence, Arthur Haselrig, as well as members of the Providence Island Company. Richard Knightley, of Fawsley in Northampton, the son of a prominent Puritan, married John Hampden's eldest daughter. His home, where his father had set up a printing press, was the centre of many meetings. Sir Thomas Barrington was close to the Earl of Warwick, served as his Deputy Lieutenant in Essex, was related to Saye and Sele, and his family connections covered most of the Eastern counties. John Hampden, one of the wealthiest commoners in England, had family connections all over Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire and as far away as Huntingdon, the home of his kinsman, Oliver Cromwell. Oliver St John was connected by family and marriage to the Cromwell and Barrington families of East Anglia as well as being lawyer to the Earl of Bedford. John Pym also, who had sat in Charles's Parliaments since 1621, was under the patronage of Bedford. Bedford himself — not a member of the Providence Island group — was a man of immense wealth founded on Abbey lands; he was an austere Protestant, he had voted for the Petition of Right in 1628, he had done practical work in draining his lands in the Fens, looking for a sound return on what he regarded as an investment, and had spent lavishly in rebuilding his property at Covent Garden in London with a view to increasing his rents.

Of other opposition peers the most significant name was that of the Earl of Essex. Since the early years of his life, embittered by the humiliation of the Howard-Somerset intrigue, Essex had served in the Palatinate, contracted a second unfortunate marriage, and suffered the death in infancy of his only child. He had thrown in his lot with the peers who had remained outside Court patronage but had nevertheless consented to serve under Buckingham at Cadiz, the mortification of that experience driving him further away from the Court. He was

overlooked by Charles for any subsequent appointment of note. His patronage was immense and at least fifteen Members of Charles's earlier Parliaments had owed their election to him. He was not a vindictive man, but he was not a good man to have in opposition; he was a person whom Charles might have cultivated. Charles chose, instead, to pile on further humiliation both for Essex and other peers whom he removed from the JPs' bench in 1629 when they refused to make the loan he demanded.

In its offices in Grays Inn Lane the Providence Island Company had ample opportunity for organization other than that which concerned its trading activities. Here, and at Saye's home at Broughton Castle near Banbury, at Fawsley where it had its printing press, and at other private houses, the opposition met and planned throughout the 1630s. Its common bond, besides religion, was wealth and a determination that its property would not be interfered with. Its members were aristocratic as well as gentry; the Parliament which was their immediate aim would contain a core of opposition Peers as well as a House of Commons which they expected to control.^[1]

In other respects Puritanism was developing in a more emotional, more spectacular way. The outdoor preachers continued to gather large crowds, in the conventicles discussion ranged over subjects not necessarily connected with religion, and an organization of protest emerged. It was not quite the same protest as that which was being made by the men who were meeting in Grays Inn Lane or in the seats of the aristocracy. Knighthood fines, the extension of forest bounds, the court of wards, aristocratic privilege, meant very little to the men and women of the conventicles. When they spoke of the King's 'arbitrary government', as they increasingly did, they referred to interference with their worship, the censorship laws, punishment by the 'prerogative' courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. The ship-money tax hit some of them, increased prices through higher port dues and monopolies were felt by most; but on the whole they were using the words 'arbitrary government' to cover a great deal that they did not really understand and which they could not make explicit. It was material which the more coherent opposition might use at first but which would be dangerously independent later on.

It was on Charles's carefully prepared ship-money writs that the opposition had taken its first stand. Its case rested largely on three charges: that Charles intended it to become a regular annual tax; that

he was not spending the money raised exclusively on the navy; and that he was levying it without the authority of Parliament. Collections were on the whole going well, the Council was following their progress daily and meeting each Sunday afternoon to hear the reports of Edward Nicholas, who had been assigned to the Committee of the Navy to coordinate the 'King's Great Business'. It came as something of a shock, therefore, that when the second ship-money writs reached Buckinghamshire in August 1635, a ship of 450 tons or the sum of £4500 having been apportioned to the county, there should have been a lengthy list of refusals. Buckinghamshire was a county of wealthy landowners, many of whom had commercial and business interests as well, and there seemed no reason why they should not contribute the small sums asked for. Heading the list of refusals was the name of John Hampden, who refused payment on all his manors in the county but chose to take his stand in denying the 20/- for which he was assessed on his Stoke Mandeville estate; it seemed to have been the intention of those who drew up the list of refusals that Hampden's case should be the one on which they would fight.

Hampden had been elected for Wendover in Charles's first Parliament and had been imprisoned in the Gatehouse for refusing to subscribe to the loan of 1627. He was a close friend of Sir John Eliot and after his death became guardian to his children. He was a founder member of the Providence Island Company. By friendship and marriage he was connected with Lord Saye, who already had done everything possible to hamper the collection of ship money round Banbury. Charles was not particularly perturbed, and it was all the greater shock, therefore, when Henry Danvers, Earl of Danby, an old soldier of Elizabeth's reign, who had long been a familiar figure in the royal household, presented him out of the blue with a letter in December 1636. Danby was visibly embarrassed and acted only from a sense of urgency, but he chose an inopportune time to produce his letter, when Charles was chatting informally to a few friends in his room. As Charles read it, he changed colour, his face hardened, and without saying a word he broke off his conversation, rose, and paced angrily about the room. The gist of Danby's letter was that it was not so much ship money, as the method of raising it, of which people were complaining, and that only by summoning a Parliament could Charles reconcile his subjects to payment. In making his case Danvers spoke in terms of common law and of 'fundamental law'. A month later another term, also to become only too familiar, was heard from the

Earl of Warwick, whose tenants in Essex were being particularly lax in paying ship money. They could not consent, he said, to such a prejudice to the 'liberties of the kingdom'. He spoke to Charles to his face and the King schooled himself to maintain a smiling countenance.^[2]

In spite of such ominous rumblings, Charles persisted with Hampden's case but took the precaution of going once more to his judges, and early in 1637 he obtained the ruling that the King was judge as to whether a state of danger existed and how it should be dealt with, and that he was, therefore, justified in imposing a ship-money tax if he thought fit. Such preliminary skirmishing over Hampden's trial began on 6 October 1637 before the Court of Exchequer. Immediately, as the opposition intended, it focused attention. Hampden's counsel were Robert Holborn and Oliver St John, both lawyers of Puritan belief with professional ties with the Duke of Bedford and the Providence Island Company. Their defence was clever in not attempting to deny the King's right to be judge of danger or to initiate defence, but it denied his right to levy any tax which he considered necessary to that defence except through Parliament. The trial lasted until December 18. When the verdicts of the twelve judges were gathered in on 12 June 1638 there were seven for the Crown, three for Hampden, and two for Hampden on technical grounds.^[3] The King had won, but at the cost of giving his opponents a platform and a great deal of publicity while raising sharply constitutional questions which concerned the relationship of an anointed King with an elected Parliament. That relationship was about to be tested.

Charles was under fewer illusions than most of his advisers. Parliament was to him 'that Hydra . . . as well canny as malicious'. If he had to have one, let it be short, for Parliaments were 'of the nature of cats, they ever grow cursed with age'. So he had written to Wentworth.^[4] Yet now he made some concessions. He withdrew a few monopolies in the autumn of 1639; he released Valentine and Strode from the custody in which they had been held, even if not with the full harshness of the law, throughout his personal rule. But when the Lord Keeper Coventry died on 14 January 1640 Charles replaced him by Finch, the Speaker who had been held in the chair in Charles's last Parliament, the Judge who had announced the extension of forest bounds, who had upheld ship money in several judgments, who had shown particular vindictiveness in the Star Chamber against Puritans.

No more unwise appointment could have been made. He made a further misjudgment in overlooking the Earl of Leicester as successor to the aged Secretary, Sir John Coke. Leicester was connected by marriage to the Northumberland family and, like them, was strongly Protestant although not Puritan. His candidature was supported by Strafford, by Hamilton, and by the Queen, whose friend, Lucy Carlisle, was Northumberland's sister. Yet Charles passed him over, some said because of Laud's influence: 'To think well of the reformed religion', Northumberland wrote to Leicester, 'is enough to make the Archbishop one's enemy.'^[5] So Charles missed an opportunity to win support from the moderates and chose instead Sir Henry Vane, a man of less ability, who was conducting a personal vendetta against Strafford, who had nothing very positive to recommend him save a bustling self-assertiveness, but who was Henrietta-Maria's second choice.

The fact that eleven years had elapsed without a Parliament made it no easier to meet one now. Nor did the reason for the summons arouse any confidence that a Parliament would be helpful to the King, for there was likely to be little enthusiasm for a Scottish war among a generation which had accepted Scotland as part of Great Britain: 'For my part . . . I shall be glad to live to do my master service in the wars out of Great Britain; I care not much for fighting in this island', wrote Sir Richard Cave to Roe, and his sentiment was echoed in all ranks of society.^[6] Moreover, religion formed a bond between many English and the Scots which was stronger than the bond which bound them to each other. In the borders, where the King would most particularly look for support, Puritanism was strong, as witnessed by the Lilburne family and their connections. In London, which would exert considerable influence on a Parliament sitting at Westminster, the Puritan congregations had for years been working up political opposition as well as religious dissidence.

In the country generally delight was tinged with disbelief that a Parliament was really to be called. No man would believe it, wrote a correspondent to Cottington from Devonshire. Of the King's friends Vane was guarded: there were many difficulties yet great hope that so happy a meeting might be followed by a like conclusion. Nicholas shook his head sadly: "I think they will be happiest who are not of the House', he wrote to Pennington.^[7] In the event, on the rumour that he was a 'rank Papist' he was not returned for Sandwich. As elections got under way a pamphlet was hurriedly issued instructing the procedure

in so unaccustomed an assembly as a Parliament.^[8] There was considerable competition at the polls and the influence of the Court party was by no means always successful. In Gloucestershire Sir Robert Tracy brought 800 of his tenants to the polls, but 'received not twenty back'. Candidates made personal election speeches in a new way, offering themselves as servants of the electors, dwelling on the power of the electorate, modestly placing themselves in the background as mere instruments of the will of the people.

There were disturbances in Northamptonshire, in Cheshire and at Lewes. In Essex it was said that the Puritan Earl of Warwick was intimidating voters by the threat of calling them to the levy if they opposed him. There were complaints of bribery by the Court party, one of them, for example, offering to give to the poor of Hastings £20 down and £10 a year during life, besides two barrels of powder yearly to the town for exercising its young men, if the burgesses would vote for him. Petitions began to appear, mostly sponsored by opposition candidates and all strangely alike — perhaps because the petitioners were suffering from the same grievances, but there was more than a hint of central organization. Very comprehensive was one that appeared on April 4. 'Of late', said the petitioners,

we have been unusually and insupportably charged, troubled and grieved in our consciences, persons and estates by innovations in religion, exactions in spiritual courts, molestations of our most Godly and learned ministers, ship-money, monopolies, undue impositions, army-money, wagon-money, horse-money, conduct-money, and enlarging the forest beyond the ancient bounds, and the like; for not yielding to which things, or some of them, divers of us have, been molested, distrained, and imprisoned.

Almost as an afterthought, it seemed, the petitioners asked for annual Parliaments. Mr Nevill of Cressing Temple found it all too much and was for raising the qualification for voting from 40/- to £20 which, he correctly maintained, was the equivalent value of 40/- at the time the Enfranchisement Statute was made. But Sir Thomas Barrington, Sir Harbottle Grimston and the Earl of Warwick, all leading Puritans, were content with things as they stood and remained closeted in Warwick's lodgings as the election results came in.^[9] Charles was less content as it became apparent that the electors had, for the most part, chosen not only Puritans but any who had been in opposition to him and that they had emphatically excluded Catholics and all who had served against the Scots. He was disappointed and

uneasy. He passionately wanted to return to the life he had enjoyed in the previous decade, yet the Scots were continuing their warlike motions and this Parliament seemed unlikely to give him the means of quieting them unless accompanied by concessions he felt he could not make. As the Venetian Ambassador expressed it, they would not give satisfaction before receiving it. By summoning Parliament had he not given substance to his worst fears and created the vehicle which would give voice and unity to the opposition?

As the 13th approached the newly-elected Members from the shires and boroughs rode in to Westminster from all over the country, many of them bearing in their hands the petitions of the freeholders and citizens they represented and which they themselves had helped to draw up. To many it was their first Parliament, it would be, perhaps, their first sight of the King and possibly the capital. If they were not all rich men, most of them were comfortably off, they took their religion seriously and they valued their worldly goods with a greater intensity, possibly, than their religion would justify. They were summoned to a Parliament for the age-old purpose of providing a king with money. But they knew enough of the Parliaments of the 1620s to understand that what had been an instrument in the hands of the King had now developed an identity of its own.

Parliament was opened about noon on 13 April 1640. The King rode in state from Whitehall to Westminster Abbey for the service of dedication accompanied by his nobles, the principal officers of state and, for the first time, by his son, the Prince of Wales, who was nearly ten years old. In the House of Lords the Prince, in his robes of state, sat on his father's left hand and listened gravely as Charles briefly opened his fourth Parliament: 'There was never a King that had a more great and weighty Cause to call His People together than Myself', he said, and he desired attention for the Lord Keeper.

Finch's speech was long and flowery, full of obligatory classical allusion but too tedious for his hearers. Its substance lay in its request for supply and for a Bill that would grant the King tonnage and poundage retrospectively from the beginning of his reign. Its conclusion, 'let us ever remember that, though the King sometimes lays by the Beams and Rays of Majesty, He never lays by Majesty itself', was inappropriate to the occasion.

Back in their own House the Commons chose John Glanville, a lawyer of Puritan leaning, as their Speaker. Then, business over, they

sat and looked at each other, uncertain how to begin on such a momentous task as they had set themselves. They showed little interest in what was to have been Charles's trump card — an apparent appeal from the Scots for French aid, in which the French King was addressed as their sovereign. Far more emotional was the scene as one after another they rose to present their petitions or to speak to the grievances of their constituents, the hard-headed Harbottle Grimston, Member for Colchester, being the first to throw off the nervous tension that hung over the House. The roll-call of grievances that followed was the indictment of Charles's rule — not, indeed, from all his subjects, for there were many he had helped, such as cloth workers, fishermen and peasants, whose voices were not heard and whose hands had not touched the petitions because they were not qualified to vote - but from the men whose constantly expressed concern was for their property and who, in its defence, were gathering the will and seeking the power, though they would not yet have expressed it so, to break the King. They were well prepared by their leaders. They ordered a committee of the whole House to consider religion, of which, significantly, Pym was in charge, and another to consider grievances. They called for records of the proceedings against Eliot, Strode, Selden, Valentine, Holles and others; they ordered all records concerning ship money, including Hampden's case, to be brought before them; they appointed a committee for establishing whether or not there had been a violation of the privileges of Parliament on the last day of the previous session. Nothing had been forgotten in eleven years.

When Pym spoke on April 17 in a two-hour speech, which was long for the House, with little classical allusion and little rhetoric, his new-style oratory found immediate acceptance. 'A good oration!' cried Members as he sat down. He had summed up the grievances which 'lay heavy upon the Commonwealth' under three heads — liberties and privileges of Parliament, innovations in religion, and 'the proprieties of our goods', bluntly announcing that these were the grievances which had disabled them from granting supply, and would still disable them, until they were redressed.

Charles continued to assert that he had no intention, and never had, of depriving them of their property or their freedom. 'God is my witness', he said of ship money, 'I never converted any of it to my own profit, but to the end of preserving my dominion of the seas.' As to their private property: 'I never designed to molest: it is my desire to be

a King of a free and rich people; if no Property in Goods, no rich people.' He offered to give up ship money for twelve subsidies. The offer was not unreasonable, though most of his Council, including Strafford, thought he might have asked for fewer subsidies. But Vane, who put the offer to the Commons, bungled the matter 'either as a knave or foole' and 'play'd the King's cards so ill, that there was noe right understanding betweene the King and the House of Commons in that matter', as one Member wrote.

By April 22 Charles was exasperated. On impulse he went to the House of Lords, not troubling to robe himself. It seemed to Giustinian he was about to use force 'to bridle the insolent demands of Parliament and make them do their duty'. But he merely spoke to them once more. They were putting the cart before the horse, he said. There could be no delay over supply; let them but grant this and he would attend to their grievances. The Lords agreed. But the Commons were listening to the report of the committee for grievances and there was no mistaking their drift. In vain Charles urged that delay was as desperate as denial. After a further fortnight of fruitless talking he gave up. To a Privy Council meeting summoned at 6 am on May 5 he announced his intention of dissolution. Strafford still urged patience. Laud, who had been misinformed of the time of the meeting, arrived too late to influence the issue but it is doubtful whether he would have supported his friend. In the end Strafford gave way. When he went to the Lords later that day Charles bitterly expressed the dilemma: 'The fear of doing that which I am to do to-day, made me not long ago to come into this House where I expressed My Fear, and the Remedies which I thought necessary for the eschewing of it', he said. Once more he separated the Lords from the Commons. 'My Lords of the Higher House, did give Me so willing an Ear, and such an Affection . . . if there had been any Means to have given a happy end to this Parliament, it was not your Lordships fault that it was not so.'

As to grievances, he said, certainly there were some, yet 'not so many as the Public Voice would make them'. He assured them that out of Parliament he would be as ready, if not more so, to remedy them as in Parliament. Finally he reminded them that he had said that delay constituted a greater danger than refusal. He would not put the fault for this on the whole House, he said — 'I will not judge so uncharitably; but it hath been some few cunning and some ill-affectioned Men, that have been the Cause of this Misunderstanding.' No King in the world, he concluded, 'shall be more careful to

maintain the Propriety of their Goods, the Liberties of their Persons, and True Religion, then I shall be. And now, My Lord Keeper, do as I have commanded you.'^[10]

It remains questionable whether Charles, with a little more patience, a little more adroitness in his policy of dividing the Lords from the Commons, might not have won a favourable response from this Parliament. But finesse was never his strong point; which was the greater pity for not only Strafford but several Members of the Commons believed that if Parliament had continued longer it would have complied with the King in some measure. If it had done so, it would have been a shrewd blow at the opposition. But if Charles made a mistake in dismissing this Parliament so soon it arose as much out of his general distrust of Parliaments as out of the immediate situation. He feared the machinations of those he had called 'vipers' in 1629 and now termed 'cunning and ill-affectioned men'. If his fears caused him to make a mistake, it was a costly error. It not only left him without supply but the dismissal supplied fuel to the opposition in giving a credibility to their account of the dismissal of the 1629 Parliament, of which some Members had no first-hand knowledge, and revealing the King as the tyrant they liked to depict. At the same time it left them with a programme and an organization which had been strengthened by the experience gained. They could be sure that, when another Parliament was called, as they were now certain it would be, they would be starting with an advantage they did not have in April 1640.

When Charles published a Declaration of the Causes which moved him to dissolution, he was justifying himself to the world at large as he had done after previous dissolutions and was treating his statement rather like a royal Proclamation. It was more significant that abridgements of Pym's speech in the Commons had been immediately printed and despatched throughout the kingdom where they were 'with great greediness taken by Gentlemen and others'. Members were accustomed to writing letters to their families or their constituents and, apart from the official record of proceedings in the House which was usually fairly perfunctory, speeches had sometimes been printed subsequently in abridged and often garbled form. But never before had the machinery of abridgement, printing and distribution been waiting and ready to serve the propaganda purposes of a party in Parliament. For the first time opposition was conscious and concerted. It was no longer a case of Members rising in their places on impulse. They got to their feet to say what they had planned to say,

they held in their hands the petitions they had engineered, and their words were intended for a wider audience than Parliament. Charles only partly understood what was happening. He did not realize the size or the efficiency of the opposition or the extent of their organization. Nor did he realize that over against monarchy there had been raised a rival power — that of the electorate. The feeling of representation was growing — a consciousness of the people behind the Parliament man — the idea of 'trust' in the sense of delegation of authority: 'nor shall we ever discharge the trust of those that sent us hither . . . unless His Majesty be pleased first to restore them to the Property of their Goods and lawful liberties', as Edmund Waller said on April 22. They were unconsciously preparing the way for the greatest of all forms of sovereignty that would stand against the King — sovereignty of the people.

26—
The King and Parliament

The Council for Scottish Affairs met in the afternoon of the day on which the Short Parliament was dismissed. Its members were sombre, even gloomy: an English Parliament dissolved, a Scottish Parliament prorogued; the issues of religion, of government, and of the authority of the monarch himself at issue between the two countries; a Scottish army still in being, an English army hardly formed; the Scottish Parliament taxing the Scots, including the minority who supported the King, to pay for their victorious arms; Charles, having emptied his treasury for unsuccessful war, unable to raise by tax or loan anything like sufficient money to provide another army; Scottish soldiers disciplined and willing, English (such as there were) undisciplined and unwilling; a Scottish nation virtually at one behind its army, an English nation deeply disturbed with barely suppressed antagonisms — all the Council could hope for was a defensive war, a holding operation, that might bring in the trained bands of the border shires and hold the Scots back from England. Only Strafford was still undaunted. He spoke rapidly, urgently. Sir Henry Vane, the secretary to the committee, scribbled with difficulty trying to keep up with the flow of words. 'Go vigorously on', Strafford was saying. 'You have an army in Ireland you may employ there (or here) to reduce this (or that) Kingdom . . . Confident as anything under heaven, Scotland shall not hold out five months . . . One summer well employed will do it . . .'^[1]

Strafford was supported by Laud and this was the only positive advice Charles received. He himself still believed that it was a question of money and that if he could pay his soldiers he could raise an army that would deal with the Scots. Whether he was temperamentally capable of the stern offensive that Strafford was calling for was another matter. For the time being he had exercised his initiative by

keeping Convocation in being, contrary to precedent, after the dismissal of Parliament. It was not for nothing that he had done so, for it voted him an annual subsidy of £20,000 for six years. At the same time it promulgated seventeen new Canons which enjoined the practice of High Church Arminianism in extreme form. It was an unnecessary, though typical, defiance which confirmed the resolution of the Scots, alienated his own people, while only marginally helping his finances. On the contrary, it encouraged resistance to further demands. London citizens refused to lend the £300,000 which Charles asked for and four leading Aldermen were imprisoned; sheriffs and other collectors of taxes, even Lords Lieutenant, were subjected to pressure with little result save the impression that Charles was prepared to resort to force to gain his ends.

Strafford took up again the question of a Spanish marriage for the King's children, promising the Spaniards support against the Dutch when the Scottish war ended. Henrietta-Maria, through the medium of Windebank and the Papal agent, Rossetti, who had succeeded Con at the English Court, applied for aid to the Pope. Charles himself approached France and Spain. Ship money was pressed; coat and conduct money was demanded in spite of repeated warning that it was even more objectionable to the people than ship money. Two of the Northern Parliament men, Sir John Hotham and Henry Bellasys, who had told the Short Parliament that their constituents would rather pay three subsidies than ship money, and that coat and conduct money was more objectionable than either, were questioned after the dissolution and imprisoned for failing to remember what they had said. Their statements provided evidence that Charles might, indeed, have obtained subsidies in exchange for ship money if the affair had been well handled.

At St George's Fields in London a great meeting named Strafford, Hamilton and Laud as enemies of the Commonwealth and six days after the dissolution a crowd of some 2000 people proceeded by night to Lambeth Palace, beating drums, brandishing weapons, and crying for the death of William the Fox. Laud had fled across the river to Whitehall leaving his Palace well defended. Thomas Bensted, who was wounded in the affray, was betrayed by his surgeon and was hanged, drawn and quartered on June 2. Posters appeared urging people to preserve their ancient liberty and eject the bishops; they threatened the Queen's mother and the Queen's priests. Another advertised the King's palace as To Let. On a window in Whitehall

someone scratched the words: 'God save the King, confound the Queen and her children, and give us the Palsgrave to reign in this kingdom.' Charles shattered the pane with his hand and a strong guard was called out to protect the Queen and the children. When rioters broke open the prisons Charles summoned the trained bands from the home counties to protect the capital. He also made concessions and Bellasys, Hotham, and the four City Aldermen were released on the 15th, the day after the attack on the prisons.

But disturbances in various parts of the country continued as pressed men refused to move outside their counties. There was news of soldiers tearing up altar rails for bonfires and throwing down images, of murdering Roman Catholic officers and committing such atrocities that commissions for holding courts martial were hurriedly issued. When Sir Jacob Astley wrote to Conway on July 18 and ended his letter with 'God help us!' he was thinking, not of the Scots, but of his own men. Rumours that Charles was thinking of bringing in Danish cavalry to quell the disturbances increased the tension, the courts martial were questioned as being without authority in the absence of Parliament, while a petition from Yorkshire complaining of the violence of the soldiery asserted at the same time that billeting was contrary to the Petition of Right. Worst of all were the words reported from Scotland that a king who sold his country to a stranger, who deserted it for a foreign land, or who attacked it with an invading force, might lawfully be deposed.

The usual rumours meanwhile circulated: that the King and Queen went to mass together, that the King loved a Papist better than a Puritan; that he would say in defence 'my wife is a Papist, shall I not love them?' A new story was told at the Three Cranes Wharf in Thames Street concerning the Prince of Wales who was said to have been troubled at night with dreams and seen during the day weeping bitterly. When his father asked him what ailed him he, after some persuasion, replied: 'My grandfather left you with four kingdoms and I am afraid your Majesty will leave me never a one!'

With the Pope predictably offering help only if Charles became a Catholic, with the City still refusing a loan, and the taxes promised by the Irish Parliament bringing in much less than was expected, Charles gave orders for debasing the coinage, but was compelled to rescind the command in face of reasoned argument from his friends and outcry from his opponents. In July, as a last resort, he seized a considerable portion of the silver bullion which was lying in the Tower ready to be

minted, promising the merchants and the Spanish government, to whom much of it belonged, an interest rate of eight per cent. This did little to ease the considerable shock or silence the loud outcry that followed. 'Great heart-burning this hath made in the City,' wrote a Court correspondent on July 10. 'It is thought this will overthrow the Mint, mar all trading, undo the best customers, and so turn at length to His Majesty's extreme prejudice'.^[2] The atmosphere was such that it was even rumoured that Charles had taken £60,000 of the money contributed to the repair of St Paul's.

On July 12 Charles joined Henrietta-Maria at Oatlands. Most of his ministers attended him and there was no cessation of public business when she gave birth, with comparative ease, to another son, Henry–'of Oatlands', as he came to be known. The Queen was never better nor so well of any of her children, it was reported. The child was christened there on July 21, his brothers and elder sister holding him at the font. His grandmother would not attend because of the difference in religion and the time was not opportune for any kind of public ceremony.

Strafford continued to insist upon resistance to the Scots and the suppression of any opposition. The Scots published an appeal to the English nation, negotiations with Spain for financial assistance began to wear thin and even Strafford could not raise money from Puritans who were so united in resistance that in the county of Buckingham-shire of £2600 demanded in coat and conduct money only £8 came in; nor, in the time available, could he produce soldiers where there were none, or turn what could be scraped together from the trained bands and the pressed men into a fighting force. Moreover, Strafford was a sick man, wracked with the pain of gout, weakened with dysentry. But such was his iron will and strength of purpose that his very presence shored up Charles's resolution. The King ordered the Lords Lieutenant of the Midland and Northern counties to call out the trained bands for military service; he directed all persons holding land by knight service to follow him to the field or commute by payment; he made the greatest efforts to keep the Yorkshire gentry firm and the northern army mobilized; he commanded the instant collection of all outstanding taxes; and when Northumberland became ill he named Strafford to the supreme land command while Northumberland kept the fleet.

When the Scots, demanding an extension of the Covenant to England and justice on Laud and Strafford, prepared to cross the

Tweed, Charles accepted the inevitable. He left London for York, on August 20, the day the Scots crossed the border at Coldstream and entered England, 25,000 strong. Strafford was full of admiration for Charles; 'in my life', he wrote, 'I have not seen a man begin with more life and courage.' There was less enthusiasm among other members of Charles's Council. The Scots, Windebank had written to Conway, 'understand too well our slowness and defects, and what a powerful party they are likely to find here that will rather join with them than oppose them'. Charles left Cottington in London as Constable of the Tower, a position from which he would be able to protect the Queen and her children, and three days after leaving London he was again at York. The previous day Cottington had secured him some £60,000 from the East India Company by an elaborate deal in which he appropriated and sold cheaply a large cargo of pepper and spices on promise to repay the Company later with interest. This was useful but could not prevent the Scots fording the Tyne at Newburn on the 28th with little effective resistance. The English cavalry broke, rallied briefly, and then gave up. In the little burst of resistance Endymion Porter's second son, Charles, aged eighteen, was killed.^[3] The Scots pressed straight on to Newcastle, which they entered on August 30. They were well-disciplined and well-mannered and at first provisioned themselves or paid for all they took.

With Scots on English soil and Charles powerless at York, a group of Peers, which included six members of the opposition, prepared a petition which reached the King on August 28. It enumerated once more the country's grievances, asked for a Parliament and, ominously, demanded the punishment of the King's advisers. Charles, as he had done before when Buckingham was alive, expressed his defiance of fate and his confidence in his chief minister by summoning a special chapter of the Garter to York, and on September 13 he invested Strafford with the blue ribbon of his most exalted honour.

But there were reports of a London petition similar to that of the peers, signed by four Aldermen and with 10,000 further signatures; there was news of more rioting in the capital directed particularly against the High Commission and the Star Chamber, in which St Paul's itself was raided in an attempt to locate the records of those courts. Charles had to make some decision. He agreed to the summoning of a Great Council of Peers at York such, it was said, as had been used in the past and could be used again to authorize the raising of money. But when it met on September 24 there was little time. His

army was disintegrating as men slipped away, Cottington's pepper money was mostly spent, and there was nothing to tide him over while he waited for more. So, once more Charles yielded and, for the second time in twelve months, set the machinery in motion for the meeting of an English Parliament. The date was to be November 3, which gave just less than the forty days enjoined by law between the writs and the poll.

Charles's old enemy, Bristol, was the leading spirit and spokesman of the Peers. But there was no mistaking his loyalty nor his integrity as he led the negotiations with the Scots which ended with the Treaty of Ripon on October 14. By this treaty the Scots were to remain on English soil and would receive £850 a day for their keep while they awaited the meeting of the English Parliament with which, it was implied, the final agreement would be made. This in itself was humiliating for Charles. Again, he might have done better with a little more patience at this point and if he had played his cards differently. It was ironic, for example, that, with the Scots becoming an increasing menace as they began to live off the country, the spirit of the border was reviving in the English who now showed more enthusiasm for fighting than they had done before; Charles might have re-organized his army and rallied support even at this late stage. He might also have kept back a little longer his strongest card, the calling of a Parliament, and refused to use it while the Scots were in England. He not only failed to do so but played directly into the hands of the Scots by allowing their Commissioners to come to London to conclude the treaty there, so giving them and the opposition the benefit of mutual support.

The writs for the new Parliament were slow in going out so there was even less time than expected for campaigning. There was nevertheless more excitement than for the previous Parliament. There was much competition — a 'great shuffling for burgesses for the Parliament', as John Nicholas put it to his son, the Secretary. Both sides did their best to secure support. On September 17 and again on October 1 Vane wrote to Windebank on the King's instructions that, in order 'to sweeten' proceedings in the election he should release all prisoners committed for matters that might cause dissidence, such as coat and conduct money, and he named certain people whom the King would like to be provided with safe seats, including some judges, law officers, and officials of the Council of the Marches.^[4] Royal patronage

was exercised to the full in the Queen's dower lands, the Prince's Duchy of Cornwall, the Cinque Ports (where Charles's cousin, Lennox, was Warden) and the Crown lands generally. Ministers and courtiers were more than ordinarily careful of the constituencies in their patronage and contacts were pursued personally or by letter. The opposition was no less mindful of its influence. The Herbert and Pembroke families in Wiltshire, Saye and Sele in Oxfordshire, Bedford in East Anglia and Devon, pressed patronage and family loyalty in their own interests; pocket boroughs were generally controlled by the opposition. Four of Strafford's friends were unsuccessful in the city and county of York, including Sir Edward Osborne, Vice-President of the Council of the North, and Sir Thomas Witherington, the Recorder of York. King's Lynn refused Arundel's nomination and Cottington's attempts to control the counties of which he was Lord Lieutenant were no more successful. Edward Nicholas, one of the clerks to the Council, was not returned, probably because of suspected Catholic affinities; nor was Windebank's nephew, in spite of his uncle's influence. On the whole the King's party did badly.

The opposition did better not only through patronage but because its plans were more carefully laid. Hampden had even before the Short Parliament ridden to Scotland to contact the Covenanters and did so again; with Pym he rode round England conferring at the 'Puritanical' houses in England, particularly at Fawsley and at Broughton Castle. Sir John Clotworthy, an Irish Presbyterian landowner who had frequently opposed Strafford was offered the choice of two safe seats under the patronage of the Earl of Warwick. In general, the opposition found it easy to win support and any who had opposed the government during the personal rule or in the Short Parliament were returned. Once it had assembled, the majority party found it easy to rid itself of yet more of its opponents by the customary scrutiny of election returns and the rejection of members who were held to have adopted unfair tactics. The committee of Privileges who decided such matters was dominated by Pym and all the members disqualified were Royalists or likely Royalists.

As he awaited the meeting of Parliament Charles was worried and irresolute but still buoyed up with the hope that all would turn out well. He was nevertheless considerably dashed by a personal defeat at the very outset. He had intended Sir Thomas Gardiner, the Recorder of London, to be the Speaker of the new House of Commons. London had rarely rejected its Recorder, yet in this election not one of its four

places had been found for him. Efforts to find him another seat were frustrated, often by doubtful means, and on the morning of the 3rd Charles was informed that Gardiner was not in the House. He postponed the opening from morning till afternoon while he considered alternative names and his choice fell upon William Lenthall, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn of no outstanding talents, who was with difficulty persuaded to accept the office. It was understandable that Charles made less of the opening ceremonial than usual, going by barge to Parliament stairs and so to the Abbey as though to open an adjourned or prorogued Parliament. He nevertheless took his son with him to sit on his left hand as he formally opened proceedings.

He probably knew already that there were 493 Members in the new House of Commons, of whom over sixty per cent had sat in the previous Parliament and forty per cent in earlier Parliaments of his reign. It was a young House. About a third of the newcomers were under thirty years old and among them were 23 mere striplings, not yet of age. But on the whole it was a not inexperienced House and the majority had held office of some kind in their counties if not in some central department. There were 79 lawyers among them, 55 were associated with trade or commerce; 49 were central or local officials; there were a physician and a naval officer and nine professional soldiers, 13 agents or secretaries of various kinds and three members who were associated with the Church. About three-fifths of them had been to Oxford or Cambridge Universities — a rather higher number to Cambridge than to Oxford — and sixty per cent had attended one of the Inns of Court. Most of them, whatever their occupation or social background, held land, even if they were not big landowners. The majority were wealthy, all were comfortably off. Trade and commerce, industry and finance, the professions and landowning interlocked in a bewildering but unmistakable manner through family and business association. Even the lawyers, though not as a class so wealthy as the big landowners or men of commerce, had their interests outside their profession, as well as ties of marriage and family, which frequently lifted them into the ranks of the wealthy. Speaker Lenthall, for example, was a man of quite considerable wealth. In total it was a House of greater wealth than the House of Lords. A news-writer in 1628 had reckoned that the Commons could buy out the Lords three times over; and if there was any difference in wealth by 1640 it was on the side of the Commons.

The Members whom Charles would regard as most dangerous

were in the middle age group, between about forty and sixty years old. Here were Pym and Haselrig, Hampden and Barrington, Denzil Holles, Valentine and Strode, the merchant Rolle and his brother; Alderman Soame, the rebellious citizen of London; the East Anglian squire, Oliver Cromwell. Charles had sufficient knowledge of the family connections of his subjects to be aware of the manifold ties of birth and marriage that bound these people together and that also connected them with the House of Lords. Even more grounds for apprehension lay in the considerable number of them who themselves, or whose friends or family connections, had resisted the King's demand for loans, opposed ship money or coat and conduct money, resisted royal authority as clothiers, enclosing landlords or encroachers upon the forests, and been fined, imprisoned, or penalized in one way or another by the King's Prerogative courts. Hampden was still the hero of the ship-money opposition, Strode and Valentine were remembered for their long imprisonment, Holles for his role in the last hours of the 1629 Parliament; many more were equally the heroes of resistance in their own counties: there were few in this group who had not in some way contributed to the political and economic opposition to the King.

It was also clear, as Charles scrutinized the list of Parliament men, that few of them would support the religious system that he and Laud had laboured so hard to build up. The Puritan Members from East Anglia, many of them nurtured in the Puritan colleges of Cambridge University and typified by Oliver Cromwell, one of the Members for Cambridge; the Puritan Members for Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, typified by Hampden and bound together by family ties, would offer no compromise on religious issues. He might have afforded a wry smile as he considered the influence upon these men of John Preston, who had once been his chaplain.

Geographically the only areas of the country favourable to him, judging by their returns, were Wales, Rutland and Somerset, Westmoreland and Cumberland. Cornwall, Hereford and Shropshire, Lancashire and Yorkshire, appeared to be evenly divided. He was bound to notice that the richest and most populous part of the country, with the exception of Somerset, had declared against him. The only comfort Charles could take was from the presence of 22 courtiers and five Privy Counsellors in the House — Jermyn, Roe (appointed to the Council at last in the summer), Sir William Uvedale (recently appointed as secretary to the army), Vane and Windebank — and of

good old Benjamin Rudyerd who had so valiantly spoken for supply in previous Parliaments. If he totted up the numbers he would have found something like 182 Members of the Commons likely to support him; 354 for the opposition; and about eleven uncommitted. It was difficult to estimate the coherence of either grouping or to judge how easily individuals could be swayed from one side to the other.

There were 124 peers in Charles's House of Lords in 1640 against only 59 when his father ascended the English throne; they could probably boast fewer representatives of ancient lineage than the Commons, though family connections ran strongly between the two Houses and it was not always easy to draw the line. Nor was it easy to estimate their allegiance. Bedford, Warwick, Brooke, Saye and Sele, Fiennes were all closely linked to the opposition in the House of Commons. Yet behind this energetic and vocal fringe lay the 24 bishops and two Archbishops and a phalanx of uncommitted lordship where Charles's chief hope lay.

Observers were on the whole not hopeful. The Venetian Ambassador reported to his Doge and Senate that there was great fear that reforms and changes of great moment would ensue, not without a very considerable diminution in His Majesty's authority. 'And now', remarked an English commentator, 'the Kinge was in the trap or snare which he had so longe laboured to avoide'.

Charles had subjected himself to considerable soul-searching while the elections were pending, and the election results themselves could but reinforce the conclusion that something had been wrong with his personal government. He could not, indeed, take the responsibility upon himself, but admitted the 'odium and offences which some men's rigour in Church and State' had contracted upon his government. 'I resolved', he afterwards wrote, 'to have such offences expiated by such laws and regulations for the future as might not only rectify what was amiss in practice, but supply what was defective in the constitution.' He would approach Parliament with a determination to reform — even to lessen the area and the application of his prerogative — if only Members would meet him with 'modest and sober sense'. Unfortunately his opening speech hardly bore out his intentions and the Venetian Ambassador was of the opinion that he did not really want a Parliament.

He was, as usual, short and to the point. He had called his previous Parliament because of the knowledge he had of the design of his Scottish subjects: 'had I been believed, I sincerely think that things had

not fallen out as now we see'. It was not a gibe, merely a statement of fact as Charles saw it. He proceeded to name the two areas where action was needed: 'the chasing out of the rebels' and 'satisfying your just grievances'. The first must be done as quickly as possible, but not at the expense of the English armies who also needed pay. 'I leave it to your consideration', he said, 'what dishonour and mischief it might be if, for want of money, my army be disbanded before the rebels be put out of this kingdom.' He had shown tact and good sense in himself coupling grievances with supply, before Parliament could itself bring them together, but to speak of the Scots as 'rebels' and of chasing them out of the kingdom was hardly tactful before an Assembly which had considerable sympathy with Scotland. Nevertheless, the points he made were valid; it was necessary to raise money in order to pay the Scots according to the Treaty of Ripon and to pay the English armies before they were disbanded, all previous loans and donations having been spent. He did not tell them that while the election was proceeding he had offered to sell himself to his shirt as security for a further city loan but had been turned down.

'One thing more I desire of you', he said, 'as one of the greatest means to make this a happy parliament, that you, on your parts, as I, on mine, lay aside all suspicions one of another . . . it shall not be my fault', he concluded, 'if this be not a happy and good Parliament.' But the Members were not prepared to take the King at his word and the speech of Lord Keeper Finch, which was again long, fulsome and tiresome, did not help. Moreover, the reference to the Scots as 'rebels' so rankled that Charles came again to Parliament to apologise for his words in a speech which, in contrast to his opening words, struck the Venetian Ambassador as so effusive and showing so much submission, that his words came ill from the mouth of a great Prince.

If he was being realistic the most that Charles could hope for from this Parliament was a sufficient number of subsidies to enable him to pay the Scots and get them off his back. The Commons, however, had come together with far wider plans in mind. In the interval between the two Parliaments the opposition had consolidated; they accepted the need to pay the Scots and, indeed, the prospect gave them a certain amount of pleasure. But, in the leadership at least, there was the further resolve to sweep away what they termed the 'arbitrary' rule of the previous twelve years and replace it by the framework of 'constitutional' government. The terms they used to justify their intent were ill-defined but the substance was clear: most of the means by which the

King had raised money in the absence of Parliament were illegal and must be stopped; the courts which were his instrument must be curbed; and Parliament must be given a clearly defined existence of its own, independent of the will of the monarch. Religious requirements were less clear-cut, but there was a general feeling in favour of a Protestant religion free from excessive ritual and image worship that could be related to the English Church of the Reformation. A petition received from Londoners to extirpate bishops 'root and branch' was received coolly on December 11 and laid aside. There was no antimonarchical feeling in their sentiments and Parliament clung closely to the belief that the King could do no wrong; aberrations were the fault of his evil counsellors. The belief was founded upon centuries of theory and, even if they had considered questioning it, it would have taken men stronger than they felt themselves to be at present to do so. But the fiction, if such it were, served them well for it would enable them to get rid of the man they most feared — the Earl of Strafford, the strongest and most influential of the King's advisers.^[5]

27—
The King and Strafford

Preliminaries over, Parliament turned to establish its normal procedural machinery and Friday 6 November, 1640, was spent in appointing committees for religion, grievances, trade, privileges. On the following day the petitions began to be read and Member after Member rose to enumerate with compelling eloquence the evils to which his constituents had been subjected — monopolies and taxation, innovations in religion, religious persecution, arbitrary courts, ship money, coat and conduct money, fine, imprisonment. Some of the speakers fumbled towards the cause — 'arbitrary government', 'evil counsellors', 'intermission of Parliaments'; or towards the remedy, mostly expressed in terms of Parliament, for Parliament was 'the great physician of the Commonwealth', as Sir Francis Seymour put it. Even Benjamin Rudyerd gave Charles no comfort, for he spoke against the Declaration of Sports. Many of the speeches were immediately printed and distributed round the country; for the statement of grievances, as well as being an indication of the Members' reforming intent, was now an established propaganda exercise and a method of justifying themselves to their constituents. On November 8 motions for the release of Prynne, Bastwick, Burton and Leighton were approved; on the 9th Cromwell spoke similarly for John Lilburne, thus beginning a love-hate relationship between them which would last for well over a decade. On the same day monopolists were excluded from the House and twelve more Court votes were conveniently lost. There was a fire running through the House of Commons which was being fed by the ardour of the Members themselves. Pym knew well enough that the flame would in time burn less brightly and that he must act quickly. Charles also perceived that he was facing a situation different in intensity from anything he had known before. Both men turned to Strafford.

Strafford, as Commander-in-Chief, had remained with the army in the North, and both he and Charles were aware that there was danger for him at Westminster. Nevertheless Charles sent for him. Possibly they planned some joint action, like the impeachment of the opposition leaders. More likely it was simply Charles's need for someone stronger than himself to lean upon. He assured Strafford that he need fear for neither life nor fortune. Strafford needed no such assurance and he did not hesitate: he was too 'great hearted', as Hamilton put it after he had warned Strafford of the danger he was running into.

For Pym had moved as quickly as Charles. He knew both that speed was the essence of the situation and that the opposition must plan more carefully than it had done with Buckingham, who had slipped through the net. A preliminary meeting of the opposition leaders had named Strafford, Laud, Finch, and Cottington as the 'evil counsellors' to be impeached and when Pym moved in the House of Commons for a committee to consider Irish affairs, with an invitation to the Irish to bring their grievances before it, Strafford's friends knew that he was to be the first target. He reached London on November 10, less than a week after the opening of Parliament, and fully aware of the situation. His prompt arrival indicated that no time could be lost and two days later, before a detailed charge could be drawn up, Pym charged Strafford with High Treason before the House of Commons. In vain the judicial Falkland urged that they should examine evidence and digest the charges made before converting them into treason. The opposition made much of alleged troop movements round the Tower with the suggestion that Strafford intended to subdue the City, Pym raised the bogey of a Catholic plot and Clotworthy 'revealed' the intended use of the Irish army against England. Tension was heightened by Pym calling for doors to be locked, and in a conspiratorial atmosphere, tense, as yet unused to their position, capable of being led, the Commons listened to the charge of High Treason against the Earl of Strafford. There was no one critical, detached or fearless enough to support Falkland. The committee appointed to draw up the charge was ready to go to the Lords that same evening, evidence enough of the deliberate plan and the detailed preliminary work that had preceded the opening of Parliament.

Strafford was with Charles and other friends at Whitehall when a sympathetic peer came hurrying over from Westminster with the news. Strafford's instinct was to be in his place in the Lords when the

charge was brought against him. But he was too late. Pym had already made the short journey from the Commons House to the Lords and as Strafford made to take his seat he was met with cries of 'Withdraw!, Withdraw!' and was compelled to wait outside the Chamber while the Peers considered their attitude to the charge which Pym had brought against him in the name of the Commons of England. When, after about ten minutes, Strafford was called in he was made to kneel while the brief, formal charge of treason was read. He was forbidden to speak, deprived of his sword, and taken away in custody. Outside the House the crowd that grew as rumour spread had no more sympathy than his colleagues within: so Strafford learned how bitterly he had alienated both his peers and the populace.

In contrast the following days were filled with rejoicing as the Puritan martyrs were released. Lilburne, being imprisoned in London, was the first to be welcomed; Prynne and Burton reached the capital from their remote prisons on November 28, Bastwick on December 4. A hundred coaches, 2000 horsemen and a great crowd on foot wearing twigs of bay and rosemary in their hats as signs of triumph and remembrance, escorted them. It was not until the middle of November that Parliament approached the City for a loan and were promised £21,000 while Members pledged themselves to bring the sum up to £90,000 so that interim payment could be made to the Scots. On December 7 ship money was declared illegal by the Commons, and only then, with this tax out of the way, did they consider subsidies. On December 10 two, on the 23rd two more, were voted. This was satisfactory except that Parliament gave no indication that the King would control any of the money. He received a further snub in November when Parliament appointed Commissioners to meet the Scottish delegation at Westminster. Charles assumed he would be present, as he had been at Berwick, and perhaps looked forward to demonstrating once more his dialectical skill. But it was the last thing that either side wanted, and Charles was firmly repulsed.

Though it laid aside the Root and Branch petition received on December 11, Parliament was occupying itself with excluding Catholics from positions of influence, and instructions were sent to the Northern armies to eject Catholic officers. It was established that few priests and Jesuits had felt the weight of the recusancy laws during the personal rule and that their immunity had generally been authorized by Windebank. The Commons were far too excited to ask, perhaps they did not want to know, on whose authority Windebank had acted,

14
Charles as Van Dyck saw him at the height of his personal happiness and seeming 
prosperity — serene, elegant, fastidious, slightly ethereal, the great star of the Garter 
blazing on his blue cloak.

15
Charles, the proud and happy monarch and husband, being presented with a laurel wreath by his Queen; a portrait symbolic of victory over strife and discord. 
Similar pictures were painted by both Mytens and Van Dyck This one is by Van Dyck.

16
Charles dining with his Queen in Whitehall Palace, talking to his friends, waited on by his great lords and courtiers, 
privileged onlookers at a discreet distance. Painted by Gerard Honckgeest.

but the Secretary had his own reasons for alarm, for it was he who had acted for Henrietta-Maria in forwarding a request for Papal aid. Windebank took no chances and, with Charles's permission, he fled the country on December 10, the first of the King's supporters to do so. Did he know that even as he was fleeing from the results of his indiscretion the Queen was preparing to appeal again to Rome for aid?

On the day of Windebank's flight Charles announced to his Privy Council that his second daughter would marry Prince William of Orange. It had been natural to consider their eldest daughter as a future Queen of Spain: whatever past relations had been, or however much Spain's position in the world had declined, it was still a high-ranking position. But those negotiations had fallen through and they were now seeking an alliance where money lay. Europe was well aware of their desperate position and when the Prince of Orange again offered his son in marriage, with considerable financial backing and a suggestion of mediation between Charles and his Parliament, or even of troops to help the English King, he stepped up his demand to take the elder, rather than the second daughter. Charles and Henrietta-Maria, though it was not a match they had envisaged in their happier days, had no alternative but to agree. Mary was nine, her intended bridegroom was nearly fifteen years old and was a bright and attractive boy. Like the marriage of Charles's sister to the Palatine, it was not a marriage of great prestige, but Mary would go to a comfortable and wealthy Court and her future husband had in person, and so far as was known in character, a great deal to commend him.

Eight days after the wedding announcement it was the turn of Laud, twin pillar with Strafford of all that the Commons detested. Laud was impeached of High Treason on December 18, sequestered from his place in the House of Lords and committed to custody. Harbottle Grimston had pronounced him to be 'the root and ground of all our miseries'. But the specific charges would have to wait. Now they turned on Lord Keeper Finch and his impeachment followed inevitably. Finch made a strong and not ignoble speech in his own defence but the virtually unanimous vote of the Commons to proceed with the charge was a foregone conclusion. Two days later, on December 21, Finch, again with Charles's permission, fled to The Hague in a ship belonging to the royal navy.

Two of the King's 'evil counsellors' had slipped away within six weeks of the meeting of Parliament, two more were confined and the

charge against one of them was being prepared as hurriedly as the lawyers would permit. Meanwhile it was essential to keep control of Parliament. Charles might dissolve it as he had done before, helped by the money already voted and by the prospective dowry of his daughter. But Pym was too quick for him. A Bill for triennial Parliaments laid down that the monarch was obliged to call a new Parliament within three months of ending the old. The Bill passed the Commons on January 20, the Lords on 5 February 1641. While Charles was considering how to avoid parting with so large a part of his prerogative, Strafford's trial was proceeding.

He was brought before the House of Lords to hear the details of the charge against him on January 30 — gaunt and ill after two months' confinement in the Tower. He had misappropriated the revenue, encouraged Papists, fomented war with Scotland, subverted the government of Ireland, acted with tyrannical despotism as President of the Council of the North, betrayed the army, broken the Short Parliament, prevented the calling of another, and finally agreed to its meeting only in order to discredit it. His vehemence against London Aldermen who had refused to lend the King money was not forgotten, he was accused of advising the King to seize the bullion in the Tower and to debase the coinage. Finally — and this was estimated to be the most telling charge against him — he was accused of offering to bring over the Irish army to subdue the kingdom of England. The charge was an undigested mixture of the general and the specific.

While Strafford was preparing his defence, Charles was considering the Triennial Bill. He had declared he would never part with so large a part of his prerogative as the Bill implied but when it came before him on February 15 he found that the old subterfuge had been employed and it was coupled with a subsidy bill. There were rumours of Parliament ceasing all business until it was passed and, between threats and inducement, Charles gave way on the 16th. He was, he said, 'yielding up one of the fairest flowers of his garland' by abandoning his right to call Parliament when he wished, but since he had, in any case, determined to govern in future through Parliament, it made little difference. Three days later Charles made what appeared to be a half-hearted attempt to gain support from the House of Lords by appointing as Privy Counsellors seven of their Members who had been opposing him — Bristol, Bedford, Essex, Hertford, Saye, Mandeville, and Saville. He may have read the situation correctly in assuming that their opposition arose partly from their exclusion from

office, but it was a little naive to offer such a sop at this late stage to men of such calibre.

Eight days after Charles had given way on the Triennial Bill Strafford was at the bar of the House of Lords to answer to the charges against him. He had had only three weeks in which to prepare his preliminary answer but appeared to be cheerful and composed. He and Charles reached the Lords at about the same time and Charles called Strafford to him in an inner room. For about an hour they spoke privately while the House waited. When Charles took his seat upon the throne and Strafford was brought to the bar the King publicly greeted his minister across the floor of the House with an affectionate gesture and a smile. In a long answer which took three hours to read and covered over 200 sheets of paper Strafford rebutted all the charges against him. The next stage was the open trial which was fixed for March 22.

While Strafford worked upon his detailed defence Pym and his friends, with a grim determination that no part of their quarry should escape, adopted in practice, though they would not have expressed it in so many words, the concept that the end justifies the means. Public feeling against Laud was not allowed to sleep and on the day on which Strafford was making his defence in the Lords the impeachment charge was made in the Commons against Laud. It was voted unanimously that the Archbishop was guilty of treason in attempting to alter religion and the fundamental laws of the realm. Without an opportunity of making a defence he was committed to the Tower on March 1, angry crowds attempting to drag him from his carriage as he passed by under the protection of the guard. Meanwhile, with a total disregard of the principle of justice or fair play, and without consulting the Lords, the House of Commons caused to be printed and published the articles of the charges against Strafford. To the people who read them the printed words were the truth, and Strafford was condemned by an angry populace before one word had been spoken at the actual trial. He came to Westminster Hall on 22 March 1641 guarded by soldiers. The royal family sat in a screened box where they might see without being seen, but Charles tore down the lattice. Henrietta-Maria stayed for only a couple of hours, but Charles stayed throughout with the Prince who occasionally came forward to take his seat by the throne, which remained unoccupied.

Pym brought forward his most telling evidence, which was the note of Strafford's speech in Council taken down by Sir Henry Vane

on May 5 in the previous year. Vane's son, an enthusiastic supporter of Pym, had found the paper in his father's study and had made a copy which he took to Pym. Now the alleged substance of the notes was brought forward in evidence against Strafford to prove that he had urged the bringing over of Irish troops to subvert England. Had Strafford used the words 'this country', meaning England, or 'that country', meaning Scotland? Had he not said that, being reduced to extreme necessity, the King was absolved from all laws of government? Vane senior was troubled and inconclusive in his answers. Northumberland, Hamilton, Juxon, Goring and Cottington failed to remember words that could have had any such interpretation. On April 10 the trial was adjourned in some confusion with nothing proved against Strafford. As the court broke up Charles and Strafford looked at each other across the Hall. The King laughed.

In other respects Charles had less reason for satisfaction and little room for manoeuvre, and his thoughts turned to the army in the North, still not disbanded and still only partly paid. When on March 6 £10,000, previously assigned to the English army, was handed over to the Scots, discontent was ready to take positive form. Edmund Verney, with the army, writing to his brother Ralph, with the Parliament, two days later, depicted a dangerous situation: 'The horse . . . will not muster till they are paid. If the foot do the like . . . believe me, it can tend to no less than a general mutiny.' Two groups of people were preparing to take advantage of this situation. In the army Henry Percy, the brother of Northumberland, was the leader of a group of officers who prepared a letter embodying their grievances which was presented first to Northumberland and then to the King. In London two courtiers, the Queen's favourite, Henry Jermyn, and the poet Sir John Suckling, were in touch with George Goring, another friend of the Queen, who had recently been appointed Governor of Plymouth. Their wild scheme involved bringing the army to London and securing the Tower while Goring used Plymouth to receive the aid the Queen expected from the Continent.

Charles and his wife were both aware of what was going on, and Charles engineered a meeting between the two groups. But they were completely incompatible and Charles's worst fears were realized. 'All these ways are vain and foolish!', he exclaimed, 'and I will think of them no more.' Goring, in frustration, disclosed the so-called 'army plot' to Members of the House of Lords on April 1, but it is likely that rumour had already been at work. With fears of an army plot spread-

ing and their case against Strafford halting, the opposition once more took stock of its position. The words were spoken by Essex but they were Pym's too, and those of his associates: 'Stone dead hath no fellow.' Since the charge of treason looked like faltering they would obtain the death penalty against Strafford by the savage procedure of a Bill of Attainder, which required no more formality than the passage of an Act of Parliament. It was Haselrig who drew the Bill from his pocket, ready prepared, on the evening of the 10th — the opposition's reply to the King's laughter. To obtain votes for this procedure Pym produced his own copy of young Vane's copy of his father's scribbled notes taken in the agitated meeting of the Scottish Committee ten months earlier. Confusion surrounded the whereabouts of the original copy and the original document itself, though the elder Vane maintained it had been burnt on the King's command. What was certain was that in the copy which Pym now produced the impression was conveyed that Strafford was reported as saying that the Irish army could be used here  — in England — to subdue this country . No one could remember exactly how the minute had read before.

While this document of Pym's was being used as evidence first in the House of Commons and then in the House of Lords, in the main trial itself the final defence had yet to be heard. When on April 13 Strafford came again to Westminster Hall to make his last speech the Bill of Attainder had already been presented to the Commons by Haselrig. It made little difference that Strafford's defence was clear and eloquent and that for two hours he tore down article after article of the charge made against him; that he was able to show that so far from committing any treason he had always acted in accordance with the laws and traditions of his country. He warned his hearers: 'These gentlemen tell me they speak in defence of the commonweal against my arbitrary laws; give me leave to say that I speak in defence of the commonweal against their arbitrary treason.' The power was now with the opposition and when the Bill of Attainder was put to the vote in the Commons on April 20 it passed by 204 votes to 59.

It needed courage to be one of the 59. Outside the House as well as within, the opposition had worked up a furious dislike of Strafford, and all who supported him. The apprentices, always ready for a riot, were streaming day after day from the City to Westminster and were joined by older and more sober citizens all crying for the blood of Strafford. Notable among those who dared to confront the Commons and its allies was young George Digby, son of the Earl of Bristol. With

his father's insight, but with more than his father's passion, he risked his life in telling Pym openly in the House that the piece of paper he had copied from young Vane's copy of his father's garbled notes was no evidence against Strafford: no one, he pointed out, not even old Sir Henry himself, would say categorically that the Earl had offered to bring over an Irish army to subdue England. Digby was supported by the Member for Windsor who was courageous enough to warn the Commons that if they passed the Bill they would 'commit murder with the sword of justice'. Evidence of the deliberate policy of intimidation practised by the House was the posting up in London and Westminster of a list of the names of those who voted against the Bill with the superscription: 'These are the Straffordians, enemies of justice, betrayers of their country.' Digby survived the attack upon him but the Member for Windsor was expelled the House.

Charles remained confident, even after this vote, and on the following day wrote to Strafford. 'I cannot satisfy myself in honour or conscience', he said, 'without assuring you now, in the midst of your troubles, that, upon the word of a king, you shall not suffer in life, honour, or fortune.' But the opposition would not be deflected now, and in order to make sure of the Lords a gigantic petition was engineered said to bear 20,000 signatures, which on April 24 was brought to Westminster by the customary noisy crowd calling for vengeance upon Strafford. Two days later the House of Lords gave the Bill its first reading and the following day, the 27th, passed it a second time. At this eleventh hour there appeared signs that Charles was taking action. Cottington resigned as Chancellor of the Exchequer, it was rumoured that the post was being offered to Pym, and that the Earl of Bedford would become Lord Treasurer and lead a group of moderate men acceptable both to Charles and to Parliament. Charles had two interviews with Pym of which nothing leaked out. But this revival of an earlier scheme came to nothing. Pym refused the proferred post, Bedford was taken ill and died shortly afterwards, leaving the moderates with no strong leader. In view of all he had said and done Pym was bound to refuse office at this point. Bedford, but for his death, might well have accepted and brought into the ambit of government the peers recently appointed to the Privy Council. For exclusion from office and influence had been one of their chief grievances and, even at this late stage, Charles might have made amends. He lost heavily by Bedford's death and might have pondered whether earlier conciliatory action might not have altered the sequence of events.

At the same time Charles was engaged in yet another plot, this time to engineer Strafford's flight. The Earl himself seems to have agreed to the plan and offered £20,000 to Sir William Balfour, the Lieutenant of the Tower, to connive at his escape while his faithful secretary, Guildford Slingsby, waited at Tilbury with a ship ready to sail. The plan was frustrated by Balfour's loyalty to Parliament, and by the 28th news of the attempted escape was flying round Westminster and the City. Charles chose the same day to make an extraordinary announcement in person to the House of Lords, telling them that he intended to keep the Irish army in being until the English and Scottish forces were disbanded. It was inevitable that the announcement should bring with it some of the overtones of Strafford's alleged assertion of the previous year: was it bravado on the King's part? Was it a threat? The House looked askance at the King. Charles sat for some time looking around him as though expecting some support 'but there was not one man gave him the least hum or colour of plaudit to his speech', wrote one who was there, and the King left the House. If it did anything Charles's statement reinforced the case against Strafford. On the following day Oliver St John, speaking in favour of the Bill of Attainder, argued that 'it was never accounted either cruelty or foul play to knock foxes and wolves on the head . . . because they be beasts of prey'.

Charles now employed two contradictory tactics. He was persuaded by his supporters and by Strafford himself that he might be able to put in the right plea to Parliament for the Earl's life. It was a delicate situation that needed careful handling. There was already a core of 'Straffordians' in the Houses and in spite of the army plot and other rumours that Pym was assiduously nursing there was a middle group that might be won if Strafford were shorn of all power. Charles went to Parliament on May 1 and, as he had so often done, he misjudged the situation. He promised, indeed, that he would never employ Strafford again in any capacity. He assured his hearers that no one had ever advised him to bring the Irish army to England or to change even the least of the laws of England. But he made no attempt to speak against the Attainder Bill, to question the constitutional issues it raised, to point out the dangers of such a Bill being used as a precedent. Nor did he refer to Strafford's defence or to the extent to which the case against him had failed or succeeded. Instead Charles made a personal appeal concerning his own conscience, which, he said in effect, would not allow him to sign Strafford's death warrant, and

he begged his hearers to relieve him of the dilemma he was in: he was not asking for Strafford's release from the death penalty, but for his own release from a matter of conscience.

Strafford heard of the speech with resignation and no hope. Laud was saddened. The speech, he later wrote, 'displeased mightily and I verily think hastened the Earl's death'. On the same day Charles attempted to infiltrate the Tower guard with his own men, but again the Lieutenant frustrated his intentions and immediately informed the Parliamentary leaders. The state of uncertainty and alarm was not only for Parliament itself — was it to be dissolved? Would Charles use force against it? — but was felt in a deep uncertainty over the City as a whole, where business and trade had virtually stopped in the general confusion, men hardly knowing who was their leader and what was the position of the King. Charles himself was distraught. His mind was partly on other things. For if the life of Strafford was important so also was the fortune of his eldest daughter who was due to be married the following day to Prince William of Orange.

The Prince had arrived on March 13 with 400 gentlemen attendants and was staying at Arundel House. He had been officially welcomed by the Earl of Lindsey at Gravesend and had been brought to Whitehall where he was met by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York who conducted him to their parents and other members of the family; it was noted that the Queen and Princesses would not let him kiss them, presumably because he was not of sufficiently high rank. But he and Mary were immediately attracted to each other — like another young couple 27 years before — and Mary very soon allowed herself to be kissed. She and her mother took some interest in her clothes. The wedding could not be so grand as her aunt's had been, even though that was held under the shadow of her uncle's death, but her dress was of silver, round her auburn hair and her throat were ropes of pendant pearls, her long train was carried by attendants dressed in white. Her bridegroom was bright and gallant in a suit of rich pink velvet and satin. From a curtained recess in the chapel at Whitehall Henrietta-Maria watched the simple Protestant ceremony and saw Charles give his daughter away. The marriage was popular with the people, yet nothing demonstrates more clearly the desperate straits to which Charles had been reduced than this marriage of his eldest daughter whose terms, and the very person of the bride herself, had been dictated by the Dutch. To add to the incongruity of the

occasion the Elector Palatine had arrived unexpectedly on the same day as the Prince, to the dismay of the King and Queen, claiming that the Princess had been promised to him. He sulked in his room during the wedding ceremony.

Henrietta-Maria walked with her children in the park that afternoon as a substitute for the celebrations that would normally have followed. In the evening she went through the accepted ritual of undressing the little girl and putting her to bed in the presence of her father, her brothers and sisters and members of the Court. The bridegroom was then brought in by the Prince of Wales and Charles led him to the bed to kiss the bride. He was allowed to lie with her for half an hour with the drapes of the bed open and in the presence of the courtiers. The marriage was then pronounced consummated and William spent the rest of the night in Charles's room where, it was said, the King made much of him.^[1]

Henrietta's delight in pageantry and the masque should have had ample scope in the marriage of her eldest daughter. The intrigue in which she was indulging was possibly something of a substitute for here she could combine the drama of play-acting with what she believed was positive assistance to her husband. While Strafford's trial and her daughter's wedding preparations were proceeding she was making clandestine appointments with various members of the opposition, hoping to influence them, descending by back stairs and the light of a single candle to her rendezvous. Not surprisingly the news of such meetings soon got about and did no good to Strafford, to her husband, nor to her own reputation. The crowds were continuing to flock day after day to Westminster and Whitehall and after two big demonstrations on the 3rd and 4th demanding the life of Strafford the Earl himself wrote to the King absolving him from any promise he had made to save him. On the 5th Pym opportunely disclosed, officially, the details of the army plot, intimating that the Queen intended to go to Portsmouth to await French forces while the King went North to take command of his troops. On the 6th Jermyn, Suckling and others concerned fled the country. On the 8th the Lords gave the Bill of Attainder its third reading by 26 votes to 19 — an appallingly thin House and a shockingly small majority and evidence of considerable support for Strafford. But how could Charles make use of it?

The Bill of Attainder now came before Charles for the most momentous decision of his life. Many of his supporters had fled; the London populace was seething not only in the streets and in

Westminster but round the Queen's apartments in Whitehall; rumours of her backstairs intrigues had now swollen to include charges of infidelity with Henry Jermyn. Again it was being said that Parliament would impeach the Queen if Strafford was not surrendered. Charles called his bishops to him. They were divided. His Council advised him to yield. The opposition let it be known that, even if he refused his consent to the Bill, Strafford would still die. The Judges, when questioned, alleged they held Strafford guilty of treason. Henrietta-Maria lost some of her defiance and was reduced to tears of frustration and fear. Through the night of the 8th there was panic in the City and in the King's household. Charles, after all, had Strafford's letter of release. Should he use it? On the evening of the 9th he gave way and signed with tears in his eyes. The news was carried to Strafford. In spite of his letter he was incredulous and the statement had to be repeated. 'Put not your trust in princes nor in the sons of men for in them there is no salvation', he cried out in his anguish. The news was carried to Laud in his room in the same fortress.

Charles took the one remaining action that was possible and sent the Prince of Wales with a letter to the House of Lords begging mercy for Strafford: not, indeed, pardon but the commutation of the death penalty to life imprisonment. The boy, who was still outside factional strife, would be a better instrument than his father. But it was a strangely abject letter, not seeming to expect compliance. The postscript: 'If he must die, it were charity to reprieve him till Saturday' was an abandonment of hope and was disregarded. The Earl of Strafford was beheaded on Tower Hill on the morning of 12 May 1641 in front of a concourse of some 100,000 people very few of whom expressed anything but satisfaction at the sight. One of the few was John Evelyn who recorded in his diary that he saw 'the fatal stroke which sever'd the wisest head in England from the shoulders of the Earle of Strafford; whose crimes coming under the cognizance of no human law, a new one was made'.^[2]

28—
The Last of London

Throughout the spring and summer of 1641 the Commons continued their work of tearing down the edifice of personal government. It was important to deprive the King of extra-Parliamentary sources of income, and in the Tonnage and Poundage Bill to which he was ironically compelled to acquiese on June 22 he agreed to forego forever the right to levy customs duties without consent of Parliament, that consent being given in the first place for a period of two months. The machinery through which he had governed without Parliament was demolished with frenetic speed, the courts of Star Chamber of High Commission and the Councils of the North and of Wales being abolished on a single day, July 5. The taxation he had imposed through these bodies was declared illegal a month later; on August 7 all ship-money proceedings were annulled, the verdict against Hampden was declared null and void, the boundaries of forests were restored to their limits at the end of James's reign; three days later knighthood fines were declared illegal. Charles had no weapons with which to resist, no machinery of government or administration to set his will in motion, no money to give him independence, no army except those troublesome units that still stood under arms in the North and were as likely to support Parliament as himself. Moreover, together with Strafford's Attainder, there had come before him for signature a Bill which precluded the dissolution of Parliament without its own consent. Now, indeed, he was truly in the snare he had laboured so long to avoid.

Religion the Commons had barely touched, apart from releasing the Puritan martyrs, and the Root and Branch petition still lay undiscussed. Even the impeachment of Laud, and he lay half-forgotten in the Tower, was as much for his civil as for his religious offences. But Parliament had acted against the Queen's Catholic priests and forced

Charles on June 25 to dismiss Rossetti, the last of the line of Papal envoys to reside at Court. On the following day Rossetti had a long interview with the Queen, during part of which Charles was present. The King, Rossetti reported to Rome, talked more like a Catholic than a Protestant, promising, if ever he was again in control of his kingdom, to treat the Catholics with all possible leniency. When they were alone Henrietta-Maria repeated to Rossetti, as she had done before, that Charles was not disinclined to the Catholic faith, but was 'timid', 'slow', and 'irresolute in action'. She assured the envoy that whatever promises a King of England made to his Parliament under compulsion he was not bound to keep.^[1] Parliament may have suspected something of this attitude, though Charles himself would not have put the matter so bluntly, even to himself. To guard against such a possibility it was necessary to prevent the King from getting control of any armed force, and on the day that he consented to dismiss Rossetti he was also obliged to consent to the disbandment of those Northern armies whose existence, poor as they were, had been his only comfort.

Charles had already made up his mind to go to Scotland and now it was necessary to go as quickly as possible before disbandment took place. Parliament was suspicious but could find no good reason, or no good way, of preventing the King from journeying to his northern kingdom when he had agreed with the Scottish Commissioners in London, in his one outstandingly good move, to be present in the Scottish Parliament to pass the Act of Pacification which would formally end the war between the two kingdoms. Undoubtedly Charles had more subtle reasons for undertaking the journey; he could make contact with his own army in the North, he probably hoped for some support among the Scots, he was anxious to get away from the English Parliament and possibly thought that from a distance he might see matters in perspective. Basically the need for physical activity was important. It was still true that he was at his best when active and less prone to the uncertainties of intellectual decision. This was one reason why hunting was so good, why he had flourished and blossomed during the Spanish adventure, in spite of its bitterness. Let him but get away from the endless talk of Parliament, the religious controversy of Roman Catholic and Sectarian, let him feel a good horse under him, putting mile after mile between himself and the suffocating capital, and all might yet be well.

The proposed visit took on more the nature of a plot since his wife was at the same time talking of a journey. Henrietta had had her own

experience of intrigue and although it had come to nothing it had given her the taste for what was basic to her nation and to her own character. Now she had plans for proceeding to the Continent with the Crown jewels and raising support for Charles in Holland or France. Parliament was suspicious when it heard she thought of going to Spa for her health and asked for the views of Doctor Mayerne. The doctor was a good professional man, besides being the royal physician, and could only give his opinion that her physical health did not justify the journey, though mentally she was much troubled: it would have been more in keeping with his profession if he had declined to discuss his patient's health at all. With Parliament about to prohibit her journey the Queen abandoned her immediate plans with a certain grace and tact though she was far from giving up the idea of seeking help abroad.

By the end of July, though Parliament had had its way with the Queen, it had not been able to do more than delay the King's departure for Scotland. This was, indeed, one of the few occasions when he stood firm and he left on Tuesday afternoon, August 10, after approving a Bill embodying the treaty with the Scots and a final payment to the Scottish armies of £220,000. A somewhat discomfited House of Commons appointed Parliamentary Commissioners to follow him, presumably to keep an eye on his activities. His nephew, the Palatine, accompanied him, as well as Lennox, Hamilton, Vane, and Endymion Porter who, besides being Groom of the Bedchamber, now sat in Parliament for Droitwich. His wife was to see her mother embarked for Holland, the situation having at last proved too much for the old Queen. Her departure was a source of satisfaction to Charles who sent her off under the escort of Arundel with all honours. With her departure and the legislation of the summer he had little fear of mob violence against his family during his absence, though he arranged that Henrietta-Maria should reside at Oatlands, well away from any likely source of trouble, with the children either with her or at nearby Richmond.

His journey was quite a success. Not only the English army but the Scots round Newcastle greeted him with enthusiasm and he reciprocated by promising an earldom to Leslie. The Scottish army crossed back into Scotland on the agreed day, Charles ratified such Bills as the Scottish Parliament required, and attended their Presbyterian services with a show of devotion, listening to their sermons and singing

psalms after the Scottish fashion. He believed he had won their support and wrote to Henrietta that 5000 foot and 1000 horse were to remain at his disposal from Leslie's army. But Porter was not so sure; 'his majesties businesses', he wrote to Edward Nicholas, 'runn in the wonted channell, suttle designes of gaineing the popular opinion and weake executions for the uphowlding of monarkie! The King is yet perswaded to howld owte, but within twoo or three dayes must yeld to all; and here are legislators that knowe howe to handle him . . .'^[2] Endymion Porter, the dilettante, the art collector, lover of gardens, trusted emissary, Groom of the Bedchamber, who never aspired to, and never held, political office, had learned to know his friend and master. The 'subtle design', the 'weak execution', the ultimate yielding were all too typical of a King who was never able, in time of crisis, to match intent, which was often over-subtle, with action, which was too often untimely or unrealistic. These faults of character, which had not shown during the personal rule when he was unopposed, were now relentlessly exposed.

The second strategem Charles was setting in motion was in Ireland, where he had hopes of winning the as yet undisbanded Irish army to his cause on the promise of religious liberty. Parliament was nervously listening, a prey to rumours that their leaders were to be seized. They were having difficulty in holding their forces together, for Members were not used to long absences from their homes. The initial enthusiasm for a Parliament died away with the expense of living in London, the discomfort of the hot summer, and the mounting plague deaths. At home, on the other hand, the harvest was ready to be gathered, and a multitude of domestic affairs cried out for attention. By the end of August only some dozen Peers and eighty Parliament men remained in their places. Parliament accepted the situation and adjourned from September 8 until October 20. Its leaders continued to watch the Queen closely, and it was said that she and her children were hostages for the King's good behaviour. Part of her time she spent profitably and blamelessly enough in writing to her husband's supporters to be sure to be in their places when Parliament reassembled, part less discreetly with the French Ambassador and her Catholic friends, indulging in talk of 10,000 men who would rise in her husband's support.

Charles was writing to her at least three times a week from Scotland, mainly through Edward Nicholas. Nicholas had been secretary to the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports and so came under the

notice of Buckingham who advanced him to the secretaryship of the Admiralty. After the Duke's death the Commissioners of the Admiralty kept Nicholas in office until Northumberland took over the Admiralty in 1636 when Nicholas became clerk of the Privy Council and so more directly under Charles's notice than before. The King obviously liked him, he had been efficient and painstaking in dealing with the ship-money correspondence, and he had Catholic leanings. He wrote careful, full, and regular despatches to Charles while the King was in Scotland and when plague in London became menacing he moved to his country house, near Oatlands, where he was close to the Queen. He was the chief medium of communication between Charles and his wife while the King was away and Charles's marginal notes and instructions on Nicholas's letters make clear how much he was coming to rely upon his wife for advice and information. He instructed Nicholas to write to those Parliament men sympathetic to him to be in their places when the Houses reassembled — 'my wife', he wrote, 'will give you the names'. He wished to sell or to renew the pawn upon a 'great collar of rubies' and instructed Nicholas to go to his wife for details.

Charles continued to honour the Scots, Argyle becoming a Marquis, Hamilton receiving a dukedom, and he made no move to return to London. He could not come so soon as he wished, he wrote to Nicholas, but there was 'necessity' in it. 'I hope that many will miss of their ends', he added gleefully; 'all their desynes hit not', he scribbled in the margin of another letter, 'and I hope before all be done that they shall miss of more'. Nicholas reported meantime that the opposition was hard at work. Their meeting place was Lord Mandeville's house in Chelsea and here they prepared for the next Parliamentary session and devised schemes for maintaining public opinion on their side. The Parliamentary committees that remained in session during the recess were under their control. Charles's written comment in the margin of the letter ran: 'It were not amiss that some of my servants met lykewais to countermynd ther Plots, to which end speake with my Wyfe and receave her directions.' His spirits were clearly high, and he was obviously immersed in some scheme which was giving him satisfaction. When at last he was ready to leave his return was as carefully planned as any opposition manoeuvre.^[3] The gentry and freeholders of Hertfordshire came to meet him at Ware, Charles stopped in the town for 'the better sort' to kiss his hand, while he talked to the rest. They then accompanied him to Theobalds where

he was met by his wife and children. But more important than this show of support was the genuine swing of feeling in Charles's favour. In the City a Royalist mayor and Common Council had replaced the outgoing opposition members; the people as a whole were thankful that the Scots had gone home, they were weary of the taxation which Parliament had necessarily to impose, they were disturbed by the interruption to business and trade caused by the uncertain situation. Most of the King's 'evil counsellors' were dead, imprisoned, or fled; the money-raising devices of the personal government were ended; those who thought about such matters were satisfied with the constitutional government which had come into being. Now, it seemed, the King would be welcomed back — still monarch, but in such a position that even the most evil influence could not affect the people's liberties. The fiction that the King himself could do no wrong made it easier and the enthusiastic welcome accorded to Charles as he rode into London with his family on November 24 was not entirely due to careful planning. They all attended a banquet at Guildhall and proceeded to Whitehall by torchlight amid cheering crowds. Charles thanked the citizens in a short speech and promised to govern 'according to the laws of this kingdom, and in maintaining and protecting the true Protestant religion'. He would care for the prosperity of the City and, in particular, would 'study to re-establish that flourishing trade which now is in some disorder amongst you'. The day after his return he knighted Edward Nicholas at Whitehall and on the 27th appointed him Secretary of State.

Charles's mysterious activities in Scotland, the swing of public opinion in London, upset the opposition. It was a measure of Pym's uncertainty that, instead of advancing to a new position, he found it necessary to go back over old ground and, shortly after Parliament reassembled, to bring forward for discussion a document which had been lying on the table since the previous November. The Grand Remonstrance on the state of the kingdom consisted, broadly, of three parts: a statement of grievances; an enumeration of the measures which had dealt with them; and a series of further demands. It was a clever document in many ways. To draw attention to achievements is always a good preparation for further action, and its content was sufficiently mixed to make opposition to the document as a whole difficult, even in respect of the new measures proposed. These concerned two of the thorniest questions left for solution: the settlement

of religion which had barely been touched upon; and the control of the armed forces, including the milita, which had been considered but without a decision being reached. To bring both issues forward in this way at the end of a long document which could hardly be controversial was bound to raise suspicions of trying to rush Parliament. In general, the impression left by the Grand Remonstrance was not one of strength but of weakness, and this was confirmed by the debates themselves and by the voting. The Grand Remonstrance received a majority in the Commons of only eleven votes, being carried on November 22, two days before Charles's return to London, by 159 votes to 148. But not until 3 o'clock in the morning was the small majority achieved, and then it passed so tumultuously, wrote a Member, 'I thought we had all sat in the valley of the shadow of death, ready to catch each other's locks and sheath our swords in each other's bowels.'^[4]

As Pym had expected it was the religious clauses of the Grand Remonstrance which aroused most opposition, and a neutral clause proposing that church matters should be settled by a Synod of Divines drawn from England and other Protestant communities in Europe fell flat. Charles's reply on December 10 that religion should be observed as it was established by Elizabeth I and his father found a far more ready acceptance. But more immediately vital to the opposition was the control of the militia and the trained bands. They had no real hold upon the machinery of government unless they controlled the armed force which, in the last resort, lies behind government. Religion might be shelved, but, whatever the voting on the Grand Remonstrance, the control of the armed forces must be secured. To this end the support of the House of Lords was necessary and here the Bishops' votes had become of crucial importance. A Bishops' Exclusion Bill had been laid aside in October but was now revived. Charles swore he would never deprive the Bishops of the votes to which they were entitled under the ancient constitution of the realm.

The opposition was fumbling and Charles was beginning to assume the initiative when events in Ireland took a hand. When news broke on November 1 that the Irish were in revolt, Parliament immediately seized the opportunity to give out that the rebellion was fomented by the Roman Catholics, the Pope, and the Queen. Fear of the papacy reached panic proportions in England as stories of atrocities, true and untrue, came out of Ireland. An alleged Catholic plot to massacre English Protestants and establish the Pope in England

was uncovered. Parliament voted that the Popish religion should no longer be tolerated in any part of the King's dominions. The Irish rebellion did irreparable harm to Charles's cause. it 'made a wonderful impression upon the minds of men, and proved of infinite disadvantage to the King's affairs, which were then recovering new life', as a contemporary wrote.

Meanwhile elections in the City of London unseated the royalist mayor and Council and Pym was driving home his advantage by working up demonstrations against the Bishops and the Queen. Predictably, Charles reacted strongly, as he always did when Henrietta-Maria was concerned, and on December 23 he sought once more to get control of the Tower of London by replacing the opposition Lieutenant with his own man, Colonel Lunsford. His position would have been stronger if he had selected someone else. Lunsford's reputation as a bully and bravado gave him little credence as a man of goodwill, even among Charles's own supporters, and three days later Charles was compelled to climb down and dismiss him.

Agitation for the dismissal of Lunsford coincided with well worked-up demonstrations before the House of Lords against the Bishops, who were manhandled to such good purpose that on December 28 all but two stayed away. George Digby, who had been raised to the peerage as Lord Digby, moved that the House was acting under duress and should remove to a place of greater safety. Though the argument was superficially reasonable the Lords realized that this was a two-edged weapon. Could not 'duress' invalidate much of the legislation already passed? They refused passage to Digby's motion, but by four votes only. When the Bishops returned to their places it was with a Protestation maintaining that measures passed in their absence were invalid, which implied that Digby's motion still stood. The implied threat to Parliament's legislation alarmed moderate as well as more extreme opinion; perhaps rumours of the Queen's rash statement to Rossetti, that the King was not bound to honour commitments made under duress, had reached Westminster. Pym, as usual, dramatized the situation when the Bishops' Protest was sent to the Commons from the Lords on December 30. He called for doors to be locked and the City trained bands to be sent for while he castigated the documents as of 'high and dangerous consequence' and called for the impeachment of the Bishops. The Lords sequestered them and sent all but the two oldest and most infirm to the Tower.

The year 1642 began in the utmost confusion. The general uncer-

tainty was reflected in sparsely attended Parliamentary sittings. Charles, intent on subduing the Irish rebellion by his own means, was recruiting into his service officers disbanded from the northern armies. In an effort to restrain riotous citizens he commanded gentlemen of the Court to wear swords and he set a guard at Whitehall Gate. The Lords asked for protection against the citizens, Pym refused to do anything to stop the people expressing their 'just desires' in any way they chose, and there were fresh rumours of the impeachment of the Queen for communicating with the Irish rebels. In such an atmosphere Charles's constitutional moves in appointing two 'moderates' to office made no impact. Falkland as Secretary of State and Culpepper as Chancellor of the Exchequer could now do little good. Impelled by fears for the safety of the Queen he put into motion the plan he had been hatching in Scotland.

He sincerely believed in the evidence he had gathered there against leading members of the opposition. He thought they had conspired to bring the Scottish armies into England to serve their own ends and that the long train of events that followed had been deliberately planned. He also believed that he could substantiate the case against them, that it would be upheld by the Judges, and that their fall would topple their party and leave him with a Parliament he could control. Such, at least, is the kind of reasoning that drove him to the action he now took. First he declared through the Attorney General that five Members of the House of Commons and one Member of the House of Lords were guilty of treason and he sent a herald to the House of Commons to demand that the five be handed over to his custody. The House of Commons naturally refused to comply with the King's command as being an interference with Parliamentary privilege. It is strange that Charles had not considered such a possibility. After a night of vaccillation he was still doubtful what to do when Henrietta-Maria's words stung him to action. 'Go, you coward!', she cried, 'and pull these rogues out by the ears, or never see my face more.' Charles hurried to his guardroom, calling in a loud voice for his loyal subjects and soldiers to follow him. They needed no second bidding, and with 500 armed men behind him and the young Elector Palatine at his side, he flung himself down the stairs of his palace and into a private coach which happened to be at the gate, commanding it to take him to Westminster, while his soldiers and others, swollen to a great crowd, followed on foot. 'In an hour', he threw over his shoulder to his wife, the deed would be done. Striding through Westminster

Hall he bade his followers wait there while he proceeded to the Commons' Chamber with only the Elector at his side. The Members were standing bareheaded as the King, restraining his anger, stepped over the threshold of the Assembly that no monarch had looked upon before. Charles walked slowly to the Speaker's chair, looking to right and to left. He soon perceived that the accused were not in their places. 'Gentlemen', he said, seeking for certainty, 'you must know that in cases of treason no person hath a privilege; and therefore I am come to know if any of those persons that were accused are here.' Then, turning to Speaker Lenthall, 'Are any of these persons in the House?', he asked again. The Speaker, Charles's own choice for the office, fell on his knees and humbly begged the King's pardon, but he had no comfort to offer. 'I have', he said, 'neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here.' The privilege of Parliament could not have been more succinctly expressed. Though humbly spoken it was spoken to the King's face and left him nonplussed. Charles looked round again, 'I see the birds are flown', he said, and left the chamber with the cry of 'Privilege, Privilege!' sounding behind him. Charles's carefully planned counter-attack had failed. Clearly the Commons had been warned in time for the five Members to slip away from Westminster by river to the City and it was useless to speculate how the betrayal, for such it seemed, had occurred. Henrietta-Maria later took the blame upon herself. She was watching the clock, she said, mindful of her husband's last words and at the end of an hour sprang up on impulse crying out that the deed was now done! Lady Carlyle, who was sitting with her, realized the import of the words. Besides her family connections with the opposition, she had an association with Pym, closer, it was rumoured, than friendship, and she sent a messenger with all speed to the Commons to warn them of the King's coming. Charles had been delayed on his way by the crowds who thronged round his coach, he took some time to walk through Westminster Hall with his followers around him and arrived just too late. His wife's impulsive words, as she believed, had 'ruined' him. But 'never', she said years later, 'did he treat me for a moment with less kindness than before it happened'.^[5]

The following day Charles went to Guildhall to demand from the City the persons of five Members, but his unprecedented entry into the House of Commons had put him in the wrong and the cries of 'Liberty of Parliament' which greeted him had more than usual

justification. As he came away someone threw into his coach a paper containing the words: 'To thy tents, O, Israel!' His heralds proclaimed the six impeached Members to be traitors while his armed soldiers and courtiers at Whitehall became more aggressive. The City trained bands stood ready to defend the privileges of Parliament and Philip Skippon, an experienced soldier, was appointed their Sergeant-major General. Arms were distributed to the people, the shops remained shut, the Thames watermen offered to defend Parliament, John Hampden announced that thousands of his Buckinghamshire men were on their way to Westminster with a petition. The House of Lords stood with the Commons and the name of Henrietta-Maria was once more bandied about. The Irish revolt was spoken of as 'the Queen's rebellion'. Whatever else he feared, whatever else he had in mind, it was anxiety for his wife that impelled Charles to action. He feared they would take her from him, he told the Dutch representative at Court. It was merely a minor irritant that he knew the six impeached men were to return to Westminster in triumph on January 11, but it perhaps determined him to leave the day before. After much discussion he had persuaded his Council and most of his influential courtiers to support this move though Holland, Essex and Lady Carlyle sought desperately to change his mind. On 10 January 1642 Charles left London with his family for Hampton Court. So great had been the confusion of rumour, so swift the current of events, that nothing had been prepared for them and they spent the night in one room. When they awoke next morning it was to the knowledge that this was Parliament's day of triumph, signalized as only London knew how with flags flying, bands playing, watermen plying their gaily decked boats, apprentices, trained bands, citizens and Parliament men all celebrating the return to Parliament of the men the King had attempted to impeach. Among the friends who accompanied the King was Endymion Porter. A few days later he wrote to his wife. 'Whither we go, and what we are able to do, I know not, for I am none of the Council. My duty and loyalty have taught me to follow my King and master, and by the grace of God nothing shall divert me from it . . . I wish sweet Tom with me, for the King and Queen are forced to lie with their children now, and I envy their happiness.'^[6]

It was resolved between the King and Queen that she should leave the country, her excuse being the need to take Princess Mary to her husband in Holland. On February 23 Henrietta-Maria and her daughter sailed from Dover, taking the Crown jewels with them. This time

Parliament made no objection. Mary was pleased enough to be joining her husband, but to the rest to the family the parting was deep sorrow. The children wept at losing their mother and their sister, Charles and Henrietta-Maria could hardly tear themselves apart. Not only they but most of their following were in tears. Charles galloped along the cliffs to see the last of his wife's vessel, as he had ridden to see her incoming sails fifteen years before. When he turned at last he was marked with sorrow: 'They have left the King to his loneliness and deeply moved.'^[7]