PART V—
CIVIL WAR

29—
The King's Standard Unfurled

When Charles turned at last from the coast he made his way to his wife's palace at Greenwich and sent for his eldest son. Parliament wanted to separate them but Charles was firm, not only through affection but because he knew the political value of the Prince of Wales. Two issues were on his mind: the Bishops' Exclusion Bill and the Militia Bill. He had agreed on February 13, as a matter of policy, to the exclusion of bishops from the House of Lords but took his stand on the immediately vital question of the militia. His wife was safe and, as he said to Hyde, 'now that I have gotten Charles, I care not what answer I send them', and he refused to surrender his power of granting commissions for the raising of troops. At the same time there was a necessity, if help was to be received from the Continent, of securing a seaport. Hull, Newcastle, Berwick appealed to him since in the North he was more likely to win support than nearer London, but he also had his eye on Portsmouth. Before he left Greenwich he commanded that his bust by Bernini should be brought in from the garden where it stood. As it was being carried towards the house, face upward, a bird dunged upon it and the stain, according to the servants, turned the colour of blood and could not be erased.

Charles's refusal to pass the Militia Bill and his journey northward, which he began on March 3, alarmed Parliament. On the same day, using the procedure they had learned while Charles was in Scotland, they converted the Militia Bill into an Ordinance, enforceable by contempt proceedings, which put the militia into the hands of Lords Lieutenants, whom they appointed themselves. Four days later Charles was at Newmarket where a Parliamentary deputation reached him seeking for a compromise. They carried with them a Declaration of Both Houses which expressed their fears and asked for the King's return to London. Alterations in religion had been schemed by those

in greatest authority about him, the document claimed, the wars with Scotland as well as the Irish rebellion having been fomented to this end. The document hardly breathed the spirit of compromise and Charles was aghast at what he termed the 'strange and unexpected' nature of the charges against him. 'God in his good time,' he exclaimed with passion, would 'discover the secrets and Bottoms of all Plots and Treasons: and then I shall stand right in the Eyes of my People.'

'What would you have?', he demanded, as he had done so many times before. 'Have I violated your laws? Have I denied to pass any Bill for the Ease and Security of my Subjects?'

When Holland murmured 'the militia' Charles retorted 'That was no Bill!' and when Pembroke begged him to grant the militia for a limited period, Charles exclaimed, 'My God!, Not for an hour!'. 'You have asked that of me', he added, 'was never asked of any King.'

When Pembroke pressed the point, saying that the King's intention was unclear, Charles rounded upon him in anger. 'I would whip a boy in Westminster school', he exclaimed, 'who could not tell that by my answers!'^[1]

Two days later he gave practical shape to his intentions by the issue of Commissions of Array which directed the trained bands to place themselves at his disposal. Henceforth Militia Ordinance and Commission of Array stood in opposition, calling upon people to take their choice between Parliament and King.

On March 15 another step was taken on the road to war when Parliament instructed Northumberland to yield the command of the fleet to the Puritan Earl of Warwick. Northumberland was a weak, possibly a sick man; he had Puritan leanings and Charles had not taken sufficient care to support the interests of his family in matters of Court promotion. He made no protest. Parliament predictably took no notice of Charles's order that Pennington should succeed to the command, Pennington himself was not strong enough to make a stand. Charles was reaping the reward, perhaps, of the little care which, inexplicably, he had expended upon the men who manned his ships. The rotting food, the unpaid wages, the lack of medical care, the squandered lives at Cadiz and Rhé rose up against him, and his carefully nurtured navy, his lovingly launched ships, passed to Parliament without a blow at the beginning of the conflict.

Charles continued his journey northward without haste and with little visible emotion. He stopped at Cambridge, where he visited

Trinity College and St John's, and he called once more at Little Gidding whose tranquil atmosphere broke through his defences: 'Pray, pray for my speedy and safe return', he begged on parting. When he reached York on March 19 one of his first actions was to send for his second son, James, Duke of York, who had been left at Richmond under the care of the Marquis of Hertford. Parliament made no attempt to hinder the boy's journey and in his delight at the reunion Charles created him a Knight of the Garter, as well as providing him with a guard of honour and setting off a blaze of welcoming fireworks.

Shortly afterwards James was called to duty. Hull had become Charles's immediate objective, for in this city were stored the arms left from the Scottish wars. Yet the attitude of the Governor, Sir John Hotham, who had been imprisoned by Charles in 1627 for refusing to collect a forced loan, was uncertain. Charles therefore sent the boy with his cousin, the Elector Palatine, on an ostensibly social visit to Hull which was intended to sound the feelings of the inhabitants. The young men reported on the loyalty of the city and next day, April 23, Charles advanced to request admission. To his dismay Hotham, who had been appointed by Parliament as a good Commons man, refused him entry. Charles proclaimed him a traitor and withdrew, though it is likely enough that the citizens would have followed the King against their Governor if they had been given a chance. More satisfactory was the ease with which the Yorkshire gentry provided him with a personal bodyguard, which he entrusted to the leadership of the Prince of Wales.

He was being joined now by many of the big northern landowners and their followers, including the Earl of Newcastle, Governor to the Prince of Wales, the Stanleys of Lancashire, and Lord Lindsey, the robust veteran of the Spanish Main and the Low Countries. Friends were also coming in from London and from Parliament itself. Edward Hyde, who had already shown himself a valuable counsellor, now felt he could serve the King at Westminster no longer and turned his back irrevocably upon the Parliament, bringing with him his friends Lord Falkland and Sir John Culpepper, both of whom had been appointed to the Privy Council at the beginning of 1642 in one of Charles's attempts at compromise. Falkland, in particular, was deeply distressed and undecided, yet was forced to the King's side on the religious issue.

At the beginning of June, Lord Keeper Littleton, somewhat timidly, fled to York bringing with him the Great Seal; by the middle

of the month the King's companions included Secretary Nicholas, Lord Chief Justice Bankes, and some thirty-five Peers including Salisbury, Bristol, Richmond, Bath, and Dorset, and he was holding court in York in a manner which would have delighted his wife. That he was able to do so was due to the magnificent generosity of the Earl of Worcester and his son, Lord Herbert. Charles had left Greenwich with virtually no money and no means of raising any but, as he made his way northward, Herbert contrived to secure £22,000 of the family assets which he presented to the amazed and grateful King. By July no less than a further £100,000 had been raised for their sovereign by this practical and loyal family. It was through their generosity that Charles was enabled to start recruiting as well as to live in a manner not too far removed from his normal style.

For a few months after he left London Charles was prepared to be conciliatory — at first until he knew his wife was safe and his sons were with him — and later under the moderating influence of Hyde, Falkland and Culpepper. He even agreed in early March to speak fair words concerning the five Members: 'if the breach of Privilege had been greater than hath beene ever before offered', he was persuaded to say, 'our acknowledgement and retraction hath beene greater than ever King hath given.' The King's studied moderation and Parliament's mistakes had their reward in the steady building up of a King's party. On April 29 a great concourse of people met at Blackheath to support a petition drawn up by the men of Kent and to select 280 of their number to carry it to Westminster. It was mainly concerned with religion, asking for the execution of laws against Catholics, the retention of Episcopacy, the protection of the liturgy against profanation by sectaries, and an end to the 'scandal of schismatical and seditious sermons and pamphlets'. It exactly conformed with the King's own position and Parliament's reaction was foolishly, if predictably, harsh. It sent for four of the signatories as 'offenders', imprisoned two of them and voted the petition 'scandalous'.

At the same time Charles was receiving many reasoned petitions, to which he gave reasoned replies, taking the opportunity of stating his case against Parliament. It is not unlikely that his advisers were taking a leaf out of Pym's book in engineering such an advantageous exchange of views and, just as the Kentish petition and its treatment by Parliament did great harm to his opponents, so this exercise undoubtedly also helped his cause. So did his reasoned answer to the Nineteen Propositions.

Parliament's Nineteen Propositions, the second document sent after Charles since his departure from London, reached him at York at the beginning of June. It was so patently unacceptable as to be little more than a propaganda exercise: it denied the right of the King to choose his own ministers, obliged him to accept the Militia Ordinance, to reform the Church according to the findings of a Church synod, and to place the education and marriage of his children in the hands of Parliament. Charles's first instinct was to ignore so extreme a document as being sufficiently damaging in itself to his opponents. But his advisers persuaded him otherwise and on June 8 his reply, drafted by Falkland and Culpepper, put his case with remarkable prescience.

In reaffirming his acceptance of the Triennial Act and the Act preventing the dissolution of Parliament, it confirmed his moderation; in recording his personal reactions to the Propositions it revealed the extent of Parliament's designs: if their proposals were accepted, he said,

we may be waited on bareheaded, we may have our hand kissed, the style of majesty continued to us, and the King's authority declared by both Houses of Parliament may be still the style of your commands; we may have swords and maces carried before us, and please ourself with the sight of a crown and sceptre . . . but as to true and real power, we should remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king.

The real force of the reply, however, lay in its counter-proposals. Charles did not claim a Divine Right of Kings, nor did he speak of the Prerogative. He asserted instead that the laws of the country were 'jointly made by a King, a House of Peers, and by a House of Commons chosen by the people'. In this 'regulated monarchy' government was entrusted to the King who had, consequently, the powers of choosing his advisers, of making war, and of preventing insurrection, and in whom must reside the power necessary 'to conserve the laws in their force and the subjects in their liberties and properties'. Parliament would act as a bulwark to prevent any abuse of this power, the Commons through the weapon of impeachment and the raising of supply, the Lords through their judicatory function.

By contrast, the role assigned to the monarch by the Nineteen Propositions, Charles claimed, would leave him with nothing 'but to look on', he would be unable to discharge the trust which is the end of monarchy, and there would follow a 'total subversion of the fundamental laws'. This situation would beget 'eternal factions and

dissensions', Parliament would be the recipient of such propositions as the King now had before him, until

at last the common people . . . discover . . . that all this was done by them, but not for them, and grow weary of journey work, and set up for themselves, call parity and independence liberty, devour that estate which had devoured the rest, destroy all rights and properties, all distinctions of families and merit, and by this means this splendid and excellently distinguished form of government end in a dark, equal chaos of confusion.^[2]

In this enunciation of constitutional monarchy, this accurate forecast of future developments, it is difficult not to discern the fruits of discussions at Great Tew where Falkland and Hyde, Chillingworth and Hobbes had pursued just such questions of political obligation. It did Charles's cause a great deal of good, yet in offering a concept of constitutional government far beyond anything yet envisaged as practical, it was, in a sense, offering hostages to fortune.

The Nineteen Propositions and the King's Answer were part of a war of words that had been rapidly gaining momentum since the opening of Parliament. In November 1640 Henry Parker outlined from Parliament's point of view The Case of Shipmoney , in June 1641 Parliament published a collection of Speeches and Passages in Parliament , a fat book whose perusal John Lilburne gave as one of his reasons for joining Parliament at the outbreak of war. When the King published his Answer to the Nineteen Propositions , Parker replied with Observations upon the King's Answer. Various replies then came from the King's side to Parker by such men as Dudley Digges, Thomas Morton, and Sir John Spelman. Robert Greville, Lord Brooke, whose wide humanity matched that of Falkland but who believed his path lay with Parliament, wrote his splendid plea for toleration — A Discourse opening the Nature of that Episcopacie which is exercised in England  — at the end of 1641, about the same time that Parker published the case against bishops in the Divine Right of Episcopacie truly Stated .

The statement of its case by either side implied justification. Parliament had greater need of justification than the King, for it was in the more unusual position of fighting an anointed monarch whose hereditary succession to the throne was unimpeachable. It was no Bosworth Field for which they were heading, they were not advancing a rival dynasty, but they were seeking to establish, or to reestablish, a constitution. In doing this they could either regard themselves as rebels, in which case they had to prove that their

rebellion was justified; or, if they chose not to regard themselves as rebels, they had to prove that they, that Parliament, was constitutionally and legislatively supreme. At the beginning of the struggle they sought to avoid the issue by such tortuous reasoning as that they were fighting not the King but his evil counsellors. But soon they were seeking justification in precedent no less diligently than Charles had done, relying upon the common law as expounded by Coke, upon statute law (but not recent statute law for this was too closely associated with the regime they were opposing), upon the ancient constitution, upon real or imagined history, and upon the very principles of political obligation. They selected for approval certain landmarks, particularly Magna Carta and their own Petition of Right: the former, being the more remote, was particularly useful and its clauses concerning free men and imprisonment were particularly apt. They spoke of a golden age where all men were free. They explained the need for such charters as Magna Carta by adopting the fiction of a free Anglo-Saxon society upon whom the Norman yoke had been riveted by William the Conqueror. Events subsequent to the Norman Conquest then became the winning back of lost freedoms by the people of England and the present struggle could be seen as one event — supposedly the last — in such a chain.

There still remained difficulties in deciding what was a good law and what a bad law. Pym had said, and his words were widely echoed throughout the conflict, that the law is that which puts a difference between good and evil, between right and wrong. But people could ask: whose law? and attention was turned to the 94th Psalm with its profound assertion of possible evil in the law-giver — 'he who frameth mischief by a law'. By what yard-stick should a law be judged? There were many answers, but the terms 'natural law' and 'fundamental law' began to take their places in the pamphlet literature. But what was 'natural' or 'fundamental' law? Was it always beneficial? And, if beneficial, to whom? The protagonists looked even further back than Anglo-Saxon society to a 'state of nature' whose inhabitants voluntarily abrogated their authority in favour of one or some who would act for them. Generally they thought in terms of a monarch who made a compact with his people which was repeated in the Coronation oath of subsequent kings. This brought the opposition on to surer ground. If an anointed monarch broke his coronation oath might he not be replaced, as having broken the original compact made between ruler and ruled?

At this point they had a wide literature to call upon. In the French wars of religion the question of deposing an unsatisfactory king had been widely canvassed, and though the context had been for the most part religious, the issue was much the same. The author of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos , published in 1574, asked squarely whether subjects ought to obey Princes who commanded that which was against the law of God, or whether they should resist a Prince whose actions were oppressive or ruinous to the state? It was the easier for Parliament to supply the answer since so much of their Puritan tradition was concerned with resistance first to the Pope and then to a persecuting monarch. 'Think you that subjects, having power, may resist their princes?' was the first question that Charles's grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scots, put to John Knox on their first meeting.

Behind the question of obedience lay a second, and even more profound, question: in whom does sovereign power reside? Parliament answered emphatically that it itself was sovereign and, not surprisingly, its old champion, William Prynne, weighed in heavily with a long, tortuous, and margin-ridden treatise on The Sovereign Power of Parliaments . Behind the verbiage he and others were claiming that Parliament was supreme because it was representative, but since the right to vote was vested in property owners, a considerable sleight of hand was necessary to carry through the assertion that Parliament was representative in the full sense of representing all the people.

For Charles the questions were more easily formulated and simpler to answer. He was defending his position as monarch by divine right, heredity, and anointment, holding his prerogative, 'the fairest jewel in his crown', to use in case of necessity and claiming to rest his government upon the law and his people assembled in Parliament. His contribution to the paper war was consequently smaller in volume than that of his opponents. Generally speaking, the Royalist writers agreed with the King but got into difficulties in trying to combine a semi-mystical approach to sovereignty with the recognition that the King was subject to law and that law could be made only with and through the Parliament. Nevertheless they were unequivocal in refusing to recognize a right of resistance to the sovereign by Parliament or anyone else. In any case, wrote John Bramhall in 1643, the kingdom had suffered more from resistance in one year than under all the kings and queens of England since the union of the two roses. As for the liberty which Parliamentarian supporters were claiming, this could be expressed only through the law, and then very inadequately. 'The true

debate among men', wrote Dudley Digges in The Unlawfulness of Subjects taking up arms , published in 1643, 'is not whether they shall admit of bonds, but who shall impose them. Though we naturally delight in a full and absolute liberty', he continued, 'yet the love of it is over-balanced with fears . . . that all others should enjoy the same freedom.'

The principles under discussion were of basic importance yet they brought no nearer a solution of the differences between Charles and his Parliament. But, although the drift to war was unmistakeable, no one would yet admit of such a bleak development. The pamphlet war that for a few brief months took the place of physical conflict was partly a desire for justification, but partly also an effort to avert the inevitable catastrophe. Certainty existed in the minds of only a few — and these, perhaps, were the lucky ones. Some simply wished to remain neutral in a quarrel which barely touched their lives. For others the doubts and questioning were intense and resulted in rifts that ran through Parliament, through counties, through towns, through families. Possibly half the peers had by now come into the King and about a quarter were uncommitted, leaving a quarter who were still with the opposition. Of the Commons only a minority had so far decided for him. Towns were divided, as Charles had seen at Hull. Families were divided, his Knight Marshall, Sir Edmund Verney, remaining with him while of the Verney sons one was with Parliament, the other with his father. Yet it was impossible for the two sides to remain locked in words and movement of some kind was inevitable. Predictably the incidents piled up. Militia Ordinance and Commission of Array were the most obvious points of conflict, openly juxtaposing the two sides. Lord Paget, originally a Parliament man, was driven by the Militia Ordnance to change sides:

my ends were the common good, and whilst that was prosecuted, I was ready to lay down both my life and fortune; but when I found a preparation of arms against the King under the shadow of loyalty, I rather resolved to obey a good conscience than particular ends, and am now on my way to his Majesty, where I will throw myself down at his feet, and die a loyal subject.

Religious differences, which perhaps had been tolerated amongst friends and neighbours, became more irritating; personal feuds took on a wider significance. The Earl of Warwick used the ships under his command to remove the arms stored at Hull and convey them to the

Tower of London. Charles made a further vain attempt to win over Hotham and take the town on July 17. He began to move southwards and westwards from York, assessing allegience, gathering support, collecting money and plate to convert into coin. On July 9 he appointed the Earl of Lindsey Commander-in-Chief of the forces he believed he could raise. Robert Bertie, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, had been created Earl of Lindsey for services under Buckingham at La Rochelle. He had seen energetic campaigning in Europe and adventures on the Spanish Main that smacked of successful piracy. He had made an advantageous marriage, improved his estates at Grimsthorpe Castle near Stamford, and did well out of Fen drainage. He was physically tough, outspoken, and almost boisterous in his manner. He was a good all-rounder to have as Commander-in-Chief.

Three days after Charles had made his choice Parliament named the Earl of Essex Captain General of the Parliamentarian army which, they oddly claimed, had been levied 'for the safety of the King's person, the defence of both Houses of Parliament, and of those who have obeyed their orders and commands, and for the preservation of the true religion, laws, liberties and peace of the kingdom'. Essex was brave, but lethargic. His coffin, his winding-sheet and his scutcheon accompanied him on his campaigns and he took no notice when Charles declared him a traitor.

It was now a question of a definitive act that would be a declaration of war and Charles decided to raise his standard. But where? The Lancashire tenantry were following their hereditary leaders, the Stanleys, and it was in Manchester, in opposition to Parliament's Militia Ordinance, that there occurred on July 15 one of the first skirmishes of the war. In Northumberland and Durham the Earl of Newcastle was marshalling his tenants for the King and was in possession of Newcastle, Shields and Tynemouth Castle. Herefordshire, Worcestershire, parts of Warwickshire, were friendly, and in Wales he could count upon strong support. Finally, against a strong case for Lancashire, Charles decided in favour of Nottingham, a compromise position between the North and Wales, well placed by river communication with the Eastern seaports where, in place of Hull, his wife's arms might land, and conveniently near to London. For, insofar as he already had an objective, it was the capital with its prestige, its wealth, its possible Royalism once the influence of Parliament was broken, its access by sea north wards and to the Continent, its radius of communications over the country, and its appeal as his home and the

seat of his government throughout his reign: he might well be regretting the night of panic that caused him to leave his capital city.

The raising of his standard at Nottingham on August 22 was not the dramatic affair that Charles could have wished. He had been refused entry to Coventry two days before and a Proclamation calling for support had not attracted the numbers he expected. For various reasons — uncertainty, bad weather, the requirements of harvest — there was no vast or enthusiastic concourse at Nottingham and it was not until six in the evening of a bleak and stormy day that Charles, his two sons, his nephews Rupert and Maurice who had lately joined him, Dr Harvey, a few courtiers, the heralds, and Sir Edmund Verney with the standard, rode to the top of Castle Hill. As the pennant was unfurled and a herald, with a flourish of trumpets, made to read a proclamation, Charles snatched the paper from him and hurriedly scribbled some amendments as best he might in the blustery wind, with the consequence that the herald, stumbling over the spidery handwriting, failed to make the dramatic summons that was called for. Later in the week the standard was blown down.

On that fateful day Charles had no more than 800 horse and 3000 foot that he could call an army. He commissioned Prince Rupert, who already had won a considerable reputation as a cavalry officer in Europe, as General of Horse, confirming the appointment made by Henrietta-Maria in his name. Although his wife had sent a warning that the Prince was still young and headstrong and needed watching, Charles granted Rupert's request that his command should be independent of the Commander-in-Chief and that he should be accountable to the King alone. His mother had tried hard to keep him in Europe, away from the maelstrom she saw developing in England and closer to the scene of his hereditary struggle, but Rupert equalled her in force of character; he not only came himself but brought his younger brother, Maurice, Bernard de Gomme, a skilled draughtsman and engineer with experience in siege warfare, and Bartholomew La Roche, a 'fireworker', who would be useful in the artillery train.

Perhaps because of the paucity of his following, perhaps through fear of the irreversible step, Charles's advisers called for one more approach to Parliament. For once Charles opposed this advice. In his slow fashion he had at last accepted war and he would not be thrown back into an agony of indecision. When he at last yielded, it was with bitter tears of frustration. But he had been right. Parliament scornfully

rejected his overtures. Only if he furled his standard and recalled his declaration of treason against their commanders would they treat.

Charles's frustration had been caused partly because he knew that further attempts at negotiation would be fruitless, partly because he wanted to vindicate himself in his wife's eyes and to free himself from the terrible scorn she was pouring upon his diffidence and uncertainties.

Henrietta-Maria was by this time firmly established at The Hague, where she and the Princess Mary had arrived on February 25 to a welcome which was warm if not enthusiastic. In the welcoming party was her sister-in-law, Elizabeth, with her youngest daughter, Sophie, who was about the same age as Mary. The anxieties of the past year had left their mark on the Queen and a rough Channel crossing in which one of the baggage ships sunk within sight of land had not improved her looks. Little Sophie, who had been deeply impressed by the Van Dyck portraits of her aunt, was sadly disappointed at the sight of what she later described as a little, lop-sided lady with big teenth but who nevertheless possessed beautiful big eyes and a good complexion. Sophie was far more impressed with her elegant cousin and was highly flattered when Henrietta-Maria commented upon a likeness between the two children.^[3] It was the first meeting between the two mothers — Charles's sister and Charles's wife — and they rode in the same carriage with William and Mary, talking earnestly.

Henrietta-Maria was comfortably lodged in the new palace of the Prince of Orange, but she soon made it clear that her object was solely that of supplying her husband with money and arms. There were difficulties in selling or pawning the jewels she had brought with her, for dealers were reluctant to touch anything that might belong to the Crown; security for a loan was similarly difficult to obtain. In long letters in cypher to Charles she related her experiences and told him what he must do. It was evident that she felt the need to bolster his resolution and was afraid of the mistakes he might make without her presence. Nothing so much indicates the hold she had over Charles as her letters from Holland. When she heard he had been denied at Hull she was first incredulous, then scathing. She had left England, she wrote, so that he would not be hampered by feelings of responsibility towards her. Now she perceived it was not thoughts for her but his own weakness which impeded him. She herself had long ago accepted the necessity for war and urged her husband over and over again not to delay his preparations. 'Delays have always ruined you', she wrote, no

doubt thinking of the Five Members. She accused him of being up to his 'old game of yielding everything'. She, who knew him so well, and who had made light of his faults when they appeared to be of little significance, now, in time of stress, remembered them all, and Charles accepted her strictures. He did nothing without his wife's approbation, wrote Elizabeth to Roe about this time.

Henrietta-Maria drove herself to extremities of fatigue by poring over Charles's cypher letters. She was terrified lest he should lose the code. She had noted his habit of thrusting things into pockets and saw that he had done the same with the precious cypher: 'take care of your pocket', she admonishes, 'and do not let our cipher be stolen.' Her endeavours were reflected in her health. Not only were her eyes troubling her, her head ached, she had pains in her legs and was becoming lame, she was distracted by toothache and had a severe cold. The difficulties of communication alone were sufficient to deter a less resolute woman. Little Will Murray, as Henrietta-Maria always called him — was he shorter even than Charles or herself? — the two brothers Slingsby, Sir Lewis Dyve, Walter Montague her chaplain, were among their go-betweens. But the weather delayed vessels, Parliament's shipping was strong in the Channel, one vessel carrying letters was driven back to Brill after four days at sea, on another occasion a bag of letters was jettisoned through fear of capture and it was some time before it could safely be fished up again. They supplemented the letters with agents of various kinds — a 'poor woman' at Portsmouth, a man who came to Holland ostensibly as a bird-catcher and who reached the Queen a fortnight after he left Charles. But it was inevitable there should be gaps filled on the Queen's side, at least, with conflicting rumours. On one occasion she was so tormented by stories of defeat and death that she made her way in disguise to a bookshop which stocked corrantos or news-sheets, but fled on being recognized. Some of Charles's letters giving details of his requirements nevertheless reached her and she was having some success in raising money and in buying arms. Some things she merely pawned, hoping to acquire them again in better days — her 'great chain' and the cross from her mother. But she sold her 'little chain' and dismembered Charles's pearl buttons: 'You cannot imagine how handsome the buttons were, when they were out of the gold, and strung into a chain . . . I assure you, that I gave them up with no small regret.'

While his wife's activities gave him hope of assistance and stiffened his resolution, Charles still had to bear the anguish of separation, the

worry of her ill-health, the difficulties of communication, and at the same time prepare for war. Her letters, indeed, aroused mixed feelings and her forceful comments on his character could be painful in the extreme. Yet her letters were also the most poignant love letters. 'If I do not turn mad', she wrote, "I shall be a great miracle; but, provided it be in your service, I shall be content — only if it be when I am with you, for I can no longer live as I am without you.'^[4]

30—
Commander-in-Chief

After his standard had been somewhat ignominiously floated at Nottingham Charles moved westward to gather the support he believed to be awaiting him in Shropshire and in Wales. He left Nottingham on the 13th for Derby, where the miners came into him in considerable strength, mostly joining the Lifeguard commanded by Lord Willoughby d'Eresby; he was welcomed at Shrewsbury on the 20th where he was joined by Patrick Ruthven with twenty or so experienced officers. Baron Ruthven of Ettrick was a hard-drinking, experienced soldier, already some seventy years of age, who had seen much service in the European wars and been Charles's Muster-Master in Scotland and Governor of Edinburgh Castle. In his pleasure at seeing him Charles now created him Earl of Forth. At Chester on the 23rd recruits began to flock in, not only from the immediate neighbourhood but, as expected, from North and South Wales and from Staffordshire, and also from Lincolnshire, Bedfordshire, and further afield.

The Parliamentarian forces under Essex had hoped to surprise the King at Nottingham, but, learning of his departure, had stopped at Northampton and on the 19th began a westward march towards Worcester parallel to the King's own. Worcester had opened its gates to Royalist troops but Rupert, probably correctly, judged the city untenable against Essex's advancing army and was covering the Royalist evacuation of the town when, quite accidentally, he fell in with a small group of Parliamentarian horse at Powicke Bridge. Rupert had the advantage of seeing the enemy before they saw him and in a brief little encounter on 23 September 1642 the first real engagement of the war occurred, in which the Parliamentarian horse broke and fled, not drawing rein until they had joined their main army, many miles away. The news of Powicke Bridge was brought to

Charles at Chester by Richard Crane, Commander of Rupert's Lifeguard, who was knighted on the spot by the delighted King. Though only about 2000 men in all had been involved Charles had, indeed, cause for satisfaction as he gleefully examined the six or seven captured cornets of horse who were brought in. First blood of the war had gone to him and casualties were few, though among the wounded were his nephew, Maurice, and his friend, Sir Lewis Dyve.

In common with the majority of the men who were joining up on either side, Charles had to learn the strategy of war in a country like England. Some of the recruits had had experience in Germany or the Low Countries, some had fought under Gustavus Adolphus and were familiar with the Swedish form of fighting, others favoured the simpler Dutch formations. Some, like the King himself, had experimented for hours with model soldiers and artillery. None of them had fought before on English soil with its own particular problems. Where fields had been enclosed, for example, there was little opportunity for deploying an army — certainly not the cavalry — and the weather played its part. Roads were execrable, bad enough for individual horsemen, almost impassable for the numbers who were now beginning to turn even the best of them into mud and quagmire as the ruts and holes common to most surfaces were filled to over-flowing by the heavy rains of September 1642. For men to be kneedeep in mud and water was not uncommon, while horses, carts, waggons and coaches had to be pushed and hauled time and time again through the enveloping slime. The drill books and manuals of war that were brought out might in some respects put a captain ahead of his men, but they gave no real insight into the situation. Neither side, for example, had envisaged the number of horses that were needed — not for the cavalry since volunteers brought their own mounts — but cart horses for drawing gun-carriages and other heavy vehicles. It took six or eight cart horses, harnessed in tandem, to pull a field gun; the heaviest cannon required twelve or fourteen. Charles, whose study of warfare had familiarized him with the problem, had encouraged James Wemyss, his Master Gunner, to produce a lighter and more mobile piece of artillery. Wemyss had actually constructed a gun consisting of a copper tube strengthened with iron bands and covered by a leather skin, but this had not yet come into general production, and markets and farms for miles around Charles's army were being scoured for horses and, failing horses for oxen, to draw his heavy guns. Carts and wagons were in similar demand for conveyance, and

denuded farms were paid by the day for their use, with a bonus if the driver came too.

Food, fodder, the paraphernalia of cooking and eating, cooks, provisioners, traders anxious to provide anything that was required for man or beast; shovels, spades, pickaxes, wheelbarrows; ropes, spare harness, materials to repair the constant breakages which the conditions of travel entailed, came along with the army. In particular a contingent of smiths and wheelrights were there, for the roads played havoc with horses' hooves and with the wheels of vehicles, and in hostile country the inability to secure the services of these craftsmen could be very serious.

Normally the Royalist army on the march consisted of two brigades of cavalry in the van, followed by a brigade of foot. Charles followed on horseback supported by his Lifeguard with his banner and flanked by his Council of War, with secretaries and messengers to hand. There followed another infantry brigade and then the enormous and unwieldy artillery train protected by musketeers, the horses pulling desperately at the heavy guns and at the carts and wagons loaded with arms and ammunition. Courtiers and courtiers-turned-soldier frequently brought their wives who travelled in carriages. They all brought much personal baggage. Even the lower-ranking soldiers came with their wives, their wardrobes and their household goods, while the secretariat had its own wagon of writing materials, documents, letters, duplicates, the King had his personal wardrobe and his more private correspondence, prostitutes cheerfully tagged along, and in the rear a further brigade of cavalry, sometimes in front of, sometimes behind the baggage trains, completed the tale of an army marching to war. The untidy, heterogeneous procession covered some five miles or more from van to rear of the muddy and difficult roads of the Midlands, moving so slowly that it took Charles ten days to cover less than a hundred miles between Shrewsbury and Banbury, which was not considered bad going and which was better than Essex did on his nearly parallel journey from Worcester to Kineton when he averaged only eight or so miles a day, and then left part of his army far in the rear.

The army carried few tents and little camping equipment, so the surrounding countryside was scoured to find billets for the 12,000 or so troops on the move. Charles and the High Command generally lodged in some nobleman's house while the men slept in scattered villages as far as ten miles away. The total area occupied by an army,

simply to move from one place to another, was very considerable. Though provisions were at first paid for and often eaten in camp, it is understandable that the advent of an army came to be dreaded and that its passage was likened to the passing of a horde of locusts. It would seem difficult to conceal its whereabouts. Yet, in spite of the strategy learned on the Continent and the frequent recourse to drill books and military manuals, the art of reconniassance was so lacking, or so extremely elementary, that commanders frequently seemed unaware of the presence of the enemy until they were on top of them.^[1]

After Powicke Bridge there had been some discussion of strategy among Charles's High Command: should they engage Essex then and there and endeavour to take Worcester? Or should they march on London? The former was ruled out partly because the enclosed nature of the countryside made cavalry deployment difficult, and partly because Charles's growing resources made the bolder plan viable. His armies were increasing daily and he now had no scruples in accepting Catholic money or plate or, indeed, Catholic services: 'this rebellion is grown to that height', he wrote to Newcastle, 'that I must not look what opinion men are who at this time are willing and able to serve me'.^[2] He left Shrewsbury on October 12, making for London in a south-easterly course with some idea of taking Banbury on the way. Passing between hostile Warwick and Coventry he stopped at Southam and reached Edgcott, four miles from Banbury, on the evening of October 22, where he lodged at Sir William Chancie's house with Rupert nine miles away at Wormleighton, Lindsey at Culworth, and his men dispersed to such scattered quarters as they could find. The weather was atrocious and bitterly cold. About midnight Rupert sent word that Essex, who had been on the shorter march from Worcester, was at Kineton, some seven miles west of the main Royalist position. The two armies, though they marched the same way and had been only twenty miles apart when they started, and for the last two days had been on a parallel course only ten miles apart, had until then no knowledge of the whereabouts of each other.

There was danger to Charles in continuing his march with Essex in his rear, so when Rupert reported in favour of battle Charles readily accepted his advice. 'Nephew', he hurriedly scribbled, 'I have given order as you have desyred; so I dout not but all the foot and canon will bee at Edgehill betymes this morning, where you will also find Your loving oncle and faithful frend.' Discussions concerning tactics soon reached deadlock; Lindsey favoured the Dutch order of battle, Rupert

the Swedish in which pikemen and musketeers were interspersed in the battle line-up, and Charles supported his nephew. The fatal flaw in the command which allowed Rupert to be independent of the Commander-in-Chief had already led to difficulties and now the volatile and haughty Prince appeared to be taking over the whole strategy of the battle, foot as well as horse. When Lindsey cast his baton on the ground declaring: 'Since your Majesty thinks me not fit to perform the office of Commander-in-Chief I would serve you as colonel only', Charles cut the Gordian knot by instructing Lord Forth to draw up the army in battle order while he himself assumed the overall command.

The ridge of Edgehill, where the Royalists would take up their position, was some five miles west of Edgcott and only two miles from Kineton. By early morning Rupert's horse were drawn up on the ridge and Charles was gazing through his perspective glass at the awakening Parliamentarian armies below. It was afternoon by the time the Royalist foot had been brought in from the scattered villages where they lay, and by that time Essex had collected the main body of his army and had deployed it in one of the open fields of that still largely unenclosed countryside. He was perturbed at the numbers he saw massing against him, which far exceeded any reports he had received, particularly since two of his regiments of foot and one of horse were a day's march behind him. He did the only thing that was open to him. He stayed where he was and waited for the enemy to attack. Charles meantime, having sent his sons firmly away to comparative safety in the charge of the faithful Dr Harvey, was riding up and down amongst his men with a black cloak over his armour encouraging everyone. By three o'clock they were ready. 'Go in the name of God', he said to Lindsey, 'and I'll lay my bones by yours.' He had under his command some 2800 horse, 10,500 foot, 1000 dragoons, and some twenty guns drawn up, in customary fashion, with the foot in the centre and the cavalry on each flank. Many prayers went up that day. Sir Edmund Verney, bearing the royal standard in a conflict he could not believe in; Lord Lindsey, no less determined to fight in the King's forces although he was no longer their leader; Lord Falkland, no fighter by inclination and hoping to end the strife in one swift blow; cavaliers who had followed Rupert from Europe; courtiers, excited and scornful of the enemy; country gentlemen and their sons whose only experience of war was in the tales of their fathers and the dusty textbooks they had routed out; raw recruits, frightened and

uncertain, whose instinct was to break and run for home; Charles himself whose baptism in battle was about to begin; seasoned veterans like Sir Jacob Astley whose spoken prayer served for them all: 'O Lord!, Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me'.

Rupert, on the right of the King's army, was the first to charge using the full weight of his horsemen, in his accustomed style, to break the enemy, reserving his fire for the pursuit. The Parliamentarian left wing was shattered by the impact. Rupert and his cavaliers pursued the fleeing horsemen to Kineton and beyond, only drawing rein when two of Hampden's regiments were seen advancing towards them. The Royalist left wing had acted similarly, if not so dramatically, and the brunt of the fighting in the field had been left to the two blocs of infantry where Charles remained, urging on his men, commanding mercy to the enemy, in the midst of terrible slaughter. His commanders begged him to retire to the top of the hill, which he did for a while, but he was soon down amongst his men again. As evening fell Rupert's horsemen returned to the battle which might have been decisively won but for their long absence. Falkland urged one more charge, possibly thinking to end the war then and there, but it was too late; men and horses were spent and darkness was falling. Charles refused to leave the field lest the enemy attempt another attack or construe his withdrawal into an admission of defeat. He slept fitfully in the uncertain light and scant warmth of a small fire made from such wood and brush as could be found, the dead and wounded of both armies lying near him on the battlefield. Before he slept he rewarded one act of heroism, while mourning its necessity. Verney had fallen in the battle and the royal standard had been seized, but Captain Smith, slipping through the enemy lines after dark with a few comrades, recaptured it and brought it to the King, who knighted him on the spot. He had no news of Lindsey, or of Lindsey's son, who had last been seen standing over his wounded father in an attempt to save him.

By first light the wounded were being brought in and the dead identified. They had lost some 1500 men in all. Lindsey's son was a prisoner, Lindsey himself had been carried to a barn where he lay without medical attention, bleeding to death; others who remained in the cold of the battlefield all night fared better, as Harvey recorded, for the frost congealed the blood on their wounds. It was soon apparent that Essex was moving off to Warwick, and the way to London was open to Charles. If the battle itself had been indecisive the result of the

battle was a victory for the King, for it had achieved his objective.^[3] Rupert proposed to the Council of War that a flying column of 3000 horse and foot should immediately march on Westminster and take the capital by surprise. Charles could not bring himself to entertain so immediate a confrontation. But neither, it seems, could he envisage a more sober approach to the city. Instead he marched to Banbury, where he secured supplies of food and clothing for his men, and he captured Broughton Castle, doubtless deriving satisfaction from the knowledge that he was master in the Puritan territory of Lord Saye and Sele. He and his army then moved forward unmolested to Oxford, whose loyalty to the King was unquestioned in spite of some difference of opinion between the town and the University. But in doing this he allowed Essex to make a leisurely return to the capital. Neither side hurried. The initial impact of civil war had been sobering and the armies were not yet willing to risk a fresh encounter. But Charles, by the delay, lost more than his opponents, for he never again had the opportunity of occupying London. Perhaps, thereby, he lost the war.

Charles entered Oxford on October 29 at full march accompanied by the four Princes and with the sixty or seventy colours captured at Edgehill borne before him. The welcome was warm and the mayor presented him with a bag of money. The deputy orator welcomed him more effusively for the University and, with his sons, he took up residence in Christ Church, while Rupert went to St John's where, in Laud's time, he had been accepted as a commoner. The foot-soldiers were billeted in the villages round Oxford, the cavalry headquarters were at Abingdon, many important officials remained near the King — Culpepper and his family in Oriel College, other members of the Privy Council in Postmaster's Hall opposite Merton College where the Warden's lodgings were being prepared for Henrietta-Maria.

The arms and ammunition they brought with them joined the stores already in the cloisters and tower of New College, twenty-seven pieces of heavy ordnance were driven into Magdalen Grove. Grain was stored in the Law and Logic Schools, fodder in New College, animals were penned in Christ Church quadrangle. In the Music and Astronomy Schools cloth was cut into coats for soldiers and carried out by packhorse to be stitched by seamstresses in nearby villages. The mill at Osney became a gunpowder factory, a mint was erected at New Inn Hall to turn the plate that had been brought in to

the King into negotiable money. Nicholas Briot's assistant, Thomas Rawlins, who was with Charles, had much of his master's skill and, apart from utilitarian pieces needed for soldiers' pay, the mint produced a beautiful golden crown piece to his design and a medal to mark the victory at Edgehill — for so the Royalists termed it, though Charles was well aware of the greater victory it might have been, as he told the Venetian Ambassador who visited him at Christ Church; if the cavalry had not overcharged and returned to the field too late to do further battle, he said, it would have been a great victory indeed.

Charles made one not very convincing attempt to march on London when Rupert, on November 11, took and briefly held, a Parliamentary outpost at Brentford. But the London trained bands streamed out to protect their city, and faced with a force of 24,000 men, outnumbering him by two to one, Charles withdrew. He might have crossed into Kent at Kingston and drawn upon the support for him there, but the campaigning season was over and he preferred to settle down in Oxford for the winter. The fortifications of the city, begun before Charles's arrival, were continued. The High Street was blocked at East Bridge by logs and a timber gate, while a bulwark between it and the Physic Garden wall supported two pieces of ordnance, and loads of stone were carried up Magdalen Tower to fling down upon the enemy. The digging of trenches was ordered at vulnerable points between St John's College and the New Park, and in Christ Church Meadow, but the response was poor and when Charles reviewed the work he spoke to the citizens personally, afterwards issuing an Order that everyone over the age of sixteen and under sixty should work on fortifications for one day a week or pay twelve pence for each default. Plans were made to use the waters of the Thames and Cherwell, which surrounded the city on all sides except the North, as an additional defence, the vulnerable North being protected by regiments at Enstone, Woodstock, and Islip. Communications with Reading, which the Royalists held, were kept open by garrisons at Wallingford and Abingdon. Strong garrisons at Banbury, Brill, Faringdon and Burford completed an outer ring of defences behind which Charles at last had a little time for contemplation as he and his army settled in for the winter.

But first he attended to the pleasant task of honouring his children by conferring the degrees of MA upon them; for Dr Harvey, Cambridge and Padua, there was the distinction of an Oxford MD. So

popular among his followers were these awards that Charles found himself sponsoring 18 Doctors and 48 Bachelors of Divinity; 34 Doctors and 14 Bachelors of Civil Law; five Doctors and eight Bachelors of Physics; 76 MAs and 12 BAs. As the day of inauguration wore on the Chancellor's actions became more mechanical, his attention lapsed, and many men who had not been named thrust themselves forward after candlelight to receive the coveted honour. The granting of degrees was an easy way for Charles to reward his followers, and by the following February the University was tired out with one Convocation after another and Charles, without ill-will, agreed to curtail his academic awards.^[4]

Meanwhile printing presses, many of them clandestine, were proliferating, especially in London, giving vent to every kind of opinion, religious, social, political; reporting battles, conferences, proceedings in Parliament or in Oxford. They came from both sides and neither side and voiced complaints that could be laid at the door of either party or no party, they proposed solutions that were practical or Utopian, they expressed new antagonisms, new alignments as the struggle proceeded and they reflected every shade of opinion and belief that the violent opening of society generated. A London bookseller, George Thomason, set out to collect a copy of every pamphlet and news-sheet that came his way from the beginning of the Long Parliament. For the year 1642, the peak year, he had well over 2000 and the numbers were always well over a thousand. They included the news-sheets which were the successors of the corrantos brought to England from Holland during the earlier stages of the Thirty Years War and which now began to appear as regular weekly newspapers. Charles had been as quick as anyone to appreciate the value of print and of regular reporting. He took a printing press with him when he left London and one of the first things he did in Oxford was to inaugurate a weekly news-sheet. Its first appearance as Mercurius Aulicus in January 1643 was preceded by a few days by Parliament's Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer. Aulicus was published from Oriel College under the editorship of Dr Peter Heylin, the Laudian divine, but its leader-writer and subsequent editor was Sir John Berkenhead, a brilliant protégé of William Laud, a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, who had worked for some time with the Archbishop at Lambeth Palace. Aulicus seems to have had two printing presses at Oxford and, remarkably, it was also printed in London. The opening paragraph of the first number referred to its

rival — 'a weekly cheat' put out to nourish falsehood amongst the people and 'make them pay for their seducement'. Aulicus would make them see 'that the Court is neither so barren of intelligence . . . nor the affaires thereof in so unprosperous a condition, as these Pamphlets make them'. In its 118 numbers, ending with the issue of 31 August — 7 September, 1645, Aulicus maintained a high standard of informed and witty reporting, receiving its news items and effecting a system of distribution and sale in and out of Oxford and even in London under the very eyes of Parliament.^[5] It competed with some 170 different news-sheets which appeared for longer or shorter periods and hundreds of pamphlets, many of which made their way to Oxford. Charles was enormously interested in all the pamphlet literature. Early in January 1643, for example, The Complaint of London, Westminster, and the parts adjoyning was being read to him while he was taking supper and he did not rise until it was finished.

Insofar as it was possible to make any calculation at this stage, it seemed that a majority of the House of Lords were following Charles and some forty per cent of the Commons, which was considerably more than the attitude of either House had indicated in the early days of the Long Parliament. Of the Commons possibly 236 Members were Royalists, most of whom had joined him, while 302 remained at Westminster. The tenants of the great landowners were for the most part following their lords — if they did not stay away from battle in an effort at neutrality; industrial towns, particularly the clothing towns of Lancashire, were for Puritanism and Parliament, while the surrounding areas, which contained many Catholics, were for the King. Similarly Bradford and Halifax contributed much support for Parliament, while round them rural areas followed the Royalist allegiance of their landlords. On the whole Charles had great hopes of the North, where he had appointed the Duke of Newcastle Commander of the four northern counties; in March 1643 he stiffened the inexperienced lord by giving him James King, Lord Eythin, a Scot who had seen active service on the Continent, as his Lieutenant-General. By the middle of December Newcastle was virtually in control of Yorkshire, and Lord Fairfax, the Parliamentarian Commander, had fallen back to Selby. In Cornwall the Marquess of Hertford, William Seymour — at one time the husband of the unhappy Arabella Stuart — who was Lieutenant General of the Western Counties, was in virtually complete control, with Ralph, Lord Hopton, his second-in-command and

such men as Bevil Grenville, grandson of the hero of the Revenge , fighting with him.

Charles's opponents had the advantage of London, of most of the wealthy towns and important ports, but south of the capital he could count on support in Kent. Roughly speaking, Charles might call the North and the South-West, including Wales and Cornwall, his country, the East and South-East Parliamenterian country, with the Midlands somewhat unevenly divided in favour of Parliament. But everywhere there were pockets of individual allegiance, and all over the country great houses were standing out in hostile territory. Charles saw among his own supporters large and small landowners, old landed families and new, merchants, industrialists, lawyers, rising gentry and falling gentry — but he saw them on the other side, too. Even past favours had not guaranteed support. He wryly watched the Earl of Holland with his friends of the Providence Island Company, and he wondered why Wemyss, his master gunner, with whom he had appeared to be on good terms, had taken up arms on the other side.

Why, indeed, were they fighting at all? Edward Hyde had often told him that the number of those who desired to sit still was greater than those who desired to engage on either side, and the philosopher Thomas Hobbes was saying that there were few of the common people who cared much for either of the causes, but that most would have taken either side for pay or plunder. There certainly had been reasons for the antagonism of the Long Parliament. But that was past history. The abuses of which they complained had been removed, the constitutional government they demanded had been secured by the summer of 1641. Was it purely rancour that made people fight against him? Were they remembering the past — the forced loans, the monopolies in which they did not share, the tonnage and poundage, so necessary a tax in an untaxed country like England, lack of preferment at Court or in office, the enclosure prohibitions and the accompanying fines at which Laud had been so adept, his own knighthood fees, forest fines and the ship money he had used for the ships which now were in Parliament's hands? If Charles had given way on the militia could he have averted war? Was it over the control of the armed forces that they were fighting? If he had abandoned Episcopacy would he have averted war? But they had not wished him to do that, as the debates on the Grand Remonstrance and the opposition to the Root and Branch Bill made abundantly clear. Did they really believe that he

was so lukewarm in his religion, or so much under the influence of his wife, as to consider joining the Roman Church? Did they consider for a moment that his relations with Spain were anything but opportunist or that he had in any way encouraged the Irish rising in 1641? He remembered angrily that the people who now accused him of betraying the Protestant religion were the very ones who had refused aid to his sister. He still could not see why a compromise had not been reached. Had Bedford served him ill by his death at the moment when a middle group might have negotiated a settlement? But, whatever the answers, it takes two to make a quarrel and it takes two armies to wage war, and unless there had been a significant reaction against Parliament the formation of a King's party would have been unlikely and the outbreak of war impossible.

Possibly the split had occurred between those who believed in his promises and those who did not believe that he had abandoned forever the right to supply without the sanction of Parliament. But a tax would be a tax, money would be required, whether for King or Parliament, and Charles could watch, even with amusement, the response accorded to his opponents' efforts to raise money. When Pym had met with a poor response from the City earlier in 1642 and spoke of 'compelling' the Londoners to lend, their defences had gone up immediately. Certainly, said D'Ewes, 'if the least fear of this should grow, that men should be compelled to lend, all men will conceal their ready money, and lend nothing to us voluntarily'. There was a similar reaction at the end of December when the City refused to lend unless the Upper House set an example. Some noble lords refused absolutely, others took time to consider, Lord Saye subscribed a mere £100, the Earl of Manchester £300.

Many people undoubtedly believed that to continue the quarrel with the King would be to unleash anarchy, and in this respect the petitions and rioting at the end of 1641, which Parliament itself had encouraged, did them harm. The Venetian Ambassador noted the apprehension lest an attenuation of royal authority 'might not augment licence among the people with manifest danger that after shaking off the yoke of monarchy they might afterwards apply themselves to abase the nobility also and reduce the government of this realm to a complete democracy'. Sir John Hotham, a little too late for Charles's satisfaction, came over to the King's side after the fighting had started, giving as one of his reasons that he feared 'the necessitous people' of the whole kingdom would rise 'in mighty numbers, and whatsoever

they pretend for att first, within a while they will sett up for themselves to the utter ruine of all the Nobility and Gentry of the kingdome'. This danger of anarchy was one of the reasons for preserving episcopacy. As his father had said, no Bishop, no King; and Sir Edmund Waller had pointed out the relationship in greater detail. Episcopacy, he said, was 'a counterscarp, or outwork; which, if it be taken by this assault of the people . . . we may, in the next place, have as hard a task to defend our property as we have lately had to defend it from the Prerogative. If . . . they prevail for an equality in things ecclesiastical, the next demand perhaps may be lex agraria, the like equality in things temporal.' Or, as Sir John Strangeways put it in the course of the debate on the Root and Branch petition, 'If we make a parity in the Church we must come to a parity in the Commonwealth.'

As far as Charles could see the choice of sides rested almost entirely on the answer to the question whether property, and the civil and ecclesiastical order which upheld it, would be safer under King or Parliament. Those who supported Parliament might have had some doubts when in October 1642 a lawyer named Fountain appealed to the Petition of Right when refusing a 'gift' to Parliament and was told bluntly by Henry Marten that the Petition was intended to restrain kings, not parliaments. Fountain was sent to prison.

But while for richer people the issue had come to be very largely one of property, there were many who were now supporting Parliament under the wider banner which Charles's opponents had appropriated to themselves — that of 'Liberty' or, in the plural, 'Freedoms'. Charles could now see his mistakes in censoring the press, in allowing the 'Puritan martyrs' their platforms; he could see that 'little men', defeated by poverty, left behind by economic developments, were unafraid of anarchy but simply hoped for a new deal under Parliament; he knew well enough the power over these people of such fanatics as John Lilburne, who turned up as prisoner in Oxford after the taking of Brentford, having lost nothing of his old fire. In court he objected to being charged as a 'yeoman', being of gentry stock; he argued with the Earl of Northampton, and challenged Prince Rupert to combat, an unexpected invitation which caused the Prince to leave the room saying 'the fellow is mad!' In his captivity in Oxford Castle Lilburne kept up such a furore that the Royalists were only too happy to exchange him in May 1643 for Sir John Smith, whom Charles had knighted on Edgehill field.

The new Earl of Lindsey, who had remained a prisoner in Warwick Castle since Edgehill, was also exchanged in 1643 and joined the King. From such friends and supporters who came into him at Oxford Charles reaped great satisfaction. On the anniversary of Edgehill he called Edward Lake to him. Lake was a lawyer who, despite his inexperience, had shown remarkable bravery. When his left hand was shot he placed his horse's bridle in his teeth and fought with his sword in his right hand until the end of the day, when he was captured and imprisoned. Seven weeks later he escaped and made his way to Oxford. Charles was deeply impressed; 'you lost a great deal of blood for me that day', he said, 'and I shall not forget it.' Then, turning to the bystanders, 'for a lawyer', he said, 'a professed lawyer, to throw off his gown and fight so heartily for me, I must need think very well of it'. Charles not only created him a baronet but showed his habitual care over detail by taking a personal interest in Lake's proposed coat of arms, himself augmenting it by the addition of one of the lions of England.^[6]

As winter set in at Oxford the Court of Whitehall reproduced itself as best it might. The city was now full of soldiers and courtiers, Privy Councillors, secretaries, officials and supporters of many kinds, mostly accompanied by their families, all crowding in on the limited accommodation, generally content to exchange their normal state for a couple of rooms in an overful lodging just for the sake of being there at all. Fashionably dressed ladies walked in college gardens or watched the recruits, mostly scholar-turned-soldier, marching down the High Street and out to the New Parks for martial exercise, or drilling in the meadows by the Cherwell under the walls of Merton College. Domestic troubles began to assert themselves: Prince Charles had the measles; Prince Maurice, more seriously, had an attack of the stone which worried his mother more than the war itself; Charles had to send to Whitehall for stockings and other small necessaries. The House of Commons debated whether a servant should be allowed to take them to Oxford and decided by a vote of 26 to 18 that Charles might have them. He did not know which was worse — the lack of interest in his needs or the fact that the matter should have been discussed at all. More serious was the news in March 1643 that Henrietta-Maria's chapel in Somerset House had been ransacked and that Parliament had sequestered the lands of bishops, deans and chapters, appropriating the income to their own use.

Meanwhile Charles played tennis with Rupert, he hunted as far away as Woodstock, he received Ambassadors, including the Venetian and the Frenchman, who was a constant visitor; he even did his best to celebrate a wedding when a Groom of his Bedchamber married the reigning beauty of the exiled Court. But all this was accompanied not only by the drilling of recruits and the construction of fortifications but by the clatter of cavalry as horsemen moved in and out of the city. The most advanced post of the Parliamenterian armies was at Windsor, where Essex was covering the western approaches to London, and while the armies of both sides lay in their wide-spreading winter quarters there was a constant movement of patrols, reconnaissance parties, and probing detachments of horse. The spring offensive was heralded when Parliamentarian forces took Reading, only twenty miles from Oxford. At the beginning of June they were in Thame and ventured into Wheatley but were beaten off by a Royalist garrison on Shotover Hill. Rupert disliked this forward probing and hoped to retaliate by securing a convoy of money which he had heard was on its way from London to Thame. He missed the convoy but on his way back to Oxford on June 18 he dispersed a small enemy force at Charlgrove Field, ten miles south-east of Oxford. In this little skirmish John Hampden was mortally wounded and died in Thame six days later. The removal of his moderating influence was a serious loss to Parliament.

The time was now approaching when Henrietta-Maria herself would be joining her husband with the arms and money she had collected. As they made plans for their reunion the couple set about deliberate deception. 'All the letters which I write by the post, in which there is no cipher, do not you believe', she instructed, 'for they are written for the Parliament.' So it was given out that she would land at Yarmouth or Boston, whereas she intended Newcastle or Scarborough. But as the time for her departure drew near communications failed completely. As Powicke Bridge and Edgehill were fought the couple were out of touch and only the most dramatic rumours reached the isolated Queen. At last, with communications restored, she set sail in January 1643. First her little flotilla was becalmed off the Dutch coast. When they finally got away they were struck by storms of unprecedented ferocity and for nine days were beaten to and fro off the Dutch shore with no opportunity of making land. The Queen sustained her terrified ladies by assuring them that Queens of England were never

drowned, acting at the same time as father-confessor to those who were convinced their end was near. When at last they were able to make land, it was Holland and not England to which they had come. The third effort was successful and Henrietta-Maria landed at Bridlington on February 22. She was given Royalist cover from the land and a troop of cavaliers rode in to greet her a few hours after her arrival. Charles was overwhelmed with relief and admiration: 'when I shall have done my part', he wrote from Oxford, 'I confess that I shall come short of what thou deservest of me.' Her trials were not yet over for the small house in which she prepared to spend the night became the target of bombardment from Parliamentarian ships and she was compelled to take to the shelter of fields and hedges while cannon shot burst round her. Even when she was ready to ride south there were difficulties, for Fairfax with his army lay between her and Oxford. It took her nearly five months to reach Stratford where she was met by Rupert on July 11. But by that time her journey had become a triumphant march. Volunteers flocked in to her and with the arms and ammunition she had brought from Holland she was accompanied by 2000 foot, well armed, 1000 horse, six pieces of cannon, two mortars, and 100 well filled wagons. Newcastle was her escort, Jermyn her Commander-in-Chief, and she herself, as she wrote exultantly to Charles, was her 'she majesty, generalissima' over all. Two days after leaving Stratford she met her husband and her two eldest sons at the foot of Edgehill. They slept that night at Sir Thomas Pope's house at Wroxton and the next day proceeded to Woodstock and thence to Oxford.

The welcome to Oxford was dubbed 'triumphant' and 'magnificent' with soldiers lining the streets, houses packed with spectators, trumpets sounding, heralds riding before her. At Carfax the town clerk read a speech and presented her with a purse of gold, at Christ Church the Vice Chancellor and the Heads of Houses in scarlet gowns welcomed her, students read verses in Latin and English, and she received the traditional University present of a pair of gloves. Charles then conducted her, by a private way through Merton Grove, to the Warden's Lodgings in Merton College which would be her home.^[7]

With the Queen's arrival Oxford resembled even more the Court at Whitehall, with courtiers flitting between Christ Church and Merton, ladies dressing elegantly in spite of the cramped rooms in which they were compelled to make their toilets. Practical jokes were played on academics who were a natural butt, it was even possible to produce

a masque. But more serious was the renewal of the gossip and rivalry her presence brought. Digby, now one of her favourites, was at odds with Rupert; Holland, who had begun the war on the other side, came to Oxford to make his peace with her and spent far too long in her elegant drawing room at Merton, frequently in the afternoons when Charles himself was visiting his wife. Charles would not receive him back into favour and Holland departed for London and the Parliament. As he prepared for the coming campaign, Charles could have done without such distractions.

31—
The Second Campaign

By this time Charles and his Council of War had decided upon their general strategy and were preparing their main offensive for 1643. Newcastle would march south from Yorkshire, Sir Ralph Hopton would gain control in the south-west, while Charles himself would command in the centre. The task was not altogether easy. While Hull was in Parliament's hands, threatening their homes in the rear, Newcastle's progress was limited by the disinclination of his men to progress further south than Lincoln, and Cornishmen were similarly troubled at leaving Plymouth in enemy occupation while they marched through Devon. Charles in the centre had suffered a reverse when the Parliamentarians captured Reading on April 27. But victories at Landsdown and Roundway Down near Bristol on the 5th and 13th of July strengthened his position, while Rupert's capture of Bristol on July 26, two days after the Queen's arrival in Oxford, was of outstanding importance.

The direction of Charles's central thrust occasioned long deliberation in the Council of War. At last it was decided that he should take Gloucester in order to open up the Severn valley and ensure communication with Royalist support in South Wales. This meant abandoning an immediate push to London down the Thames valley, which might have been supported by a parallel drive by Prince Maurice through Hampshire and Sussex. But the western army was still occupied and Newcastle was still no further south than Lincoln. Moreover, it was felt that a threat to Gloucester would lure Essex away from the capital.

For the first time since his arrival in the city Charles left Oxford for a major campaign on Wednesday 10 August 1643. Gloucester did not immediately capitulate, though Essex, as predicted, began his march westward. Charles therefore, fearing to be cut off from his base and

hoping to turn the tables by preventing Essex's retreat to London, abandoned the siege. On September 20 the two armies came face to face at Newbury, with Charles barring Essex's route to the capital. The King was in command and he had been joined by Rupert. As at Edgehill the battle was indecisive but, unlike Edgehill, Charles drew off in the night leaving the way to London open to Essex, while he himself went north to Oxford. There were rumours that he had run out of ammunition, but if he had remained on the field it is likely that Essex would have retreated leaving the Royalists still barring his way to London. It was perhaps another lost opportunity for the King: he had neither taken Gloucester nor opened up a route to the capital nor prevented Essex from returning there. He had lost also his Secretary of State, one of the noblest of his subjects: for Falkland, who had never come to terms with civil war, had been seen to ride recklessly to his death in the battle. In appointing Lord Digby in Falkland's place Charles brought even closer to him than before a man who was deeply attached to his cause but who was impulsive and unreliable and, moreover, still hostile to Rupert, the most able of the King's commanders. Charles's first sally from Oxford, while not disastrous, had done him little good.

In the autumn of 1643 the King's armies retook Reading and some regiments from Ireland joined him. But on October 11 a new sharpness was apparent in the Parliamentarian attack in a small cavalry engagement at Winceby in Lincolnshire when Oliver Cromwell, with a detachment of the hand-picked troopers he had been recruiting in East Anglia, decisively defeated a Royalist force. The year ended in stalemate. Charles was still in Oxford, firmly entrenched behind a ring of well-fortified garrisons, but no nearer to an occupation of London. Parliament had been sufficiently dissatisfied with its military achievements to seek the assistance of the Scots. In return for military aid they agreed to support the Scottish Presbyterian form of worship and to reform the English 'according to the word of God', which was assumed by the Scots and the English Presbyterians to be the same thing. The Solemn League and Covenant which signalized the agreement was taken by the English on September 25 and every officer of the Parliamentarian army was expected to subscribe to it.

Partly as a counter-measure and much as he disliked Parliaments, Charles determined to demonstrate his own strength by rallying to his side all those who had left, or were prepared to leave, Westminster for Oxford. The Parliament which met in Christ Church Hall on 22

January 1644 consisted of some 44 Lords, including the Prince of Wales and Prince Rupert, and 118 Members of the Lower House. But for their war duties and other pressing commitments Charles would have had about 82 Peers and 175 Commoners in his Oxford Parliament — which was a majority of Peers and about one-third of the Commons. There was not much, however, they could do. The Oxford Parliament was prorogued in April 1644 and adjourned in March 1645. It continued to meet from time to time but its records were destroyed during the seige of Oxford. Charles, indeed, lost any faith he may have had in 'this mongrel Parliament', as he ungraciously termed it in a letter to his wife, as action of another kind became necessary.

The fruits of the Covenant appeared at the opening of 1644 when a Scottish army entered England, commanded by Alexander Leslie, the little, old crooked soldier who had crossed the border in 1639 and whom Charles had created Earl of Leven in 1640. By the spring Parliamentarian troops were once more manoeuvring in the South and South-west and Oxford began to look like a beleaguered city. Charles's trials as a Commander were matched by his anguish over Henrietta-Maria. She had not taken kindly to Oxford, she was pregnant and unwell, once more wracked with pain and rendered by her pregnancy anxious and alarmed as the war approached the city and she feared that any escape route would be cut off. Charles could not guarantee her safety if she remained with him; her presence might interfere with military strategy; she herself was anxious to bear her child away from the clangour of war. So once more they prepared to part after less than a year together. Charles with their two eldest sons escorted her to Abingdon on April 17 and left her in the care of Jermyn, her destination still undecided. He received such alarming accounts of her condition that he sent an anguished note to their physician, who remained in London: 'Mayerne, if you love me, go to my wife!', and then, of necessity, turned his attention to his Council of War.

Rupert advocated the holding of Oxford firmly in the centre within its outer garrisons while he went north to aid Newcastle, who had fallen back on York, and Maurice completed the conquest of the West. No sooner had he departed for the North, however, than Charles saw the disadvantages of his own position. He had little freedom of movement while the armies of Essex and Waller were probing and manoeuvring close to Oxford, the city was ill-supplied with provisions, and if he allowed himself to be besieged he would be

starved out in a fortnight. He decided to abandon Reading in order to acquire its men and arms and the city changed hands for the third time on May 18 when the garrison was dismantled and Essex and Waller were free to move in. A week later Charles abandoned Abingdon, so leaving open the entire southern approach to Oxford. To the East, Essex was now approaching Islip and probing as far forward as Cowley and Headington, while Waller began an encircling movement from the West. The situation was sufficiently delicate for someone to talk of surrender on terms. 'What!', exclaimed Charles, 'I may be found in the hands of the Earl of Essex, but I shall be dead first!'

So, after taking a day's hunting in Woodstock, where he shot two bucks, he proceeded to action. Leaving part of his army in the city, and after feigning an attack on Abingdon which drew Waller southwards, he rode out northwards as soon as it was dark on the summer evening of June 3, with 3000 horse and 2500 foot. He rode through Port Meadow by the wide-spreading Thames to Wolvercote and Yarnton, the spires of Oxford fading behind him in the darkness. He crossed the little Evenlode at Hanborough Bridge while his friends left lighted matchcord in the hedges at Islip to deceive the enemy. He proceeded to Witney and reached Burford the next evening, the following night he was at Bourton-on-the-Water and so proceeded to Evesham and Worcester.

But once the exhilaration of action was over he began to doubt his own wisdom: he had left his base both short of food and, with the abandonment of Reading and Abingdon, ill-defended. At the same time, as he might have predicted, Essex and Waller appeared to be joining forces for a combined attack upon him while Rupert was miles away in the North and Oxford could give him little help. Hurriedly he wrote from Worcester to Rupert on the 7th: 'I confess the best had been to have followed your advice . . . yet we doubt not but to defend ourselves until you may have time to beat the Scots, but if you be too long in doing it, I apprehend some great inconvenience.' Fears for the northern project now began to fill his mind also, and a week later he wrote again, unexpectedly, and confusedly:

If York be lost I shall esteem my crown little less. But if York be relieved and you beat the rebels' army of both Kingdoms which are before it, then . . . I may possibly make a shift . . . to spin out time until you come to assist me. Wherefore I command you and conjure you by the duty and affection which I know you bear me that, all new enterprises laid aside, you immediately march according to your first

intention with all your force to the relief of York. But if that be either lost, or have freed themselves from the besiegers, or that, for want of powder you cannot undertake that work, that you immediately march with your whole strength directly to Worcester to assist me and my army.

Charles was clearly torn between his desires for the relief of York and his need to be relieved at Worcester. But, against the odds, the wheel of fortune now began to turn in his favour as the armies of Essex and Waller, far from planning a concerted attack, appeared about to separate, with Essex marching into Devon and Waller alone pursuing the King. With a certain arrogance Charles now doubled back over the Cotswolds, through Broadway and back to Woodstock, collecting men and arms as he went. On June 22 he even pushed over to Buckingham, in enemy country. A Council of War here debated three possibilities, each of which demonstrated their changed fortunes: marching northwards to assist Rupert; falling alternately on the two enemy armies; or making a sudden attack on London. So meagre did London's defences appear at that time that the last plan seemed feasible.

But before Charles could act Waller's army had caught up with him on June 24 by Cropredy Bridge on the banks of the little river Cherwell between Banbury and Daventry. Charles, with the Prince of Wales, was in the main body of the army throughout the engagement that followed, within pistol shot of the enemy. It was said by captured soldiers that the King's person had been deliberately aimed at and that they had focused upon him with their perspective glasses to make sure where he was and what he looked like; it was a different story from the initial one of protecting the King's sacred person and punishing only his evil counsellors. Patrick Ruthven, Earl of Forth, recently created Earl of Brentford, led the Royalist vanguard, a cavalry brigade brought up their rear, while Waller continued on a parallel course on the opposite side of the Cherwell. Each army had about 5000 horse, Charles some 3500 foot, Waller rather more. As they neared Cropredy Bridge Charles sent forward a small detachment to hold the bridge and protect his flank. On the news that a Parliamentarian force was approaching from the North, which might be cut off, this detachment hastened its pace to such effect that a gap appeared between van and rear of the Royalist army. Waller was quick to seize the opportunity and threw a considerable force across a ford at Slat Mill, half a mile to the south of the bridge. Charles, however, regrouped his men in time to repulse Waller with considerable loss of men and material. By

evening the two armies were once more eyeing each other across the Cherwell. Charles sent a message of grace and pardon to Waller who replied that he had no power to treat and the next morning Charles decided to draw off without further engagement, his army being short of victuals and news coming in of a further Parliamentarian detachment marching to the relief of Waller. With little loss to himself, Charles had captured the whole of the enemy artillery train and inflicted considerable casualties. It was a resounding victory, an engagement that Charles liked to remember, and when his secretary, Sir Edward Walker, wrote a detailed account of the battle, Charles annotated the work himself.^[1]

Charles was now free to engage Essex and he turned southwestward, making for Exeter. He had learned while he was on the march that Henrietta-Maria had given birth to a daughter in the city on June 6, and at Buckingham on the 25th he began a letter to her that the requirements of battle left unfinished. After Cropredy Bridge, in the humble house at Williamscote where he slept, he completed the letter, but she never saw his loving words, for the letter was intercepted.

Dr Mayerne had come to her and Madame Peronne had been sent by her sister-in-law from France, but she remained ill and depressed in spite of the healthy, pretty little girl she had borne and called Henrietta after herself. She feared to be taken by the Parliamentarian forces now marching into the West, and her one obsession was escape. So, leaving her baby with Lady Dalkeith, she fled from Exeter with a handful of companions, including her faithful dwarf, Geoffrey Hudson. The dangers and privations of her journey were terrible, but at Falmouth a Dutch vessel, hired by Jermyn, was waiting and on July 14 she sailed for France. She still had to face bombardment by Parliament's ships and the storms that always dogged her, but she reached Brest two days later, only a year after her reunion with her husband at Edgehill. When Charles reached Exeter on July 26 his wife was on the road to Paris waiting to hear whether the waters of Amboise would help her to regain her health; but he fondled his baby daughter — the prettiest, so it had been reported to him, of all his children — and made arrangements for her christening in Exeter Cathedral.

Not only had he missed seeing Henrietta-Maria but, as he hastened westwards, the news from the North was bad. Rupert's approach to York had been sufficient to cause the besieging Parliamentarian armies to retire, fearing to be caught between the oncoming Rupert and Newcastle's men in the town. By a quick feint and a rapid march

Rupert bypassed them as he approached the city, putting the river Swale between his forces and theirs and triumphantly calling upon Newcastle to join him. He then wheeled round to meet the Parliamentarian forces with the intention of crushing them before they had time to group. Thus he would be carrying out Charles's instructions to the letter: to relieve York and beat the rebels' army. Speed was the more necessary as he had not yet heard of Charles's victory at Cropredy Bridge and now pictured him sore beset and awaiting his nephew's return. The characters of Rupert and Newcastle, and an old rivalry dating from the war in Europe between Rupert and Lord Eythin, Newcastle's second, dashed Rupert's plans. Rupert did not stop for the courtesies of the occasion; he spoke to Newcastle, who was twice his age even if less than half as good as a soldier, as though he were the junior officer. Newcastle courteously hid his resentment but he was slow in following Rupert; Eythin encouraged his men to demand their pay before engaging further. Rupert was left on Marston Moor far below the strength he needed and, as he waited for Newcastle and Eythin, the enemy had time enough for their own dispositions. It was four in the afternoon of July 2 before Eythin followed Newcastle to the field, bringing up his foot. He was then dissatisfied with Rupert's dispositions and, though it was too late to alter the plan, it was six or seven in the evening before all was in place. Meanwhile Rupert could hear across the moor the psalms which Cromwell's troopers were accustomed to sing, prompting his question to a captured Parliamentarian soldier: 'Is Cromwell there?'

He was not expecting battle that night, and with other Royalist commanders was preparing to eat his supper when the enemy attacked, their combined forces numbering some 26–27,000 to Rupert's 17–18,000. Moreover, the surprise caused Rupert to lose the initial impact of his cavalry, upon which he relied. Though his men fought hard and bravely the Parliamentarian victory was complete by the end of the day when 4000 Royalist dead lay on the battlefield. Rupert had interpreted Charles's letter to mean the relief of York and the defeat of the Parliamentarian armies. Victory in the field had gone to 'old Ironsides', as Rupert now termed Cromwell in reference to the impenetrable strength of his troops. York surrendered on July 16. Newcastle 'in shame', as he said, at the magnitude of the defeat, left the country together with Eythin and other officers, Rupert collected what men he could and made his way south through Lancashire, too short of ammunition for any engagement.^[2]

Charles, meantime, in spite of his wife's departure and the bad news from the North, had been conscious since the end of June of a feeling resembling satisfaction, almost of fulfilment, as though the earlier events of his life were falling into place: the war-games of his youth; the hours he spent in his cabinet room as a young man seeking escape from the difficulties outside which were too personal to be resolved; the fling for independence when he rode off to seek the Infanta's hand. He was fighting now in a cause he had been brought up to believe was right and he was in full command — unlike the years at Whitehall when Parliaments and Privy Council, ministers and courtiers had bullied him beyond belief and talked incessantly, driving him to the solace of his pictures. Even at Oxford they were doing the same; and at Oxford there were too many military commanders. Now he was on his own, now was the time for action, with one simple task before him. He was, as Roe had perceptively remarked years before, at his best when alone, acting in the awareness of his own responsibility. He did the things he wanted to do. He took the Prince of Wales to a great concourse of people on Dartmoor. 'Your cheerfulness in this service I shall requite if it be in my power', he said to them; 'if I live not to do it, I hope this young man, my son, your fellow soldier, to whom I shall particularly give it in charge, will do so.' When he made contact with the enemy he was in no hurry to strike but awaited the right moment. He knew the game was in his hands.

When Charles entered Exeter, Essex was at Tavistock, having had an easy march and being satisfied that Plymouth was safe, though he was well aware of the danger in his rear and sent urgently to Parliament for reinforcements. Yet, in spite of the difficulties of his situation, or because he hoped for Cornish support, or because he had designs on the profitable tin mines whose proceeds were helping to support Charles, or merely because some of his followers held land in Cornwall and were anxious to inspect it, Essex pushed further on into the peninsular and crossed the Tamar on July 27. Charles could have predicted the welcome he got, for Cornwall was Royalist to a man, and, in steady pursuit, he rode into Liskeard on August 2 while Essex moved to Bodmin and Sir Richard Grenville occupied Grampound, hoping to catch Essex between the two Royalist forces. Essex struck due south towards the sea, where the chance of being cut off was less, and reached Lostwithiel on August 3. Skilfully and without haste Charles set to work to contain him. On the 4th he occupied Boconnock, Lord Mohun's house, lying to the East; on the 12th Grenville

seized Lord Robart's house at Lanhydrock and secured the Respryn Bridge over the Fowey river, which effectively shut Essex in on his landward side. Charles then turned his attention to the seaward side of Essex's position. Essex had control of the western arm of Fowey harbour but Royalist forces took possession of key positions on the opposite side, nearer the mouth of the harbour, so that Essex was effectively blocked for exit or entrance. Charles was still in no hurry, and when Essex's cavalry rode out of Lostwithiel in the early hours of August 31 towards Plymouth he made no attempt to stop them.

It was different with the foot, and later that day battle was joined. Making a reconnaissance before the fighting started, Charles came under fire and a fisherman standing by him was killed. The King remained unmoved. Once more he fought in the midst of his army, he supped that night with his men on the field, and slept under a hedge during the wet, stormy night. By morning Essex had escaped to Plymouth leaving Skippon to accept Charles's terms, which were magnanimous enough, merely requiring the complete surrender of all their arms and equipment while the men were left free to make their way as best they might. What would he have done with prisoners? They would have required guards, food, lodging, and the difficulties of transporting them would have been considerable. Charles was probably pleased to see Essex go and he had no wish to take Skippon. The war had not yet reached the stage when the execution of a commander was considered just or helpful. But Charles had dispersed his opponents in the West, he had once more opened up the western thrust to London, and he had acquired 42 guns, a mortar, 100 barrels of powder, and 5000 small arms. It was perhaps not much to place against Marston Moor, and only about 16,000 Royalist horse and foot and 10,000 Parliamentarian had been involved in all, but it had revealed the inability of the Parliamentarian command to support its officers in the field and, in spite of the intervention of the Scots, in spite of Cromwell and his Ironsides, the autumn of 1644 was full of doubts for Parliament.^[3]

Charles, on the other hand, after a season of successful campaigning, had never felt better. As he turned to wards home his object was to relieve Banbury and to raise the seiges of Basing House and Donnington Castle — all garrisons useful to Oxford — before going into winter quarters. Marching slowly he reached Newbury on October 22. But the Parliamentarian generals had read his intentions correctly and were massed on Clay Hill, north of the river Kennet, to offer battle.

The second battle of Newbury was indecisive and about 500 men were killed on each side. Charles had no wish to risk further losses when he was outnumbered and victory was uncertain, so he drew off in the night to Wallingford and entered Oxford on the 28th. Scarcely pausing, he immediately, with an escort of 500 horse, made for Bath to consult with Rupert. The two left Bath together on the 30th with some 3000 horse and foot and came by way of Cirencester and Burford (where they left a detachment) to Oxford again, which they reached on November 1. Five days later Charles reviewed his army — 15,000 strong — on Bullingdon Green and announced the replacement of old Patrick Ruthven, Earl of Brentford, by Prince Rupert as Lieutenant General, with the Prince of Wales as titular Commander-in-Chief. He made one more foray to secure Donnington Castle and was riding at the head of his men, as usual, when, in a sharp little affray, his horse was wounded in the foot, but there was no serious resistance and he secured the Castle and took over the artillery which was stored there.

He returned to Oxford for the winter on November 23 1644 when the leaves had fallen from the trees and the mists were rising from the meadows. The old city looked dank and cheerless. The Court had shrunk, the courtiers' gossip was less shrill, the students had departed. Merton College was quiet once more and no one trod the private way between his room and Henrietta's. She was now in Paris, the guest of her sister-in-law who was Queen Regent during the minority of the little Louis XIV, somewhat better in health and beginning once more to seek aid for her husband. The letters had started coming through again but, because of headaches and eye-strain, she more often gave them to Jermyn to render into code; Jermyn also, Charles assumed, would decypher his letters to his wife. The knowledge was not pleasing to Charles. There had been various stories of the Queen's unfaithfulness: even when she was coming to meet him at Edgehill the gossips had spoken of too close a friendship with Lord Charles Cavendish, for whom she was rumoured to have delayed her journey. The Earl of Holland had figured largely in earlier days and Charles could not forget how assiduously Holland had courted her in her rooms at Merton. Impudent and scandalous remarks concerning the Queen and Henry Jermyn had recently come to his ears. Jermyn he knew as a faithful friend and servant to the Queen but he remembered how her first request on their meeting at Edgehill had been for a peerage for Jermyn. He was distressed but he was quite unbelieving of

any scandal. The actions of his nephew, the Elector Palatine, were in a different category. That young man had left England after the disastrous summoning of Hull, in which he considered he had played an undignified part, but had returned at the end of August, taken the Covenant, and attempted to ingratiate himself with the Parliament, letting the rumour gain ground that he would be willing to accept his uncle's throne. Even more sinister talk hung in the air, forgotten as soon as whispered, though it had reached Charles's ears, of an intention to depose him in favour of his son, the Prince of Wales.

More concretely his thoughts turned to his old friend, Archbishop Laud, whom he had not seen since the day he was placed under arrest. Laud had remained in prison, half forgotten, it seemed, during the early stages of the war. But Prynne had not forgiven and in the early spring of 1644 the old man was brought to the bar of the House of Lords to answer to a charge of treason brought forward by a Committee of the House of Commons based upon a case made out by Prynne in his usual style of verbose hatred, whose substance was that Laud had attempted to subvert the established religion and the very law itself. The trial resembled that of Strafford except that his accusers found it less interesting, wandering in and out of the chamber at will, rarely caring to devote their afternoons to listening to the prisoner's case which, week after week, for ten whole months, he laboured to put before them. It was difficult to make a charge of treason stick, and the procedure familiar in the trial of Strafford was carried through: first, the petitioning and the angry crowds at Westminster demanding the life of the Archbishop, then the Bill of Attainder. Strode spoke of the need for 'expedition' in the business and claimed that 'multitudes' were 'demanding justice'. 'Is this', cried Essex, who had borne the brunt of their fighting, 'the liberty which we promised to maintain with our blood? Shall posterity say that to save them from the yoke of the King we have placed them under the yoke of the populace?' The speaker carried no more weight than the argument. They were remodelling their armies and in the new command Essex would have no place.

Laud was executed on 10 January 1645, maintaining to the end that he lived and died in the Protestant religion as established in England and that he had laboured to keep a uniformity in the external worship of God according to the doctrine and discipline of that Church.^[4]

To Charles the news brought a strange justification of all he had

done, an expiation, through Laud, for the death of Strafford. In a letter to Henrietta-Maria a few days after the Archbishop's death he wrote:

Nothing can be more evident than that Strafford's innocent blood hath been one of the great causes of God's just judgment upon this nation by a furious civil war, both sides hitherto being almost equally guilty, but now this last crying blood being totally theirs, I believe it is no presumption hereafter to hope that the hand of justice must be heavier upon them and lighter upon us, looking now upon our cause, having passed through our faults.

The conduct of the trial, as well as the execution itself, confirmed his belief in the necessity to continue the war, and his interest was focused upon the strategy of the coming campaign rather than the tortuous or insulting peace proposals that were put to him from time to time.

Parliamentary Commissioners were in Oxford when he returned from the relief of Donnington Castle and he received them the following day — his old enemy Denzil Holles, and the lawyer, Bulstrode Whitelocke, for whom he had some respect. The basis of their proposals was ludicrous enough, entailing the setting up of Presbyterianism as the national religion and he himself taking the Covenant; and when they read the list of Royalists to be excluded from pardon the names included his nephews Rupert and Maurice. Charles was glad to hear the contemptuous laughter of his courtiers. He went that evening with Rupert to the Commissioners' lodgings. The talk was amiable enough but Charles treated them with a certain disdain. 'You told me twice', he said, 'that you had no power to treat . . . that you were only to deliver the propositions. A postillion might have done as much as you.' He therefore declined to give his answer in any form but in a sealed envelope which they were to deliver to Parliament. When they were reluctant to accept it he spoke sharply: 'You must take it', he said, 'were it a ballad or a song of Robin Hood.' When the packet was opened by Parliament it was found to contain nothing but a request for a safe conduct for two of the King's advisers to bring his formal answer to Westminster. The humiliation of the two Commissioners was probably in bad taste, but it was his way of replying to their insult to his nephews. The substance of his reply, when it was sent for discussion at Uxbridge in January 1645, was in the remark he made when taking formal leave of the Commissioners: 'There are three things I will not part with — the Church, my crown, and my friends; and you will have much ado to get them from me.'^[5]

32—
'My Marching Army'

The peace proposals indicated by the Commissioners at Oxford in the autumn of 1644 were repeated more formally at Uxbridge in the early months of 1645 and lost nothing of their sting. Charles smothered his indignation and infinitely improved his constitutional image among those who had time to think about such matters by his counter-proposals which, in substance, proposed the adoption of the constitution as it stood in the summer of 1641, the preservation of the Common Prayer Book from 'scorn and violence', and the framing of a Bill for 'tender consciences'. He even suggested that both armies should be disbanded and he himself come to Westminster — though what he meant by the proposal was not clear. He assured Henrietta-Maria that it did not mean surrender: 'As for trusting the rebels, either by going to London or disbanding my army before a peace, do no ways fear my hazarding so cheaply or foolishly.' I 'pretend to have a little more wit', he said, 'than to put myself in the reverence of perfidious rebels.'

Both sides, indeed, knew that the position was not yet amenable to peace propositions. Parliament continued its plans for remodelling its army, the fruits of which appeared in the New Model Ordinance of January 1645. Charles strained every nerve to build up his fighting force. He had never despaired of foreign aid, but one by one his contacts were failing. His Uncle of Denmark remained unmoved, the French made no response to his wife's importuning. In an effort to make available further resources from the family of Orange, the Prince of Wales was offered as husband to the daughter of Dutch William, but the match no longer sounded worth the expense to that practical sovereign; he was said to have informed Jermyn that the best course for the King of England would be to make peace at any price with his subjects. But Charles had said to Newcastle years before that he saw no reason why his Catholic subjects should not fight for him,

and he saw no reason why he should persecute them for their religion. Now his thoughts turned to Ireland. If he could satisfy the Catholic Irish he could bring them to fight for him and at the same time release the English soldiers who were holding them and thus, in one operation, acquire two armies. By the beginning of 1645 he was deep in plans with the Catholic Earl of Glamorgan, the son of the Marquis of Worcester who at the beginning of the war had so unstintingly poured money into his cause. Glamorgan was to offer the Irish a mitigation of the recusancy laws with their total repeal later in return for 10,000 Irish who would land in North Wales to help the King and a further 10,000 in South Wales, where they would be joined by loyal Welshmen. At the same time French troops, encouraged by France and by the Pope, would land in the eastern counties to assist a monarch whose attitude to Catholics was so sympathetic.

One of the many difficulties of the situation was that the Marquis of Ormonde, who became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1644, had himself arranged a 'Cessation' with the Irish, although not upon such favourable terms, and had already sent Irish troops both to England and to Scotland. He knew nothing of Glamorgan's commission, while Glamorgan, in his enthusiasm, exceeded the terms of Charles's authority and disregarded his injunction not to proceed to action without consulting the Lord Lieutenant. Charles, holding many irons in the fire, was sorely missing his wife and his dependence upon her grew in her absence as they communicated about the troops who would come to his assistance and where they would land. Some might march through France, thought Charles — but, he hastily adds, 'this is an opinion, not a direction'. On even the smallest matter he waits for her consent — even a bedchamber post in the Prince's household. He begs Jermyn to given him an account of her health. It was altogether a different man from the one who had commanded in the Lostwithiel campaign.

But with willows whitening along the rivers and the meadow grasses springing underfoot the King's mind turned once more to the new season's campaigning, and his spirits rose at the prospect of action. The victories of Montrose in Scotland indicated a northward march to join forces with him but Charles's freedom of movement was inhibited by the activities of Cromwell who was harrying the country round Oxford, keeping the garrisons on the alert, scooping up all the available draught horses. Before he could leave the city Charles

needed more than 400 of these animals and they had to be found in an area already heavily drawn upon. It was not until May 11 that his needs were supplied and he managed to elude Cromwell, marching out with 11,000 men to join a Council of War at Stow.

The divided counsels that were so common among the Royalists led to the decision to separate, Charles and Rupert heading north, Goring marching westward to confront Fairfax. Neither deployment was initially successful. Goring failed to hold Parliament's forces in the West with the result that Fairfax was able to join Cromwell at Marston, a couple of miles from the centre of Oxford, on May 22. Oxford was poorly supplied and its ability to withstand a siege was sufficiently uncertain to keep the main Royalist army within striking distance of the city. Within these limits, however, it was moving fairly freely and on May 31 it captured Leicester and made towards Daventry.

Its pace was on the whole leisurely, though on one occasion it marched from 4 am to 6 pm without rest, and there was ample scope for young Richard Symonds, a trooper in Charles's Lifeguard — one of a divided family, for his brother was with Parliament — to satisfy his passion for topography and to fill his notebook with interesting details of their marches: the black earth which people cut into turf above Uttoxeter, curiously wrought statues in alabaster in a church, 'a flowery cross', 'a private sweet village'.^[1] But a free-moving Royalist army jotting down its impressions of the countryside was not what the Parliamentarian army command had envisaged, and on June 7, at Daventry, Charles learned that his opponents had changed their tactics and lifted the siege at Oxford. The welcome news, however, was mitigated not only by the necessity of revictualling the city before he moved on, but by the knowledge that Fairfax and Cromwell were now free to harrass him more directly.

The first move of the Parliamentarian commanders was to the Eastern Association, which they thought was Charles's objective and which, indeed, his Privy Council at Oxford had urged him to attack instead of persisting on his north wards march. When Charles replied to this advice he was at his most dignified and unrealistic. 'You know', he wrote to them from Daventry on June 11, 'that the Council was never wont to debate upon any matter not propounded to them by me, and certainly it were a strange thing if my marching army — especially I being at the head of them — should be governed by my sitting Council at Oxford.' The following day forces even less acceptable were dictating his strategy.

Charles was in the grip of that lethargic belief that all was well, or would become so, which in times of stress sometimes overcame him. His attitude was also bound up with the luxury of dependence, in this case upon Rupert, which was so much part of his character. When he was in sole charge, as in the Loswithiel campaign, he planned every move with the greatest care. Now he was so little heeding the New Model Army, which could not be so very far off, that on the 12th he went hunting in Fawsley Park, three miles south of Daventry on the Banbury Road, the property of that Knightley family who had been prominent among his opponents. As at the taking of Broughton Castle there may have been some feeling of retribution in the action. The exhilaration of the sport was rudely disturbed towards evening, however, by Rupert's urgent summons: enemy horse were in the neighbourhood.

The first instinct of the Royalists was to put ground between themselves and their opponents. Neither Goring nor Gerard had joined them from the West and they would be heavily outnumbered. So throughout the night of the 12th the scattered Royalist troops and equipment were called in from the villages round Daventry, and by the morning of the 13th the King's army was making its way towards Harborough. Meanwhile Fairfax had reached Kislingbury, about eight miles from Daventry, and on the 13th he was joined there by Cromwell. That same evening a party of Parliamentarian horse under Henry Ireton, probing forward, found a group of Rupert's cavalry playing quoits and another eating supper at Naseby, apparently unaware of, or unheeding, the proximity of the enemy. Charles himself spent the night at the village of Lubenham near Harborough and before turning in he wrote to Nicholas, perhaps intending to mitigate the sharpness of his earlier letter. 'I assure you', he said, 'I shall look before I leap further north.' But he had little time for looking. He was aroused in the middle of the night by the news that the Parliamentarian army was upon them.

When manoeuvring for position was complete the two armies were facing one another from serrated ridges of higher ground separated by broken land of furze and scrub, the Parliamentrians having the advantage of slightly higher ground as well as a superiority in numbers of two to one, their combined forces amounting to some 14,000 against 7500 Royalists. Both sides were drawn up in similar conventional array with cavalry on either flank, infantry in the centre and supporting musketeers lining the hedges at appropriate points.

Charles, his lethargy vanished in the need for action, reviewed his men. His army was a splendid sight, the regiments in the colours of their commanders, banners fluttering, horses groomed to a peak of perfection. Charles was filled with pride and drew his sword as he paraded before them in full armour, the very picture of a mighty sovereign leading his men to war. Then he took his place in front of the reserve of horse and foot which was stationed immediately behind Astley's infantry. When Cromwell, on that bright June morning, looked across the little valley and saw his enemies in full array involuntary words of admiration rose to his lips, but he merely felt the more elated that it was he who was the chosen instrument of the Lord to humble that mighty show.

At ten o'clock in the morning of June 14 Rupert on the Royalist right wing led the cavalry charge against Ireton's horse on the Parliamentarian left, his accustomed speed and force somewhat diminished by the nature of the ground between the two ridges and the subsequent uphill drive. But he broke through and was at Naseby attempting to secure the Parliamentarian baggage trains while Cromwell on their right was routing the Royalist left with cavalry to spare to help his foot in the centre. Charles immediately brought his reserves into action to help Astley's infantry: 'One charge more, gentlemen, one charge more', he was crying, 'and the day is ours!' In the midst of the mêlée the Earl of Carnwath seized his bridle. 'Will you go upon your death in an instant!' he cried, with several full-blooded Scottish oaths, and swung the horse's head to the right. The confusion was too great for Charles to repair the move instantly and to some of his men it appeared as though an order to right turn had been given; in obeying it they left Cromwell's cavalry unmolested and themselves galloped off some quarter of a mile to the rear, carrying the King with them. Rupert had not lingered at Naseby but when he returned the situation was already beyond repair. The remnants of the Royalist army made for Leicester, fourteen miles away, harassed by enemy troopers. The bodies of the slain covered an area of four square miles; they were thickest upon the little hill where the King had commanded.

Naseby was a complete military disaster for Charles. A thousand of his men were dead; 5000 were prisoners or wounded, including 500 officers; his foot, as a fighting force, had ceased to exist; the royal standard was taken, the Queen's colours, the Duke of York's, the banner of every infantry regiment on the field was with the enemy. Charles's artillery train, powder, arms, baggage and wagons, includ-

ing his own coach where he kept copies of his correspondence and his private papers, including his wife's letters and copies of his letters to her, fell to the enemy. Thirty-five of the letters, going back to his letter to Buckingham about his wife's 'Monseiurs' and including many of personal endearment, were immediately published by Parliament. More important to them were the letters that revealed the plans for military assistance which Charles had been discussing with his wife: the landing of French troops on the English coast at Selsey or thereabouts; the intended rising in Wales to coincide with the landing of Irish troops; the parts played by Ormonde and Glamorgan; Charles's offer to suspend, and ultimately to repeal, the penal laws against Catholics.

Naseby was a victory of 14,000 over 7,000 and was defeat without dishonour, owing much to the fact that Cromwell had sufficient cavalry to turn on the Royalist centre after he had dealt with their left wing. Moreover, while it was a defeat that had scattered Charles's infantry and destroyed his arms it had left him with a considerable force of cavalry. Could he retrieve the remnants of the foot, add to them the armies that still existed in the West, and recruit more men to build another fighting force? With thoughts of support among the Welsh, of help from Ireland, and of Montrose's victories in Scotland, his only idea was to try.^[2]

Charles spent the night of Naseby at Ashby-de-la-Zouche while the wounded were taken to Leicester, then, with his remaining cavalry, he marched westward through Lichfield to hereford, which he reached on the 18th after a difficult march through hilly and woody country where, as young Symonds noted, the churches were very poor. At Hereford Charles learned that Fairfax had taken Leicester, and here Rupert left him to take command of the garrison at Bristol, which was sorely pressed. Charles pushed on and was at Abergavenny on July 1 and on the 3rd reached Raglan, the splendid and well-fortified home of the Earl of the Earl of Worcester whose generosity had enabled him to begin his campaign in 1642. Here for a few days he was able to refresh his mind and body while remaining at the centre of what he hoped could be a revival of his cause. Glamorgan was still in Ireland and he had the brief and relaxing experience of viewing the waterworks, pumps, irrigation devices and hydraulic lifts which the busy mind of that young man had erected in his family home. But Charles's mind was more upon his own son, the Prince of Wales, whom he had sent, in the charge of two of his most trusted councillors, to Cornwall.

Within a week Charles's hopes were dashed. Goring was defeated at Langport on July 10, Bridgwater fell on the 23rd, support promised from Wales failed to materialize. All men, it was said, 'grew less affected or more frighted', many were compounding with Parliament, scattered pockets of Royalist resistance were giving up. There was talk of peace, in which even Rupert shared. Charles was at the bottom of the trough. 'Nephew', he wrote to Rupert on August 3 from Cardiff, having left Raglan on July 18,

I confess that, speaking either as a mere soldier or statesman, I must say there is no probability but of my ruin; but as a Christian, I must tell you, that God will not suffer rebels to prosper, or this cause to be overthrown . . . I know my obligations to be neither to abandon God's cause, injure my successors, nor forsake my friends.

Charles was repeating his stand on his religion, his Crown, and his friends; and, like Cromwell, he believed that God was with him.

Two days later Charles wrote to his son. 'It is very fit for me now to prepare for the worse', he said, and he instructed the Prince: 'whensoever you find yourself in apparent danger of falling into the rebels' hands, that you convey yourself into France, and there to be under your mother's care; she is to have the absolute power of your education in all things, except religion, and in that not to meddle at all, but leave it entirely to the care of your tutor, the bishop of Salisbury.' On the same day, August 5, with some 2500 horse and foot he set off over the rough Welsh mountains to Brecknock, Radnor and Ludlow, with the general intention of proceeding north to join Montrose. With little rest he passed through Shropshire and on to Derbyshire until on August 15 he came to Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, one of the homes of the Duke of Newcastle, where he rested for two nights, leaving after Sunday service on August 17. The following day he was at Doncaster, where he was heartened by the appearance of some volunteers who came in to join him. But there was no rest, for enemy forces were gathering to the north under Colonel-General Poyntz while Leslie with 4000 Scottish horse was approaching from the west. So he made south-eastward, reaching Huntingdon on the 24th and Woburn on the 26th, where he slept in the house of the Duke of Bedford, and two days later, with his men and animals badly needing refreshment, he came once more to Oxford, reaching the city on August 28.

In two days he was off again. There was something of desperation in his ceaseless marching. Even the ebullient Digby began to despair:

there is such an universal weariness of the war, despair of a possibility for the King to recover, and so much of private interest grown from these upon everybody [he wrote to Jermyn], that I protest to God I do not know four persons living besides myself and you that have not already given clear demonstrations that they will purchase their own and — as they flatter themselves — the kingdom's quiet at any price.

But Charles's obsession now was the relief of Bristol, which even Rupert's presence in the city had not been able to free from the pressure of enemy troops. He instructed Goring to draw what force he could from the west and march to the Somerset side of the town, while he himself advanced with horse and foot across the Severn not far from Gloucester. To make final plans for this unrealistic scheme Charles went once more to Raglan and here, on September 11, he received the 'monstrous intelligence', as he termed it, of Rupert's surrender of Bristol the previous day.

It was a blow which in his weakened state he could hardly take, and for the first time Charles refused to support a subordinate or a friend who had failed him. The crime was deeper in that Rupert was the King's own nephew, that to Charles he had been almost another Buckingham. But whereas when things had gone wrong with Buckingham Charles had rewarded him and hidden the hurt that the revelation of a flaw in his idol had occasioned, now his reaction was violently opposite. The Prince had no one in Charles's immediate circle to speak for him, Digby was too likely to believe the worst, and Charles did not wait for details or explanation. Instead, all the anguish of the war, of defeat, the utter weariness of the marching backwards and forwards, came out in one harsh, savage letter:

Nephew,

Though the loss of Bristol be a great blow to me, yet your surrendering it as you did is of so much affliction to me, that it makes me forget not only the consideration of that place, but is likewise the greatest trial of my constancy that hath yet befallen me; for what is to be done? after one that is so near me as you are, both in blood and friendship, submits himself to so mean an action (I give it the easiest term) such — I have so much to say that I will say no more of it: only, lest rashness of judgment be laid to my charge, I must remember you of your letter of the 12 Aug., whereby you assured me, (that if no mutiny happened), you would keep Bristoll for four months. Did you keep it four days? Was there any thing like a mutiny? More questions might be asked, but now, I confess, to little purpose. My conclusion is, to desire you to seek your subsistence (until it shall

please God to determine of my condition) somewhere beyond seas, to which end I send you herewith a pass; and I pray God to make you sensible of your present condition, and give you means to redeem what you have lost; for I shall have no greater joy in a victory, than a just occasion without blushing to assure you of my being Your loving uncle, and most faithful friend.

Rupert was required to deliver up his commission immediately and Charles sent to Nicholas at Oxford to arrest the Governor of the city, who was Rupert's friend, and who Charles felt might try to mitigate the Prince's punishment. 'Tell my son', he added in a postscript to Nicholas, 'that I shall less grieve to hear that he is knocked on the head than that he should do so mean an action as is the rendering of Bristol castle and fort upon the terms it was.'^[3]

Charles had two more lines of hope. He still thought of joining Montrose, not yet knowing that three days after the surrender of Bristol Montrose had been decisively defeated by Leslie at Philliphaugh, but more immediately his mind was on the port of Chester where troops from Ireland might land but which was being threatened, though not yet invested, by Parliamentarian troops. Losing no time he left Raglan on September 18 and started marching again over the Welsh mountains, where ten miles felt like twenty and where for long stretches they 'saw never a house or church' as Trooper Symonds recorded. In an ill-provisioned countryside their fare was meagre and Charles shared even his cheese on one occasion with fellow-travellers at an inn. On Sunday September 21 they came to Chirk Castle, twenty miles south of Chester, whence Charles sent a message to the Governor to hold out for a further twenty-four hours. Chester was still open to the south and west and Charles hoped that his cavalry would be able to repulse the enemy horse while he himself entered the city with his Lifeguard of about a thousand men by the Dee bridge. But at Rowton Heath, two miles from Chester, his troopers suffered another defeat on September 24 and he himself watched from the city walls as the leader of his Lifeguard, young Bernard Stuart, whom he had recently created Lord Lichfield, sallied from the city to their assistance only to be slain himself amid fearful carnage outside the city walls as defenders and attackers became inextricably mixed. It was the end of the gallant troop of horse who had followed him since Naseby.

With no more than a small bodyguard Charles refreshed himself at Denbigh Castle for three days and then made for Newark, arriving

there on October 4. Here Rupert sought him out, demanding to be judged by court martial, compelling Charles to assimilate the stark facts that Bristol was contained by sea and land, that it was bound to fall, and the only question was whether this would be with the minimum loss of life or with great slaughter. The court martial unanimously found Rupert 'not guilty of any the least want of courage or fidelity' but there was an ugly scene between the King and Rupert's friends, and both Charles and the Prince remained angry and bitter.

Parliament was mopping up fragments of Royalist resistance in the west and the Midlands and Charles decided to make for Oxford. To escape detection he left with a few friends at 10 o'clock in the evening of November 3; at 3 am on the 4th they were at Belvoir but pushed on until, towards evening, Charles was so weary that he was compelled to sleep for the space of four hours in the village of Codsbury, a few miles from Northampton. At ten in the evening they started again and before daybreak were past Daventry, reaching Banbury shortly before noon on the 5th whence a party of horse from Oxford escorted them to the city. It was nearly a year since the King's triumphant return to Oxford from the west. The city was now more grey, more sad, more still than before. Charles had taxed himself physically to the utmost, having been on the move, almost incessantly, for six months, either on horseback or on foot. He had covered more than 1200 miles of difficult country in long marches, sometimes from dawn until midnight, whose nature can be gathered from his men's descriptions: 'a cruel day', 'a long march over the mountains', 'no dinner', 'dinner in the field'. How could so brave an army as he had had have suffered such a sore defeat? Only on the stage of universal history could his own tragedy find its place. But even here he found no compliance. He sent to the Bodleian Library for a copy of D'Aubigné's Histoire Universelle . But John Rous, Bodley's Librarian, sent back a courteous denial and brought the statutes of the Library for the King to see. They forbade lending and could not be set aside, even for a reigning monarch. Charles readily accepted the situation. But in his exhausted condition it seemed like another repulse.^[4]

But, even without D'Aubigné, there was enough to ponder on. Charles had many good commanders both old and young with war experience. Rupert was perhaps the most brilliant but he had faults of arrogance and impetuosity and his close kinship with the King led to difficulties which were exacerbated by the jealousies of others about the King, particularly by Digby — also young, brilliant, and arrogant.

It was possibly a mistake, as some of Charles's advisers thought, to raise Rupert to the supreme command under himself, yet there were many professional soldiers who welcomed the appointment.

In the early stages of the war Cromwell observed a 'spirit' among the cavaliers that he felt was lacking in Parliament's troops. The men who came into Charles were fired with an enthusiasm to defeat the 'rebels' and were inspired by their Cause, by their King, and by Rupert's charisma. But when Cromwell raised his 'men of a spirit' in East Anglia who knew what they wanted and were prepared to fight for what they knew, he was forging an army with a spirit that was even more pervasive and more durable than that of the cavaliers. His 'Ironsides' fought, it was said, with a sword in one hand and a Bible in the other, and when, with the new-modelling of their army, they were also subject to efficient control and direction they became virtually invincible. That Cromwell himself, besides being essentially professional, was also a brilliant soldier, was recognized by his opponents. When Rupert asked before Marston Moor, 'Is Cromwell there?', it was the respect of one brilliant, professional soldier for another.

There was, nevertheless, an amateurishness about a great deal of the Royalist fighting, typified by Charles hunting in Woodstock before leaving Oxford for a major campaign or hunting in Fawsley Park on the eve of Naseby. There were occasions when divided counsels harmed his prospects, particularly at Stow-on-the-Wold in May 1645 when Goring went into the west leaving Rupert and the King to go northward. Charles was probably wrong in sending his most experienced counsellors, including Hyde and Culpepper, into the west with the Prince of Wales, so depriving himself of strong advisers to counterbalance the volatile young men who remained with him. There were probably missed opportunities, like the failure to advance to London after Edgehill or after the first battle of Newbury. But basically Parliament had the more resources in its control of London and Westminster and its access to the City and most of the wealthy towns and ports. It had also a wider-based support than Charles had in the many ills and grievances which united for a time in opposition. The disparate nature of this support would prove to be a weakness, but it helped to win the war. Even so, Parliament had to call upon the assistance of the Scots and its victory was no foregone conclusion.

For Charles himself the war had opened up opportunities that he

took with open hands. He was no cardboard commander but actively participated in general strategy and individual campaigns, rapidly turning theoretical knowledge to practical use. He was brave, he was tireless, he marched with his men, often on foot, rarely using his coach; he shared in camp life, took his place on the battlefield, matched his endurance with the strongest of his men. Yet now his friends were leaving the country or compounding with Parliament on such terms as they could and his last army perished at Stow-on-the-Wold shortly after Charles got back to Oxford, when Sir Jacob Astley was trying to get through to him. After his defeat the old man sat himself on an upturned drum and addressed his captors: 'You have done your work, boys', he said, 'and may go play, unless you will fall out among yourselves.' That they would do so was almost the last hope that Charles had left.

33—
'Never Man So Alone'

The most simple division that Charles could see among his opponents was into Parliament, Army, and Scots. There was also a division into Presbyterians and Independents, but this was by no means straightforward, for while the English Parliament and the Scottish army were predominantly Presbyterian, the English army was for the most part strongly Independent in religion with an expanding periphery of sectarianism. Questions of soldiers' pay were also important as Parliament tried, by one means or another, to find money for their wages. Daily becoming more vocal was a wide discontent compounded of soldiers and civilians, Independents and sectaries, mostly of the poorer sections of society, who had been hurt by the fighting or who had not received the benefits from the war that they had expected. Three years of war had increased taxation, disrupted trade, laid waste parts of the country, and broken up homes. The poor who hoped for an end to poverty, those who expected lower taxation, were disillusioned. Many who had turned away from Charles's Anglicanism found in Parliament's Presbyterianism an equally rigid and intolerant worship and reached out to wider forms of nonconformity. As protest grew poverty and sectarianism joined hands and vented their grievances with fresh urgency in dozens of pamphlets and petitions, using the art which Parliament had taught them and turning their complaint against Parliament itself with the general refrain: 'What have we fought for all this while?' The comprehensive cry for Liberty or Freedom recoiled like a boomerang on the heads of the Parliament men who attempted to stem the spate of words by a revival of the printing Ordinances. The press was muzzled more effectively than it had been under the King, and punishment was meted out — not by the Star Chamber or the High Commission for they had been abolished — but by Parliament's own committees.

All through 1645 opposition to Parliament had been hardening and men and women were responding to the leadership of that same John Lilburne who had already crossed Charles's path in London and Oxford. In 1645 he wrote and published from a secret press England's Birthright Justified , which was virtually the manifesto of a party. Perhaps the Leveller party matured a little too late for Charles to take advantage of it; but, in spite of the general concern for the underprivileged that he had shown in the course of his government, it was not in his character to assume the leadership of a discontented populace, and it is unlikely that he, or any adviser who was now with him, would have been clever enough to turn the popular resentment against Parliament to the King's advantage. Charles also let pass another opportunity when some of the leading Independents indicated that, in return for the toleration of their religion, they would be prepared, with the support of the army, to yield a greater control of government to Charles than any terms had yet proposed.

The French were at the centre of a move that attracted Charles the most. After Naseby Cardinal Mazarin had cause to fear the power of the victors, and the Queen Regent was anxious to help her sister-in-law. The Scots had their own reasons for fearing a combination of army and Parliament and both French and Scots were ready to consider a solution in which they made use of the King as a bargaining factor. In the three-cornered negotiations that built up in the winter of 1645/46 the French Ambassador, Jean de Montreuil, who was young, enthusiastic but not very experienced, was the intermediary.

Charles was in an agony of indecision throughout the period, as his letters to Henrietta-Maria reveal. He was not only tossed this way and that by conflicting suggestions but the Irish affair threatened to blow up in his face as Glamorgan's activities were insistently questioned. If Charles was forced back on to the letter of his agreement with Glamorgan and Ormonde he would have to repudiate the lengths to which Glamorgan, in his enthusiasm, had gone and this would end his hopes of Irish assistance. The dilemma caused him to lean more heavily towards the Scots, and as it became clear that Oxford would not be able to hold out for much longer against the encircling enemy, he listened once more to Montreuil. The Scots had led him to believe that if he would recognize their Presbyterian establishment in Scotland and would not interfere with the Presbyterian form of worship in England, they would see that he was restored to his just rights and privileges. So, to avoid the risk of capture, he laid his plans to join the

Scottish army at Southwell, outside Newark, which was one of the few places which had not fallen to the enemy.

On Sunday 26 April 1646 one of his chaplains, Dr Michael Hudson, brought the necessary disguise to Ashburnham's chamber. Jack Ashburnham was a lively courtier, a couple of years younger than Charles. He was related to Buckingham and had been under the Duke's patronage, moving easily in the royal circle. On Buckingham's death he became groom of the bedchamber to the King and was particularly friendly with secretary Nicholas and George Goring. He sat for Hastings in the Long Parliament but followed the King and became treasurer and paymaster to the royal army. Parliament had deprived him of his seat and sequestered his estates while Ashburnham, jaunty and somewhat feckless, faithfully followed Charles and now was ready to help his escape from Oxford. Charles, for his part, both loved and trusted the young courtier. Hudson was a versatile and enterprising man who had been first a servant and then a Fellow of Queen's College and had married into a local gentry family, so he knew the Oxfordshire countryside intimately. He had become chaplain to the King after Edgehill, Charles trusted him and had used him on several delicate missions. About midnight the King arrived with his cousin Richmond, Ashburnham cut his lock and trimmed his beard and Charles assumed the garb of a serving man. Then they sent for the Governor of the city and instructed him not to allow anyone in or out of Oxford for five days. The Governor accompanied them to the East Gate and locked it behind them. 'Farewell Harry!' were his last words to Charles. The clocks were striking 3 am as the three men passed over the East bridge and made their way through Marsh Baldon, Dorchester, Benson, Nettlebed and Henley. When challenged on the road they displayed a pass with Fairfax's signature which had belonged to a soldier who had had leave to travel to London. At Slough they were joined for company by one of Ireton's men and continued on their way through Uxbridge to Hillingdon, which they reached at 10 o'clock the next morning.

Hudson had considered the curious route towards London a necessary feint, but it now became apparent that Charles was once more wavering and was again considering the possibility of presenting himself at Westminster. Possibly he expected some communication at Hillingdon. But a defeated king arriving in the capital at this stage of the struggle with no following could inspire little confidence. His contacts clearly met with no response and any communication he

might have expected at Hillingdon failed to materialize. So, after waiting for three hours, he turned northwards through Harrow and St Albans to Wheathampstead, where he spent the night. The following morning, the 28th, Hudson was sent off to make contact with Montreuil while Charles and Ashburnham journeyed to Downham, a few miles south of King's Lynn, doubtless having in mind the use of that seaport as an escape route if Hudson's report was unfavourable. Hudson had family connections in the area who protected Charles while he was waiting for news. He also went once more for comfort — secretly and in the night — to Little Gidding which he found untouched by war.

Hudson got nothing from the Scots in writing, but a verbal assent to a paper drawn up by Montreuil appeared to him to be satisfactory and he returned to Charles with the assurance that the Scots would ask him to do nothing contrary to his conscience and that, if Parliament refused to restore him to his rights and prerogatives, the Scots would declare for him. It was not as much as Charles had hoped but, as he weighed up the courses open to him, it still seemed that joining the Scots was the best alternative. But the decision hung on a knife's edge. If Hudson had failed to make contact with Montreuil, or if Montreuil had been less persuasive in that last interview, or, indeed, if Montreuil himself had assessed the situation correctly and reported less favourably, Charles would have turned back to London or would have taken Ashburnham's advice to go by sea to Newcastle where he might have had a little respite. As it was, continuing his circuitous way in order to avoid capture by Parliamentarian troops, he looped down to Huntingdon, crossed the Nen and the Welland to Melton Mowbray, doubled back to Stamford, and then made north-north-west, skirting Grantham, over the Trent to Southwell and to the house of the French Ambassador, where he arrived at 7 o'clock in the morning of May 5 after a journey of ten days. It was virtually his last taste of freedom.

Once with the Scots it was clear that both sides were at a loss. The Scots professed surprise at his coming and their immediate object, apart from the taking of Newark, was to get as far away from Parliament and its armies as possible while they considered the situation. Charles, knowing that Newark could not hold out, sadly ordered its surrender remembering the many times he had found refuge there. But in spite of this show of goodwill on the King's part the Scots made further demands which were entirely at variance with his own, or with Montreuil's understanding of the terms under which he had come among them. They pushed the question of religion 'so

ungraciously that they could not have done differently had they wished to give him an aversion for the establishment of their Presbyterianism', as Montreuil wrote to Mazarin. They demanded that Charles sign the Covenant and that he establish Presbyterianism in England and Ireland; on his refusal they treated him like a prisoner, placing guards at his door.

When the first panic of the King's flight was over and Parliament realized where he was, they ordered the Scots to send him to Warwick Castle but the Scots were still not sure how great a prize had fallen into their hands and on May 7 they started for Newcastle, which they reached on the 13th. Parliament then, angry and suspicious, tried to get hold of the King's two friends but the Scots, unexpectedly magnanimous, turned a blind eye when Charles commanded them to escape. He sent by Ashburnham a brief note to Henrietta-Maria 'transferring at this time the freedom of my pen to his tongue'. He also sent to Secretary Nicholas at Oxford to treat for the city's surrender, adjuring him to take particular care of the University and to have the Duke of York sent to his father. Oxford surrendered on June 24. Though the University was not harmed the Duke of York was sent under restraint to St James's Palace. Wallingford, the last of the Royalist fortresses, surrendered on July 27.

At Newcastle formal disputations began at the end of May with Alexander Henderson the Scottish Divine, in an endeavour to convert Charles. He had no alternative but to join in the wearisome and fruitless exchanges; in any case there was little else to do except write letters and hope he could smuggle them out. Although he also played chess and golf it was the most wretched, the most deeply humiliating period of his life. James Harrington, a friend of his sister, was permitted to take Ashburnham's place as groom of the bedchamber, but he was a prisoner, unable to leave the Scottish army, treated with increasing disdain and subject to 'barbarous usage' as he put it to his wife. He could not even call upon a servant without getting leave, the Scots did the contrary to whatever he asked: each day, he said, was 'never wanting new vexations'. 'I have need of some comfort', he begged her, 'for I never knew what it was to be barbarously baited before . . . there was never man so alone as I . . . no living soul to help me . . . all the comfort I have is in thy love and a clear conscience.' 'I hope God hath sent me hither for the last punishment that he will inflict upon me', he wrote more lightly, 'for assuredly no honest man can prosper in these peoples company.' In spite of his anguish he retained an

outward dignity that struck all who saw him. He supported it all, wrote Montreuil, 'with an equanimity that I cannot enough admire, having a kindly demeanour towards those who show him no respect, and who treat him with very little civility.' Charles knew how to take adversity; it was decision he found so difficult.

But decision he had to take when on July 13 Commissioners arrived at Newcastle from Parliament with Nineteen Propositions, which were not unlike those proposed at Uxbridge the previous year, demanding a Presbyterian settlement of religion, in which Charles took the Covenant, and Parliamentary control of the militia for twenty years. Charles's answer was evasive. As he wrote to Henrietta-Maria, 'all my endeavours must be the delaying my answer'. His wife and the advisers with whom he was in touch — Jermyn, Culpepper and Ashburnham — advised him to accept Presbyterianism, on the grounds that it would come anyway. Henrietta-Maria, however, was adamant on the necessity of retaining the militia. Charles saw matters differently. The point he made over and over again was that his opponents sought to control the state through religion: 'unless religion be preserved, the militia will not be much useful to the crown . . . if the pulpits teach not obedience . . . the king will have but small comfort of the militia'. Or, as he put it more explicitly, it 'is not the change of Church government which is chiefly aimed at . . but it is by that pretext to take away the dependency of the Church from the Crown, which . . . I hold to be of equal consequence to that of the Militia; for people are governed by the pulpit more than the sword in times of peace.'

Charles felt so strongly on the matter that he wrote a long letter to the Prince of Wales on August 26. Take it from me, he said,

as an infallible maxim . . . that, as the Church can never flourish without the protection of the Crown, so the dependency of the Church upon the Crown is the chiefest support of regal authority. This is that which is so well understood by the English and Scots rebels, that no concessions will content them without the change of Church government . . . Therefore, my first direction to you is, to be constant in the maintenance of that Episcopacy, not only for the reasons above said, but likewise to hinder the growth of Presbyterian doctrine, which cannot but bring anarchy into any country, whenever it shall come for any time.

Charles's second obsession at this time was the preservation of the rights of his son. 'I conjure you, by your unspotted faithfulness, by all

that you love, by all that is good', he wrote to his three counsellors on July 22,

that no threatenings, no apprehensions of danger to my person, make you stir one jot from any foundation in relation to that authority which the Prince of Wales is born to. I have already cast up what I am like to suffer, which I shall meet (by the grace of God) with that constancy that befits me. Only I desire that consolation, that assurance from you, as I may justly hope that my cause shall not end with my misfortunes, by assuring me that misplaced pity to me do not prejudice my son's right.

What was the worst that he envisaged for himself at this time is not clear.

In sending his first formal reply to the Propositions on August 1 Charles made the point that the proposals had taken twice as many months to prepare as he had taken days for his answer, yet they imported such changes in both Church and State that he suggested a full debate for which he proposed to come to London, or any of his houses. The offer was not taken up, nor did a second evasive reply in December meet with any response. His only thought then was escape. But again Henrietta-Maria opposed his plans. 'Everyone here', she wrote from Paris, was startled at the idea. 'I . . . conjure you, that till the Scots shall declare that they will not protect you, you do not think of making any escape from England . . . you would destroy all our hopes, besides the danger of the attempt.' She may have been right. But there were rumours then and later that this vehement rejection of a plan which would bring them together and which there were good reasons for supporting at that time were due to her alarm lest his coming should disclose and interfere with her relationship with Jermyn; one near contemporary was very certain that she had a child by Jermyn. She had certainly become exasperated with Charles's refusal to compromise on religion and had threatened to take no further part in his affairs. His panic-stricken, abject replies could have alienated her still further: 'I assure thee, both I and all my children are ruined, if thou shouldst retire from my business: for God's sake leave off threatening me with thy desire to meddle no more with business . . . as thou lovest me give me so much comfort (and God knows I have but little, and that little must come from thee) as to assure me that thou wilt think no more of any such thing.' It is apparent that the Scots had worn down the spirit of the man whose physical endurance had appeared unbreakable.

Neither the Scots nor Parliament were getting anything out of the situation and when Parliament paid the Scots £100,000 as the first instalment of the money owing to them, the Scots left Newcastle for home, leaving Charles in the hands of Parliamentary Commissioners, who included his old friends Pembroke and Denbigh. After consulting Parliament they agreed to his suggestion that they all go to his wife's house at Holdenby — it was a convenient distance from London and well removed from the influence of the army — and, to his utter relief, they set off on 3 February 1647, more than nine months after he left Oxford. The journey of some 160 miles was a veritable progress in the old style through Durham, Leeds, Nottingham and Leicester, with people flocking to see him, pressing forward to be 'touched' for the 'Evil', and accompanying him on his journey with cries of joy and prayers for his preservation. At Holdenby the welcome was warm from the many country gentry and ordinary people who greeted him with affection. An officer of the Wardrobe had prepared the house for him, his chaplains were in attendance, his usual state was observed, and he 'touched' many more people who came to be cured. War had deprived them of the opportunity and he was gratified at their continuing belief in his powers. Apart from the Commissioners the only evidence that he was not quite his own master was the appointment of Parliament's nominee, Thomas Herbert, to share with Harrington the duties of groom of the bedchamber. Herbert was a quiet, unassuming man, who came to know the best side of the King's character, while Charles developed a complete trust that was almost affection for the man Parliament had chosen to be his constant companion. The two grooms were shortly joined by a third, James Maxwell, personally known to Charles through his experiments in the manufacture of iron, the patent for the manufacture of pipe clay which Charles had granted him, and, more particularly, for the generous loans he had made to the King on the security of the royal jewels. Maxwell had married the widow of James's surveyor of stables.

Charles now re-formed the ordered life he enjoyed. Private devotions on Sunday, two or three hours' reading each day, chess and walking for recreation when Pembroke would with difficulty keep pace with Charles's rapid pacing up and down the long gravel walk in the garden. He continued to be abstemious at meals, drank only a little beer and wine, and was never in better health. One of his pleasures was riding to Harrowden, nine miles away, or to Althorpe, which was nearer, for a game of bowls. As he crossed a bridge going to

Harrowden one day a labourer was detected thrusting a parcel into his hands which proved to be a packet of letters from the Queen. The 'rustic' was Major Bosvile, who was apprehended and sent away. A few weeks later a lady described as 'handsome' and 'bold' was seized and searched after visiting Charles at Holdenby. Nothing was found on her and she was released, but later a letter in cypher was found behind the hangings where she had stood in Charles's room. The woman was most likely Jane Whorwood who later made several more efforts to communicate with Charles and to help him escape. At Holdenby, at least, she would have been in touch with him through her stepfather, James Maxwell, for Jane Whorwood was the daughter by her first husband of the widow whom Maxwell married. After these episodes Charles's servants were restricted and more closely watched, but Maxwell remained with him.

While Charles's days at Holdenby passed pleasantly enough, in spite of the fact that he was in custody, the victorious army and Parliament, having dismissed the Scots, were falling out amongst themselves. The cleavage between Presbyterian and Independent was becoming more markedly one between Parliament and army with the Parliament, having established a Presbyterian religion in January 1645, continuing to refuse freedom for nonconformity. Added to this, Parliament's financial difficulties were becoming greater and army pay was falling so severely behind that the Horse and Dragoons were forty-three weeks, the Foot eighteen weeks in arrears by March 1647. Parliament was nevertheless proposing to disband part of the army and to send the rest of it to Ireland. Working on the soldiery was the ubiquitous firebrand, John Lilburne, who, besides forming a Leveller party among civilians, was engaged in forming one in the army. So successful were he and his friends that by April the soldiers were electing representatives or agitators to state their case and were forming a Council of the Army to take charge of their affairs. War between Parliament and Army was open when Fairfax announced on May 31 that he would not draw up his regiments for disbandment. On the same day Lilburne published from imprisonment in the Tower Rash Oaths Unwarrantable , in which he castigated Parliament men as dastardly renegades and announced that 'King Charles his seventeen years misgovernment before this Parliament . . . was but a flea-biting, or as a molehill to a mountain, in comparison of what this everlasting Parliament already is.'

For Cromwell and the High Command the position was delicate. Cromwell had several times begged Parliament to consider freedom of conscience; he was reluctant to see the men who had won the war deprived of their wages; while not anxious to become a political man he had no wish to see the army's victory thrown away by politicians at Westminster. Like Lilburne, and like the agitators, his thoughts turned to the King. The events of the next few days are shrouded in secrecy. But Charles was playing bowls at Althorpe with two of the Commissioners in the early afternoon of June 2 when he was informed of horsemen approaching Holdenby. The players returned to the house but it was not until midnight that a party of horse drew up before it and placed guards on all the entrances. When asked his name and business the officer in charge replied Joyce, a cornet in Colonel Whalley's regiment and his business was with the King. The statement was greeted with laughter, but it seemed less amusing when the soldiers guarding Holdenby fraternized with Joyce's men and put the Commissioners under guard. Joyce, having found his way about, then knocked at the King's door. Charles's attendants asked through the locked door who it was disturbing the King's rest at that time of night, and he replied again that his name was Joyce, an officer in the army, and he was sorry to disquiet the King but could not help it for speak to him he must, and that at once. Demands and resistance continued until Charles was awakened and rang his silver bell to enquire what the noise was about. When he sent word that he would not rise nor speak with Joyce until morning the officer was disgruntled but had no alternative but to wait.

Charles rose a little earlier than usual, performed his morning exercises and sent for Joyce, who approached him with no more deference than if he had been a superior officer. Charles immediately asked about the Commissioners.

'By your favour, Sir', he said, 'let them have their liberty and give me a sight of your Instructions.'

'That', said Joyce, 'you shall see', and taking the King to a window he showed him his troop of horse drawn up in the inner court. 'There, Sir, are my Instructions.'

The King took a long look at the troop, found them good men, well groomed, well mounted and armed. 'Your instructions', he told the Cornet, 'are in fair Character, legible without spelling.' He accordingly made ready to depart, insisting that the Commissioners went with him. The King was merry, almost certainly not unaware of the

dissensions in the South, and hoping that the new developments could not be to his disadvantage.

Charles was escorted to Hinchinbrook, followed by 'the confident Cornet', where he received a hearty welcome from the people, and on to Childersly, four miles from Cambridge, where he stayed for three days while the Masters, Fellows, and students flocked in to kiss his hand or merely to see him. More importantly the Army Command came also and for the first time the King and Cromwell came face to face. When Fairfax and Cromwell disavowed Joyce's action in bringing him there Charles laughed: 'Unless you hang up Joyce I will not believe what you say!'

They moved on to Newmarket on the 8th, where Charles's hunting lodge had been made ready for him, and all the while crowds were gathering to see him and the Army officers were in close attendance, particularly Cromwell and Henry Ireton.

Charles resumed his routine, keeping his usual hours of private devotion, but he also dined frequently in public, basking in the prayers and acclaim of the byestanders. He was in custody, but it was pleasant. And he was now constitution-making with the Army which, for the time being, he infinitely preferred to constitution-making with the Scots or with Parliament.

On the surface the movement of events was to Charles's advantage. Cromwell and Ireton consulted him on the heads of a scheme which Ireton had drawn up, and Ashburton and Sir John Berkeley, who had recently arrived from France, joined the discussions. Berkeley was a cousin of Sir Thomas Roe, a kinsman of Jermyn, who had undertaken diplomatic missions for the King and given good service in the wars. He had been present at the baptism of Henrietta-Anne in Exeter Cathedral and had recently spent some time with the Queen and Jermyn in Paris. On this account alone he was welcome to Charles, but he was thought also to have some influence with the Parliamentarian army.

Ireton met the King's wishes on several points and the Heads of the Proposals, as finally submitted to the Council of the Army on August 1, were the most advantageous terms that Charles had been offered — and, indeed, the best that he was likely to get. Parliament was still to have control of the militia and the appointment of officers of state for ten years, but there would be no established Presbyterianism and no compulsion to take the Covenant, though neither would the use of the

Prayer Book or church attendance be obligatory; it was, in fact, a fairly comprehensive toleration which Ireton was offering. A Council of State would participate with the King in foreign affairs and in control of the army; the existing Parliament would end within a year and new Parliaments would meet every two years and sit for a limited time; Royalists would be treated leniently and a general amnesty be declared.

It is possible that Charles regarded his negotiations with the Army as mere preliminaries, believing that Parliament was certain to outbid the Army in the terms it offered him, and he probably had little faith in the Army's power to carry out its undertakings. There was certainly a clash of personality between him and Ireton. Charles was unused to the waspish tones of the Commissary General, who spoke in sharp sentences and would not wrap up a denial in the manner to which the King was accustomed. When Charles told the soldiers, frankly but lightly, at the beginning of their negotiations, 'You cannot do without me. You will fall to ruin if I do not sustain you', Ireton was emphatic and unsmiling: 'Sir', he said, 'you have an intention to be the arbritrator between the Parliament and us, and we mean to be it between your Majesty and Parliament.' When Charles later remarked 'I shall play my game as well as I can', Ireton answered, 'If your Majesty have a game to play, you must give us also the leave to play ours.' Neither man breathed the spirit of compromise. But there had been sufficient concession on the part of the Army Command to alarm the soldiers. Having fought the King for five years, they asked, why did their officers now make an idol of him? 'Why permit they so many of his deceiptfull Clergy to continue about him? Why doe themselves kneele, and kisse, and fawne upon him? . . . Oh shame of men! Oh sin against God! What!', they exclaimed using a new term for the first time, 'to doe thus to a man of blood; over head and eares in the blood of your dearest friends and fellow Commoners?'

The situation was a little more delicate than Charles understood. While he was travelling from Holdenby, and again on June 10, the soldiers had held massive meetings at which they threatened to march on London unless their demands were met. While he was talking to the King at Newmarket Cromwell had this on his mind and at last decided to take control of a movement that he had little chance, and little inclination, to stem. With the whole army behind him he marched to London, and on August 2 they drew up, 20,000 strong, on Hounslow Heath. Independent Members of both Houses rode out to

meet them and there was great shouting and acclaim, with men throwing their hats in the air and crying for 'Lords and Commons and a free Parliament!'. Six of the leading Presbyterians, including Charles's old enemy, Denzil Holles, left the House. But still the Presbyterian majority remained until, on the 20th, Cromwell himself, with other officers who were also Parliament men, went to Westminster, while a regiment of cavalry was drawn up in Hyde Park. The issue needed no underlining. The most prominent Presbyterians left the House, leaving control, for the time being, to the Independents.

While the army moved towards London, Charles went, too, on what was a leisurely progress, stopping at noblemen's houses on the way. He stopped for dinner and a joyous meeting with his three children at Sion House, and was joined there by his nephew, the Elector Palatine. He reached Lord Craven's house at Caversham on the north bank of the Thames on July 3, where Cromwell visited him several times and where he was allowed to have his children with him for two nights. Eagerly he rode to Maidenhead to meet them. Cromwell, an emotional man, was deeply moved at the reunion. Berkeley met him as he was coming from the King with tears in his eyes. He had just seen, said Cromwell, 'the tenderest sight that ever his eyes beheld, which was the interview between the King and his children'. He wept at the memory and declared that never man was so abused as the King, who was 'the most uprightest and most conscientious man of the three Kingdoms'. Yet still there was no agreement between them. Pompone de Bellievre, who was now Ambassador from France in Montreuil's place believed that Charles might have had the army with him if he had frankly accepted their proposals at this time. But Charles constantly hoped for more from someone else; he had so firmly grasped the fact that his opponents were divided that he could not believe that he would fail to retrieve all if he played his cards carefully. He was encouraged by a resurgence of Royalist pamphlets and the unaccustomed words of pity and sympathy provided a new support.^[1]

34—
Dum Spiro Spero

Charles's destination was his own palace of Hampton Court where Colonel Edward Whalley, a cousin of Cromwell's, was in charge. Captivity sat lightly upon the King and he had many visitors, including not only Cromwell but Cromwell's wife, his daughter, and her recently-married husband, Henry Ireton. His children also visited him and they all sat to John Hoskins, the miniaturist. Charles's chaplain, Jeremy Taylor, also came. He had been with the King during much of the fighting and had been one of those honoured in 1643, at Charles's request, by the University of Oxford, who conferred upon him the degree of Doctor of Divinity for his pamphlet, Episcopacy Asserted . Now he had published his Liberty of Prophesying , which interested Charles although he did not altogether agree with it, but there were probably other reasons for his visit. He lived ten miles from Mandinam in Carmarthenshire, the home of Joanna Bridges who was rumoured to be Charles's natural daughter. At all events Charles gave Taylor a ring with two diamonds and a ruby, a watch, and a few pearls and rubies which ornamented the ebony case in which he kept his bible. There was no reason why he should give these to Taylor unless they were to pass on to Joanna Bridges, whom the divine later married as his second wife. Charles hunted in his familiar parks, played bowls, walked the terraces and gravel ways of the gardens, watched the Thames, the familiar river associated with his happiest days. In the great house itself, of some 1500 rooms, he had virtual freedom, for he had given his word not to try to escape. He was, nevertheless, so carefully watched that he had little communication with Henrietta-Maria. Yet, despite this deprivation, he remained buoyant and was confident of the future. But he was slow in coming to an agreement with anybody. Berkeley urged him to make a decision. Was he letting slip another opportunity? It seemed likely, for Cromwell's position

was once more endangered in the autumn of 1647 by Lilburne and the agitators who were increasingly restless at his failure to produce the expected results. Cromwell clapped Lilburne in the Tower.

Charles was well aware of Lilburne's plot to capture the army. Sir Lewis Dyve, his own supporter, had been imprisoned in the Tower since the capture of Sherborne Castle in August 1645 and was in close touch with the voluble and excitable Leveller leader, who disclosed his plans to Dyve who passed them on to the King. But Lilburne was at the same time suggesting collaboration with Charles, whose reign he still maintained was 'but as a flea biting' to the enormities of Parliament. The King was also being approached by other sectaries, notably by William Kiffin, the Baptist, who reported to Lilburne that Charles had given him such assurances of liberty for the future that he was completely satisfied of the King's goodwill. On the strength of this Lilburne tried to arrange through Dyve a meeting between some of the leading agitators and the King. If the King would satisfy these men, Lilburne would pawn his life, so Dyve reported to Charles on October 5, 'that within a moneth or six weekes at the farthest the wholl army should be absolutely at your Majestie's devotion to dispose thereof as you pleased'. But Charles was of the opinion, with some justification, that Lilburne at this stage did not represent the true feelings of the Levellers and he heard enough of Cromwell's strength in the Army Council meetings of October and early November to discount the dreams of Dyve and Lilburne. Moreover, he found the reports of the army debates at Putney, which lasted from October 28 to November 11, particularly disturbing, for Levellers and agitators were there discussing a document called The Agreement of the People which claimed a Parliamentary vote for all men on the grounds that the 'poorest hee' in England had as much right as the greatest. Charles was left further away than ever from the possibility of any approach to such men. The violence of their language may, indeed, have contributed to the decision he was about to make.

He had received several round-about reports of plots on his life and the dismissal of Ashburnham, Berkeley and other attendants on November 1 increased his sense of isolation. He had been growing increasingly melancholy at his enforced captivity. Lady Fanshaw, who had made one of the war marriages at Oxford, saw him about this time and was much distressed at his sadness: 'when I took my leave', she wrote, 'I could not refrain from weeping: when he had saluted me, I prayed to God to preserve His Majesty with long life and happy

years; he stroked me on the cheek, and said, "Child, if God pleaseth, it shall be so, but both you and I must submit to God's will, and you know in what hands I am".' A mysterious letter warning him directly of a plot by the agitators to kill him arrived on the 9th. But his plans were already laid. On the evening of November 11 he left his greyhound bitch whimpering in his room and walked out of Hampton Court. He was joined near the Palace by Colonel William Legge and himself led the familiar way to Thames Ditton where Ashburnham was waiting with Berkeley and horses from his own stables. The little party made for Bishop's Sutton in Hampshire, but the weather was foul and even with Charles as guide they lost their way in Windsor forest. It was dawn before they arrived at the inn where fresh horses were waiting and they were warned by an accomplice that a Parliamentary Committee meeting was already in progress there. So, changing mounts but without rest or refreshment, they pushed on. As when he left Oxford, Charles was undecided where to go. If a boat had been ready he might have gone to Jersey or to France. Perhaps he allowed himself to be influenced by Ashburnham, who was inclined to favour the Isle of Wight. It was still within his kingdom, it was reasonably remote from any assassination attempt, there were a number of good Royalists there, and it offered escape to the Continent if necessary. Moreover Charles seemed to think, without any very good reason, that the new Governor of the Island, Colonel Robert Hammond, would be in sympathy with him.

No contact had been made with Hammond but the Earl of Southampton, who had visited Charles at Hampton Court shortly before he left, welcomed the King at his old haunt of Tichfield on Southampton Water and here he waited with Legge while Ashburnham and Berkeley went over to the Island to feel their way with the Govenor. Their passage was delayed by bad weather and they handled the affair ineptly. They did not know Hammond nor he them, and Ashburnham was staggered by Berkeley's open and, as he termed it, 'verie unskilfull entrance into their business' when, immediately after the opening of formalities, he asked Hammond if he knew who was near him. Naturally enough Hammond replied in the negative and Berkeley rushed on: 'Even good King Charles, who is come from Hampton Court for feare of being murdered privately.' It is difficult to know who was more confused in the subsequent exchanges. Hammond recovered first and suggested that they all three of them go to the King.

Charles had found the waiting long and had put out feelers for a boat to France, but the ports had already been closed on news of his escape. When at last his friends returned Ashburnham went in to him and told him that Hammond was outside. 'Oh Jack! thou hast undone me!' cried Charles. His place of retreat was revealed, what he had intended to be exploratory had become obligatory and there was no going back. They crossed to Cowes the same day and went on to Carisbrooke Castle in the centre of the Island. The people greeted him with affection as he passed and a woman thrust a damask rose into his hand, plucked from her garden at that late date. The Army Command had found the note that Charles had left at Hampton Court saying he feared for his life, as well as the warning letter signed E.R., and the search parties were out; it was not long before Hammond was in communication with them and Charles's whereabouts were known.

Some of Charles's friends believed that the army were glad he had gone, on the grounds that he had proved no use to them and was encouraging the rift between the Command and the agitators. Whether Cromwell and his friends had planted the idea of murder in Charles's mind, whether he himself had manufactured the idea as an excuse to be gone, or whether the notes and his fears were genuine, some of his supporters nevertheless believed he had made a mistake both in leaving Hampton Court and in going to the Isle of Wight. But at first Charles had no reason to regret the change. People were friendly and supporters flocked to Carisbrook to see or speak with him. There was also some justification in his own belief that in dealing with the Army alone he was negotiating on too narrow a front, for, before the year was out, both Parliament and Scots had sent Commissioners to him on the Island. He deliberately played for time, came to the conclusion that the Scots were offering better terms, and made a secret agreement with them in which he promised Presbyterianism for three years and they agreed to raise another army for him. Their solemn agreement was buried in lead in the Castle grounds, at the end of December. Charles tried to postpone his reply to Parliament, but the Commissioners insisted he make known his response to their overtures before they left the Island, and he was forced to admit that he had rebuffed them.

Although he had not expected to declare himself so soon, he had been well aware of the hostility that would result and had again been thinking of escape. But where? To the Scots? To Jersey or France while the Scots raised their army? On the day the Parliamentary

17
Charles during the civil wars, after the original miniature of John Hoskins. Probably
 painted during his imprisonment at Hampton Court There is a marked difference 
from the serene monarch of the previous portrait.

18
The King on Trial in Westminster Hall, from a contemporary engraving. Charles sits 
in the dock, facing his accusers.

19
The three children whom Charles saw in his captivity at Hampton Court, where this 
miniature was painted by Hoskins. James, Duke of York, shortly afterwards escaped 
but Elizabeth and Henry visited him on the day before his execution.

20
The execution of Charles I as seen by a French contemporary. None of the extant 
drawings is accurate, but this one gives a realistic general impression of the scene.

21
Charles the Martyr as portrayed, in slightly varying form, in thousands of copies of 
the Eikon Basilike  published immediately after his death and reprinted dozens of times.

Commissioners left he learned that the ship he had been expecting was at Southampton and that a small boat was in readiness to take him across from the Island. The wind was set fair. Hurriedly he prepared for the journey. Hammond was attending the departing Parliamentary Commissioners and there was no one to stop him. But a glance out of the window at the last moment revealed that the wind had changed and was blowing from the North, making it impossible to leave the Island.

His captivity had hitherto sat lightly on him. Many of his household had joined him, his carriage and a quantity of his books had been sent over, he had driven round the Island, seen the Needles, walked about Newport and other towns and villages. But on the strength of the King's refusal to Parliament's terms and the knowledge of his agreement with the Scots, tighter security at Carisbrooke was imposed, his Household was reduced, and Ashburnham, Berkeley and Legge were sent away. A sympathetic officer in Newport attempted to rescue him but his plan was discovered before it could be tried, and on 15 January 1648 Parliament passed a vote of No More Addresses to the King.

Escape was now more than ever on his mind and the number of people willing to help him indicated both the extent of royalism in the Isle of Wight and his own ability to command support. There were soldiers like Colonel William Hopkins and his son George, who lived at Newport; Captain Cooke, one of his guards, who had come over to his side; Captain Silus Titus, who had originally served Parliament but had been won over by Charles at Holdenby, had come south with him and remained near him at Carisbrooke; there was the sailor who unsuccessfully tried to get letters to the King from his wife and children. Among civilians were Abraham Dowcett, Edward Worsley, Boroughs, Cresset, Napier, who all had access to Carisbrooke; and more than one who, like John Newland of the Corporation of Newport, owned a boat which could be put at the King's disposal. In Charles's household at Carisbrooke were Henry Firebrace, now twenty-eight years old, his page of happier days; David Murray, his tailor; Uriah Babbington, his barber; and a Gentleman Usher named Osborn, who was appointed as a spy but defected. Osborn's duties entailed waiting upon Charles at table and taking care of the royal gloves during the meal; it was easy to convey and receive messages in the fingers of the gloves. There were also Mrs Wheeler, who was in charge of his laundry, and her assistant, Mary, as well as the old man

who brought up coals. Working between London and the Island was his old friend, Jane Whorwood, and Mrs Pitt, a contact of Titus at Southampton. The Earl of Alford, who had spoken so strongly for Parliament in the 1620s was ready to help at his home near Arundel, and Sir John Bowring, who had become a clerk to the Privy Council at Oxford and who had useful connections in the Isle of Wight, had for some time been a trusted confidant and go-between. There were in addition many who helped in carrying letters; Major Bosvile, who had turned up at Holdenby disguised as a rustic, was still active; Clavering of the Post Office was usefully placed; a sailor, a physician, well-dressed women, poor people, and apparently ordinary people were all at various times part of the line of communication that Charles succeeded in maintaining, albeit imperfectly, with his wife and his supporters.

The laundry woman, Mary, had access to Charles's rooms during the day when they were empty and unguarded, and it was simple for her to conceal letters under the carpet or behind the wall-hangings and to indicate to the King where she had hidden them. In this way, with the help of Abraham Dowcett, Napier of the town, and the tailor, David Murray, a plot was hatched in February for making a hole in the ceiling of Charles's room through which he could make his way to an upper storey and so to an unguarded part of the Castle. But Hammond's vigilance was too much for them and the plans were revealed. Mrs Wheeler and Mary, with other servants including (mistakenly at this time) the royal barber were dismissed. Charles would not allow a Parliament man nor a soldier to approach him with a razor and preferred to let his hair and beard grow.

It was about this time that Charles started communicating with Titus on odd scraps of paper, some no more than one inch across, disguising his handwriting and using a cypher for the most important parts of his messages. Parliament became suspicious enough to order Hammond to search his room. Charles surprised the Governor while he was doing so, there was a scuffle in which the King received some small injury, but he succeeded nevertheless in throwing his papers into the fire before Hammond could get them.

Charles's position certainly looked brighter in the spring. The Scots were ready to cross the border in his support, Irish troops had promised help, in South Wales Colonel Poyer declared for the King, all over the country discontent and royalism were joining hands. Cromwell sent Ashburnham and Berkeley to the Isle of Wight in one

more attempt at compromise, but Charles gained far more from the welcome contact than he gave; for why should he compromise when events appeared to be going his way? The one essential was escape.

Henry Firebrace was the leading spirit in the fresh attempt, and he was confident enough to assure the Scots that the King would shortly be joining them. He communicated with Charles through a hole he made in the wall of Charles's bedroom, underneath the tapestry hangings, and Charles knew precisely how and where to surmount the two castle walls that stood between him and the two horsemen who would be waiting with three horses beyond the outer defences. He was convinced he could get out of his chamber window for he had tried the space with his head and refused Firebrace's urging to tamper with one of the bars. On the coast Newland would be ready with a boat to take him to the mainland, he would ride straight to Edward Alford's house at Arundel and thence be conducted to Queensborough in Suffolk where a ship would be waiting.

On the night of Monday March 20 all was ready; but the King failed to come: his body would not follow where his head had gone and after a desperate struggle in which he feared he would not be able to move either way he was thankful to get back into his room. In a note to Titus Charles begged that his friends should be given thanks for their part in the enterprise and almost immediately further plans were set on foot for weakening one of the bars on his window with aqua fortis , or nitric acid, after which it might be pulled from its socket. Jane Whorwood obtained the acid in London but it was spilt on its journey to the Isle of Wight. A further supply was procured which was later found in Charles's room, but an alternative means of removing the bar was also provided by the 'fat plain man' who brought a 'hacker' to Charles — an implement that could convert two plain knives, such as the King possessed, into a saw that would cut through the bars of his window. But too many people were involved in this plot and on June 2 Hammond was able to disclose it to Parliament, although not before a bar of Charles's window had been actually cut. 'He hath one or two about him who are false', reported Hammond, and he sent some of the faithful, including Titus, Boroughs and Cresset away from the Island. They thought of setting fire to the Castle before they left and rescuing the King in the confusion. More practically, Titus managed to stay behind.

While the King was vainly trying to escape, what was virtually a

second civil war was flaring round the country. Reaction had set in fuelled by sequestration, taxation, intolerance, food shortages, censorship, repression. The reaction had not gone the way of the Levellers but the way of the Royalists. By the beginning of May the whole of South Wales was in revolt and Cromwell was hastening westwards. Berwick and Carlisle had been taken for the King, Surrey and Kent, even the Eastern counties were in arms. The Prince of Wales was at sea with a Dutch fleet, and reached the mouth of the Thames, the Duke of York escaped from St James's on April 21 disguised as a girl and reached Holland. In May there was mutiny in the navy. On July 8 a Scottish Royalist army at last crossed the border under the Duke of Hamilton. If Charles had been in any place but the Isle of Wight, separated by sea from his supporters, a Royalist force might have rescued him to lead his armies; if he had gone overseas he might, even now, have been landing with the Prince of Wales on English soil to fight once more for his Crown. Instead there was only expectation and hope, followed all too soon by despair. At the beginning of June Fairfax defeated the Royalists at Maidstone and turned to deal with those in Essex; early in July Cromwell completed the suppression of Charles's supporters in Wales and marched northwards to deal with the Scots, whom he defeated at Preston on August 17. Hamilton was captured shortly afterwards and the capitulation of Colchester on August 28 marked the end of the war in the Eastern counties. Charles was helpless.

Hammond meanwhile was doing what he could for his captive. Charles found the wine poor and the bed-linen not over-clean. But a golf course was made within the outer defences of the Castle, in one corner of which a little summer house was built where he could watch the sea and the shipping and the soft line of green hills which were not visible from his room. He spent nevertheless many hours indoors, praying, reading, and writing. One of his concerns was to record his own reactions to the condition in which he now found himself, another — as far as he could understand them — the reasons for the conflict between himself and his Parliament. As he wrote of the present he could forget his attempts to escape and the defeat of his followers in a resignation so complete that it seemed to embrace whatever the future might bring. His mood of resignation was fostered by the scant communication he had at this time with his family; he complained to Titus that his wife's letters seemed to miscarry, and

there was a hint of bitterness in his remark that he received answers to other letters but not to those he sent to her.

When he wrote of the past he explained, and sometimes excused, his actions. If he had called Parliament to any place but London, he believed, the consequences would have been different; when he left Whitehall he was driven by shame rather than fear, in order not 'to prostitute the Majestie of My Place and Person, the safetie of My Wife and Children'; he passed the Triennial Act 'as gentle and seasonable Physick might, if well applied, prevent anie distempers from getting anie head'; when his wife left England it was not even her going that hurt most but the 'scandal of that necessity'. He was bitter at the publication of the private letters to his wife, which had been captured after Naseby. No man's malice, he wrote, could 'be gratified further by my letters than to see my constancy to my wife, the laws, and religion: bees will gather honey where the spider sucks poison . . . the confidence of privacy may admit greater freedom in writing such letters which may be liable to envious exceptions'.

He harked back to the death of Strafford, which was always on his mind, acknowledging his greatness, his abilities, which 'might make a Prince rather afraid, then ashamed to emploie him in the greatest affairs of state'. Charles had been persuaded to choose what appeared 'safe' rather than 'just' and the Act that resulted he described as a 'sinful frailtie'. To his son he wrote that the reflections he was putting down were mainly intended for him, in the hope that they would help to remedy the present distempers and prevent their repetition. The fact that the Prince of Wales had experienced troubles while young may help him 'as trees set in winter, then in warmth and serenitie of time' frequently benefit. He urged him to be Charles 'le bon' rather than Charles the Great, to take heed of abetting faction, to use his prerogative to remit rather than to exact and, above all, to begin and end with God.

Charles also made translations from Latin, which he had always enjoyed doing, he wrote favourite passages in the fly-leaves of some of his books, he read the Bible, Bishop Andrewes's sermons, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity , Herbert's Divine Poems , and many more religious works. For lighter reading he chose Spenser's Faery Queen and Tasso's Godfrey of Bulloigne . He kept Bacon's Advancement of Learning by him, carefully continuing his annotation. He could still get pleasure from books. Although, as he wrote, they had left him 'but little of life, and onely the husk and shell' yet 'I am not old, as to be wearie of life', he said, and he wrote over and over again in his books: Dum spiro Spero.

The second civil war ended the possibility of any agreement with Cromwell and the army. Charles was once more the Man of Blood and the renewed fighting was a punishment for not having dealt firmly with him before. Charles was all the more glad when Parliament sent Commissioners to Newport to treat in early September 1648. In the absence of the army, which was still in the field, it was a Commission dominated by Presbyterians and it contained several of Charles's old friends.

After a second military defeat Charles had little bargaining power, yet such was the aura of kingship that negotiations were planned and conducted almost as though he were a free monarch. On giving his word not to escape he was conducted to Newport on September 18 and settled in the best state the town could offer, which was at the house of his friend, Colonel Hopkins. Negotiations were conducted in the school house where Charles sat on a chair of state, he was allowed several chaplains, advisers and friends, who included Richmond, Hertford, Southampton, Lindsey and Ashburnham. Some came with their wives, so that evenings once more became social occasions, while during the day Charles again enjoyed the exhilaration of horse riding.

But, although he put on a show, Charles had little spirit for the negotiations. He was determined to give nothing away and obtained the agreement of the Commission that no section should be held binding until the whole proposed treaty had been discussed. Forty days had been allowed for discussion and week after week went by with no tangible result. Charles's friends believed that the Independent faction was playing for time until Cromwell and Fairfax had completed their military work: with the army once more in control there would be an end to negotiations and Charles's life would be in danger. But to all plans for escape he turned a deaf ear. If the Independents were playing for time, he was too, though to what end he was not quite sure. He made concession after concession, sometimes going further than he had done before, sometimes bitterly reproaching himself for doing so, sometimes assuaging his conscience by reminding himself that by his covering stipulation he need hold nothing binding until the conclusion of the whole treaty. When he did consider escape he was brought up against his parole. He was particularly evasive over Irish affairs but finally agreed to settle Ireland as Parliament should decide. In the general coming and going occasioned by the treaty negotiations his communications with France and Ireland

had been easier and he knew that his wife and Ormonde were still planning a Royalist rising in Ireland. In a burst of hope he saw himself escaping and joining them in the field, and he wrote to Henrietta-Maria, telling her he was acting under duress and warning her not to be deceived. 'If the rumour of his concessions concerning Ireland', he wrote to her, 'should prejudice my affairs there, I send the enclosed letter to the Marquis of Ormonde, the sum of which is to obey your command, and to refuse mine till I certify him I am a free man.' He was acting just as, seven years earlier, she had told the Papal agent he would act.

But he had, on the whole, little confidence either that the concessions he had appeared to make would help him or that he was right to have made them. Night after night he went through the day's proceedings with his secretary, Sir Philip Warwick, meticulously, yet with a growing weariness, on one occasion turning away from Warwick and others in the room to hide his tears. Finally he yielded to his friends' importunities and agreed to escape. But scarcely had he done so when he reversed his decision. Signalling privately to Bowring one day to follow him into an inner room, he told him he had just received letters from overseas advising him not to leave the Island and assuring him that the army had no power to harm him. 'So now', said Charles,

if I should go with you, now, as I thought to have done, and things fall out otherwise than well with me; and the rather because my treaty hath had so fair an end . . . and that my concessions are satisfactory, and especially since I have received this advice (you guess from whence it comes) I shall be always blamed here after . . . Therefore I am resolved to stay here, and God's will be done.

It was Charles at his most typical. The letter was obviously from Henrietta-Maria and he was once more tormented with anxiety that she might blame him for doing the wrong thing if he refused to follow her advice. She had also persuaded him to cover his negotiations with a rosy, but false, hue of optimism which he had not felt before. He did not appear to question the reason for her anxiety that he should remain on the Isle of Wight at this time — as once before she had urged him to stay in England.

By the middle of October Charles had agreed, as he had done before, to grant Presbyterianism for three years; he still refused to take the Covenant, but he allowed of 'counsel and assistance' by a Presbytery at the end of the three years. The militia he agreed to abandon first for ten years, but later he conceded twenty. He would on no account

consider the death penalty for his supporters, but agreed to punishments of fine and the confiscation of part of their estates. But by this time his mood had again changed and the optimism had faded. On October 9 he wrote to Hopkins in despair: 'notwithstanding my too great concessions already made, I know that, unless I shall make yet others which will directly make me no King, I shall be at best but a perpetual prisoner . . . To deal fairly with you, the great concession I made this day — the Church, militia, and Ireland — was made merely in order to my escape, of which if I had not hope, I would not have done.' To return to prison now, he said, 'would break my heart, having done that which only an escape can justify'. My only hope, he concluded, 'is that now they believe I dare deny them nothing, and so be less careful of their guards'.

One thing Charles did continue to deny them and that was Episcopacy; he would not give it up as his personal religion and he would not suppress it so long as he had power. He had made concessions to Presbyterians and would foster a fairly wide toleration but from that position he would not budge. Partly on this rock, but partly because there never really was any hope of success, negotiations by the end of October had virtually ground to a halt. On November 12 Charles was enquiring urgently of Hopkins about tides and had decided to make for Gosport on the night of the 16th or 17th when Newland would once more have a boat ready. But it seemed that he no longer had any hand in ordering his own affairs. Hammond knew of his plans on the 13th and the enterprise was necessarily abandoned at the very time that Jane Whorwood reported from London through Sir John Bowring that a plot was actually in being to murder him, and that Sir Peter Killigrew came to warn him that the army intended to bring him to London for a public trial. In his bitterness Charles complained that his friends had failed him and his melancholy grew.

While negotiations had been proceeding at Newport the Army was once more facing its own problems. Internally it had to deal with the Levellers, who were still seeking their own form of constitutional settlement based on universal suffrage and a wide toleration, and particularly with Lilburne, who was still asserting that they could not in law bring the King to trial and that to do so would be to open the door to further arbitrary government. But the trial of the King was precisely what the majority of the soldiers now wanted and Ireton embodied their point of view in a Remonstrance which was published

in the middle of October. But the army had to face the fact that Parliament was still negotiating with the King and that a conjunction between Parliament and King, or the King's escape, might at any moment jeopardize their military victory. At the end of November Ireton's Remonstrance was laid aside by Parliament and Fairfax, albeit reluctantly, once more began to move with his troops towards the capital. They were continuing their discussions with the Levellers, but while the most articulate soldiers were talking the majority could see only the black and white of the situation and by the beginning of December events had begun to move quickly.

On November 27 Hammond, on his refusal to take orders from anyone but Parliament, was removed from the Isle of Wight and the following day placed in custody by the Army, whose headquarters were now at Windsor. On the 30th Lieutenant-Colonel Cobbett and Captain Merryman arrived at Newport with a company of soldiers. On the night of December 1 his friends were urging Charles that now, if ever, was the time to escape. Captain Cooke assured him that he had horses and that a boat was ready. He had the password, and to demonstrate to Charles how easy escape would be he passed and repassed the guards with Richmond. But Charles was overcome with weariness and with inertia, his old fatal disease, and in spite of all he had said he now declared he would not break his word or his parole; he had made an agreement with Parliament and he would keep it. They argued desperately that it was the Army they were now dealing with, and not Parliament. Charles took no notice and retired to bed. The following morning at daybreak he was roused by soldiers under the command of Cobbett and hurried off without his breakfast. As one of the soldiers tried to follow him into his coach Charles thrust him back. 'It's not come to that yet!', he exclaimed.

He was taken across the Solent to Hurst Castle, a defensive fortress surrounded on three sides by sea, connected at low tide with the mainland by a thin strip of gravelly sand. The Governor was uncouth but not unkind; the rooms were so dark that candlelight was needed right through the day; the King's exercise was merely a daily walk along the shingle where, as usual, he outstripped his companions; the air was dank with winter mist and vapours from the marshes of the mainland. His only solace was in the passing ships that reminded him of freedom and of his own navy. While he was there Colonel Pride, on December 6, stationed himself with a body of musketeers outside the doors of the House of Commons, turning back the Presbyterian

Members as they arrived. He did the same the following day, excluding some 96 altogether, leaving about 56 sitting Members.

Charles was kept at Hurst Castle for a little over two weeks. On the night of December 17 he was awakened by noise and, ringing his little silver bell, sent Herbert to investigate. It was the drawbridge being let down to admit Colonel Harrison, who had been one of the most vehement in demanding the death of the Man of Blood. Charles was convinced that he was come to murder him in that bleak and desolate place, but the reality was reassuring, for on the 19th he was conducted by Cobbett to Windsor. He almost enjoyed the journey. As he was approaching Farnham he noted a fine-featured, splendidly-dressed Officer in command of the welcoming party. On enquiry he learned it was no other than Harrison. That evening after supper Charles perceived the same officer standing across the room from where he stood in his accustomed place in front of the fire. He beckoned him to him and, taking him apart, asked if he really had intended his death at Hampton Court? The answer was no doubt evasive, but the question shows that Charles had a real fear of assassination at that time.

At Bagshot Charles dined with Lord Newburgh. One more hope remained. Newburgh owned some of the fastest horses in England and one of them would be ready if the King could arrange to change his mount. Charles was prepared but again fate — or was it his captors? — had arranged that the horse should become lame shortly before his arrival. There was encouragement from the people who cheered him as he passed towards Windsor, some even crying out for God to bless him. The Castle, where he arrived on December 23, was more like a fortress than ever, for it now held many Royalist prisoners, including his kinsman, friend, and counsellor, Hamilton. Christmas was bleak and lonely. But Charles watched the river from the terrace where he took his daily walk and looked towards Eton with its memories of his first tutor and of bathing parties with Buckingham. A little of his old state was preserved in the serving of his meals, but gradually it was depressed, his attendants were dismissed. As he continued his hurried walking up and down the terrace, pausing to gaze out over the river, his hold on all that he had known throughout his life perceptibly loosened. He had no communication now with the wife who had borne him nine children in fifteen years, nor with his two eldest sons, nor with the daughter whose marriage might have helped his fortunes, nor with that baby, now a little girl of nearly five, who

represented his last contact with Henrietta-Maria. Only Elizabeth and Henry, the children of his happiest years, remained near him — like himself, prisoners.

Charles was to remain at Windsor until 19 January 1649, while his opponents discussed his fate. A strong party of soldiers still urged his trial and condemnation. Fairfax shrank from such a procedure and kept outside the discussions. Lilburne and his party continued to assert that neither Parliament nor Army had the legal right to try the King and that to do so would be to open the door to further arbitrary government. Cromwell hesitated; even Ireton hung back. The Earl of Denbigh was sent with a secret message to Charles at Windsor which could have paved the way to further negotiation. Charles refused to see him. He would struggle for terms no longer; he could not consult his wife; he would no longer plague his conscience to determine what was right; there was no need to prevaricate; as he had written, they had left him with but the 'husk and shell' of life; he merely had to make his peace with himself, which meant with God, and he was helped by the wide, grey river that symbolized the best of his life. He believed that, except for the betrayal of Strafford, he had acted well; he believed his son would reign after him; he believed his captors were evil men and he knew what to expect. It was consequently easy for him to wait. As he had written: 'That I must die as a Man, is certain, that I may die a King, by the hands of My own Subjects, a violent, sudden, and barbarous death, in the strength of My years, in the midst of My Kingdoms, My Friends and loving Subjects being helpless Spectators, My Enemies insolent Revilers and Triumphers over Mee . . . is so probable in humane Reason, that God hath taught Mee not to hope otherwise.'^[1]

35—
'To Vindicate His Helpless Right'

Charles had not long to wait after his refusal to see Denbigh. On 1 January 1649 an Ordinance passed the House of Commons for the trial of the King on a charge of treason on the grounds that he had levied war against the Parliament and Kingdom of England. The Lords rejected the motion. On the 3rd the Commons passed it a second time together with an Ordinance establishing a High Court of Justice of 135 Commissioners. On the same day they refused to consider a letter from Henrietta-Maria begging permission to visit her husband. The next day they constituted themselves the sole law-making body without the concurrence of King or House of Lords and on the 6th passed what they could now call an Act, for the trial of Charles Stuart on the grounds that he

had a wicked design totally to subvert the ancient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and, in their place, to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government; and that, besides all other evil ways and means to bring this design to pass, he hath prosecuted it with fire and sword, levied and maintained a cruel war in the land against the Parliament and Kingdom, whereby the country hath been miserably wasted, the public treasure exhausted, trade decayed, thousands of people murdered, and infinite other mischiefs committed.

Since they could not make use of the Great Seal with its inscription in the name of Charles they had another made which was inscribed 'In the first year of freedom, by God's blessing restored'. The trial was fixed for January 20 and a Committee appointed to consider the preparation of Westminster Hall for the purpose.

The leaders of the Army, who since Pride's Purge were also the leaders of the nation and among whom Cromwell was the chief, had come to the conclusion that there could be no peace while Charles

remained King. Cromwell's last, almost despairing, effort to avoid the consequences of that decision by sending Denbigh to Windsor had failed and he saw no alternative to the trial: what he expected from it is uncertain. It is likely that, as in the case of Strafford, he and his most intimate associates had come to the conclusion that 'stone dead hath no fellow'. But many supporters of Parliament and the Army shrank from either the trial itself or the consequences. The eminent and respected lawyers John Selden and Bulstrode Whitelocke were among those who retired from the capital. Equally serious were the refusals of Lord Chief Baron Wilde, Chief Justice Henry Rolle and, above all, Chief Justice Oliver St John, the kinsman of Cromwell and defender of Hampden in the ship-money case, to serve on a High Court of Justice to try the King. At its first meeting on January 8 only 52 were present out of the 135 named, and procedure at the trial could not be agreed. When Algernon Sidney made the point that the King could be tried by no court and no man by that court, Cromwell betrayed his anxiety by shouting, 'I tell you we will cut off his head with the crown upon it!' Sidney did not attend again.

Fairfax gave the first meeting of the court some substance by his presence, but he had nothing to contribute and never reappeared either at preliminary meetings or at the trial itself. Fairfax was a good and brave soldier who took and executed military decisions firmly, yet off the field he was indecisive and weak, and at this moment of crisis chose to stand aside. Another notable absentee was Philip Skippon, Commander of the London trained bands and a zealous Puritan.

But the list of appointees to the High Court of Justice was long, including soldiers, Parliament men, lawyers, civic dignitaries and local leaders, and since a quorum of only twenty had been named, even the small attendance of 45 at their next meeting on January 10 was sufficient to enable them to proceed to business and elect a Lord President to conduct the trial. The choice was difficult, and in the absence of so many powerful legal figures it fell upon Sergeant John Bradshaw of the Sheriff's court in London, who had recently been appointed Chief Justice of Chester but who was otherwise of no particular repute. Equally important was the choice of Counsel for the Prosecution. The Attorney General, Anthony Steel, withdrew at the last moment on the plea of illness, real or feigned, and the lawyer John Cook was brought in to present the charge against the King, which he immediately began to draw up with the help of Isaac Dorislaus, a Dutch lawyer who had also taught at Cambridge University.

Meanwhile on January 9 the Sergeant at Arms had made proclamation in Westminster Hall, at Cheapside and at the Old Exchange that Charles Stuart, King of England, was to be brought to trial and that the Court of Justice would be in session from January 10 in the Painted Chamber which adjoined Westminster Hall. On January 13, the report on the preparation of the Hall was received. Public trials were only occasional episodes in the life of the great timbered Hall, whose hammerbeam roof was the finest in Europe. It was 240 feet long, 67 feet wide, large enough to house several of the courts of law — Common Pleas, King's Bench, the Exchequer Court, and Chancery — which functioned in various parts of the Hall with only low, temporary partitions separating them from the citizens, courtiers and others who sauntered at will, gossiping, buying news-sheets from hawkers or patronizing the booksellers' and stationers' booths that lined the walls. Westminster Hall had now to be cleared, decisions had to be made concerning the seating of the judges, the admission of the public, the position of the King during the trial, and security: mighty subjects had stood trial in Westminster Hall but never before had a reigning monarch been brought there as a prisoner on trial for his life.

Strafford had been brought in, as was customary, by the public or great North door of the Hall and his trial had been conducted about halfway down towards the southern end. Such a dignified walk, in full view, was to be denied the King. His place of trial was brought nearer to the southern end of the Hall and he would enter from a short passage beneath the Hall that brought him, by a flight of a few steps, close to the place he would occupy. A wooden partition was to be built from wall to wall across the width of the Hall, between him and the public, behind which soldiers would stand. Security would thus be provided and, what was perhaps more important, he would be denied contact with the spectators, and they with him, for he would be effectively screened from the body of the Hall except when he was standing.

Charles was brought on January 19 from Windsor to St James's in a coach and six, escorted by soldiers and with Hugh Peters, the Puritan divine, riding in front of the entourage. When a man on horseback put off his hat to him Charles returned the courtesy but his guard threw both man and horse into a ditch. The following day Charles was taken in a closed sedan chair to Whitehall and thence in his own barge, again enclosed, to Cotton House, which was conveniently near to West-

minster Hall. Spectators thronged the river and the banks and some of them cheered, but his own boat was closely followed and preceded by guards. While he was on his way Cromwell and the Commissioners were still discussing procedure in the Painted Chamber and as they heard the sounds that indicated that Charles was disembarking at Cotton steps Cromwell rushed to the window, turning deathly white: 'He is come, he is come!', he cried, 'and now we are doing that great work that the nation will be full of.' But what answer, he asked, as he asked himself and others over and over again, should be given when the King enquired by what authority he was being tried? After a pause Henry Marten spoke: 'In the name of the Commons in Parliament assembled and all the good people of England.'

At the south end of Westminster Hall benches had been erected for the men who were to be Charles's Judge and Jury. In the middle of them, and a little raised, sat John Bradshaw, the President, with a table before him. The benches, President's chair and table were covered with crimson cloth; Bradshaw wore a black gown and, considering his exposed position and the feelings the trial would evoke, he had had his hat reinforced with steel plates. At right angles to the Commissioners' seats, stretching northwards down the Hall, were two bodies of soldiers, several lines deep, and in the middle of the open space in front of Bradshaw and between the soldiers was a table bearing the mace and the sword of state at which two clerks sat ready to make their notes. Beyond the clerks and opposite the Commissioners' seats was the dock, a rectangular wooden enclosure with a crimson chair in the middle facing Bradshaw and the Commissioners. Immediately behind the dock was the high wooden partition that separated off the rest of the Hall. Soldiers lined this barrier and were stationed also down the middle of the Hall as far as the door so that the spectators were divided into two. On each side of the Hall at the South end, above the Judges' seats, galleries had been erected for privileged spectators who gained access through adjoining buildings. In view of the general security and the care taken to guard the King from sympathetic eyes there appeared to be a strange carelessness here. But whatever happened in the galleries there was no chance of escape for Charles, for all the doors to the Hall were securely guarded and troops of horse waited outside.

When all was ready it was apparent that only half of the Commissioners' chairs were occupied and, in fact, only 68 answered to their names. As the name of Fairfax was pronounced Lady Fairfax cried out

from the gallery that her husband was not there and never would be there. Order was restored as she hastily withdrew and the court waited.

It was a small man who walked into Westminster Hall with short steps and hurried gait under the guard of Colonel Tomlinson's men and mounted the few steps to the dock. He was dressed entirely in black with an enveloping black cloak round his shoulders on which gleamed the large embroidered star of the Order of the Garter. Apart from the deep white collar and cuffs, the only relief was a jewel at his throat and round his neck the blue ribbon of the garter, suspending the onyx and diamond George, his most precious jewel, which opened to reveal a portrait of his wife. The beard was tinged with grey, it was bushier, less finely trimmed than it had been, and there was more hair on his upper lip. Under the high-crowned black hat the dark auburn hair fell down to his shoulders and was still thick though its lustre had gone and it was streaked with grey. Those who had not seen him since the war would have noted the sunken eyes and the pouches beneath them. He looked a man who had suffered, who had faced hardship and expected more; who was disillusioned, and somewhat bitter. It was the face of one who had fought hard and perhaps knew he had lost. Yet as well as resignation there was a maturity in the face that was absent from the Court portraits of Van Dyck. Nor was his face or his figure that of an old, or of a sick man, and when he spoke people noted, as Lady Fairfax did, that his stammer had entirely gone.

Charles looked slowly round the hall and up at the galleries; he sat down on his red chair, rose, and turned to look over the barrier at the spectators and the guards behind him before resuming his seat. His head remained covered to mark his refusal to recognize the court. After Bradshaw had opened proceedings, John Cook, the Solicitor General, who was standing within the bar by the King, began the charge. Charles, wishing to speak, tapped him on the shoulder with his cane and as he did so its silver top fell off. No one stirred to pick it up so Charles stooped and put it in his pocket while Cook continued, 'I do in the name and on the behalf of the people of England exhibit and bring into this court a charge of high treason and other high crimes whereof I do accuse Charles Stuart, King of England.'

'By your favour, Hold!', exclaimed Charles, but the clerk to the court was ordered to proceed with the long indictment: 'Charles Stuart, King of England . . . trusted with a limited power to govern

by and according to the laws of the land . . . obliged to use the power committed to him for the good and benefit of the people for the preservation of their rights and liberties' had nevertheless 'out of a wicked design . . . to . . . uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power' conspired 'to overthrow the rights and liberties of the people . . . to take away . . . the right and power of frequent and successive Parliaments' and for the accomplishment of his design had 'trayterously and maliciously levyed war against the present Parliament, and the people therein represented.'

There were then enumerated the various battles of the civil war, the attempted use of foreign troops and the renewal of the war in 1648, all the evils resulting being laid at his door. 'Charles Stuart', concluded the charge, was 'guilty of all the treasons, murders, rapines, burnings, spoils, desolations, dammages, and mischiefs to this nation, ordered and committed in the said wars, or occasioned thereby.' On behalf of the people of England, consequently, the said Charles Stuart was impeached 'as a tyrant, traytor, murderer and a publick and implacable enemy to the commonwealth of England'.

Charles sat looking sometimes at the court, sometimes up at the galleries. At one point he rose and turned again with a stern countenance to look down the long, intimidating length of the hall. When it came to the final words of the impeachment he laughed in the face of the court as he had laughed in the face of Strafford's accusers.

Charles asked over and over again, as Cromwell had foreseen, to be told by what authority he was brought there, and the answer was always basically the one upon which his judges had agreed: 'the authority of the Commons of England assembled in Parliament'. Once they added the words 'of which you are the elected King'. Charles was quick to seize the point: the English monarchy was not elective but had been hereditary for a thousand years. And, he said, though 'I will stand for the privilege of the Commons, rightly understood, as any man here whatsoever', yet a Parliament — and he looked round — 'I see no House of Lords here that may constitute a Parliament'. He might also have pointed out that the House of Commons was not at that moment a House elected by the people but a rump of what had been elected by a part of the people over eight years before. Without the King and the House of Lords, with an out-of-date and unrepresentative House of Commons, what authority remained to institute a court of justice to try a King?

Throughout the first day Charles made his point repeatedly,

refusing to acknowledge the court or to answer to the charge made against him. 'I am your King', he asserted at one time, 'I have a trust committed to me by God, by old and lawful descent. I will not betray that trust to answer to a new unlawful authority.' 'I stand more for the liberty of my people than any here that sitteth to be my judge', he declared. Bradshaw became increasingly on edge: 'You, instead of answering, interrogate this court, which doth not become you in this condition . . .' 'Well, let me tell you', said the King brightly, 'to say you have legal authority will satisfy no reasonable man.'

'That is your apprehension', snapped Bradshaw. Charles remarked that apprehension  — neither his nor Bradshaw's — would decide the issue and in despair Bradshaw ordered the guard to withdraw the prisoner, but the last word on the first day of the trial rested with Charles:

'I do not fear that ', he remarked pointing to the clerk's table upon which lay both the indictment and the sword. No one was quite sure to which object he was referring.

The court was adjourned until Monday, leaving Sunday free for prayer and meditation, and Charles was taken back to Cotton House with Herbert in attendance. A few people cried for God to bless him but others cried 'Treason!' as he passed. He was allowed the services of Dr Juxon, Bishop of London, and while the Commissioners were fasting and listening to sermons Charles heard the words of the Church of England in the fashion he desired. The soldiers guarding him were contemptuous, occupying his bedroom and puffing in his face the tobacco smoke he detested. He went to another room, where Herbert slept on a mattress by his side, but he himself slept little; sometime over that weekend he put into writing his reasons for refusing to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court.

Monday the 22nd, the second day of the trial, was not unlike the first, but with Charles more fluent, clearly having considered his words in the interim. Upon Cook's formal request that the prisoner be called upon to plead, Bradshaw recapitulated the position, finally turning to Charles: 'the court expects that you apply yourself to the charge not to lose any more time, but to give a positive answer thereto', he concluded.

'It is not my case alone, it is the freedom and the liberty of the people of England', Charles began, 'and, do you pretend what you will, I must justly stand for their liberties. For if power, without law, may make law, may alter the fundamental laws of the kingdom — I do

not know what subject he is in England can be assured of his life or anything he can call his own.'

Bradshaw was at a loss to stem the King's eloquence. But as Charles continued,

'My reasons why in conscience of that duty I owe to God first, and my people afterwards for their lives, liberties and estates, I conceive I cannot answer at this time till I be satisfied of the legality of it . . .'

Bradshaw seized his opportunity.

'Sir, I must interrupt you . . . it seems you are about the entering into arguments and disputes concerning the authority of the court . . . You may not do it!'

Since this had been Charles's point all along, Bradshaw's interjection at this point fell a little flat.

'Sir', replied the King courteously, 'by your favour . . . I do know law and reason though I am no lawyer professed. I know as much law as any gentleman in England, and therefore, Sir (by your favour), I do plead for the liberties of the people of England more than any of you do . . .'

Charles was again interrupted, but the argument continued. When pressed by the King Bradshaw said again, 'We sit here by the authority of the Commons of England, and that authority hath called your ancestors . . . to account.'

'I deny that! Show me one precedent!'

'The point is not to be debated by you!'

'The Commons of England was never a court of judicature.'

'Confess or deny the charge!', cried the clerk.

'By what authority do you sit?' reiterated the King.

'Take him away!', roared Bradshaw.

'I do require that I may give my reasons.'

"Tis not for a prisoner to require  . . .'

'I am not an ordinary prisoner . . .'

At this Colonel Hewson, who was sitting as one of the Judges, rushed forward, called out 'Justice!' and spat in the King's face.

'Well Sir', remarked Charles, wiping his face, 'God hath justice in store both for you and me.'

The next day Cook pointed out that it was the third time they had met and the issue had not been joined. Charles attempted still to keep them from coming to the charge for, as he observed, the affirmative was easier to establish than the negative — it would be easier to charge him than for him to rebut the accusation. But although he managed to

speak at some length, Bradshaw had this time been well primed. He wasted no time on argument with the prisoner.

'Clerk, do your duty!' he commanded.

'Duty!' exclaimed Charles derisively, but the clerk read on:—

'Charles Stuart, King of England, you are accused in the behalf of the People of England of divers high crimes and treasons; which charge hath been read to you. The court now requires you to give your final and positive answer by way of confession or denial of the charge.'

Charles still refused. To acknowledge the court would be contrary to the privileges of the people of England and an alteration of the fundamental laws of the land, he said.

'Sir!' thundered Bradshaw, 'this is the third time you have publicly disowned this court and put an affront upon it.'

He was visibly agitated and he proceeded hurriedly to the attack:

'How far you have preserved the fundamental laws and freedom of the subject, your actions have spoken it. For truly, Sir, men's intentions are used to be shown by their actions. You have written your meaning in bloody characters throughout the whole kingdom . . . Clerk, record the default! And, gentlemen, you that brought the prisoner, take him back again.'

Charles was surprised by the sudden dismissal and cried in vain, 'I have one word to you . . . I find I am before a power . . .': the words were drowned in uproar as he was hustled away.

The court did not sit again in Westminster Hall until Saturday January 27. Meanwhile it continued to consult in he Painted Chamber, taking evidence from selected witnesses. But less than half the Commissioners attended; in spite of all that Cromwell could do only 63 were present on Friday 26 when, after long debate, it was ordered that the King be brought on the morrow to Westminster Hall to be sentenced.

Bradshaw appeared on that final day in scarlet. As he rose to open the court Charles, who knew that their intention was to sentence him that day, also attempted to speak. 'A hasty judgment', he was saying, 'is not so soon recalled . . .'

'You shall be heard before judgment is given,' Bradshaw promised him.

Charles required a double assurance, perhaps surprised at the ease with which he had won his point:

'I shall be heard before the judgment be given?'

'You shall.'

With that Bradshaw began his address. As he was saying that the prisoner was to answer to a charge of treason and other high crimes exhibited against him in the name of the people of England, two masked women in the gallery cried out 'It is a lie . . . Oliver Cromwell is a tyrant!' One of them was thought to be Lady Fairfax, but they slipped away in the hubbub unidentified and, as order was restored, Bradshaw was heard saying that the prisoner would be allowed to speak before sentence was passed provided he made no more attacks on the jurisdiction of the court.

This time Charles did not address the court but asked instead to be heard before the Lords and Commons in the Painted Chamber. He was, in fact, appealing over the heads of a court he refused to recognize to a political body which, however unrepresentative it had become, was nevertheless part of the constitution which he would be able to acknowledge as legal.

An uneasiness in the court, and the King's reasonable request, caused disquiet among the Commissioners and one of them, John Downes, became so agitated that Cromwell had to rebuke him. But Downes brushed Cromwell aside, crying out that he was not satisfied. The disturbance was enough to persuade Bradshaw to adjourn the court while Charles's request was being considered. But it only delayed the real issue. No concession was made, and when the court reassembled it was in order to proceed immediately to judgment and to sentence.

'I have a plan', he cried, 'to put before the Lords and Commons for a lasting peace . . .'

But it was too late. Though Ludlow thought he might have been about to propose abdicating in favour of his son, Bradshaw would hold no longer, and had begun the long indictment. Charles abandoned his attempts to speak and listened intently, only interrupting with an occasional exclamation. When he realized the charge was at an end and that verdict and sentence would be forthcoming, he hurriedly claimed his right to speak, according to Bradshaw's promise. He was refused permission unless he first acknowledge the jurisdiction of the court.

'You disavow us as a court, and therefore for you to address yourself to us, not acknowledging of us as a court to judge of what you say, it is not to be permitted.'

Amid growing tension the clerk read the sentence, ending with the words:

'For all which treasons and crimes this Court doth adjudge that the said Charles Stuart, as a tyrant, traytor, murtherer and publique enimy to the good people of this nation, shall be put to death by the severing of his heade from his body.'

Charles tried desperately to speak.

'Sir,' roared Bradshaw, 'you shall not be heard after the sentence!'

'No, Sir?'

'No, Sir!'

'Guards, withdraw your prisoner!'

Charles was trying to speak above the noise:

'I may speak after the sentence . . . I am not suffered to speak . . . hold! . . . Expect what justice the people will have . . .'

The broken sentences were accompanied by uncouth and brutal behaviour by Colonel Axtell and his men who were hustling the prisoner and burning grains of gunpowder to make smoke to blow in his face. At a signal from their commander they broke into cries of 'Justice!' 'Execution!'.

Charles was taken in a closed sedan chair through King Street, with troops close lining the route, to his own apartments at Whitehall. He walked between guards through his own Privy garden and even saw one of his old servants, weeping at his master's plight. The next day he was taken to St James's Palace.

He had conducted his defence virtually unaided. His claim that he knew as much law as any man in England was not far from the truth, but no amount of sophisticated legal assistance would have made the slightest difference to the verdict. His refusal to plead before a court which, by all he knew of law, was unconstitutional, was a simple and straightforward way of meeting the issue, one which John Lilburne had used several times and would use again with great effect, but without influencing the verdict, in a few months' time. Whether the King could, or should, have met the charges head on and tried to prove that he was not a tyrant and not responsible for the civil wars is another matter. He would have needed more time than they gave him, he would have required assistance and access to documents to answer the long list of charges. Perhaps he knew from the beginning what the verdict would be and shrank from the long attempt to vindicate his actions in public. Perhaps the offer which he appeared about to make—but too late—really did concern his abdication. Perhaps he was relying on the kind of offer that some of his friends had reputedly made—to

guarantee with their estates and their lives any terms that would reinstate him. But his accusers were not prepared for compromise or negotiation. Appeals for clemency, including one from the Netherlands, were disregarded. No notice was taken of a blank sheet of paper, signed by the Prince of Wales, on which the Prince offered to let them inscribe any terms they wished in return for his father's life.^[1]

Charles remained at St James's throughout the 29th and did not hear the sounds of the scaffold being erected outside the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall. He knew nothing of the difficulties his accusers were having in obtaining signatures for the death warrant. He no longer felt the loneliness of the last months. He burned some papers, he sent his dogs away, he refused to see his closest friends; only Herbert and Juxon stayed near him. He sent Herbert on a few errands. He received a messenger from his eldest son with a note craving his father's blessing. He was allowed a visit from Elizabeth and Henry, who had been staying at Sion House. They burst into tears at the sight of their father. Charles told Elizabeth he was about to die for the laws and liberties of the land and the true Protestant religion, he begged her not to grieve and to tell her mother that his thoughts had never strayed from her and that his love would be the same to the last. Little Henry, who was only nine, he took on his knee. 'Sweetheart,' he said, 'now they will cut off thy father's head . . . and perhaps make thee a king.' But he charged the boy never to accept the throne while his elder brother lived and never to accept it from the hands of their enemies. 'I will sooner be torn in pieces first!' cried the little boy. Charles then divided the few jewels he had between the children and retired to prayer.

On the morning of the 30th he rose early, was careful of his toilet and asked for two shirts, since the weather was cold and shivering might be mistaken for fear. Morning prayers were conducted by Bishop Juxon and shortly afterwards the soldiers arrived. As they left Jane Whorwood ran forward to greet him, their affectionate embrace reviving the rumour that she had been his mistress at Hampton Court and Carisbrooke.^[2] He walked this time, with his usual quick, lively gait, across St James's Park between Colonel Tomlinson and Bishop Juxon, with Herbert following behind and foot soldiers at front and rear with drums beating and flags flying; his spaniel, Rogue, had escaped from her confinement and joyously made to follow him but was turned back. At Whitehall Charles ate a piece of bread and drank a glass of wine before returning to prayer. Not until 2 o'clock did the

call come. When he stepped out of a window of the Banqueting House on to the scaffold with Juxon by his side, Herbert being too distraught to accompany him, he found Colonel Hacker and Colonel Tomlinson already there with the masked executioner and his assistant. The scaffold ran from about the second to the sixth window of the building, large enough for the fifteen or so people who occupied it, including Puritan divines, soldiers, and some of the shorthand writers who would speed the details of the execution to the printers.

The scaffold was black, the rails round it were draped with black cloth; the low block, about eighteen inches long and six inches high, was similarly covered with black and near it, attached to four staples driven into the scaffold, were the hooks and pulleys that would be attached to the King to hold him down if he resisted execution. He made no comment except to ask if a higher block were available and was told there was no other. Round the scaffold were ranks of soldiers, horse and foot, and beyond them the crowds who had come to witness the beheading of a king: by intent they were too far away to hear anything he might say. Charles realized this but, he said, if he did not speak, it would appear he submitted to the guilt as well as to the punishment. So, speaking from the notes he had made on a little piece of paper some four inches square, he addressed himself to those about him.

He made two protestations: 'I never did begin a war with the two Houses of Parliament,' he said, and 'I call God to witness . . . that I never did intend for to encroach upon their privileges.'

Then he made public repudiation of his own act in signing Strafford's death warrant: 'God forbid that I should be so ill a Christian as not to say God's judgments are just upon me. Many times he does pay justice by an unjust sentence . . . an unjust sentence that I suffered for to take effect, is punished now by an unjust sentence upon me.'

He turned then to his political testament: a society, he said, must give God his due, the King his due, the people their due. A national synod, freely called, freely debating could settle religion; the laws of the land would define the position of the king; as to the people, he said, 'truly I desire their liberty and freedom as much as anybody whatsoever; but I must tell you that their liberty and freedom consists in having government, those laws by which their lives and their goods may be most their own. It is not their having a share in the government; that is nothing appertaining unto them. A subject and a sovereign are clean different things!'

He made his profession of faith, saying that he died a Christian according to the tenets of the Church of England, he put on the white satin cap which would confine his hair, placed his George, which he had worn to the last, in the hands of the Bishop, and spoke to him one word — 'Remember'. Then he lay down, put his head upon the block, and, after a second or two, stretched out his arms. It was the signal. The axe fell and the executioner raised aloft the head of Charles Stuart. The crowd groaned. The troops immediately moved to disperse the people. Devoted followers and souvenir hunters rushed to dip their handkerchiefs in his blood; to acquire hairs from his head or beard, threads from his garment or chips from the block.

The following day the head was sewn on, the body embalmed and placed in a leaden coffin which was taken to St James's Palace where it was watched over by a few of his friends. Many tried to see him but few were admitted. Rumour said that Cromwell came by night to look at the coffin, sighing 'Cruel necessity!' as he departed. Charles was refused interment in Henry VII's chapel at Westminster, but was taken on the night of February 7 in a black coach drawn by six horses decked in black to his own bedchamber at Windsor. The following day he was brought to the Dean's Hall, which was draped with black mourning cloths. There was some confusion over the exact place of burial, which was sad for one who so liked order in his life. But on February 9 his coffin was carried to St George's Chapel by soldiers, with Richmond, Hertford, Southampton and Lindsey holding over it the four corners of the black funeral pall. The service he would have wished was denied but Juxon walked behind the coffin with the English Prayer Book in his hand and Herbert and a few other friends and household servants followed their master to the vault which had been opened towards the middle of the choir and which was found to contain the coffins of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour. The simple coffin bore nothing but the words King Charles , and the date. As it was brought from the Hall to the vault snow began to fall and the black pall was thickly covered with white snowflakes.

People remembered that he had dressed in white for his Coronation, and the legend of the White King grew. On the day of his interment his meditations in captivity were published as Eikon Basilike , and the legend of the Martyr King began. Yet his opponents had executed him as a traitor and Milton wrote Eikonoklastes to destroy the image that had been built up. But even Milton could not succeed in doing so and the Eikon was published again and again in

English, French, Dutch, German, Danish, Italian, Latin and Greek editions, most with a frontispiece showing the King at his devotions — sad, ethereal, noble. For a century the view persisted, modified but basically unchanged, until the beneficiaries of the Great Rebellion began to replace it by a constitutional interpretation of the civil wars which justified their own ascendancy and cast Charles in a role which more nearly resembled the King of the indictment. Where the truth lay depended, largely, upon the point of view.^[3]

Concerning religion Charles said many times, and probably believed, that so long as a man held the basic tenets of Christianity he would have no quarrel with him; it was in this spirit that he had allowed the Roman Catholic Church to approach him. But he also believed, like his father, that Church and State were mutually supporting and that a religious toleration that extended to an unlimited and uncontrolled anarchy of belief would result in social and constitutional chaos. Cromwell believed the same, the difference between them being that Cromwell would banish the Catholics whom Charles would tolerate and would tear down Charles's Church of England in favour of the Independency which Charles proscribed. Both men were suspicious of Presbyterians, and Cromwell, like Charles but with less logic, stopped short of tolerating the extremer forms of sectarianism. Both men walked with God, Cromwell in a more hearty fashion than Charles and with a more constant awareness of the Lord's hand in every event. Yet if Charles did not express himself as forcibly as Cromwell, he was none the less aware of God's presence in his life: he needed an ordered Church to assure him of this; Cromwell did not.

Most of Charles's constitutional transgressions stemmed from the fact that he was trying to raise money in a country which employed no regular system of taxation, and where he could make use of occasional taxes only with the consent of Parliament. From the beginning of his reign he was saddled with debts not of his making, with departments of state that were riddled with graft and inefficiency, with a virtually non-existent civil service and a form of local government — if it deserved the name — that was voluntary, amateur, and self-centred. The waste of the money that was raised for war was due as much to the inherited venality of his executive as to his own inability to reform. His personal expenses, even taking into account his pictures, the Court masques, and the extravagance of his wife, were not high on any comparison with his father or with European monarchs; that

Court expenditure, which he made some effort to contain, remained an unwieldy item was due as much to some of the people who afterwards opposed him as to himself. Nor did his methods of raising money without a Parliament always deserve the censure accorded them. Though they too often included pickings for his friends, they mainly affected vested interests and, apart from some monopolies, hit the rich rather than the poor, they generally accorded a care for the underdog, and they amounted to less than the taxes imposed in most other countries.

Charles was wrong in thinking he could influence the European situation in favour of the Palatine House by means of war: the ill-judged, obsessive preoccupation with La Rochelle, the gross inefficiency and the failure of each venture he embarked upon, proved the contrary. Yet during the period of which his opponents chiefly complained, and while Europe was devastated by war, his country enjoyed eleven years of prosperity. He himself never ceased to attend to the details of government — like a cobbler, he once said, going through all the papers that came before him, not originating but patching and sewing.

He had faults of character and training which made him a difficult man to deal with — splitting hairs in argument, depending upon the rigid letter of the word rather than its spirit, a tendency to discount the means if the desired end could be achieved, too obvious a reliance upon Guicciardini and his Maxims . He could be distressingly vindictive, as he was with Eliot, but he could also show compassion. He lacked subtlety and the lighter touch, though he was shrewd and a good judge of an argument or a character. When driven into a corner he could become obstinate and, though he himself would have shrunk from the accusation, there was a grain of justification in his opponents' belief that he could not be trusted, and that he would substitute his own interpretation for whatever agreement might be reached.

But faults in Charles do not necessarily imply virtue in his opponents. The core of opposition which began the struggle and remained to the end consisted of the men of property for whom Ireton spoke at the Putney debates. But the easy slide into opposition under the cry of 'Freedom' had brought in many people who either returned to neutrality, joined the King, or — mistakenly — remained with the opposition until it was too late. It was not the King who stood in their way, denying the universal suffrage and the toleration which the Agreement of the People demanded — it was those very men for whom Ireton

spoke. The 'poor scrubs' had been deceived certainly — not by the King but by their own superior officers. One of the few who saw the situation clearly was John Lilburne — and he was kept in prison by Parliament or by the Army throughout the greater part of the civil wars. There was truth in Cromwell's vision of revolution after revolution stretching out indefinitely as layers of dissatisfaction came to the surface. But to arrest it at the point where the underprivileged, who had joined Parliament for freedom and a decent standard of life, still stood outside his settlement could hardly be justified. When, after the King's execution, the Rump abolished the monarchy and the House of Lords and erected in their place a Council of State, Lilburne's bitter cry of 'the old cheat, the transmutation of names', rang out in the pamphlet he called England's New Chains . Cromwell's reply was to crush Lilburne and the Levellers shortly after the execution of the King. If honest dealing was in question, it was a case of the pot calling the kettle black.

It was three hundred years before 'the poorest hee in England' could raise his head in social and political equality. But the men of property for whom Cromwell was at first the instrument but was, in the end, too radical, achieved their ends when Charles's son ascended the throne in 1660. The irony was that the Restoration Settlement broadly restored the constitution of 1641, which Charles himself had agreed to observe and had later proposed as the basis of a settlement. The difference between 1660 and the 1640s lay in a new monarch, more pliant than his father, a man who was the grandson of Henri IV — not the grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots — who knew that if Paris was worth a mass England was worth a settlement with men whose preoccupation with their property could be made to coincide with his own interests. The crowning irony was that Charles I himself was not far removed from at least some of his opponents: Ireton's speech at Putney and Charles's on the scaffold show precisely the same attitude to the people and the uses of government.

Whether Charles I could have averted, or postponed, the civil war, whether the change could have been effected peaceably, is doubtful. Charles had all the faults of character and temperament which made negotiation difficult, while his opponents had, in Parliament, the supreme negotiating body. Charles, like Laud and Clarendon, had always feared Parliaments — particularly Parliaments that sat long, giving to their Members the advantages of self-knowledge and propinquity. And now he was brought down by the longest Parliament of all.

In the end, when the various currents of the Interregnum had settled into one stream and the men of property were securely at the helm, there seemed to be a certain inevitability about the events that brought Charles to the scaffold; wealth must be matched by influence, it had been said, economic power by political power. Since wealth, even when reinforced in other ways, still depended primarily upon land, there was no need to change the electoral system. It was merely necessary to restrict the power of the monarch and guarantee frequent Parliaments, to sweep away irksome vestiges of feudalism like the Court of Wards and Knighthood fines in a general tidying up that brought echoes of Salisbury's Great Contract and, of necessity, to make the adjustments that had become necessary through the land confiscations of the civil wars. Religion remained difficult to fit into any mould but, in a similar spirit of expediency, Bishops returned to the House of Lords and the Church of England was Established without being too strongly political, while Dissent was tolerated but skilfully excluded from effective influence.

Charles did not see all this — or only dimly. He had fought for something more simple. If he had won, as in the early stages it had seemed he could, he might well have postponed, or even averted, the Whig supremacy. But the alternative — involuntary, perhaps — might well have been, as many of his opponents feared, a royal despotism of a European kind. The ordered society, benevolently guided from above, that Charles envisaged belonged to the past rather than the future and there is no certainty that it would have prevailed.

It was Charles's misfortune that accident had placed him in the path of momentous change of one kind or another. His strength lay in preservation, in guarding his heritage. He had no aptitude for presiding over the difficult birth of a new society. He once wrote to Digby that if he could not live as a King he would chose to die like a gentleman; it was his personal tragedy that he was not allowed to live as a gentleman, for it was a role he would have filled impeccably.