"nor was it desired that he should meddle in any business, or be sensible of the unhappy condition the royal family "was in. The assignation which was made by the Court of "France for the better support of the Prince was annexed to "the monthly allowance given to the Queen, and received by "her and distributed as she thought fit; such clothes and "other things provided for his Highness as were necessary; "her Majesty desiring to have it thought that the Prince "lived entirely upon her, and that it would not consist with "the dignity of the Prince of Wales to be a pensioner to the "King of France. Hereby none of his Highness's servants had any pretence to ask money, but they were contented with "what should be allowed them; which was dispensed with a very sparing hand; nor was the Prince himself ever master "of ten pistoles to dispose as he liked. The Lord Jermyn "was the Queen's chief officer, and governed all her receipts; and he loved plenty so well that he would not be without "it, whatever others suffered who had been more acquainted "with it." In this last sentence there is an insinuation of more than meets the eye. Henry Jermyn, originally one of the members for Bury St. Edmunds in the Long Parliament, and created Baron Jermyn by Charles (Sept. 8, 1643) for his conspicuous Royalism, had long been the special favourite. of the Queen and the chief of her household; after Charles's death he became the Queen's second husband by a secret marriage; and so cautious a writer as Hallam does not hesitate to countenance the belief that his relations to the Queen were those of a husband while Charles was yet alive.1 66 Such were Charles's circumstances, such was his real isolation, when his captivity began. It was to last all the rest of his life, or for more than two years and a half. The 1 Clar. 594-602 and 640; Hallam, Const. Hist. (10th ed.), II. 183 and 188, with footnotes; and Letters of the King to the Queen, numbered xxvii., xxviii., xxxii., xxxv., and xxxviii. in Bruce's Charles I. in 1646. In the last of these letters, dated Newcastle, July 23, Charles writes:-"Tell Jermyn, from Ime, that I will make him know the "eminent service he hath done me concerning Pr. Charles his coming to form and place of his captivity were indeed to be varied. There were to be four stages of it in all, the first only being his detention among the Scots at Newcastle. At the point which we have reached in our narrative, viz. the conclusion of the Civil War, three months of this first stage of the long captivity (May-August 1646) had already elapsed. We have now, therefore, to follow the King, with an eye also for the course of events round him, through the remainder of this stage of his captivity, and through the three stages which succeeded it. FIRST STAGE OF THE CAPTIVITY: STILL WITH THE SCOTS AT NEWCASTLE: AUG. 1646-JAN. 1646-7. Balancings of Charles between the Presbyterians and the Independents-His Negotiations in the Presbyterian direction: The Hamiltons his Agents among the Scots-His Attempt to negotiate with the Independents: Will Murray in London-Interferences of the Queen from France: Davenant's Mission to Newcastle-The Nineteen Propositions unanswered: A Personal Treaty offered-Difficulties between the Scots and the English Parliament-Their Adjustment: Departure of the Scots from England, and Cession of Charles to the English-Westminster Assembly Business, and Progress of the Presbyterian Settlement. Three months of Scottish entreaty and argumentation had failed to move Charles. He would not take the Covenant; he would not promise a pure and simple acceptance of Presbytery; and to the Nineteen Propositions of the English Parliament he had returned only the vaguest and most dilatory answer. The English Parliamentarians, as a body, were furious, and the milder of them, with the Scots, were in despair. "We are here, by the King's madness, in a terrible plunge," Baillie writes from London, Aug. 18; "the powerful faction "desires nothing so much as any colour to call the King and "all his race away." In another letter on the same day he says, "We [the Scots in London] strive every day to keep "the House of Commons from falling on the King's answer. "We know not what hour they will close their doors and "declare the King fallen from his throne; which if they once "do, we put no doubt but all England would concur, and, "if any should mutter against it, they would be quickly suppressed." And again and again in subsequent letters, through August, September, and October, the honest Presbyterian writes in the same strain, breaking his heart with the thought of the King's continued obstinacy.1 It must not be supposed that Charles was merely idle or inert in his obstinacy. In the wretched phrase of those who regard politics as a kind of game, he was "playing his cards" as well as he could. What was constantly present to his mind was the fact that his opponents were a composite body distracted by animosities among themselves. He saw the Presbyterians on the one wing and the Independents on the other wing of the English or main mass, and he saw this main mass variously disposed to the smaller and very sensitive Scottish mass, to whose keeping he had meanwhile entrusted himself. Hence he had not even yet given up the hope, which he had been cherishing and expressing only a month before his flight to the Scots, that he "should be able so to draw the Presbyterians or the Independents to side with him for extirpating one the other, that he should really be King again." He could not now, of course, pursue that policy in a direct manner or with the expectation of immediate success. But he could pursue it indirectly. He could extract from the Nineteen Propositions the two main sets of concessions which they demanded-the concession of Presbytery and what went along with that, and the concession of the Militia and what went along with that; and, holding the two sets of concessions in different hands, he could alternate between that division of his opponents which preferred the one set and that which preferred the other, so as to find out with which he could make the best arrangement. By a good deal of yielding on the Episcopacy question, coupled with a promise to suppress Sects and Heresy, might he not bribe 1 Baillie, II. 389 et seq. From a letter to Lord Digby, dated March 26, 1646, quoted by Godwin (II. 132-3) from Carte. K K the Scots and Presbyterians to join him against the Independents? By a good deal of yielding on the Militia question, coupled with a promise of Toleration for the Sects, might he not bribe the Independents to join him against the Presbyterians, and perhaps even save Episcopacy? Which course would be the best? Might not that be found out most easily by trying both? In accordance so far with the advices from France, Charles had begun with the Presbyterian "card,", and had played it first among the Scots. We have seen the classification he had made of the Scots, from his observation of them at Newcastle, into the four parties of the Montroses, the Neutrals, the Hamiltons, and the Campbells. The Montroses, or absolute Royalists, were now nowhere. After having lurked on in his Highland retreat, with the hope of still performing some feat of Hannibal in the service of his captive Majesty, Montrose had reluctantly obeyed the orders to capitulate and disband which had been sent to him as well as to all the Royalist commanders of garrisons in England, and, without having been permitted the consolation of going to Newcastle to kiss his Majesty's hand, had embarked, with a few of his adherents, at Stonehaven, Sept. 3, in a ship bound to Norway. The first of the four parties of Scots in the King's reckoning of them being thus extinct, and the second or Neutrals making now no separate appearance, the real division, if any, was into the Hamiltons and the Campbells. The division was not for the present very apparent, for Hamilton and his brother Lanark had not been ostensibly less urgent than Argyle and Loudoun that his Majesty would accept the Nineteen Propositions. But underneath this apparent accord his Majesty had discerned the slumbering rivalry, and the possibility of turning it to account. He had regained the Hamiltons. When the Duke, indeed, came to Newcastle in July to kiss the hand of his royal kinsman from whom he had been estranged, and by whose orders he had been in prison for more than two years, the meeting had been rather awkward. Both had "blushed at once." But forgiveness had passed between them; and, though the King in his letters to the Queen continued to speak of the "bragging" of the Hamiltons, and of his "little belief" in them, the two black-haired brothers did not know that, but were glad to hear themselves again addressed familiarly by the King as "Cousin James " and "Lanark." Through these Hamiltons might not a party among the Scots be formed that should be less stiff than Argyle, Loudoun, and the others were for concurrence with the English in all the Nineteen Propositions? The experiment was worth trying, and in the course of September the King did try it in a very curious manner. The Duke of Hamilton, who had meanwhile paid a visit to Scotland, had then returned to Newcastle at the head of a new deputation from the Committee of the Scottish Estates, charged with the duty of reasoning with his Majesty. Besides the Duke, there were in the deputation the Earls of Crawford and Cassilis, Lords Lindsay and Balmerino, three lesser barons, and three burgesses. They had had an interview with the King, and had pressed upon him the Covenant and the Nineteen Propositions by all sorts of new arguments, but without effect. The next day, however, they received a communication from his Majesty in writing. After expressing his regret that his conversation with them the day before had not been satisfactory, he explains more fully an arrangement which he had then proposed. Whatever might be his own opinion of the Covenant, he by no means desired from the Scots anything contrary to their Covenant. But was it not the main end of the Covenant that Presbyterial Government should be legally settled in England? Well, he was willing to consent to this after a particular scheme. "Whereas I mentioned that the "Church-government should be left to my conscience and "those of my opinion, I shall be content to restrict it to some "few dioceses, as Oxford, Winchester, Bristol, Bath and Wells, and Exeter, leaving all the rest of England fully "under the Presbyterian Government, with the strictest "clauses you shall think upon against Papists and Indepen"dents." In other words, Charles offered a scheme by which Presbytery and Episcopacy should share England between them on a strict principle of non-toleration of anything else, |