The New World: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume II (The Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading Series)

The King naturally hoped to profit by the differences between Parliament and the Army and between the English and Scottish Governments. He delayed so long that the Governments came to terms without him. In February 1647 the Scots, having been paid an instalment of half the sum due to them for their services in England, handed over Charles under guarantee for his safety to Parliamentary Commissioners and returned to their own country. This transaction, though highly practical, wore and still wears a sorry look. The jingle was on many lips. The confusion and distresses of the year 1646, with its interminable constitutional and religious discussion and the paralysis of national life, created fierce and general discontent, and from every quarter eyes were turned in new loyalties towards the King.

When the Scots had taken their payment Charles was led with the greatest deference southward to Holmby House in Northamptonshire by his new owners. His popularity became at once manifest. From Newcastle southwards the journey was a progress of cheering crowds and clashing bells. To greet the King, to be freed from the cruel wars, to have the Old England back again, no doubt with some important changes, was the national wish. Completely broken in the field, as previously in the Parliamentary struggle, Charles was still incomparably the most important figure in England. Every one was for the King, provided he would do what they wished. Stripped of all material weapons, he was more than ever conscious of the power of the institution which he embodied. But a third and new partner had appeared upon the English scene. The Ironside Army, twenty-two thousand strong, was not yet the master, but was no longer the servant, of those who had created it. At its head stood its renowned and trusted generals: Thomas Fairfax, Commander-in-Chief; Oliver Cromwell, its sun of glory; Henry Ireton, its brain and in a large degree its conscience. Beneath them, upon the grim parades, stirred political and religious controversies sufficient in themselves for civil and social wars far more embittered than that which had been finished.

Parliament had been refreshed by the election of new Members to fill the Royalist vacancies. It contained a strong Independent group which supported the Army. But the majority still represented the Presbyterian interest and strove for a strictly limited monarchy. The Army in no way shared the religious views of its Presbyterian employers. Their fiercest fighters, their most compulsive preachers, their most passionate sectaries, were almost as much opposed to a Presbyterian Establishment as to the Episcopacy. They differed from the Scots as much as from Archbishop Laud. Freedom of religious conviction was wrought in them by the variety and vigour of their sects. They were ready indeed to dragoon others; but who should dragoon them?

Now that the war was won most Members of Parliament and their leaders had no more need of the Army. It must be reduced to modest proportions. The civil power must reign. The expenses must be curtailed. A large number of regiments should be employed in Ireland to avenge the Irish massacres of 1641. Suitable garrisons must be maintained in England. As for the rest, let them go to their homes with the thanks of the House of Commons to cheer them in their later life. But here a matter very awkward on such occasions obtruded itself. The pay of the Army was in arrears. In March 1647 the foot were owed for eighteen weeks and the horse for forty-three. At Westminster in this once great Parliament it was felt that a six-weeks’ payment should efface the debt. The soldiers did not look upon all this in the same way. Differing in many great things from one another, they were united upon the question of pay. They were resolved not to go to Ireland or be disbanded to their homes until it was settled—and other matters as well in which they took an interest. A serious dispute between Parliament and the Army thus began, both sides flushed with the sense of having a victory in their hands for which they deserved a reward.

In the first phase of the dispute Parliament assumed it had the power to give orders. Cromwell, as Member for Cambridge, assured them in the name of Almighty God that the Army would disband when ordered. But he must have used a different language in the other quarter, because when the Army received the Parliamentary decisions they responded by a respectful petition from the officers. In this document, drawn up probably by Ireton, they asked for themselves and their men arrears of pay, indemnity for acts done in the war, guarantees against future conscription, and a pension for disabled men, widows, and children. “Whereas,” they said, “the necessity of war has put us upon many actions, which the law would not warrant (nor have we acted in time of settled peace); we humbly desire that before our disbanding a full and sufficient provision may be made by ordinance of Parliament (to which the royal assent may be desired) for our indemnity and security in all such services.” Even after Marston Moor and Naseby the victorious Ironsides did not feel sure that anything counted without the royal authority. They sought a guarantee which would be national and permanent, and for all the tight-knit majority organisation at Westminster this guarantee the kingly office alone could supply. Here is the salient fact which distinguishes the English Revolution from all others: that those who wielded irresistible physical force were throughout convinced that it could give them no security. Nothing is more characteristic of the English people than their instinctive reverence even in rebellion for law and tradition. Deep in the nature of the men who had broken the King’s power was the conviction that law in his name was the sole foundation on which they could build.

The Parliamentary leaders received the officers’ petition with displeasure. They seemed to imagine themselves in full control. Eventually they ordered each regiment to proceed to a different station in order that they might be separately disbanded or sent to Ireland. The reply of the Army was to concentrate at Newmarket. There they made a Solemn Engagement not to disband until their desires were met. As the balance between authority and physical force seemed fairly even both sides sought allies. The Presbyterians in Parliament looked to the Scots and the Army leaders looked to the King. The generals—Cromwell, Ireton, and Fairfax, Commander-in-Chief, to put them in their order of power—saw themselves about to be reduced to something lower than the venomous faction-politicians, who thought the victory was their own property and that all they had to do was to enjoy and distribute its spoils in a narrowly selected circle. Up to this point the Army, generals, officers, and men, were at one.

Cromwell and Ireton felt that if they could get hold of the King physically, and before Parliament did so, it would be much. If they could gain him morally it would be all. Ireton was already secretly in touch with the King. Now in early June, on his and Cromwell’s orders Cornet Joyce, with near four hundred Ironside troopers, rode to Holmby House, where the King, surrounded by his household and attended by the Parliamentary Commissioners, was agreeably residing. The colonel of the Parliamentary guard fled. Charles, convinced of his personal inviolability, passed the night in calm serenity. Civilities were interchanged between the officers of his household and the troops.

In the morning Cornet Joyce intimated with due respect that he had come to remove the King. Charles made no protest. He walked out on to the terrace and eyed the solid buff and steel array with an almost proprietary air. “I have promised,” said Joyce to his troopers, “three things in your name. You will do no harm to His Majesty’s person; you will force him to nothing against his conscience; you will allow his servants to accompany him. Do you all promise?” “All,” was the cry. “And now, Mr Joyce,” said the King, “tell me, where is your commission? Have you anything in writing from Sir Thomas Fairfax?” Cornet Joyce was embarrassed. He looked this way and that, but finally he said, pointing to the regiment, “Here!” “Indeed,” said the King, with the compulsive smile and confidence of sovereignty and Divine Right. “It is one I can read without spelling: as handsome and proper a company of gentlemen as I have seen this many a day. . . . Where next, Mr Joyce?”

The Cornet and those who had sent him thought only of studying the King’s wishes so long as they had him in their power. Oxford—but the King thought it unhealthy. Cambridge—this was more agreeable. The King found Newmarket attractive. The Army at any rate lay there. Off they all rode together, a jingling and not unhappy company, feeling they had English history in their hands. For three days the King lay at Childerley, near Newmarket. Cambridge University flocked out with loyal addresses, which had been lacking in the Civil War. Soon arrived Cromwell, Ireton, and Fairfax. The royal captive was removed to Hatfield, thence to Hampton Court, where the officers of the household were astonished to see the King walking up and down the garden for hours conversing and laughing with the rebel generals, all apparently in the highest good humour. Eventually the following royal message was framed: “His Majesty conceives the Propositions of Parliament as being destructive to the main principal interests of the Army, and of all those whose affections concur with them; and His Majesty, having seen the Proposals of the Army . . . believes his two Houses will think with him that they much more conduce to the satisfaction of all interests and may be a fitter foundation for a lasting peace than the Propositions now tendered by Parliament. He therefore propounds (as the best way in his judgment in order to peace) that his two Houses would instantly take into consideration those Proposals.”²

Behind all this was a great political and personal deal. No one has probed its precise details. There was a religious compromise which the nation could have stomached. There was a Constitution where power was balanced between Parliament and Crown. There was substantial indemnity and reward for the Army when disbanded. There is the outline of a Cromwell, Earl and Knight of the Garter, quelling, as Viceroy, the Irish disorders, renewing in a different form the “Thorough” administration for which Strafford had lost his life. As Lord Keeper, Ireton, the most constructive political mind of the hour, might have shaped the Island Constitution and outrun the toilsome marches of the generations. At this moment there was at finger tips a settlement in the power of the English people and near to their hearts’ desire. But of course it was too good to be true. Not so easily can mankind escape from the rigours of its pilgrimage. Charles was never wholly sincere in his dealings with the Army leaders; he still pinned his hopes on help from the Scots. Parliament for their part rejected the military and royal proposals. They stood by faction and the party policy, and they too hoped that the Scots might be brought to put down the warriors who had saved them in their need. Here were checks. But another came from the Army itself.

Hitherto the generals had held the officers, and the officers had held the men; but all was boiling with force and thought, surging upwards upon religious passion. The soldiers were deep in the Old Testament. Ehud and Eglon, Saul and Samuel, Ahab and Jehu, were in their minds. They particularly admired the conduct of Samuel when before the Lord he hewed to pieces Agag, delicately though he walked. The generals wished to make a good arrangement for the country, for the King, and for themselves. The rank and file had deeper-cutting convictions. The only chance for the arrangement between Charles and Cromwell was that it should be carried swiftly into effect. Instead there was delay. The main preoccupation of the generals was to hold their men. But the old harangues did not seem effective in a military assembly which already looked upon the King as “the Man of Blood,” and were astonished that their honoured leaders should defile themselves by having truck with him. The mood of the soldiers became increasingly morose; and the generals saw themselves in danger of losing control over them.

The Presbyterian party in the House of Commons now realised they could not quell the Army. But the City of London, its apprentices and its mob, as yet unconvinced, held them to their duty. They were forced by riot and violence to rescind the conciliatory resolutions which, much against their will, they had offered to the Army. In fear of the London mob, the Speaker and fifty or sixty Members resorted to Army headquarters at Hounslow, claiming the protection of Cromwell. This was granted. The Army marched on London, occupied Westminster, entered the City, and everything except their problems fell prostrate before them.

At Putney in the autumn of 1647 the Army held keen debate. The generals, and especially Ireton, sought to canalise their turbulence. A military Parliament or Army debating society was formed. The regiments had elected their delegates. These were called by them the “agents,” or “agitators.” Ireton had drawn up the military constitution. He was prepared to go to all lengths short of disturbing the social order or the rights of property. At Putney they wrestled with one another and with their ideas long and earnestly for weeks. They set a secretary to record their proceedings; his records eventually found their way to an Oxford college, and the nineteenth century was presented with a window on the vivid scene. All sorts of new figures sprang up: Sexby, Rainborow, Wildman, Goffe the preaching colonel. These spoke with fervour and power, and every time they hit the bull’s-eye. Cromwell listened to sentences like these: “The poorest he that is in England hath a life to live as the greatest he,” and “A man is not bound to a system of government which he hath not had any hand in setting over him.” It was a brew of hot Gospel and cold steel.

The doctrine of natural right to political equality shocked Ireton as much as it would have shocked Burke or Fox. He sought rigidly the middle course between a Parliament which could not be dissolved and the rank and file of an Army which would not be disbanded. His precise arguments commanded Cromwell’s intellectual assent, but not his political judgment. They fell flat with the soldiers’ “agents.” When General Ireton dwelt upon the principle that only those should vote who had what is now called “a stake in the country” his audience became thoughtful. When he pointed out that a claim for political equality based on the law of God or the law of Nature would affect the rights of property, when he said, “By the same right of Nature he hath an equal right in any goods he sees,” the soldiers did not recoil in horror from this conclusion. Their ideas were soon abreast of those of the Chartists in the nineteenth century—manhood suffrage at twenty-one, equal electoral districts, biennial Parliaments, and much more in prospect.

Cromwell heard all this and brooded over it. His outlook was Elizabethan. He thought such claims would lead to anarchy. When orators raised the cheers of the assembly for the day when King, lords, and property would all be cast down together his thoughts wandered back to his landed estate. Clearly this was dangerous nonsense. Ireton’s would-be calming arguments only opened up new vistas of subversion. Apart from all this political talk, Cromwell had to think of discipline. He still held power. He used it without delay. He carried a resolution that the representative officers and agitators should be sent back to their regiments. He replaced the General Council of the Army by a General Council of his officers. The political conceptions of the Putney Ironsides were only to be realised in our own day.

Late in this autumn of 1647 Cromwell and Ireton came to the conclusion that even with the pay and indemnity settled they could not unite King and Army. They could not carry the troops. Religious notions which Pym and Hampden would have detested, a Republicanism which the Long Parliament had persistently eschewed, and behind these questions of property manhood suffrage, and, in terms then unknown, Socialism and Communism, all seethed in the conclaves and conventicles of the soldiers. It remained only to find occasion to break the dangerous, glittering contacts which had been made. There was no difficulty. Royalist England, beaten in arms, mulcted in estate, still lived and breathed, watching for its chance. Parliament continued to formulate its solidly based political aims. The Scots, imbued with religious fervour and personal cupidity, hung on the Border. Charles, who was aware of all these movements, began to look elsewhere. Under these stresses the combination between the defeated King and the victorious generals finally splintered. It was easy for an Ironside colonel, by the directions of his chiefs, to hint to Charles that his life was in danger, that meetings were held openly at which his assassination in the public interest was debated by ruthless men. At the same time no restriction was placed upon his movements.

In November the King, convinced that he would be murdered by the soldiery, whom their officers could no longer restrain, rode off in the night, and by easy stages made his way to Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle of Wight. Here, where a donkey treads an endless water wheel, he dwelt for almost a year, defenceless, sacrosanct, a spiritual King, a coveted tool, an intriguing parcel, an ultimate sacrifice. There still resided in him a principle which must be either exploited or destroyed; but in England he no longer had the power to make a bargain. There remained the Scots. With them he signed a secret Engagement by which Royalism and Presbyterianism were to be allied. From this conjunction there shortly sprang the Second Civil War.

How near to the verge both Cromwell and Charles had pushed their effort to agree was meanwhile to be shown. The Army was about to revolt. A plot was made to arrest or murder the generals. Colonels talked of impeaching Cromwell. He was “going the same way as Hotham.” On December 15 the generals faced their men. Some of the regiments submitted at once; but those of Robert Lilburne and Thomas Harrison were mutinous. The historian Gardiner has described the scene: “They appeared on the field with copies of the Agreement of the People stuck in their hats, with the addition of the motto ‘England’s Freedom! Soldiers’ Rights!’ Harrison’s regiment was soon brought to submission by a few words of reproof from Fairfax, but Lilburne’s was not in so compliant a mood. Cromwell, seeing that persuasion alone would not avail him here, rode along the ranks, sharply ordering the men to tear the papers from their hats, and on finding no signs of obedience dashed among the mutineers with his sword drawn. There was something in his stern-set face and resolute action which compelled obedience. The instincts of military discipline revived, and the soldiers, a moment before so defiant, tore the papers from their hats and craved for mercy. The ringleaders were arrested, and three of them condemned to death by an improvised court-martial. The three were, however, allowed to throw dice for their lives, and the loser, whose name was Arnold, was shot in the presence of his comrades. Thus at the cost of a single life discipline was restored, without which the Army would have dissolved into chaos.”³

The Second Civil War was very different in cause and conditions from the first. The parts played by almost all the principals were altered, or even reversed. The King and his Prerogative were now seen, not as obstacles to Parliamentary right, but as the repository of ordinary English freedom. A large proportion of the Members of the Long Parliament, and almost all the House of Lords, if they had been allowed to meet, would have expressed this view. The Scots, formerly so exacting against the King, were now convinced that their peril lay in the opposite quarter. Wales was solid in its Royalism. London, formerly the main prop of Pym and Hampden, was now deeply inclined to a restoration of the royal authority. The apprentices, who had hounded Charles out of the capital, still rioted in their exuberance; but now they insulted the soldiery and cried “Long live the King!” Half the Navy, hitherto a deadly weapon against Charles, mutinied in his favour. Most of the ships involved sailed off to Holland and entreated the Prince of Wales to become their admiral. All the Royalist forces, smarting, bleeding in pocket and in person, outraged in sentiment and social interest, were eager to draw the sword. The mass of the people still remained comparatively inert. There was not at this moment the universal passion which produced the Restoration of 1660; but all the leading forces in English society were moving together, and even in the mass the feeling prevailed that the King and Parliament had been swept aside by a new tyranny, which would bring bad times to the toilers. Prisoner at Carisbrooke, Charles was now more truly King than he had ever been in the palmiest days of the Personal Rule.

The story of the Second Civil War is short and simple. King, Lords and Commons, landlords and merchants, the City and the countryside, bishops and presbyters, the Scottish army, the Welsh people, and the English Fleet, all now turned against the New Model Army. The Army beat the lot. And at their head was Cromwell. Their plight at first might well have seemed desperate; but this very fact wiped out all divisions among them. Fairfax, Cromwell, Ireton, were now once again united to their fierce warriors. The Army marched and fought. They marched to Wales; they marched to Scotland, and none could withstand them. A mere detachment sufficed to quell a general rising in Cornwall and the West. They broke the Royalist forces at Colchester; and here a new rigour became apparent. The Royalist commanders, Lucas and Lisle, contrary to all previous conventions, were by Fairfax’s order shot outside the walls after the surrender. Cromwell, having subdued the Welsh rising, moved swiftly to the North, picked up his forces, and fell on the Scottish army as it was marching through Lancashire. Although David Leslie led it this was not the old Army of Scotland. The trained Scottish forces, under Lord Leven, stood aside. The invaders were cut off, caught, and destroyed at Preston. The Fleet, which had been so potent a few years back against a struggling King, could do little against this all-mastering, furious Army which stalked the land in rags, almost barefoot, but with bright armour, sharp swords, and sublime conviction of its wrongheaded mission.

We must not be led by Victorian writers into regarding this triumph of the Ironsides and of Cromwell as a kind of victory for democracy and the Parliamentary system over Divine Right and Old World dreams. It was the triumph of some twenty thousand resolute, ruthless, disciplined, military fanatics over all that England has ever willed or ever wished. Long years and unceasing irritations were required to reverse it. Thus the struggle, in which we have in these days so much sympathy and part, begun to bring about a constitutional and limited monarchy, had led only to the autocracy of the sword. The harsh, terrific, lightning-charged being, whose erratic, opportunist, self-centred course is laid bare upon the annals, was now master, and the next twelve years are the record of his well-meant, puzzled plungings and surgings.

Plainly the fruit of the victory that could most easily be gathered was the head of the King. True, he had never moved from Carisbrooke, but was he not the mainspring of the whole of this vast movement of England against the Army, its rule, and even its pay? Was he not the pivot upon which all public opinion turned? Did he not embody all those courses which the Ironsides either hated or could not unravel? Was he not a trophy gained by march and battle? At a moment of great hesitancy in matters of government, when everything was fluid and uncertain, here was a supreme act which all could understand and upon which the Army could unite. The execution of Charles Stuart, “the Man of Blood,” could alone satisfy the soldiers and enable their leaders to hold their obedience.

One stormy evening, with the rain beating down, in the Isle of Wight, it was noticed that many boat-loads of Ironside soldiery were being rowed across the Solent and landed at Newport and Cowes. The King’s household made inquiries and kept vigilant watch. His trusty friends urged flight, which was not, it seemed, as yet impossible. Charles, who was deep in new and hopeful negotiations with Parliament, had enough confidence in the strength of his position to reject the opportunity. It was his last. A few days later he was brought to the mainland and confined in Hurst Castle. Here the new severities of the Second Civil War marked the rules to which he was subjected. Hitherto his personal dignity and comfort had always been consulted. Now, with scarcely a personal attendant, he found himself shut in the candleless gloom of a small tower prison. There was still a further interlude of negotiations; they were nothing but parleyings with a doomed man. And in this darkness the King rose to his greatest height. His troublous, ill-starred reign had shown him in many wrong attitudes; but at the end he was to be granted by Fate the truly magnificent and indisputable role of the champion of English—nay, British, for all the Island was involved—rights and liberty. After some delay he was during the Christmas season brought towards London. At first he feared that Colonel Harrison, the officer who fetched him, would be his assassin; but nothing of the kind was intended. The Army meant to have his blood in the manner which would most effectively vindicate their power and their faith. Cromwell, who had nothing else to give his burning legions, could at least present them with an awful and all-dominating scene of expiation. To Colonel Harrison, one evening, on the journey to the capital, Charles put a blunt question, “Are you come to murder me?” “It is not true, sir,” said the Colonel. “The law is equally bound to great and small.” Charles slept in peace. He was reassured against murder; by law he was inviolable.

It must have been a vivid contrast with the privations of Hurst Castle when the King rested for nearly a week at Windsor. Here all again was respect and ceremony. A nucleus of the staff and household were in attendance. The King dined every night in ancient state, served on the knee. The Parliamentary officers joined him at table, saluted, and quitted him with the deepest bows. A strange interlude! But now forward to London; much is afoot there. “Will Your Majesty graciously be pleased to set forth?”

London lay locked under the guard and countersign of the Army. Some Parliamentary time-server had stood by Colonel Pride, when the Members sought to take their seats in the House of Commons, and had ticked off all those not likely to obey the Army’s will. Forty-five Members who tried to enter were arrested, and out of a total of over five hundred three hundred did not take their seats again. This was “Pride’s Purge.” The great trial of “the Man of Blood” was to be presented to the nation and to the world. English law and precedent were scoured from the most remote times, but no sanction or even cover for such a proceeding could be found. The slaying of princes had many examples. Edward II at Berkeley Castle, Richard II at Pontefract, had met terrible fates; but these were deeds wrapped in secrecy, disavowed by authority, covered at the time by mystery or the plea of natural causes. Here the victorious Army meant to teach the English people that henceforward they must obey; and Cromwell, who eighteen months before might have been King Charles’ Viceroy of Ireland, now saw in his slaughter his only chance of supremacy and survival. In vain did Fairfax point out that the stroke which killed the captive King would make his son in Holland the free possessor of all his rights. No English jurist could be found to frame the indictment or invent the tribunal. A Dutch lawyer, Isaac Dorislaus, who had long lived in England, was able to deck what was to be done in the trappings of antiquity. The language of the order convening the court had no contact with English history; it looks back to the classical age, when the ruin of tyrants was decreed by the Senate or the Prætorian Guard. An ordinance passed by the docile remnant of the Commons created a court of a hundred and thirty-five Commissioners, of whom barely sixty would serve, to try the King. The carpenters fitted Westminster Hall for its most memorable scene. This was not only the killing of a king, but the killing of a king who at that time represented the will and the traditions of almost the whole British nation.

The more detail in which the famous trial has been described the greater is the sense of drama. The King, basing himself upon the law and Constitution he had strained and exploited in his years of prosperity, confronted his enemies with an unbreakable defence. He eyed his judges, as Morley says, “with unaffected scorn.” He refused to acknowledge the tribunal. To him it was a monstrous illegality. John Bradshaw, the president of the court, could make no logical dint upon this. Cromwell and the Army could however cut off the King’s head, and this at all costs they meant to do. The overwhelming sympathy of the great concourse gathered in Westminster Hall was with the King. When, on the afternoon of the final sitting, after being refused leave to speak, he was conducted from the Hall it was amid a low, intense murmur of “God save the King.” But the soldiers, primed by their corporals, and themselves in high resolve, shouted, “Justice! Justice! Execution! Execution!”

Personal dignity and convenience were consulted to the last. Every facility was accorded the King to settle his temporal affairs and to receive the consolations of religion. This was not a butchery, but a ceremony, a sacrifice, or, if we may borrow from the Spanish Inquisition, “an act of faith.” On the morning of January 30, 1649, Charles was conducted from St. James’, whither he had been removed from his comfortable lodgings by the river, to Whitehall. Snow fell, and he had put on his warm underclothes. He walked briskly amid the Ironside guard, saying, “Step out now,” across the half mile which led him to the Banqueting House. There no attempt was made to interfere with his wishes so far as they did not conflict with what had been resolved. But most of those who had signed the death warrant were aghast at the deed of which they were to bear the weight, and the ultimate vengeance. Cromwell had found great difficulty in holding together enough of his signatories. Fairfax, no mean person, still Commander-in-Chief, was outraged. He had to be mastered. Ireton and Harrison remained in the building with the doomed King. Cromwell was there, and wherever else was necessary.

At one o’clock in the afternoon Charles was informed that his hour had come. He walked through a window of the Banqueting House on to the scaffold. Masses of soldiers, many ranks deep, held an immense multitude afar. The King looked with a disdainful smile upon the cords and pulleys which had been prepared to fasten him down, upon the fantastic assumption that he would carry his repudiation of the tribunal which had condemned him even to physical lengths. He was allowed to speak as he chose. His voice could not reach beyond the troops; he therefore spoke to those who gathered on the scaffold. He said that “he died a good Christian, he had forgiven all the world, yea, chiefly those who had caused his death (naming none). He wished their repentance and that they might take the right way to the peace of the kingdom, which was not by way of conquest. He did not believe the happiness of people lay in sharing government, subject and sovereign being clean different. And if he would have given way to an arbitrary Government and to have all laws changed according to the sword he need not have suffered, and so he said he was a martyr to the people.”

A strange destiny had engulfed this King of England. None had resisted with more untimely stubbornness the movement of his age. He had been in his heyday the convinced opponent of all we now call our Parliamentary liberties. Yet as misfortunes crowded upon him he increasingly became the physical embodiment of the liberties and traditions of England. His mistakes and wrong deeds had arisen not so much from personal cravings for arbitrary power as from the conception of kingship to which he was born and which had long been the settled custom of the land. In the end he stood against an army which had destroyed all Parliamentary government, and was about to plunge England into a tyranny at once more irresistible and more petty than any seen before or since. He did not flinch in any respect from the causes in which he believed. Although, no doubt, in bargainings and manœuvres with his enemies he had practised deceit and ill faith, these arose from the malignancy and ever-shifting character of the quarrel, and were amply matched upon the other side. But he never departed from his central theme either in religion or State. He adhered unswervingly to the Prayer Book of the Reformed Church and to the Episcopacy, with which he conceived Christianity was interwoven. By his constancy, which underlay all the shifts and turns of tumultuous and swiftly changing years, he preserved the causes by which his life was guided. He was not a martyr in the sense of one who dies for a spiritual ideal. His own kingly interests were mingled at every stage with the larger issues. Some have sought to represent him as the champion of the small or humble man against the rising money-power. This is fanciful. He cannot be claimed as the defender of English liberties, nor wholly of the English Church, but none the less he died for them, and by his death preserved them not only to his son and heir, but to our own day.