VII. 14.] the first articles of the treaty.

His majesty told them,

7

1643

If the conclusion of the present treaty upon his first proposition and April 7. the first proposition of both Houses should be so full and perfectly made, that the law of the land might have a full, free, and uninterrupted course, for the defence and preservation of the rights of his majesty, and of themselves, and the rest of his subjects, there would be thence a clear evidence to him and all men of a future peace; and it would be such a conclusion as he intended, never meaning that both armies should remain undisbanded until the propositions on both sides were fully concluded.'

To the other clause of their own proposition concerning the April 6. King's return to the Parliament, they said, 'they had no instructions to treat upon it,' which the King much wondered at; and finding that they had no other authority to treat or debate what was necessary to be done in order to disbanding, but only to press him to appoint a day for the actual disbanding, and that the forces in the north, where he had a great army and they had none, might be first disbanded, he endeavoured to draw them to some propositions upon his return to the Parliament; from whence expedients would naturally result, if they pursued that heartily, which would conclude a general peace. And it seemed very strange that, after so many discourses of the King's absence from the Houses, from whence they had taught the people to believe that most of the present evils flowed and proceeded, when a treaty was now entered upon, and that was a part of their own first proposition, that their committee should have no instructions or authority to treat upon it. In the end, they received new instructions, to declare to his majesty the desire of both Houses for his coming to April 10. his Parliament; 'which,' they said, 'they had often expressed with full offers of security to his royal person, agreeable to their duty and allegiance, and they knew no cause why he might not repair thither with honour and safety.' When the King found he could not engage them in that argument to make any particular overture or invitation to him, and that the committee, who expressed willingness enough, had not in truth the least power to promote or contribute to an accommodation; lest they should make the people believe that he had a desire to continue the war, because he consented not to their proposition of disbanding the armies, he sent this message by an express of

8

The King's message of April 12,

[VII. 14. 1643 his own to the two Houses, after he had first communicated it Apr. 12. to their committee :

'To shew to the whole world how earnestly his majesty longs for peace, and that no success shall make him desire the continuance of his army to any other end, or for any longer time, than that, and until, things may be so settled, as that the law may have a full, free, and uninterrupted course, for the defence and preservation of the rights of his majesty, both Houses, and his good subjects:

16. 1. As soon as his majesty is satisfied in his first proposition concerning his own revenue, magazines, ships, and forts, in which he desires nothing but that the just, known legal rights of his majesty, (devolved to him from his progenitors,) and of the persons trusted by him, which have violently been taken from both, be restored unto him and unto them, unless any just and legal exceptions against any of the persons trusted by him (which are yet unknown to his majesty) can be made appear to him:

17. 2. As soon as all the members of both Houses shall be restored to the same capacity of sitting and voting in Parliament as they had upon the first of January 1641; the same, of right, belonging unto them by their birthrights and the free election of those that sent them, and having been voted from them for adhering to his majesty in these distractions; his majesty not intending that this should extend either to the bishops, whose votes have been taken away by bill, or to such in whose places upon new writs new elections have been made :

18. 3. As soon as his majesty and both Houses may be secured from such tumultuous assemblies as, to the great breach of the privileges and the high dishonour of Parliaments, have formerly assembled about both Houses, and awed the members of the same, and occasioned two several complaints from the Lords' House, and two several desires of that House to the House of Commons, to join in a declaration against them; the complying with which desire might have prevented all these miserable distractions which have ensued; which security, his majesty conceives, can be only settled by adjourning the Parliament to some other place at the least twenty miles from London, the choice of which his majesty leaves to both Houses:

19. His majesty will most cheerfully and readily consent that both armies be immediately disbanded, and give a present meeting to both his Houses of Parliament at the time and place at and to which the Parliament shall be agreed to be adjourned: his majesty being most confident that the law will then recover the due credit and estimation; and that upon a free debate, in a full and peaceable convention of Parliament, such provisions will be made against seditious preaching and printing against his majesty and the established laws, which hath been one of the chief causes of the present distractions, and such care will be taken concerning the legal and known rights of his majesty, and the property and liberty of his subjects, that whatsoever hath been published, or done, in or by colour of any illegal declaration, ordinance, or order of one or both Houses, or any committee

VII. 21.]

to the two Houses.

9

of either of them, and particularly the power to raise arms without his 1643 majesty's consent, will be in such manner recalled, disclaimed, and provided against, that no seed will remain for the like to spring out of for the future, to disturb the peace of the kingdom, and to endanger the very being of it. And in such a convention his majesty is resolved, by his readiness to consent to whatsoever shall be proposed to him, by bill, for the real good of his subjects, (and particularly for the better discovery and speedier conviction of recusants, for the education of the children of Papists by Protestants in the Protestant religion, for the prevention of practices of Papists against the State, and the due execution of the laws and true levying of the penalties against them,) to make known to all the world, how causeless those fears and jealousies have been which have been raised against him, and by that so distracted this miserable kingdom. And if this offer of his majesty be not consented to, (in which he asks nothing for which there is not apparent justice on his side, and in which he defers many things highly concerning both himself and people, till a full and peaceable convention of Parliament, which in justice he might now require,) his majesty is confident that it will then appear to all the world, not only who is most desirous of peace, and whose fault it is that both armies are not now disbanded, but who have been the true and first cause that this peace was ever interrupted or these armies raised; and the beginning or continuance of the war, and the destruction and desolation of this poor kingdom (which is too likely to ensue) will not, by the most interessed, passionate, or prejudicate person, be imputed to his majesty.'

20. To this message they returned no answer to the King, but required the committee to return to Westminster (having April 14. been in Oxford with his majesty just twenty days) with such positive circumstances, that the House of Commons enjoined their members to begin their journey the same day; which April 15. they obeyed, though it was so late, that they were forced to very inconvenient accommodations; and at their return, were looked upon with great jealousy, as persons engaged by the King and disinclined to the Parliament; and this jealousy prevailed so far, that Mr. Martin opened a letter from the earl of Northumberland to his wife, presuming he should therein have discovered some combination; and this insolence was not disliked.

21. Many were of opinion that the King was too severe in this treaty, and insisted too much upon what is his own by right and law; and that if he would have distributed offices and places liberally to particular men, which had been a condescension in policy to be submitted to, he might have been repossessed of his own power; and I have heard this alleged

Possibility that the King might

[VII. 21. 1643 by many who at that time were extremely violent against all such artifices. The committee themselves (who at that time perfectly abhorred the proceedings of the Parliament, or rather the power and superiority of the earl of Essex) seemed exceedingly desirous of such an accommodation as all good men desired, and to believe that if the King would have condescended so far as to nominate the earl of Northumberland to be Lord High Admiral, that it would have made so great a division in the Houses, that the treaty would have been continued, and his majesty been satisfied in all the other propositions. And the earl of Northumberland to private friends did make as full professions of future service to his majesty, and as ample recognitions of past errors and mistakes, as could reasonably be expected from a wary nature, before he could be sure what reception such professions and vows would find. But the King thought the power and interest of that committee would be able to do little, if it could not prevail for the enlarging the time of the treaty, in which they seemed heartily to engage themselves. And he was resolved to have at least a probable assurance of the conclusion, before he would offer such concessions as, taking no effect, might prove prejudicial to him: as, the nominating the earl of Northumberland to be Admiral (though he would willingly have done it, as the price and pledge of an honourable peace) would have discontented all who had, how unreasonably soever, promised themselves that preferment; and many would have imputed it to an unseasonable easiness, (from which imputation it concerned the King at that time as much to purge himself as of unmercifulness and revenge,) upon promises and hopes to have readmitted a man to a charge and trust he had so fatally betrayed and broken, against more solemn promises and obligations than he could now enter into; and therefore it concerned the King to be sure of some advantage in lieu of this visible hazard.

22. I am one of those who do believe that this obligation at this time laid upon the earl of Northumberland, with such other circumstances of kindness as would have been fit to accompany it, would have met real gratitude and faithfulness in him, (for

VII. 22.] have regained the earl of Northumberland.

II

as originally he had, I am persuaded, no evil purposes against 1643 the King, so he had now sufficient disdain and indignation against those who got him to tread their ways when he had not their ends,) and that it would have made some rent and division in the two Houses, (which could not but have produced some benefit to the King,) and that it might probably have procured some few days' addition for the continuance of the treaty, (the avowed ground of denying it being, because the King had not in the least degree consented to any one thing proposed by them :) but I confess I cannot entertain any imagination that it would have produced a peace, or given the King any advantage or benefit in the war: what inconvenience it might have produced hath been touched before. For,-besides that the stirring and active party, who carried on the war, were neither gracious to the earl of Northumberland, nor he to them, their favourite at sea being then the earl of Warwick, who had the possession of the fleet, and whom alone they believed fit to be trusted with the navy-whoever calls to mind what was done in the Houses during the time of the treaty and by their directions; that by their own authority they directed all the lands of bishops, deans, March 27. and chapters to be sequestered, and inhibited the tenants to pay any rent to them; that under pretence of searching for arms, and taking away superstitious pictures, they caused the March 30. Queen's chapel at Somerset House (where she was to exercise her devotions, if they ever meant she should return again to London) to be most licentiously rifled, in which license with impunity her lodgings were plundered, and all her furniture and goods of value taken away and embezzled; that there was an order made in the House of Commons, when they sent their April 10. messengers every day to Oxford without any formality or control, 'that whatsoever person should come from Oxford or any part of the King's army to London, or the parts adjacent, without the warrant of both Houses of Parliament, or of the lord general the earl of Essex, he should be apprehended as a spy and intelligencer, and be proceeded against according to the rules and grounds of war:' by virtue of which order of the House of Commons only, and without any communication that