out of the article of indemnity, were for accommodating matters before they left Uxbridge. The earl of Southampton rode post from Uxbridge to Oxford, to entreat the king to yield something to the necessity of the times; several of his council pressed him to it on their knees; and it is said his majesty was at length prevailed with, and appointed next morning to sign a warrant to that purpose, but that Montrose's romantic letter, of his conquest in Scotland, coming in the meantime, made the unhappy king alter his resolution.* But there was something more in the affair than this; lord Clarendont is of opinion, that if the king had yielded some things to the demands of the parliament relating to religion, the militia, and Ireland, there were still other articles in reserve that would have broken off the treaty; in which I cannot but agree with his lordship; for not to mention the giving up delinquents to the justice of parliament, of which himself was one, there had been as yet no debate about the Roman Catholics, whom the parliament would not tolerate, and the king was determined not to give up, as appears from the correspondence between himself and the queen at this time. In the queen's letter, January 6, 1644—5, she desires his majesty "to have a care of his honour, and not to abandon those who had served him for if you agree upon strictness against Roman Catholics, it will discourage them from serving you; nor can you expect relief from any * Dr. Grey attempts to convict Mr. Neal of falsehood in each part of this paragraph. For the first part, the doctor says, "that, as far as he could learn, there was not so much as the shadow of an authority."-In reply, it may be observed, that though Mr. Neal has not, as it is to be wished he had, referred to his authority, yet the doctor's assertion is not well supported. For Whitelocke informs us, that" on the 19th of February the earl of Southampton and others of the king's commissioners went from Uxbridge to Oxford, to the king, about the business of the treaty, to receive some farther directions from his majesty therein." Memorials, p. 127. As the treaty closed on the 22d, the reader will judge, whether Mr. Neal, speaking of the object and expedition of this journey, had not so much as the shadow of an authority. With respect to the latter part of the paragraph concerning Montrose, Dr. Grey will have it, that bishop Burnet's authority makes directly against Mr. Neal; and then he quotes from him as follows: " Montrose wrote to the king, that he had gone over the land from Dan to Beersheba, and that he prayed the king to come down in these words, Come thou and take the city, lest I take it, and it be called by my name.' This letter was written, but never sent, for he was routed, and his papers taken before he had dispatched the courier. Of course the doctor means to conclude, that the king could not be influenced to obstruct the operation of the treaty, by a letter which was never received. But it escaped Dr. Grey's attention, that the letter which he quotes was written more than a year after the treaty was broken off: and Mr. Neal speaks, on the authority of bishop Burnet, of another letter, or expresses received, while the treaty was pending. So that there is no contradiction in the case.-ED. + Vol. 2. p. 594. " Roman-Catholic prince."*--In her letter of January 27, she adds, "Above all have a care not to abandon those who have served you, as well the bishops as the poor Catholics." In answer to which the king writes, January 30, "I desire thee to be confident, that I shall never make peace by abandoning my friends." And, February 15, And, February 15, "Be confident, that in making peace I shall ever shew my confidence in adhering to the bishops, and all our friends."-March 5, I give thee power in my name, to declare to whom thou thinkest fit, that I will take away all the penal laws against the Roman Catholics in England, as soon as God shall make me able to do it, so as by their means I may have so powerful assistance as may deserve so great a favour, and enable me to do it."-As for Ireland, his majesty had already commanded the duke of Ormond, by his letter of February 27, to make peace with the Papists, cost what it would. "If the suspending Poynings's act will do it (says he), and taking away the penal laws, I shall not think it a hard bargain— When the Irish give me that assistance they have promised, I will consent to the repeal by law."+ It appears from hence, that the peace which the king seemed so much to desire was an empty sound. The queen was afraid he might be prevailed with to yield too far; but his majesty bids her be confident of the contrary, for "his commissioners would not be disputed from their ground, which was according to the note she remembers, and which he would not alter." When the treaty was ended, he writes thus to the queen, March 13; "Now is come to pass what I foresaw, the fruitless end of this treaty-Now if I do any thing unhandsome to myself or my friends, it will be my own fault-I was afraid of being pressed to make some mean overtures to renew the treaty, but now if it be renewed it shall be to my honour and advantage."§ Such was the queen's ascendant over the king, and his majesty's servile submission to her imperious dictates; the *Rapin, vol. 2. p. 511, 512, folio edition. Rushworth, vol. 5. p. 942. 944. 946, 947. Ibid. p. 978, 979. We will leave with our readers bishop Warburton's remarks on this reflection of Mr. Neal. "Never was the observation of the king's unhappy attachment made in a worse place. His honour required him not to give up his friends; and his religion, viz. the true principles of Christianity, to take off the penal laws from peaceable Papists; and common humanity called upon him to favour those who had served him at the hazard of their lives and fortunes." -It may be properly added, that religion, in the liberal sense in which his lordship explains the term, required the king to take off the fate of three kingdoms was at her disposal; no place at court or in the army must be disposed of without her approbation; no peace must be made but upon her terms; the Oxford mongrel parliament, as his majesty calls it, must be dismissed with disgrace, because they voted for peace; the Irish Protestants must be abandoned to destruction; and a civil war permitted to continue its ravages throughout England and Scotland, that a Popish religion and arbitrary government might be encouraged and upheld.* As a farther demonstration of this melancholy remark, his majesty authorized the earl of Glamorgan, by a warrant under his royal signet, dated March 12, 1644, to conclude privately a peace with the Irish Papists upon the best terms he could, though they were such as his lieutenant the duke of Ormond might not well be seen in, nor his majesty himself think fit to own publicly at present, engaging, upon the word of a king and a Christian, to ratify and perform whatsoever he should grant under his hand and seal, on condition they would send over into England a body of ten thousand men, under the command of the said earl. The date of this warrant is remarkable, as it was at a time when his ma penal laws from peaceable Puritans as well as Papists. But in his majesty's dictionary the word does not appear to have borne so generous and just a meaning.—ED. * Clarendon, vol. 2. p. 364. Dr. Grey treats this account of the earl of Glamorgan's commission as a fine piece of slander, furnished by a tribe of republican writers: and to confute it he produces a letter from the king to the lord-lieutenant and council of Ireland, one from colonel King in Ireland, and another from secretary Nicholas to the marquis of Ormond, There is no occasion here to enter into a discussion of the question concerning the authority under which the earl of Glamorgan acted. For since Mr. Neal and Dr. Grey wrote, the point has been most carefully and ably investigated by Dr. Birch, in "An inquiry into the share which king Charles I. had in the transactions of the earl of Glamorgan," published in 1747. And the fact has been put out of all doubt by a letter of that nobleman to the lord-chancellor Hyde, written a few days after king Charles II.'s restoration, which has appeared in the Clarendon State Papers, vol. 2. p. 20203, and has been republished in the second edition of the Biographia Britannica, vol. 2. p. 320, under the life of Dr. Birch. The general fact having been ascertained beyond all contradiction, the question which offers is, how far the king acted criminally in this transaction. Mrs. Macaulay represents him as violating every principle of honour and conscience. Mr. Hume, on the contrary, speaks of it as a very innocent transaction, in which the king was engaged by the most violent necessity. Dr. Birch considers it with temper, though he appears to think it not easily reconcilable to the idea of a good man, a good prince, or a good Protestant. Mr. Walpole has some candid and lively reflections on it. "It requires (he observes) very primitive resignation in a monarch to sacrifice his crown and his life, when persecuted by subjects of his own sect, rather than preserve both by the assistance of others of his subjects who differed from him in ceremonials or articles of belief.-His fault was not in proposing to bring over the Irish, but in having made them necessary to his affairs. Every body knew, that he wanted to do without them, all that he could have done with them." Biographia Britannica, second edition, vol. 2. p. 321, note.-ED. See Rushworth, vol. 6. p. 239, &c. Rapin, p. 330. Hist. Stuarts, p. 305. jesty's affairs were far from being desperate; when he thought the divisions in the parliament-house would quickly be their ruin, and that he had little more to do than to sit still and be restored upon his own terms, for which reason he was so unyielding at the treaty of Uxbridge; and yet the earl, by his majesty's commission, granted every thing to the Irish, even to the establishing the Roman-Catholic religion, and putting it on a level with the Protestant; he gave them all the churches and revenues they were possessed of since the Rebellion, and not only exempted them from the jurisdiction of the Protestant clergy, but allowed them jurisdiction over their several flocks, so that the reformed religion in that kingdom was in a manner sold for ten thousand Irish Papists, to be transported into England and maintained for three years. Let the reader now judge, what prospect there could be of a well-grounded peace by the treaty of Uxbridge! What security there was for the Protestant religion! How little ground of reliance on the king's promises! and consequently, to whose account the calamities of the war, and the misery and confusions which followed after this period, ought to be placed. The day before the commencement of the treaty of Uxbridge, the members of the house of commons attended the funeral of Mr. John White, chairman of the grand committee of religion, and publisher of the Century of Scandalous Ministers; he was a grave lawyer, says lord Clarendon, and made a considerable figure in his profession. He had been one of the feoffees for buying in impropriations, for which he was censured in the star-chamber. He was representative in parliament for the borough of Southwark; having been a Puritan from his youth, and, in the opinion of Mr. Whitelocke,* an honest, learned, and faithful servant of the public, though somewhat severe at the committee for plundered ministers. He died January 29, and was buried in the Temple-church with great funeral solemnity.t *Memorials, p. 122. † Dr. Grey, on the authority of Walker, "charges Mr. White with corrupt prac tices by the way of bribery; says, that Dr. Bruno Ryves called him a fornicating Brownist, and that the author of Persec. Undec. suggests much worse against him; and, on the testimony of an anonymous author, represents him as dying distracted, crying out, how many clergymen, their wives and children, he had undone; raving and condemning himself at his dying hour, for his undoing so many guiltless miuisters." Such representations carry little weight with them against the testimony of Clarendon and Whitelocke: especially, when it is considered that the obnoxious part, CHAP. VI. THE PROGRESS OF THE WAR. DEBATES IN THE ASSEMBLY ABOUT ORDINATION. THE POWER OF THE KEYS. THE DIVINE RIGHT OF PRESBYTERIAN GOVERNMENT. COMMITTEES FOR COMPREHENSION AND TOLERATION OF THE INDEPENDENTS. THE king's commissioners had been told at the treaty of Uxbridge, that the fate of the English monarchy depended upon its success; that if the treaty was broken off abruptly, there were a set of men in the house, who would remove the earl of Essex, and constitute such an army, as might force the parliament and king to consent to every thing they demanded, or change the government into a commonwealth; whereas, if the king would yield to the necessity of the times, they might preserve the general, and not only disappoint the designs of the enemies to monarchy, but soon be in circumstances to enable his majesty to recover all he should resign. However, the commissioners looked upon this as the language of despair, and made his majesty believe the divisions at Westminster would soon replace the sceptre in his own hands.* The house of commons had been dissatisfied with the conduct of the earls of Essex and Manchester last summer, as tending to protract the war, lest one party should establish itself upon the ruins of the other; but the warmer spirits in the house, seeing no period of their calamities this way, apprehended a decisive battle ought to be fought as soon as possible, for which purpose, after a solemn fast, it was moved that all the present officers should be discharged, and the army intrusted in such hands as they could confide in. December 9, it was resolved, that no member of either house should execute any office civil or military, which Mr. White acted, would necessarily create many enemies ; some of whom would invent, and others eagerly credit, the most reproachful calumnies against him, Dr. Calamy and Mr. Withers, whom Dr. Grey never notices, have sufficiently exposed the partiality and credulity of Dr. Walker, to render his assertions suspicious. And it should not be overlooked, as a strong presumption at least of the purity of Mr. White's character and the integrity of his proceedings, that he appealed to the public by his Century of Scandalous Ministers.-ED. * Clarendon, vol. 2. p. 595. |