IV. A.D. 1645. CHAPTER Dauphinè; and the huguenots, abandoned by the English court, suffered inhuman cruelties. Charles CHAS. I. was accused as the author of their ruin; all christendom believed that he was a traitor to their cause. It was not the French king, said the harassed and bleeding huguenots, for then we could have borne it; but it was the king of England, a professed protestant, that betrayed us! They published their grievances, and charged him with "horrid perfidiousness and deep dissimulation." Subise, their agent at the English court, remonstrated. Charles muttered something about "the knavery of Pennington," and was silent. The puritans had no doubt of his guilt, but the proof of his wickedness was not yet patent to the world, and a whole consensus of historians has long numbered up their suspicions of the king in this affair as the basest instance of their disloyalty and prejudice. Amongst the king's papers which fell into the hands of the parliament, was a copy of Charles's warrant commanding Pennington to place his fleet at the disposal of Louis.* But the charge died away, and was in the course of time discredited. The treachery was so great that his apologists were willing to think it incredible; and his enemies paid "Sir * King Charles's Case; with an addition concerning Rochel, &c. &c.; by John Cooke, barrister, 1649. The warrant is not printed in the Naseby papers, in Ludlow. Cooke, solicitor-general at the king's trial, had not seen it, as he infers the king's guilt, in this instance, from the duplicity of which the Naseby papers convicted him in other matters in which the papists were concerned. Ludlow must have seen it. John," he says, "received a letter from the king, signed Charles Rex, which was afterwards found by the parliament amongst his papers, requiring him to dispose of those ships as he should be directed by the French king; and if any should refuse to obey those orders, to sink or fire them." (Mem. p. 2.) These are almost the very words of the warrant, as the reader will see below. IV. CHAS. I. A.D. 1645. but little attention to events which, when the dis- CHAPTER closure was made, belonged to a former generation. But the patient researches of antiquarians, have at length changed the aspect of the controversy. The original warrant has come to light, in which Charles commands the villany he was afraid to own.* He himself betrayed the huguenots, and handed over to the French king the fleet equipped for their protection, to be the instrument of their slaughter. The providence of God is exercised not less in protecting his servants than in bringing to shame the craft of their oppressors ! The Naseby papers, and some other documents found in the popish archbishop of Tuam's carriage soon after, completed the loss of Charles's character. With regard, in particular, to the affairs of Ireland, it was now evident that the puritans had not been * The original was, in 1810, in the possession of George Duckett, esq., F.A.S., and was communicated by him to the Royal Antiquarian Society of London. It is printed in their Transactions, p. 110, and, being little known, is here transcribed. "CHARLES R. PENNINGTON,-These are to charge and command you, immediately upon sight thereof, that, without all difficulty and delay, you put our former commandment into execution, for the consigning of the shippe under your charge, called the Vantguarde, into the hands of the marquis d'Effial, with all her equipage, artillery, and munition; assuring the officers of the said shippe, whom it may concern, that we will provide for their indemnity. And we further charge and command you, that you also require the seaven marchant shippes, in our name to put themselves into the service of our dear brother, the French kinge, according to the promise we have made unto him; and in case of backwardness or refusall, we command you to use all forceable means in your power to compell them thereunto, even to their sinking. And in these several charges, see you faile not, as you will answer the contrary at your uttermost perill, and this shall be your sufficient warrant. Given at our court at Richmond, this 28 of Julie, 1625. "To our trusty and well beloved John Pennington, captaine of our shippe called the Vantguarde." IV. A.D. 1645. CHAPTER anxious without a cause. Their suspicions were confirmed the king felt but little sympathy for the CHAS. I. Irish protestants; his indignation, his hatred, was reserved for the rebels at Westminster. When the massacre broke out he could do no less than issue a proclamation against the Irish rebels. It was now discovered that he had strictly forbidden the printer to strike off more than forty copies, which were to be sent, with the signature blank, to the king himself.* It appeared that in another document, where the word rebels had been used, he, with his own hand, had erased it, and written Irish. He had impeded the military supplies which the parliament, before the war began, had raised under the earl of Leicester to attack the rebels; had detained the earl in England against his fruitless remonstrances, and at length had seized the horses which he had collected, for his own service.† Sir Kenelm Digby, it was discovered, was then at Rome imploring a loan from the pope; to which his holiness (supported keenly by the king of France, and by the queen, who was now at Paris,) replied by insisting upon these two conditions-peace with the Irish rebels, and a repeal of the penal laws against the Roman catholics in England. The king had already promised the one, and done the other! There was nothing in Charles's nature, or in his conduct, to afford the least shadow to the plausible conjecture of modern writers, that his concessions to the * An order to the king's printer, &c., 2 Jan. 1641. See Ludlow or Harleian Miscell, where also the Naseby papers are printed. + Leicester to Algernon Sidney, Sept. 1642. Lord Jermyn to lord Digby. Paris, 9 June, 1645; and St. Jermains, Aug. 5, 1646. IV. CHAS. I. A.D. 1645. Roman catholics indicated a liberal policy beyond CHAPTER the spirit of his age. He wanted their assistance against his parliament; and he undertook to reward their service in the field, since he had no money, with civil immunities. It was thus he stated the matter in his own letter to the queen. It was a mere barter, a vulgar affair of business.* No relief was offered to other classes of his subjects. He would have granted the papists all their demands; at the same time he would have crushed the presbyterians and independents, and forbidden, if he could, the exercise of their religion,—and this too in an age when thousands of living men still remembered the atrocious plot of Guido Faux and the jesuits against the king his father and the whole parliament of England. Such affection for the papists joined with such hatred of the presbyterians, could not be mistaken for the love either of truth or liberty. Indeed there is too much reason to believe that Charles was, at this very time, engaged in a traitorous correspondence with the pope. Amongst the treasures of the Vatican, they shew with triumph a letter from the infatuated king of England, which runs thus: "CHARLES I. TO THE POPE, A.D. 1645. "Most holy father, "So many and so great proofs of the fidelity "and affection of our cousin the earl of Glamorgan "we have received, and such confidence do we de 16 March, 1644, and 5 March, 1645; and the King's letter to Ormond, viceroy of Ireland, 27 Feb. 1645. CHAPTER IV. CHAS. I. A.D. 1645. servedly repose in him, that your holiness may justly give faith and credence to him in any "matter, whereupon he is to treat in our name, "with your holiness, either by himself in person, "or by any other. Moreover whatever shall have "been positively settled and determined by him, "the same we promise to sanction and perform. "In testimony whereof, we have written this very "brief letter, confirmed by our own hand and seal; "and we have in our wishes and prayers nothing "before this, that by your favour we may be re"stored into that state in which we may openly "avow ourself "Your very humble and obedient servant, "CHARLES R." "At our court at Oxford, October 20." The original is in latin; and there is another in the same strain to cardinal Spada, the pope's secretary. The letters are written in a beautiful hand, (and Charles's signature was remarkable in this respect,) and sealed with the royal arms; and neither the pope nor the cardinal had any reason to question them.* At Rome, their genuineness has never been impugned; at home, however, some doubt has been thrown upon them. The letter to the pope is dated from Oxford, the 20th of October. Now it is certain that Charles was then at Newark; that he had not visited Oxford since the month of * My attention was drawn to these letters, by a friend who has recently returned from Rome. The custode allowed copies of them to be taken in his presence. About the same time they were published in Holliwell's letters of the kings of England, vol. ii. p. 358, from whence the translation given above is taken. |