IV. A.D. 1645. August; and that he did not return to that city till CHAPTER the 5th of November.* Upon this discrepancy a suspicion of forgery has been advanced, though CHAS. I. with but little reason it would seem. For during his absence the seat of government still remained at Oxford; there his council sat; their powers were almost unlimited and the alternative lies between these two suppositions; either they ventured upon a most audacious forgery involving high treason on the one hand, or, upon the other, they merely filled in a date to a letter already prepared and signed, and waiting only for a conveyance. The former supposition is almost incredible; the latter is scarcely more, under the circumstances, than a matter of course. It is true that within a few weeks Charles had expressed very different sentiments. Writing to the marquis of Ormond, on making some concessions to the Irish papists, he says: "I would rather choose to suffer all extremities, than ever abandon my religion." And again: "Rather leave it to the chance of war, than give my consent to any such allowance of popery, as must ever bring destruction to that profession which, by the grace of God, I shall ever maintain through all extremities." But to the pope himself he had long held out other hopes. Even upon the field of Naseby there was now found his own copy of a letter, carefully preserved for twenty years, in which he says, "your holiness may rest assured In this, Rushworth, Clarendon, and Whitelocke agree. Sir E. Walker only, who was with the king, says that he arrived at Oxford on the 5th October. But this must be an error of the pen, and is inconsistent with his own account of Charles's movements during the few previous weeks.-Walker's Historical Discourses, page 148. Ed. 1705, fol. A.D. 1645. CHAPTER that our moderation is such as will preserve us IV. from any action that may testify the least hatred CHAS. I. to the Roman catholic religion; and that by easy and gentle means, we will rather embrace all occasions of removing those invidious suspicions that are among us: that as we confess one individual Trinity, and one Christ crucified, so we may unanimously re-unite in one faith; for the attainment of which, we shall not only employ our vigilant care and utmost diligence, but most readily hazard our life and kingdoms."* It was known already that the king had agreed upon a truce with the rebels for one year, professedly to give his troops repose, but in fact to enable him to employ them in the war at home. This "cessation" aroused the worst suspicions of the parliament, and gave great offence even amongst his own friends, for the rebels were giving way on all sides, and the English army seemed on the point of success in every direction. But it was now discovered that the cessation was but a prelude. The earl of Glamorgan, the son of the marquis of Worcester, and himself a papist, had just concluded peace in the king's name with the Irish rebels. The treaty itself was found in the carriage of the titular archbishop of Tuam, commander of the rebels in that province, at the battle of Sligo, where he was killed, October the 17th.+ It was published with the Naseby papers; and now nothing more was wanting to complete the indignation of the puritans and the degradation of the king. He had *To pope Gregory from Madrid, 20 June, 1623.-Naseby papers. IV. A.D. 1645. treated with the rebels upon an equal footing, as CHAPTER if with a sovereign state; and their leaders were mentioned in honourable terms. The articles of CHAS. I. agreement were made with the usual ostentation of diplomatic courtesy, between the earl of Glamorgan, by virtue of his majesty's authority, and under his signet and royal signature, on the one part, and the right honourable Richard lord viscount Mountgarret, lord president of the supreme council of the confederate catholics of Ireland, for and on behalf of his majesty's Roman catholic subjects and the catholic clergy of Ireland, on the other.* There was not a word of pardon, much less of punishment; no traitors were excepted; no amnesty was sought or offered. It was a treaty of peace and alliance made upon equal terms. The preliminaries were dated from Oxford in the month of March; just when he stubbornly refused to acknowledge the two houses at Westminster to be a parliament, and while indeed he continued to style them rebels. Until the treaty of Uxbridge, at the beginning of the year, he had never been persuaded to address them as a parliament: a private letter to the queen was now published, in which he apologized for this weak concession. He would not have given up the point, he said, if but two members of his council had supported him: but he stood alone: yet still he had acted under a protest, which he had had carefully transcribed into the journals of his privy council. Nor would he have yielded even then, except upon the jesuitical "condition and construction," expressly made, "that the calling them such * Ludlow, appendix, p. 500. To the queen, 2 Jan., 1645. 1V. CHAPTER did no ways acknowledge them to be a parliament." And this, he says, "was the argument that preCHAS. I. vailed with me." A.D. 1645. The terms and conditions of the treaty were even more offensive than its courtesies. The rebels were confirmed in the possession of their plunder since the massacre broke out in October 1641, whether land or tithes; the Romish clergy were secured in the tithes and benefices they had seized upon; and the king engaged to remove one and all of the disabilities and restraints which the caution of successive generations had imposed on Roman catholics. A religion which admits of no rival and allows no freedom of conscience was on the point of being re-established by pike and sword in one third of his dominions by the king's sole act, whether (for this was the subject of a special clause) the consent of parliament should ever be gained or not. But the king was playing a desperate game, and on this last throw he had hazarded all that he could lose. And what were the advantages he proposed to himself? They were simply these: to relieve himself from his embarrassment in Ireland, to propitiate the papal sovereigns of Europe, and the pope himself, whose nuncio, a duly accredited agent of the court of Rome, was already in Ireland; and above all to obtain assistance from the rebels against his people and the parliament at home. The treaty contained a stipulation to that purpose. By the seventh article the confederate catholics agreed to send over ten thousand men to serve his majesty in any part of England, Wales, or Scotland, armed half with muskets, the rest with pikes: they were IV. A.D. 1645. to form one entire body, and their officers and CHAPTER commanders were to be named by the supreme council of the said confederate catholics. The CHAS. I. treaty was no sooner published than Charles, with habitual duplicity, denied that Glamorgan had his authority to conclude a peace. Glamorgan was a cavalier and a man of honour, and he was silent. But such falsehoods were now utterly useless; they had been repeated too often, and imposed on none; the king sunk in public respect, not so much from another lie, which might have passed unnoticed, as because he betrayed a faithful servant in Gla morgan. Ten thousand savages were thus let loose on England. Many of them had already appeared, and it was no question how, upon their part, the war would be carried on. Five regiments landed at Chester, the great northern seaport, and were met by the parliamentary forces at Nantwich in Cheshire. They were beaten; and on the field of battle the puritans found, with mingled feelings of horror, indignation, and disgust, the bodies of one hundred and twenty Irish women* armed with long knives, the weapons of a cut-throat. The atrocities of the Irish massacre were too recent to be denied much less forgotten; and the introduction of ten rebel regiments, containing thousands, it was supposed, of the very men who had steeped themselves in the blood of the unoffending protestants, seemed to justify the alarm of those who dreaded a repetition of similar atrocities at home. By a public ordinance of parliament, quarter was forbidden to every Irish* Whitelocke, pp. 71, 97. |