CHAP. XIV. CHARLES II. GOES ΤΟ SCOTLAND. CROMWELL INVADES COURT. SCOTLAND. -INFLUENCE OF EVENTS THERE ON THE CON- - 1650-1654. XIV. 1650. In the spring of 1650, when the King's hopes CHAP. had been destroyed in Ireland, and Montrose and other gallant Royalists had fallen victims, in Scotland, to the vengeance of the Covenanters ; Charles, at Breda, was induced to accede to the hard conditions of this successful party. The conditions were principally these: that the King should sign the Covenant; should declare void all treaties with the rebels in Ireland; should not permit any liberty of the Popish religion in any part of his dominions; and should acknowledge the authority of all Parliaments holden since the begin XIV. 1650. CHAP. ning of the war.* The King acceded; set sail for Scotland in June; signed the Covenant before he was allowed to land; and was conducted to his capital through Aberdeen, where one of the quartered limbs of Montrose was still hanging over the gate. Nicholas had expressed to Ormond his regret that Hyde's mission to Spain should have caused his absence from a scene where he might have counteracted the influence of the Scotch Presbyterians; and the result seems to justify Hyde's strong objections to the King's being placed in the power of the Scotch. Charles, reckless and insincere, had, for the sake of temporary support, stooped to professions which his uncompromising minister would have bid him rather die than make. In August, he was compelled to issue a declaration, which he had previously declined, deploring the wickedness of his father, and the idolatry of his mother; declaring that he detested prelacy, and that he would henceforth have neither friends nor enemies but such as were the friends or enemies of the Covenant. "Who," said the English Parliament in their answer, "sees not the gross hypocrisy of this whole transaction, and the sandy "and rotten foundation of all the resolutions flowing hereupon?"§ It was discreditable both to 66 66 *Thurloe, i. 147. + Carte's Letters, i. 322. Clarendon's State Papers, iii. 1. 14. et seq. $ Parliamentary History, xix. 364. et seq. XIII. the King and to the Covenanters; and well had it CHAP. been, if the latter had paused ere they humbled the sovereign whose cause they adopted, by an act so humiliating to him, so little profitable to themselves. 1650. invades While royalty was thus rendered contemptible, Cromwell and while bigotry was thinning the ranks of the Scotland. Royalist army, by drafting out all who were called malignants or engagers, Cromwell, now (since the retirement of Fairfax) made captain-general of the English forces, was invading Scotland with a small, but highly efficient, force. The bigotry which had thinned the ranks, forced the experienced Lesley to abandon the Fabian policy which he was successfully pursuing; and at Dunbar, on the 3d of Battle of September, Cromwell, availing himself, with admirable promptitude, of an injudicious movement of the Scottish army, attacked, routed, and utterly defeated it. 3000 men were killed, and above 9000 taken prisoners: the miserable remnant fled to Stirling; and Edinburgh fell into the hands of the victor. The intelligence of this event was sent by Cardenas to the Spanish Government, and, like all other previous changes of fortune, it produced a corresponding change in the demeanour of that timeserving Government towards Cottington and Hyde. In vain did they endeavour to explain that a defeat which only crippled the strength of the covenanting party, without effecting the subjugation of Scotland, would be regarded by the young King as a means of emancipation from his late thraldom, Dunbar. Conduct of the Spanish Govern ment. XIV. 1650. CHAP. and probably render him more truly a king than he had been before. This explanation the Spanish Government would not accept; and the ambassadors, after many hints that their continued presence was fruitless and unwelcome, received at length a message on the subject, sent, as from the King, by the Secretary of State. He told them, "that they "had been above a year in that court, where they "had been well treated, notwithstanding some "miscarriages, which might very justly have in"censed his Catholic Majesty (mentioning the "death of Ascham); that they were extraordinary "ambassadors, and so needed not any letters of revocation; that they had received answers to "all they had proposed, and were at liberty to depart, which his Catholic Majesty desired they "would do, since their presence in the court "would be prejudicial to his affairs."* On receiving this uncourteous message, the ambassadors demanded an interview with Louis de Haro, who, on the following day, not only addressed them to the same effect, but "pressed them very plainly, " and without any regard to the season of the year, "it being towards the end of January, to use all "possible expedition for their departure, as a thing 66 66 66 that, even in that respect, did exceedingly concern "the service of the King." So anxious for their departure was the Spanish Court, that even this urgency was not deemed sufficient.† A message * Clarendon's History of the Rebellion, vi. 459. Hyde assigns a reason for this urgency which seems inadequate, namely, the expected arrival of pictures, bought for the King of Spain, was sent, informing them that the King had fixed a day for their last audience, when they were expected to take their leave; and when this ceremony had been performed, about the beginning of March, the two ambassadors quitted Madrid. CHAP. XIV. 1651. Hyde's po verty while in Spain. Such was the fruitless and mortifying conclusion of fifteen months of suppliant negotiation, and the bitter endurance of penury and neglect. Of the poverty which Hyde then suffered, we have much interesting evidence in his letter to Secretary Nicholas. "All our money is gone," he said, in a letter of the 6th of January; "and let me never Jan. 6. 66 prosper if I know or can imagine how we can get "bread a month longer."* In a letter of the 16th of August he said, "Greater necessities are hardly "felt by any men, than we for the present undergo, such as have almost made me foolish; so "that I have not for my life been able either to 66 pay you any part of my debt, or to supply the "miserable wants and distresses of my poor wife, "both which I hope shortly to do." His salary, at this time, seems to have been in a great measure dependent upon the advances which the Spanish Government could be prevailed upon to make to Charles. "I assure you," he said in a letter of October the 19th, "I am not more troubled for "the intolerable necessity my wife is in (though 1650. by his ambassador in England, out of the collection of Charles I. The Spanish Court seem to have been too little solicitous, lest they should hurt the feelings of the English ambassadors, to be fairly suspected of such delicacy. |