1640 THE LAMBETH RIOTS. 133 join in hunting 'William the Fox' for breaking the Parliament.1 May 6. Placards against Laud. May 11. Riots at Lambeth. Three days later a placard was placed up in the Exchange inviting all who were faithful to the City, and lovers of liberty and the commonwealth, to assemble in St. George's Fields in Southwark, on the early morning of the 11th. Warned in time, the Council ordered that St. George's Fields should be occupied on the 11th by the Southwark trained bands.2 The apprentices were not so easily baffled. They waited quietly till the trained bands had retired in the evening. A little before midnight a mob of some five hundred persons, for the most part journeymen and apprentices, answered to the summons. In this class the general dislike of Laud was sharpened by its own special grievances against the new monopolies.3 With a drum beating in front, the rabble took its way to Lambeth. Laud, warned in time, had placed his house in a state of defence, and had crossed the river to Whitehall for safety. The rioters, finding that their prey had escaped them, retired with threats of returning to burn down the house. Next morning May 12. the Council gave directions that watch should be kept by night as well as by day, and that the trained bands of Middlesex and Surrey should be called in to help in preserving order. Several persons were arrested on suspicion. Insulting placards continued to be posted in the streets, threatening an attack on the apartments of the Queen's mother at St. James's, and calling on the mob to pull down her chapel and do what mischief they could to her priests. Others urged that Laud should be dragged out of Whitehall and murdered. One went so far as to announce that the King's palace was to let. Nor were these tumults confined to the mob alone. At Aylesbury some soldiers mutinied against their officers, and twenty-two houses were burnt down May 12. before the disturbance was quelled. In Kent the yeomen and farmers who had been pressed declared that they were not bound to go beyond the limits of their county, and left Insulting placards. the ranks in a body. On the night of the 14th the Court was startled by a fresh outrage. The prisons in which the rioters were confined were broken open by a mob, and the prisoners were set at liberty. It was plain that something must be done, if the country was not to lapse into anarchy. Orders were given to the deputy-lieutenants and the justices of the peace of several counties who happened to be in London, May 14. General nsecurity. to return home to preserve order. Doubts, however, were freely expressed whether the guardians of the peace could be depended on. It was said that they had been sent from London to keep them from the temptation of imitating the Covenanting Tables. The support of the lower ranks was still more doubtful. The recent imprisonment of the aldermen had been felt by the City as an insult. The freeholders and farmers of Middlesex and Surrey had no love for Laud. They were heard to mutter that, if they must fight, they would rather fight against the Government than for it. The defence of the Queen's mother was especially distasteful. It was known that she had urged her daughter to use her influence with the King during the sitting of the late Parliament, and it was taken for granted that this influence had been used to hasten the dissolution. For the first time in the reign the name of Henrietta Maria herself was drawn into the political conflict. It could not well be otherwise. It had been so natural for her to take the part of her husband's Roman Catholic subjects; so natural, too, for her to urge their cause in contemptuous disregard of a public opinion of which she The Queen asks the neither understood the meaning nor estimated the weight. Yet, when all allowance has been made for Pope for aid. the ignorance of a woman and a foreigner, it is difficult to speak with patience of the rash act of which Henrietta Maria, if not Charles himself, was now guilty. At the height 1 Laud's Diary, Works, iii. 235. Rushworth, iii. 1173. Rossetti to Barberini, May R. O. Transcripts. Salvetti's News-Letter, May 15 25' 15. 25 Giustinian to the Doge, May Ven. Transcripts. Rossingham's News 15 Letter, May 19, Sloane MSS. 1,467, fol. 198. Deputy-Lieutenants of Kent to the Council, May 11, S. P. Dom. ccccliii. 11. 1640 CHARLES HESITATES. 135 of the alarm Windebank appeared before Rossetti, conjuring him to write to Rome for help in money and men. The Pope, it was probably thought, would be ready to assist the King, especially as the subjects who now endangered his throne were always ready to clamour for the persecution of the Catholics, whilst Charles had extended to them some measure of protection.1 Strafford blamed. May 15. Fresh precautions. Whilst overtures so ruinous were being made to Rome, voices were raised at Whitehall in condemnation of Strafford. Why, it was asked, had he brought things to such a pass without sufficient forces at his disposal to compel submission. The attack on the prisons brought matters to a crisis. Six thousand foot were ordered up from the trained bands of Essex, Kent, and Hertfordshire. It was impossible to fall back thus on popular support without conceding something to the popular Concessions agitation. On the 15th, the day after the attack on the prisons, Hotham and Bellasys, together with the four aldermen, were set at liberty, though the latter were required to enter into bond to appear in the Star Chamber when called on. The next day, when the Lord The loan not Mayor and aldermen repeated their refusal to rate pressed. any man to the loan, they were sent away without further reproaches. On the 17th the sheriffs of London were ordered to make a bonfire of a large number of Roman Catholic made. May 16. 15 25 20 30 20, 1 Rossetti's letter of May is not to be found amongst the Record Office Transcripts, but its purport is clear from Barberini's reply of June 30, and from Rossetti's answer to Barberini of Aug. Windebank is directly stated to have made the overture. It is impossible that he should have done so without orders from the Queen or the King. That the Queen knew of this seems made out by the fact that Rossetti as a matter of course communicated Barberini's reply to her, and also by the part she subsequently took in pressing for similar help in the course of 1641. On the other hand, the long conversation with Windebank, related in the lastnamed letter, turns so entirely on the King's proceedings, that it seems very likely that the secretary was originally commissioned by him. Indeed, if the Queen had opened the negotiation without her husband's knowledge she would hardly have employed a Secretary of State. 2 Montreuil's despatch, May 14, Bibl. Nat. Fr. 15,995, fol. 87. May 17. Roman Catholic Proposed negotiation with Scotland. books which had recently been seized. Even a party of young lawyers, who had drunk confusion to the Archbishop, were dismissed by the Council on the plea, sugbooks burnt. gested to them by Dorset, that they had been really drinking confusion to the Archbishop's foes. There was even talk of taking up again the dropped negotiation with Scotland. With the exception of Loudoun, the Scottish commissioners were set at liberty.1 Traquair was asked whether he would undertake a mission to Edinburgh to preside over the Parliament which was to meet in June. On his refusal, Hamilton was requested to go. The King, however, proposed to delay Hamilton's journey, and to prorogue. the Scottish Parliament for another month, on the characteristic ground that by the middle of July he would know whether he was to have a loan from Spain which would enable him to make war on Scotland.2 Abandonment of Strafford's Such was the end of Charles's first attempt to do all that power would admit. Though a list of names of those qualified to lend was sent in by the aldermen, the project of forcing a loan from the London citizens was tacitly policy. abandoned. Efforts would still be made to enforce the payment of ship-money and coat-and-conduct money; but even if ship-money and coat-and-conduct money were collected with more regularity than was likely to be the case they would not pay the army in the field. By pressure upon official persons the loan which had been begun with the Privy Councillors was raised by May 15 to 232,530.3 But this sum had been already spent, and except in the very unlikely case of a loan from Spain no way appeared to meet the necessities of war. The feeling with which Strafford's violence was regarded by loyal but un Bih. Nat. Fr. 15,995, fol. 87. Ibid. Ven. Transcripts. Council fol. 89. Giustinian to the Doge, Register, May 15. Rushworth, iii. 1180. 2 Montreuil's despatches, May 21, May 26, Bibl. Nat. Fr. 15,995, fol. 89, 91. Giustinian to the Doge, 31, June 7' May 22 News-Letter, May 26, Sloane MSS. 1,467, fol. 112 b. 1640 May 18. Northumberland's letter to Conway. DESPONDENCY AT COURT. 137 enthusiastic subjects was well expressed by Northumberland. "The nature of most men," he wrote to Conway, who had already been sent to drill the cavalry in the North, "is not willingly to acknowledge an error until they needs must, which is some of our condition here at this time. We have engaged the King in an expensive occasion, without any certain ways to maintain it; all those that are proposed to ourselves have hitherto failed, and though our designs of raising this great army are likely to fail, yet are we loth to publish that which cannot many days be concealed. In plain terms I have little hope to see you in the North this year, which I profess I am extremely sorry for, conceiving it will be dishonourable to the King, and infamous for us that have the honour to be his ministers, when it shall be known that he shall be obliged to give over the design." Strafford's with Bristol. 2 Strafford was no longer at hand to inspire courage into the fainting hearts at Whitehall. For some days he had been absent from the Council table, suffering from an conversation attack of dysentery. On the first news of the tumults, Bristol had sought him out, and had urged him to give his voice for another Parliament. To the calm, good sense of Bristol, the policy of adventure into which the King had been drawn seemed devoid of all the higher elements of statesmanship. When, some months later, Bristol gave an account of his conversation with Strafford on this occasion, he stated that he never understood by the discourse of the Earl of Strafford that the King should use any force or power of arms, but only some strict and severe course in raising money by extraordinary ways for his supplies in the present danger.' To Bristol's plea for another Parliament Strafford was entirely deaf. He did not indeed show any 'dislike of the said discourse, but said he held it not counsellable at that time, neither did the present danger of the kingdom, which was not imaginary, but real and pressing, admit of so slow and uncertain remedies; that the Parliament, in this great distress of the King and kingdom, Northumberland to Conway, May 18, S. P. Dom. 2 The date is fixed as being not long after the dissolution, and also by the reference to the Lambeth tumults and the mutinies of the soldiers. |