amongst the mutineers; and this project was only abandoned through the absolute impossibility of finding the money for the levy.1

to be exe.

cuted.

If Danish soldiers were not to be had, at least the English officers might be empowered to execute martial law. "You July 25. may now hang with more authority," wrote NorthumMartial law berland in forwarding these instructions to Conway; "but, to make all sure, a pardon must come at last.” The whole expenditure on the forces, he added, till the end of October, would be 300,000l., 'towards which we have not in cash nor in view above 20,000l. at the most. If some speedy way be not found to get the rest presently, I do not think that I shall pass the Trent this year.' 2

Communionrails pulled down.

In the eastern counties the unruliness of the soldiers assumed a new form. At Bocking the clergyman was so ill-advised as to attempt to propitiate the men by the gift of a barrel of beer and fifty shillings. They took his money and his beer, got drunk, and rushed into the church. There they pulled up the communion-rails, brought them out and made a bonfire with them in the street. In various other places in Essex churches were invaded and the communion-rails pulled down. At Penfield, near Braintree, and at Icklington in Cambridgeshire, the minister was chased out of the parish.3

At the back of this ill news came a great petition from the

Giustinian to the Doge, Aug. 3' July 24, Ven. Transcripts. That this was so is shown by the instructions given on Aug. 6 by Christian IV. to his ambassadors Ulfeld and Krabbe. They were to propose to Charles the cession of the Orkneys to Denmark, either for money or for hired soldiers, as Christian had heard from General King of Charles's wish to have soldiers from Denmark. When the ambassadors arrived it was too late, and they said nothing of the Orkneys, and Charles was equally silent about the soldiers. This information has been kindly communicated to me by Dr. Fridericia from the Copenhagen archives. See his Danmarks ydre politiske Historie, 1635-1645, p. 258.

2 Northumberland to Conway, July 25, S. P. Dom. cccclxi. 16.

3 Maynard to the Council, July 27. Warwick to Vane, July 27, ibid. cccclxi. 23, 24.

1640

July 28. 'The Yorkshire petition.

July 30. It is pre

THE YORKSHIRE PETITION.

177

gentlemen of Yorkshire. Not only did they complain of the violence of the soldiery quartered amongst them, but they proceeded to say that the billeting of these men in their houses was a breach of the Petition of Right. The petition was presented to the King at Oatlands on the 30th. Strafford would have had it rejected as an act of mutiny in the face of approaching invasion. His daring sented to the spirit never quailed, but he could no longer inspire King. his fellow-councillors with his own audacity. To them the case, as well it might, seemed altogether desperate. Peace, they thought, must now be bought at any price. Roe, the Negotiations opponent of the debasement of the coinage, was to to be opened. carry the news to the City that negotiations were to be opened, and to ask once more for a loan, which it was fondly hoped would be readily granted, as the money was needed to pay off the soldiers, and not for purposes of war. Roe went to Guildhall as he was bidden, but he went The City again refuses in vain. He was told that grants of money were to lend. matters for Parliaments, and not for the citizens of London. As for themselves they were quite unable to find the money, the Londonderry plantation having consumed their stocks.' 2

able.

6

If it was unlikely that the Londoners would place confidence in the honeyed words of the King now that he was in such War inevit desperate straits, it was still less likely that, after the experience of the pacification of Berwick, the Scots would reopen a negotiation which took no account of their present demands, and which, even if it gave them all for which they asked, might be subsequently explained away by whatever interpretation it might please Charles to place upon his words. They had long ago made up their minds that a lasting peace could only be attained after an invasion of England, and that it would be necessary to come to an understanding not

1 Rushworth, iii. 1214.

2 Rossingham's News-Letter, Aug. 4, S. P. Dom. cccclxiii. 33. Montreuil's despatch, Aug. Bibl. Nat. Fr. 15,995, fol. 107. Giustinian

6

16'

with the King alone, but with an English Parliament. Every piece of intelligence which reached them from the South must have convinced them that they had no longer, as in 1639, to fear a national resistance. The circumstances of the dissolution of the late Parliament, together with the growth of the belief in the existence of a gigantic Popish plot,' had put an end to that. Personages of note and eminence had entered into communication with their commissioners, and had given them assurances, which they had no reason to doubt, that Parliament, if it met, would take up their cause, and would refuse to grant a sixpence to the King unless he consented to put an end to the war. If nothing had passed since, the knowledge of the emptiness of the exchequer, of the growing resistance to the various attempts which had been made to wring money from Englishmen, and of the mutinous temper in which the troops were marching northwards, must have convinced the Covenanting leaders that the time had now arrived in which they might strike hard without fear of consequences.

Communications be

tween the Scots and

leaders.

There can be little doubt, indeed, that secret messages had passed between the Scots and the English leaders. Before Loudoun had left London he had been in communication with Lord Savile, the son of Strafford's old rival, who had inherited the personal antipathies of his the English father, and whose hatred of Strafford placed him by the side of men of higher aims than his own. To him, as the recognised organ of the English malcontents, Johnston of Warriston addressed a letter on June 23, just at the moment when Leslie's army was first gathering at Leith. After expressing the not unnatural desire of the Scottish leaders for a definite understanding with the English nobility, it asked for an extension of the National Covenant in some form to England, in order that the Scots might distinguish friends from foes, and for a special engagement from some principal persons that they would join the invading army on its entrance into Northumberland, or would send money for its support.

June 23. Johnston's letter to Savile.

1 The communications through Frost, noticed by Burnet (Hist. of Own Times, i. 27) seem to relate to the period before the Short Parliament.

1640

July 8. Answer of the Peers.

AN INVITATION TO THE SCOTS:

179

This letter passed through Loudoun's hands, and the answer was forwarded by Savile some days after the Scottish nobleman had set out on his return. It was signed by Bedford, Essex, Brooke, Warwick, Scrope, Mandeville, and Savile himself. It contained a distinct refusal to commit a treasonable act, and an assurance that the English who had stood by the Scots in the last Parliament would continue to stand by them in a legal and honourable way. Their enemies were one, their interest was one, their end was one, 'a free Parliament,' to try all offenders and to settle religion and liberty. This letter failed to give satisfaction in Scotland. Nor was its deficiency likely to be supplied by an accompanying letter, full of the most unqualified offers of aid from Savile himself. The Scots pressed for an open declaration and engagement in their favour. Towards the end of July, or early in August, Savile sent them what they wanted. He forged the signatures of the peers with such skill that, when the document was afterwards submitted to their inspection, not one of them was able to point out a single turn of the pen by which the forgery might have been detected.1

Savile's forged

engagement.

1 I have probably surprised many of my readers by the facility with which I have accepted as genuine the letters printed by Oldmixon (Hist. of Engl. 141). Oldmixon's character for truthfulness stands so very low that historians have been quite satisfied to treat the letters as a forgery. The internal evidence of their authenticity is, however, very strong. The letters which he ascribes to Johnston, to the Peers, and to Savile, are written in so distinct a style, and that style is so evidently appropriate to the character and position of the writers, as to require in a forger very high art indeed-art which there is nothing to lead us to suppose that Oldmixon possessed. The allusions to passing events cannot all be tested, but none of those which I have succeeded in testing are incorrect. The prediction, indeed, that the troops would be on the Borders on July 10 anticipated reality by ten days; but this is just the mistake which Johnston, writing before the event, would be likely to make, and which a skilful forger would avoid. On the other hand, the strongest evidence in favour of the letters is derived from the argument by which Disraeli satisfied himself of their supposititious character. He asks how Oldmixon came to place the seven names at the end of the Peers' letter, when he assures us that those names were cut out from the original? My answer to this is that the letter produced by Oldmixon is not what he alleges it to be. The story of cutting out the names is

Encouraged by these communications, Leslie had in July taken up his post in Choicelee Wood, about four miles from

borrowed by him from Nalson (ii. 428). There can, however, be no doubt that the paper described by Nalson was that forged by Savile, namely, the declaration and engagement on the faith of which the Scots said they had invaded England, and which they alleged to have been broken by the English lords. The letter in Oldmixon contains no engagement which those lords did not fulfil. The forged letter must therefore have been entirely different from the one given by Oldmixon. Nalson's evidence, it may be remarked, is here of the highest authority, being, as has been noticed by Ranke (ii. 397) an extract from the memoirs of the Earl of Manchester, who, as Lord Mandeville, was one of those whose signatures were forged. On the hypothesis that the letters were Oldmixon's forgery, we have to face the enormous difficulty that, after producing letters so wonderfully deceptive as the others were he did not take the precaution of forging one from the Peers which would bear the slightest resemblance to the description which he has himself given of it. On my hypothesis everything is easily explained. Oldmixon met with the letters either in the original or in copy. Being either careless or dishonest, or both, he was not content to give them simply for what they were, but must needs give them out for the lost engagement for which Charles sought in vain. The dates, too, as we have them, support this view. The Peers' letter is said to have been sent off from Yorkshire on July 8, about ten days after Loudoun left London. Manchester, in his Memoirs, says that the engagement was sent after Loudoun had been released, and had been some few weeks in Scotland. I would add that Henry Darley, the reputed bearer, was in York on July 28, signing the Yorkshire Petition, and it would be likely enough that Savile was encouraged to the forgery by the temper of the signers of that petition. If so, Darley's journey would be, as I have suggested, towards the end of July or the beginning of August. Further, Darley was arrested by a warrant from Strafford, dated Sept. 20, and confined in York Castle, till he was liberated by the Long Parliament (Lords' Journals, iv. 100, Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iv. 30). The only piece of internal evidence against these letters is the reference to Lord Wariston, before he had gained that title as a Lord of Session. He was, however, a Scotch laird, and a Scotch laird might easily pass into a Lord in an English letter, his official title being that of Baron. My attention has been called by Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander Fergusson to the fact that John Napier, the inventor of logarithms, whose position was exactly that of Johnston, describes himself on a title-page as Baro de Murchistoun, and he also tells me that he is informed on high authority that in charters of such estates it was customary to use even the word Dominus of the owner. Oldmixon himself calls Johnston Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord of Wariston, which is clearly an anticipation of the