if

long time, delivered to the commissioners of the Parliament. By them he was' conducted to Holmby, or Holdenby-house, in Northamptonshire; where he remained, in easy not in honourable confinement, till he was seized in the following June, by the army; and after some removals was settled by them, in a state of delusive liberty and splendour, at Hampton-Court.

At this crisis of his fate he was presented with an opportunity of recovering his fallen fortunes, and replacing himself on the throne. The Presbyterians, now in the fulness of their power, with the Parliament, the city of London and the Scots at their command, thought it no longer necessary to continue that disguise which had hitherto imperfectly concealed their principles from the world. They openly avowed themselves the enemies of toleration; and their victorious army, composed of Independents and various sectarists, began to discover that they had lavished their blood only to substitute one tyranny for another, and had conquered merely for their own ruin. In this exigence they preferred petitions and remonstrances to the Parliament, and, on the failure of these legal weapons, under the impulse of resent

y Feb. 6, 1646-7.

ment and despair, they resorted to violence, and destroyed the presbyterian power, the government, and themselves. They became indeed the instruments of their superior officers; and were eventually made the engine of Cromwell, by whom they with the nation were despoiled of all their great political objects; but were gratified with their favourite toleration in its most unlimited extent.

These events however, though just at hand, were not as yet disclosed or even foreseen; and Ireton and Cromwell, uncertain of the result of their contest with the Presbyterians, made an offer to Charles, while he was in their power at Hampton-Court, to reinstate him in his royalties on certain conditions, for which they stipulated in behalf of themselves and of their friends. But the infatuated prince, under the influence of weak or interested advisers, and elated by a strange opinion of his own essential importance2 amid this violent conflict of parties, rejected the proffers of his fortune; and even offended those, by whom they were made, with his

z He was persuaded, he said, that it was in his power to turn the scale, and that the party must sink which he abandoned; and he told those, who brought to him the offers of the army, "I shall see you glad ere long to accept more equal terms. You cannot be without me: you will fall to ruin, if I do not sustain you," &c. &c. RUSHWORTH.

haughtiness, his fluctuation and his duplicity. When they found, by their discovery of his secret correspondence with the queen, that no reliance was to be placed on his good faith, Ireton and Cromwell seem to have determined on his destruction; and, withdrawing their protection, they compelled him, for his immediate preservation, to fly from Hampton-Court in quest of another asylum. This he sought, but, instead of it, he unfortunately found a much more certain and rigorous prison in the Isle of Wight; where he experienced a close confinement for nearly a twelvemonth in Carisbrooke Castle."

Even here however fortune seemed again disposed to redress her former wrongs to him, and to give him back, by treaty, a large part at least of what she had ravished from him by arms. But his fatal obstinacy finally repulsed her; and the persuasion, from which all his past experience could not reclaim him, of the consequence of a dethroned and captive king, induced him to throw away the last mean of safety. The difficulties which he interposed protracting the negociation between him and the Parliament, the army gained time to return from their victo

a Commanded by Col. Hammond.

U

rious expedition against the Scots, and to concert their measures against their common enemies, the Presbyterians and himself. Having possessed themselves of the Parliament by force, they once more seize upon the Monarch, and, insulting him with the mockery of a legal trial under the pretended authority of an unrepresented people, they lead him to suffer on the scaffold.

In pro

nouncing the illegality of this whole proceeding the voice of the dispassionate and the intelligent must necessarily be unanimous; and the question will not be found to include any part of that respecting the guilt of Charles, or the right of the nation to make him responsible with his life, for the abuse of his delegated sceptre. He fell, as it must be obvious, not by the judicial, but by the military sword; and, though Bradshaw pronounced the sentence, the fanatic army, under the guidance of Ireton and Cromwell, were in truth the authors of his death.

Abhorrent, as I necessarily must be, from this deed of sanguinary violence, I cannot consent to involve, in one sweep of condemnation, all those who were its perpetrators. While the greater number of them were wild

b On the 30th of January, 1648-9.

enthusiasts, who conceived that they were acting in obedience to the will of God by removing the intolerant supporter of prelacy, and the violator also, as they imagined, of the obligation of the sovereign to the people, a few of them, if not comprehensive politicians, were honest patriots, who fancied that, by the trial and the execution of a guilty king, they could establish a commonwealth on the basis of equal right and of general advantage. Among these, who certainly formed a small minority, I must reckon Ireton, Bradshaw and Ludlow, men who were true to their professed principles, and who evidently acted on their views of the public good, erroneous as we know them to have been. On Bradshaw I shall produce in its proper place an eloquent and, in many respects, a just eulogy from the pen of Milton.

During the whole of this distressful and opprobrious transaction, our author had remained an inactive spectator of the public scene, and had in no way been accessory to the fate of Charles. "Neither did I

с

Neque de jure regio quicquam a me scriptum est, donec Rex, hostis a senatu judicatus belloque victus, causam captivus apud judices diceret, capitisque damnatus est. Tum verò tandem, cum Presbyteriani quidam ministri, Carolo priùs infestissimi, nunc Independentium partes suis anteferri, et in senatu plus posse indignantes, Parliamenti sententiæ de Rege lata (non