III. CHAS. I. A.D. besides Hugh Peters, who, in return, aspired to CHAPTER military command. Palmer, a Nottinghamshire clergyman and a zealous preacher, appeared with a captain's commission at the head of a troop of 1643–4–5. horse; and "one Mr. Coates, a minister, an honest, godly man, was the captain of four hundred infantry; and yet neither Coates nor Palmer abandoned their sacred functions. Palmer proved himself a coward, and laid down his commission; but he resumed the ministry without objection, and was esteemed among the nonconformists as a preacher in the days of Charles II.+ These instances must have been uncommon: still there was a strange fusion of the clerical and military character. It is a curious fact that each of the chaplains wore a sword "for form's sake," as one of them expresses it; and the men who abhorred a surplice girded on with pride the symbols of destruction, and the implements of death. But such it appears was the fashion of the times.‡ The chaplains had joined the army under the impression, which was universal on both sides, that one battle, or at least a short campaign, would conclude the war. When it became apparent that the struggle was likely to be prolonged they grew weary of the service. One after another they silently withdrew. The consequences were in every way unfortunate. In losing its presbyterian chaplains the army lost its best advisers. They were not only men of piety but of cultivated minds. Their passions were subdued, their experience embraced every change of human * Hutchinson, pp. 175, 208. † Ibid, p. 429. Martindale's Diary, p. 37. CHAPTER life. They had lived in dungeons, in exile, and in III. want; and, more trying still to virtue, they had CHAS. I. been caressed by parliaments and applauded by the 1643-4-5. multitude. In heart and soul they were loyal to A D. the king; none of his own chaplains were more sincere than they when they prayed, as they never failed to do, that he might reign once more upon his father's throne and in the hearts of a loving people. Their retirement left the army to itself; it soon became rebellious, and broke out into the wildest excesses of uncontrolled fanaticism. CHAPTER IV. A.D. 1645-1648. CHAPTER CHAS. I. THE necessities of the king and the urgent representations of his council at length induced him to offer proposals for a treaty. The parliament, though A.D. 1645. elated with its tide of recent success, could not easily decline a conference to which it was urged by the whole kingdom, now longing for repose. Commissioners from both sides were appointed, and a period of twenty days assigned for their deliberations. They assembled at Uxbridge on the 30th of January, 1645. The treaty opened with an ill omen. It was remarked, that while the deportment of the royalists was full of hope and confidence, the parliamentary commissioners were reserved and cold. On the first day Love, who was chaplain to the parliamentary garrison at Windsor, preached a furious sermon in the parish church. The king's commissioners, he said, came there with hearts full of blood; there was as great a distance between this treaty and peace as between heaven and hell; it was intended only to amuse the people till the royalists had power to injure them.* The king's commissioners remonstrated against the insult, and the * Clarendon, b. ii. p. 579. Whitelocke, p. 123. IV. A.D. 1645. CHAPTER parliament sent for Love and heard his explanation; but he escaped unpunished. But the chances of CHAS. I. civil war, and the changes through which men pass, are strange. Love, protesting against Cromwell's usurpation, and still avowing his allegiance to the Stuarts, perished on Tower-hill six years afterwards, by the same axe which had dripped with the blood of Laud and of his royal master. Uxbridge consisted then as now of one wide street. The king and his party occupied the south side; the parliamentary commissioners lodged upon the north. Prayers were read daily in the parish church before the royalists. The puritans assembled in the large chamber of an inn. Here Marshall preached, while Henderson assisted. The two parties often crossed the street for mutual intercourse; there was a constant exchange of courtesies; in religion only there was an austere reserve. There were men of great sincerity, and of great piety on both sides ; they had been friends, they still were fellow countrymen. Prayer in common might perchance have softened asperities which no arguments could reBut after Love's sermon it was not tried. The parliament made three demands; of which the first had reference to religion; and the commissioners entered upon this point at once. It was proposed that episcopacy should be immediately abolished; that the book of common prayer should be totally suppressed; that the directory, which was just issued, should be introduced and authorized; that "such a national church should be established as might be most agreeable to God's word and the practice of the best churches;" and lastly, that the move. IV. CHAS. I. A.D. 1645. king himself should take the covenant, and oblige CHAPTER his subjects to accept it. The king was assisted by his chaplains Drs. Sheldon, Potter, Hammond, and others; the parliamentary divines were Henderson, Vines, and Marshall. The church politics of the parliament were now complicated with various difficulties, and its conduct often appears, at first sight, a confused heap of contradictions. As the price of the Scotch alliance it had plunged into the toils of the solemn league and covenant. Against all comers it was bound to defend the presbyterian cause. Consistency obliged the commissioners to force it upon the king. But few of the leaders in the house of commons were sincere. The covenant had been purposely so expressed as to leave a shade of ambiguity, of which, all along, they intended to avail themselves. Fervent presbyterians, in their simplicity, believed that the church which "should be most in accordance with God's word and the practice. of the best churches" must of course be presbyterian. The sectaries and independents secretly reserved this point. They considered themselves pledged only to subvert prelacy and popery; and then, having cleared the ground, to build anew. Thus Henderson and Marshall, at Uxbridge, were mere puppets, moved about in a game they did not understand, and by men whose intentions they were not allowed to penetrate. In the management of their argument they fell into the common error of endeavouring to prove too much; and in doing so, ruined their cause with its lukewarm friends as well as with its adversaries. They maintained, before the commissioners on both sides, that presbyterianism was L |