IV. CHAS. I. A.D. 1643. beer was stopped, and water with a half-pennyworth CHAPTER of bread was supplied instead. Some of them were laid in irons on the cold pavement of the castle yard for two and three days together, without a morsel of food or a drop of water, and cruelly deprived of their outer coats. The imprisonment lasted six months, and in some instances even nine; but death released numbers after a shorter agony. Nine captains, a lieutenant, a merchant of London, two clergymen (one of whom, an aged man, a doctor of divinity, broke his neck in an attempt to escape) were soon numbered with the dead. Pens, ink, and paper were of course denied; but the prisoners contrived to lay their sufferings before the king and his council. They were not relieved, nor could they learn that their petitions had ever been discussed. No less than seventy of them presented a relation of these "their transcendent cruelties" at the bar of the house of commons, by the hands of a fellowsufferer, and they confirmed the statement upon oath before the house of lords.* And thus it was that the puritans became revengeful and cruel in return. The repetition of such scenes is sufficient to explain the bitterness displayed on both sides before the war closed. The royal army was ill * 1. The inhumanity of the king's prison-keeper in Oxford; or a true relation of the most transcendent cruelties, &c. 2. Petitions and articles presented to the king, against Smith, his provost-marshal-general, &c. 3. A letter to the speaker, subscribed with seventy prisoners' hands, &c. 4. A letter from a gentleman imprisoned at Oxford to his friend. 5. The insufferable cruelties exercised upon the Cirencester men in the castle at Oxford. Published by authority of parliament, and in the Somers tracts, p. 281. CHAS. I. A.D. 1646 CHAPTER disciplined, and under Goring and prince Rupert IV. atrocities were committed at which one shudders. The puritan army endured much before it became unfeeling, and the provocations it received were such as in the maxims of war to justify retaliation, if not to demand it. But it must not be concealed that fanaticism on the side of the puritans, like a poisoned drug, dyed their warfare with a sanguinary hue. After the battle of Naseby few of the presbyterian chaplains continued with the army, and their retirement seemed to be the signal for the revival of a more glowing piety. It was but a delusion, and soon shewed itself in its true character; but it appeared at first as if the presence of the chaplains had been a restraint upon religion. In fact they had at least guided the rising spirit of enthusiasm through safe channels when it was impossible to repress it; whereas it now burst every barrier and filled the camp with turbid inundations. Each officer had for some time considered himself well qualified to become a spiritual guide and teacher; each private soldier now began to think himself the commissioner of heaven; he was an avenger to execute judgment; the executioner of a sentence which eternal justice had decreed; and he learned to look with indifference on the sufferings of his victim because he was inflicting the just punishment which God himself had awarded. The newmodelled army seemed to be more religious when in truth it was more profane; for religion means not the fervours of an audible devotion, but the submission of the heart and conduct to the will of God. The army displayed the one while it renounced the IV. CHAS. I. other; and England saw to her dismay antino- CHAPTER mianism no longer noisy in the pulpit or rampant from the press, but fierce and well disciplined in battle, the genius of war and the mistress of the camp. After the battle of Naseby the king retired to Hereford, and thence to South Wales. He was for some time a fugitive, hurrying from day to day, without a plan and without rest, from one town to another, as his fears or hopes prompted him; but his cause was lost, and he was conscious of it. The virtues of the Stuarts shone only in adversity; and it is now that we begin to form some acquaintance with what was truly great in Charles's character. He was calm when all around him were distracted, and firm when they were idly turbulent. Even the fiery Rupert wrote to his royal uncle that everything was lost; and he counselled peace upon whatever terms the parliament would grant. "If," replied the king, "I had any other quarrel than the defence of my religion, my crown, and my friends, you had full reason for your advice. Speaking either as a soldier or statesman, I must say there is no probability but of my ruin; but as a christian, I must tell that God will not suffer rebels to prosper you or his cause to be overthrown. Whatever personal chastisement it shall please him to inflict upon me must not make me repine, much less to give over this quarrel."* Bristol and Chester were still his own; and while they were faithful the communication with Ireland was free to him either for the introduction of troops, or, at the worst, for a safe * Clarendon, vol. viii. p. 90. A.D. 1646. IV. CHAS. I. A.D. 1645. CHAPTER retreat. On the 11th of September prince Rupert surrendered Bristol on the first assault: the king in just displeasure dismissed him from his service. Charles hastened to relieve Chester, which was also in a state of siege. A time-worn inscription upon one of its venerable towers still relates that the unhappy sovereign of a distracted realm stood there on the 24th of September, 1645, and saw his troops defeated on the plains beneath. This battle of Rowton heath completed the destruction of his army; and already, though he was not yet acquainted with the fact, all his hopes in Scotland were at an end. The battle of Philiphaugh had been fought on the 13th; the Scotch royalist army had been destroyed; and Montrose, his general, was now a fugitive and an outlaw. Charles spent the winter at Oxford, his cheerless monotony disturbed only by fresh tidings of some new disaster. In April, Fairfax, having subdued the west of England, the seat of Charles's strength, advanced by forced marches to the siege of Oxford. The king, attended by Hudson, a clergyman, and Ashburnham, his valet, left Oxford in disguise; he carried their portmanteau behind him on his horse, and passed as their servant. It was conjectured by his friends in Oxford that he would go to London, appeal to the magnanimity of parliament, and trust to that passionate outburst of returning loyalty which the presence of their king, once more in the midst of them, might create amongst the citizens. Charles himself seems to have entertained the project which might have saved his crown; but at Brentford his resolution failed; he left the high road and crossed the country to IV. CHAS. I. A.D. 1646--8. Harrow. From the summit of this beautiful hill, CHAPTER Westminster abbey and the lofty spire of St. Paul's lay beneath him and full in sight. He reined in his horse and gazed in silence. Could he trust his safety with the parliament ? Should he make a last attempt in person? Could he hope to stir the enthusiasm of the city? But his resolution again failed, if these indeed were his intentions: he had no advisers at hand; and who would have dared to advise a king upon such a venture? He rode on towards St. Alban's, dejected and silent; and in a few days it was known in London that he had found a refuge in the Scottish camp at Newark. He was from this time in fact a prisoner. But the war did not close immediately. The garrisons of the royalists were reluctant to surrender; either hoping for some change in the king's affairs, or fearing to trust themselves to an irritated and conquering foe. Colchester held out two years after the king's flight from Oxford, and was one of the last places that submitted to the parliament. The exasperation on both sides was great. The puritans were furious, the royalists were in despair. Colchester was situated in the heart of the six associated counties which had been the first to espouse the parliamentary cause and the strongest to support it; it stood alone, and yet breathed defiance to the last. The siege began early in the month of June, 1648, and was conducted by Fairfax in person; the defence by lord Goring, lord Capel, sir Charles Lucas, and others. Goring had been by name excepted from the indemnity in which the parliament had offered free pardon to all who would lay down. |