in these and other points, the parliament marked, by naming him with ten others, in their instructions to the Earl of Essex, as incapable of being ever admitted to pardon. But Hyde had no official station at court: his appointment to one, at the time of the treaty, furnishes no unpleasing court-anecdote. When the commissioners came to Oxford, some one of their company brought a copy of a letter of the king's to the queen, which had been intercepted by the parliament, and printed. In this letter he adverted to a promise which he had given her, on the eve of her departure for Holland, not to dispose of places at court without her advice; but excepting from that promise the offices of state, and such other changes as the urgency of his affairs might require to be made without delay. In particular, he observed, "I must make Hyde secretary of state; for the truth is, I can trust nobody else." The next morning when Hyde, as was his custom, joined the king in his walk, Charles inquired if he had seen his letter to the queen, which had been intercepted and printed. Hyde answered, he had not. Charles gave it to him to read; and, after he had read it, said, "I wish it were as much in my power to make every one else amends, as I can you. I am resolved, this afternoon, to swear you secretary of state." Hyde refused the secretariship, but was made chancellor of the exchequer. He would, at all events, have had a share in the treaty, as the king's secret adviser; he now took his place also at the board, in his official character as a member of the privy council.

Owing as well to the restrictions on the commissioners, in consequence of which every proposal or demand which arose had to be referred to the parliament, and debated by both houses, as to the real indifference of both the parliament and the king to the success of the negotiations, no progress was made. The period fixed for the committee's return was nearly expired, and only two articles, viz. the first demand on either side, had yet been brought into discussion. The commissioners were not to blame. They were governed, upon the whole, by just and honourable views; and so earnestly desired the success of their labours, that, perceiving the insuperable difficulties which surrounded them, while they complied in all their public proceedings with the letter of their instructions, they nevertheless privately intimated to the king, that if he would submit to some sacrifices, they might possibly find means to obtain a corresponding concession on the other side. The Church was the point on which, beyond all others, Charles was inflexible. Would he, in order to secure it, surrender the command of the militia-an advantage which the parliament deemed indispensable to their security? The discussion of this point had been, on one occasion, protracted till midnight. The committee indulged a belief that the king had been won over; but at so late an hour they would not ask his written consent. It was agreed to defer it to the morning. Morning came; and the eager commissioners made their appearance earlier than usual. But the king's mind was changed. He had been prevailed on, during the night, to prepare a totally different The disappointed commissioners now suggested, that if Northumberland were restored to the office of Lord High Admiral, which Charles had taken from him in consequence of his having appointed Warwick to the command of the fleet, that nobleman's influence might be found available to soften the obstinacy of his opponents. But Charles was stung with the ingratitude of the earl; whom, to use his own words, he "had ever

answer.

sought to live with as his friend, and courted as his mistress." The eloquent importunity of Hyde and Falkland was of no avail: the king would merely promise, that he might one day restore Northumberland's commission, when he had performed some such service as should atone for the past. Still Charles desired that the negotiation should proceed, and proposed a prolongation of the term. The parliament refused; at the same time instructing their commissioners to press his majesty to name a day for disbanding the armies, and to return to his parliament. He replied, that when the command of his revenue, magazines, ships, and forts, should be restored to him; when all the members of the two houses, with the exception of the bishops, should be allowed to return to their seats, as they held them at the opening of the parliament; and when the houses should be secured from tumultuary assemblies, which could only be done by adjournment to some place twenty miles distant from London, he would consent to the immediate disbanding of the armies, and return to his parliament. No answer was returned to these proposals; but on the 19th day, the commissioners received peremptory orders to quit Oxford the next morning. They obeyed; and from that time all communication between that city and London was interdicted by the parliament.

Clarendon assigns as the true cause of Charles's haughty refusal of all concession, the famous promise to the queen, that he would neither give away any office nor consent to a peace except by her mediation. The noble historian likewise asserts, that at her landing she wrote to Oxford, expressing apprehension on the subject of the treaty; and that the king's motive for desiring a prolongation of the treaty was, that she might have time to reach Oxford before its conclusion. But we have seen that he did not regard the first part of this promise as binding, in the sense commonly understood; and of the other (if it ever were made), the most rational and probable interpretation seems to be that of Lingard. "As far as I can judge," writes that historian, "it only meant that whenever he made peace, he would put her forward as mediatrix; to the end that, since she had been calumniated as being the cause of the rupture between him and his people, she might also have, in the eyes of the public, the merit of effecting the reconciliation." The truth is, the wound had long become immedicable. The faults of both the leading parties in the nation-perhaps, the sins of the nation itself-demanded, at the hand of a corrective Providence, the excision of the "ulcerous part" by the sword; and peace was impossible till one of them had fallen. War was renewed amidst the mournful apprehensions of the good and wise, who clearly saw, that, whichsoever side should now prevail, the liberty as well as the prosperity of the country must inevitably suffer.

On the very day the commissioners returned to London, the Earl of Essex quitted it; and, rejoining his army, laid siege to Reading.

79

CHAPTER X.

HAMPDEN.

war.

THE parliament passed the winter in devising schemes for raising money to carry on the The assessments were rigidly enforced; the estates of delinquents and the lands of the church were sequestered; an excise was, for the first time in our country, imposed on a great number of commodities. Neither these designs, nor their efforts to recruit the army, were for a moment relaxed during the negotiations at Oxford. The army of Essex when he sat down before Reading on the 17th of April, was the finest that had yet been seen in this unhappy war. It consisted of about 16,000 foot and about 3,000 horse, all well armed, and abundantly supplied with everything necessary for the siege. Under the command of Sir Arthur Aston, there were few short of 4,000 excellent troops; but he had very little ammunition; and the slight defences of the town were not capable of being long maintained against a powerful enemy. Essex resolved to reduce it by the cautious method of approach. The indefatigable Skippon, to whom the operations were committed, had already planted his batteries within less than musket-shot of the outworks, in doing which the besiegers succeeded in beating back the garrison in several sorties; when Hampden, whose influence in the army was now of nearly equal weight with the authority of the lord-general, impatient any longer to wait the issue of that dilatory procedure, determined to attempt the walls by assault. Advancing silently from the trenches with 400 picked men, seconded by Colonel Hurry, he passed the ditches in the gray twilight of the morning, and, mounting the rampart, seized upon the northernmost bastion. They met with a brave resistance, and were driven back. Hampden, calling forward his reserves, immediately placed himself at the head of a second attack; and, again struggling up the well-defended walls, renewed the fight. The governor had previously been disabled by a shot. Colonel Fielding, who had supplied his place, now brought forward the main strength of the garrison, and a bloody conflict ensued. Both leaders fought, hand to hand, on the ramparts, each at the head of his party. Overpowered by the numbers and determined valour of the royalists, Hampden was on the point of once more retiring, when Hurry, by a sudden movement, threw himself between the royalists and the town. The inhabitants, ill-affected to the royal cause, at once ceased firing; and, after a severe struggle, a parley was demanded by Fielding, and a truce followed.

Meantime the king, who had no intention to retain the permanent occupation of Reading, reluctantly advanced to its relief, with some divisions of his army hastily drawn together; designing only to force one of the besiegers' quarters, and withdraw the garrison. But Essex had drawn the principal strength of his army to the west side of

the town, towards Oxford. On that side there was no pass, except over Caversham Bridge. To protect that place, a body of the parliamentary troops was posted: against which the king, understanding them to consist of only two regiments,—the Lord Robert's and Colonel Berkeley's-detached two of his own, the green and the red, commanded by General Ruthen in person. The parliamentarians, however, were immediately supported by strong reinforcements. The skirmish that followed was sanguinary; and the royalist troops suffering severely, and perceiving no movement attempted from the town, retired, in the end, to their main body. In the night came Fielding to the king, and assured him that neither could he, on his part, hold out the town, nor would the small force which Charles had brought suffice to raise the siege; but that if the king agreed to his surrendering, good terms might be granted. Charles, who only desired to secure the safety of his troops, consented. The next morning, the town was given up on honourable conditions; the garrison joined the army at Wallingford; and the king once more retired to Oxford. Essex lingered in the neighbourhood of Reading. There his army was wasted with disease and desertion; and his counsels, at the same time, thwarted both by his great masters in Westminster, and by dissatisfied officers in the camp.

Six weeks Essex lay at Reading. It was in this interval the famous Waller plot was discovered. This plot was a design on the part of some royalist politicians in London, to satisfy the general desire for peace, and for the prevention of farther and direr calamities to the country, by forcibly promoting an accommodation between the king and the parliament. Its results were the expulsion from the House of Commons, the fining, and banishment of the principal conspirator, the execution of two of his friends, and a great accession of strength to the war faction. Again Pym was the safeguard of his party-the genius who laid open their dangers, the thunderer who struck down their foes. With his usual happy blending of adroitness and force-the great secret of popular influence he so told the tale of his great discovery to the citizens, as effectually to scatter to the winds the dull ashes which had been gathering, of late, upon their zeal. He introduced an oath against similar designs; an engagement nominally optional, but in reality imposed on every member of the Peers and Commons, on the army, and on all citizens. After a terrible preamble, asserting that "there has been, and now is on foot in this kingdom, a popish and traitorous plot for the subversion of the true protestant religion, &c., in pursuance whereof a popish army hath been raised, and is now on foot in various parts of the kingdom," the subscribers bound themselves never to lay down arms so long as the papists now carrying on war should be protected from the justice of the parliament; and never to adhere to, or willingly assist, the forces raised by the king without the consent of both houses. "The popish plot and popish army," observes a modern historian, "were fictions of their own, to madden the passions of their adherents."

At length the parliamentarian general, being enabled to advance, fixed his headquarters at Thame. And now occurred one of the most eventful actions of the war.

Hurry, a Scotch mercenary, bred in the German wars, had led the attack on Reading, under Hampden; and had before done good service for the parliament at Edge-hill, and