Hilaire Belloc

“ Charles himself bore his misfortunes with an air of magnanimity, which was characterized as obstinacy by the desponding minds of his followers. As a statesman he acknowledged the hopelessness of his cause; as a Christian he professed to believe that God would never allow rebellion to prosper; but, let whatever happen, he at least would act as honour and conscience called on him to act; his name should not descend to posterity as the name of a king who had abandoned the cause of God, injured the rights of his successors, and sacrificed the interests of his faithful and devoted adherents. ”

“ But his army, under the nominal command of the prince of Wales, and the real command of Prince Rupert, was frittered away in a multitude of petty garrisons, and languished in a state of the most alarming insubordination. The generals, divided into factions, presumed to disobey the royal orders, and refused to serve under an adversary or a rival; the officers indulged in every kind of debauchery; the privates lived at free quarters; and the royal forces made themselves more terrible to their friends by their licentiousness than to their enemies by their valour. ”

“ Such was the end of the unfortunate Charles Stuart; an awful lesson to the possessors of royalty, to watch the growth of public opinion, and to moderate their pretensions in conformity with the reasonable desires of their subjects. Had he lived at a more early period, when the sense of wrong was quickly subdued by the habit of submission, his reign would probably have been marked with fewer violations of the national liberties. It was resistance that made him a tyrant. The spirit of the people refused to yield to the encroachments of authority ”

“ At that moment the mist dispersed, and the first spectacle which struck the eyes of the Scots, was the route of their cavalry. A sudden panic instantly spread from the right to the left of their line; at the approach of the English they threw down their arms and ran. Cromwell's regiment halted to sing the 117th Psalm; but the pursuit was continued for more than eight miles; the dead bodies of three thousand Scots strewed their native soil; and ten thousand prisoners, with the artillery, ammunition, and baggage, became the reward of the conquerors. ”

“ Ought they not, in consistency with their own principles, to have ascertained the sense of the nation by calling a new parliament? The question was raised, but the leaders, aware that their power was based on the sword of the military, shrunk from the experiment; and, to elude the demands of their opponents, appointed a committee to regulate the succession of parliaments and the election of members; a committee, which repeatedly met and deliberated, but never brought the question to any definitive conclusion. ”

“ But while we blame the illegal measures of Charles, we ought not to screen from censure the subsequent conduct of his principal opponents. From the moment that war seemed inevitable, they acted as if they thought themselves absolved from all obligations of honour and honesty. They never ceased to inflame the passions of the people by misrepresentation and calumny; they exercised a power far more arbitrary and formidable than had ever been claimed by the king ”

“ Nor was this spirit confined to the army; in all companies men were heard to maintain that, to set up monarchy again was to pronounce condemnation on themselves, to acknowledge themselves guilty of all the blood which had been shed to put it down. But nowhere did the proposal excite more cordial abhorrence than in the conventicles of the Fifth-monarchy-men. In their creed the protectorate was an impiety, kingship a sacrilegious assumption of the authority belonging to the only King, the Lord Jesus. They were his witnesses foretold in the Apocalypse ”

“ His insinuating manner, the modesty of his pretensions, and the belief of his integrity, gave to his opinions an irresistible weight in the lower house; and the courage and activity which he displayed in the army led many to lament that he did not occupy the place held by the more tardy or more cautious earl of Essex. The royalists exulted at his death as equal to a victory; the patriots lamented it as a loss which could not be repaired. Both were deceived. Revolutions are the seed-plots of talents and energy. One great leader had been withdrawn ”

“ Fleetwood was brave in the field, but irresolute in council; eager for the acquisition of power, but continually checked by scruples of conscience; attached by principle to republicanism, but ready to acquiesce in every change, under the pretence of submission to the decrees of Providence. Cromwell, who knew the man, had raised him to the second command in the army, and fed his ambition with distant and delusive hopes of succeeding to the supreme magistracy. The protector died, and Fleetwood, instead of acting, hesitated, prayed, and consulted ”

“ But the majority warmly contended for the establishment of a commonwealth. Why, they asked, should they spontaneously set up again the idol which it had cost them so much blood and treasure to pull down? Laws would prove but feeble restraints on the passions of a proud and powerful monarch. If they sought an insuperable barrier to the restoration of despotism, it could be found only in some of those institutions which lodge the supreme power with the representatives of the people. ”

“ From Montreuil Charles understood that the Scots would afford him an asylum in their army, and declare in his favour, if he would assent to the three demands made of him during the treaty at Uxbridge; a proposal which both Henrietta and the queen regent of France thought so moderate in existing circumstances, that he would accept it with eagerness and gratitude. But the king, in his own judgment, gave the preference to a project of accommodation with the Independents, because they asked only for toleration, while the Scots sought to force their own creed on the consciences of others ”

“ The artillery, tents, baggage, and ammunition fell into the hands of the conquerors, with two thousand prisoners, three hundred of whom were massacred in cold blood at the gate of the city. This was called the battle of Rathmines, a battle which destroyed the hopes of the Irish royalists, and taught men to doubt the abilities of Ormond. At court, his enemies ventured to hint suspicions of treason; but Charles, to silence their murmurs and assure him of the royal favour, sent him the order of the garter. ”

“ Whitelock replied, that, for the army, his excellency had hitherto kept and would continue to keep it in due subordination; but with respect to the parliament, reliance must be placed on the good sense and virtue of the majority. To control the supreme power was legally impossible. All, even Cromwell himself, derived their authority from it. At these words the lord-general abruptly exclaimed, "What, if a man should take upon him to be king?" ”

“ At length, three weeks after the death of the king, whose life it was intended to save, the English parliament condescended to answer the protestation of the Scots, but in a tone of contemptuous indifference, both as to the justice of their claim and the consequences of their anger. [b] Scotland, it was replied, might perhaps have no right to bring her sovereign to a public trial, but that circumstance could not affect the right of England. As the English parliament did not intend to trench on the liberties of others, it would not permit others to trench upon its own. ”

“ It was now some time since the king had begun to tremble for his safety. He saw that the violence of the Levellers daily increased; that the officers, who professed to be his friends, were become objects of suspicion; that Ireton had been driven from the council, and Cromwell threatened with impeachment; that several regiments were in a state of complete insubordination; and that Fairfax himself doubted of his power to restore the discipline of the army. ”

“ But Charles, in addition to his own scruples, feared to irritate the prejudices of his Protestant subjects. He knew that many of his own adherents would deem such a concession an act of apostasy; and he conjured the Irish deputies not to solicit that which must prove prejudicial to him, and therefore to themselves: let them previously enable him to master their common enemies; let them place him in a condition "to make them happy," and he assured them on the word of a king, that he would not "disappoint their just expectations." ”