insurgents. Though badly supplied with artillery, he left their strong castles in ruins, his troops moving to victory with the precision of machines. The Duke of Hamilton with the Scotch Presbyterian Royalist army at Annan, on the western border, crossed the frontier and advanced into Lancashire. Cromwell, who had now settled the Welsh rising, marched at once to meet the invading force at Preston. During the battle of Preston, which lasted three days, and extended over many miles of the low-lying district of the Ribble, the Scots were utterly routed by the impetuous dash of Cromwell, who, cutting Hamilton's forces in two, drove them north and south. But though Cromwell, now more than ever the darling of the soldiers, was putting the finishing stroke to the Scotch invasion in the North, these formidable manifestations in favour of the King emboldened the Parliament in its detestation of the reign of martial law to reconsider its position. They came to a vote by 165 to 99 that they would not alter the fundamental government by King, lords, and commons; they abandoned their impeachment against seven peers, the most moderate of the Upper House, and the most obnoxious to the army; they restored the eleven members to their seats; they revoked their resolution against a personal treaty with the King, including even that which required his assent by certain preliminary articles. In a word, as it is summed up by Hallam, The party for distinction's sake called Presbyterian, but now rather to be denominated Constitutional, regained its ascendency.' This change in the counsels of Parliament led to the liberation of the King from Carisbrooke Castle. Certain politicians in the House of Lords had a good deal to do with this decision of the Lower House. Wise in their own generation, these time-servers had become the dupes of their own crafty policy. They were ready enough to swim with the stream, but they did not wish to be pushed from their position by upstarts such as Ireton and Harrison, and they were anxious to see a treaty concluded with the King, which might save the impending destruction of the House of Lords. Information about these Parliamentary proceedings was soon transmitted to Carisbrooke, and on August 5 the King was officially waited on by the Earl of Middlesex, Sir John Hippisley (M.P. for Cockermouth in Cumberland), and John Bulkeley, Esq. (M.P. for Newtown, I.W.). Hippisley had been one of the Commissioners sent to Charles at Newcastle in August, 1646. These three Commissioners informed the King that the Parliament had agreed to a personal treaty with him in the Isle of Wight, where he should be in the same state and freedom as he had been in Hampton Court, along with other conditions. They were allowed ten days for their going, stay, and return. With these Commissioners, under the authority of a pass from Parliament, Captain Titus, Uriah Babington, the King's sworn barber, and Sir Peter Killigrew also came; and since so much of the restraint which had been laid upon Charles was removed by the repeal of the order respecting his receiving addresses, the King's condition in the old Castle of Carisbrooke was a little more cheerful than it had been. According to Herbert, the King, on receiving the Commissioners gave them his hand to kiss, and told them that their address being in order to peace doubled their welcome, peace being the thing he earnestly desired, and then assured them withal that if upon the treaty peace did not issue it should be no fault of his--he would not be blamed. After the interchange of some preliminary correspondence, on Thursday, August 10, the King signified to the Commissioners his acceptance of the Parliamentary proposition. The room was full of ladies, and he expressly said that the last message he sent was delivered to the Commissioners sealed, and if it had been presented to the Houses it would have been better for him, and he now thought fit to send this open, for he thought he could not be in a worse condition than he was, being under such close restraint, none being suffered to speak a word without suspicion. On the receipt of this message a vote of the Lords and Commons was immediately passed, along with a request to his Majesty to send the names of such persons as he shall conceive to be of necessary use to be about him during the treaty that the Houses agreed that such domestic servants (not excepted in the former limitations) as his Majesty should appoint were to be sent to him, and that the time of the commencement of the treaty was to be within ten days after the King's consent to treat, and to continue forty days, with some other resolutions of minor importance. As the communications from the Parliament to Colonel Hammond had only intimated that the vote of non-addresses had been repealed, he did not conceive himself justified in permitting the King to leave the bounds of the Castle until he received an express order from the Houses to that effect, as he was detained there under the authority of a subsequent ordinance. So ended the eight months' imprisonment of Charles in Carisbrooke Castle. That captivity would have been more dignified if it had not been mixed up with plots and schemes, and with the tampering with unworthy agents. 'Oh, Mr. Secretary,' says the faithful and loyal Lord Clarendon in a letter to Nicholas, 'those stratagems have given me more sad hours than all the misfortunes in war which have befallen the King, and look like the effects of God's anger toward us.' But, as in imagination we see the King descending for the last time the hill on which stands Carisbrooke Castle, we cannot balance the faults and virtues of the man and sovereign, but feel only sympathy with 'Majesty in misery,' the title of the copy of verses which the King had written in Carisbrooke Castle, and which, as David Hume says in his history, 'the truth of the sentiment, rather than any elegance of expression, renders very pathetic.' Charles was in outward appearance a very different man to what he was when a year before he had thrown himself upon the Governor of Carisbrooke Castle. He had laid aside all care of his person, and allowed his hair and beard to grow, and to hang dishevelled and neglected; his hair was become almost entirely grey. And we call to mind that These external manners of laments Are merely shadows to the unseen grief Our heads are bowed down with awe at the tragedy of life and the vicissitudes of human destiny, or, to speak more reverently and truly, we feel that we are in the hands of Him who is the Disposer of the kingdoms of this world. For he who descended the hill was, to use the phrase of the Romans of the Lower Empire, 'born in the purple,' he was cradled in a royal palace, and was the King of England; he could not altogether shake off 'the regal thoughts wherewith he reigned,' nor crush the pride of kingly sway from out his heart.' That departure from his fortress prison of Carisbrooke was a solemn moment in his life, a prelude to that more solemn moment when the King, walking at his usual fast pace, went on foot from St. James's Palace through the Park to Whitehall, with a guard of halberdiers in front and behind, before he laid his 'gray and discrowned head' upon the block. Our usual impressions of the personal appearance of Charles I are derived from the engravings which have been made from one or other of the many portraits which Vandyck painted. There exist in different collections in England and on the Continent thirty-six portraits of King Charles by the hand of that great painter. Note especially that grand picture, now in Windsor Castle, where Charles is represented in armour, mounted on a grey horse, finely foreshortened as if advancing from under a lofty archway; the figure is seen almost in front, the hair gracefully parted and falling on the shoulders, and the features wear a look of sedate and contemplative dignity; or else the other picture, also in Windsor Castle, three heads in three different points of view, front, profile, and three-quarters; Charles's long dark hair is parted on his brow, and falls over his rich lace collar. This beautiful picture was painted about 1637 for the purpose of being sent to Rome to Bernini, the Italian sculptor, who executed from it a bust in marble. According to one tradition, Bernini himself, or, according to another version, the PopeUrban VIII-on seeing this portrait, was so struck by the melancholy, or, as he termed it, fatal funesta expression, that he prophesied the violent end of the original. Bernini's bust was destroyed when the palace of Whitehall was burned in 1697. Very different was the King's appearance in 1648 from what it had been eleven years ago, when that picture was painted in the thirty-seventh year of his age. 'Wild as a wave his beard in silver stream'd— But few had number'd; such a spell hath care Let us be thankful that we have got rid of what were called the State services' in our Prayer Book. In these services, especially that of King Charles the Martyr, the truth of history was sacrificed to ferocious animosities. That these animosities should have found their way into prayers and thanksgivings changed the sin against man into a direct sin against God. Still it is a question whether even passionate partisanship is not better than the coldness and forgetfulness to which it may give place. People ought to be kept in mind of their past history. We in the Isle of Wight certainly ought to cherish all those associations which connect Carisbrooke Castle with the imprisonment of Charles I, and with a period of our national history which should never lose its freshness and interest for succeeding generations, and is fraught with most valuable lessons of political instruction. January 1, 1887. CARISBROOKE CASTLE DURING THE THE first civil war between the King and the Parliament of England practically came to an end with the fatal fight of Naseby field, June, 1645, leaving the fag end to wear itself out in the West. The summer of 1648 witnessed the renewed brief struggle known as the second civil war. Charles I was then prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle, and the hopes of the Royalist party, subdued with difficulty and ready at all moments to rise again, were centred in the person of the royal inmate of Carisbrooke's 'narrow case.' A contemporary writer, Thomas May, whose affections went with Cromwell and the Independents, in his Breviate of the History of Parliament in Masere's Tracts, gives a lifelike picture of the condition of affairs. May, who up to 1637 had been a courtier, was in that year opposed to Sir William Davenant as candidate for the office of poet-laureate, which the |