to enfeeble the healthy forces of the social system of the national life.

In this emergency the Governor of the Island, Colonel Hammond, used every exertion and adopted every available measure of precaution against a Cavalier rising within the Isle of Wight or an invasion of its coasts. Cowes, Yarmouth, and Sandown forts were well supplied with provisions and ammunition; the friends of the Parliament were allowed to arm and prepare horse for defence, and the ministers were bidden by the authorities to tune their pulpit oratory to notes of defiance against the Royalists, and directed to caution their congregations against the dangers to which they would be exposed if the common adversary should prevail.' The most dreaded adversary was the national fleet, which after it had put its vice-admiral, Rainsborough, ashore pronounced for the King, the sailors declaring that they would serve Prince Charles, and sailed away to Holland where the prince then was, and with him his brother, the boy-duke of York. At this crisis the Parliament appointed the Earl of Warwick to be lord high admiral. No sooner had that 'pious old Earl,' as Mr. Carlyle calls him, the seamen's darling, hoisted his flag, than the mutiny and desertion ceased. He stationed himself at the mouth of the Thames to watch the Essex coast and to prevent supplies and reinforcements being sent to Colchester, which was being held for the King with a very fierce and obstinate resistance against Fairfax and his besieging force. The controversy between Charles I and Parliament on the subject of ship-money marks an era, not only in constitutional history, but in the formation of our Navy. The necessity of a national fleet was equally felt by Royalist and Parliamentary statesmen. The opposition to ship-money arose not so much out of any objection to the creation of a Navy, as out of distrust of the policy which sought to raise money for that purpose without assent of Parliament. Under Charles I the Navy was first divided into rates and classes, but the sailing and the fighting-men in our war-vessels were not so thoroughly fused as they are in these days.

In the month of July the Prince of Wales appeared in the Downs with a fleet consisting of the English ships which had

gone over to him, and some which he had procured abroad. It might have been supposed that his first attempt would have been for getting his father out of Carisbrooke Castle, Warwick being too weak to face him on the sea. The Prince's conduct has given rise to dark suspicions, but it must be remembered that he was only then a lad of eighteen, and that the movements of the fleet were regulated by older persons in authority. Clarendon says plainly that the person of the King was not wanted, or rather that it cannot be imagined how wonderfully fearful some persons in France were, that he should make his escape and the dread they had of his coming thither.' It certainly is most damaging to the character of the Queen Consort, Henrietta Maria, that she should have seen such dislike to the King's escape, when it appeared the only means to secure his life during his confinement in the Isle of Wight, and it justifies the remark of Hallam that, 'careless of her husband's happiness, and already attached perhaps to one whom she afterwards married, Henrietta longed only for the recovery of a power which would become her own.' The prince sent Warwick an order to strike his flag, but the stout old earl kept his flag flying; and the prince, moving to the mouth of the Thames, ordered London to join him, or at least lend him £20,000. Warwick in the meanwhile waited for reinforcements from Portsmouth, and covered the Essex coast. The utter failure of Hamilton and the Scots, and of the Royalist risings, along with the surrender of Colchester, rendered the fleet useless; still, if it had sailed to the Isle of Wight, it might have saved the King, whose life was now threatened by the violent party which had got the upper hand. Charles, from his prison in Carisbrooke Castle, had expressly urged this course by a message, yet the prince and his advisers made their preparations for stealing off to the Dutch coast without an effort forapparently without a thought of-his unfortunate father. On the other side, Warwick waited patiently till that famous Lincolnshire sea-general, Sir George Ayscough, successfully sailing by Prince Charles in the night, brought round the reinforcements from Portsmouth. Neither fleet fired a shot. The furious 'Levellers' reproached Warwick for not destroying the prince and his fleet. By the course he pursued that

skilful commander did better service for the Parliament. He carefully avoided any collision with a fleet manned by Englishmen, and the result was that by offering the mutineers a free pardon he soon recovered most of the ships and nearly every English seaman who had deserted. Almost the last hopes of the poor King in his prison at Carisbrooke Castle expired as the fleet, under the command of his son and heir, quitted the Downs and stood round for Holland. He had trusted on the staff of a broken reed, which had gone into his hand and pierced it. This is the most mysterious and melancholy incident in the tragedy of the eight months' captivity of Charles I in Carisbrooke Castle.

January 8, 1887.

THE SEIZURE OF CHARLES I AT NEWPORT AND HIS REMOVAL TO HURST CASTLE.

THE Conclusion of the treaty of Newport, though not the immediate cause of the trial and execution of Charles I, marks the turning-point in the drama of the civil war which led to the creation of the revolutionary tribunal, which, after it had pronounced Charles to be a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a public enemy, sent its royal victim to the scaffold. The negotiations between the King and the Commissioners at Newport proved that Parliament was ready to come to an accommodation with the King. The officers of the army, instigated, sad to say, by those who called themselves Christian ministers, determined to inaugurate the new Commonwealth with the blood of a victim. Hugh Peters, preaching at St. Margaret's, Westminster, upon the significant text, 'Bind your kings with chains and your nobles with fetters of iron,' called Charles in the course of his sermon the 'great Barabbas, murtherer, tyrant, and traitor.' The preacher declared that he had 'found upon a strict scrutiny that there were in the army five thousand saints no less holy than those who now conversed with God Almighty in heaven.'

He accused the Lord Mayor, aldermen, merchants of the city, and Presbyterian incumbents of the London parishes of desiring to crucify our Saviour and release Barabbas.' Clarendon says that there were many consultations among the officers about the best mode of disposing of the King; some were for deposing him, others for poison or assassination, which he fancies would have been practised if they could have prevailed on Hammond, the Governor of Carisbrooke Castle. Whatever were the crimes or errors of the military leaders, they were certainly men that abhorred this kind of guilt; they were no midnight stabbers or secret poisoners, and had courage equal to the open course which they considered essential to the preservation of their own party, and of what many of them deemed to be the cause of their country.

At this crisis Cromwell, who at the first certainly had never professed himself averse to monarchy, wavered. He made his decision, as Lord Macaulay says, 'with many struggles and misgivings, and probably not without many prayers.' Evidence of this strong conflict of feeling is found in a very long letter, dated November 25, 1648, which Cromwell addressed from Knottingley, near Pontefract, to Colonel Robert Hammond at Carisbrooke Castle. This 'remarkable' letter, with its hubbub of words, which may be read in Mr. Carlyle's Cromwell (vol. i. pp. 339, 345), shows that at any rate Cromwell was displeased with what he calls 'the ruining hypocritical agreement at Newport.' Oliver Cromwell, though undoubtedly a man of strong religious convictions, and with none of that tiger thirst of blood which filled the hearts of Hugh Peters and some of his associates, was, in the political language of the present day, an 'Opportunist,' dexterously mounting on the crest of the wave of public opinion, and holding the claims of his party above those of his country. The abdication of the King was all that was needed. At any rate his death was, in the words of the cynical French politician, worse than a crime, a blunder also. The stain of that iniquitous transaction, the King's death, will cling to the memory of that uncrowned English ruler, the Lord-Protector. 'Hammond,' as the elder D'Israeli correctly says, 'had become a more important personage than his real character would have made him,' but the assertion that he was the tool

of Cromwell and Ireton is refuted by the facts. Hammond was a man of honour, of whom Carisbrooke Castle need not be ashamed; he was not the instrument of carrying out the desires of the military party. A young colonel,' says Mr. Carlyle with a sneer, 'with such dubitations as those of Hammond will not suit in that Isle at present.' When the letter was delivered by the hand of Colonel Ewer of the 'Army Remonstrance' at Carisbrooke Castle, Hammond had vanished, having received an order from the LordGeneral and Army-Council that he should straightway repair to Windsor, being wanted at head-quarters there. Hammond, as in duty bound, immediately on the receipt of this order from the army, transmitted it to the House of Commons, by whom it was resolved that he should be required to stay in the Island, and attend his charge there until further orders; that the General be informed of this note, and an order be dispatched to the Lord Admiral to send some ships to the Isle of Wight, where he was to be in communication with Colonel Hammond, and consider himself under the commands of the Governor of the Island.

Before the arrival of these orders from the House Hammond had however left the Isle of Wight in consequence of the General's letter. The orders of 'Captain Pen,' though armed with all the authority of Parliament, had to yield to the orders of Captain Sword.' In this transaction we may hear the knell of Parliamentary government being rung, and observe the preparation for those violent proceedings which afterwards happened in the House itself, and were called Pride's Purge.' Hammond informed the Lords and Commons from Farnham that he was proceeding towards the army; and intimated to them at Bagshot that he was there under restraint. This intelligence caused an ordinance to be passed for a letter to be written to the General to acquaint him that his orders given to Colonel Ewer were contrary to the resolutions of the House and the instructions to Colonel Hammond, and desired him to recall the said order and immediately command Hammond back to the Island.'

Although Hammond had obeyed the General's instructions by hastening to head-quarters, he refused to surrender his charge to Ewer, as before his departure from the Island,