1648.1

PARLIAMENT UNPOPULAR.

231

"for the example of others, and to prevent the peace of the king: dom from being disturbed in this way again, that some should suffer." Fairfax, though always inclined to the side of mercy, agreed with Ireton. One, a foreigner, he reprieved; the other two, who had both broken their word of honour not to bear arms against the Parliament, were executed.

While the generals were engaged in fighting Royalists and Scots, the Presbyterians in London, taking advantage of the absence of many Independent members with the army, were doing their utmost to ruin the cause of civil and religious liberty. There were, without doubt, many members of the Parliament who would sooner have seen victory on the side of the Scots than of the Independents. In the Upper House this party was in a majority, so that when the Commons voted that all Englishmen who should abet the invaders were traitors, the Lords actually refused to concur in the vote (July 18th). A persecuting ordinance was fulminated against sectarians (p. 203). The eleven Presbyterian members were recalled to their seats (June). The Presbyterian major-general, Huntingdon, presented to Parliament a paper, modestly entitled, 'Sundry Reasons inducing him to lay down his Commission,' but really containing charges against his commander, which, in the event of the Scots' success, might have served to cost Cromwell his head. Even those Presbyterians whose feelings of nationality were too strong to suffer them to wish success to the invaders, were yet most eager to conclude a treaty with the king, and thereby sacrifice the cause for which the English armies were fighting. The vote of the 3rd of January, forbidding any addresses to be made to the king, under penalties of treason, was now rescinded (June 30th), and, after some time had passed in preliminaries, fifteen commissioners were sent to negotiate the terms of a treaty with Charles at Newport (Sept. 13th).

The Parliament had now exercised supreme power since the breaking out of the war in the year '41. Once looked upon as the saviour of the nation's liberties, it was now hated and despised. The causes of this were manifold. In the first place, however able and honest were some of its members, it had, as a body, been subjected to violence, and had sacrificed all consistency, voting one day to please the soldiers, another to please a City mob. A former Royalist member justly reproaches them with " voting

of members in and out so often; voting there shall be no more addresses to the king, and then voting that there shall—a temper something like that of Henry VIII., who advanced men in a good humour he knew not why, and ruined them again in another he knew not why."*

A second cause that brought the Parliament into disfavour with the people, was that both Houses of Parliament constantly trespassed on the liberties of the people by fining and imprisoning political offenders, under the pretence of breach of privilege, without showing legal cause or bringing the victims to trial. Yet the House of Lords, except in cases of impeachment or appeals from inferior courts, possessed an undisputed jurisdiction only over peers; while the House of Commons possessed no judicial power at all, except in disputed elections and in cases of interference with the free action of members. Lilburne had already signalized himself by attacking the encroachments thus made upon the liberties of the people. He had been committed to prison by order of the Lords (July, 1646), and it was two years before he succeeded in obtaining from the judges of the King's Bench his writ of 'habeas corpus.' It was not to be expected that in time of war a troublesome agitator should meet with other than summary treatment. Lilburne had attacked one of the two Houses under which he served, and, when imprisoned for this, had been writing pamphlets exciting the soldiers to mutiny. In such a case, a temporary suspension of the subject's right to a 'habeas corpus' was necessary and justifiable. It probably, however, did the Parliament quite as much injury as if the man had been left at liberty. A revolutionary government, though surrounded by enemies, and with none of the prestige of an old-established régime to protect it, is none the less expected to show a far greater regard to the liberties of the subject than the government it has displaced. So now crowds of sympathizing spectators thronged the court when Lilburne demanded his liberty on the ground that the Lords acted illegally in calling any but peers to the bar of their House. The judges, however, supported the jurisdiction of the Lords, and refused to grant Lilburne his release, on the ground that he had been committed by a superior court. Notwithstanding the decision of the judges, abuse of privilege was a real

"Letter of an Ejected Member" (printed 1648).

1648.]

FINANCIAL OPPRESSION.

233

blot on the administration: so was also the subservience the Parliament had shown.

There can be no doubt, however, that what ruined the government in the opinion of the country at large was the bad financial administration. The other causes touched the men who thought and the men who felt; but this weighed with the average men who did not either think much or feel much. Such men are four out of five in any community. As a rule they follow their leaders, but in England, if their pockets are once touched, they take a course of their own. These men the Parliament had alienated by bad finance. Properly administered, the revenue would have been more than sufficient to meet the expenditure. Its sources were numerous-the excise, the customs, the monthly assessment on land and goods, the compositions made by Royalists, and the seizure and sale of bishops' lands, crown lands, and the estates of those who preferred poverty and exile to having any dealings with rebels. But the machinery for collection was both oppressive and expensive. There was a bureaucracy of the worst kind, for the counties were put in the hands of committees, who levied the taxes, looked after Royalists' estates, and secured obedience to the government. It was said, indeed, that one half of the revenue was devoured by these committees and their officials. Large sums of money were lavishly granted by the Parliament to its adherents, sometimes as rewards for services, sometimes as payments of loans, borrowed at a high interest during the war. Adventurers who had joined the side of the Parliament as a paying speculation, succeeded in their object, making large fortunes either as members of Parliament or as members of county committees. Colonel Birch, a merchant of Bristol, who had abandoned his business as unprofitable, and enlisted in the Parliament's army, was granted at different times the sums of £1500, £800, and £4900, and in the year 1650 had so much spare capital that he bought bishops' lands to the value of £2000. While these liberal gifts were made, the pay of the soldiers was left in arrear. То meet the deficit, heavy extra impositions were laid on the country. Thus, in 1647, the people in many parts of Radnor, though they had already paid their six months' contribution, were required to raise an additional rate of three shillings for each foot soldier quartered amongst them. During the war Fairfax exacted from the city of Bath £90,000 in six months, in addition to twelve

months' pay, which had been previously granted. Thus, while men connected with the government grew rich, the tradespeople in garrison towns were being gradually reduced to beggary, and the country people in some places were almost starving. "Amazing," says Lilburne in one of his pamphlets, "that so many men in Parliament, and their associates elsewhere, who pride themselves as the only saints and godly men upon earth, and have large possessions of their own, can take yearly salaries: of £1000, £3000, £6000.”*

From these various causes the House of Commons was unpopular, It was also divided against itself. It contained three chief political parties. First, the Presbyterians, eager to recover their former ascendancy by making a treaty with the king; secondly, the Republicans, who aimed at getting rid of king and House of Lords; thirdly, Independents, still true to the cause of liberty of conscience: besides these were the lawyers and the waverers, who voted with the Republicans, either through dread of Presbyterian ascendancy, or because, after long enjoying the sweets of power, they were loath to see the present Parliament dissolved. Outside the Commons' House was an army of between 20,000 and 30,000 men, at this time the real power in the land. The officers' views of settlement differed from those of the Republicans principally in the following point, that while the Republicans wished the army ic act as an obedient servant in establishing their Republican ideal, the officers cared little about the form of the civil power as long as it carried out their own views of reform. The two parties, however, were closely allied, and, in fact, intermingled. A standing army had never before been known in England, and was as little loved by the people as the perpetual Parliament itself. Thus the officers, unable to rule in their own names, hoped to rule by coalescing with the Republicans. The Republicans, in their anxiety to found their own form of government, mistook the character and aims of their only and necessary supporters. The ranks of the army were really filled with sectarians and Levellers. The reforms these demanded were not theoretical, but practical and popular-the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the lessening of lawyers' fees, an adjustment of seats to population, the meeting of new parliaments every year, and the reform of the Church.

* Memoirs of Col. Birch, 68, 96, 152, 236; Whitelock, Mem; Hollis, Memoirs; Fundamental Liberties of England vindicated,' in King's Tracts.

1648.]

NEGOTIATIONS AT NEWPORT.

235

A Leveller has given us a picture of a meeting of officers, Republicans, Independents, and some of his own party, held during the autumn months, while the Presbyterians were treating with the king. "We intend," said the officers, "to cut off the king's head, and purge, if not dissolve, the Parliament." "We know," replied Lilburne, as the spokesman of the Levellers, "that the king is a bad man, but the army deceived us last year, and is not to be trusted. It is our interest to keep up one tyrant against the other, until we can know which tyrant will give more freedom. For we do not wish the government to develop into the wills and swords of the army, and we [be] dealt with as the slavish peasants of France, who can call nothing their own. An agreement must be drawn up before anything else is done." "There is no time," objected an officer; "the treaty between the king and the Parliament will be concluded, and then you will be destroyed as well as we." "We must dissolve the Parliament," said Ireton for the officers, "for how else are we to get rid of it? It will never dissolve itself." On the other hand, Republican and Independent members of the House opposed a dissolution, thinking a purge of their Presbyterian companions a far more desirable remedy, and by no means objecting to concentrating all civil power in their own hands.

When such were the counsels of the men in power, the negotiations begun at Newport in September appear little better than a farce. There Charles was himself receiving, disputing, and answering the propositions of the Parliament, which were the same as those offered at Newcastle. Two of the commissioners on their knees implored him to waste no time, but to grant on the first day all that he could on the last. It probably mattered less than they thought whether he yielded on the first or last day, for where in either case was to be found the means to resist the will of the army, which was opposed to all compromise? At last, after protracting the negotiations over six weeks, Charles agreed to grant to Parliament the command of the militia and the government of Ireland for twenty years; to suspend the power of bishops for three years, until a form of Church government should be agreed upon by himself and the two Houses; and to allow seven of his friends to be excepted from pardon. How far, however, he was sincere in making these concessions may be judged from his own letters. "Be not startled," he wrote to Ormond