Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 13.djvu/170

---

Whether before leaving Cromwell planned the seizure of the king by Joyce is a more doubtful question. Hollis definitely asserts that Joyce received his orders to secure the king’s person at a meeting at Cromwell’s house on 30 May (Hollis; Maseres, Tracts, i. 246). Major Huntingdon makes a similar statement, with the addition that Joyce’s orders were only to secure the king at Holmby, not to take him thence, and that Cromwell said that if this had not been done the king would have been fetched away by order of parliament, or carried to London by his presbyterian keepers (Maseres, Tracts, i. 399). Although the evidence of Huntingdon is not free from suspicion, this statement is to some extent supported by independent contemporary evidence, and is in harmony with the circumstances of the case and the character of Cromwell. So long as it was possible he had striven to restrain the army and to mediate between it and the parliament; when that was no longer possible he took its part with vigour and decision. The effect of Cromwell’s presence at the army was immediately perceptible. Discipline and subordination were restored, and the authority of the officers superseded that of the agitators. As early as 1 July Lilburn wrote to Cromwell complaining: ‘You have robbed by your unjust subtlety and shifting tricks the honest and gallant agitators of all their power and authority, and solely laced it in a thing called a council of war’ (Jonah’s Cry, p. 9). In the council itself Fairfax was a cipher, as he himself admits, and the influence of Cromwell predominant; his adversaries spoke of him as ‘the principal wheel,’ the ‘primum mobile’ which moved the whole machine (A Copy of a Letter to be sent to Lieutenant-general Cromwell from the well affected Party in the City, 1647). Hitherto the manifestos of the army had set forth simply their grievance as soldiers; now they began to insist on their claim as citizens to demand a settlement of the peace of the kingdom and the liberties of the subject. In the letter to the city of 10 June, which Carlyle judges by the evidence of its style to be of Cromwell’s own writing, the willingness of the army to subordinate the question of their pay to the question of the settlement of the kingdom is very plainly stated, and special stress is also laid on the demand for toleration (Rushworth, vi. 554). Cromwell shared the general opinion of the army that a settlement could best be obtained by negotiation with the king. Whatever the world might judge of them, he said to Berkeley, they would be found no seekers of themselves, further than to have leave to live as subjects ought to do, and to preserve their consciences, and they thought that no men could enjoy their lives and estates quietly without the king had his rights (Maseres, Tracts, i. 360). Accordingly he exerted all his influence to render the propositions of the army acceptable to the king; and, when Charles made objections to the first draft of those proposals, introduced important alterations in the scheme for the settlement of the kingdom, which was finally made public on 1 Aug. In this Cromwell acted with the assent of the council of war; but the extreme party in the army held him specially responsible for this policy, and accused him of ‘prostituting the liberties and persons of all the people at the foot of the king’s interest’ (Wildman, Putney Projects). The same willingness to accept a compromise showed itself in the line of conduct adopted towards the parliament after the entry of the army into London. Cromwell and the council of war were satisfied with the retirement of the eleven accused members, and did not insist on their prosecution or on the complete ‘purging’ of the House of Commons, as many of their followers in the army desired (ib.) The king did not accept the proposals of the army, and definitely refused those offered him by the parliament (9 Sept. 1647). A considerable party opposed the making of any further application to the king, but after three days’ discussion (21–3 Sept.) Cromwell and Ireton succeeded in carrying a vote that fresh terms should be offered to him (Masson, Life of Milton, iii. 565; Hist. MSS. Comm. 5th Rep. 179). Cromwell’s most important intervention in the debates on the new propositions took place on the question of the duration of the presbyterian church settlement. The army leaders had expressed, in their declaration to the city, their willingness to accept the establishment of presbyterianism, and, in their proposals to the king, to submit to the retention of episcopacy; in each case they had required legal security for the toleration of dissent. What Cromwell sought now was to limit the duration of the presbyterian settlement, and, failing to fix the term at three or seven years, he succeeded in fixing as its limit the end of the parliament next after that then sitting (13 Oct., Commons’ Journals). Before the new proposals could be presented to the king, the flight of the latter to the Isle of Wight took place (11 Nov.) The charge that the king’s flight was contrived by Cromwell in order to forward his own ambitious designs is frequently made by contemporaries. It is expressed in the well-known lines of Marvell, which describe how—