Twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope
That Charles himself might chase
To Carisbrook’s narrow case,
That thence the royal actor borne
The tragic scaffold might adorn.
(Marvell, Works, ed. Grosart, i. 163.)
But the testimony of Sir John Berkeley shows clearly that the persons who worked on the king’s fears were the Scotch envoys; they instigated the flight, and reaped the fruit of it in the agreement they concluded with the king on 26 Dec. 1647. Moreover, so long as the king remained at Hampton Court he was in the charge of Colonel Whalley, Cromwell’s cousin, and throughout one of his most trusted adherents. At Carisbrook, on the other hand, the king was in the charge of Robert Hammond, a connection of Cromwell by his marriage with a daughter of John Hampden, but a man as to whose action under the great temptation of the king’s appeal to him Cromwell was painfully uncertain (Carlyle, Letter lii.) At the time the king’s flight greatly increased the difficulties of Cromwell’s position. His policy for the last few months had been based on the assumption that it was possible to arrive at a permanent settlement by treaty with the king. To secure that end he had made concessions and compromises which had created a wide-spread feeling of dissatisfaction and distrust in the ranks of the army. Rumours had been persistently circulated by royalist intriguers that Cromwell was to be made Earl of Essex, and to receive the order of the Garter, as the price of the king’s restoration, and among the levellers these slanders had been generally believed. In consequence, his influence in the army had greatly decreased, and even his life was threatened (Berkeley, Memoirs; Maseres, Tracts, i. 371).
The change in Cromwell’s policy which now took place has been explained by the theory that he was afraid of assassination, and by the story of an intercepted letter from the king to the queen (Carte, Ormonde, bk. v. § 18). It was due rather to the fact that the king’s flight, and the revelations of his intrigues with the Scots which followed, showed Cromwell on what a rotten foundation he had based his policy.
For the moment the most pressing business was the restoration of discipline in the army. In three great reviews Fairfax and Cromwell reduced the waverers to obedience (15–18 Nov. 1647), and the general entered into a solemn engagement with the soldiers for the redress of their military grievances and the reform of parliament, while the soldiers engaged to obey the orders of the general and the council of war (Old Parliamentary History, xvi. 340). Cromwell especially distinguished himself by quelling the mutiny of Colonel Lilburn’s regiment in the rendezvous at Ware; one of the mutineers was tried on the field and shot, and others arrested and reserved for future punishment (15 Nov.; Ludlow, Memoirs, ed. 1751, p. 86). On the 19th Cromwell was able to report to the commons that the arm was in a very good condition, and received the thanks of the house for his services (Rushworth, vii. 880).
During December a series of meetings of the council of the army took place at Windsor, in which dissensions were composed, reconciliations effected, and the re-establishment of union sealed by a great fast day, when Cromwell and Ireton ‘prayed very fervently and very pathetically’ (23 Dec. 1617; Cromwelliana, p. 37). As the authorised spokesman of the army, Cromwell took a leading part in the debate on the king’s rejection of the four bills which the parliament had presented to him as their ultimatum (3 Jan. 1618). ‘The army now expected,’ he said, ‘that parliament should govern and defend the kingdom by their own power and resolution, and not teach the people any longer to expect safety and government from an obstinate man whose heart God had hardened’ (Walker, History of Independency, ed. 1661, pt. i. p. 71). He added that in such a policy the army would stand by the parliament against all opposition, but if the parliament neglected to provide for their own safety and that of the kingdom the army would be forced to seek its own preservation by other means. Under the influence of this speech, and a similar one from Ireton, parliament voted that no further addresses should be made to the king, and excluded the representatives of Scotland from the committee of both kingdoms. The conviction that this course alone afforded security to the cause for which he had fought was the motive which led Cromwell thus to advocate a final rupture with the king. Had he been already aiming at supreme power, he would hardly have chosen the very moment when events had opened the widest field to ambition to begin negotiations for the marriage of his eldest son with the daughter of a private gentleman (Carlyle, Letters liii. lv.) The contribution of a thousand a (year for the recovery of Ireland from the lands which parliament had just settled on him, and the renunciation of the arrears due to him by the state, are smaller proofs of his disinterestedness (21 March 1648; Commons’ Journals, v. 513).
Cromwell’s chief occupation during the months of March and April 1648 was to
