Hotham caused the gates to be shut and the bridges drawn up, and speaking from the walls asserted that he could not admit the king without breach of the trust reposed in him by parliament (Old Parliamentary History, x. 472). The king then demanded Hotham's exemplary punishment, and declared him a traitor, and the parliament answered that Hotham had done nothing but in obedience to their commands, and that the declaring him a traitor was ‘a high breach of privilege of parliament’ (Clarendon, Rebellion, v. 88–95; Declaration of Parliament, 28 April 1642; Rushworth, iv. 565–71). While the constitutional controversy was being vigorously discussed, intrigue seemed likely to succeed where force had failed. In May Hotham detected a conspiracy to corrupt his officers to open the gates to the king (ib. pp. 599–601). In June Lord Digby, who had been accidentally made prisoner and brought into Hull, endeavoured to seduce Hotham himself. He persuaded him that by delivering up Hull to the king he might at once prevent a civil war and gain riches and honour for himself, and Hotham was so far won over that he released Digby and promised that ‘if the king would come before the town though but with one regiment, and plant his cannon against it and make but one shot, he should think he had discharged his trust to the parliament as far as he ought to do, and that he would then immediately deliver up the town’ (Clarendon, Rebellion, v. 432–7; Rushworth, v. 799). Relying on this promise the king, with an army of two thousand or three thousand men, came to Beverley on 7 July and beleaguered Hull. Hotham, however, who had now repented of his promise, flooded the country round, made two successful sallies, and forced the king to raise the siege (July, Rushworth, iv. 610).
There is little doubt that Hotham was really anxious for an accommodation between king and parliament. With the religious aims of the puritans he had no sympathy, though eager to avail himself of the opportunity of enriching his family with sequestrated livings (Mercurius Aulicus, 16 April 1643). According to his kinsman, Sir Hugh Cholmley, Hotham ‘was a man that loved liberty, which was an occasion to make him join at first with the puritan party, to whom after he became nearer linked, merely for his own interest and security, for in more than concerned the civil liberty he did not approve of their ways’ (Clarendon State Papers, ii. 185). Shortly before the battle of Edgehill, Hotham wrote to Lenthall and other parliamentary leaders urging them to use their interest to bring about an agreement at once, ‘for if the sword were once drawn it would be with us as it was with the Romans in the time of Cæsar and Pompey, when 'twas said whoever had the better the Roman liberty was sure to have the worst’ (Rushworth, v. 275; cf. Mercurius Aulicus, 14 Jan. 1643). His dissensions with Fairfax, his constant appeals for money, and other signs of discontent, are frequently mentioned in the royalist papers during the spring of 1643 (ib. 7, 8, 24 Feb. 1643). Nevertheless, when Cholmley deserted the cause of the parliament for that of the king, Hotham remained staunch, and recovered Scarborough 31 March (A True and Exact Relation of the Proceedings of Sir Hugh Cholmley's Revolt, with the Regaining of Scarborough Castle by the care of Sir John Hotham, 1643; Rushworth, v. 265). By the end of April, however, he was in correspondence with the Earl of Newcastle concerning the terms on which a settlement might be brought about. He complained bitterly of the failure of the treaty at Oxford. ‘If those of the cabinet council had advised his majesty to have offered reason to the parliament, I should with my life and fortunes more willingly have served him than ever I did any action in my life’ (Sanford, Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion, p. 554). While Sir John Hotham still negotiated, the arrest of his son obliged him to act, but before he could admit the royalist forces, Thomas Raikes, the mayor of Hull, and Sir Matthew Boynton, Hotham's brother-in-law, seized the town and secured his partisans. Hotham himself got out of Hull, but was stopped at Beverley (29 June 1643) and shipped off to London (Rushworth, v. 275; Vicars, Jehovah-jireh, pp. 365–72; Wildridge, Hull Letters, pp. 33–40, 151).
Hotham was brought to the bar of the House of Commons on 7 Sept. 1643, examined, expelled from his seat, and sent to the Tower. His further punishment was delayed till after an ordinance had been passed appointing commissioners to execute martial law, 16 Aug. 1644 (Rushworth, v. 777). Under this law Hotham was brought before a court sitting at Guildhall and presided over by Sir William Waller (28 Nov. 1644), by which he was condemned to death (7 Dec. 1644). He petitioned that either his own life or that of his son might be spared, so that his whole family might not be cut off root and branch. A powerful party among the presbyterians were anxious to save his life, and the lords twice reprieved him after the day for his execution had been fixed. But Cromwell and the majority of the commons were determined to punish him, and
