as chief, might have hoped to become what we should now call a ‘Majesty’s Ministry,’ and to execute peaceably, with their King presiding over them, what reforms had grown inevitable. A most desirable result, if a possible one; for of all men these had the least notion of revolting, or rebelling against their King!
This negotiation had been entered into, and entertained as a possibility by both parties so much is indubitable; so much and nothing more, except that it ended without result.[1] It would in our days be the easiest negotiation; but it was then an impossible one. For it meant that the King should content himself with the Name of King, and see measures the reverse of what he wished and willed take effect by his sanction. Which, in sad truth, had become a necessity for Charles I. in the England of 1641. His tendency and effort has long been the reverse of England’s; he cannot govern England, whatever he may govern! And yet to have admitted this necessity,—alas, was it not to have settled the whole Quarrel, without the eight-and-forty years of fighting, and confused bickering and oscillation, which proved to be needful first? The negotiation dropped; leaving for visible result only this appointment of St. John’s. His Majesty on that side saw no course possible for him.
Accordingly he tried it in the opposite direction, which also, on failure by this other, was very natural for him. He entered into secret tamperings with the Officers of the English Army; which, lying now in Yorkshire, ill-paid, defeated, and in neighbourhood of a Scotch Army victoriously furnished with 850l. a-day, was very apt for discontent. There arose a ‘first Army-Plot’ for delivering Strafford from the Tower; then a second Army-Plot for some equally wild achievement, tending to deliver Majesty from thraldom, and send this factious Parliament about its business. In which desperate schemes, though his Majesty strove not to commit himself beyond what was necessary, it became and still remains in-
- ↑ Whitlocke, Clarendon; see Forster’s Statesmen, ii. 150-7.
