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which they had come so far to fight against. The payments so grudgingly made to the Scots were simply what was due to them for their military services and promised by the treaty; the matter was arranged five months before the king was delivered to the English commissioners, on January 30, 1647.1 The Scottish auxiliaries then gave up the fortresses of Newcastle, Berwick, and Carlisle, and marched back to their own country. Before giving up the king it was stipulated that "he should be conducted to Holdenby House, there to remain till he gave satisfaction to both kingdoms in the propositions of peace, and that in the meantime there shall be no harm, prejudice, injury, or violence done to his royal person-that there shall be no change of government other than that has been for three years preceding-and that his posterity shall in no wise be prejudiced in their lawful succession to the throne and government of these kingdoms."

To the representations of the Scottish commissioners the parliament had retorted: "Let not your expressions obliquely infer that the parliament of England will not do what becometh them to the king, since all the world doth know that this kingdom hath in all times showed as great affection to their kings as any other nation." How could the Scots have foreseen that within three years a victorious faction would have brought the king to the block?

1 David Lesley, in reply to complaints against the Scottish soldiers of plundering, states that sometimes for the space of seven or eight months together they had received no pay.-Letter dated Kelham, February 22, 1645, Parliamentary History, vol. xiv., p. 270. Holles, who was teller in almost every division about the settlement with the Scots, observes that "the question was how the soldiers would be disposed to march out who had not been paid for so many months."-Memoirs, pp.

CHAPTER XVI

Discord between the Presbyterians and the Independents. Growth of Republican Ideas. Vane on a Change of Government. Charles's Intrigues. Discontent in the Army. The King removed by Joyce. Views of Fairfax, Ireton, and Cromwell. The King escapes from Hampton Court. The New Civil War. Risings in England. Mutiny in the Fleet. Hamilton's Invasion of England. Cromwell's

visit to Edinburgh.

The Treaty of the Isle of Wight. Great Debate between the Monarchists and Republicans. Vane's Speech. The Vote. Pride's Purge. The King's Trial.

In the debates and negotiations about the king, the parliament was divided into two parties. The peers and most of the Presbyterians in the Lower House, with the Scottish commissioners, were so anxious to have the king back that they were willing to accept guarantees and to make concessions, which the other party looked upon as an unworthy surrender to the vanquished. Having lost all faith in the honour of the Stuart, and seeing none to put in his place, it began to dawn upon the minds of some bold thinkers. that a monarch might be dispensed with. Mr Hyde has recorded with abhorrence that in the early days of the Long Parliament, conversing with Henry Marten, he pressed him to say what he desired. To which that heathen roundly answered: "I do not think one man wise enough to govern us all." Henry

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Marten, as already noticed, was imprisoned for some days for an outspoken remark about royalty in parliament. He had none of the austerity of the Puritans ; his private life caused scandal; but he was honest and kind-hearted, and gifted with a genial wit which sometimes served to soften the harshness of the zealous religionists with whom he took part. His republican sentiments were fostered by a study of the great historians and orators of antiquity. In England men had been so nursed in the traditional sentiment of loyalty, so wedded to inveterate precedent and custom, that they could scarcely conceive of a nation without a king. Eschylus, describing the triumph of the Athenians over the hosts of Asia, makes the Persian queen to ask: "What leader is over them and commands their army?" to which the chorus replies: "They are not called the slaves or the subjects of any man.' How then," asks Atossa, "could they withstand the invasion of enemies?" a question which an Asiatic might well put, and a European could alone answer.

Even during the Dark Ages the tradition of liberty did not die out. Wherever feudal or monarchical tyranny was loosened, men revived the ideas of self-government; municipalities passed into republics in Italy and in the Hanse town. The United Provinces of the Netherlands, after vainly seeking a monarch in England and France, had flourished under a commonwealth, which in illustrious deeds already rivalled the republic of Venice, the oldest state in Europe, and Switzerland, whose valour had been admired for three hundred years.

1 Persai, 1. 241.

The renewed study of the classics at the Renaissance nourished ideas of liberty hostile to the traditions of feudal supremacy. Hobbes, a framer of arguments for despotism, assigns such influence to the teaching of Aristotle and Cicero "of controlling the actions of sovereigns, and again of controlling these controllers, that there was never anything so dearly bought as these western parts have bought the learning of the Greek and Latin tongues." We may use the observation of the sophist of Malmesbury, leaving his arguments to the oblivion of failures.

Henry Vane had not started with a theory of republican government to be fitted upon England. Nevertheless the force of events had led him to recognise, that under the existing conditions, republican institutions were the surest means to gain for his country an equitable government, the freedom of thought, freedom of the press, and immunity from interference in matters of faith and conscience, which he so heartily desired. It is recorded that Ulfilas, in translating the scriptures, missed out the books of Samuel and Kings for fear that they might prove stimulants to the turbulent independence of the Goths; and while men like Harry Marten, Algernon Sydney, and John Milton, could light the republican fires at the ancient altars of liberty, men of lesser education read in the Old Testament the retribution which fell upon wicked kings. The religious fervour of the times stirred the lower ranks of the people who had not before thought of political questions.

The misery of those four years' war feebly disturbs us; indeed, some may feel a pleasurable emotion in

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the record of battles bravely fought and won; but to those who felt, not fancied, the myriad miseries of the struggle, resentments were aroused hard to quell when thinking of friends changed into enemies, houses burned or sacked, homesteads and towns plundered, women outraged, families ruined. Not less than 40,000 men had lost their lives, who, but for the lust of power of one man, might have been rejoicing in their youth and strength.

It was not to be expected that those who took sides against the king should look upon the monarchy as when the war began. The tone of the victorious party was harsher. They could now save taxing their friends by levying heavy fines and compositions on their vanquished antagonists.

Vane was the leader of the Independents, the most powerful man in the parliament; Cromwell, now back to the House with a halo of glory from the fights he had gained, and the castles he had stormed, had the support of the sectaries in the army. Both were anxious to get rid of the absurd position of using the king's name to levy war against him. The parliament had proclaimed that they were making war to remove the king's wicked counsellors; but the counsellors were now removed, and the king was undeniably more perverse than any of them. of them. Vane's views about a radical change of government are thus stated by himself, in his Essay upon Government: "Ancient foundations, when once they become destructive to those very ends for which they were first ordained, and prove hindrances to the good and enjoyment of human societies, to the true worship of God, and the safety of the people, are for their sakes, and upon the