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nanters, proclaimed it an act of enormous impiety to spare those sanguinary foes, whom the God of battles had put in their power.

In England, therefore, it was necessary to seek an asylum; and Newark, one of the few strong places still held for the king, was finally selected. The vigilance of Pointz being for a moment diverted by his desire to get possession of Chester, the fugitive party were enabled to secure a day's advance. At Chirk, the king was joined by a party of Prince Rupert's cavalry from Bristol. At Bridgenorth, and again at Lichfield, he indulged a day's halt; but much of this melancholy expedition is described, by one of his attendants, as leading them "through unknown ways and passages, with many dark and late marches." A more formidable evil to the king, than darkness, cold, or hunger, was the mortification of hearing, wherever he came, of some fresh disaster by the seizure of his remaining garrisons and military posts. Charles bore all, however, with a mixture of magnanimity and good humour which recalls to mind his illustrious predecessor, the Fifth Harry, when environed with nearly the like circumstances:

"Upon his royal face there is no note

How dread a peril hath enrounded him;
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of colour
Unto the weary and all-watched night:
But freshly looks, and overbears attaint,

With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty."

Some of the king's most serious perplexities were aggravated, if not caused, by a too modest preference of other men's views to the dictates of his own quick perception and clear judgment. The fact is alluded to by his noble historian, while referring to the preference given, on this occasion, to Newark over Worcester, which had been first chosen for the king's retirement. This was attributed to the influence of Lord Digby, by whose advice Charles was at this time chiefly guided. For it was Digby who had suggested the king's severity towards Prince Rupert, after the fall of Bristol; and Worcester was not only easy of access from Oxford, whence the prince was expected to come and expostulate with his uncle, before retiring to the continent, but that garrison was under the command of Prince Maurice, who was said keenly to resent his brother's treatment. Hardly was Charles beginning to enjoy some degree of repose at Newark, when intelligence arrived that Rupert was already on his way, and had been joined by Maurice. Digby now sought to place himself beyond the reach of the storm, by persuading the king to move farther north, and even to renew his cherished design of penetrating into Scotland. In this last object he failed, in consequence of the arrival of a messenger with intelligence that Montrose had been forced to retreat into the highlands; but he obtained the same end, by getting himself placed at the head of a separate expedition. The design was suddenly broken to his officers by the king, at a rendezvous of the troops in Worksop Park. Although, he said, it was now too late for himself to march into Scotland, he nevertheless proposed that Sir Marmaduke Langdale, with the northern horse, should proceed thither to aid the struggling marquess. Willingly, your majesty," interposed Langdale,

prepared with his reply; "but on one condition. It is, that Lord Digby may command in chief, and myself under him." To the surprise of those not in the secret, Digby, a nobleman hitherto employed in none but civil affairs, frankly assented. A commission was drawn up on the spot, appointing the noble secretary general of all the forces already raised, or to be raised, for the king, north of the Trent; and he immediately began his march, at the head of 1,500 cavalry, and accompanied, besides Langdale, by the earls of Carneworth and Niddesdale, and other noblemen and gentlemen from Scotland and the north of England. The issue of this expedition, the last sent out by Charles, will presently be told we follow, for the moment, the personal fortunes of the king.

The next few days were among the most mortifying, though not the most calamitous, in the life of King Charles the First. They constituted part of that ambiguous, that tormenting period, at which those who are born to greatness, but doomed to misfortune, experience some of the worst evils of both, without enjoying the beneficial compensations of either. Already, the loss of power had marred his regal character in the view of the selfish and the base; but not yet had suffering hung its consecrating halo round that "discrowned head," nor had the contemplation of his kingly and christian patience yet forced the world to pity those unexampled misfortunes, which

"Lent his life the dignity of woe."

At Belvoir Castle, Rupert received a command from the king to proceed no farther without his majesty's orders. Next day, however, the contumacious prince came to Newark, and was met, beyond the gates, by Sir Richard Willis the governor, by Lord Gerrard, and other officers and troops; an attention which the factious governor had never shown to the king himself. Accompanied by this escort, and by a numerous party of his own officers who had attended him from Oxford, he made his way into the presence, without any of the usual ceremonies, which hitherto had been punctually observed in that fugitive court, and roughly told the king that he was come to justify his conduct. Charles replied coldly and evasively, conversed for a time with Prince Maurice, and, to avoid further discourse, retired for the night. The next day he invited the prince to make his defence, when the king declared himself satisfied that his nephew had not been guilty of treason, or disloyalty; but added, that he could not acquit him of indiscretion. Their mutual confidence was not, however, restored.

The king had resolved on an immediate return to Oxford. But, previously to his departure, he judged it essential to the security of Newark to remove from the office of governor, Sir Richard Willis, who was involved in continual disputes with the royal commissioners, and to appoint Lord Bellasis in his room. This design Charles privately intimated to Willis, in terms of earnest and affectionate regard; but, though coupled with the offer of the command of the life-guards, vacant by the death of the gallant Earl of Lichfield,—an office, says Clarendon, fit for any nobleman—the communication was received by Willis with undissembled displeasure. Rupert took up his friend's cause. As if the former intrusion had not sufficiently demonstrated into how great contempt the king's authority was fallen, the same parties, a second time, burst suddenly into the royal presence. Willis first spoke: The king, he said, had, by what he had before imparted to

him, dishonoured him in the eyes of the whole garrison. Rupert followed, asserting, that the king had resolved to deprive Willis of his office, not for any fault, but because he was his friend; to which Lord Gerrard added, that it was all a plot of Digby's, whom he would prove a traitor. Charles now rose in anger, and would have had Willis withdraw with him for more privacy, but he insolently replied "No: I have received a public injury, and expect a public satisfaction." With one voice they then exclaimed, that, finding themselves no longer trusted, they desired to have passes to go beyond the seas. "Your passes," retorted the king, with concentrated indignation, "shall be granted you; with orders not only to leave my service, but never again to make use of the swords you wear." Intimidated by the unusual tone, gesture, and language of their sovereign, the intruders withdrew. Charles was presently surrounded by the loyal cavaliers and officers in the town, who called on him to punish this outbreak of insolent disaffection, as the only way to prevent a mutiny in the town; the prince's troops being already drawn up in the market-place, whither he and his party had likewise returned. The king then armed himself, mounted his horse, and, issuing orders to the guards to charge his nephew and his adherents, if necessary, repaired to the spot. Finding the party there drawn up, as had been reported to him, he advanced, sword in hand, before his officers, and addressing the prince, said: "Nephew! for what purpose are you thus in arms?" "To defend ourselves against our enemies," replied Rupert. "I command you," continued the king, "to march out immediately to Belvoir Castle, and there stay till your passes are sent you." The prince obeyed, and presently marched off his followers. Becoming afterwards more sensible of the impropriety of their behaviour, and finding that their commissions were really taken from them, these factious cavaliers sent in a petition to the king, desiring, in terms indicative of some contrition, to be tried by a court-martial. "Having met," they observed, "to make our several grievances known, we find we have drawn upon us some misconstruction by the manner, by reason your majesty thought that appeared as a mutiny." The king remarked, that "he would not christen it, but it looked very like one." As to the demand of a court-martial, he could not, he said, submit his decisions to the judgment of any court. The prince, soon afterwards, made his submission, "acknowledging his errors ;" and, though he had actually obtained passes also from the parliament to go beyond sea, he made no immediate use of them, but, in a little time, returned to the court, and was entirely reconciled to the king. Charles, however, would not again permit Willis to come into his presence.

The king left Newark on the 3rd of November. At ten o'clock at night all the cavalry, comprising the remains of the life-guards, mixed with some broken squadrons of other regiments, in all about five hundred men, mustered in the market-place. At eleven the king mounted, put himself at the head of his guards, in the centre of the cavalcade, and issued from the gates. As the royal party passed Belvoir Castle, the commandant, Sir Gervas Lucas, came noiselessly forth with his cavaliers, and attended the king till break of day. The line of march was beset with hostile garrisons; and from Burleigh, and from Rockingham, the enemy's horse hurried out in pursuit. In the evening, the tired fugitives indulged themselves with a few hours' rest, in an obscure village. Once

more, by ten o'clock, Charles was in the saddle; he passed through Daventry as the day broke; and arriving before noon at Banbury, was met by his cavalry from Oxford, whom he had ordered there to attend him, and, under their escort, safely entered that city in the evening. "And so," writes the affectionate historian, "he finished the most tedious and grievous march that ever king was exercised in, having been almost in perpetual motion from the loss of the battle of Naseby to this hour, with such a variety of dismal accidents as must have broken the spirits of any man who had not been the most magnanimous person in the world."

192

CHAPTER XXI.

GLAMORGAN-CLOSE OF THE FIRST WAR.

EVERYTHING which the king or his friends now attempted, was sure to bear upon it the fatal marks of a failing, or utterly fallen, cause. What indiscretion planned, rashness undertook; and both seemed to labour for no other end than to supply imbecility, or ill fortune, with occasions to complete the work of ruin.

At Doncaster, Lord Digby surprised and routed a party of about 1,000 foot, lately raised in that neighbourhood for the parliament; but being himself attacked at Sherborne by Colonel Copley, who commanded a powerful detachment of the enemy's horse, he was, in turn, defeated, with the loss of a considerable number of his troops. A circumstance which greatly aggravated the calamitous result of this action, was the capture of Digby's cabinet of official correspondence; of which, as in the similar misfortune of the king at Naseby, the parliament hesitated not to take the most ungenerous advantage. Some of the papers taken related to Charles's negotiations with the Irish, and were peculiarly open to interpretations injurious to the royal character and interests. In no less than two subsequent instances, both in like manner connected with the affairs of Ireland, the same indiscretion in exposing state-documents to all the chances of war, was productive of similar prejudice to the king. About the middle of October, the titular archbishop of Tuam was killed near Sligo, when duplicates of the important negotiation then in progress were found on his person; and again, at the commencement of the following year, many letters and papers of moment, relating to the same transations, came into the possession of the parliament, by means of the capture, at Padstow, of a vessel from Ireland. Digby rallied his dispersed followers at Skipton, and continued his march through Westmoreland and Cumberland, as far as Dumfries. Unable there to obtain intelligence of Montrose, and equally unable, if he returned, to elude the vigilance of the Scottish army, he disbanded his troops near Carlisle, and transported himself and his officers to the Isle of Man there, the fugitives were hospitably entertained by the loyal Earl and heroic Countess of Derby, till they could cross over to Dublin. In Ireland a new and curious scene of this eventful drama was opened, in which Digby performed a conspicuous part.

That the king should be willing to receive aid from any quarter of his dominions, or from any class of his subjects, in the obstinate and unequal contest in which he was engaged, can surely be matter neither of surprise nor blame. The truce with the Roman Catholic insurgents in Ireland, though the reason alleged for it, on the king's part, was want of means to continue the war, was in reality designed to enable him to recall the

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