and Lenthall, the speakers, with the principal members of the Independent party, and such others from the ranks of their opponents as declined irrevocably to compromise themselves with the stronger faction, withdrew to seck the protection of the army.

Fairfax had, by this time, reached Hounslow on his second approach towards the capital; and as the fugitive senators passed along the lines upon the heath, they were welcomed by the troops with loud gratulations. In the evening the whole number, consisting of eight peers and fifty-eight commoners, besides the two speakers, assembled in council at Sion House, and being joined by Fairfax, Cromwell, and the other generalofficers, entered into a solemn obligation "to live and die with the army." Here they were also joined by a sergeant-at-arms, and by others of the Independent side; who reported that the two houses, finding themselves deserted by their speakers, had elected others in their room, and openly adopted the views of the Presbyterians and the city; that the extorted vote, inviting the king to Westminster, had been confirmed; that every effort was made by raising and disciplining troops, and otherwise, to provide for the defence of the city; and that many royalists, making use of the king's name, were openly associated with the Presbyterians. The importance of this last particular, in that doubtful conjuncture, could not escape the discerning mind of Cromwell. In whatever degree the king might have entitled himself to the lieutenant-general's indignation by his late behaviour, it was now no season to change his own policy or bearing. At this crisis he might be more than ever necessary. Cromwell, therefore, instantly despatched an express to the royal captive, entreating him that he would at least soften his rejection of the army's desires, by addressing a conciliatory letter to the general, in which he should disavow any connexion with the proceedings in the city, and should farther throw out some general expressions of satisfaction at the treatment he had met with in the army, and of regret that he could not directly sanction their proposals.

A letter was accordingly drawn up; but Charles hesitated, and refused his signature until it had been three or four times debated. A whole day had been thus lost, when at length Berkley and Ashburnham were dismissed with it in charge. On the road they were met by messengers from Cromwell, urging despatch. They hastened; but it was too late. The city, by turns, assuming an attitude of defiance, and again crouching in the most abject terror, had finally sent a deputation with offers of submission, whose arrival at Sion House preceded the appearance of the royal letter. The gates of London were already thrown open, the forts on the line of communication were given up, Southwark occupied by a division under Rainsborough. Charles's useless messengers found neither Cromwell nor Ireton at hand to read the letter; all the grace, and therefore the utility, of which, had been lost by its unhappy delay. Those great officers ("grandces of the army," as they presently began to be styled) were, at that moment, occupied with greater affairs than the king's. The following day witnessed the triumphant entry of the Independents into the capital. Fairfax on his charger, preceded by Hammond's regiment of foot, with Rich's and Cromwell's regiments of cavalry, and surrounded by his bodyguards and a crowd of gentlemen, headed the procession. A train of carriages succeeded, in which were the speakers and the seceding members, now regarded as constituting

exclusively the parliament. The long line was closed by Tomlinson's regiment of horse. In this order the victorious march was continued to Westminster, the conquerors, as they passed through Hyde Park, receiving the forced congratulations of the lord mayor and aldermen, and at Charing Cross the deprecatory submission of the common-council. In Palace Yard the general alighted, and retired into a private house, while the Lords and Commons proceeded to their respective places of assembly.

The Houses being assembled, Fairfax was invited to attend. Seated within the bar, first of the Peers, then of the Commons, he received the formal submission of the parliament, in two resolutions assented to with breathless haste. By the first, the Houses passed an ordinance appointing Fairfax governor of the Tower of London; the second conveyed to him the thanks of the parliament for "restoring them to their privileges.” After the general had retired, the Presbyterians gathered courage to make some use of the numerical majority which they could still command in the Commons. They, indeed, allowed the lord mayor, one of the sheriffs, and four aldermen, with some officers of the militia, to be sent prisoners to the Tower, and suffered seven out of eight peers who had continued to sit during the absence of the speakers, to be impeached; but a resolution to annul all the votes passed in that interval, viz. from July 26th to August 7th, was through their exertions rejected; and a vote only to repeal them substituted in its place. The eleven members, who had re-appeared during the tumults, now fled into voluntary exile. On the following day, the whole army marched through London, and was distributed about the neighbouring villages, in Surrey and Kent. As it had now no intention either to disband or to remove from the vicinity of the metropolis, the king's palace at Hampton Court was chosen for his residence; and on the 24th day of August he was conducted thither from Oatlands (then, likewise, a magnificent royal mansion), where he had passed those last ten days, in which, with just so much regard to the monarch's rights as comported with their own interests, prejudices, and passions, the two parties had brought to an issue their quarrel for the possession of his person and his authority.

THE reception of the army at London was to decide its treatment of the king and his cause. Had Cromwell met with determined opposition from the parliament and the citizens, it is probable that by affecting a frank agreement with Charles, on his own terms, he would have withdrawn the royalists from the presbyterian ranks, and, at the same time, enlisted the loyal sympathies of the people on his side. But a measure so discouraging to the secret yearnings of his ambition, was rendered superfluous by the cowardice and disunion of his opponents. He was relieved from the necessity of shutting up those vast undefined personal prospects which had dawned upon his thoughts, within that "tower of strength" (for such it was still) "the king's name." Yet the time was not come, when it would be safe to discard the pretext of a contemplated or desired reconcilement ; the mask, which, though adorned with a coronet and ribbon, would, if permanently fixed, have pressed heavily upon the brow of the aspiring military magnate, policy could easily persuade him to wear for a season longer. The council of officers passed a resolution, not to recede from their proposals; and, on the king's removal to Hampton Court, its members appeared to vie with each other in attentions to the royal captive.

The period of three months passed by Charles at Hampton Court, is not unaptly said by his affectionate and lettered attendant Herbert, to have consisted of "halcyon days.” It was, at least in its commencement, a gleam—the last allowed him-of prosperity and peace. He once more found himself surrounded by the splendour, the vivacity, and the dignified observances of a court. He was waited on, without restraint, by his own servants; his chaplains publicly celebrated divine service in his chapel; the presencechamber was thronged by nobility of the highest rank. Mingled with these were the general officers of the army, the great leaders in parliament, and the principal citizens. It seemed as if an act of amnesty and oblivion had tacitly passed, and as if the king's residence near his capital, and beneath his own royal roof, had soothed the jarring heats of party, and charmed into peace the strifes of passion and self-interest. The loyalty which really survived in the bosoms of the people, was outwardly assumed, from curiosity, fashion, or policy, by those whose bosoms were unacquainted with its power. Not only were Cromwell, Ireton, and other general officers, found mixing at Charles's levees with the legitimate denizens of the court-the Richmonds, the Ormonds, the Dorsets, the Southamptons, but their families were emulous to keep up the appearance of respect. "This last week," observes the writer of a letter dated late in October, "Cromwell's, Ireton's, and Whalley's wives went to court; where Mr. Ashburnham, taking Mrs. Cromwell by the hand, and all

the rest having their peculiar servants [i. e. obsequious cavaliers], were led into the court, and feasted by them." Besides this unrestrained intercourse with all parties, the king enjoyed other liberties of greater importance to his happiness. He had frequent visits from his children; he was allowed an unrestricted correspondence with the queen and the Prince of Wales; while, in the pleasures of the chase, and other equestrian recreations, the only restraint upon his freedom was his own pledged word not furtively to quit his present place of residence. The general expectation, which these circumstances encouraged, that Charles was presently to return to his capital, and publicly reassume the functions of sovereignty, was confirmed by his frequent intercourse with Cromwell, already master of the political as well as the military power of his country. Wolsey's terracewalks and stately galleries bore witness to frequent conferences between the descendant of the ancient but unhappy Stuart line, and that coarse though gifted being, who now, with alternations of supple hypocrisy and most earnest purpose, strove to impart acceptability to his assiduous visits. That negotiations were for some weeks carried on between these two great and interesting personages, the issue of which the whole country believed would be Charles's reinstatement on the throne, is beyond dispute. On what conditions this event was to be accomplished, seems no less ambiguous than the sincerity of the negotiating parties. It is probable that the hero of Independency urged the king to yield those points which were required in the proposals of the army-the surrender of his chief prerogatives and principal friends; the concession of unlimited popular demands; universal toleration in matters of conscience. Respecting the rewards stipulated on the other side, though matter of confident rumour, we have no better authority than the gossip of female politicians, or the jealous invectives of the conclave of agitators at Putney. If these may be trusted, Cromwell professed that he would, at this time, have been content with the earldom of Essex, the garter, and the government of Ireland, for himself, and honours and emoluments in proportion for his son-in-law and eldest son.

But the part Cromwell had now to play, required the exercise of all his wonderful foresight, skill, boldness, and unmatchable dissimulation. While engaged in gaining the king, he was losing his friends, and farther exasperating his enemies in the parliament in the army, the focus of his influence, his popularity was rapidly declining. The agitators murmuringly insinuated that the whole army was to be compromised in a private bargain with the king; the officers complained that the doors of the lieutenant and commissary-generals were open to Ashburnham and Berkley, when they were closed against themselves. Charles, himself too often driven to ambiguity and indirectness, was profoundly suspicious of Cromwell's good faith, notwithstanding the most solemn asseverations both of himself and Ireton, that they were ready to peril their lives in support of the objects of the treaty. It was with a view to satisfaction on this head, that Berkley and the gentlemen of the king's bedchamber were so often to be seen at head-quarters. Cromwell entreated the king to use greater privacy in his messages. "If I am an honest man," he said, "I have spoken enough as to the sincerity of my intentions; if not, nothing is enough."

In the mean time, with the exception of an occasional murmur that the enemies of

the parliament were allowed free access to the king, and were taking advantage of it to their injury, that assembly seemed willing, in the prosecution of those disputes which their presbyterian strength enabled them still to maintain with the army, to forget his existence. At length the army's proposals were brought before the houses for their approbation, previously to their being again submitted to the king. By the exertions chiefly of the Scottish party they were set aside, and, in their stead, the Newcastle propositions, modified by some inconsiderable changes, were presented at Hampton Court. The necessity of a final decision painfully revived, in Charles's mind, the question of Cromwell's sincerity. He resolved to put him to a fresh test. A frequent messenger between Cromwell and the king was Major Huntingdon, an officer of the lieutenantgeneral's own regiment, who, in the course of this employment, had conceived a strong attachment for his majesty, and had in return obtained the royal confidence. The king, sending for Huntingdon, earnestly inquired, "Whether he, who knew Cromwell intimately, considered that he was in heart the same, as he had by his tongue so freely and frequently expressed himself to be?" This grave question staggered the major, and he besought the king to wait for his answer till the next day. That night he hastened to Putney, and at dawn the next morning applied at Cromwell's quarters for an audience. Cromwell rose from bed to receive him. He communicated his business. Cromwell then asseverated with all imaginable solemnity, that he from his heart meant to do everything in his power, as he had promised, to restore the king; imprecating maledictions on himself, his wife, and children, if he failed in his word, and protesting, that though deserted by the army, if but ten men stood by him, he would be true to the king and his cause. Huntingdon, aware of the violent measures against the king then agitated in the army, and too well acquainted with Cromwell to be easily convinced, was still so cautious as to stipulate, that should anything happen to hinder the lieutenant-general's intentions, he would give the king warning, in time to provide against the danger. Relying on these assurances, Charles no longer hesitated once more to refuse the parliament's propositions. He intimated his confidence in Cromwell and his inseparable counsellor Ireton, by submitting his answer to be altered by them as they pleased. It repeated the former statements of his inability to consent to the propositions, without violence to his conscience and his honour. It then passed, with some respectful allusions to the services and just expectations of the army, to the proposals submitted to him from that quarter, to which, he presumed, the houses of parliament were no strangers; and concluded by declaring his belief, that they "would think with him, that those proposals were much more calculated to conduce to the satisfaction of all interests, and to be the basis of a lasting peace, than the propositions now tendered." This answer was presented to the Commons on the 13th of September. It raised a violent flame in the house. The king was called an obstruction in the way of all good resolutions: he was an Ahab, and coloquintida ; and they ought to think no more of him, but proceed as if no such person existed. In levelling these acrimonious specches against the royal person and authority, none were more vehement than "the two grand impostors," as Huntingdon, on this occasion, terms Cromwell and Ireton. When this monstrous fact was reported to Charles, it