injustice than had ever been laid to the charge of the king or his ministers. They forced the people to pay heavier taxes than had been known in England before they obliged them to provide horses and arms for the war, and even ordered that men should be pressed into their service for soldiers. When some citizens of London objected to their proceedings, they hanged them up at their own doors; and if any one wished to take no part, either for or against them, they ordered that he should be treated as an enemy.

They had encouraged fierce mobs to petition against the church, the king, and his ministers, but now that the people wanted to complain of their own unjust doings, they passed a severe law against what they called " tumultuous petitioning." The friends of the king sold their valuable things to help him, and gave him their gold and silver plate to coin into money; the parliament punished these loyal men by confiscating their estates. Those who raised troops for him were ordered to be put to death without mercy.

The clergy were treated with the most barbarous injustice. In the year 1643, a bond was drawn up called "A solemn league and covenant, for the reformation and defence of religion, the honour and happiness of the king, and the peace and safety of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland." Under pretence of advancing "the reformation of religion," "the honour of the king," and "the peace of the three kingdoms," this covenant bound men by a solemn oath, to promote to the utmost of their power the designs of the parliament; and, in particular, to overturn the English Church, in

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order that a form of doctrine, worship, and discipline, similar to those of Scotland, might be established in all the three kingdoms. The clergy were commanded to take the covenant on pain of losing their benefices; and seven thousand clergymen were turned out of their homes and livings, and deprived of everything they possessed, even to their household furniture, because they would not (and as honest men they could not) bind themselves to renounce the doctrine, government, and worship of the English Church. Those of the clergy who were only plundered and turned out of their livings, were the least ill-treated: some were so ill-used that they died in consequence; hundreds perished in jails, and others were shut up in the holds of ships.

The puritans meddled even with the private worship of families, and forbade any one to use the prayerbook in his own house, under pain of fine and imprisonment. The churches were miserably profaned by the soldiers of the parliament; they broke down the carved work, destroyed the painted windows, and tore up the monuments of the dead, that they might sell the materials. The troopers stabled their horses in the cathedrals, and sate there smoking and drinking, as if the house of God had been a tavern. In some of the churches it was no uncommon thing for a soldier to mount the pulpit and preach that it was now the duty of "the saints" to destroy all temporal govern

ments.

All this while, many battles and sieges were taking place, and thousands of Englishmen had fallen. In 1643, two of the most famous men in the kingdom were killed;—John Hampden, fighting against the

king, at Chalgrove, near Oxford; and Lord Falkland, fighting for the king, at Newbury. The war was not confined to England. A brave young man, the Marquis of Montrose, had taken arms in Scotland, and was fighting for the king against the Scottish Covenanters. But the forces of Charles grew weaker and weaker, and at Naseby, in Northamptonshire, on the 14th June, 1645, they were defeated with terrible slaughter by the parliamentary army under Fairfax. This defeat was the ruin of the king's cause. Fairfax proceeded to subdue all the west of England, and in the spring of 1646 approached Oxford.

Charles had the greatest horror of falling alive into the hands of the parliament. He determined rather to trust himself with the Scots, who had entered England to assist his rebellious subjects, and who were encamped near Newark. When he heard that Fairfax was drawing near, he fled from Oxford, and repaired to the Scottish camp. He was received with some show of respect, but found himself, in fact, a prisoner. The Scots required him to give orders that Montrose should lay down his arms, and that all the towns and castles which his friends still held for him should be surrendered to the troops of the parliament. Charles complied; Oxford, Worcester, Pendennis, and Raglan, were given up; Montrose retired to Norway. The king had no place left in all his kingdom, which he could call his own. Even his poor shelter in the Scottish camp was soon taken from him.

Although much insulted and annoyed by some of the Scots, he won greatly upon the affections of others, and the parliament began to fear that they would help

CHARLES CONFINED IN HAMPTON COURT PALACE. 187

him to regain his kingdom. They would fain have driven back their allies into their own country, but they found an easier way of getting rid of them, and at the same time, of obtaining possession of the captive king. They promised the Scottish leaders a large sum of money if they would give up the king, and go back to Scotland; and, to their lasting disgrace, the Scots betrayed their sovereign who had fled to them in the hour of his distress, and, on the 30th January, 1647, gave him up into the hands of his enemies.

During two years, Charles remained a prisoner, sometimes in the hands of the parliament, sometimes in those of the army. The parliament had begun to find out that in setting to work to destroy the authority of their king, they had raised up to themselves many masters; for their own army would no longer obey them. They would have been glad now to come to some agreement with Charles, but it was too late. Unknown to Fairfax, the commander-in-chief, Cromwell had ordered a troop of horse to take the king out of the hands of the persons whom the parliament had set to guard him, and to bring him to the head-quarters of the army in Cambridgeshire. He now took the command of the army himself, and by his orders Charles was taken from place to place, and at last to Hampton Court palace. He remained there some months, and was able to arrange a plan of escape for his second son, James, a boy of fourteen. Disguised in girl's clothes, James got safely away, and joined his elder brother and sister in Holland. The queen and her youngest child, Henrietta, were in France; and only two of the king's children, Elizabeth and Henry, remained in England.

When Charles had been for some time at Hampton Court, the soldiers, stirred up by their preacher, Hugh Peters, began to demand his blood. The king was afraid they would murder him, and contrived to get away from Hampton Court, and fly to the south coast, hoping to find there some ship which would take him abroad. But there was none, and he was forced to give himself up to Colonel Hammond, who governed the Isle of Wight for the parliament, and who was ordered by his masters to confine Charles a close prisoner in Carisbrooke Castle. There Charles spent ten dreary months, but he was always patient and cheerful, and gentle to everybody about him. He had always won the love of those who lived with him, but never so much as in these days of captivity and sorrow, when all that was faulty in his character seemed to have been purged away by the fire of affliction.

At the end of ten months the parliament again tried to make a treaty with the king, but there was one thing to which he could not consent-that those brave men who had fought for him should be counted traitors. When he heard that some of them had been shot in cold blood by order of Cromwell, he could not refrain from tears. Even if Charles had agreed to the demand of the parliament, the army did not intend that the treaty should take effect, for they were resolved that he should die. There were some members of the parliament who could not make up their minds to the murder of the king; but Cromwell soon got rid of them, by sending Colonel Pride with 500 soldiers to turn them out of the House.

There remained now but fifty members of the