Scottish colony in Ulster. Murders, and atrocities worse than ordinary murder, were committed in the North of Ireland. At Portadown the victims were driven into a river and drowned. Women were stripped naked and turned into the wintry air to die of cold and starvation, and children were slaughtered as ruthlessly as fullgrown men. The lowest estimate of the destruction which reached England raised the number of victims to 30,000, and, though this was doubtless an immensely exaggerated reckoning, the actual number of victims must have reached to some thousands. In England a bitter cry for vengeance went up, and with that cry was mingled distrust of the king. It was felt to be necessary to send an army into Ireland, and, if the army was to go under the king's orders, there was nothing to prevent him using it-after Ireland had been subdued against the English Parliament. 5. The Grand Remonstrance. 1641. The perception of this danger led the Commons to draw up a statement of their case, known as the Grand Remonstrance. They began with a long indictment of all Charles's errors from the beginning of his reign, and, though the statements were undoubtedly exaggerated, they were adopted by the whole House. When, however, it came to the proposal of remedies, there was a great division amongst the members. The party led by Pym and Hampden, by which the Remonstrance had been drawn up, asked for the appointment of ministers responsible to Parliament, and for the reference of Church matters to an Assembly of divines nominated by Parliament. The party led by Hyde and Falkland saw that the granting of these demands would be tantamount to the erection of the sovereignty of Parliament in Church and State; and, as they feared that this in turn would lead to the establishment of Presbyterian despotism, they preferred to imagine that it was still possible to make Charles a constitutional sovereign. On November 23 there was a stormy debate, and the division was not taken till after midnight. A small majority of eleven declared against the king. The majority then proposed to print the Remonstrance for the purpose of circulating it among the people. The minority protested, and, as a protest was unprecedented in the House of Commons, a wild uproar ensued. Members snatched at their swords, and it needed all Hampden's persuasive pleadings to quiet the tumult. 6. The King's Return. 1641.-Charles had at last got a party on his side. When, on November 25, he returned to London, he announced that he intended to govern according to the laws, and 1641-1642 THE FIVE MEMBERS 535 would maintain the 'Protestant religion as it had been established in the times of Elizabeth and his father.' He was at once greeted with enthusiasm in the streets, and felt himself strong enough to refuse to comply with the request of the Remonstrance. If only he could have kept quiet, he would probably, before long, have had a majority, even in the House of Commons, on his side. It was, however, difficult for Charles to be patient. He was kept short of money by the Commons, and he had not the art of conciliating opponents. On December 23 he appointed Lunsford, a debauched ruffian, Lieutenant of the Tower, and the opponents of the Court naturally saw in this unwarrantable proceeding a determination to use force against themselves. On December 26 they obtained Lunsford's dismissal, but on the following day they heard that the rebellion in Ireland was spreading, and the increased necessity of providing an army for Ireland impressed on them once more the danger of placing under the orders of the king forces which he might use against themselves. 7. The Impeachment of the Bishops. 1641.-In order to make sure that the House of Lords would be on their side in the time of danger which was approaching, the Commons and their supporters called out for the exclusion of the bishops and the Roman Catholic peers from their seats in Parliament. A mob gathered at Westminster, shouting, No bishops! No Popish lords! The king gathered a number of disbanded officers at Whitehall for his protection, and these officers sallied forth beating and chasing the mob Another day Williams, Archbishop of York, having been hustled by the crowd, he and eleven other bishops sent to the Lords a protest that anything done by the House of Lords in their absence would be null and void. The Peers, who had hitherto supported the king, were offended, and, for a time, made common cause with the other House against him; whilst the Commons impeached as traitors the twelve bishops who had signed the protest, wanting, not to punish them, but merely to get rid of their votes. 8. The Impeachment of the Five Members. 1642.-Charles, on his part, was exasperated, and fancied that he could strike a blow which his opponents would be unable to parry. He knew that the most active of the leaders of the opposition, Lord Kimbolton in the House of Lords, and Pym, Hampden, Hazlerigg, Holles, and Strode in the Commons, had negotiated with the Scots before they invaded England in 1640, and he believed that they had actually invited them to enter the kingdom in arms. If this was true, they had legally been guilty of treason, and on January 3, 1642, Charles ordered the Attorney-General to impeach them as traitors. Doubts were afterwards raised whether the king had a right to impeach, but Charles does not seem to have doubted at the time that he was acting according to law. 9. The Attempt on the Five Members. 1642.--As the Com. mons showed signs of an intention to shelter these five members from arrest, Charles resolved to seize them himself. On the 4th of January, followed by about 500 armed men, he betook himself to the House of Commons. Leaving his followers outside, he told the House that he had come to arrest five traitors. As they had already left the House and were on their way to the city, he looked round for them in vain, and asked Lenthall, the Speaker, where they were. May it please your Majesty," answered Lenthall, kneeling before him, "I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place, but as this House is pleased to direct me." Charles eagerly looked round for his enemies. "The birds are flown," he exclaimed, when he failed to descry them. He had missed his prey, and, as he moved away, shouts of "Privilege! privilege!" were raised from the benches on either side. 66 10. The Commons in the City. 1642. The Commons, believing that the king wanted, not to try a legal question, but to intimidate the House by the removal of its leaders, took refuge in the City. The City, which had welcomed Charles in November, when it was thought that he was come to maintain order according to law, now declared for the Commons. On January 10 Lord Kimbolton and the five members were brought back in triumph to Westminster by the citizens. Charles had already left Whitehall, never to return till the day on which he was brought back to be tried for his life. II. The Struggle for the Militia. 1642.-There was little doubt that if Charles could find enough support, the questions at issue would have to be decided by arms. To gain time, he consented to a Bill excluding the bishops from their seats in the House of Lords, and he then sent the queen abroad to pawn or sell the Crown jewels and to buy arms and gunpowder with the money. He turned his own course to the north. A struggle arose between him and the Houses as to the command of the militia. There was no standing army in England, but the men of military age were mustered every year in each county, the fittest of them being selected to be drilled for a short time, at the expiration of which they were sent home to pursue their ordinary avocations. These drilled men were liable to be called out to defend their 1642-1643 EDGEHILL 537 county against riots or invasion, and when they were together were formed into regiments called trained bands. All the trained bands in the country were spoken of as the militia. The Houses asked Charles to place the militia under officers of their choosing. "Not for an hour," replied Charles; "it is a thing with which I would not trust my wife and children." The feeling on both sides grew more bitter; Charles, after taking up his quarters at York, rode to Hull, where there was a magazine of arms of which he wished to possess himself. Sir John Hotham, the Parliamentary commander, shut the gates in his face. Both Charles and the Parliament began to gather troops. The Parliament appointed the Earl of Essex, the son of Elizabeth's favourite, a steady, honourable man, without a spark of genius, as their general. On August 22, 1642, Charles set up his standard at Nottingham as a sign of war. - 12. Edgehill and Turnham Green. 1642. The richest part of England-the south-east-took, on the whole, the side of the Parliament; the poorer and more rugged north-west took, on the whole, the side of the king. The greater part of the gentry were cavaliers or partisans of the king; the greater part of the middle class in the towns were partisans of the Parliament, often called Roundheads in derision, because some of the Puritans cropped their hair short. After a successful skirmish at Powick Bridge Charles pushed on towards London, hoping to end the war at a blow. On October 23 the first battle was fought at Edgehill. The king's nephew, Prince Rupert, son of Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, commanded his cavalry. With a vigorous charge he drove before him the Parliamentary horse in headlong flight; but he did not pull up in time, and when he returned from the pursuit he found that the royalist infantry had been severely handled, and that it was too late to complete the victory which he had hoped to win. The fruits of victory, however, fell to the king. The cautious Essex drew back and Charles pushed on for London, reaching Brentford on November 12. That he did not enter London as a conqueror was owing to the resistance of the London trained bands, the citizen-soldiery of the capital. On the 13th they barred Charles's way at Turnham Green. The king hesitated to attack, and drew back to Oxford. He was never to have such another chance again. 13. The King's Plan of Campaign. 1643.--Charles's hopes of succeeding better in 1643 were based on a plan for overwhelming London with superior force. He made Oxford the headquarters of his own army, and he had a second army under Sir Ralph Hopton in Cornwall, and a third army under the Earl of Newcastle in Yorkshire. His scheme was, that whilst he himself attacked London in front, Hopton should advance through the southern counties into Kent, and Newcastle through the eastern counties into Essex. Hopton and Newcastle would then be able to seize the banks on either side of the Thames below London, and thus to interrupt the commerce of the city, without which it would be impossible for it to hold out long. 14. Royalist Successes. 1643.-The weak point in Charles's plan was that his three armies were far apart, and that the Earl of Essex, now stationed in London, might fall upon his main army before Newcastle and Hopton could come to its aid. Towards the end of April, Essex besieged and took Reading, but his troops melted away from disease, and he did not advance against Oxford till June, when his cautious leadership was not likely to effect anything decisive. In the meanwhile the king's party was gaining the upper hand elsewhere. On May 16 Hopton completely defeated the Parliamentarians at Stratton in Cornwall, and was then ready to march eastwards. On June 18 Hampden received a mortal wound in a skirmish at Chalgrove Field. On July 5 Hopton got the better of one of the most energetic of the Parliamentary generals, Sir William Waller, on Lansdown, near Bath, and on July 13 his army thoroughly overthrew the same commander at Roundway Down, near Devizes. On July 26 Bristol was stormed by Rupert. Hopton now hoped to be able to push on towards Kent without difficulty. In the north, too, the king's cause was prospering On June 30, Newcastle defeated the Parliamentarians, Lord Fairfax and his son, Sir Thomas Fairfax, at Adwalton Moor, close to Brad. ford. He, too, hoped to be able to push on southwards. It seemed as if the king's plan would be carried out before the end of the summer, and that London would be starved into surrender. 15. The Siege of Gloucester. 1643.-Charles, however, failed to accomplish his design, mainly because the armies of Hopton. and Newcastle were formed for the most part of recruits, levied respectively in the west and in the north of England, who cared more for the safety of their own property and families than for the king's cause. In the west, Plymouth, and in the north, Hull, were still garrisoned by the Parliament. Hopton's men were, therefore, unwilling to go far from their homes in Cornwall as long as their fields were liable to be ravaged by the garrison of Plymouth, and in the same way, Newcastle's men would not go far from Yorkshire as long as their fields were liable to be ravaged by the |