The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of King George the Fi | Page 4

London the earl of Southampton, Sir John Colepepper,
and William Uvedale, the bearers of a proposal, that commissioners
should be appointed on both sides, with full powers to treat of an
accommodation.[a] The two houses, assuming a tone of conscious
superiority, replied that they could receive no message from a prince
who had raised his standard against his parliament, and had pronounced
their general a traitor.[b] Charles (and his condescension may be taken
as a[c]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. August 25.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. August
27.] [Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 4]
proof of his wish to avoid hostilities) offered to withdraw his
proclamation, provided they on their part would rescind their votes
against his adherents.[a] They refused: it was their right and their duty
to denounce, and bring to justice, the enemies of the nation.[b] He
conjured them to think of the blood that would be shed, and to
remember that it would lie at their door; they retorted the charge; he
was the aggressor, and his would be the guilt.[c] With this answer
vanished every prospect of peace; both parties appealed to the sword;
and within a few weeks the flames of civil war were lighted up in every
part of the kingdom.[1]
Three-fourths of the nobility and superior gentry, led by feelings of
honour and gratitude, or by their attachment to the church, or by a
well-grounded suspicion of the designs of the leading patriots, had
ranged themselves under the royal banner. Charles felt assured of
victory, when he contemplated the birth, and wealth, and influence of
those by whom he was surrounded; but he might have discovered much
to dissipate the illusion, had he considered their habits, or been
acquainted with their real, but unavowed sentiments. They were for the
most part men of pleasure, fitter to grace a court than to endure the
rigour of military discipline, devoid of mental energy, and likely, by
their indolence and debauchery, to offer advantages to a prompt and

vigilant enemy. Ambition would induce them to aspire to office, and
commands and honours, to form cabals against their competitors, and
to distract the attention of the monarch by their importunity or their
complaints. They contained among them many who secretly
disapproved of the war,
[Footnote 1: Journals, v. 327, 328, 338, 341, 358. Clarendon, ii, 8, 16.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Sept. 6.] [Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Sept. 11.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 16.]
conceiving that it was undertaken for the sake of episcopacy,--an
institution in the fate of which they felt no interest, and others who had
already in affection enrolled themselves among the followers of the
parliament, though shame deterred them for a time from abandoning
the royal colours.[1]
There was another class of men on whose services the king might rely
with confidence,--the Catholics,--who, alarmed by the fierce
intolerance and the severe menaces of the parliament, saw that their
own safety depended on the ascendancy of the sovereign. But Charles
hesitated to avail himself of this resource. His adversaries had allured
the zealots to their party, by representing the king as the dupe of a
popish faction, which laboured to subvert the Protestant, and to
establish on its ruins the popish worship. It was in vain that he called
on them to name the members of this invisible faction, that he publicly
asserted his attachment to the reformed faith, and that, to prove his
orthodoxy, he ordered two priests to be put to death at Tyburn, before
his departure from the capital, and two others at York, soon after his
arrival in that city.[2] The houses still persisted in the charge; and in all
their votes and remonstrances attributed the measures adopted by the
king to the advice and influence of the papists
[Footnote 1: Thus Sir Edward Varney, the standard-bearer, told Hyde,
that he followed the king because honour obliged him; but the object of
the war was against his conscience, for he had no reverence for the
bishops, whose quarrel it was.--Clarendon's Life, 69. Lord Spencer
writes to his lady, "If there could be an expedient found to salve the

punctilio of honour, I would not continue here an hour."--Sidney Papers,
ii. 667.]
[Footnote 2: Thomas Reynolds and Bartholomew Roe, on Jan. 21; John
Lockwood and Edmund Caterick, on April 13.--Challoner, ii. 117,
200.]
and their adherents.[1] Aware of the impression which such reports
made on the minds of the people, he at first refused to intrust with a
commission, or even to admit into the ranks, any person, who had not
taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy; but necessity soon taught
him to accept of the services of all his subjects without distinction of
religion, and he not only granted[a] permission to the Catholics to carry
arms in their own defence, but