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signed an agreement with them-The Engagement, as it was called-which gave him his own way in England, allowing him to put an end to all toleration of the sects, and to grant a dominant position to Presbyterians for three years only. Against the English Parliament and the army the Scots were to claim for the Crown the power over the militia, the control over the Great Seal, the bestowal of honours and offices, the choice of Privy Councillors, and the negative voice in Parliament. In support of this settlement, which included a disbandment of the army and a dissolution of Parliament, a Scottish army was to march into England. Of all the Scotsmen embarked in this scheme, the only man of marked ability was Lauderdale, and though no direct evidence exists on the subject, it seems likely enough that the Engagement was mainly, if not altogether, his work. If the suggestion be accepted that the picture by Janssen in the possession of the present Duke, in which a paper is being handed by Lauderdale to Lanark, represents the transference of the Engagement from the former to the latter, it would lend additional strength to the supposition founded on the relative intellectual powers of the two men. However this may be, it is certain that two days after the signature of The Engagement, Charles rejected the Four Bills which had been laid before him by the English Parliament, thus showing his own belief that it was

no longer needful for him to keep up even the semblance of an understanding with the Houses at Westminster.

That the result of a successful Scottish invasion would be to restore Charles to the throne on the old conditions, and to sweep away everything for which any English party had struggled, can hardly be doubted. It is true that The Engagement was buried in the garden of Carisbrooke Castle, and that not a word of its contents reached any English ears. Yet from the rejection of the Four Bills, following on the visit of the Scottish Commissioners to Carisbrooke, it was evident that some dangerous project was on foot, and even those who had welcomed a Scottish army in 1643, when it invaded England at their bidding, were likely to be scandalised at the intervention of another Scottish army in opposition to themselves. To Cromwell and to the soldiers of every grade, the prospect of seeing those objects for which they had shed their blood wrenched from them by a Scottish invasion, was peculiarly offensive. In the army all quarrels were hushed and all offences pardoned in face of the obvious danger. What was more, the leading officers assured Parliament that the army might be relied upon against the invaders. The extreme Levellers indeed continued to regard Cromwell as a time-server and a hypocrite, and some even of those who were ready to accept his co-operation

were somewhat suspicious. "If you prove not an honest man," said Hazlerigg to him, "I will never trust a fellow with a great nose for your sake."

Under the circumstances Charles's Royalist friends were sent away from Carisbrooke, and he himself, after a futile attempt to escape, treated as a prisoner under lock and key. A vote that no further addresses should be made to the King passed the Commons. For some time the Lords refused their concurrence, and it was only on a threat of the intervention of the army that they gave way. After the struggle was at an end, two regiments occupied Whitehall and the Mews. The supremacy of the army in the State was growing more pronounced as each political difficulty

arose.

There are good reasons for believing that before the end of January, 1648, Cromwell, to whom the interference of the army in politics was almost as objectionable as the establishment of a democracy on abstract principles, proposed to transfer the Crown from Charles to the Prince of Wales; preserving the office whilst changing the persons. No proposal could have been more statesmanlike; but, unhappily, it was not possible to carry it into effect. The whole of the Royal family was too exasperated against the enemies of its head to lend itself to such a transaction. There can be no doubt that Cromwell had, by this time, abandoned all thought of looking to Charles as the basis of the political settlement he desired. About

the end of February a letter from Charles to the Queen was intercepted which convinced those into whose hands it fell that the writer was preparing to take the aggressive against his opponents. Early in February Cromwell was found amongst the supporters of a Parliamentary declaration intended to uphold the vote of No Addresses, in which Charles's misdemeanours were set forth at length, somewhat in the fashion of the Grand Remonstrance. His attempt to bring into England Germans, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Lorrainers, and Danes as well as Irishmen was one of the principal counts against him. Cromwell is even said to have 'made a severe invective against monarchical government,' though it is probable that his argument was directed less against a hereditary chief-magistracy bound by constitutional limitations than against a system under which the King retained the ultimate decision of all questions in his own hands. At all events, he refused to commit himself absolutely to Republicanism, thereby exasperating those who, like Marten, and even his own bosom friend-the younger Vane-had come to the conclusion that, in the England of that day, a Republic was the only alternative to an absolute monarchy.

It was about this time that a meeting took place, the proceedings at which were recorded by Edmund Ludlow, himself a Republican or Commonwealth'sman-to use the term in use amongst contemporaries.

Anxious to bring men of different opinions into line against Charles, Cromwell gave a dinner to the leaders of the various parties, after which a conference was held in which, according to Ludlow, Cromwell and his friends 'kept themselves in the clouds, and would not declare their judgments either for a monarchical, aristocratical or democratical government, maintaining that any of them might be good in themselves, or for us according as Providence should direct us'. The old difference of opinion between the men of practice and the men of theory was, on this occasion, aggravated by the fact that many theoretical upholders of a Commonwealth drew the very practical conclusion that not only were Charles's subjects absolved from their allegiance, but that it was the duty of Parliament to call the King to account for the blood that had been shed in England in consequence of his misdeeds. The conference begun in the interests of peace bade fair to lead to open division, and Cromwell, to silence angry vituperation, flung a cushion at Ludlow's head and ran downstairs. Ludlow in his turn threw the cushion back at Cromwell, and, as he proudly boasted, 'made him hasten down faster than he desired'. rough piece of horseplay, it at all events served its purpose in quieting a strife which, every minute that it lasted, was doing injury to the cause which Cromwell desired to serve.

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