Such hesitation, however, was with him perfectly consistent with the promptest and most determined action when the time for hesitation was at an end. On May 31, the day on which the order for seizing the artillery at Oxford was despatched from London, a meeting was held at Cromwell's house in Drury Lane, at which was present a certain Cornet Joyce, who had apparently been authorised by the Agitators to secure the artillery at Oxford, and then to proceed to Holmby to hinder the removal of the King by the Presbyterians, if not to carry him off to safer quarters. For such an action. as this, the Agitators, as they well knew, had no military authority to give, and for that authority it was useless to apply to Fairfax, who, much as he sympathised with the soldiers in their grievances, had none of the revolutionary decision required by the situation. Cromwell, whose general approbation had probably been secured beforehand, now gave the required orders, and Joyce was able to set out with the assurance that he was about to act under the orders of the Lieutenant-General.

There is reason to believe that those orders only gave authority for the removal of the King from Holmby conditionally on its appearing that he could in no other way be preserved from abduction by the Presbyterians. When on June 1 Joyce arrived at Oxford, he found that the garrison had resolved to refuse the delivery of the guns, and on the following day he marched on to Holmby with some 500 horsemen at his back. On his arrival, Graves took to flight, and the garrison of the place at once fraternised with the new-comers. In the early morning of the 3rd Joyce, followed by his men, was let in by a back door, asserting that he had come to hinder a plot "to convey the King to London without directions of the Parliament." "His mission," he further stated, was "to prevent a second war discovered by the design of some men privately to take away the King, to the end he might side with that intended army to be raised; which, if effected, would be the utter undoing of the kingdom." To this profession his actions were suitable. During the whole of the day he remained quiet, never hinting for an instant that he had any intention of doing more than preserve the King's person

against violence. In the course of the day, however, he took alarm at some rumours of an impending attack, and made up his mind, probably nothing loth, that the danger could only be met by removing the King to safer quarters. About half-past ten at night he roused Charles from his slumbers, invited him to follow him on the following morning, and, on giving assurances that no harm would follow, received the promise he required. On the morning of the 4th, as Charles stepped from the door of the house, he was confronted by Joyce and his 500 troopers. The King at once asked whether Joyce had any commission for what he was doing. "Here," replied Joyce, turning in the saddle as he spoke, and pointing to the soldiers be headed, "is my commission. It is behind me." "It is a fair commission," replied Charles, and as well written as I have seen a commission in my life: a company of handsome, proper gentlemen, as I have seen a great while." Having selected Newmarket as his place of residence, Charles not unwillingly, as it seemed, set out in this strange companionship. On that very morning, or on the previous evening, Cromwell, feeling himself no longer safe at Westminster, slipped away and rode off to join the army at Newmarket. Both Fairfax and Cromwell declared for the King's return to Holmby, no doubt considering Joyce's removal of the King to be unnecessary, and, under the circumstances, unauthorised. It was only on Charles's positive refusal to return that he was allowed to continue his journey.

It would not be long before the army would have to experience the difficulties which beset a negotiation with Charles. It had first to come to an understanding with Parliament. Before Cromwell's arrival, the Agitators had presented to Fairfax a representation of their old complaints, accompanied with a reminder to Parliament that some particular persons-the Presbyterian leaders were evidently aimed at-had been to blame. In another declaration, known as A Solemn Engagement of the Army, these complaints were more forcibly reiterated, with the addition, first of a demand for the erection of a Council of the army, composed partly of officers and partly of agitators; and secondly, of a vindication of the army from harbouring wild

schemes,"such as to the overthrow of magistracy, the suppression or hindering of Presbytery, the establishment of Independent government, or the upholding of a general licentiousness in religion under pretence of liberty of conscience." That these two clauses were added under Cromwell's in

fluence-if not by his own pen-can hardly be doubted. On the one hand, if the army was to intervene in politics, it must speak through some organ, having, as far as possible, the character of a political assembly; and, on the other hand, it must be made clear to all that its aims were as little subversive as possible. If the Presbyterians would acknowledge that their designs had met with an insuperable obstacle, and had resigned power into hands more likely to use it with prudence, the crisis might be tided over without leaving behind it more evil consequences than were necessarily connected with the intervention of an armed force.

Unhappily the Presbyterians were the most unlikely persons in the world to grasp the realities of the situation. They firmly believed, not only that their cause was just, but that the army-without a shadow of excuse-had deliberately, even before the London militia had been reorganised, plotted the seizure of the King's person, with the object of establishing anarchy in the Church and military despotism in the State. Each party, in short, was convinced that it was acting on the defensive; and, in politics, as in all other spheres of life, results are to be traced less to facts which actually exist than to the assumptions relating to those facts in the minds of the actors. Parliament actively pursued its preparations for resistance, planning the formation of the nucleus of a fresh army at Worcester, and granting permission to the City to raise cavalry as well as infantry. The soldiers were undoubtedly right in holding that nothing less than the outbreak of another civil war was impending.

Before the irrevocable step was taken, Parliament sent commissioners to persuade the army to disband on the payment of an additional £10,000. On the 10th, the commissioners finding the soldiers at a rendezvous on Triploe Heath were received by a general refusal to accept the terms till they had been examined by the new Army Council. The army then significantly marched to

OLIVER CROMWELL.

From the Painting by Robert Walker, in the collection of the Earl of Sandwich,

at Hinchingbrooke.