It is much to be believed that if the King could have been trusted,even at this time,he might have been saved.Even Oliver Cromwell expressly said that he did believe that no man could enjoy his possessions in peace,unless the King had his rights.He was not unfriendly towards the King;he had been present when he received his children,and had been much affected by the pitiable nature of the scene;he saw the King often;he frequently walked and talked with him in the long galleries and pleasant gardens of the Palace at Hampton Court,whither he was now removed;and in all this risked something of his influence with the army.But,the King was in secret hopes of help from the Scottish people;and the moment he was encouraged to join them he began to be cool to his new friends,the army,and to tell the officers that they could not possibly do without him.At the very time,too,when he was promising to make Cromwell and Ireton noblemen,if they would help him up to his old height,he was writing to the Queen that he meant to hang them.
They both afterwards declared that they had been privately informed that such a letter would be found,on a certain evening,sewed up in a saddle which would be taken to the Blue Boar in Holborn to be sent to Dover;and that they went there,disguised as common soldiers,and sat drinking in the inn-yard until a man came with the saddle,which they ripped up with their knives,and therein found the letter.I see little reason to doubt the story.It is certain that Oliver Cromwell told one of the King's most faithful followers that the King could not be trusted,and that he would not be answerable if anything amiss were to happen to him.Still,even after that,he kept a promise he had made to the King,by letting him know that there was a plot with a certain portion of the army to seize him.I believe that,in fact,he sincerely wanted the King to escape abroad,and so to be got rid of without more trouble or danger.That Oliver himself had work enough with the army is pretty plain;for some of the troops were so mutinous against him,and against those who acted with him at this time,that he found it necessary to have one man shot at the head of his regiment to overawe the rest.
The King,when he received Oliver's warning,made his escape from Hampton Court;after some indecision and uncertainty,he went to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight.At first,he was pretty free there;but,even there,he carried on a pretended treaty with the Parliament,while he was really treating with commissioners from Scotland to send an army into England to take his part.When he broke off this treaty with the Parliament (having settled with Scotland)and was treated as a prisoner,his treatment was not changed too soon,for he had plotted to escape that very night to a ship sent by the Queen,which was lying off the island.
He was doomed to be disappointed in his hopes from Scotland.The agreement he had made with the Scottish Commissioners was not favourable enough to the religion of that country to please the Scottish clergy;and they preached against it.The consequence was,that the army raised in Scotland and sent over,was too small to do much;and that,although it was helped by a rising of the Royalists in England and by good soldiers from Ireland,it could make no head against the Parliamentary army under such men as Cromwell and Fairfax.The King's eldest son,the Prince of Wales,came over from Holland with nineteen ships (a part of the English fleet having gone over to him)to help his father;but nothing came of his voyage,and he was fain to return.The most remarkable event of this second civil war was the cruel execution by the Parliamentary General,of SIR CHARLES LUCAS and SIR GEORGE LISLE,two grand Royalist generals,who had bravely defended Colchester under every disadvantage of famine and distress for nearly three months.When Sir Charles Lucas was shot,Sir George Lisle kissed his body,and said to the soldiers who were to shoot him,'Come nearer,and make sure of me.''I warrant you,Sir George,'said one of the soldiers,'we shall hit you.''AY?'he returned with a smile,'but I have been nearer to you,my friends,many a time,and you have missed me.'
The Parliament,after being fearfully bullied by the army-who demanded to have seven members whom they disliked given up to them-had voted that they would have nothing more to do with the King.
On the conclusion,however,of this second civil war (which did not last more than six months),they appointed commissioners to treat with him.The King,then so far released again as to be allowed to live in a private house at Newport in the Isle of Wight,managed his own part of the negotiation with a sense that was admired by all who saw him,and gave up,in the end,all that was asked of him-even yielding (which he had steadily refused,so far)to the temporary abolition of the bishops,and the transfer of their church land to the Crown.Still,with his old fatal vice upon him,when his best friends joined the commissioners in beseeching him to yield all those points as the only means of saving himself from the army,he was plotting to escape from the island;he was holding correspondence with his friends and the Catholics in Ireland,though declaring that he was not;and he was writing,with his own hand,that in what he yielded he meant nothing but to get time to escape.