cured their pardon'. And thus Fairfax, after taking Exeter, which completed the conquest of the west, marched with his victorious army to the centre of the kingdom, and fixed his camp at Newbury. The prince of Wales, in pursuance of the king's orders, retired to Scilly, thence to Jersey; whence he went to Paris; where he joined the queen, who had fled thither from Exeter, at the time the earl of Essex conducted the parliamentary army to the west. In the other parts of England, Hereford was taken by surprise: Chester surrendered: lord Digby, who had attempted with one thousand two hundred horse to break into Scotland and join Montrose, was defeated at Sherburn in Yorkshire, by colonel Copley; his whole force was dispersed, and he himself was obliged to fly, first to the Isle of Man, thence to Ireland. News too arrived that Montrose himself, after some more successes, was at last routed; and this only remaining hope of the royal party finally extinguished. When Montrose descended into the southern counties, the covenanters, assembling their whole force, met him with a numerous army, and gave him battle, but without success, at Kilsyth". This was the most complete victory that Montrose ever obtained. The royalists put to sword six thousand of their enemies, and left the covenanters no remains of any army in Scotland. The whole kingdom was shaken with these repeated successes of Montrose; and many noblemen who secretly favoured the royal cause, now declared openly for it, when they saw a force able to support them. The marquis of Douglas, the earls of Annandale and Hartfield, the lords Fleming, Seton, Maderty, Carnegy, with many others, flocked to the royal standard. Edinburgh opened its gates, and gave liberty to all the prisoners there detained by the covenanters. Among the rest was lord Ogilvy, son of Airly, whose family had contributed extremely to the victory gained at Kilsyth". 1646. 1646. David Lesly was detached from the army in England, and marched to the relief of his distressed party in Scotland. Montrose advanced still farther to the south, allured by vain hopes, both of rousing to arms the earls of Hume, Traquaire, and Roxborough, who had promised to join him; and of obtaining from England some supply of cavalry, in which he was deficient. By the negligence of his scouts, Lesly, at Philip-haugh in the Forest, surprised his army, much diminished in numbers, from the desertion of the highlanders, who had retired to the hills, according to custom, in order to secure their plunder. Defeat of After a sharp conflict, where Montrose exerted great valour, his forces were routed by Lesly's cavalry°: and he himself was obliged to fly with his broken forces into the mountains; where he again prepared himself for new battles and new enterprises P. Montrose. The covenanters used the victory with rigour. Their prisoners, sir Robert Spotiswood, secretary of state, and son to the late primate, sir Philip Nisbet, sir William Rollo, colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Andrew Guthry, son of the bishop of Murray, William Murray, son of the earl of Tullibardine, were condemned and executed. The sole crime imputed to the secretary was his delivering to Montrose the king's commission to be captain general of Scotland. Lord Ogilvy, who was again taken prisoner, would have undergone the same fate, had not his sister found means to procure his escape by changing clothes with him. For this instance of courage and dexterity, she met with harsh usage. The clergy solicited the parliament that more royalists might be executed; but could not obtain their request". After all these repeated disasters, which everywhere befell the royal party, there remained only one body of 22nd Mar. troops on which fortune could exercise her rigour. Lord Astley, with a small army of three thousand men, chiefly cavalry, marching to Oxford in order to join the king, was met at Stowe by colonel Morgan, and entirely de13th Sept. 1645. P Rush. vol. vii. p. 231. Guthry's Memoirs. Rush. vol. vii. p. 232. feated, himself being taken prisoner. "You have done your work," said Astley to the parliamentary officers; "and may now go to play, unless you choose to fall out among yourselves"." The condition of the king during this whole winter was to the last degree disastrous and melancholy. As the dread of ills is commonly more oppressive than their real presence, perhaps in no period of his life was he more justly the object of compassion. His vigour of mind, which, though it sometimes failed him in acting, never deserted him in his sufferings, was what alone supported him; and he was determined, as he wrote to lord Digby, if he could not live as a king, to die like a gentleman; nor should any of his friends, he said, ever have reason to blush for the prince whom they had so unfortunately served. The murmurs of discontented officers, on the one hand, harassed their unhappy sovereign; while they overrated those services and sufferings which they now saw must for ever go unrewarded. The affectionate duty, on the other hand, of his more generous friends, who respected his misfortunes and his virtues as much as his dignity, wrung his heart with a new sorrow, when he reflected that such disinterested attachment would so soon be exposed to the rigour of his implacable enemies. Repeated attempts which he made for a peaceful and equitable accommodation with the parliament, served to no purpose but to convince them that the victory was entirely in their hands. They deigned not to make the least reply to several of his messages, in which he desired a passport for commissioners". At last, after reproaching him with the blood spilt during the war, they told him that they were preparing bills for him; and his passing them would be the best pledge of his inclination towards Rush. vol. vii. p. 141. It was the same Astley who, before be charged at the battle of Edgehill, made this short prayer: "O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget thee, do not thou forget me." And with that rose up, and cried, “ March on, boys!" Warwick, p. 229. There were certainly much longer prayers said in the parliamentary army; but I doubt if there were so good a one. s Carte's Ormond, vol. iii. No. 433. u Rush. vol. vii. p. 215, etc. Walker, p. 147. 1646. 1646. peace in other words, he must yield at discretion. He desired a personal treaty, and offered to come to London, upon receiving a safe-conduct for himself and his attendants: they absolutely refused him admittance, and issued orders for the guarding, that is, the seizing of his person, in case he should attempt to visit them. A new incident, which happened in Ireland, served to inflame the minds of men, and to increase those calumnies with which his enemies had so much loaded him, and which he ever regarded as the most grievous part of his misfortunes. After the cessation with the Irish rebels, the king was desirous of concluding a final peace with them, and obtaining their assistance in England: and he gave authority to Ormond, lord lieutenant, to promise them an abrogation of all the penal laws enacted against catholics; together with the suspension of Poinings' statute, with regard to some particular bills which should be agreed on. Lord Herbert, created earl of Glamorgan, (though his patent had not yet passed the seals,) having occasion for his private affairs to go to Ireland, the king considered, that this nobleman, being a catholic, and allied to the best Irish families, might be of service: he also foresaw that farther concessions with regard to religion might probably be demanded by the bigotted Irish; and that, as these concessions, however necessary, would give great scandal to the protestant zealots in his three kingdoms, it would be requisite both to conceal them during some time, and to preserve Ormond's character by giving private orders to Glamorgan to conclude and sign these articles. But as he had a better opinion of Glamorgan's zeal and affection for his service than of his capacity, he enjoined him to communicate all his measures to Ormond; and though the final conclusion of the treaty must be executed only in Glamorgan's own name, he was required to be directed in the steps towards it by the opinion of the lord lieutenant. Glamorgan, bigotted to his religion, and passionate for the king's service, but guided in these pursuits by no * Rush. vol. vii. p. 217. 219. Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 744. manner of judgment or discretion, secretly, of himself, without any communication with Ormond, concluded a peace with the council of Kilkenny, and agreed, in the king's name, that the Irish should enjoy all the churches of which they had ever been in possession since the commencement of their insurrection, on condition that they should assist the king in England with a body of ten thousand men. This transaction was discovered by accident. The titular archbishop of Tuam being killed by a sally of the garrison of Sligo, the articles of the treaty were found among his baggage, and were immediately published everywhere, and copies of them sent over to the English parliament. The lord lieutenant and lord Digby, foreseeing the clamour which would be raised against the king, committed Glamorgan to prison, charged him with treason for his temerity, and maintained that he had acted altogether without any authority from his master. The English parliament, however, neglected not so favourable an opportunity of reviving the old clamour with regard to the king's favour of popery, and accused him of delivering over, in a manner, the whole kingdom of Ireland to that hated sect. The king told them, "that the earl of Glamorgan, having made an offer to raise forces in the kingdom of Ireland, and to conduct them into England for his majesty's service, had a commission to that purpose, and to that purpose only; and that he had no commission at all to treat of any thing else, without the privity and direction of the lord lieutenant, much less to capitulate any thing concerning religion, or any property belonging either to church or laity a." Though this declaration seems agreeable to truth, it gave no satisfaction to the parliament; and some historians, even at present, when the ancient bigotry is somewhat abated, are desirous of representing this very innocent transaction, in which the king was engaged by the most violent necessity, as a stain on the memory of that unfortunate prince". Having lost all hope of prevailing over the rigour of the a Birch, p. 119. z Rush. vol. vii. p. 239. b See note B, at the end of the volume. 1646. |