Although on the presentation of this petition it was agreed to have Ordinances prepared which might meet the main demands of the Agitators, the situation had really gone too far for the Presbyterians to come to any true accord with the Army, since they no longer trusted Cromwell’s assurance on the subject of the disbandment. New wild thoughts were crossing their minds to return King Charles to the Scots. From that vantage point, he might be restored to his throne by a combined force of Scots, English Royalists and Presbyterians; the desired Church reform would at last be carried through in England. Of course such a scheme was impossible of enactment so long as the Army loomed so large and menacing in Essex. So it was that on 25 May the Presbyterians put up a fatal proposal by which the Army was to be disbanded, piecemeal, to avoid united disruption and with none of the satisfactions hitherto guaranteed. From the point of the vocal dissentients at Saffron Walden such a move of course smelt at once of robbery and treachery. By 1 June – the date set for the disbandment of the first regiment (the General’s) – the Army had already taken matters into its own hands and assembled at a general rendezvous at Newmarket, not far from Saffron Walden but over the borders into Suffolk. Both parties bristled like hedgehogs with suspicion of each other. King Charles, who stood outside either commitment, had once again become the key to the situation. It was indeed a strange if welcome reversal of the royal fortunes, for it was only a year since both sides had been combining to fight him. Now, wrote Fairfax, the King had become “the Golden Ball cast between the two parties”.18 The question was, in which direction the ball would roll.
As early as February, Sir Lewis Dyve, a percipient correspondent, had noticed a novel mildness in the attitude of the Independents to the King. The Royalist commander at Sherborne, Dyve had been brought to London as a prisoner after its fall, and had been committed to the Tower for treason; here however he had sufficient liberty – and sufficient visitors – to be able to instruct the King secretly of the turn of events in the capital. He passed on to Charles the warming news of the Independents’ relaxation: the very men who had up till now been most bitter in their expressions against him, were beginning to admire the King. If only their liberty of conscience could be assured under his protection, they might well devote to him their support, realizing how far the Presbyterians were now conniving at their ruin. On 24 May Sir Lewis informed Charles further that although Cromwell had previously been the principal man labouring to reconcile the differences between the Army and Parliament due to his dual position in both camps, he was now finding this task beyond him. Sheer self-preservation was making him adhere to the Army, since suspicions of him were growing daily inside the House itself. As to Cromwell’s feelings for the King, Sir Lewis believed - and he had confirmation of it from a bosom friend of Cromwell’s – that if only he could be secured from fear of the King’s personal vengeance for his trespass against him during the war “he may yet happily prove an instrument of great service to you in the army, the better whereof I understand is well inclined already”.19
If Cromwell’s attitude, and that of his fellow Independents, to the King was improving for lack of alternatives, Charles himself in his long delayed answer to the Newcastle Propositions did not display much concern for tender consciences. He agreed to the establishment of Presbyterianism for a period of three years, so long as both he and his household could use the Book of Common Prayer; he would also name twenty divines to sit in the Westminster Assembly to negotiate the Church settlement. As to the Covenant, he refused to give a more than vaguely soothing definite answer until he had come to London and been advised by his own chaplains. So Charles continued to play out his cards according to his own style; he was cheered no doubt by such proofs of his popularity during his captivity at Holdenby as the people crowding round their sovereign to touch him, in order to be cured of scrofula, known as the King’s Evil. In vain the House of Commons tried to inform them that this was mere idle superstition: ancient loyal – and credulous – ways died hard.
For all such warning signs of the equivocating nature of the man they had to deal with, it was still clear to the Independents that the seizure of the King by the Presbyterians could be the fatal blow to their future. Fear of such a dangerous development was uppermost in the minds of the little group of Army politicians who started to meet at Cromwell’s house in Drury Lane. Mrs Cromwell of course found her home and hospitality thrown into the cause, but the habits of a lifetime were not so easily discarded: “No men of more abstemiousness ever affected so vile and flagitious an enterprise upon so just a government,” wrote one who admired neither Mrs Cromwell’s menus nor her husband’s plans: “small beer and bread and butter” were served. Because she was at one and the same time accused of taking bribes, her house was said to be like that of King Midas, with nothing in it except gold. Mrs Cromwell’s critics also rather illogically suggested that even so she was so much out of pocket as a result of this unlavish entertaining that she was obliged to sell a commemorative piece of gold plate given to her husband to balance her books.20 One or other of the charges might be true but not both. Under the circumstances one is tempted to suppose that of the two courses open to her, Mrs Cromwell did perhaps keep a comparatively modest table for her husband’s conspiratorial friends – reflecting the natural disgust of the housewife through the ages at having her house turned into a political headquarters.
Exactly what was decided upon in the course of these urgent discussions, as in another meeting at the Star Tavern at Coleman Street when Cromwell, the leading Independent minister Hugh Peter and others discussed the question of the King, remains a mystery although it has been much pondered upon. Obviously the Presbyterians could not be allowed to seize the King and post him, as it were, to the Scots, so long as there were Independent soldiers capable of obstructing them. On the other hand there was a considerable difference between action taken by the Independents merely to keep the King safely out of alien hands, and a more positive move to take him into their own keeping, elsewhere than at Holdenby. On balance, the evidence points to the Army plotters headed by Cromwell having proposed some sort of securing action; but of course over the question of the King the two parties were both chiefly inspired by fear of each other, like two blindfolded men who back into each other in a room while trying to avoid contact. In such circumstances it was only too easy for some violent reaction to be seemingly provoked.
What was undisputed was that acting under the instructions of this London-based group, a certain Cornet Joyce was sent down to Oxford on I June to secure the magazine there. Joyce, one of those interesting minor but crucial figures in English history, had started life as a tailor before becoming a soldier in the Eastern Association, apparently in Cromwell’s regiment; more latterly he had acted as Cornet in the cavalry regiment of Fairfax – who subsequently described him in his Memorials as “an ArchAgitator”. Having performed the first part of his mission, the next day he moved on from Oxford to Holdenby together with five hundred troopers he had gathered. When asked what his unexpected arrival at the royal prison signified, Joyce replied that he had come with authority from the soldiers to seize Colonel Graves, officer in charge of Charles, “to prevent a plot to convey the King to London”. Thus far we may believe he was acting on instructions. The letter he wrote at eight o’clock the next morning, 3 June (but wrongly dated 4 June – he was evidently in haste) confirms this impression. It was addressed to Cromwell or in his absence Haselrig or Fleetwood: “Sir, We have secured the King, Graves is run away .. . You must hasten an answer to us, and let us know what we shall do. We are resolved to obey no orders but the Generall’s; we shall follow the Commissioners directions while we are here, if just in our Eyes.” But the actual ending of the letter provides a strong indication that he had no explicit instructions beyond the point of seizure. “I humbly entreat you to consider what is done and act accordingly with all the haste you can,”he wrote, “we shall not rest night nor day till we hear from you.”21
In fact
long before Joyce did hear from London, or receive any further enlightenment, whatever direction it might have taken, he had lost his nerve and decided that Charles ought to be moved somewhere closer to the Army rendezvous. Joyce sought an interview with the King to that effect, and when Charles asked Joyce what commission he had to secure his person, showed up the confusion of his situation by pointing uncertainly backward to his troops behind him. To which King Charles gave his famous and charmingly ironical reply: “It is as fair a commission and as well written as I have seen a commission written in my life.” Stopping a night at Hinchingbrooke en route, and watched in silence by the people as he passed, the King came first to a house in Newmarket – yet another proof that Joyce’s action had not been premeditated, since no royal habitation had been planned – but was taken ultimately to a house near Cambridge.
It was at this point, hearing the news of Joyce’s expedition but not, it should be emphasized, of its eventual outcome, that Cromwell seemed to emerge out of the half-dream of irresolution which had surrounded him all the year. Always at his best when the situation called for precipitate and decisive action, he was quick to take in the significance of Joyce’s action for his own safety in London. The sign had come that he should finally throw in his lot with the Army. When the news reached him that the Presbyterians planned to arrest him the next day when he appeared in the House of Commons (“which he seldom omitted to do”) and send him to the Tower, Cromwell abandoned his megrims of self-examination. Leaving London in the very early hours of the morning of 4 June with Hugh Peter, he was already at Ware in Hertfordshire by the time they breakfasted. About the same time as the King was being installed in a house at Childerley, north-west of Cambridge, Cromwell arrived at Kentford Heath, just beyond Newmarket, the scene of the general rendezvous of the Army.
That Cromwell was right to flee, if he valued his liberty, is made clear by Clarendon: the plan of his opponents was to remove from the Army councils the cleverest man amongst them, since it was believed that Fairfax would prove adequately amenable once deprived of Cromwell’s stiffening. It was Joyce who later, and understandably, tried to blame the whole incident and both sets of orders upon Cromwell. According to the later testimony of Major Huntington, a hostile witness to Cromwell, when Joyce was told that Fairfax was highly displeased with him for bringing the King out of Holdenby, he replied that “Lieutenant-General Cromwell had given him orders at London to do what he had done, both there and at Oxford”. Huntington however also reports Ireton’s version: “that he gave orders only for securing the King there and not for taking away”, which leaving aside Joyce’s self-justification, is surely more plausible. Even Cromwell’s own alleged comment on the move – also given by Huntington – was more of a judicious assessment of it all after the event, than an assumption of personal responsibility: “if this had not been done, the King would have been fetched away by order of Parliament, or Colonel Graves, by the advice of the Commissioners, would have carried him to London, throwing themselves upon the favour of Parliament for that service.”22
* * *
The Commons, frightened into retraction by the ominous news of Joyce, had on 3 June voted full arrears for the Army; it even expunged Holles’s venomous resolution stating all those who had protested in March to be enemies of the State, from its records. But it was too late to avoid reaping the whirlwind. On 5 June the Army at Newmarket issued a declaration of which the basic theme was the stirring up of war by the Presbyterian leaders – it asked for the names of ah1 those who had evolved Holies’s resolution – but which ended with two more potentially helpful clauses, put in at Cromwell’s instigation. The first of these established an Army Council of Generals and senior officers, also to include two commissioned officers and two other representatives from each regiment. Cromwell would therefore be a member as would Fairfax and Ireton. The second clause denied that the Army intended to overthrow Presbyterianism: it merely wanted liberty of conscience for its members.
At Childerley the King now received Fairfax and the other senior officers. Fairfax found him in an optimistic mood, outwardly quite ready to gamble on his chances with the Army: as Fairfax took his leave, the King confided to him, “Sir, I have as good an Interest in the Army as you.” Cromwell and Ireton were reported to have behaved “with good manner” towards Charles, although unlike Fairfax, they only bowed their heads in greeting and did not kiss his hand.23 But their treatment of Charles was carefully polite: and at his own strong desire, he was allowed to move to Newmarket, although Cromwell had instructed Whalley to use anything but force to persuade him to return to Holdenby. He was taken by the backways in case his presence should occasion a demonstration of popular enthusiasm.
It was understandable that the King should begin to take heart from his new situation, since the news which was percolating through from London described the capital in a grim and growing sense of disorder. Charles could be pardoned for believing that he might soon be the tertius gaudens between Army and Parliament. In London the pulses of those members of Parliament still remaining began to race, as large numbers of former soldiers known as “Refbrmadoes” poured into the city, intent on rioting. Crowding round the very doors of the House of Commons, they issued unpleasant threats against the members and generally, said Whitelocke, presented “a very rude address”.24 But of course there might be a silver lining to such an unwelcome thundercloud: when Parliament voted a hasty ,Ł10,000 for this noisy crew, it was not unmindful of the fact that they might be employed usefully at some later stage against the brooding mass of the official Army.
This body was now drawn up at Thriplow Heath, about seven miles from Cambridge – ten miles in the direction of London, whither it was the intention of the fiercer spirits of the Army that they should march. It was now of course in possession of a properly organized assembly, in the shape of the newly instituted Army Council, with which to confront any overtures from outside; the transformation from a loose collection of wayward soldiers making up at best an angry rabble which had been taking place in stages since the spring was complete. Even so, Cromwell by no means felt himself turned overnight into the Army’s creature. He retained extremely ambivalent feelings to that section of the soldiery whose aims and language was so revolutionary as to threaten the mere existence of peace and order. Sir Gilbert Pickering gave an interesting sidelight on his hesitations, and the quandary in which he found himself, ten years later. He revealed that Cromwell had been extremely unwilling to be drawn to the head of the violent and rash party of the Army at Thriplow Heath when they would not disband, and did not in fact do so until he had received three letters demanding his leadership. He was thus morally certain that the Army would march on, even if he was not there to head them, and could envisage himself not as a firebrand but as one who would exercise a restraining influence.
As it was, under pressure from Fairfax, the soldiers were persuaded to behave politely to the commissioners from Parliament who came to Thriplow Heath to visit them, since he had directed that they should be “very silent and civil”. There was however no softening in their immediate policy towards Parliament; when the Army’s voice was uplifted it took the form of cries of “Justice, Justice” shouted raucously in the ears of the commissioners (a note that Cromwell and Ireton had taught them to sing, observed Holies grimly in his memoirs). The Army now moved forward. The night of 10 June was spent at Royston from whence a minatory manifesto was sent to the City of London authorities, of which Parliament was intended to take good note. Under its newly organized leadership, the Army proclamations were becoming more sophisticated, and in many of the phrases, Cromwell’s own preoccupations can be discerned. It was Parliament who aimed to engage the kingdom in a new war to protect themselves “from question and punishment”; the Army on the other hand “as Englishmen” continued to desire a proper settlement. Even so, the Army still stressed its innocence of any desire to alter the present constitution: “We have said it before, and we profess it now, we desire no al
teration in the Civil Government.. ,”25
From Royston the Army moved on to St Albans, which was within the twenty-five-mile limit hopefully prescribed for them by Parliament. In vain the City called out the trained bands to their defence; they refused to co-operate. And the new declaration put forward by the Army on 14 June – in which Ireton was able to give the first flavour of his political thinking – warned Parliament in turn of the sort of lines along which the Army were now moving. It contained the first suggestions for purging Parliament as well as a plan for choosing a fresh House of Commons. Later it was said that the eleven Presbyterian members, headed by Holies, should be impeached not only for plotting the disbandment of the Army, but also for setting in train a new war. It was, wrote Holies later, the Army’s first open attempt to meddle with the affairs of the kingdom, on the grounds that they were “not a mercenary power to serve the arbitrary power of the State but that they took up Arms in judgement and Conscience”.26 As MPs began to tremble for their lives or at least their property at the prospect of the soldiers’ arrival, a further broadside from the Army to Parliament of similar nature – the Humble Remonstrance – followed on 24 June.
Lilburne, now in the Tower for a series of offences including a violent attack on Manchester, and delighted with the turn matters were taking, hastened to congratulate his dear Cromwell for the “active pains” he was now taking for the right cause. But Cromwell was worrying less over his left wing, if we may so term Lilburne, than the problem of the King who had now arrived at Royston from Newmarket. While Dyve predicted real possibilities of Charles winning over Cromwell if he showed him enough favour,27 Cromwell took a middle path: he warned Whalley neither to let the King go free, nor to antagonize him unnecessarily over personal religious matters. He suspected with reason that the Parliamentary commissioners who had accompanied him could be relied upon to do that, and indeed the moment Charles celebrated an Anglican service, they insisted on having his chaplains removed. The army headquarters had advanced still further to Uxbridge, a very short distance indeed from the capital. Here on i July Fairfax appointed ten of the chief officers including Cromwell to discuss the Humble Remonstrance with the commissioners at the Katharine Wheele Inn. The Army then fell back a little to Reading, and the King himself was brought first to Windsor and then to Lord Craven’s house at Caversham, just across the river from the Army’s new position. The scene was set for a sincere attempt on the part of the Independent Army leaders to reach settlement with the King. After all, dealings with the Presbyterians had proved so acutely unsatisfactory that it was just possible they had misjudged the King, attributing to him some of the chicanery which rightfully belonged to their political opponents.