Читать книгу The First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne - Thomas Longueville - Страница 26

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“Archbishop Laud,” says the Duchess, “was pleased to tell His late Majesty, that my Lord was one of the Wisest and Prudentest Persons that ever he was acquainted with.

“For further proof, I cannot pass by that my Lord told His late Majesty King Charles the First, and Her Majesty the now Queen-Mother, some time before the Wars, That he observed by the humours of the People, the approaching of a Civil War, and that His Majesties Person would be in danger of being deposed, if timely care was not taken to prevent it.”

Perhaps a very far-reaching gift of prophecy may not have been necessary to foretell all this. Early in 1640, things were looking very threatening. Both in England and in Scotland political as well as religious disputes were causing frictions likely at any moment to produce a flame. Charles was preparing for a war against the Scots, and, in order to obtain a vote of supplies for this war, he summoned a Parliament, afterwards known as the Short Parliament.

When it had assembled, a letter from the Scots to the King of France, appealing for his assistance in a war which they were contemplating against the English, was produced in the House to stimulate the loyalty of the Commons. It had little effect. Members boldly asserted that a Scottish invasion might be a bad thing, but that invasions by the Crown upon the liberties of Englishmen at home were worse things still and that these home invasions ought to be repelled before the Scottish invasion. As to either subsidies for the proposed campaign against the Scots, or ship-money, the Commons passed a Resolution that “till the liberties of the House and kingdom were cleared, they knew not whether they had anything to give or no”. Pym urged peace with the Scots, while Sir Henry Vane asked for £840,000 to make war upon them. The Commons, and even the Lords, were in a sulky humour, the King was now being publicly defied by his Government and he dissolved Parliament on 5 May, 1640.

Charles, Strafford and Vane tried every possible means of raising funds for the war. The citizens of London refused to make a loan at 8 per cent. and they also refused to levy a rate. An appeal to the King of Spain for a loan met with no better success. There were revolutionary risings in London. Torture was used for the last time in England upon one of the leaders[35] of the malcontents. Presently the bishops were persuaded to give a few thousands; Cottington managed to borrow £50,000 from the East India Company at the usurious interest of 16 per cent., and at last the City agreed to a loan of £200,000, on the security of the Peers. Of all the Peers none was more ready to help the King financially than Newcastle.

[35] Gardiner’s History, vol. IX, p. 141.

The position of Newcastle’s great friend, Strafford, at this time, was intolerable. He was practically at the head of the King’s affairs; but those affairs were in an almost hopeless condition. There was not enough money to pay and provide for the army during a prolonged war; there was a mutinous spirit among the soldiers; their commander-in-chief, Northumberland, had no heart for the war; the high officials were trembling at the responsibility of illegal action; both the King and Strafford were in agony, the one from vacillation, the other from gout.

Conway, who was in command in the North and had been incredulous about a Scottish invasion, on discovering its reality wrote a very doleful letter early in August to Northumberland. He complained that he had only half the number of troops with which the Scots were about to cross the border and that nearly a quarter of his men were entirely unarmed. On learning the state of things in the North, Charles issued orders to all the lords-lieutenants in the Midlands and the North to call out the trained bands for immediate service, and, Northumberland’s health having broken down, Charles made Strafford Commander-in-Chief of the English army. The failure of Conway, of Northumberland, and eventually of Strafford, cleared the way for the employment of a man exceedingly unambitious of military service, namely, Newcastle.

The King left London for the North on 20 August, 1640. On the night of the same day, the Scottish army, of about 25,000 men, crossed the Tweed at Coldstream and invaded England. Charles reached York on the 23rd, Strafford joined him there four days later, and, on the 29th, the Scots took the city of Newcastle and occupied it. Before long the counties of Northumberland and Durham were completely in their power. Charles held a great council of the peers at York; he announced that he was about to issue writs for a Parliament to meet on 3 November, and he asked the advice of the council upon the situation. The upshot of much deliberation on the part of the council, and much negotiation with the enemy, was that a cessation of arms was agreed upon, the two northern counties being left in the possession of the Scots.

The Parliament—the notorious Long Parliament—met on the day appointed. Within ten days, Strafford, who had taken his seat in the Lords, was impeached and arrested. About a month later, Laud had also been impeached and, like Strafford, imprisoned in the Tower.

Charles soon discovered that he was no longer governing, but governed. The Parliament negotiated with the Scots without consulting him or even taking him into its confidence. Eventually the Commons voted that £300,000 should be given to the King’s enemies, the Scots, as a “Brotherly Assistance”.

The King’s affairs kept going rapidly from bad to worse. We cannot here deal with the trials and the executions of Newcastle’s two friends, Strafford and Laud—for Laud also was a friend of Newcastle—or the Root and Branch Bill, or the Grand Remonstrance, or the Rebellion in Ireland which is said to have cost that country nearly half its population. We shall presently have enough to do with Newcastle himself without troubling ourselves about general politics; but it has been necessary to take a brief survey of them in so far as they led up to the most important events in Newcastle’s life.

In the years 1640 and 1641, the Queen showed more energy than the King, but she was equally, if not even more, injudicious. At about the period dealt with at the beginning of the last chapter, or even earlier, by way of obtaining the advice of a sage politician, she had listened, and persuaded Charles to listen, to the proposals of Newcastle’s profligate, and light-minded friend, Sir John Suckling. That courtier recommended the King to make use of his army in the North to re-establish and maintain his regal authority: as Strafford was in the Tower and Northumberland was still invalided, he suggested that Newcastle should be put in command of that army, and that he should bring it South, to overawe the Parliament and support the King. In addition to advising the use of force, Suckling personally endeavoured to raise loyal troops in support of the Crown. His efforts, however, did more harm than good to the King’s cause; his plot was discovered by the Parliament, he fled to France and he was declared a traitor.

Although there was no proof of Newcastle’s complicity in this plot, the fact that his appointment to command the army of the North was part of its scheme made the Parliament suspect him more strongly than ever.

The effect of all this was that the Queen was now even more hateful to the Parliament than was the King. The crisis arrived when five members of Parliament began to urge that the Queen, as the prime author of the encroachments upon the liberties of the subjects, should be formally impeached. The King still hesitated; but, according to the well-known story, the Queen said to him:[36] “Go, you coward! and pull these rogues out by the ears, or never see my face again”. The Queen told Lady Carlisle of this little episode, Lady Carlisle told Essex, Essex told others, and others told the five members, who made their escape in safety.

[36] Gardiner’s History, X, p. 136.

Urged on the one side by his councillors to use the utmost caution, on the other by his Queen to be a man and to put his foot down, the vacillating and nervous King, in a moment of spasmodic courage, threatened the Parliament; whereupon the Parliament threatened the King, who then practically ran away, leaving London on 10 January, 1642.

The first actual conflict between the King and the Parliament took place in relation to Newcastle. When Charles had left York, to meet the Long Parliament in London, he had sent all the ammunition and stores which he had accumulated for his war against the Scots, to Hull. He had foreseen the likelihood of a civil war, and he had privately given Newcastle a commission, appointing him governor of Hull; but he had told him not to use it unless he received further orders.

During the morning on which the King left London, early in January, 1642, one of his first acts was to dispatch orders to Newcastle, commanding him to make immediate use of that commission, and to hurry to Hull, as the Duchess says, “with all possible speed and privacy”. Of what followed she says:—

“Immediately upon the receipt of these his Majesties Orders and Commands, my Lord prepared for their execution, and about Twelve of the Clock at night, hastened from his own house when his Familie were all at their rest, save two or three Servants which he appointed to attend him. The next day early in the morning he arrived at Hull, in the quality of a private Gentleman, which place was distant from his house forty miles; and none of his Family that were at home, knew what was become of him, till he sent an Express to his Lady to inform her where he was.”

The probable intense anxiety of his wife, which might so simply and so easily have been saved, does not appear to have occurred to him. The Duchess continues:—

“Thus being admitted into the Town, he fell upon his intended Design, and brought it to so hopeful an issue for His Majesties Service, that he wanted nothing but His Majesties further Commission and Pleasure to have secured both the Town and Magazine for His Majesties use; and to that end by a speedy Express gave His Majesty, who was then at Windsor, an account of all his Transactions therein, together with his Opinion of them, hoping His Majesty would have been pleased either to come thither in Person, which he might have done with much security, or at least have sent him a Commission and Orders how he should do His Majesty further Service.”

Unfortunately for Charles, his most intimate followers could not be trusted for secrecy, and there were spies in his train. His orders to Newcastle were betrayed to the Parliament, and, by its authority, Sir John Hotham, who lived very near Hull, was appointed its governor and ordered to seize it with the help of the Yorkshire trained bands under his command.

Newcastle had entered Hull, had proclaimed himself its governor, in the King’s name, and had found that it contained a larger quantity of munitions than the Tower of London itself; but, when Legg, on behalf of the King, and Hotham, on the part of the Parliament, brought troops to occupy the town, the Mayor—to use a very vulgar expression—uncertain as to which way the cat would jump, refused to admit the soldiers of either of them.

“Before Newcastle had been three days in Hull,” says Clarendon,[37] “the House of Peers sent for him, to attend the service of that House, which he had rarely used to do, being for the most part at Richmond attending upon the Prince of Wales, whose Governor he was.[38] He made no haste to return upon the summons of the House, but sent to the King to know his pleasure.”

[37] Hist., vol. I, part II. book iv.

[38] This, of course, refers to a past period.

As usual, Charles showed weakness. Having dispatched Newcastle in a tremendous hurry to secure his magazines at Hull against the Parliament, he now ordered him to obey the Parliament, to leave Hull and the magazines to their fate, and go to London. Newcastle, says the Duchess, “received orders from His Majesty to observe such Directions as he should receive from the Parliament then sitting: Whereupon he was summoned personally to appear at the House of Lords, and a Committee chosen to examine the Grounds and Reasons of his undertaking that Design; but my Lord shewed them his Commission, and that it was done in obedience to His Majesties Commands and so was cleared of that Action”.

Both Lords and Commons then petitioned the King to allow the magazines at Hull to be removed to the Tower of London; and when the King was slow in sending a reply, they ordered Hotham to dispatch them there at once.

Clarendon (Hist., vol. I, part II. book v.) describes Sir John Hotham as “by his nature and education a rough and rude man, of great covetousness, of great pride, and great ambition; without any bowels of good nature, or the least sense or touch of generosity; his parts were not quick and sharp, but composed, and he judged well; he was a man of craft, and more likely to deceive than be cozened.” “He had been first induced to sympathise with the Parliament against the King,” adds Clarendon, “by his particular malice against the Earl of Strafford;” he had been imprisoned, probably as he suspected at the instigation of Strafford, for complaining in Parliament at the King’s demands for large subsidies for the army; and he had formally ranged himself upon the Parliamentary side; but the Parliamentary leaders “well knew that he was not possessed with their principles in any degree,” that, although he had considered Laud guilty of treason, he was a zealous supporter of Church and State, and that he had been “terrified” by certain votes against sheriffs and deputy-lieutenants passed in the House of Commons. “Therefore they sent his son, a member likewise of the House, and in whom they confided, to assist him, or rather to be a spy upon his father. And this was the first essay they made of their Sovereign Power over the Militia and the Forts.” As will appear later, the son was in reality more royalist in his inclinations than the father upon whom he was to spy.

Against such a usurpation of the Royal Prerogative the King made a protest on 9 March. He was determined to displace Hotham, and to replace Newcastle, at Hull. In April he went North with a view to testing the powers of the Parliament by entering Hull himself. At the same time he was anxious to avoid all appearance of committing an act of war. Ostensibly, he intended merely to enter Hull as he might enter any of his other cities.

When Hotham was informed that the King was approaching, accompanied by 300 men, and that there were 400 more behind them, he was “in great confusion,” says Clarendon, “and calling some of the chief magistrates, and other officers together to consult, they persuaded him not to suffer the King to enter the town”.

Presently a messenger from Charles arrived, bringing to Hotham the information that the King would do him the honour of dining with him that day.

Bewildered almost to distraction, Hotham resolved to obey orders which he had received from the Parliament to admit no troops whatever without its special instructions. Accordingly he had his drawbridges raised, and standing upon the walls when the King arrived, he very respectfully informed him of the strict injunctions which he had received from his employers—the Commons. Then the King offered to come in with an escort of only twenty men; but Hotham, knowing that there was a strong royalist spirit within the town, was afraid of admitting him, and said that to allow even so small a number of armed men to enter would be a breach of his orders. Clarendon says: “the gentleman, with much distraction in his looks, talked confusedly of ‘the trust he had from the Parliament’; then fell upon his knees, and wished ‘that God would bring confusion upon him and his, if he were not a loyal and faithful subject to His Majesty, but, in conclusion, plainly denied to suffer his Majesty to come into the town’”. The King’s soldiers then loudly called upon the garrison to kill Hotham on the spot and throw him over the wall; and Charles, having made his heralds proclaim Hotham a traitor, rode away in a rage.

In the following month (May), the greater part of the arms and stores were shipped from Hull to the Tower of London. The Hotham incident greatly increased the irritation already existing between the King and the Parliament; and, although war had not been actually declared, both sides were collecting troops and stores.

Charles ordered Newcastle to take possession of the city bearing his name, and also the command of the four adjacent counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Durham and Westmoreland. On 17 June, 1642, he entered the city of Newcastle in the name of the King. He also secured Tynemouth Castle and he fortified Shields. The King had now a port on the East coast at which he could receive supplies from Holland, whither the Queen had gone to raise money for the coming war by selling her jewels and begging for loans.

It was all very well to be given the command of four counties; but it was difficult to command them without men to enforce commands. The King had indeed ordered Newcastle to make bricks without straw. As it was, when Newcastle arrived, “he neither found any military provision considerable for the undertaking that work, nor generally any great encouragement from the people in those parts”. So says the Duchess; and she adds:—

“As soon as my Lord came to Newcastle, in the first place he sent for all his Tenants[39] and Friends in those parts, and presently raised a Troop of Horse consisting of 120, and a Regiment of Foot, and put them under Command, and upon duty and exercise in the Town of Newcastle; and with this small beginning took the Government of that place upon him ... and armed the Soldiers as well as he could: And thus he stood upon his Guard, and continued them upon Duty; playing his weak Game with much Prudence, and giving the Town and Country very great satisfaction by his noble and honourable Deportment.” In short, under the circumstances, Newcastle would have found it very dangerous, when “playing his weak game,” to be anything except civil and obsequious.

[39] The tenants on the Ogle property in the North, which he had inherited from his mother.

Clarendon says that Newcastle had no sooner occupied the city of Newcastle, “without the slightest hostility (for that town received him with all possible acknowledgment of the King’s goodness in sending him), but he was impeached by the House of Commons of High Treason”.[40] Although Clarendon states that he entered the town without the slightest hostility, the following entry occurs in the catalogue of the Thomason Tracts. “1642, July 12, Sir John Hotham’s Resolution presented to the King at Beverley. Whereunto is annexed joyful news from Newcastle, wherein is declared how the colliers resisted the Earl of Newcastle.”

[40] Hist., vol. II, part I. book vi.