The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution. Samuel Rawson Gardiner
p. 306); and on December 20 he gave a second answer in a similar strain (No. 68, p. 308).
When in February, 1647, the King was removed from the custody of the Scots at Newcastle to the custody of the English Parliament at Holmby House, it seemed as if there was no third course open to Parliament between the deposition of Charles and the acceptance of his terms. Charles had however been busy during the last months of his sojourn at Newcastle in holding out hopes of concession on his part, and especially of his granting Presbyterianism for three years, in the expectation that he would, during that period, be able to regain sufficient influence to obtain the restoration of Episcopacy and the Prayer Book when it came to an end. Parliament had now for some time been again split up into two parties. On the one side were the Presbyterians, who were attempting to organise an Erastian Presbyterianism in England, and whose principle was to substitute the predominance of Parliament in Church and State for that of the King. On the other side were the Independents, who wished to introduce a large, if not a complete toleration, and thus to liberate individual consciences from the control both of Parliament and King. As the Independents had a great hold upon the army, the Presbyterians, who in the beginning of 1647 commanded a majority in both Houses, had strong reasons for falling back on the King. The result was a consultation between their leaders, who were joined by one or two of the weaker Independents, such as the Earl of Northumberland, with the French ambassador Bellièvre, and the production on January 29 of a proposed answer which was to be sent through the Queen’s hands to the King in order that, if he approved of it, he might return it to those who had drawn it up, on which they were ready to support the King’s wish to come to London to enter into a personal negotiation with Parliament (No. 69, p. 309). On May 12, Charles sent to the Houses what was in form a third answer to the Propositions of Newcastle (No. 70, p. 311), but which was in reality intended to be a reply to the secret proposals of the Presbyterians, and which, in fact, accepted them with some not very important modifications.
The historical importance of these two documents can hardly be overrated. In them the alliance was struck between the King and the Presbyterian party which led to the Second Civil War in 1648 and ultimately to the Restoration in 1660. The Presbyterians, with a majority in Parliament at their disposal, gave up the attempt to coerce Charles which they had made in the Nineteen Propositions, and in the Propositions of Oxford, of Uxbridge, and Newcastle, and fell back on the principle of re-establishing his authority as it was in August, 1641, in return for the concession, scarcely more than nominal, of a three years’ Presbyterianism.
The first step to the realisation of this scheme was an attempt on the part of the Presbyterians to get rid of the army, and when, chiefly through their mismanagement, the attempt failed, the army allied itself entirely with the Independents, carried off the King from Holmby House, and obtained the impeachment and suspension of the eleven leading Presbyterians in the House of Commons.
On August 1, the army came forward with its own plan for the settlement of the kingdom, the Heads of the Proposals which were drawn up by Ireton and amended by the Council of the Army after they had been informally submitted to the King (No. 71, p. 316).
The Heads of the Proposals were the most comprehensive attempt at a permanent settlement which had yet been devised. They did not, like the various propositions laid before Charles on former occasions, seek to establish a Parliamentary despotism upon the ruins of the despotism of the King. They proposed indeed to make the King’s power subservient to that of the Parliament, but to lessen the power of Parliament by making it more amenable to the constituencies, and by restricting the powers of the State over the liberty of individuals.
The first object was mainly to be gained by providing for biennial Parliaments and for a redistribution of seats, which, by suppressing what in later times were known as rotten boroughs, would have made Parliament more representative (§ I, 1-5).
The second object was to be gained by the establishment of religious liberty, by depriving the Bishops of coercive jurisdiction, and by repealing all Acts imposing penalties upon attending or not attending on any special form of worship, or upon refusing to take the Covenant (§§ XI-XIII).
With the power of Parliament thus attenuated, it remained to be considered what were to be its relations with the Crown. Here the necessity of distinguishing between restrictions needed whilst the excitement of the Civil War was calming down, and restrictions permanently necessary, was not left out of sight. The militia was to be placed for ten years under the Parliament. After that it was to be commanded by the King, but not without the advice and control of Parliament (§ II, 1, 2). For seven years there was to be a Council of State, the members of which were to be at once agreed on, and this Council of State was to superintend the militia and to conduct foreign negotiations, the final decision in peace or war being reserved to Parliament (§ III, 4, 5, 6). No attempt was made to interfere with the King’s choice of his officers, except that Royalists who had borne arms against the Parliament were to be excluded from office for five years, and from sitting in Parliament till after the end of the second biennial Parliament (§ II, 4). No Peers created after May 21, 1642, were to sit in Parliament without the consent of the Houses (§ V). Acts under the King’s Great Seal since it had been carried off from Parliament were to be declared invalid, and those under the Parliament’s Great Seal to be valid (§ VII).
Such were the principal proposals made in this noteworthy document. It is unnecessary to call attention to its vast superiority, from a constitutional point of view, to the Presbyterian plan of waiting upon events. Yet it was this very superiority which rendered it impossible to put it in execution. It contained too much that was new, too much in advance of the general intelligence of the times, to obtain that popular support without which the best Constitutions are but castles in the air; and even if this could have been got over, there was the fatal objection that it proceeded from an army. The Presbyterian plan was more suited to the slow and cautious progressiveness of human nature. It too, however, had for the present its root of failure in it, in that it was based on the calculation that Charles, if he were restored to power, would be amenable to Presbyterian pressure. He was already giving them hopes that he would be so. Before the end of July he had intimated to the Scots his readiness to make such concessions to them as would induce them to send an invading army to support the Presbyterians in England. The army, on its part, on August 6, took military possession of Westminster. Yet, even so, it found its hold upon Parliament uncertain, and instead of taking up the Heads of the Proposals, the Houses sent to the King a revised edition of the Propositions of Newcastle, differing only in a few unimportant particulars from the paper originally presented to Charles in 1646 by the Presbyterian Parliament and the Scots. In reply, the King, on September 9, despatched a letter expressing his preference for the army proposals (No. 72, p. 326). On November 11, he fled from Hampton Court, where he had been under the custody of the army, to the Isle of Wight, where he was placed in virtual imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle. On November 16 he wrote a letter to the Speaker of the House of Lords (No. 73, p. 328), offering to abandon the militia during his own life, but refusing to abolish Episcopacy, and proposing three years’ Presbyterianism, to be followed by a system to be approved of by the King and the Houses, with full liberty to all those who should differ on conscientious grounds from that settlement, and consenting to consider the proposals of the army concerning elections and the succession of Parliaments. Parliament replied on December 14, by sending the Four Bills (No. 75, p. 335), which, together with the accompanying demands, were tantamount to a reiterated request for the acceptance of the Propositions of Newcastle.
On paper, at least, Charles had the advantage; but on December 26, he concluded a secret engagement with the Scottish Commissioners (No. 76, p. 347), on the basis of the three years’ Presbytery, but substituting for the full liberty for those who differed from the final settlement of the Church a clause providing that an effectual course was to be taken ‘for suppressing the opinions and practices of Anti-Trinitarians, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Arminians,’ &c. On this ground the Parliament of Scotland was to require the disbandment of all armies, and if that was denied, to assert ‘the right which belongs to the Crown in the power of the militia, the Great Seal, bestowing of honours and offices of trust, choice of Privy Councillors, the right of the King’s negative voice in Parliament,’ &c. (p. 349). If this were denied, a Scottish army was to invade England with these objects, and also to endeavour that there might be ‘a free and