In the mean while an extraordinary ferment seemed to agitate the whole mass of the population.  With the exception of the army, every class of men was dissatisfied.  Though the war had ceased twelve months before, the nation enjoyed few of the benefits of peace.  Those forms and institutions, the safeguards of liberty and property, which had been suspended during the contest, had not been restored; the committees in every county continued to exercise the most oppressive tyranny; and a monthly tax was still levied for the support of the forces, exceeding in amount the sums which had been exacted for the same purpose during the war.  No man could be ignorant that the parliament, nominally the supreme authority, was under the control of the council of officers; and the continued captivity of the king, the known sentiments of the agitators, and, above all, the vote of non-addresses, provoked a general suspicion that it was in contemplation to abolish the monarchical government, and to introduce in its place a military despotism.  Four-fifths of the nation began to wish for the re-establishment of the throne.  Much diversity of opinion prevailed with respect to the conditions; but all agreed that what Charles had so often demanded, a personal treaty, ought to be granted, as the most likely means to reconcile opposite interests and to lead to a satisfactory arrangement.

Soon after the passing of the vote of non-addresses,[a] the king had appealed to the good sense of the people through the agency of the press.  He put it to them to judge between him and his opponents, whether by his answer to the four bills he had given any reasonable

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1648 Jan. 18.]

cause for their violent and unconstitutional vote; and whether they, by the obstinate refusal of a personal conference, had not betrayed their resolve not to come to any accommodation.[1] The impression made by this paper called for an answer:  a long and laboured vindication of the proceedings of the House of Commons was prepared, and after many erasures and amendments approved; copies of it were allotted to the members to be circulated among their constituents, and others were sent to the curates to be read by them to their parishioners.[2] It contained a tedious enumeration of all the charges, founded or unfounded, which had ever been made against the king from the commencement of his reign; and thence deduced the inference that, to treat with a prince so hostile to popular rights, so often convicted of fraud and dissimulation, would be nothing less than to betray the trust reposed in the two houses by the country.  But the framers of the vindication marred their own object.  They had introduced much questionable matter, and made numerous statements open to refutation:  the advantage was eagerly seized by the royalists; and, notwithstanding the penalties recently enacted on account of unlicensed publications, several answers, eloquently and convincingly written, were circulated in many parts of the country.  Of these the most celebrated came from the pens of Hyde the chancellor, and of Dr. Bates, the king’s physician.[3]