and conscience called on him to act; his name should not descend to posterity as the name of a king who had abandoned the cause of God, injured the rights of his successors, and sacrificed the interests of his faithful and devoted adherents.  From Leicester he retreated[a] to Hereford; from Hereford to Ragland Castle, the seat of the loyal marquess of Worcester; and thence to Cardiff, that he might more readily communicate with Prince Rupert at Bristol.  Each day brought him a repetition of the most melancholy intelligence.  Leicester had surrendered almost at the[b] first summons; the forces under Goring, the only body of royalists deserving the name of an army, were defeated by Fairfax at Lamport; Bridgewater, hitherto[c] deemed an impregnable fortress, capitulated after a[d]

[Transcriber’s Note:  No footnote 1 in the text]

[Footnote 1:  Rushworth vi. 132.  Clarendon, ii. 630.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1645 July 3.] [Sidenote b:  A.D. 1645 June 17.] [Sidenote c:  A.D. 1645 July 10.] [Sidenote d:  A.D. 1645 July 23.]

short siege; a chain of posts extending from that town to Lime, on the southern coast, cut off Devonshire and Cornwall, his principal resources, from all communication with the rest of the kingdom; and, what was still worse, the dissensions which raged among his officers and partisans in those counties could not be appeased either by the necessity of providing for the common safety, or by the presence and authority of the prince of Wales.[1] To add to his embarrassments, his three[a] fortresses in the north, Carlisle, Pontefract, and Scarborough,[b] which for eighteen months had defied all the efforts of the enemy, had now fallen, the first into the[c] hands of the Scots, the other two into those of the parliament.  Under this accumulation of misfortunes many of his friends, and among them Rupert himself, hitherto the declared advocate of war, importuned him to yield to necessity, and to accept the conditions offered by the parliament.  He replied that they viewed[d] the question with the eyes of mere soldiers and statesmen; but he was a king, and had duties to perform, from which no change of circumstances, no human power could absolve him,—­to preserve the church, protect his friends, and transmit to his successors the lawful rights of the crown.  God was bound to support his own cause:  he might for a time permit rebels and traitors to prosper, but he would ultimately humble them before the throne of their sovereign.[2] Under

[Footnote 1:  Clarendon, ii. 663, et seq.  Rushw. vi. 50, 55, 57.  Carte’s Ormond, iii. 423.]

[Footnote 2:  Clarendon, ii. 679.  Lords’ Journals, vii. 667.  Only three days before his arrival at Oxford, he wrote (August 25) a letter to secretary Nicholas, with an order to publish its contents, that it was his fixed determination, by the grace of God, never, in any possible circumstances, to yield up the government of the church to papists, Presbyterians, or Independents, nor to injure his successors by lessening the ecclesiastical or military power bequeathed to him by his predecessors, nor to forsake the defence of his friends, who had risked their lives and fortunes in his quarrel.—­Evelyn’s Memoirs, ii.  App. 104.]