Friends, though divided eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 368 pages of information about Friends, though divided.

Friends, though divided eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 368 pages of information about Friends, though divided.

The king, instead of frankly dealing with the Commons, now that his hopes in the field were gone, unhappily continued his intrigues, hoping that an open breach would take place between the parties.  On the 5th of December he wrote to the speaker of the House of Lords, offering to send a deputation to Westminster with propositions for the foundation of a happy and well-grounded peace.  This offer was declined, and he again wrote, offering himself to proceed to Westminster to great in person.  The leaders of Parliament, and indeed with reason, suspected the sincerity of the king.  Papers had been found in the carriage of the Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, who was killed in a skirmish in October, proving that the king had concluded an alliance with the Irish rebels, and that he had agreed, if they would land ten thousand men in England, that popery should be re-established in Ireland, and the Protestants brought under subjection.  Letters which have since been discovered prove that in January, 1646, while urging upon the Parliament to come to terms, he was writing to the queen, saying that he was only deceiving them.  In his letter he said: 

“Now, as to points which I expected by my treaty at London.  Knowing assuredly the great animosity which is betwixt the Independents and Presbyterians, I had great reason to hope that one of the factions would so address themselves to me that I might, without great difficulty, obtain my so just ends, and, questionless, it would have given me the fittest opportunity.  For considering the Scots’ treaty that would be besides, I might have found means to put distractions among them, though I had found none.”

Such being the spirit that animated the king, there is little reason for surprise that the negotiations came to nothing.  The last hope of the crown was destroyed when, on the 22d of March, Lord Astley, marching from Worcester to join the king at Oxford, was defeated at Stow, in the Wold, and the three thousand Cavaliers with him killed, captured, or dispersed.  Again the king sent a message to Parliament, offering to come to Whitehall, and proposing terms similar to those which he had rejected when the negotiators met at Uxbridge.  His real object, however, was to produce such an effect by his presence in London as would create a reaction in his favor.  Three days after he had sent this message he wrote to Digby: 

“I am endeavoring to get to London, so that the conditions may be such as a gentleman may own, and that the rebels may acknowledge me king, being not without hope that I shall be able so to draw either the Presbyterians or Independents to side with me for exterminating the one or the other, that I shall be really king again.”

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Friends, though divided from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.