SENT MESSENGER TO THE SCOTCH ARMY.

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I brought it, attended by a trumpet, and a guard of five hundred horse, to the Scots' quarters. I was stopped at Darlington, and my errand being known, General Lesly sent a Scots' major and fifty horse to receive me, but would let neither my trumpet or guard set foot within their quarters. In this manner, I was conducted to audience in the chapterhouse at Durham, where a committee of Scots' lords, who attended the army, received me very courteously, and gave me their answer in writing also.

It was in this answer that they showed, at least to me, their design of embroiling the king with his English subjects; they discoursed very freely with me, and did not order me to withdraw when they debated their private opinions. They drew up several answers, but did not like them; at last, they gave me one which I did not receive; I thought it was too insolent to be borne with. As near as I can remember, it was thus:

The commissioners of Scotland, attending the service in the army, do refuse any treaty in the city of York.

One of the commissioners, who treated me with more distinction than the rest, and discoursed freely with me, gave me an opportunity to speak more freely of this than I expected.

I told them, if they would return to his majesty an answer fit for me to carry, or if they would say they would not treat at all, I would deliver such a message. But I entreated them to consider the answer was to their sovereign, and to whom they made a great profession of duty and respect; and at least they ought to give their reasons, why they declined a treaty at York, and to name some other place, or humbly to desire his majesty to name some other place. But to send word they would not treat at York, I could deliver no such message, for, when put into English, it would signify, they would not treat at all.

I used a great many reasons and arguments with them on this head; and at last, with some difficulty obtained of them to give the reason, which was the Earl of Strafford's having the chief command at York, whom they declared their mortal enemy, he having declared them rebels in Ireland.

With this answer I returned. I could make no observations in the short time I was with them; for as I stayed but one night, so I was guarded as a close prisoner all the while. I saw several of their officers whom I knew, but they durst not

speak to me; and, if they would have ventured, my guard would not have permitted them.

In this manner I was conducted out of their quarters to my own party again, and having delivered my message to the king, and told his majesty the circumstances, I saw the king receive the account of the haughty behaviour of the Scots with some regret; however, it was his majesty's time now to bear, and therefore the Scots were complied with, and the treaty appointed at Rippon; where, after much debate, several preliminary articles were agreed on, as a cessation of arms; quarters, and bounds to the armies; subsistence to the Scots' army; and the residue of the demands was referred to a treaty at London, &c.

We were all amazed at the treaty, and I cannot but remember, we used to wish much rather we had been suffered to fight; for though we had been worsted at first, the power and strength of the king's interest, which was not yet tried, must, in fine, have been too strong for the Scots; whereas now we saw the king was for complying with anything, and all his friends would be ruined.

I confess, I had nothing to fear, and so was not much concerned; but our predictions soon came to pass; for no sooner was this parliament called, but abundance of those who had embroiled their king with his people of both kingdoms, like the disciples, when their master was betrayed to the Jews, forsook him and fled; and now parliament tyranny began to succeed church tyranny, and we soldiers were glad to see it at first. The bishops trembled, the judges went to gaol; the officers of the customs were laid hold on; and the parliament began to lay their fingers on the great ones, particularly Archbishop Laud and the Earl of Strafford. We had no great concern for the first, but the last was a man of so much conduct and gallantry, and so beloved by the soldiers and principal gentry of England, that everybody was touched with his misfortune.

The parliament now grew mad in their turn; and, as the prosperity of any party is the time to show their discretion, the parliament showed they knew as little where to stop as other people. The king was not in a condition to deny anything, and nothing could be demanded but they pushed it. They attainted the Earl of Strafford, and thereby made the king cut off his right hand to save his left, and yet not save it

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neither. They obtained another bill, to empower them to sit during their own pleasure, and after them, triennial parliaments, to meet whether the king call them or no; and granting this completed his majesty's ruin.

Had the house only regulated the abuses of the court, punished evil counsellors, and restored parliaments to their original and just powers, all had been well; and the king though he had been more than mortified, had yet reaped the benefit of future peace; for now the Scots were sent home, after having eaten up two counties, and received a prodigious sum of money to boot. And the king, though too late, goes in person to Edinburgh, and grants them all they could desire, and more than they asked; but in England, the desires of ours were unbounded, and drove at all extremes.

They threw out the bishops from sitting in the house, make a protestation equivalent to the Scotch covenant; and this done, print their remonstrance. This so provoked the king, that he resolves upon seizing some of the members, and, in an ill hour, enters the house in person to take them. Thus one imprudent thing on one hand produced another of the other hand, until the king was obliged to leave them to themselves, for fear of being mobbed into something or other unworthy of himself,

These proceedings began to alarm the gentry and nobility of England; for, however willing we were to have evil counsellors removed, and the government return to a settled and legal course, according to the happy constitution of this nation, and might have been forward enough to have owned the king had been misled, and imposed upon to do things which he had rather had not been done; yet it did not follow, that all the powers and prerogatives of the crown should devolve upon the parliament, and the king in a manner be deposed, or else sacrificed to the fury of the rabble.

The heats of the house running them thus to all extremes, and at last to take from the king the power of the militia, which indeed was all that was left to make him anything of a king, put the king upon opposing force with force; and thus the flame of civil war began.

However backward I was in engaging in the second year's expedition against the Scots, I was as forward now; for I waited on the king at York, where a gallant company of gentlemen as ever were seen in England, engaged themselves

to enter into his service; and here some of us formed ourselves into troops for the guard of his person.

The king having been waited upon by the gentry of Yorkshire, and having told them his resolution of erecting his royal standard, and received from them hearty assurances of support, dismisses them, and marches to Hull, where lay the train of artillery, and all the arms and ammunition belonging to the northern army, which had been disbanded. But here the parliament had been beforehand with his majesty, so that when he came to Hull, he found the gates shut, and Sir John Hotham, the governor, upon the walls, though with a great deal of seeming humility and protestations of loyalty to his person, yet with a positive denial to admit any of the king's attendants into the town. If his majesty pleased to enter the town in person with any reasonable number of his household, he would submit, but would not be prevailed on to receive the king, as he would be received, with his force, though those forces were then but very few.

The king was exceedingly provoked at this repulse, and indeed it was a great surprise to us all; for certainly never prince began a war against the whole strength of his kingdom under the circumstances that he was in. He had not a garrison, or a company of soldiers in his pay; not a stand of arms, or a barrel of powder, a musket, cannon, or mortar; not a ship of all the fleet, or money in his treasury to procure them; whereas the parliament had all his navy, and ordnance, stores, magazines, arms, ammunition, and revenue, in their keeping. And this I take to be another defect of the king's counsel, and a sad instance of the distraction of his affairs; that when he saw how all things were going to wreck, as it was impossible but he should see it, and it is plain he did see it, that he should not, long enough before it came to extremities, secure the navy, magazines, and stores of war, in the hands of his trusty servants, that would have been sure to have preserved them for his use, at a time when he wanted them.

It cannot be supposed but the gentry of England, who generally preserved their loyalty for their royal master, and at last heartily showed it, were exceedingly discouraged at first, when they saw the parliament had all the means of making war in their own hands, and the king was naked and destitute either of arms or ammunition, or money to procure them.

THE QUEEN JOINS THE KING'S FORCES.

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Not but that the king, by extraordinary application, recovered the disorder the want of these things had thrown him into, and supplied himself with all things needful.

But my observation was this, had his majesty had the magazines, navy, and forts in his own hand, the gentry, who wanted but the prospect of something to encourage them, had come in at first, and the parliament being unprovided, would have been presently reduced to reason.

But this was it that baulked the gentry of Yorkshire, who went home again, giving the king good promises, but never appeared for him, till by raising a good army in Shropshire and Wales, he marched towards London, and they saw there was a prospect of their being supported.

In this condition the king erected his standard at Nottingham, August 2nd, 1642, and, I confess, I had very melancholy apprehensions of the king's affairs; for the appearance to the royal standard was but small. The affront the king had met with at Hull had baulked and dispirited the northern gentry, and the king's affairs looked with a very dismal aspect. We had expresses from London of the prodigious success of the parliament's levies, how their men came in faster than they could entertain them, and that arms were delivered out to whole companies listed together, and the like: and all this while the king had not got together a thousand foot, and had no arms for them neither. When the king saw this, he immediately despatches five several messengers, whereof one went to the Marquis of Worcester into Wales; one went to the queen, then at Windsor; one to the Duke of Newcastle, then Marquis of Newcastle, into the north; one into Scotland, and one into France, where the queen soon after arrived, to raise money, and buy arms, and to get what assistance she could among her own friends: nor was her majesty idle, for she sent over several ships laden with arms, and ammunition, with a fine train of artillery, and a great many very good officers; and though one of the first fell into the hands of the parliament, with three hundred barrels of powder and some arms, and a hundred and fifty gentlemen, yet most of the gentlemen found means, one way or other to get to us, and most of the ships the queen freighted arrived; and at last her majesty came herself, and brought an extraordinary supply, both of men, money, arms, &c., with which she joined the king's forces under the Earl of Newcastle in