CHAPTER V. ANNALS OF THE COMMONWEALTH THIRD YEAR, FEB. 18, 1650-1-DEC. 1, 1651. NEW COUNCIL OF STATE: RELATIONS WITH SPAIN: NEGOTIATION WITH THE PORTUGUESE AMBASSADOR: EMBASSY OF ST. JOHN AND STRICKLAND TO THE UNITED PROVINCES: AFFAIRS IN SCOTLAND: CROMWELL'S ILLNESS THERE : EFFECTS OF THE ENGLISH OCCUPATION AMONG THE SCOTS STATE OF SCOTLAND NORTH OF THE FIRTHS: CHARLES II. AND HIS SCOTTISH COURT: PARLIAMENT AT PERTH AND STIRLING: DECLINE OF THE ARGYLE INFLUENCE RESOLUTIONERS AND REMONSTRANTS: CHARLES'S SCOTTISH ARMY: DISGRACE OF LORD HOWARD OF ESCRICK: ENGLISH PRESBYTERIAN CONSPIRACY FOR CHARLES II.: CASE OF MR. LOVE AND MR. GIBBONS: CROMWELL'S MARCH UPON STIRLING: ACCESS BLOCKED BY LESLIE: DEVICE OF A PASSAGE THROUGH FIFESHIRE: CROMWELL AT PERTH: SUDDEN MARCH OF CHARLES AND THE SCOTS INTO ENGLAND: CROMWELL'S RAPID PURSUIT: EXCITEMENT THROUGHOUT ENGLAND: EXECUTION OF LOVE AND GIBBONS: BATTLE OF WORCESTER: THE CAPTIVES AND FUGITIVES: CONQUEST OF SCOTLAND COMPLETED BY MONK NEW HONOURS FOR CROMWELL: EXECUTION OF THE EARL OF DERBY AND OTHERS: SCOTTISH PRISONERS IN ENGLAND: ESCAPE OF CHARLES II. THE MARQUIS OF ARGYLE IN SCOTLAND VIEW OF HIS CHARACTER AND CAREER: DECREE FOR THE INCORPORATION OF SCOTLAND WITH THE COMMONWEALTH CLEMENT HOME POLICY AFTER WORCESTER: NAVIGATION ACT AGAINST FOR reasons not assigned, this third Council of State was to hold office only for nine months and a half, ceasing on Dec. 1, 1651, and not on Feb. 18, 1651-2, which would have been the regular twelvemonth's term. The twenty-one reappointed members were-CROMWELL, Chief Justices ST. JOHN and ROLLE, Lords Commissioners WHITLOCKE and LISLE, Serjeant BRADSHAW, LORD GREY OF GROBY, VANE, HASILRIG, PICKERING, MASHAM, ARMYN, MILDMAY, HARRINGTON, SKIPPON, WALTON, PUREFOY, SCOTT, BOND, CHALLONER, and GURDON. The first nineteen of these had been members of both the two preceding Councils; the last two only of the second. Among the members of the two preceding Councils not reappointed on this one were Fairfax (retired from public life since June 1650), Henry Marten, Alderman Pennington, and Ludlow; and among members of the last Council now omitted were Lord Howard and Sir Peter Wentworth. The twenty absolutely new members were : Alderman Francis Allen. John Fielden, Esq. Lieut.-Gen. Charles Fleetwood. Robert Goodwin, Esq. * Major-Gen. Thomas Harrison. William Lemon, Esq. Thomas Lister, Esq. Walter Strickland, Esq. (late Agent at the Hague). Sir Thomas Widdrington, Knt. All of these were members of Parliament; and those asterisked had signed the death-warrant of Charles I. At the first meeting of the Council (Feb. 19, 1650-1), Walter Frost, junior, was reappointed assistant to his father, whose reappointment to the General Secretaryship had been made, as before, by Parliament itself, and Milton was reappointed Secretary for Foreign Languages. At the meeting on March 1, the standing Committees of Council were appointed or reappointed. There were now seven such Committees, for these departments respectively-Ordnance, Admiralty, Affairs of Ireland and Scotland, Examinations and Informations, Conference with Army-officers, Law, and The Mint; and among these the members of the Council were distributed according to their tastes or qualifications, some to serve on two or more Committees. Of the larger Committees three were to be a quorum, and of the smaller two. Renewed precautions for secrecy of the proceedings, by locked doors, &c., are very conspicuous at the beginning of this Council.1 Besides Cromwell, whose re-nomination on the Council in his absence had been again a matter of course, there were several others whose attendance at Council or its Committees could not be expected for some time. Lord Commissioner St. John and Mr. Strickland, for example, who had been appointed Ambassadors Extraordinary to the United Provinces, took their formal leave of Parliament on the 25th of February, before their departure, with all befitting state and ceremony, on their important mission. On the same day, in proof that the negotiations in London with the Spanish Ambassador Cardenas had been so far satisfactory, it was resolved by the House to send one or more Ambassadors from the Commonwealth to the Court of Madrid. They were not yet named, however; and the business of intercourse between the two nations was to be managed for some time longer, as hitherto, between the friendly Cardenas and the chiefs of the Commonwealth conferring in London. The murder of Ascham was still a subject of discussion; but, on the whole, his Spanish Majesty was understood to be now very well disposed towards the Commonwealth. His Majesty's relations at the time to other continental powers, including Portugal, were such as to make this policy prudent; and it must have been good news to him to learn in Madrid how indifferently the Portuguese 1 Notes from Council Order Books of days named. Envoy had succeeded in London in comparison with his own Ambassador, Cardenas.1 The negotiation with Guimaraes in London, indeed, was a most protracted affair. Begun at the close of the second year of the Commonwealth, it had been handed on into the third, a Committee of the Council of State, with Mr. Charles Vane and Milton in constant attendance, managing the treaty with Guimaraes directly, both by interviews and by exchange of papers, but the Council itself and the Parliament reviewing and superintending. Through the month of April 1651 the treaty occupied much of the time both of the Council and of the House. On certain preliminary articles, including the release of Englishmen imprisoned in Portugal, the restoration of English ships and goods taken by the Portuguese in retaliation for Blake's ravages, the reparation of damages caused by the protection given to Rupert's piratical navy, and even security for the payment by the King of Portugal of £180,000 towards England's expenses in the late war, there was not much difficulty; but on some important ulterior points there was a contest of firmness and ingenuity between the Parliament and the Envoy, the Parliament again and again voting the Envoy's offers to be unsatisfactory, and the Envoy again and again maintaining his ground in papers. The Treaty having prolonged itself into May, and Guimaraes, after repeated references to him, still evading what was demanded, Parliament at length (May 16) declared the Treaty to be absolutely broken off, and ordered a pass to be sent to Guimaraes for his departure out of the territories of the Commonwealth within fourteen days. Even after that Guimaraes made some attempts to renew the negotiation, but in vain. It was to be made clear to Portugal and to all the world that the English Commonwealth could be as dictatorial as the most absolute potentate in Europe.2 More really a disappointment to the heads of the Commonwealth than the broken treaty with Portugal was the failure. 1 Commons Journals of date given; Godwin, III. 369, and 375-6. 2 Commons Journals and Council Order Books of many days in April and May 1651-those in the C. J. traceable in the Index, under Guimaraes; Godwin, III. 369-370. of the Embassy of Chief Justice St. John and Mr. Strickland to the States-General of the Netherlands. They had been accompanied by a train of gentlemen in attendance, as well as servants, and had taken with them for their secretary JOHN THURLOE, a Lincoln's Inn lawyer, then thirty-four years of age, who had been in St. John's confidential employment for many years, and had served also, by his recommendation, in various public posts. They entered the Hague in a procession of twenty-seven coaches, with 246 followers on foot; and they had their first audience of the States-General on the 20th of March. Their hope, and that of the Parliament at home, was that the new political condition of the United Provinces, brought about by the recent death of the Prince of Orange, would prove favourable to their mission. The Republican party, on whose sympathies the English Commonwealth might naturally count, were now in power, and were taking advantage of the infancy of the heir of the Orange line for the perpetuation of that power, and the protection of Republican institutions from future encroachments. The Stadtholderate, which had been virtually hereditary in the Orange line since the foundation of the Republic, was now in abeyance, and the Orange interest politically depressed. Still the Orange party was numerous, and in great favour with the populace in the Hague and in other towns; and whatever this party could do to thwart the Embassy from the English Commonwealth was sure to be done, not only because of the sympathy of the party with the Stuart dynasty in England, but also because the alliance with the English Commonwealth which the Ambassadors had come to propose threatened to be fatal to all chance of a renewal of the Orange Stadtholderate. Hardly had the Ambassadors arrived, indeed, when they had very unpleasant experience of this. Their coaches were pursued and hooted in the streets; the windows of their hotel were broken over and over again; there were scuffles between the Hague people and their servants; Prince Edward, a younger son of the Queen of Bohemia, passing them in the Park, called out "O you rogues, you dogs"; there were rumours of plots against their lives; altogether it did not seem impossible |