[Illustration: THE LANDING OF THE QUEEN]
This was at five o'clock in the morning. The queen and her attendants were in their beds, asleep. The reports of the cannon from the ships, the terrific whistling of the balls through the air, and the crash of the houses which the balls struck, aroused the whole village from their slumbers, and threw them into consternation. The people soon came to the house where the queen was lodging, and begged her to fly. They said that the neighboring houses were blown to pieces, and that her own would soon be destroyed, and she herself would be killed. They may, however, have been influenced more by a regard to their own safety than to hers in these injunctions, as it must have been a great object with the villagers to effect the immediate removal of a visitor who was the means of bringing upon them so terrible a danger.
These urgent entreaties of the villagers were soon enforced by two cannon-balls, which fell, one after another, upon the roof of the house, and, crashing their way through the roof and the floors, went down, without seeming to regard the resistance, from the top to the bottom. The queen hastily put on her clothes, and went forth with her attendants on foot, the balls from the ships whistling after them all the way.
One of her servants was killed. The rest of the fugitives, finding their exposure so great, stopped at a sort of trench which they came to, at the end of a field, such as is dug commonly, in England, on one side of the hedge to make the barrier more impassable to the animals which it is intended to confine. This trench, with the embankment formed by the earth thrown out of it, on which the hedge is usually planted, afforded them protection. They sought shelter in it, and remained there for two hours, like besiegers in the approaches to a town, the balls passing over their heads harmlessly, though sometimes covering them with the earth which they threw up as they bounded by. At length the tide began to ebb, and the vice-admiral was in danger of being left aground. He weighed his anchors and withdrew, and the queen and her party were relieved. Such a cannonading of a helpless and defenseless woman is a barbarity which could hardly take place except in a civil war.
The queen rejoined her husband, and she rendered him essential service in many ways. She had personal influence enough to raise both money and men for his armies, and so contributed very essentially to the strength of his party. At last she returned to the Continent again, and went to Paris, where she was still actively employed in promoting his cause. At one of the battles in which the king was defeated, the Parliamentary army seized his baggage, and found among his papers his correspondence with the queen. They very ungenerously ordered it to be published, as the letters seemed to show a vigorous determination on the part of the king not to yield in the contest without obtaining from the Parliament and their adherents full and ample concessions to his claims.
As time rolled on, the strength of the royal party gradually wasted away, while that of Parliament seemed to increase, until it became evident that the latter would, in the end, obtain the victory. The king retreated from place to place, followed by his foes, and growing weaker and more discouraged after every conflict. His son, the Prince of Wales, was then about fifteen years of age. He sent him to the western part of the island, with directions that, if affairs should still go against him, the boy should be taken in time out of the country, and join his mother in Paris. The danger grew more and more imminent, and they who had charge of the young prince sent him first to Scilly, and then to Jersey-islands in the Channel-whence he made his escape to Paris, and joined his mother. Fifteen years afterward he returned to London with great pomp and parade, and was placed upon the throne by universal acclamation.
At last the king himself, after being driven from one place of refuge to another, retreated to Oxford and intrenched himself there. Here he spent the winter of 1646 in extreme depression and distress. His friends deserted him; his resources were expended; his hopes were extinguished. He sent proposals of peace to the Parliament, and offered, himself, to come to London, if they would grant him a safe-conduct. In reply, they forbade him to come. They would listen to no propositions, and would make no terms. The case, they saw, was in their own hands, and they determined on unconditional submission. They hemmed the king in on all sides at his retreat in Oxford, and reduced him to despair.
In the mean time, the Scots, a year or two before this, had raised an army and crossed the northern frontier, and entered England. They were against monarchy and Episcopacy, but they were, in some respects, a separate enemy from those against whom the king had been contending so long; and he began to think that he had perhaps better fall into their hands than into those of his English foes, if he must submit to one or to the other. He hesitated for some time what course to take; but at last, after receiving representations of the favorable feeling which prevailed in regard to him in the Scottish army, he concluded to make his escape from Oxford and surrender himself to them. He accordingly did so, and the civil war was ended.
CHAPTER X. THE CAPTIVITY.
1646-1648
The king's escape from Oxford.-The king delivers himself to the Scots.-His reception.-Proclamation by Parliament.-Surrender of Newark.-Negotiations about the disposal of the king's person.-The Scots surrender the king.-Whether he was sold.-The king's amusements in captivity.-Holmby House.-Contest about forms.-Intolerance.-The Scotch preacher.-The king's presence of mind.-The king receives letters from the queen.-The army.-Oliver Cromwell.-His plan to seize the king.-Cornet Joyce.-He forces admittance to the king.-Joyce's interview with the king.-His "instructions."-The king taken to Cambridge.-Closely guarded.-The king's evil.-The king removed to Hampton Court.-The king's interview with his children.-Contentions.-The king's escape from Hampton Court.-Carisbrooke Castle.-Colonel Hammond.-The king again a prisoner.-His confinement in Carisbrooke Castle.-Negotiations.-The king's employments.-Unsuccessful attempts to escape.-Osborne.-Plan of escape.-Rolf's treacherous design.-Rolf foiled.-The king made a closer prisoner.-The king's wretched condition.
The circumstances of King Charles's surrender to the Scots were these. He knew that he was surrounded by his enemies in Oxford, and that they would not allow him to escape if they could prevent it. He and his friends, therefore, formed the following plan to elude them.
They sent word to the commanders of each of the several gates of the city, on a certain day, that during the ensuing night three men would have to pass out on business of the king's, and that when the men should appear and give a certain signal, they were to be allowed to pass. The officer at each gate received this command without knowing that a similar one had been sent to the others.
[Illustration: NEWARK.]
Accordingly, about midnight, the parties of men were dispatched, and they went out at the several gates. The king himself was in one of these parties. There were two other persons with him. One of these persons was a certain Mr. Ashburnham, and the king was disguised as his servant. They were all on horseback, and the king had a valise upon the horse behind him, so as to complete his disguise. This was on the 27th of April. The next day, or very soon after, it was known at Oxford that his majesty was gone, but no one could tell in what direction, for there was no means even of deciding by which of the gates he had left the city.
The Scotch were, at this time, encamped before the town of Newark, which is on the Trent, in the heart of England, and about one hundred and twenty miles north of London. There was a magnificent castle at Newark in those days, which made the place very strong. The town held out for the king; though the Scots had been investing it for some time, they had not yet succeeded in compelling the governor to surrender. The king concluded to proceed to Newark and enter the Scottish camp. He considered it, or, rather, wished it to be considered that he was coming to join them as their monarch. They were going to consider it surrendering to them as their prisoner. The king himself must have known how it would be, but it made his sense of humiliation a little less poignant to carry this illusion with him as long as it was possible to maintain it.