CHARLES I

AS any man more constant than Charles Steward

under the blows of adverse Providence?

More stubborn in defying God Almighty?

His heralds had declared at Marston Moor,

at Taunton, Naseby, Sherborne, Rowton Heath –

where stately William Lawes gave up the ghost,

Lord Bernard Steward suffered mortal wounds,

and O.C.’s cousins Henry and James Cromwell

were captured by the Houses’ colonel general –

His angels had proclaimed at Torrington,

Chester, Cardiff, Lichfield, Donnington Castle,

Stow-on-the-Wold, and, lastly, Exeter −

that the Most High approved the godly party

and willed the ruin of the royal power.

UT Charles preferred his other evidences:

Graham-Montrose yet maintained a force in Scotland;

Butler-Ormonde trucked with the Confederates

(whom Rinuccini showered with arms and money);

and Charles’ incomparable ambassadress,

his she-majesty, his generalissima,

pursued demarches to Mazarin, Frederick Henry,

Charles of Lorraine, King Christian, and the pope.

ND nearer home − Newcastle being his home,

who had no hole wherein to lay his head −

more potent signs and wonders had appeared.

The rebel Scots, who’d overthrown his church

and spurned his government, then ventured south

to fight beside their English brother-rebels,

now feared those brothers more than they feared their king.

Notwithstanding Parlament − so-called,

with half the Commons and one peer in seven −

had sworn the Solemn League and Covenant

and thereby hired Scotland’s mightiest host,

it now begrudged even a subject Presbytery

and bowed to the Independent infidels,

thus cheating Caledonia of her meed −

not to mention two million pounds the Houses

owed the Scots for wages, arms, and quarter.

Wherefore the faithless Scots (encouraged by

the Machiavellian cardinal) begged their king

to cast his lot with them against the foes

of a Scottish Presbyterian English church.

HORN of his tresses by the Duke of Richmond,

and garbed as the suffering servant of his Groom

of the Bedchamber, John Ashburnham MP,

and of Scoutmaster Dr. Michael Hudson,

who posed as Royalists traveling to London

to sue for composition of their estates,

Charles had fled from Oxford at 3 a.m.

over the Magdalene Bridge across the Cherwell.

“Farewell, Harry!” cried Sir Thomas Glemham,

twice governor of York and now of Oxford,

as Charles’s party clopped into the night.

Charles had sent to Ireton, then Rainsborough,

but they dared not respond, nor dared the army

offend the Houses by receiving him.

The French envoy, however, counseled Charles

the Scots would shield his conscience and his honor,

whatever that might mean − he was their king.

O Charles began his nine-day odyssey,

unparalleled in English kings’ adventures:

nine days evading watchful enemies,

nine days’ uncertainty of harborage,

with any harboring him proclaimed a traitor.

They rode to Dorchester and Nettlebed

(where a trooper questioned them), to Maidenhead

and Slough; to Hillingdon (where no word came

inviting Charles to go to ground in London,

or join the hero Graham-Montrose in Scotland),

to Harrow and St. Albans and Wheathampstead;

to Newmarket and Ely (Cromwell country),

then roosting at the White Swan in Downham;

to Crimplesham (electing not to sail),

to Southery Ferry, Earith, Coppingford;

to Little Gidding, where they prayed the hours;

to Stamford; Melton Mowbray; and to Southwell,

where Charles and company fetched up at dawn

at the King’ Head, where Montreuil was lodging.

he Scottish officers besieging Newark

warmly welcomed Charles to the Scottish army,

but Kerr-Lothian, Argyll’s commissioner,

disclaimed all terms with Charles and barred discussion

of aught besides the prompt surrender of Newark,

disbandment of the marquess’s small army,

and perfection of the Presbytery in England.

Charles ordered Belasyse to yield the town,

which done, the Scottish army hurried north,

with Charles in tow, their lord and prisoner,

to Scotland’s English citadel, Newcastle.

HERE they held him under close arrest

at New House, Robert Anderson’s fine palace,

engrafted on Grey Friars friary.

Colonel Sir Francis Anderson inherited

the thirteen acres walled within the walls,

before the war a verdant paradise

of alleys, orchards, lawns, and statuary,

now pocked and shivered by the Scottish storm

that crowned nine weeks of pounding cannonfire.

Sir Francis was yet absent on the service.

A stalwart of the capable northern host,

he’d fought the regiment of horse he coloneled

at Boldon, Hylton, Marston Moor, and Ormskirk,

Upavon, Melton Mowbray, Pontefract,

Leicester, Naseby, Rowton Heath, and Sherburn-

in-Elmet, where the Roundheads finally caught him.

Held first in York, he lay five years in London

before he was permitted to compound.

HE Scots could not revere where they abhorred.

Depriving Charles of loving servitors,

they sent away Ashburnham and stout Hudson;

secluded Charles from chaplains of his choosing;

banned him partaking holy offices

according to the Book of Common Prayer;

and goaded him each morning, noon, and night

to take the Solemn League and Covenant,

without which they could not espouse his cause,

nor re-admit him to his Scottish kingdom.

WRETCHED refuge, but Charles had a plan.

Just as the Scots now feared the Independents,

he knew his lodging with the Scots would threaten

the Independents with a Presbyterian union

of English-, Scots-, and even Ulstermen,

who, joining with the downcast royal party,

would pulverize the Independency

with roaring numbers or in open war.

To incubate this menace, Charles had let

the Scots believe their Scottish king would countenance

a Presbyterian settlement for England,

if authorized by Scripture and the Fathers.

To help him understand the arguments,

he asked that Alexander Henderson −

a sage amongst the Covenanters, who

had led the opposition to James’ rituals

and Charles’s popish Book of Public Service −

who’d reissued Scotland’s National Covenant,

and overseen the ouster of the bishops −

take ship from Edinburgh to instruct him.

HARLES met with Henderson and traded letters,

epistles, rather, stating their positions,

for seven weeks from late May into August.

A veteran, for twenty years and more,

of precisely these ecclesiastical quarrels,

later rehearsed before him in the treaties

of Oxford, early on, and later, Uxbridge,

Charles opened, not where these disputes left off,

but, most ingenuously, by thanking God

for “the king his father’s love,” who “laid in him

the grounds of Christianity,” which Charles,

long settled in his principles, must honor;

and by appealing to the legal, orderly

perfection of the English reformation,

which salvaged the apostles’ pristine church

and left no more reforming to be done,

the less the abolition of his bishops.

Reposing on his coronation oath,

Charles deftly passed the burden of proof to him

he’d summoned as his teacher and physician.

OPING to prolong debate, Charles sought

a public disputation twixt known scholars,

and failing that, a doctor of his party

and books sufficient to defend his stronghold.

The Scots were not deceived. Their obstinate king,

no patriotic Scot, whom they had begged,

in tears and on their knees, to take the Covenant,

would never yield in this world or the next.

They did not know the scorn he poured on them

in letters to his queen, nor how he scolded

his queen and ministers, when they dared urge him

to sacrifice his bishops for his crown.

“You do not grasp,” he said, “the mutual

dependency of monarchy and miter.”

After seven weeks from May to August,

great Henderson buckled under his burden.

He sailed home to Edinburgh and died there.

EANWHILE, the Scots rejected Charles’s offer

to champion an English Presbytery

that would suppress the Independents, yet

would tolerate the lawful English worship

and coexist with bishoprics in Bristol,

Exeter, Oxford, Bath and Wells, and Winchester.

Charles rejected Parlament’s propositions

amounting to complete capitulation,

instead proposing that he come to London

and make his peace with Parlament in person.

Meanwhile, at Charles’ behest, Oxford surrendered,

then Worcester, then R garrisons one by one,

Wallingford, Raglan, and Pendennis castles,

the Scilly Isles, then Denbigh and Conway castles.

Despite Charles’ efforts to detain him, Montrose

escaped to Norway, whilst the nuncio quashed

Charles’ longed-for treaty with the Irish rebels.

Tiring of the king’s prevarications,

the Scots said they would bring their army home

if Parlament would pay off their arrears.

AD Charles miscarried? He abominated

his friends’ entreaties that he cede his bishops.

“Religion is the only ground of power,”

he rumbled. (In principio erat verbum.)

“Religion will recover the militia

sooner than the militia our religion.”

(Poor Davenant, expelled from Charles’s presence

for roundly arguing the queen’s position.)

The Scots declined additional proposals

for three- and five-year trial Presbyteries,

and interim surrender of the army,

for five, ten, twenty years, or Charles’s lifetime.

Instead, they came to terms with Parlament

to withdraw for four hundred thousand pounds.

Charles was welcome to accompany them −

he only had to take the Covenant

and ratify the Houses’ propositions.

(The Scots were wary now of irritating

the Houses by outbidding them for Charles.)

Leslie-Leven spurned a kingly bribe.

AD Charles miscarried? Whilst he temporized,

the Presbyterians swept the Common Council,

and Londoners petitioned for disbandment

of Fairfax’s sectary-ridden army −

Sir Thomas sent two regiments to Surrey.

Then, when the Scots went home, and eased the threat

of joint assaults by Scots, the French, the Rs,

and Skippon’s men had occupied Newcastle,

the godly army’s purpose evanesced,

and with it, army clout in Parlament.

ARLEMENT created a committee

to welcome Charles into the Houses’ keeping.

Led by Herbert-Pembroke, Feilding-Denbigh,

and Montague of Boughton, for the peers,

with Colonel Patrick Maule, a Scottish earl,

it counted such insignes in their number

as Major Generals Sir James Harrington

and Sir Richard Browne, both new MPs,

and both conspicuous victors in the war;

MPs Sir Walter Erle, Sir John Holland,

Sir John Coke, and John Crew, long-serving victors;

Sir John Thoroughgood of Kensington,

one of Charles’s longtime gentleman-pensioners;

Sir Fulke Greville; Captain Anthony Mildmay;

Mr. Thomas Herbert, traveler to Persia

(first patronized by Pembroke’s elder brother);

Mr. James Harrington, the general’s cousin;

Mr. John Anstie, one of Charles’s ushers;

and two illustrious Puritan divines,

Masters Stephen Marshall and Joseph Caryl.

HIS company journeyed north, up wintry roads,

the lords in coaches, gentry in their saddles,

each man in silence rolling in his mind

his imminent encounter with a king

who’d striven all his life to tame the Houses.

Now four long years of costly, bloody warfare

had left him soundly beaten in the field,

by land and sea, in three of his three kingdoms −

and yet the royal loser’s dauntless eye

was not without its terror for the victors

who’d raised their hands against the Lord’s anointed,

at least against his captive natural person.

Each had his sins, commissions and omissions,

in striking at, or failing to aid, his lord,

and none but felt he stood in sight of Christ,

though not the Lord himself (no king but Jesus),

by Him detailed to wield the secular sword.

ONE needed fear, not even Herbert-Pembroke,

the arch-traitor, once a royal favorite,

a longtime privy councillor, lord lieutenant

of several counties, Charles’ Lord Chamberlain −

he’d joined in the unpardonable sin

of voting to attaint poor Wentworth-Strafford.

None needed fear. Charles greeted every man,

both peer and churl, with cordial dignity,

accommodating them in battered New House.

He cheerfully expressed his eagerness

to entertain them all at Holdenby,

surrounded by right trusty English subjects.

Accompanied by Colonel Graves’ brigade,

consisting of his regiment of horse,

two troops of Pye’s, necnon three companies

of Okey’s tried dragoons, the party marched

through New House gate and into Pilgrim Street

and out the city gate dismantled by

Sir Alexander Hamilton’s artillery.

AD Charles miscarried? Nine long months had passed

since he’d surrendered to the Scots at Southwell.

This brilliant, frosty morning at Newcastle,

there opened unto Charles the clearest evidence

yet lighted on in favor of his cause:

for every step of every road he traveled,

by coach, on horseback, and, for hours, on foot,

through towns and villages, twixt fallow fields −

his every step was thronged with men and women

of all degrees and every walk of life,

the country gentry, tenants, laborers,

preachers, teachers, and disabled soldiers,

young children with their friends, and babes in arms.

An endless clamor greeted Charles’s ears:

“The king! The king! God save Your Majesty!

God save the king! God save and preserve our king!”

Small church bells clanged, and great arrays resounded.

Folk pressed into the road. The convoy crawled.

The scrofulous were offered to his touch.

He laid on hands and prayed. He was their king.

AY after day, in sunshine, fog, and rain,

the adulation of the people mounted,

word flying faster than his southward progress.

Newcastle left behind, to Durham, Richmond,

from Ripon on to Leeds and Rotherham,

from Rotherham to Nottingham, where Fairfax,

dismounting from his horse, the crowd now silent,

dismounting, knelt to earth and kissed Charles’ hand.

Charles nodded, and remarked to Herbert-Pembroke:

“The General is a man of honor.” Fairfax

kept these words and pondered them in his heart.

When Charles’s train (or pageant) reached Northampton,

bells and cannonfire enlarged the joy

the throats of Charles’s people trumpeted,

and when he reached his house at Holdenby

(his mother’s gift to Henry, then to him),

the local folk received him like a father.

The years of wretched warfare were forgotten:

the people loved him even more than when

he’d returned from Scotland, peace treaty in hand.

HARLES settled in at Holmby. Weather permitting,

he took the air about the pleasant grounds

and bowled at nearby Harrowden and Althorp,

the former, Lord Vaux’ place, where hidden rooms

had harbored papist priests, like John Gerard;

the latter house was Spencer-Sunderland’s,

a boy whose father fell to cannon-fire

at the first battle of Newbury, and whose mother

was Robert Sidney Earl of Leicester’s daughter.

Charles played at chess and read his favorite authors,

Spenser, William Shakespeare (who we said

was Cromwell’s doubtful cousin), Ariosto

(in Harington’s translation), Tasso (Englished

by Edward Fairfax, Ferdinando’s uncle),

Hooker, and the inspired Lancelot Andrewes −

the same divine who’d baptized baby Dev-Ex.

E’D lost the war, but might yet win the peace.

His stay among the Scots had irked the army −

how much the more a lodgment nearer London,

attended by no Independent saints,

but in the main by English Presbyterians

(Colonel Graves being openly of that kidney),

the Independents’ internecine rivals.

Though yet bereft of chaplains of his choosing,

Charles could wait and watch, with satisfaction,

the buds of strife unclosing in bright blooms.