Falkland's political course was thus traced out. The desire to secure intellectual liberty from spiritual tyranny was the ruling principle of his mind. His claim to our reverence lies in the fact that his mind was as thoroughly saturated as Milton's was with the love of freedom as the nurse of high thought and high morality, while his gentle nature made him incapable of the harsh austerities of Milton's combative career. As an efficient statesman Falkland has little claim to notice. He knew what he did not want, but he had no clear conception of what he did want; no constructive imagination to become a founder of institutions in which his noble conceptions should be embodied. It was this deficiency which made him during his future life a follower rather than a leader, to choose the royalist side not because he counted it worthy of his attachment, but because the parliamentary side seemed to be less worthy, and to accept a political system from his friend Hyde as he had accepted a system of thought from his friend Chillingworth. Falkland's mind in its beautiful strength as well as in its weakness was essentially of a feminine cast.
If the moral tendency towards a great achievement were not as meritorious as the intellectual discovery of the means by which that achievement may be rendered possible, one might easily grow impatient over the remainder of Falkland's career. While he remained in the Long parliament his advice was purely negative. He was, as might have been expected, hostile to the Scotch, and wished that the English parliament should take no interest in the incident at Edinburgh, and should refuse to allow Scottish troops to take part in the Irish war (D'Ewes's ‘Diary,’ Harl. MS. 162, fols. 12 b, 60 b). He resisted the second Bishops' Exclusion Bill (ib. fol. 31 b), and in the debate on the Grand Remonstrance complained of the hard measure dealt out to the bishops and the Arminians (Verney Notes, 121). Not a hint is to be found that during these fateful months he suggested any practical remedy for the evils of which he was profoundly conscious.
It is probable that no one was more surprised than Falkland himself when, on or about 1 Jan. 1642, the king offered him the vacant secretaryship of state. It required all the persuasive powers of his friend Hyde to induce him to accept it, and he seems to have given way rather because he thought the party which he had joined to be on the whole better than the one which was opposed to it, than because he had great confidence in Charles's character. Whatever his motive may have been, his resolution was not affected by the incident of the attempt upon the five members. Yet if Falkland kept his place, there are no signs of his acquiring or attempting to acquire political influence. His name is, as might be expected, to be found among those appended to the declaration of 15 June 1642, in which the peers and others assembled at York protest that they abhor all designs of making war (Clarendon, v. 342); and on 5 Sept. he was the bearer of the second message sent by Charles to the parliament after the standard had been raised at Nottingham. We learn from D'Ewes that, in addition to the public declaration (Lords' Journals, v. 338) with which he was charged, Falkland was directed privately to inform the parliamentary leaders that Charles was prepared to ‘consent to a thorough reformation of religion,’ as well as to anything else that they ‘could reasonably desire’ (D'Ewes's ‘Diary,’ Harl. MS. 164, fol. 314 b). The rejection of this overture no doubt determined Falkland to throw himself on the royalist side more heartily than he had done before.
Of Falkland's career as secretary we know little. A well-merited reproof given to Rupert—‘in neglecting me, you neglect the king’ (Warburton's Mem. of Rupert, i. 368)—is evidence of the spirit in which he magnified his office, while a letter written on 27 Sept., soon after the fight at Powick Bridge, in which he predicts a speedy end to the rebellion, because Essex's army was filled with ‘tailors or embroiderers or the like,’ shows, as does his remark to Cromwell before the debate on the Grand Remonstrance—that the subject would not need a long discussion—that he had little conception of the forces opposed to him (Civil War Tracts in the British Museum, press mark E, 9 March, 121, 22). Later on we have the fact that he conducted the secret correspondence with the London partakers in Waller's plot, but it is impossible now to say whether he did so as a mere matter of duty, or because he considered that all was fair against enemies who were also rebels. At all events, by the summer of 1643 Falkland was weary of the war. At the siege of Gloucester, when among his friends, after a deep silence and frequent sighs, he ‘would with a shrill and sad accent ingeminate the word Peace! Peace! and would passionately profess that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation which the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart’ (Clarendon, Hist. vii. 233).
The misery of the spectacle around him
