himself told Ashburnham, who met him as he was going down to his government, that he went there 'because he found the army was going to break all promises with the king, and that he would have nothing to do with such perfidious actions' (Vindication of John Ashburnham, ii. 108).
According to Wood, while the king was at Hampton Court Dr. Henry Hammond [q. v.] had 'conducted this nephew to his majesty as a penitent convert,' and he was given the honour of kissing the king's hand (Athenae, iii. 501). Hopes founded on these grounds led the king to choose the Isle of Wight as a place of refuge. On 13 Nov. 1647 Hammond learnt from Sir John Berkeley and John Ashburnham that the king had fled from Hampton Court to save his life from the levellers, and intended to put himself under Hammond's protection 'as a person of good extraction, and one that though he had been engaged against him in the war, yet it had been prosecuted by him without any animosity to his person' (Berkeley, Memoirs, 'Maseres' Tracts,' p. 377). Hammond grew pale and trembled, and broke out 'into passionate and distracted expressions,' saying that he was undone, and between his duty to the king and his obligations to the army would be confounded. Finally, he said 'he did believe his majesty relied on him as a person of honour and honesty, and therefore did engage to perform whatever could be expected of a person of honour and honesty' (ib. pp. 378, 380; Ashburnham, ii. 48, 115). On this extremely vague engagement Ashburnham conducted Hammond to the king, and the king came to the Isle of Wight. (The king's account of his reasons for throwing himself on Hammond's protection is given in Hammond's letters of 13 Nov. and 19 Nov.; Old Parliamentary Hist. xvi. 331, 357; Lords' Journals, ix. 525, 538.) Hammond at once wrote to the parliament announcing what had happened, and, in order to secure the king from any attempt on the part of the levellers, called the gentlemen of the island together, and required their co-operation for the defence of his majesty's person (Oglander, Memoirs, pp. 66, 69). Parliament immediately drew up a series of instructions to Hammond, ordering him to set a guard over Charles 'for securing the king's person from any violence, and preventing his departing the said isle without the directions of both houses' (16 Nov. 1647, Lords' Journals, ix. 527; a second set of instructions, on the occasion of the treaty of Newport, dated 17 Aug. 1648, ib. x. 454). He was also ordered by the commons to send up Ashburnham, Berkeley, and Legge as prisoners, and, after a vigorous protest, obeyed, saying that whatsoever was commanded by authority, especially that of the parliament, though never so contrary to his sense of honour, should never be disobeyed by him (ib. ix. 538). Thus instead of becoming the king's protector, Hammond found himself his gaoler. His relations with the king were at first pleasant. 'I am daily more and more satisfied with this governor,' wrote Charles on 23 Nov. 1647 (Burnet, Lives of the Hamiltons, ed. 1852, p. 414). After the king's rejection of the ' Four Bills' tendered him by parliament at the end of December 1648, he was more closely confined, and the position of the governor became difficult and delicate. Rumours spread of angry scenes between Hammond and the king (Clarendon State Papers, vol. ii., Appendix, p. xliv). In April a report went abroad of a scuffle between Charles and his gaoler, in which blows had been exchanged (The Fatal Blow, or the most impious and treasonable fact of Hammond in offering force unto and hurting his most Sacred Majesty discussed, 1647, 4to). There was no truth in this story; the utmost of which Herbert complains is that Hammond searched the king's cabinet for papers (Memoirs of Sir Thomas Herbert, ed. 1702, p. 79). In the king's secret correspondence in the summer of 1648, he speaks Hammond's 'barbarity' and 'incivility,' and says 'the devil cannot outgo him neither in malice nor cunning' (21 Aug. 1647; Wagstaffe, Vindication of King Charles the Martyr, 1711, p. 155; cf. Memoirs of Sir P. Warwick, p. 330). The vigilance observed by Hammond to prevent the king's escape or rescue, and the restrictions imposed by him on the access of royalists to his majesty, were the cause of these complaints. In May 1648 two of the gentlemen attending on the king, Osborne and Dowcett, were detected in a plot for concerting his escape, and were arrested. Osborne asserted that Hammond's second in command, Major Rolph, had plotted against the king's life, and that the governor was cognisant of it. Hammond indignantly vindicated both himself and his officer, appealing to the king himself to witness that he had been treated with all possible care and respect, and demanding either to be cleared from Osborne's calumnies, or removed from his office (Old Parliamentary Hist. xvii. 191,, 256, 294; Rushworth, vii. 1185, 1191). More than once previously he had begged to be relieved from his ungrateful task, and again on 19 Nov. 1648 he prayed that he might be superseded by some one else (Old Parliamentary Hist. xvii. 257, xviii. 240). In November 1648 the breach between the army and the parliament involved him in new
