best measures to be adopted for the satisfactory settlement of the affairs of the kingdom. Charles also sent to parliament, repeating his offers of accommodation, and requesting the two houses to forward to him the propositions for peace. To show his sincerity, he ordered his officers to surrender the fortresses still in their hands to the committee of both kingdoms for the English parliament. He had offered to surrender them to the Scots, but they refused to accept them, knowing that it must embroil them with the parliament. This surrender on the part of the king, on the 10th of June, closed the war. The last to pull down the royal standard was the old marquis of Worcester, the father of Glamorgan, who held Raglan Castle, and who, though he was eighty years of age, was compelled by parliament to travel from Raglan to London, where he immediately died. Worcester had refused to give up Raglan, as it was his own house. He did not surrender it till the 19th of August. Oxford was given up on the 24th of June. Rupert and Maurice were suffered to withdraw to the continent. The duke of York, Charles's second son, was sent up to London to the keeping of parliament, and put under the care of the earl of Northumberland.
Things being in this position, and both the king and the Scots being anxious to keep at a distance from Fairfax and his army till the terms were settled, the Scots rapidly retreated to Newcastle, carrying the king with them.
The treaty betwixt the Scots and the English parliament was now carried on with much diplomacy on both sides, and was not finally settled till the Kith of January, 1647. The Scots, soon after leaving Newark, proposed a meeting with the parliamentary commissioners, to explain the reasons of their retreat northwards, and also for not surrendering Ashburnham and Hudson; but the meeting did not take place, and soon after Ashburnham contrived to escape and get into France, to the queen. Charles said that he could have escaped, too, had he been so disposed; but Hudson attempting it, was stopped.
Charles did not neglect to try the effect of brilliant promises on David Leslie and others of the Scotch officers, if they would side with him and make a junction with Montrose for his restoration. He offered to make David earl of Orkney, but the committee of estates sent the earls of Argyll and Loudon, and lord Lanark, to Newcastle, to see that all was kept in order in the camp; and they told Charles plainly that he must take the covenant, and order Montrose to disband his forces in the Highlands, if he expected them to do anything important for him. Charles consented to order the disbanding of Montrose's followers and his retirement to France, but he could not bring himself to accept the covenant. In fact, on the same day that he gave the order to surrender his remaining fortresses, he sent a letter to the English parliament, informing them that he was in full freedom, and in a capacity to settle with them a peace, and offering to surrender the question of religion to the assembly of divines at Westminster, to place the militia in their hands as proposed at Uxbridge, for seven years, and, in short, to do all in his power to settle the kingdom without further effusion of blood. The parliament, however, were too sensible of their power, and knew that he was in no condition to make war on them, to notice such overtures, further than they thought his terms now too high.
At this very time Charles was in active secret endeavour to obtain an army from Ireland and France. Glamorgan and the pope's nuncio were busy there; the queen was equally busy in France; Mazarin again promised her ten thousand men, and incited lord Jermyn to seize upon Jersey and Guernsey; and the king, though he had ordered Montrose to disband his forces and quit Scotland, again desired him to be ready to raise the royal standard once more in the Highlands in conjunction with the French and Irish. All these wild schemes, however, were knocked on the head by the earl of Ormond making peace with the parliament on condition that he should recover his estates. He surrendered the castle of Dublin and the fortresses to parliament, went over to England, and all hope of aid from Ireland was at an end.
Whilst these political designs were in agitation, Charles was deeply engaged with the religious difficulty of giving up episcopacy and consenting to the dominance of presbyterianism. He consulted Juxton, the ex-bishop of London, and gave him leave to advise with Dr. Sheldon and the late bishop of Salisbury, whether he might not accept presbyterianism as a man under compulsion, and therefore not really bound by it; and he was at the same time engaged with Alexander Henderson on the scriptural authority of episcopacy or presbyterianism. During this dispute, in which each champion supported his opinion with scriptural passages, and yet came no nearer than such disputants ever do, the Scotch divine was taken ill and died, and the royalists declared that the king had so completely worsted him, that he died of chargin.
On the 23rd of July the English parliament at length made proposals of peace, sending the earls of Pembroke, Denbigh, and Montague, and six members of the commons, to Newcastle, to treat with him. The conditions were not so favourable as those offered at Uxbridge, things, indeed, being now very different; the great point, however, being the abandonment of episcopacy. They were to receive an answer or return in ten days; but the king would not yield the question of the church. The Scottish commissioners were present, and urged the king warmly to consent to the conditions, and thus to restore peace. The earls of Loudon and Argyll implored it on their knees. Then Loudon, chancellor of Scotland, told him "that the consequences of his answer to the propositions was so great, that on it depended the ruin of his crown and kingdoms; that the parliament, after many bloody battles, had got the strong-holds and forts of the kingdom into their hands; that they had his revenue, excise, assessments, sequestrations, and power to raise all the men and money in the kingdom; that they had gained victory over all, and that they had a strong army to maintain it, so that they might do what they would with church or state. That they desired neither him nor any of his race longer to reign over them, and had sent these propositions to his majesty, without the granting whereof the kingdom and his people would not lie in safety; that if he refused to assent, he would lose all his friends in parliament, lose the city, and lose the country; and that all England would join against him as one man to process and dis-
