and the march upon it just related, took place. Still the officers did not cease their exertions to persuade the king to adopt the proposals; but he was waiting to see what turn affairs would take, and listening at the same time to the Scots and the Irish catholics. This idea was so little concealed, that talking with Ireton, he let slip the observation, "I shall play my game as well as I can." On which Ireton replied, " If your majesty has a game to play, you must give us leave also to play ours." As the bluster of the city seemed to subside before the approaching army, Charles sent Berkeley to ask the officers, "If he should accept the proposals, what would ensue?" They said, "We will offer them to the parliament." "And if they should reject them, what then?" The rest of the officers hesitating to answer such a question, Rainsborough said bluntly, "If they wont agree, we will make them!" to which all the rest instantly assented. Berkeley carried this decisive answer to Charles, but there, he says, he had very different work; he was just as unconceding as ever. Cromwell and Ireton then begged, that though the king would not sign the proposals, he would at least write a kind letter to the army, which would show the country that they were doing nothing contrary to his majesty's mind. With the co-operation of Berkeley, Ashburnham, and others of the king's friends, they met at Windsor, and drew up such a letter, but they could not prevail on him to sign it till the city had yielded, and it was too late. Still the officers, to show that their triumph had not altered in the least their desire for agreement with the king, again voted the proposals as their terms of settlement. Charles renewed his discussion with them, and was every day sending messages by Ashburnham to Cromwell and Ireton, yet never coming nearer; but, on the other hand, bringing those officers into suspicion with a new and fanatic party which had arisen, which originally called themselves Rationahsts, but soon after Levellers.
The levellers were, in fact, a set of men amongst whom Lilburne, now colonel John Lilburne, was a leading character. They had imbibed from the Old Testament, which was their favourite study, a spirit of republicanism combined with a wild fanatic style of language. They found in the remarks on monarchs in the Scriptures, on the election of Saul by Israel, a clear denunciation of all kings, and they declared they would no longer seek after kings who aimed only at absolute power, nor after lords who sought only honours and places, but they would have a free government by a parliament, and a free religion. They drew up a paper called "The Case of the Army," and another called "The Agreement of the People," which were presented to the general and the agitators of the eleven regiments. Religious republicanism was abroad in the army, and they drew up a new constitution, at which a biennial parliament, with six monthly sessions, widely extended franchise, and a more equally distributed representation, was at the head. There were to be neither king nor lords in their system. Colonels Pride and Rainsborough supported their views: Cromwell and Ireton strenuously opposed them. They were, therefore, immediately the objects of attack, and represented as being in a close and secret compact with the king, the Ahab of the nation, to betray the people. Lilburne was busily employed in writing and printing violent denunciations in flaming style, and strongly garnished with Bible terms. Parliament denounced the doctrines of the levellers as destructive of all government, and ordered the authors to be prosecuted; but Lilburne against John and John against Lilburne was not so easily extinguished.
Whilst this fanatic effervescence had broken out in the army, the presbyterians in parliament and the Scottish commissioners made one effort more for the recovery of their ascendancy. Regarding the religious toleration proposed in the array conditions as something horrible and monstrously wicked, they drew up fresh proposals of their own, and presented them to the king. If Charles could not endure the army proposals, he was not likely to accept those of the presbyterians, who gave no place to his own church at all; and he told them that he liked those of the army better. This answer Berkeley showed to the officers of the army before it was sent; they highly approved of it, and promised to do all they could in the house to get an order voted for a personal treaty, "and," Berkeley adds, "to my understanding, performed it, for both Cromwell and Ireton, with Vane and all their friends, seconded with great resolution this desire of his majesty." Cromwell, indeed, he says, spoke so zealously in its favour, that it only increased, both in the house and out of it, the suspicion of his having made a compact with the king to restore him. The more the officers argued for a personal treaty, the more the presbyterians in the house opposed it; but at length a resolution was carried for it. It was thought that it would occupy twenty days, but it went on for two months, and came to nothing—other and strange events occurring.
The levellers, after this display of zeal on the part of Cromwell, vowed that they would kill both him and the king, whom they not only styled an Ahab and a Coloquintida, a man of blood, and the everlasting obstacle to peace and liberty, but demanded his head as the cause of the murder of thousands of freeborn Englishmen. Cromwell declared that his life was not safe in his own quarters, and we are assured that Lilburne and another agitator named Wildman had agreed to assassinate him, as a renegade and traitor to liberty. To check this wild and dangerous spirit in the army, Cromwell and Ireton recommended that it should be drawn closer together, and thus more under the immediate discipline of its chief officers. This was agreed upon, and a general rendezvous was appointed to take place at Ware on the 16th of November.
During the interval, Charles was royally lodged at Hampton Court, and was freely permitted to have his children with him, but all the time he was at his usual work of plotting. The marquis of Ormond having surrendered his command in Ireland to the parliament, was come hither, and lord Capel, who had been one of Charles's most distinguished commanders, being also permitted by parliament to return from abroad, a scheme was laid, whilst Charles was amusing the army and parliament with the discussion of the "Proposals," that the next spring, through the Scottish commissioners, who were also in the plot, a Scottish army should enter England, forty thousand strong, and calling on the presbyterians to join them, should march forward. At the same time Ormond should lead an army from Ireland, whilst Capel summoned the rest of the king's friends in
