The History of the Rebellion : A new selection by Earl of Clarendon Edward Hyde

Author:Earl of Clarendon Edward Hyde
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Oxford

The King had no kindness for him upon an old account, as remembering the part he had acted against the earl of Strafford: however, he had been induced, upon the accidents which happened afterwards, to repose trust in him; and this he knew well enough, and foresaw that he should be quickly overshadowed in the war, and therefore desired to get out of it by a seasonable peace; and so in all his discourses urged the necessity of it, as he had begun at Buckingham,* and that the King ought to send propositions to the Parliament in order to obtaining it; and in this march had prosecuted his former design by several cabals among the officers, and disposed them, to petition the King to send to the Parliament again an offer of peace, and that the lord Digby and sir John Culpepper might not be permitted to be present in councils of war; implying that if this might not be granted, they would think of some other way. Which petition, though by the wisdom of some officers [it] was kept from being delivered, yet so provoked the King that he resolved to take the first opportunity to free himself from his impetuous humour; in which good disposition the lord Digby ceased not to confirm his majesty, and as soon as the news came of the northern defeat, and that the marquis of Newcastle had left the kingdom, he prevailed that Goring might be sent for to attend his majesty; who then proposed to himself to make his nephew prince Rupert general of the army, and Goring general of the horse; which Wilmot could not avowedly have excepted against, the other having been always superior to him in command, and yet would be such a mortification to him as he would never have been able to digest.

Whether his apprehension of this, as his jealous nature had much of sagacity in it, or his restless and mutinous humour, transported him, but he gave not the King time to prosecute that gracious method, but even forced him to a quicker and a rougher remedy: for during the whole march he discoursed in all places that the King must send to the earl of Essex to invite him to a conjunction with him, that so the Parliament might be obliged to consent to a peace; and pretended that he had so good intelligence in that army, as to know that such an invitation would prove effectual, and be acceptable to the earl, who, he knew, was unsatisfied with the Parliament’s behaviour towards him: and was so indiscreet as to desire a gentleman, with whom he had no intimacy, and who had a pass to go beyond the seas and must go through the earl’s quarters, that he would remember his service to the earl of Essex, and assure him that the army so much desired peace that it should not be in the power of any of those persons about the King to hinder it, if his lordship would treat upon any reasonable propositions.

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