CHAP. 1640. own audacity. To them the case, as well it might, seemed altogether desperate. Peace, they thought, must now be bought at any price. Roe, the opponent Het be of the debasement of the coinage, was to carry July 30. Negotia opened. The City again refuses to lend. War inevitable. the news to the City that negotiations were to be opened, and to ask once more for a loan, which it was fondly hoped would be readily granted, as the money was needed to pay off the soldiers and not for purposes of war. Roe went to Guildhall as he was bidden, but he went in vain. He was told that grants of money were matters for Parliaments, and not for the citizens of London. As for themselves they were quite unable to find the money, the Londonderry plantation having consumed their stocks.'1 6 If it was unlikely that the Londoners would place confidence in the honeyed words of the King now that he was in such desperate straits, it was still less likely that, after the experience of the pacification of Berwick, the Scots would reopen a negotiation which took no account of their present demands, and which, even if it gave them all for which they asked, might be subsequently explained away by the interpretation which it might please Charles to place upon his words. They had long ago made up their minds that a lasting peace could only be attained after an invasion of England, and that it would be necessary to come to an understanding not with the King alone, but with an English Parliament. Every piece of intelligence which reached them from the South must have convinced them that they had no longer, as in 1639, to fear a national resistance. The circumstances of the dissolution of the late Parliament had put an end to * Rossingham's Newsletter, Aug. 4, S. P. Dom. cccclxiii. 33. Montreuil's Despatch. Aug., Bibl. Nat. Fr. 15,995, fol. 107. Giustinian's Despatch, Aug., Ven. Transcripts. ENGLISH COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE SCOTS. that. Personages of note and eminence had entered into communication with their commissioners, and had given them assurances, which they had no reason to doubt, that Parliament, if it met, would take up their cause, and would refuse to grant a sixpence to the King unless he consented to put an end to the war.1 If nothing had passed since, the knowledge of the emptiness of the Exchequer, of the growing resistance to the various attempts which had been made to wring money from Englishmen, and of the mutinous temper in which the troops were marching northwards, must have convinced the Covenanting leaders that the time had now arrived in which they might strike hard without fear of consequences. 401 CHAP. 1640. July. cations the Scots English There can be little doubt, however, that secret Communicommunications had passed between the Scots and between the English leaders. Before Loudoun had left London and the he had been in communication with Lord Savile, the leaders. son of Strafford's old rival, who had inherited the personal antipathies of his father, and whose hatred of Strafford placed him by the side of men of higher aims than his own. To him, as the recognised organ of the English malcontents, Johnston of Warriston addressed a letter on June 23, just at the moment when Leslie's army was first gathering at Leith. After letter to expressing the not unnatural desire of the Scottish leaders for a definite understanding with the English nobility, it asked for an extension of the National Covenant in some form to England, in order that the Scots might distinguish friends from foes, and for a special engagement from some principal persons that they would join the invading army at its entrance The communications through Frost, noticed by Burnet (Hist. of Own Times, i. 27) seem to relate to the period before the Parliament. June 23. Johnston's Savile. СНАР. IX. 1640. July 8. the Peers. into Northumberland, or would send money for its support. This letter passed through Loudoun's hands, and Answer of the answer was forwarded by Savile some days after the Scottish nobleman had set out on his return. It was signed by Bedford, Essex, Brooke, Warwick, Scrope, Mandeville, and himself. It contained a distinct. refusal to commit a treasonable act, and an assurance that the English who had stood by their side in the last Parliament would stand by their side still in a legal and honourable way. Their enemies were one, their interest was one, their end was one, a free Parliament,' to try all offenders, and to settle religion and liberty. This letter failed to give satisfaction in Scotland. Nor was its deficiency likely to be supplied by an accompanying letter, full of the most unqualified offers of aid from Savile himself. The Scots pressed for an open declaration and engagement in their favour. In the end of July or the beginning of forged en August, Savile sent them what they wanted. He gagement. forged the signatures of the Peers with such skill that, when the document was afterwards submitted to their inspection, they were unable to point out a single turn of the pen by which the forgery might have been detected.1 Aug. Savile's I bave probably surprised many of my readers by the facility with which I have accepted Oldmixon's letters (Hist. of Engl. 141) as genuine. Oldmixon's character for truthfulness stands so very low that historians have been quite satisfied to treat the letters as a forgery. The internal evidence of their authenticity is, however, very strong. The letters of Johnston, of the Peers, and of Savile are written in so distinct a style, and that style so evidently appropriate to the character and position of the writers, as to require in a forger a very high art indeed-art which there is nothing to lead us to suppose that Oldmixon possessed. The allusions to passing events cannot all be tested, but there is none which I have succeeded in testing which is incorrect. The prediction that the troops would be on the Borders on July 10 indeed anticipated reality by ten days; but this is just the mistake that Johnston was likely PREPARATIONS FOR INVASION. Encouraged by these communications, Leslie had in July taken up his post in Choicelee Wood, about to make, and which a skilful forger would avoid. On the other hand, the strongest evidence in favour of the letters is derived from the argument by which Disraeli satisfied himself of their supposititious character. He asks how Oldmixon came to place the seven names at the end of the Peers' letter when he assures us that those names were cut out from the original? My answer to this is that the letter which Oldmixon produces is not what he says it was. The story of cutting out the names is borrowed by him from Nalson (ii. 428). Now there can be no doubt what the paper described in Nalson really was. It was a declaration and engagement on the faith of which the Scots said they had invaded England, and which they said the English Lords had broken. The letter in Oldmixon contains no engagement which was not fulfilled. There can be no doubt, therefore, that the forged paper was a different one from that which he has printed, and that it contained a promise of actual assistance. Nalson's evidence is of the highest authority as being an extract from the Memoirs of the Earl of Manchester, who, as Lord Mandeville, was one of those whose signature was forged. On the hypothesis that the letters were Oldmixon's forgery, we have to face the enormous difficulty that, after producing letters so wonderfully deceptive as the others were, he did not take the precaution of forging one from the Peers which would bear the slightest resemblance to the description which he himself had given of it. On my hypothesis everything is easily explained. Oldmixon met with these letters either in the original or in copy. Being either careless or dishonest, or both, he was not content to give them simply for what they were, but must needs give them out for the lost engagement for which Charles had sought in vain. The dates, too, as we have them, support this view. The Peers' letter is said to have been sent off from Yorkshire on July 8, about ten days after Loudoun left London. Manchester in his Memoirs says that the engagement was sent after Loudoun had been released, and had been some few weeks in Scotland. I would add that Henry Darley, the reputed bearer, was in York on July 28, signing the Yorkshire Petition, and it would be likely enough that Savile was encouraged to the forgery by the temper of the signers of that petition. If so, Darley's journey would be, as I have suggested, in the end of July or the beginning of August. Further, Henry Darley was arrested by a warrant from Strafford, dated Sept. 20, and confined in York Castle till he was liberated by the Long Parliament (Lords' Journals, iv. 100. Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iv. 30). The only piece of internal evidence against these letters is the reference to Lord Warriston, when he was not till later a Lord of Session. He was, however, a Scotch Laird, and a Scotch Laird might easily pass into a Lord in an English letter, his official title being that of Baron. My attention has been called by Lieut.-Col. Alexander Fergusson to the fact that John Napier, the inventor of logarithms, 403 CHAP. 1640. July. CHAP. 1640. Dunse. Plan of a dictator ship. four miles from Dunse.1 He, too, had difficulty in obtaining money and provisions for his army, and for some weeks he was obliged to content himself with Leslie near keeping a small force upon the Borders till supplies came in sufficient quantities to enable him to gather his whole army for the projected invasion. Nor were political divisions wanting to add to his distraction. The huge Committee of Estates was but a cumbrous substitute for government; and, as the prospect of a reconciliation with Charles melted into the distant future, the Covenanters can hardly be blamed for looking around for some temporary form of executive which would give unity of control to their action. Naturally the name of Argyle was uppermost in their thoughts, and plans were discussed, in some of which it was proposed to constitute him dictator of the whole country, whilst in others he was to rule with unlimited sway to the north of the Forth, whilst two other noblemen were to receive in charge the southern counties. Aug. The Bond nauld. To such a scheme Montrose declared himself of Cumber- bitterly hostile. He was still under the delusion that it was possible to establish an orderly constitutional and Presbyterian government, with Charles at its head. Whether this notion were wise or foolish, it was shared, at least in theory, by a large majority of whose position was exactly that of Johnston, calls himself on the titlepage the Baro de Murchistoun, and he also tells me that he is informed on high authority that in charters of such estates it was customary even to use the word Dominus of the owner. Oldmixon calls Johnston Sir Archibald Johnston, Lord of Warriston, which is clearly an anticipation of his subsequent title. It may, therefore, be argued that the Lord Warriston in the letter is the result of Oldmixon's ignorance. Yet after all, Johnston was Lord of Warriston, not because he was a judge, but because he was proprietor of the estate. For Savile's acknowledgment of the forgery, see p. 437. 'Outside the wood is a spot marked as Camp Moor on the Ordnance Мар. |