The King, therefore, in a dark and rainy night, his guards being retired, as it was thought, on purpose, left Hampton Court and went to the sea-side about Southampton, where a vessel had been bespoken to transport him but failed; so that the King was forced to trust himself with Colonel Hammond, then governor of the Isle of Wight; expecting perhaps some kindness from him, for Dr. Hammond’s sake, brother to the colonel and his Majesty’s much favoured chaplain. But it proved otherwise; for the colonel sent to his masters of the Parliament, to receive their orders concerning him.
This going into the Isle of Wight was not likely to be any part of Cromwell’s design, who neither knew whither nor which way he would go; nor had Hammond known any more than other men, if the ship had come to the appointed place in due time.
….
The Parliament, in which there were more Presbyterians yet than Independents, might have gotten what they would of the King during his life, if they had not by an unconscionable and sottish ambition obstructed the way to their ends. They sent him four propositions, to be signed and passed by him as Acts of Parliament; telling him, when these were granted, they would send commissioners to treat with him of any other articles.
The propositions were these: First, that the Parliament should have the militia, and the power of levying money to maintain it, for twenty years; and after that term, the exercise thereof to return to the King, in case the Parliament think the safety of the kingdom concerned in it.
See also
- Military coup in Westminster
- Cromwell and the parliaments
- Cromwell despairs of Parliament again
- Fall of the House of Cromwell
- Turmoil in their sovereignty
Books
- By Thomas Hobbes:
- By Earl Spencer:
- Charles I and the People of England by David Cressy
- Cromwell, Our Chief of Men by Lady Antonia Fraser
- Civil War London by David Flintham