nts proposed; new
discussions followed, and a week was perhaps consumed before a point of
small importance could be settled.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. April 14.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. April 17.]

essential to their own security. At one period they indulged a strong hope
of success. At parting, Charles had promised to give them satisfaction, on
the following day; but during the night he was dissuaded from his purpose;
and his answer in the morning proved little short of an absolute denial.
Northumberland also made a secret offer of his influence to mollify the
obstinacy of the patriots; but Charles, who called that nobleman the most
ungrateful of men, received the proposal with displeasure, and to the
importunity of his advisers coldly replied, that the service must come
first and the reward might follow afterwards. Whether the parliament began
to suspect the fidelity of the commissioners, and on that account recalled
them, is unknown. Hyde maintains that the king protracted the negotiation
to give time for the arrival of the queen, without whom he would come to
no determination; but of this not a vestige appears in the private
correspondence between Charles and his consort; and a sufficient reason
for the failure of the treaty may be found in the high pretensions of each
party, neither of whom had been sufficiently humbled to purchase peace with
the sacrifice of honour or safety.[1]

It was owing to the indefatigable exertions of Henrietta, that the king had
been enabled to meet his opponents in the field. During her residence in

[Footnote 1: See Clarendon's Life, 76-80; Whitelock, 68; and the letters in
the king's works, 138-140. Before Henrietta left England, he had promised
her to give away no office without her consent, and not to make peace but
through her mediation. Charles, however, maintained that the first regarded
not offices of state, but offices of the royal household; and the second
seems to have been misunderstood. As far as I can judge, it only meant that
whenever he made peace, he would put her forward as mediatrix, to the end
that, since she had been calumniated as being the cause of the rupture
between him and his people, she might also have in the eyes of the public
the merit of effecting the reconciliation.--Clarendon's Life, ibid.]
[a]Holland she had repeatedly sent him supplies of arms and ammunition,
and, what he equally wanted, of veteran officers to train