yalty itself. Cromwell was never braver than when he faced
the gathering storm, forbade the discussion, adjourned the Council, and
sent the officers to their regiments. But the strain was too great to
last long, and Charles was still resolute to "play his game." He was in
fact so far from being in earnest in his negotiation with Cromwell and
Ireton that at the moment they were risking their lives for him he was
conducting another and equally delusive negotiation with the Parliament,
fomenting the discontent in London, and preparing for a fresh Royalist
rising. What he still more counted on was aid from the North. The
intervention of the Scots had ruined his cause, but their intervention
might again restore it. The practical suspension of the Covenant and the
triumph of the party of religious liberty in England had produced a
violent reaction across the Tweed. Argyle and the zealous Presbyterians
still clung to the alliance between the two countries, though it
disappointed their hopes; but Hamilton, who had now become a Duke, put
himself at the head of the more moderate religionists, and carried the
elections for a new Parliament. Charles at once saw the results of the
Duke's success. "The two nations," he wrote joyously, "will soon be at
war." All that was needed for the success of these schemes was his own
liberty: and in November 1647, in the midst of their hopes of an
accommodation, the army leaders learned that they had been duped
throughout, and that the king had fled.

[Sidenote: The second Civil War.]

The flight fanned the excitement of the New Model into frenzy, and only
the courage of Cromwell averted an open mutiny in its gathering at Ware.
But even Cromwell was powerless to break the spirit which now pervaded
the soldiers, and the king's perfidy left him without resources. "The
king is a man of great parts and great understanding," he said, "but so
great a dissembler and so false a man that he is not to be trusted." The
danger from his escape indeed soon passed away. By a strange error
Charles had ridden from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, perhaps
with some hope from the sympathy of Colonel Hammond, the Governor of
Carisbrook Castle, and again found himself a prisoner. But the wider
perils remained. Foiled in his effort to put himself at the head of the
new civil war, the king set himself to organize it from his prison; and
while again opening delusive negotiations with the two Houses he signed
a secre