lf and for
whose interest only, of will and power, all our wars and troubles have
been, with all the miseries attending them, may be specially brought to
justice for the treason, blood, and mischief he is therein guilty of."

[Sidenote: Pride's Purge.]

The demand drove the Houses to despair. That the king should be forced
back into legal courses, and if need be forced by stress of arms, seemed
to the bulk of the English gentry who were ranged on the Parliament side
a necessity, though a hard necessity. But the tradition of loyalty, of
reverence for the Crown, was strong even in the men who had fought
hardest against Charles. They shrank with horror from the sight of a
king at the bar of a court of justice, or yet more on the scaffold. The
demand for a new Parliament was hardly less horrible. A new Parliament
meant the rule of the Sectaries, a revolution in the whole political and
religious system of the realm. To give way to Charles altogether, to
surrender all that the war had gained, seemed better than this. Their
reply to the Remonstrance was to accept the king's concessions,
unimportant as they were, as a basis of peace. The calculations of
Charles were verified by the surrender of his old opponents; but the
surrender came too late to save either Parliament or king. The step was
accepted by the soldiers as a defiance. On the thirtieth of November
Charles was again seized by a troop of horse, and carried off to Hurst
Castle, while a letter from Fairfax announced the march of his army upon
London. "We shall know now," said Vane, as the troops took their post
round the Houses of Parliament, "who is on the side of the king, and who
on the side of the people." But the terror of the army proved weaker
among the members than the agonized loyalty which strove to save the
monarchy and the Church; and a large majority in both Houses still voted
for the acceptance of the terms which Charles had offered. The next
morning, that of the sixth of December, saw Colonel Pride at the door of
the House of Commons with a list of forty members of the majority in his
hands. The Council of Officers had resolved to exclude them, and as each
member made his appearance he was arrested, and put in confinement. "By
what right do you act?" a member asked. "By the right of the sword,"
Hugh Peters is said to have replied. The House was still resolute, but
on the following morning forty more members were excluded, and the rest
gave way.

[Siden