three thousand Cavaliers with him killed, captured, or
dispersed. Again the king sent a message to Parliament, offering to come
to Whitehall, and proposing terms similar to those which he had rejected
when the negotiators met at Uxbridge. His real object, however, was to
produce such an effect by his presence in London as would create a
reaction in his favor. Three days after he had sent this message he
wrote to Digby:

"I am endeavoring to get to London, so that the conditions may be such
as a gentleman may own, and that the rebels may acknowledge me king,
being not without hope that I shall be able so to draw either the
Presbyterians or Independents to side with me for exterminating the one
or the other, that I shall be really king again."

These offers were rejected by Parliament, and the army of Fairfax
advanced toward Oxford. In the meanwhile, Montreuil, a special
ambassador from France, bad been negotiating with the Scottish
commissioners in London to induce the Scots to take up the cause of the
king. He then proceeded to Edinburgh, and afterward to the Scotch army.
At first the Scotch were willing to receive him; but they perceived the
danger which would be involved in a quarrel with the English Parliament.
Already there were many causes of dispute. The army had not received the
pay promised them when they marched south, and being without money had
been obliged to live upon the country, creating great disorders and
confusion, and rendering themselves bitterly hated by the people. Thus
their answers continued to be ambiguous, making no absolute promise, but
yet giving a sort of encouragement to the king to place himself in their
hands.

Toward the end of April Fairfax was drawing so close around Oxford that
the king felt that hesitation was no longer possible, and accompanied
only by his chaplain, Dr. Michael Hudson, and by a groom of his
bedchamber, named Jack Ashburnham, he left Oxford at night, and after
many adventures arrived at the Scotch army, before Newark, where upon
his arrival "many lords came instantly to wait on his majesty, with
professions of joy to find that he had so far honored their army as to
think it worthy his presence after so long an opposition." Lord Leven,
however, who commanded the Scotch army, while receiving the king with
professions of courtesy and honor, yet gave him to understand that he
must in some way consider himself as a prisoner. The king, at the
request of the Scotch, sign