ssels, laden with small pieces of ordnance, and prepared for fight.
Skippon, whom the parliament had appointed, by their own authority,
major-general of the city militia,[*] conducted the members, at the head
of this tumultuary army, to Westminster Hall. And when the populace, by
land and by water, passed Whitehall, they still asked, with insulting
shouts, "What has become of the king and his cavaliers? And whither are
they fled?"[**]

* Nalson, vol. ii. p 833.

** Whitlocke. p. 52 Dugdale, p. 82. Clarendon, vol ii p.
380.

The king, apprehensive of danger from the enraged multitude, had retired
to Hampton Court, deserted by all the world, and overwhelmed with
grief, shame, and remorse, for the fatal measures into which he had
been hurried. His distressed situation he could no longer ascribe to the
rigors of destiny, or the malignity of enemies: his own precipitancy and
indiscretion must bear the blame of whatever disasters should henceforth
befall him. The most faithful of his adherents, between sorrow and
indignation, were confounded with reflections on what had happened,
and what was likely to follow. Seeing every prospect blasted, faction
triumphant, the discontented populace inflamed to a degree of fury,
they utterly despaired of success in a cause to whose ruin friends and
enemies seemed equally to conspire.

The prudence of the king, in his conduct of this affair, nobody
pretended to justify. The legality of his proceedings met with many and
just apologies, though generally offered to unwilling ears. No maxim of
law, it was said, is more established, or more universally allowed, than
that privilege of parliament extends not to treason, felony, or breach
of peace; nor has either house, during former ages, ever pretended, in
any of those cases, to interpose in behalf of its members. Though some
inconveniencies should result from the observance of this maxim, that
would not be sufficient, without other authority, to abolish a principle
established by uninterrupted precedent, and founded on the tacit consent
of the whole legislature. But what are the inconveniencies so much
dreaded? The king, on pretence of treason, may seize any members of the
opposite faction, and for a time gain to his partisans the majority of
voices. But if he seize only a few, will he not lose more friends by
such a gross artifice than he confines enemies? If he seize a great
number, is not this expedient force, open and bare