owards negotiation, and were cautious not to expose too
easily to censure those high terms which their apprehensions or their
ambition made them previously demand of the king. Though their partisans
were blinded with the thickest veil of religious prejudices, they
dreaded to bring their pretensions to the test, or lay them open before
the whole nation. In opposition to the sacred authority of the laws, to
the venerable precedents of many ages, the popular leaders were ashamed
to plead nothing but fears and jealousies, which were not avowed by the
constitution, and for which neither the personal character of Charles,
so full of virtue, nor his situation, so deprived of all independent
authority, seemed to afford any reasonable foundation. Grievances which
had been fully redressed; powers, either legal or illegal, which
had been entirely renounced; it seemed unpopular, and invidious, and
ungrateful, any further to insist on.

The king, that he might abate the universal veneration paid to the name
of parliament, had issued a declaration, in which he set forth all
the tumults by which himself and his partisans in both houses had
been driven from London; and he thence inferred, that the assembly at
Westminster was no longer a free parliament, and, till its liberty
were restored, was entitled to no authority. As this declaration was an
obstacle to all treaty, some contrivance seemed requisite in order to
elude it.

A letter was written in the foregoing spring to the earl of Essex, and
subscribed by the prince, the duke of York, and forty-three noblemen.[*]
They there exhort him to be an instrument of restoring peace, and to
promote that happy end with those by whom he was employed. Essex,
though much disgusted with the parliament, though apprehensive of
the extremities to which they were driving, though desirous of any
reasonable accommodation, yet was still more resolute to preserve an
honorable fidelity to the trust reposed in him. He replied, that as
the paper sent him neither contained any address to the two houses of
parliament, nor any acknowledgment of their authority, he could not
communicate it to them. Like proposals had been reiterated by the king
during the ensuing campaign, and still met with a like answer from
Essex.[**]

* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 442. Rush, vol vi. p. 566.
Whitlocke, p. 77.

** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 444. Rush. vol. vi. p. 569, 570.
Whitlocke, p. 94.

In order to mak