d by fraud and violence, he has lessened,
if not overpowered, our detestation of his enormities, by our admiration
of his success and of his genius.

During this important transaction of the self-denying ordinance, the
negotiations for peace were likewise carried on, though with small hopes
of success. The king having sent two messages, one from Evesham,[*]
another from Tavistoke,[**] desiring a treaty, the parliament despatched
commissioners to Oxford with proposals, as high as if they had obtained
a complete victory.[***]

* 4th of July, 1644.

** 8th of Sept 1644.

*** Dugdale, p. 737. Rush. vol. vi. p 850.

The advantages gained during the campaign and the great distresses of
the royalists, had much elevated their hopes; and they were resolved to
repose no trust in men inflamed with the highest animosity against them,
and who, were they possessed of power, were fully authorized by law to
punish all their opponents as rebels and traitors.

The king, when he considered the proposals, and the disposition of the
parliament, could not expect any accommodation, and had no prospect but
of war, or of total submission and subjection: yet, in order to satisfy
his own party, who were impatient for peace, he agreed to send the duke
of Richmond and earl of Southampton with an answer to the proposals
of the parliament, and at the same time to desire a treaty upon their
mutual demands and pretensions.[*] It now became necessary for him to
retract his former declaration, that the two houses at Westminster were
not a free parliament; and accordingly he was induced, though with
great reluctance, to give them, in his answer, the appellation of the
parliament of England.[**] But it appeared afterwards, by a letter which
he wrote to the queen, and of which a copy was taken at Naseby, that
he secretly entered an explanatory protest in his council book; and he
pretended, that though he had called them the parliament, he had not
thereby acknowledged them for such.[***] This subtlety, which has been
frequently objected to Charles, is the most noted of those very few
instances from which the enemies of this prince have endeavored to
load him with the imputation of insincerity; and have inferred that
the parliament could repose no confidence in his professions and
declarations, not even in his laws and statutes. There is, however, it
must be confessed, a difference universally avowed between simply giving
to men the appe