ffensive or preventive war in the parliament
prudent and reasonable, it could never in any propriety of speech, make
it be termed a defensive one. But the parliament, sensible that the
letter of the law condemned them as rebels and traitors, deemed this
point absolutely necessary for their future security; and the king,
finding that peace could be obtained on no other terms, at last yielded
to it. He only entered a protest, which was admitted, that no concession
made by him should be valid, unless the whole treaty of pacification
were concluded.[***]

* Warwick, p. 324.

** Clarendon. Sir Edward Walker, p. 319

*** Walker, p. 11, 12, 24.

He agreed that the parliament should retain, during the term of twenty
years, the power over the militia and army, and that of levying what
money they pleased for their support. He even yielded to them the right
of resuming, at any time afterwards, this authority, whenever they
should declare such a resumption necessary for public safety. In effect,
the important power of the sword was forever ravished from him and his
successors.[*]

He agreed that all the great offices, during twenty years should be
filled by both houses of parliament.[**] He relinquished to them the
entire government of Ireland, and the conduct of the war there.[***] He
renounced the power of the wards, and accepted of one hundred thousand
pounds a year in lieu of it.[****] He acknowledged the validity of their
great seal, and gave up his own.[v] He abandoned the power of creating
peers without consent of parliament. And he agreed, that all the debts
contracted in order to support the war against him, should be paid by
the people.

So great were the alterations made on the English constitution by this
treaty, that the king said, not without reason, that he had been more an
enemy to his people by these concessions, could he have prevented them,
than by any other action of his life.

Of all the demands of the parliament, Charles refused only two. Though
he relinquished almost every power of the crown, he would neither give
up his friends to punishment, nor desert what he esteemed his religious
duty. The severe repentance which he had undergone for abandoning
Strafford, had no doubt confirmed him in the resolution never again to
be guilty of a like error. His long solitude and severe afflictions had
contributed to rivet him the more in those religious principles which
had ever a considerable inf