[1] To add to his embarrassments, his three[a] fortresses in the
north, Carlisle, Pontefract, and Scarborough,[b] which for eighteen months
had defied all the efforts of the enemy, had now fallen, the first into
the[c] hands of the Scots, the other two into those of the parliament.
Under this accumulation of misfortunes many of his friends, and among them
Rupert himself, hitherto the declared advocate of war, importuned him to
yield to necessity, and to accept the conditions offered by the parliament.
He replied that they viewed[d] the question with the eyes of mere soldiers
and statesmen; but he was a king, and had duties to perform, from which no
change of circumstances, no human power could absolve him,--to preserve
the church, protect his friends, and transmit to his successors the lawful
rights of the crown. God was bound to support his own cause: he might for a
time permit rebels and traitors to prosper, but he would ultimately humble
them before the throne of their sovereign.[2] Under
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 663, et seq. Rushw. vi. 50, 55, 57. Carte's
Ormond, iii. 423.]
[Footnote 2: Clarendon, ii. 679. Lords' Journals, vii. 667. Only three days
before his arrival at Oxford, he wrote (August 25) a letter to secretary
Nicholas, with an order to publish its contents, that it was his fixed
determination, by the grace of God, never, in any possible circumstances,
to yield up the government of the church to papists, Presbyterians, or
Independents, nor to injure his successors by lessening the ecclesiastical
or military power bequeathed to him by his predecessors, nor to forsake
the defence of his friends, who had risked their lives and fortunes in his
quarrel.
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