God's Fury, England's Fire_ A New History of the English Civil Wars - Michael J. Braddick [313]
On 26 December, probably in consummation of his plans for the last eighteen months or more, Charles signed an agreement that allowed him to resume the fighting: the Engagement.39 Under its terms he offered to confirm the Solemn League and Covenant by Act of Parliament, provided that no-one (including him) was forced to take it. He would establish Presbyterian church government and the Directory of Worship for three years (although exempting himself and his household), to be followed by a free debate at the Westminster Assembly. There would also be legislation against schism and heresy. In return for this, the Scots would provide an army:
for preservation and establishment of religion, for defence of His Majesty’s person and authority, and restoring him to his government, to the just rights of the Crown and his full revenues, for defence of the privileges of Parliament and liberties of the subject, for making a firm union between the kingdoms, under His Majesty and his posterity, and settling a lasting peace.40
Duly signed, it was wrapped in lead and buried in the garden of the castle until the opportunity arose to take it off the island.41
Two days later Charles rejected the Four Bills. Proposals which had already been denounced by the Scottish commissioners could clearly not be the basis for peace, he argued, and the form of the approach foreclosed negotiation – not least because he would have to assent to actions taken under a Great Seal created without his authority. He had asked for a personal treaty and they ‘in manner propose the very subject matter of the most essential parts thereof to be first granted, a thing which will be hardly credible to posterity’.42 This was not an unreasonable position, at least if it had been taken up by someone who had not just entered an agreement to start another war.
Although the Engagement was not public knowledge until February 1648, when it was discussed in the Edinburgh parliament, Charles’s preference for Scottish military intervention as an alternative to settlement with Parliament was widely suspected. The Four Bills had been an ultimatum which had in the end met a brisk and wounding rejection. The result was the Vote of No Addresses. The Houses declared they would make no more approaches, and declared that no-one should make an application without their approval on pain of prosecution for treason. They would also receive no further approaches from the King, and no-one else was to either. A similar measure had been floated three months previously, and the Four Bills had been a means to forestall a similar measure as rumours about Charles and the Scots spread.43
It is not clear how this particular deadlock could be broken, although it does seem to have been a measure attractive to those thinking about solutions which did not include Charles – abdication in favour of a more suitable monarch, for example. Cromwell appears to have experienced a conversion to this view, arguing in favour of the measure, referring to the King as a dissembler and quoting scripture: ‘thou shalt not suffer a hypocrite to reign’. But for that very reason it was not immediately acceptable even to an Independent-dominated House of Lords (the impeached Presbyterian Lords still being absent): it was reasonable to fear that those casual of the authority of monarchy in these terms were unlikely to be more friendly towards the authority of the Lords. The General Council of the Army approved a statement ending with the promise to stand by Parliament ‘in what shall be further necessary for prosecution [of the Four Bills], and for settling and securing of the parliament and kingdom, without the King and against him, or any other that shall partake with him’.44
The Lords did not pass the Vote of No Addresses until 17 January, under pressure from the army, which