POLITICAL HISTORY 



to secure adherents and to detach the supporters of its adversary. A month after the king s 

 arrival the Marquess of Hertford came in with 800 horse, escorting the young Duke of York, who 

 was received with loyal enthusiasm, and was admitted to the Order of the Garter on 19 April. 

 The importance of securing the great port of Hull had long been recognized, and as early as 

 January an effort had been made by the Royalists to place Sir Thomas Metham in command 

 there, but his local influence was small, and Captain Legge, to whom the business had been 

 entrusted, deemed it wiser to commit the care of the town to the burgesses. They showed their 

 independence by refusing to receive Sir John Hotham when first nominated by the Parliament, but 

 Legge had to warn the king that the proposed appointment of the Earl of Newcastle as governor 

 would be unpopular, and that it would be wiser for Charles either to come in person or to leave 

 the burgesses in control of their own afeirs.^* During the next three months the Parliamentary 

 party gained the ascendancy and Hotham was installed as governor. Charles now determined to 

 make sure of the town by going there in person, and on 23 April he rode to Hull with a large 

 body of horse. Upon reaching Hull he found the gate shut, and in response to his indignant 

 demand for admission. Sir John Hotham replied courteously, but firmly, that he had orders not to 

 allow the king or his troops to enter.^' Furious at the affront to his authority, but impotent to 

 compel obedience. King Charles turned back to Beverley, and wrote to the Parliament demanding 

 satisfaction for the insult. Parliament, however, approved Hotham's action, but doubting whether 

 he would be able to keep the town, proposed to withdraw the stores of ammunition lying there ; a 

 course against which the burgesses unsuccessfully protested. 



After the Hull incident the king made fresh efforts to strengthen his party in Yorkshire, with 

 indifferent success, addresses protesting loyalty being countered by petitions urging the king to 

 come to terms with his Parliament. A great meeting of the county gentry was held at York on 

 12 May, but led to no definite result, as the feelings of the assembly were much divided, so Charles 

 took the decisive step of summoning the gentry to come to York in arms for his defence. Lord 

 Fairfax, Sir Thomas Stapleton, and Sir Hugh Cholmley, who had been sent down to York to act 

 as commissioners for the Parliament, and had received but a chilly welcome, remonstrated with the 

 king, who endeavoured to explain away his action by asserting that he had only asked for volun- 

 teers.'" The terms of his proclamation, however, did not bear him out, and it was significant that 

 he at the same time ordered Sir Robert Strickland's regiment of foot to be mobilized. In answer to 

 his summons about 200 gentlemen came in ; of these the king chose fifty to form his personal 

 guard, and the others, by the advice of some of his lords,'^ he dismissed for the time being,'^ though 

 preparations were made to form a body of horse of which Prince Charles was to be captain, with a 

 brother of Sir John Byron as lieutenant, and one of Sir Ingleby Daniel's sons as cornet.'' The 

 next move was to make a wider appeal, to test the sympathies of the yeomanry and lesser gentry, 

 and for this purpose a great meeting of the freeholders of the county was summoned. On 3 June 

 some 60,000 persons assembled on Heworth Moor, to which place came the king with his atten- 

 dant nobles, accompanied by a troop of 140 gentry with the young prince riding at their head, and 

 a foot guard of 800 men of the trained bands. Loyal shouts of welcome rang from all parts of the 

 field, but the meeting was far from unanimous in support of the king. Copies of a petition 

 decidedly adverse to his demands had been prepared, and Sir John Bourchier began to read one of 

 these to the assembly, who were testifying to their approval of its contents when Lord Savile rode 

 up, bade him desist, and forcibly snatched the paper from him. Sir John restrained the people from 

 expressing their indignation in acts, and Sir Thomas Fairfax, with much difficulty, forced his way 

 to the king and offered a copy of the petition to King Charles ; twice it was rejected, and then Sir 

 Thomas, placing the petition on the king's saddle-bow, retired.'* When the meeting broke up, 

 crowds of people went into the city to subscribe their signatures to copies of the petition to be sent 

 up to the Parliament. Although the feeling of the county was thus divided, York itself was ' a 

 sanctuary to all those that despised the Parliament ' ; '^ the king's adherents were rapidly concen- 

 trating there ; the Great Seal had been brought down secretly, the Lord Keeper following and 

 narrowly escaping capture on the way,'° and towards the end of June Briot, the engraver of the 

 Mint, was ordered to bring his -implements at once to York," and soon after this, no doubt, began 

 the conversion into coin of the plate generously sacrificed for their cause by the loyalists. Charles 

 endeavoured to counteract the ordinance of Parliament for embodying the militia by issuing com- 

 missions of array ; this course, which was first adopted on 1 1 June,'^ afterwards led to the aliena- 

 tion of many of his supporters through the granting of commissions to Roman Catholics. Meanwhile 



" Cal. S.P. Dm. 1 641-3, 307. 



" Gardiner, op. cit. ix, 192-3. 



" Ibid. 1645-7, p. 424. 



^ Cai. S.P. Dom. 1641-3, p. 330. 



" Ibid. 67. 



" Cat. S.P. Dom. 1 64 1-3, p. 344. 



"Mbid. is 3. 



^'' Cal. S.P. Dom. 1641-3, p. 322. 



'^ Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. ii, 3 1 6. 



'* Yorks. Arch. Journ. vii, 64-6. 



'" Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. ii, 3 1 6. 



'^ Gardiner, Hist, of Engl, x, 202. 



419 



