Yet he owned, that
those who staid with him must expect and resolve either to die for a
good cause, or, which is worse, to live as miserable in the maintaining
it as the violence of insulting rebels could make them." The treaty
terminated without hope of being again renewed. Cromwell carried his
ordinance; the army and the state were governed by his own creatures;
while, by a master-piece of cunning, he contrived to be exempted from
the restrictions of his own decree, and continued to act as general and
legislator without a rival. Afterwards, when his packed representatives
had effected all the purposes for which he kept them together, he put
himself at the head of a file of soldiers, destroyed the engine by which
he had overthrown the constitution, and turned the pantomimic Parliament
out of doors, laden with the odium of his crimes as well as of their
own.
The melancholy presentiments of the King, when he found all hopes of
honourable reconciliation futile, confirmed his determination to send
the Prince of Wales into the west of England, where his arms still
triumphed, that in case either of them fell into the hands of the
rebels, the freedom of the other might tend to secure their mutual
safety.
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