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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009
There has been revived in various ways, within the last few years, an old subject of controversy, namely, the execution of Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, in cold blood, on the surrender of Colchester to Fairfax in 1648. Mr. Firth's discovery of the Clarke papers, his valuable lives of the two knights in the ‘Dictionary of National Biography’, Mr. Gardiner's judicial summary of the case, and—magnis cotnponere parva—the erection of a memorial on the scene of the execution by a local enthusiast, have all contributed to remind us of a dispute which has led, at the hands of partisans, to heated and angry recrimination.
page 157 note 1 So Lucas's sister, the Duchess of Newcastle, writes that he was ‘shot to death for his loyal service.’
page 158 note 1 Memorials of the Civil War … forming the concluding volumes of the Fairfax Correspondence. Edited by Bell, Robert (1849)Google Scholar.
page 158 note 2 ‘Sir Charles Lucas belonged to that class of bullying, reckless, dare-devil adventurers … street brawlers and tavern gasconaders … dregs of the English population … roarers and cut-purses … disgraced by crimes and debaucheries. Sir Charles Lucas was distinguished by the unscrupulous passions and audacity of these people … rude, bold, and dissolute … ready to carry his objects by the most flagitious means … set fire to streets and houses, plundered the citizens, and committed other excesses of a revolting kind’ (Fairfax Corre'pondence, ii. 36–40).
page 158 note 3 Of this, three instances will suffice. Mr. Bell imagined that the Loyalist general, the Earl of Norwich (Lord Goring), was not one individual, but two. He accordingly described a simultaneous stand by ‘Goring at Bow, and the Earl of Norwich at Chelmsford’ (ii. 36), thus fairly rivalling Sir Boyle Roche's bird; and similarly enumerated among the prisoners at Colchester, ‘Norwich, Capel, Goring? &c. ! He also imagined that the famous passage about going ‘into Court’ in Fairfax's Short Memorial referred to the council of war at the surrender of Colchester, and from this he drew his deductions. It is obvious, of course, as admitted by Mr. Markham, that the passage referred, and could only refer, to the trial of Lord Capel, in the following year, before the High Court of Justice. Thirdly, when quoting Clarendon's opinion (expressed in the language of the period), he actually attributes it (p. 49) to Lord de Grey, who had published, shortly before, his Memoirs of Sir Charles Lucas.
page 159 note 1 Colchester Address (Arch. Journal, xxxiv. 119).
page 159 note 2 Fortnightly Review, xxvi. 374 (Sept. 1876).
page 159 note 3 ‘Lord Fairfax at Colchester’ (Fortnightly Review, xxvi. 374).
page 159 note 4 Ibid.
page 159 note 5 Essex Standard (Colchester).
page 160 note 1 ‘The Siege of Colchester’ (Arch. Journal, xxxiv. 119).
page 160 note 2 ‘The Siege of Colchester’ (Saturday Review, Aug. 12, 1876).
page 161 note 1 ‘some satisfaction to military justice,’ altered to ‘the satisfaction of military justice.’
page 164 note 1 Fortnightly Review, p. 377.
page 164 note 2 Life of Fairfax, p. 328.
page 164 note 3 Fortnightly Review, p. 382.
page 165 note 1 Life of Fairfax, p. 330
page 166 note 1 Life of Fairfax, p. 330.
page 166 note 2 Fortnightly, p. 381.
page 168 note 1 Memoirs, i. 306.
page 168 note 2 Fortnightly, p. 377.
page 169 note 1 ‘Ever generous to a defeated foe, Fairfax did not confine his kind offices to the concession of exceptionally honourable terms on the field’ [!](Life, p. 401 )
page 169 note 2 Ibid.
page 169 note 3 Ed. Firth, p. 45.
page 170 note 1 The Loyal Sacrifice.
page 170 note 2 ‘This is the first example of Justice that ever was shewed in this kind (since [i.e. during] the first and second war) by the Parliaments party, though it be according to the rule of war (in submitting to mercy)’; an argument which does not profess to justify its cruelty.
page 170 note 3 Thus it was that the terrified Italians described the practice of the French, in the invasion under Charles, VIII., to give no quarter in battle: ‘Et jamais nul ne fait prisonnier, ce que par adventure jamais n'advint en bataille … Leurs batailles d'Italie n'ont joint acaustoumé d'estre telles’ (Memoires de Commuines, viii. 6)Google Scholar . See also, on this point, Guicciardini.
page 172 note 1 Observe that here again Fairfax confines himself to those who were actually put to death.
page 172 note 2 Memoirs, i. 354. Ludlow, though famous for having deliberately smoked a body of Iribh to death in a cavern (Ib. pp. 422–24), had been moved by the cries of this garrison, as he was burning them out:—‘they hung out a white flag begging earnestly for mercy and that we would take away the fire’ (Ib. pp. 353–354).
page 173 note 1 That Ireton was foremost, throughout, in the demand for ‘Justice’ on the Loyalists is virtually beyond question. MrMarkham, treats with scorn ‘Clarendon's suggestion that the Colchester executions were due to the influence of Ireton’ (Life, p. 360)Google Scholar; but how strong and widespread was this belief at the time is strikingly evidenced by Evelyn's, version that Lucas and Lisle were ‘murdered by Ireton (sic) in cold blood’ (Diary, 07 8, 1656)Google Scholar.
page 173 note 2 This important expression is wholly omitted from that ‘garbled version’ which Mr. Markham quotes.
page 173 note 3 Fairfax's, Despatch (Rushwerth, p. 1243)Google Scholar. I have called attention, by the insertion of a ‘(sic),’ to the peculiar use of the term ‘Justice’ which at this time prevailed. In the mouth of the Army it was, as I have shown, the synonym of ‘punishment’ or ‘vengeance.’ Steel, in his argument against the Duke of Hamilton (when on his trial with Capel, &c.), d stinguishes between ‘military’ and ‘civil justice’: ‘No security fiom the stroke of civil justice belongs to the prisoner by this refuge; for as to the military, that is not the contention.’
page 174 note 1 ‘His execution was cruel and unnecessary, and, in my opinion, that majority was guilty of judicial murder’ (Arch, fourn. xxxiv. 119).
page 174 note 2 Fortnightly, p. 382.
page 174 note 3 The expression ‘barbarously murdered’ was in frequent use at the time. It was applied, for instance, to the execution of Lord Capel, both in his epitaph and his widow's petition to the Crown; and to that of Charles I. in Walker's Historical Discourses, &c. It would be, obviously, even more applicable in such a case as that of Lucas and Lisle. The Loyalist narrative of the siege of Col-chester, found among the Duke of Beaufort's MSS., speaks of Lucas having ‘now received the reward of his Christian charitie, whilst his barbarous murderers are persecuted wilh their own guilt.’
Lucas's sister, the Duchess of Newcastle, describes the knight as ‘inhumanly murdered and shot to death.’ Mr. Firth takes exception to the term ‘murdered.’ But if he will refer to the preamble of the Act for constituting the High Court of Justice a few months later, he will find that those who had fallen in the Civil War are formally described as ‘murdered,’ while the sentence on Charles I. describes him as a ‘murderer’ (iii. 581, 582). The term, therefore, was correct at the time.
page 176 note 1 ‘So as the Lord, General may be free to put tome immediately to the sword’ [Ruskworth, p. 1247)Google Scholar.
page 176 note 2 Ibid. This phrase is believed to be corrupt.
page 176 note 3 Hallam observes of him, with good-natured contempt, that in Charles I. he ‘had for once found a man less discerning of the times than himself.’
page 177 note 1 ‘Short Memorials’ (Anliq. Rep. iii. 4, 9).
page 178 note 1 Life of Fairfax, p. 384.
page 179 note 1 MrMarkham, , indeed, writes: ‘Lord Fairfax accepted a seat in the Council of State; but he firmly refused to sign a declaration which was presented to the Councillors on taking office, by which they would have been made to express approbation of the abolition of kingship and of the House of Lords’ (Life, p 354)Google Scholar. It will probably be sufficient to quote the Resolution of the House of Commons, 20 Feb. 1649–50, reciting that Fairfax had ‘taken and subscribed the Engagement appointed for the Members of the Council of State, viz.’:—
‘I do testify that I do adhere to … the settling of the Government of this Nation for the future, in the way of a Republic, without King or House of Peers: And I do promise, in the sight of God, that through his Grace, I will be faithful in performance of the trust committed to me as aforesaid ‘(Commons Journals, vol. vi.).
page 179 note 2 Dictionary of National Biography, xxxiv. 230.
page 180 note 1 Only some weeks before his actual rising in arms, and when he had been resolved for some time to act ‘with a view to the restoration’ (Life, p. 375), he gave an illustration of his ‘perfect consistency and good faith’ (Ib. p. 385), by swearing in officers to be ‘true faithfull and constant to this Commonwealth without a single person, Kingshipp, or House of Peers’; while on the very day when, according to MrMarkham, , he ‘secured the restoration of the monarchy’ (p. 382)Google Scholar, this ‘heroic’ man wrote to the Rump: ‘We desire you to be assured that what hath been done was only in order to your service.’