It does not appear to me that a brave and prudent man, in the condition of Charles the First, had, up to that unfortunate day, any other alternative than a vigorous prosecution of the war, in hope of such decisive success as, though hardly within probable calculation, is not unprecedented in the changeful tide of fortune. I cannot therefore blame him either for refusing unreasonable terms of accommodation, or for not relinquishing altogether the contest. But, after his defeat at Naseby, his affairs were, in a military sense, so irretrievable that in prolonging the war with as much obstinacy as the broken state of his party would allow, he displayed a good deal of that indifference to the sufferings of the kingdom and of his own adherents, which has been sometimes imputed to him. There was, from the hour of that battle, one only safe and honourable course remaining. He justly abhorred to reign, if so it could be named, the slave of parliament, with the sacrifice of his conscience and his friends. But it was by no means necessary to reign at all. The sea was for many months open to him; in France, or still better in Holland, he would have found his misfortunes respected, and an asylum in that decent privacy which becomes an exiled sovereign. Those very hopes which he too fondly cherished, and which lured him to destruction, hopes of regaining power through the disunion of his enemies, might have been entertained with better reason, as with greater safety, in a foreign land. It is not perhaps very probable that he would have been restored; but his restoration in such circumstances seems less desperate than through any treaty that he could conclude in captivity at home.