[283] Rushworth Abr. iv. 550. At the very time that he was publicly denying his employment of papists, he wrote to Newcastle, commanding him to make use of all his subjects' services, without examining their consciences, except as to loyalty. Ellis's _Letters_, iii. 291, from an original in the Museum. No one can rationally blame Charles for anything in this, but his inveterate and useless habit of falsehood. See Clarendon, iii. 610. It is probable that some foreign catholics were in the parliament's service. But Dodd says, with great appearance of truth, that no one English gentleman of that persuasion was in arms on their side. _Church History of Engl._ iii. 28. He reports as a matter of hearsay, that, out of about five hundred gentlemen who lost their lives for Charles in the civil war, one hundred and ninety-four were catholics. They were, doubtless, a very powerful faction in the court and army. Lord Spencer (afterwards Earl of Sunderland), in some remarkable letters to his wife from the king's quarters at Shrewsbury, in September 1642, speaks of the insolency of the papists with great dissatisfaction. _Sidney Papers_, ii. 667. [284] It cannot be doubted, and is admitted in a remarkable conversation of Hollis and Whitelock with the king at Oxford in November 1644, that the exorbitant terms demanded at Uxbridge were carried by the violent party, who disliked all pacification. Whitelock, 113. [285] Baillie, ii. 91. He adds, "That which has been the great snare to the king is the unhappy success of Montrose in Scotland." There seems indeed great reason to think that Charles, always sanguine, and incapable of calculating probabilities, was unreasonably elated by victories from which no permanent advantage ought to have been expected. Burnet confirms this on good authority. Introduction to _Hist. of his Times_, 51. [286] Whitelock, 109, 137, 142; Rushw. Abr. v. 163. The first _rat_ (except indeed the Earls of Holland and Bedford, who were rats with two tails) was Sir Edward Dering, who came into the parliament's quarters, Feb. 1644. He was a weak man of some learning, who had already played a very changeable part before the war. [287] A flagrant instance of this was the plunder of Bristol by Rupert, in breach of the capitulation. I suspect that it was the policy of one party to exaggerate the cruelties of the other; but the short narratives dispersed at the time give a wretched picture of slaughter and devastation.