In this, however, as in other cases, history is really less personal and mysterious than is commonly supposed. Cromwell and Ireton doubtless negotiated personally with the king during the summer of this year, but it was on the basis of a public program for resettlement agreed to by the army and communicated to parliament. At the same time the parliament, still presbyterian in feeling, was submitting to the king, in conjunction with the Scots, propositions the {320} same in substance as those which he had rejected when with the Scotch army at Newcastle. One of the essential points in the army’s scheme, of which more will be said afterwards, was that it allowed the use of the Common Prayer, and provided against the compulsory imposition of the covenant. The parliamentary scheme, on the other hand, was conceived in the strict presbyterian sense. When the proposals of the army were publicly presented to Charles in the month of July, he treated them in a way which set the heart of the army against him once for all. Cromwell and Ireton, however, continued to treat with him. They simply wanted to keep him from closing with the presbyterians, not having made up their minds to any further step, while he strangely fancied that he was cajoling them and playing off the army against the parliament. They did not, while treating him with all respect, for a moment lower their tone with him. They would not consent to kiss his hand, and the king himself complained that no promise of favour or decoration could affect them. Their perfect explicitness is witnessed by two opposite authorities, both good, and both on different grounds unfriendly to Cromwell, by Berkley the king’s confidant, and the wife of colonel Hutchinson. By the middle of September they had given up all hopes of him. It is a well-known story that Charles sent a letter to the queen, sewn in the skirt of the messenger’s saddle, in which he said that the army and the Scots were both courting him, and that he should close with the party that bid fairest, probably with the Scots; that Cromwell and Ireton having secret information of this, sat drinking, in the dress of common troopers, at the Blue Boar in Holborn, where the messenger was to put up; that there they seized him, ripped up the skirts of the saddle, and found the letter. This story has received many embellishments, such as that the letter said that Cromwell and Ireton were expecting a silken garter, but would find a hempen cord, but is probably in substance true. There was no need, however, of any such mysterious discovery to satisfy Cromwell and Ireton that the king was playing a double game. With that inability to conceal exultation in his own artifice which was one of his most curious characteristics, he told them so plainly, while they pronounced no less plainly that God had hardened his heart.