Blair Worden - A Book of Friendship

PAUL SEAWARD

solidify the alliance between City radicals and the war party. 13 It did not end the progress towards negotiation, for in the wake of the Common Hall meeting, the House of Commons resumed work on the propositions. But in strengthening the hand of the war party it reduced the narrow prospect that anything would come of them. Hyde’s role in drafting previous royal responses might suggest that he drew up the 4th January one too, and imply that he supported a hardline approach to the City. He was certainly hostile enough to London’s turbulently radical politics. But we don’t know. His rather neutral account of it in the Historical Narration might be interpreted as tight-lipped, though that could either be the result of a reluctance directly to blame the king or a sense of his own responsibility for the unfortunately misjudged intervention. 14 Nor, speculate as we might, do we have any idea whether Glapthorne’s alternative response had anything to do with Hyde, or any other faction at the royal court. The Two Speeches , though, patently were by Hyde, and they do indicate a rather more subtle strategy towards the nobility than that directed at the City on 4th January. They adopt a format and style derived from a set of counterfeit speeches emerging from London over the previous two or three weeks. These were designed to expose the divisions between war and accommodation parties at Oxford, though exactly whose agenda they were supposed to advance is more difficult to determine. The series begins with Two Speeches Spoken at the Councell-Table at Oxford. The One by the Right Honourable John Earle of Bristoll, in favour of the continuation of the present Warre. The other, by the Right Honourable Edward Earle of Dorset, for a speedy Accommodation betwixt His Majestie, and his High Court of Parliament . Thomason dates this to 24th December 1642, a few days after the Lords had completed their original draft of the peace propositions on 20th December. These included demands for Lord Digby (the earl of Bristol’s son and now a secretary

13 Ian Gentles, ‘Parliamentary Politics and the Politics of the Street: the London Peace Campaigns of 1642-3’, Parliamentary History , 26, 2 (2007), 146. 14 History of the Rebellion , vi. 214-28.

45