In opposition to the sacred authority of the laws, to the venerable precedents of many ages, the popular leaders were ashamed to plead nothing but fears and jealousies, which were not avowed by the constitution, and for which neither the personal character of Charles, so full of virtue, nor his situation, so deprived of all independent authority, seemed to afford any reasonable foundation.

Grievances which had been fully redressed; powers, either legal or illegal, which had been entirely renounced; it seemed unpopular, and invidious, and ungrateful, any further to insist on.
The king, that he might abate the universal veneration paid to the name of parliament, had issued a declaration, in which he set forth all the tumults by which himself and his partisans in both houses had been driven from London; and he thence inferred, that the assembly at Westminster was no longer a free parliament, and, till its liberty were restored, was entitled to no authority.

As this declaration was an obstacle to all treaty, some contrivance seemed requisite in order to elude it.
A letter was written in the foregoing spring to the earl of Essex, and subscribed by the prince, the duke of York, and forty-three noblemen.[*] They there exhort him to be an instrument of restoring peace, and to promote that happy end with those by whom he was employed.

Essex, though much disgusted with the parliament, though apprehensive of the extremities to which they were driving, though desirous of any reasonable accommodation, yet was still more resolute to preserve an honorable fidelity to the trust reposed in him.

He replied, that as the paper sent him neither contained any address to the two houses of parliament, nor any acknowledgment of their authority, he could not communicate it to them.