Belloc-Lingard - The History of England
Title: The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans
to the Accession of King George the Fifth
Volume 8
Author: John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
Release Date: January 13, 2004 [EBook #10700]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
From The First Invasion By The Romans To The Accession Of King George The
Fifth
With an Introduction By HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS
IN ELEVEN VOLUMES 1912
* * * * *
Battle Of Edge Hill--Treaty At Oxford--Solemn Vow And Covenant--Battle
Of Newbury--Solemn League And Covenant Between The English And Scottish
Parliaments--Cessation Of War In Ireland-Royalist Parliament At
Oxford--Propositions Of Peace--Battle Of Marston Moor--The Army Of
Essex Capitulates In The West--Self-Denying Ordinance--Synod Of
Divines--Directory For Public Worship--Trial Of Archbishop Laud--Bill Of
Attainder--His Execution.
It had been suggested to the king that, at the head of an army, he might
negotiate with greater dignity and effect. From Nottingham he despatched to
London the earl of Southampton, Sir John Colepepper, and William Uvedale,
the bearers of a proposal, that commissioners should be appointed on both
sides, with full powers to treat of an accommodation.[a] The two houses,
assuming a tone of conscious superiority, replied that they could
receive no message from a prince who had raised his standard against his
parliament, and had pronounced their general a traitor.[b] Charles (and his
condescension may be taken as a[c]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. August 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. August 27.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 4]
proof of his wish to avoid hostilities) offered to withdraw his
proclamation, provided they on their part would rescind their votes against
his adherents.[a] They refused: it was their right and their duty to
denounce, and bring to justice, the enemies of the nation.[b] He conjured
them to think of the blood that would be shed, and to remember that it
would lie at their door; they retorted the charge; he was the aggressor,
and his would be the guilt.[c] With this answer vanished every prospect
of peace; both parties appealed to the sword; and within a few weeks the
flames of civil war were lighted up in every part of the kingdom.[1]
Three-fourths of the nobility and superior gentry, led by feelings of
honour and gratitude, or by their attachment to the church, or by a
well-grounded suspicion of the designs of the leading patriots, had ranged
themselves under the royal banner. Charles felt assured of victory, when he
contemplated the birth, and wealth, and influence of those by whom he was
surrounded; but he might have discovered much to dissipate the illusion,
had he considered their habits, or been acquainted with their real, but
unavowed sentiments. They were for the most part men of pleasure, fitter to
grace a court than to endure the rigour of military discipline, devoid of
mental energy, and likely, by their indolence and debauchery, to offer
advantages to a prompt and vigilant enemy. Ambition would induce them to
aspire to office, and commands and honours, to form cabals against their
competitors, and to distract the attention of the monarch by their
importunity or their complaints. They contained among them many who
secretly disapproved of the war,
[Footnote 1: Journals, v. 327, 328, 338, 341, 358. Clarendon, ii, 8, 16.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Sept. 6.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Sept. 11.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 16.]
conceiving that it was undertaken for the sake of episcopacy,--an
institution in the fate of which they felt no interest, and others who
had already in affection enrolled themselves among the followers of the
parliament, though shame deterred them for a time from abandoning the royal
colours.[1]
There was another class of men on whose services the king might rely with
confidence,--the Catholics,--who, alarmed by the fierce intolerance and the
severe menaces of the parliament, saw that their own safety depended on the
ascendancy of the sovereign. But Charles hesitated to avail himself of
this resource. His adversaries had allured the zealots to their party, by
representing the king as the dupe of a popish faction, which laboured to
subvert the Protestant, and to establish on its ruins the popish worship.
It was in vain that he called on them to name the members of this invisible
faction, that he publicly asserted his attachment to the reformed faith,
and that, to prove his orthodoxy, he ordered two priests to be put to death
at Tyburn, before his departure from the capital, and two others at York,
soon after his arrival in that city.[2] The houses still persisted in the
charge; and in all their votes and remonstrances attributed the measures
adopted by the king to the advice and influence of the papists
[Footnote 1: Thus Sir Edward Varney, the standard-bearer, told Hyde, that
he followed the king because honour obliged him; but the object of the war
was against his conscience, for he had no reverence for the bishops, whose
quarrel it was.--Clarendon's Life, 69. Lord Spencer writes to his lady,
"If there could be an expedient found to salve the punctilio of honour, I
would not continue here an hour."--Sidney Papers, ii. 667.]
[Footnote 2: Thomas Reynolds and Bartholomew Roe, on Jan. 21; John Lockwood
and Edmund Caterick, on April 13.--Challoner, ii. 117, 200.]
and their adherents.[1] Aware of the impression which such reports made on
the minds of the people, he at first refused to intrust with a commission,
or even to admit into the ranks, any person, who had not taken the oaths of
allegiance and supremacy; but necessity soon taught him to accept of the
services of all his subjects without distinction of religion, and he not
only granted[a] permission to the Catholics to carry arms in their own
defence, but incorporated them among his own forces.[2]
While the higher classes repaired with their dependants to the support of
the king, the call of the parliament was cheerfully obeyed by the yeomanry
in the country, and by the merchants and tradesmen in the towns. All these
had felt the oppression of monopolies and ship-money; to the patriots they
were indebted for their freedom from such grievances; and, as to them they
looked up with gratitude for past benefits,
[Footnote 1: In proof of the existence of such a faction, an appeal has
been made to a letter from Lord Spencer to his wife.--Sidney Papers, ii.
667. Whether the cipher 243 is correctly rendered "papists," I know not. It
is not unlikely that Lord Spencer may have been in the habit of applying
the term to the party supposed to possess the royal confidence, of which
party he was the professed adversary. But when it became at last necessary
to point out the heads of this popish faction, it appeared that, with
one exception, they were Protestants--the earls of Bristol, Cumberland,
Newcastle, Carnarvon, and Rivers, secretary Nicholas, Endymion Porter,
Edward Hyde, the duke of Richmond, and the viscounts Newark and
Falkland.--Rushworth, v. 16. May, 163. Colonel Endymion Porter was a
Catholic.--Also Baillie, i. 416, 430; ii. 75.]
[Footnote 2: Rushworth, iv. 772; v. 49, 50, 80. Clarendon, ii. 41. On
September 23, 1642, Charles wrote from Shrewsbury, to the earl of
Newcastle: "This rebellion is growen to that height, that I must not looke
to what opinion men are, who at this tyme are willing and able to serve me.
Therefore I doe not only permit, but command you, to make use of all my
loving subjects' services, without examining ther contienses (more than
there loyalty to me) as you shall fynde most to conduce to the upholding of
my just regall power."--Ellis, iii. 291.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642 August 10.]
so they trusted to their wisdom for the present defence of their liberties.
Nor was this the only motive; to political must be added religious
enthusiasm. The opponents of episcopacy, under the self-given denomination
of the godly, sought to distinguish themselves by the real or affected
severity of their morals; they looked down with contempt on all others, as
men of dissolute or irreligious habits; and many among them, in the belief
that the reformed religion was in danger, deemed it a conscientious duty
to risk their lives and fortunes in the quarrel.[1] Thus were brought into
collision some of the most powerful motives which can agitate the human
breast,--loyalty, and liberty, and religion; the conflict elevated the
minds of the combatants above their ordinary level, and in many instances
produced a spirit of heroism, and self-devoted-ness, and endurance, which
demands our admiration and sympathy. Both parties soon distinguished their
adversaries by particular appellations. The royalists were denominated
Cavaliers; a word which, though applied to them at first in allusion to
their quality, soon lost its original acceptation, and was taken to be
synonymous with papist, atheist, and voluptuary; and they on their part
gave to their enemies the name of Roundheads, because they cropped their
hair short, dividing "it into so many little peaks as was something
ridiculous to behold."[2]
Each army in its composition resembled the other. Commissions were given,
not to persons the most fit to
[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 76.]
[Footnote 2: Life of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 100. "The godly of those days,
when the colonel embraced their party, would not allow him to be
religious, because his hair was not in their cut, nor his words in their
phrase."--Ibid. The names were first given a little before the king left
Whitehall.--Clarendon, i. 339.]
command, but to those who were most willing and able to raise men; and
the men themselves, who were generally ill paid, and who considered their
services as voluntary, often defeated the best-concerted plans, by their
refusal to march from their homes, or their repugnance to obey some
particular officer, or their disapproval of the projected expedition. To
enforce discipline was dangerous; and both the king and the parliament
found themselves compelled to entreat or connive, where they ought to
have employed authority and punishment. The command of the royal army was
intrusted to the earl of Lindsey, of the parliamentary forces to the earl
of Essex, each of whom owed the distinction to the experience which he was
supposed to have acquired in foreign service. But such experience
afforded little benefit. The passions of the combatants despised the cool
calculations of military prudence; a new system of warfare was necessarily
generated; and men of talents and ambition quickly acquired that knowledge
which was best adapted to the quality of the troops and to the nature of
the contest.
Charles, having left Nottingham, proceeded to Shrewsbury, collecting
reinforcements, and receiving voluntary contributions on his march.
Half-way between Stafford and Wellington he halted the army, and placing
himself in the centre, solemnly declared in the presence of Almighty God
that he had no other design, that he felt no other wish, than to maintain.
the Protestant faith, to govern according to law, and to observe all
the statutes enacted in parliament. Should he fail in any one of these
particulars, he renounced all claim to assistance from man, or protection
from God; but as long as he remained faithful to his promise, he hoped for
cheerful aid from his subjects, and was confident of obtaining the blessing
of Heaven. This solemn and affecting protestation being circulated through
the kingdom, gave a new stimulus to the exertions of his friends; but it
was soon opposed by a most extraordinary declaration on the part of[a]
the parliament; that it was the real intention of the king to satisfy the
demands of the papists by altering the national religion, and the rapacity
of the Cavaliers by giving up to them the plunder of the metropolis; and
that, to prevent the accomplishment of so wicked a design, the two houses
had resolved to enter into a solemn covenant with God, to defend his truth
at the hazard of their lives, to associate with the well-affected in London
and the rest of the kingdom, and to request the aid of their Scottish
brethren, whose liberties and religion were equally at stake.[1]
In the meantime Waller had reduced Portsmouth,[b] while Essex concentrated
his force, amounting to fifteen thousand men, in the vicinity of
Northampton. He received orders from the houses to rescue, by force[c] if
it were necessary, the persons of the king, the prince, and the duke of
York, from the hands of those desperate men by whom they were surrounded,
to offer a free pardon to all who, within ten days, should return to their
duty, and to forward to the king a petition that he would separate himself
from his evil counsellors, and rely once more on the loyalty of his
parliament. From Northampton Essex hastened to[d] Worcester to oppose the
advance of the royal army.
At Nottingham the king could muster no more than six thousand men; he left
Shrewsbury at the head of[e] thrice that number. By a succession of skilful
manoeuvres
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 16. Rushworth, v. 20, 21. Journals, v.
376,418.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Oct. 22.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 9.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1642. Sept. 16.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1642. Sept. 23.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1642. Oct. 12.]
he contrived to elude the vigilance of the enemy; and had advanced two
days' march on the road to the metropolis before Essex became aware of his
object. In London the news was received with terror. Little reliance could
be placed on the courage, less on the fidelity of the trained bands; and
peremptory orders were despatched to Essex, to hasten with his whole force
to the protection of the capital and the parliament. That general had seen
his error; he was following the king with expedition; and his vanguard
entered the village of Keynton on the same evening on which the royalists
halted on Edgehill, only a few miles in advance. At midnight[a] Charles
held a council of war, in which it was resolved to turn upon the pursuers,
and to offer them battle. Early in the morning the royal army was seen in
position[b] on the summit of a range of hills, which gave them a decided
superiority in case of attack; but Essex, whose artillery, with one-fourth
of his men, was several miles in the rear, satisfied with having arrested
the march of the enemy, quietly posted the different corps, as they
arrived, on a rising ground in the Vale of the Red Horse, about half a mile
in front of the village. About noon the Cavaliers grew weary of inaction;
their importunity at last prevailed; and about two the king discharged a
cannon with his own hand as the signal of battle. The royalists descended
in good order to the foot of the hill, where their hopes were raised by the
treachery of Sir Faithful Fortescue, a parliamentary officer, who, firing
his pistol into the ground, ranged himself with two troops of horse under
the royal banner. Soon afterwards Prince Rupert, who commanded the cavalry
on the right, charged twenty-two troops of parliamentary horse led by Sir
James
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Oct. 23.]
Ramsay; broke them at the very onset; urged the pursuit two miles beyond
Keynton, and finding the baggage of the enemy in the village, indulged his
men for the space of an hour in the work of plunder. Had it not been for
this fatal imprudence, the royalists would probably have gained a decisive
victory.
During his absence the main bodies of infantry were engaged under their
respective leaders, the earls of Lindsey and Essex, both of whom,
dismounting, led their men into action on foot. The cool and determined
courage of the Roundheads undeceived and disconcerted the Cavaliers.
The royal horse on the left, a weak body under lord Wilmot, had sought
protection behind a regiment of pikemen; and Sir William Balfour, the
parliamentary commander, leaving a few squadrons to keep them at bay,
wheeled round on the flank of the royal infantry, broke through two
divisions, and made himself master of a battery of cannon. In another part
of the field the king's guards, with his standard, bore down every corps
that opposed them, till Essex ordered two regiments of infantry and a
squadron of horse to charge them in front and flank, whilst Balfour,
abandoning the guns which he had taken, burst on them from the rear. They
now broke; Sir Edward Varner was slain, and the standard which he bore was
taken; the earl of Lindsey received a mortal wound; and his son, the lord
Willoughby, was made prisoner in the attempt to rescue his father[1].
Charles, who, attended by his troop of pensioners, watched the fortune of
the field, beheld with dismay the slaughter of his guards;
[Footnote 1: The standard was nevertheless recovered by the daring or the
address of a Captain Smith, whom the king made a banneret in the field.]
and ordering the reserve to advance, placed himself at their head; but
at the moment Rupert and the cavalry reappeared; and, though they had
withdrawn from Keynton to avoid, the approach of Hampden with the rear of
the parliamentary army, their presence restored the hopes of the royalists
and damped the ardour of their opponents. A breathing-time succeeded; the
firing ceased on both sides, and the adverse armies stood gazing at each
other till the darkness induced them to withdraw,--the royalists to their
first position on the hills, and the parliamentarians to the village of
Keynton. From the conflicting statements of the parties, it is impossible
to estimate their respective losses. Most writers make the number of the
slain to amount to five thousand; but the clergyman of the place, who
superintended the burial of the dead, reduces it to about one thousand two
hundred men.[1]
Both armies claimed the honour, neither reaped the benefit, of victory.
Essex, leaving the king to pursue his march, withdrew to Warwick, and
thence to Coventry; Charles, having compelled the garrison[a] of Banbury to
surrender, turned aside to the city of Oxford. Each commander wished for
leisure to
[Footnote 1: This is the most consistent account of the battle, which I can
form out of the numerous narratives in Clarendon, May, Ludlow, Heath, &c.
Lord Wharton, to silence the alarm in London, on his arrival from the
army, assured the two houses that the loss did not exceed three hundred
men.--Journ. v. 423. The prince of Wales, about twelve years old, who was
on horseback in a field under the care of Sir John Hinton, had a narrow
escape, "One of the troopers observing you," says Hinton, "came in fall
career towards your highness. I received his charge, and, having spent a
pistol or two on each other, I dismounted him in the closing, but being
armed cap-a-pie I could do no execution on him with my sword: at which
instant one Mr. Matthews, a gentleman pensioner, rides in, and with a
pole-axe decides the business."--MS. in my possession.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 27.]
reorganize his army after the late battle. The two houses, though they
assumed the laurels of victory, felt alarm at the proximity of the
royalists, and at occasional visits from parties of cavalry. They ordered
Essex to come to their protection; they[a] wrote for assistance from
Scotland; they formed a new army under the earl of Warwick; they voted an
address to the king; they even submitted to his refusal of receiving as
one of their deputies Sir John Evelyn, whom he had previously pronounced a
traitor.[1] In the meanwhile the royal army, leaving Oxford, loitered-for
what reason is unknown-in the vicinity of Reading, and permitted Essex
to march without molestation by the more eastern road to the capital.
Kingston, Acton, and Windsor were already garrisoned[b] for the parliament;
and the only open passage to London lay through the town of Brentford.
Charles had reached Colnbrook in this direction, when he was[c] met by the
commissioners, who prevailed on him to suspend his march. The conference
lasted two days; on the second of which Essex threw a brigade,[d]
consisting of three of his best regiments, into that town. Charles felt
indignant at this proceeding. It was in his opinion a breach of faith; and
two days[e] later, after an obstinate resistance on the part of the enemy,
he gained possession of Brentford, having driven part of the garrison into
the river, and taken fifteen pieces of cannon and five hundred men. The
latter he ordered to be discharged, leaving it to their option either to
enter among his followers or to
[Footnote 1: Journals, 431-466. On Nov. 7 the house voted the king's
refusal to receive Evelyn a refusal to treat; but on the 9th ingeniously
evaded the difficulty, by leaving it to the discretion of Evelyn, whether
he would act or not. Of course he declined.--Ibid. 437, 439.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Nov. 2.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Nov. 7.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Nov. 10.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1642. Nov. 11.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1642. Nov. 13.]
promise on oath never more to bear arms against him.[1]
This action put an end to the projected treaty. The parliament reproached
the king that, while he professed the strongest repugnance to shed the
blood of Englishmen, he had surprised and murdered their adherents at
Brentford, unsuspicious as they were, and relying on the security of a
pretended negotiation. Charles indignantly retorted the charge on his
accusers. They were the real deceivers, who sought to keep him inactive
in his position, till they had surrounded him with the multitude of
their adherents. In effect his situation daily became more critical. His
opponents had summoned forces from every quarter to London, and Essex found
himself at the head of twenty-four thousand men. The two armies faced[a]
each other a whole day on Turnham Green; but neither ventured to charge,
and the king, understanding that the corps which, defended the bridge
at Kingston had been withdrawn, retreated first to Beading, and then to
Oxford. Probably he found himself too weak to cope with the superior number
of his adversaries; publicly he alleged his unwillingness to oppose by a
battle any further obstacle to a renewal of the treaty.[2]
The whole kingdom at this period exhibited a most melancholy spectacle.
No man was suffered to remain neuter. Each county, town, and hamlet was
divided into factions, seeking the ruin. of each other. All stood upon
their guard, while the most active of either
[Footnote 1: Each party published contradictory accounts. I have adhered to
the documents entered in the Journals, which in my opinion show that, if
there was any breach of faith in these transactions, it was on the part of
the parliament, and act of the king.]
[Footnote 2: May, 179. Whitelock, 65, 66. Clarendon, ii. 76.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Nov. 14.]
party eagerly sought the opportunity of despoiling the lands and surprising
the persons of their adversaries. The two great armies, in defiance of the
prohibitions of their leaders, plundered wherever they came, and their
example was faithfully copied by the smaller bodies of armed men in other
districts. The intercourse between distant parts of the country was
interrupted; the operations of commerce were suspended; and every person
possessed of property was compelled to contribute after a certain rate
to the support of that cause which obtained the superiority in his
neighbourhood. In Oxford and its vicinity, in the four northern counties,
in Wales, Shropshire, and Worcestershire, the royalists triumphed without
opposition; in the metropolis, and the adjoining counties, on the southern
and eastern coast, the superiority of the parliament was equally decisive.
But in many parts the adherents of both were intermixed in such different
proportions, and their power and exertions were so variously affected by
the occurrences of each succeeding day, that it became difficult to decide
which of the two parties held the preponderance. But there were four
counties, those of York, Chester, Devon, and Cornwall, in which the leaders
had[a] already learned to abhor the evils of civil dissension. They met
on both sides, and entered into engagements to suspend their political
animosities, to aid each other in putting down the disturbers of the public
peace, and to oppose the introduction, of any armed force, without the
joint consent both of the king and the parliament. Had the other counties
followed the example, the war would have been ended almost as soon as it
began. But this was a consummation which the patriots deprecated. They
pronounced such engagements
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Dec. 23.]
derogatory from the authority of parliament; they absolved their partisans
from the obligations into which they had entered; and they commanded them
once more to unsheath the sword in the cause of their[a] God and their
country.[1]
But it soon became evident that this pacific feeling was not confined to
the more distant counties. It spread rapidly through the whole kingdom; it
manifested itself without disguise even in the metropolis. Mea were anxious
to free themselves from the forced contribution of one-twentieth part of
their estates for the support of the parliamentary army[2] and the citizens
could not forget the alarm which had been created by the late approach
of the royal forces. Petitions for peace, though they were ungraciously
received, continued to load the tables of both houses; and, as the king
himself had proposed a cessation of hostilities, prudence taught the
most sanguine advocates for war to accede to the wishes of the people, A
negotiation was opened at Oxford. The demands of[b] the parliament amounted
to fourteen articles; those of Charles were confined to six. But two only,
the[c] first in each class, came into discussion. No argument[d] could
induce the houses to consent that the king should name to the government of
the forts and castles without their previous approbation of the persons to
be appointed; and he demurred to their proposal that both armies should
be disbanded, until he knew on what conditions he was to return to his
capital. They had limited the duration of the conference to twenty days; he
proposed a prolongation of[e]
[Footnote 1: Journals, 535. Rushworth, v. 100. Clarendon, ii, 136, 139.]
[Footnote 2: Journals, 463, 491, 594, Commons' Journals, Dec. 13. It was
imposed Nov. 29, 1642.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Jan. 7.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. Jan. 30.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. Feb. 3.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1643. March 20.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1643. March 30.]
the term; they refused; and he offered, as his ultimatum, that, whenever he
should be reinstated in the possession of his revenues, magazines, ships,
and[a] forts, according to law; when all the members of parliament, with
the exception of the bishops, should be restored to their seats, as they
held them on the 1st of January, 1641; and when the two houses should be
secure from the influence of tumultuary assemblies, which could only be
effected by an adjournment to some place twenty miles distant from London,
he would consent to the immediate disbanding of both armies, and would meet
his parliament in person. The Commons instantly passed a vote to recall
the[b] commissioners from Oxford; the Lords, though at first they
dissented, were compelled to signify their concurrence; and an end was put
to the treaty, and to[c] the hopes which it had inspired.[1]
During this negotiation the houses left nothing to the discretion of their
commissioners, the earl of Northumberland, Pierrepoint, Armyn, Holland, and
Whitelock. They were permitted to propose and argue; they had no power to
concede.[2] Yet, while they acted in public according to the tenour of
their instructions, they privately gave the king to understand that he
might probably purchase the preservation, of the church by surrendering the
command of the militia,--a concession which his opponents deemed
[Footnote 1: See the whole proceedings relative to the treaty in the king's
works, 325-397; the Journals of the Lords, v. 659-718; and Rushworth,
v. 164-261.]
[Footnote 2: This was a most dilatory and inconvenient arrangement. Every
proposal, or demand, or suggestion front the king was sent to the
parliament, and its expediency debated. The houses generally disagreed.
Conferences were therefore held, and amendments proposed; new
discussions followed, and a week was perhaps consumed before a point of
small importance could be settled.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. April 14.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. April 17.]
essential to their own security. At one period they indulged a strong hope
of success. At parting, Charles had promised to give them satisfaction, on
the following day; but during the night he was dissuaded from his purpose;
and his answer in the morning proved little short of an absolute denial.
Northumberland also made a secret offer of his influence to mollify the
obstinacy of the patriots; but Charles, who called that nobleman the most
ungrateful of men, received the proposal with displeasure, and to the
importunity of his advisers coldly replied, that the service must come
first and the reward might follow afterwards. Whether the parliament began
to suspect the fidelity of the commissioners, and on that account recalled
them, is unknown. Hyde maintains that the king protracted the negotiation
to give time for the arrival of the queen, without whom he would come to
no determination; but of this not a vestige appears in the private
correspondence between Charles and his consort; and a sufficient reason
for the failure of the treaty may be found in the high pretensions of each
party, neither of whom had been sufficiently humbled to purchase peace with
the sacrifice of honour or safety.[1]
It was owing to the indefatigable exertions of Henrietta, that the king had
been enabled to meet his opponents in the field. During her residence in
[Footnote 1: See Clarendon's Life, 76-80; Whitelock, 68; and the letters in
the king's works, 138-140. Before Henrietta left England, he had promised
her to give away no office without her consent, and not to make peace but
through her mediation. Charles, however, maintained that the first regarded
not offices of state, but offices of the royal household; and the second
seems to have been misunderstood. As far as I can judge, it only meant that
whenever he made peace, he would put her forward as mediatrix, to the end
that, since she had been calumniated as being the cause of the rupture
between him and his people, she might also have in the eyes of the public
the merit of effecting the reconciliation.--Clarendon's Life, ibid.]
[a]Holland she had repeatedly sent him supplies of arms and ammunition,
and, what he equally wanted, of veteran officers to train and discipline
his forces.[b] In February, leaving the Hague, and trusting to her good
fortune, she had eluded the vigilance of Batten, the parliamentary
admiral, and landed in safety in the port of Burlington, on the coast of
Yorkshire.[c] Batten, enraged at his disappointment, anchored on the second
night, with four ships and a pinnace, in the road, and discharged above
one hundred shot at the houses on the quay, in one of which the queen was
lodged.[d] Alarmed at the danger, she quitted her bed, and, "bare foot and
bare leg," sought shelter till daylight behind the nearest hill. No action
of the war was more bitterly condemned by the gallantry of the Cavaliers
than this unmanly attack on a defenceless female, the wife of the
sovereign. The earl of Newcastle hastened to Burlington, and escorted her
with his army to York. To have pursued her journey to Oxford would have
been to throw herself into the arms of her opponents. She remained
four months in Yorkshire, winning the hearts of the inhabitants by her
affability, and quickening their loyalty by her words and example.[1]
During the late treaty every effort had been made to recruit the
parliamentary army; at its expiration, Hampden, who commanded a regiment,
proposed to besiege the king within the city of Oxford. But the ardour of
the patriots was constantly checked by the caution of the officers who
formed the council of war. Essex invested Reading; at the expiration of ten
days[e]
[Footnote 1: Mercurius Belgic. Feb. 24. Michrochronicon, Feb. 24, 1642-3.
Clarendon, ii. 143. According to Rushworth, Batten fired at boats which
were landing ammunition on the quay.]
[Sidenote a: CHAP.I.A.D. 1643]
[Sidenote b: 1643 Feb. 16.]
[Sidenote c: 1643 Feb. 22.]
[Sidenote d: 1643 Feb. 24.]
[Sidenote e: 1643 April 27.]
it capitulated; and Hampden renewed his proposal. But the hardships of the
siege had already broken the health of the soldiers; and mortality and
desertion daily thinned their numbers, Essex found himself compelled to
remain six weeks in his new quarters at Reading.
If the fall of that town impaired the reputation of the royalists, it added
to their strength by the arrival of the four thousand men who had formed
the garrison. But the want of ammunition condemned the king to the same
inactivity to which sickness had reduced his adversaries. Henrietta
endeavoured to supply this deficiency. In May a plentiful convoy [a]
arrived from York; and Charles, before he put his forces in motion, made
another offer of accommodation. By the Lords it was received with respect;
the Commons imprisoned the messenger; and Pym, in their name, impeached the
queen of high treason against the parliament and kingdom.[b] The charge
was met by the royalists with sneers of derision. The Lords declined the
ungracious task of sitting in judgment on the wife of their sovereign;
and the Commons themselves, but it was not till after the lapse of
eight months, yielded to their reluctances and silently dropped the
prosecution.[1]
In the lower house no man had more distinguished himself of late, by the
boldness of his language, and his fearless advocacy of peace, than Edmund
Waller, the poet. In conversation with his intimate friends he had
frequently suggested the formation of a third party, of moderate men, who
should "stand in the gap, and unite the king and the parliament." In
[Footnote 1: Journals, 104, 111, 118, 121, 362. Commons' Journals, May 23,
June 21, July 3, 6, 1644, Jan. 10.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. May 20]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. May 23]
this work they calculated on the co-operation of all the Lords excepting
three, of a considerable number of the lower house, and of the most able
among the advisers of the king at Oxford; and that they might ascertain the
real opinion of the city, they agreed to portion it into districts, to
make lists of the inhabitants, and to divide them into three classes,--of
moderate men, of royalists, and of parliamentarians. The design had been
communicated to Lord Falkland, the king's secretary; but it remained
in this imperfect state, when it was revealed to Pym by the perfidy or
patriotism of a servant, who had overheard the discourse of his master.[a]
Waller, Tomkins his brother-in-law, and half-a-dozen others, were
immediately secured; and an annunciation was made to the two houses of "the
discovery of a horrid plot to seize the city, force the parliament, and
join with the royal army."[1]
The leaders of the patriots eagerly improved this opportunity to quell that
spirit of pacification which had recently insinuated itself among their
partisans. While the public mind was agitated by rumours respecting the
bloody designs of the conspirators, while every moderate man feared that
the expression of his sentiments might be taken as an evidence of his
participation in the plot, they proposed a new oath and covenant to the
House of Commons.[b] No one dared to object; and the members unanimously
swore "never to consent to the laying down of arms, so long as the papists,
in open war against the parliament, should be protected from the justice
thereof, but according to their power and vocation, to assist the forces
raised by the parliament against the forces
[Footnote 1: Journals, June 6.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. May 31]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. June 6]
raised by the king." The Lords, the citizens, the army followed their
example; and an ordinance was published that every man in his parish church
should make the same vow and covenant.[1][a] As for the prisoners, instead
of being sent before a court of law, they were tried by a court-martial.[b]
Six were condemned to die: two suffered.[c] Waller saved his life by the
most abject submission. "He seemed much smitten in conscience: he desired
the help of godly ministers," and by his entreaties induced the Commons to
commute his punishment into a fine of ten thousand pounds and an order
to travel on the continent. To the question why the principal should be
spared, when his assistants suffered, it was answered by some that a
promise of life had been made to induce him to confess, by others that too
much
[Footnote 1: Journals, May 31; June 6, 14, 21, 27, 29. Rushworth, v.
322-333. Whitelock, 67, 70, 105. The preamble began thus: "Whereas there
hath been and now is in this kingdom a popish and traitorous plot for the
subversion of the true Protestant religion, and liberty of the subject,
in pursuance whereof a popish army hath been raised and is now on foot in
divers parts of the kingdom," &c.--Journals, June 6. Lords' Journals, vi.
87. I am loath to charge the framers and supporters of this preamble with
publishing a deliberate falsehood, for the purpose of exciting odium
against the king; but I think it impossible to view their conduct in any
other light. The popish plot and popish army were fictions of their own to
madden the passions of their adherents. Charles, to refute the calumny, as
he was about to receive the sacrament from the hands of Archbishop
Ussher, suddenly rose and addressed him thus, in the hearing of the whole
congregation: "My Lord, I have to the utmost of my soul prepared to become
a worthy receiver; and may I so receive comfort by the blessed sacrament,
as I do intend the establishment of the true reformed Protestant religion,
as it stood in its beauty in the happy days of Queen Elizabeth, without
any connivance at popery. I bless God that in the midst of these publick
distractions I have still liberty to communicate; and may this sacrament
be my damnation, if my heart do not joyn with my lipps in this
protestation."--Rush. v. 346. Connivance was an ambiguous and therefore
an ill-chosen word. He was probably sincere in the sense which he
attached to it, but certainly forsworn in the sense in which it would be
taken by his opponents.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. June 27]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. June 30]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. July 5]
blood had already been shed in expiation of an imaginary plot.[1]
In the meanwhile Essex, after several messages from the parliament, had
removed from Reading, and fixed his head-quarters at Tame. One night Prince
Rupert, making a long circuit, surprised Chinnor in the rear of the army,
and killed or captured the greater part of two regiments that lay in the
town.[a] In his retreat to Oxford, he was compelled to turn on his pursuers
at Chalgrove; they charged with more courage than prudence, and were
repulsed with considerable loss. It was in this action that the celebrated
Hampden received the wound of which he died. The reputation which he had
earned by his resistance to the payment of the ship-money had deservedly
placed him at the head of the popular leaders. His insinuating manner, the
modesty of his pretensions, and the belief of his integrity, gave to his
opinions an irresistible weight in the lower house; and the courage and
activity which he displayed in the army led many to lament that he did not
occupy the place held by the more tardy or more cautious earl of Essex. The
royalists exulted at his death as equal to a victory; the patriots lamented
it as a loss which could not be repaired. Both were deceived. Revolutions
are the seed-plots of talents and energy. One great leader had been
withdrawn; there was no dearth of others to supply his place.[2]
[Footnote 1: After a minute investigation, I cannot persuade myself that
Waller and his friends proceeded farther than I have mentioned. What
they might have done, had they not been interrupted, is matter of mere
conjecture. The commission of array, which their enemies sought to couple
with their design, had plainly no relation to it.]
[Footnote 2: Rushworth, v. 265, 274. Whitelock, 69, 70. Clarendon, ii. 237,
261.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. June 18]
To the Root-and-branch men the rank, no less than the inactivity of Essex,
afforded a legitimate ground of suspicion. In proportion as he sank in
their esteem, they were careful to extol the merits and flatter the
ambition of Sir William Waller. Waller had formerly enjoyed a lucrative
office under the crown, but he had been fined in the Star-chamber, and his
wife was a "godly woman;" her zeal and his own resentment made him a
patriot; he raised a troop of horse for the service, and was quickly
advanced to a command. The rapidity of his movements, his daring spirit,
and his contempt of military rules, were advantageously contrasted with
the slow and cautious experience of Essex; and his success at Portsmouth,
Winchester, Chichester, Malmesbury, and Hereford, all of which he reduced
in a short time, entitled him, in the estimation of his admirers, to the
quaint appellation of William the Conqueror. While the forces under Essex
were suffered to languish in a state of destitution,[1] an army of eight
thousand men, well clothed and appointed, was prepared for Waller. But the
event proved that his abilities had been overrated. In the course of a week
he fought two battles, one near Bath, with Prince Maurice,[a] the other
with Lord Wilmot, near Devizes[b]: the first was obstinate but indecisive,
the second bloody and disastrous. Waller hastened from the field to the
capital, attributing the loss of his army, not to his own errors, but
to the jealousy of Essex. His patrons did not abandon their favourite.
Emulating the example of the Romans,
[Footnote 1: His army was reduced to "four thousand or five thousand
men, and these much malcontented that their general and they should be
misprised, and Waller immediately prized."--Baillie, i. 391. He had three
thousand marching men, and three hundred sick.--Journals, vi. 160.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 5]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. July 13]
they met the unfortunate general in triumphal procession, and the speaker
of the Commons officially returned him thanks for his services to his
country.[1][a]
This tone of defiance did not impose on the advocates of peace. Waller's
force was annihilated; the grand army, lately removed to Kingston, had been
so reduced by want and neglect, that Essex refused to give to it the name
of an army; the queen had marched without opposition from Yorkshire to
Oxford, bringing to her husband, who met her on Edge-hill, a powerful
reinforcement of men, artillery, and stores[b]; and Prince Rupert, in the
course of three days, had won the city and castle of Bristol, through the
cowardice or incapacity of Nathaniel Fiennes, the governor.[2][c] The cause
of the parliament seemed to totter on the brink of ruin; and the Lords,
profiting of this moment of alarm, sent to the Commons six resolutions to
form the basis of a new treaty. They were favourably received; and after a
debate, which lasted till ten at night, it was resolved by a majority of
twenty-nine to take them into consideration.[3][d]
But the pacific party had to contend with men of
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 284, 285. Clarendon, ii. 278, 290. Journals,
July 27. May, 201--205. His first successes were attributed to Colonel
Hurry, a Scotsman, though Waller held the nominal command--Baillie, i. 351.
But Hurry, in discontent, passed over to the king, and was the planner of
the expedition which led to the death of Hampden.--Clarendon, ii. 264.
Baillie, i. 371.]
[Footnote 2: Fiennes, to clear himself from the imputation of cowardice,
demanded a court-martial, and Prynne and Walker, who had accused him in
their publications, became the prosecutors. He was found guilty, and
condemned to lose his head, but obtained a pardon from Essex, the
commander-in-chief.--Howell, State Trials, iv. 186-293.]
[Footnote 3: Clarendon Papers, ii. 149. The Lords had in the last month
declared their readiness to treat; but the proceedings had been suspended
in consequence of a royal declaration that the houses were not free, nor
their votes to be considered as the votes of parliament.--Journals, vi. 97,
103, 108.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 27]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. July 13]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. July 27]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1643. August 5]
the most determined energy, whom no dangers could appal, no difficulties
subdue. The next day was Sunday, and it was spent by them in arranging a
new plan of opposition.[a] The preachers from their pulpits described peace
as the infallible ruin of the city; the common council voted a petition,
urging, in the most forcible terms, the continuation of the war; and
placards were affixed in the streets, calling on the inhabitants to rise
as one man, and prevent the triumph of the malignants.[b] The next morning
Alderman Atkins carried the petition to Westminster, accompanied by
thousands calling out for war, and utterings threats of vengeance against
the traitors. Their cries resounded through both the houses. The Lords
resolved to abstain from all public business till tranquillity was
restored, but the Commons thanked the petitioners for their attachment to
the cause of the country. The consideration of the resolutions was then
resumed; terror had driven the more pusillanimous from the house; and on
the second division the war party obtained a majority of seven.[1]
Their opponents, however, might yet have triumphed, had they, as was
originally suggested, repaired to the army, and claimed the protection of
the earl of Essex. But the lord Saye and Mr. Pym hastened to that nobleman
and appeased his discontent with
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 320. Journals, Aug. 5, 7, Lords', vi, 171, 172.
Baillie, i. 390. On the Saturday, the numbers were 94 and 65; on the Monday
81 and 79; but the report of the tellers was disputed, and on the second
division it gave 81 and 89. Two days later, between two thousand and three
thousand women (the men dared mot appear) presented a petition for peace,
and received a civil answer; but as they did not depart, and some of them
used menacing language, they were charged and dispersed by the military,
with the loss of several lives.--Journals, June 9. Clarendon, iii. 321
Baillie. i. 390.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August 6]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 7]
excuses and promises. They offered to punish those who had libelled his
character; they professed an unbounded reliance on his honour; they
assured him that money, clothing, and recruits were already prepared to
re-establish his army. Essex was won; and he informed his friends, that he
could not conscientiously act against the parliament from which he held his
commission. Seven of the lords, almost half of the upper house, immediately
retired from Westminster.[1]
The victorious party proceeded with new vigour in their military
preparations. Measures were taken to recruit to its full complement the
grand army under Essex; and an ordinance was passed to raise a separate
force of ten thousand horse for the protection of the metropolis.
Kimbolton, who on the death of his father had succeeded to the title of
earl of Manchester, received a commission to levy an army in the associated
counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Ely, and Hertford.[2]
Committees were appointed to raise men and money in numerous other
districts, and were invested with almost unlimited powers; for the exercise
of which in the service of the parliament,
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 323-333. Northumberland repaired to his house at
Petworth; the earls of Bedford, Holland, Portland, and Clare, and the
lords Lovelace and Conway, to the king at Oxford. They were ungraciously
received, and most of them returned to the parliament.]
[Footnote 2: The first association was made in the northern counties by the
earl of Newcastle in favour of the king, and was afterwards imitated by
the counties of Devon and Cornwall. The patriots saw the advantage to be
derived from such unions, and formed several among their partisans. The
members bound themselves to preserve the peace of the associated counties;
if they were royalists, "against the malevolent and ambitious persons who,
in the name of the two houses, had embroiled the kingdom in a civil war;"
if they were parliamentarians, "against the papists and other ill-affected
persons who surrounded the king." In each, regulations were adopted, fixing
the number of men to be levied, armed, and trained, and the money which for
that purpose was to be raised in each township.--Rushworth, v. 66, 94-97,
119, 381.]
they were made responsible to no one but the parliament itself. Sir Henry
Vane, with three colleagues from the lower house, hastened to Scotland to
solicit the aid of a Scottish army; and, that London might be secure from
insult, a line of military communication was ordered to be drawn round the
city. Every morning thousands of the inhabitants, without distinction of
rank, were summoned to the task in rotation; with drums beating and colours
flying they proceeded to the appointed place, and their wives and daughters
attended to aid and encourage them during the term of their labour.[a] In a
few days this great work, extending twelve miles in circuit, was completed,
and the defence of the line, with the command of ten thousand men, was
intrusted to Sir William Waller. Essex, at the repeated request of the
parliament, reluctantly signed the commission, but still refused to insert
in it the name of his rival. The blank was filled up by order of the House
of Commons.[1]
Here, however, it is time to call the attention of the reader to the
opening career of that extraordinary man, who, in the course of the next
ten years, raised himself from the ignoble pursuits of a grazier to the
high dignity of lord protector of the three kingdoms. Oliver Cromwell
was sprung from a younger branch of the Cromwells, a family of note and
antiquity in Huntingdonshire, and widely spread through that county and the
whole of the Fenn district. In the more early part of his life he fell into
a state of profound and prolonged melancholy; and it is plain from the
few and disjointed documents which have come down to us, that his mental
faculties were
[Footnote 1: May, 214. Journals, July 18, 19, 27; Aug. 3, 7, 9, 15, 26.
Lords', vi. 149, 158, 175, 184.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August.]
impaired, that he tormented himself with groundless apprehensions of
impending death, on which account he was accustomed to require the
attendance of his physician at the hour of midnight, and that his
imagination conjured up strange fancies about the cross in the market-place
at Huntingdon,[1] hallucinations which seem to have originated in the
intensity of his religious feelings, for we are assured that "he had spent
the days of his manhood in a dissolute course of life in good fellowship
and gaming;"[2] or, as he expresses it himself, he had been "a chief, the
chief of sinners, and a hater of godliness." However, it pleased "God the
light to enlighten the darkness" of his spirit, and to convince him of
the error and the wickedness of his ways; and from the terrors which
such conviction engendered, seems to have originated that aberration of
intellect, of which he was the victim during great part of two years.
On his recovery he had passed from one extreme to the other, from the
misgivings of despair to the joyful assurance of salvation. He now felt
that he was accepted by God, a vessel of election to work the work of God,
and bound through gratitude "to put himself forth in the cause of the
Lord."[3] This flattering belief, the
[Footnote 1: Warwick's Memoirs, 249. Warwick had his information from Dr.
Simcott, Cromwell's physician, who pronounced him splenetic. Sir Theodore
Mayerne was also consulted, who, in his manuscript journal for 1628,
describes his patient as valde melancholicus.--Eliis, Orig. Letters, 2nd
series, iii. 248.]
[Footnote 2: Warwick, 249.]
[Footnote 3: In 1638 he thus writes of himself to a female saint, one of
his cousins: "I find that God giveth springs in a dry barren wilderness,
where no water is. I live, you know where, in Meshec, which they say
signifies prolonging,--in Kedar, which signifies blackness. Yet the Lord
forsaketh me not, though he do prolong. Yet he will, I trust, bring me to
his tabernacle, his resting place." If the reader wish to understand this
Cromwellian effusion, let him consult the Psalm cxix. in the Vulgate., or
cxx. in the English translation. He says to the same correspondent, "You
know what my manner of life hath been. Oh! I lived in and loved darkness,
and hated light. I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true. I
hated godliness. Yet God had mercy on me. Oh, the riches of his
mercy!"--Cromwell's Letters and Speeches by Carlyle, i. 121. Warwick bears
testimony to the sincerity of his conversion; "for he declared he was ready
to make restitution to any man who would accuse him, or whom he could
accuse himself to, to have wronged."--Warwick, 249.]
fruit of his malady at Huntingdon, or of his recovery from it, accompanied
him to the close of his career: it gave in his eyes the sanction of Heaven
to the more questionable events in his life, and enabled him to persevere
in habits of the most fervent devotion, even when he was plainly following
the unholy suggestions of cruelty, and duplicity, and ambition.
It was probably to withdraw him from scenes likely to cause the
prolongation or recurrence of his malady, that he was advised to direct
his attention to the pursuits of agriculture. He disposed by sale of his
patrimonial property in Huntingdon, and took a large grazing farm in the
neighbourhood of the little town of St. Ives.[a] This was an obscure, but
tranquil and soothing occupation, which he did not quit till five years
later, when he migrated to Ely, on the death of his maternal uncle, who had
left to him by will the lucrative situation of farmer of the tithes and of
churchlands belonging to the cathedral of that city. Those stirring
events followed, which led to the first civil war; Cromwell's enthusiasm
rekindled, the time was come "to put himself forth in the cause of the
Lord," and that cause he identified in his own mind with the cause of the
country party in opposition to the sovereign and the church. The energy
with which he entered into the controversies of the time attracted public
notice, and the burgesses of Cambridge chose him for their representative
in both the parliaments called by the king in 1640. He carried with him to
the house the simplicity of dress, and the awkwardness of manner, which
bespoke the country farmer; occasionally he rose to speak, and then, though
his voice was harsh, his utterance confused, and his matter unpremeditated,
yet he seldom failed to command respect and attention by the originality
and boldness of his views, the fervour with which he maintained them, and
the well-known energy and inflexibility of his character.[1] It was not,
however, before the year 1642 that he took his place among the leaders of
the party. Having been appointed one of the committees for the county
of Cambridge and the isle of Ely, he hastened down to Cambridge, took
possession of the magazine, distributed the arms among the burgesses, and
prevented the colleges from sending their plate to the king at Oxford.[a]
From the town he transferred his services to the district committed to his
charge. No individual of suspicious or dangerous principles, no secret plan
or association of the royalists, could elude his vigilance and activity. At
the head of a military force he was everywhere present, making inquiries,
inflicting punishments, levying weekly the weekly assessments, impressing
men, horses, and stores, and exercising with relentless severity all those
repressive and vindictive powers with which the recent ordinances had armed
the committees. His exertions were duly appreciated. When the parliament
selected officers to command the seventy-five troops of horse, of sixty men
each, in the new army under the earl of Essex,[b] farmer Cromwell received
the
[Footnote 1: Warwick, 247]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. August. 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Sept. 14.]
commission of captain; within six months afterwards, he was raised to the
higher rank of colonel, with permission to levy for himself a regiment of
one thousand horse out of the trained bands in the Eastern association.[a]
To the sentiment of honour, which animated the Cavaliers in the field, he
resolved to oppose the energy which is inspired by religious enthusiasm.
Into the ranks of his Ironsides--their usual designation--he admitted no
one who was not a freeholder, or the son of a freeholder, and at the same
time a man fearing God, a known professor of godliness, and one who would
make it his duty and his pride to execute justice on the enemies of
God.[1] Nor was he disappointed. The soldiers of the Lord of Hosts proved
themselves a match for the soldiers of the earthly monarch. At their head
the colonel, by his activity and daring, added new laurels to those which
he had previously won; and parliament, as a proof of confidence, appointed
him military governor of a very important post, the isle of Ely.[b] Lord
Grey of Werke held at that time the command of the army in the Eastern
association; but Grey was superseded by the earl of Manchester, and Colonel
Cromwell speedily received the commission of lieutenant-general under that
commander.[2][c]
But to return to the general narrative, which has been interrupted to
introduce Cromwell to the reader,
[Footnote 1: Cromwell tells us of one of them, Walton, the son of Colonel
Walton, that in life he was a precious young man fit for God, and at his
death, which was caused by a wound received in battle, became a glorious
saint in heaven. To die in such a cause was to the saint a "comfort great
above his pain. Yet one thing hung upon his spirit. I asked him what
that was. He told me, that God had not suffered him to be any more the
executioner of His enemies."--Ellis, first series, iii. 299.]
[Footnote 2: See Cromwelliana, 1--7; May, 206, reprint of 1812; Lords'
Journ. iv. 149; Commons', iii. 186.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. March 2.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. July 28.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. August 8.]
London was preserved from danger, not by the new lines of circumvallation,
or the prowess of Waller, but through the insubordination which prevailed
among the royalists. The earl, now marquess, of Newcastle, who had
associated the northern counties in favour of the king, had defeated the
lord Fairfax, the parliamentary general, at Atherton Moor, in Yorkshire,
and retaken Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, from the army under Cromwell.
Here, however, his followers refused to accompany him any further. It was
in vain that he called upon them to join the grand army in the south, and
put an end at once to the war by the reduction of the capital. They had
been embodied for the defence of the northern counties, and could not
be induced to extend the limits of that service for which they had been
originally enrolled. Hence the king, deprived of one half of his expected
force, was compelled to adopt a new plan of operations. Turning his back on
London, he hastened towards the Severn, and invested Gloucester, the only
place of note in the midland counties which admitted the authority of
the parliament.[a] That city was defended by Colonel Massey, a brave and
determined officer, with an obstinacy equal to its importance; and Essex,
at the head of twelve thousand men, undertook to raise the siege. The
design was believed impracticable; but all the attempts of the royalists
to impede his progress were defeated;[b] and on the twenty-sixth day the
discharge of four pieces of cannon from Presbury Hills announced his
arrival to the inhabitants.[c] The besiegers burnt their huts and
retired;[d] and Essex, having spent a few days to recruit his men and
provision the place, resumed his march in the direction of London.[e] On
his approach to Newbury,
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August 10.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 26.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. Sept. 5.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1643. Sept. 6.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1643. Sept. 19.]
he found the royal army in possession of the road before him. I shall not
attempt to describe a conflict which has been rendered unintelligible by
the confused and discordant narratives of different writers. The king's
cavalry appears to have been more than a match for that of the enemy;
but it could make no impression on the forest of pikes presented by the
infantry, the greater part of which consisted of the trained bands from the
capital. The battle raged till late in the evening, and both armies passed
the night in the field, but in the morning the king allowed Essex to march
through Newbury; and having ordered Prince Rupert to annoy the rear,
retired with his infantry to Oxford. The parliamentarians claimed, and
seem to have been justified in claiming, the victory; but their commander,
having made his triumphal entry into the capital, solicited permission to
resign his command and travel on the continent. To those who sought to
dissuade him, he objected the distrust with which he had been treated, and
the insult which had been offered to him by the authority intrusted to
Waller. Several expedients were suggested; but the lord general was aware
of his advantage; his jealousy could not be removed by adulation or
submission; and Waller, after a long struggle, was compelled to resign the
command of the army intrusted with the defence of the capital.[1][a]
As soon as the parliament had recovered from the alarm occasioned by the
loss of Bristol, it had found leisure to devote a part of its attention to
the civil government of the kingdom. I. Serious inconveniences
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 286, 290, 293. May, 220-228. Clarendon, iii,
347. Journals, Sept. 26, 28; Oct. 7, 9. Lords', vi. 218, 242, 246, 247,
347, 356.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Oct. 9.]
had been experienced from the absence of the great seal, the application
of which was held by the lawyers necessary to give validity to several
descriptions of writs. Of this benefit the two houses and their adherents
were deprived, while the king on his part was able to issue patents and
commissions in the accustomed form. To remedy the evil, the Commons had
voted a new seal;[a] the Lords demurred; but at last their consent was
extorted:[b] commissioners were appointed to execute the office of lord
keeper, and no fewer than five hundred writs were sealed in one day. 2. The
public administration of justice had been suspended for twelve months. The
king constantly adjourned the terms from Westminster to Oxford, and the two
houses as constantly forbade the judges to go their circuits during the
vacations. Now, however, under the authority of the new seal, the courts
were opened. The commissioners sat in Chancery, and three judges, all that
remained with the parliament, Bacon, Reeve, and Trevor, in those of the
King's Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. 3. The prosecution of
the judges on account of their opinions in the case of the ship-money
was resumed. Of those who had been impeached, two remained, Berkeley and
Trevor. The first was fined in twenty, the second in six, thousand pounds.
Berkeley obtained the remission of a moiety of the fine, and both were
released from the imprisonment to which they were adjudged.[1]
Ever since the beginning of the troubles, a thorough understanding had
existed between the chief of the Scottish Covenanters, and the principal of
the English
[Footnote 1: Lords' Journals, vi. 214, 252, 264, 301, 318. Commons'
Journals, May 15; July 5; Sept. 28. Rushworth, v. 144, 145, 339, 342, 361.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. Oct. 11.]
reformers. Their views were similar; their object the same. The Scots had,
indeed, fought and won; but they held the fruit of their victory by a
doubtful tenure, as long as the fate of their "English brethren" depended
on the uncertain chances of war. Both policy and religion prompted them to
interfere. The triumph of the parliament would secure their own liberties;
it might serve to propagate the pure worship of their kirk. This had been
foreseen by the Scottish royalists, and Montrose, who by the act against
the plotters was debarred from all access to the king, took advantage of
the queen's debarkation at Burlington to visit her at York. He pointed out
to her the probability of the Scottish Covenanters sending their army to
the aid of the parliament, and offered to prevent the danger by levying in
Scotland an army of ten thousand royalists. But he was opposed by his enemy
the marquess of Hamilton, who deprecated the arming of Scot against Scot,
and engaged on his own responsibility to preserve the peace between the
Scottish people and their sovereign. His advice, prevailed; the royalists
in Scotland were ordered to follow him as their leader; and, to keep him
true to the royal interest, the higher title of duke was conferred upon
him.[1]
If Hamilton was sincere, he had formed a false notion of his own
importance. The Scottish leaders, acting as if they were independent of the
sovereign, summoned a convention of estates. The estates met[a] in defiance
of the king's prohibition; but, to their surprise and mortification, no
commissioner had arrived from the English parliament. National jealousy,
the known intolerance of the Scottish kirk, the exorbitant
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iv. 624. Guthrie, 127.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. June 22.]
claims set up by the Scottish leaders in the late invasion, contributed to
deter many from accepting their new offers of assistance;[1] and more than
two months were suffered to elapse before the commissioners, Vane, Armyn,
Hatcher, and Darley, with Marshall, a Presbyterian, and Nye, an Independent
divine, were despatched[a] with full powers to Scotland.[2] Both the
convention of the estates and the assembly of the kirk had long waited to
receive them; their arrival[b] was celebrated as a day of national triumph;
and the letters which they delivered from the English parliament were read
with shouts of exultation and tears of joy.[3]
In the very outset of the negotiation two important difficulties occurred.
The Scots professed a willingness to take up arms, but sought at the same
time to assume the character of mediators and umpires, to dictate the terms
of reconciliation, and to place themselves in a condition to extort the
consent of the opposite parties. From these lofty pretensions they were
induced to descend by the obstinacy of Vane and the persuasions of Johnston
of Wariston, one of their subtlest statesmen; they submitted to act as the
allies of the parliament; but required as an indispensable
[Footnote 1: "The jealousy the English have of our nation, beyond all
reason, is not well taken. If Mr. Meldrum bring no satisfaction to
us quickly as to conformity of church government, it will be a great
impediment in their affairs here."--Baillie, July 26, i. 372. See also
Dalrymple, ii. 144.]
[Footnote 2: The Scots did not approve of this mission of the Independent
ministers. "Mr. Marshall will be most welcome; but if Mr. Nye, the head of
the Independents, be his fellow, we cannot take it well."--Baillie, i. 372.
They both preached before the Assembly. "We heard Mr. Marshall with great
contentment. Mr. Nye did not please. He touched neither in prayer or
preaching the common business. All his sermon was on the common head of
spiritual life, wherein he ran out above all our understandings."--Id.
388.]
[Footnote 3: Baillie, i. 379, 380. Rushworth, v. 467, 470.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 20.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 27.]
preliminary, the sanction of the kirk. It was useless to reply that this
was a civil, and not a religious treaty. The Scots rejoined, that the two
houses had always announced the reformation of religion as the chief of
their objects; that they had repeatedly expressed their wish of "a nearer
union of both churches;" and that, in their last letters to the Assembly,
they had requested the members to aid them with their prayers and
influence, to consult with their commissioners, and to send some Scottish
ministers to join the English divines assembled at Westminster.[1] Under
these circumstances, Vane and his colleagues could not refuse to admit a
deputation from the Assembly, with Henderson the moderator at its head. He
submitted to their consideration the form of a "solemn league and covenant"
which should bind the two nations to prosecute the public incendiaries, to
preserve the king's life and authority in defence of the true religion
and the liberties of both kingdoms, to extirpate popery, prelacy, heresy,
schism, and profaneness, and to establish a conformity of doctrine,
discipline, and church government throughout the island. This last clause
alarmed the commissioners. They knew that, though the majority of the
parliamentarians inclined to the Presbyterian tenets, there existed among
them a numerous and most active party (and of these Vane himself was among
the most distinguished) who deemed all ecclesiastical authority an invasion
of the rights of conscience; and they saw that, to introduce an obligation
so repugnant to the principles of the latter, would be to provoke an open
rupture, and to marshal the two sects in hostile array against each other.
But the zeal of the
[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 140.]
Scottish theologians was inexorable; they refused to admit any opening to
the toleration of the Independents; and it was with difficulty that they
were at last persuaded to intrust the working of the article to two
or three individuals of known and approved orthodoxy. By these it was
presented in a new and less objectionable form, clothed in such happy
ambiguity of language, as to suit the principles and views of all parties.
It provided that the kirk should be preserved in its existing purity, and
the church of England "be reformed according to the word of God" (which the
Independents would interpret in their own sense), and "after the example
of the best reformed churches," among which the Scots could not doubt that
theirs was entitled to the first place. In this shape, Henderson, with an
appropriate preface, laid[a] the league and covenant before the Assembly;
several speakers, admitted into the secret, commended it in terms of the
highest praise, and it was immediately approved, without one dissentient
voice.[1]
As soon as the covenant, in its amended shape, had received the sanction of
the estates, the most eloquent pens were employed to quicken the flame of
enthusiasm. The people were informed,[b] in the cant language of the time,
1. that the controversy in England was between the Lord Jesus, and the
antichrist with his followers; the call was clear; the curse of Meroz would
light on all who would not come to help the Lord against the mighty: 2.
that both kirks and kingdoms were in imminent danger; they sailed in one
bottom, dwelt in one house, and were members of one body; if either were
ruinated, the other could not subsist; Judah could not long continue in
liberty, if
[Footnote 1: Baillie, i. 381. Clarendon, iii. 368-384.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 24.]
Israel were led away captive: and 3. that they had now a fair opportunity
of advancing uniformity in discipline and worship; the English had already
laid the foundation of a good building by casting out that great idol,
prelacy; and it remained for the Scots to rear the edifice and in God's
good time to put on the cap-stone. The clergy called on their hearers "to
turn to God by fasting and prayer;" a proclamation was issued summoning all
the lieges between the ages of sixteen and sixty to appear in arms; and the
chief command of the forces was, at the request of the parliament, accepted
by Leslie, the veteran general of the Covenanters in the last war. He had,
indeed, made a solemn promise to the king, when he was created earl of
Leven, never more to bear arms against him; but he now recollected that it
was with the reservation, if not expressed, at least understood, of all
cases in which liberty or religion might be at stake.[1]
In England the covenant, with some amendments was approved by the two
houses, and ordered to be taken and subscribed by all persons in office,
and generally by the whole nation. The Commons set[a] the example; the
Lords, with an affectation of dignity which exposed them to some sarcastic
remarks, waited till it had previously been taken by the Scots. At the same
time a league of "brotherly assistance" was negotiated, stipulating that
the estates should aid the parliament with an army of twenty-one thousand
men; that they should place a Scottish garrison in Berwick, and dismantle
the town at the conclusion of the war;[b]
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 472, 482, 492. Journals, 139, 312. Baillie,
i. 390, 391. "The chief aim of it was for the propagation of our church
discipline in England and Ireland."--Id. 3.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Sept. 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. Nov. 29.]
and that their forces should be paid by England at the rate of thirty-one
thousand pounds per month, should receive for their outfit an advance
of one hundred thousand pounds, besides a reasonable recompense at the
establishment of peace, and should have assigned to them as security the
estates of the papists, prelates, and malignants in Nottinghamshire and the
five northern counties. On the arrival of sixty thousand pounds the levies
began; in a few weeks they were completed; and before the end of the
year Leslie mustered his forces at Hairlaw, the appointed place of
rendezvous.[1]
This formidable league, this union, cemented by interest and fanaticism,
struck alarm into the breasts of the royalists. They had found it difficult
to maintain their ground against the parliament alone; they felt unequal to
the contest with a new and powerful enemy. But Charles stood undismayed; of
a sanguine disposition, and confident in the justice of his cause, he saw
no reason to despond; and, as he had long anticipated, so had he prepared
to meet, this additional evil. With this view he had laboured to secure
the obedience of the English army in Ireland against the adherents and
emissaries of the parliament. Suspecting the fidelity of Leicester, the
lord lieutenant, he contrived to detain him in England; gave to the
commander-in-chief, the earl of Ormond, who was raised to the higher rank
of marquess, full authority to
[Footnote 1: Journals, Sept. 14, 21, 25; Oct. 3; Dec. 8. Lords' Journals,
vi. 220-224, 243, 281, 289, 364. The amendments were the insertion of
"the church of Ireland" after that of England, an explanation of the
word prelacy, and the addition of a marginal note, stating, that by the
expression "according to the word of God," was meant "so far as we do
or shall in our consciences conceive the same according to the word of
God."--Journals, Sept. 1, 2.]
dispose of commissions in the army; and appointed Sir Henry Tichborne lord
justice in the place of Parsons. The commissioners sent by the two houses
were compelled[a] to leave the island; and four of the counsellors, the
most hostile to his designs, were imprisoned[b] under a charge of high
treason.[1]
So many reinforcements had successively been poured into Ireland, both from
Scotland and England, that the army which opposed the insurgents was at
length raised to fifty thousand men;[2] but of these the Scots seemed to
attend to their private interests more than the advancement of the common
cause; and the English were gradually reduced in number by want, and
desertion, and the casualties of war. They won, indeed, several battles;
they burnt and demolished many villages and towns; but the evil of
devastation recoiled upon themselves, and they began to feel the horrors of
famine in the midst of the desert which they had made. Their applications
for relief were neglected by the parliament, which had converted to its own
use a great part of the money raised for the service of Ireland, and felt
little inclination to support an army attached to the royal cause. The
officers remonstrated in free though respectful language, and the failure
of their hopes embittered their discontent, and attached them more closely
to the sovereign.[3]
In the meanwhile, the Catholics, by the establishment of a federative
government, had consolidated their power, and given an uniform direction to
their efforts. It was the care of their leaders to copy the example given
by the Scots during the successful war
[Footnote 1: Carte's Ormond, i. 421, 441; iii. 76, 125, 135.]
[Footnote 2: Journals, v. 226.]
[Footnote 3: Clarendon, iii. 415-418, 424. Carte's Ormond, iii. 155, 162,
164.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 1.]
of the Covenant. Like them they professed a sincere attachment to the
person, a profound respect for the legitimate authority of the monarch; but
like them they claimed the right of resisting oppression, and of employing
force in defence of their religion and liberties. At their request, and in
imitation of the general assembly of the Scottish kirk, a synod of Catholic
prelates and divines was convened at Kilkenny; a statement[a] of the
grievances which led the insurgents to take up arms was placed before them;
and they decided that the grounds were sufficient, and the war was lawful,
provided it were not conducted through motives of personal interest or
hatred, nor disgraced by acts of unnecessary cruelty. An oath and covenant
was ordered to be taken, binding the subscribers to protect, at the risk of
their lives and fortunes, the freedom of the Catholic worship, the person,
heirs, and rights of the sovereign, and the lawful immunities and liberties
of the kingdom of Ireland, against all usurpers and invaders whomsoever;
and excommunication was pronounced against all Catholics who should abandon
the covenant or assist their enemies, against all who should forcibly
detain in their possession the goods of English or Irish Catholics, or of
Irish Protestants not adversaries to the cause, and against all who should
take advantage of the war, to murder, wound, rob, or despoil others. By
common consent a supreme council of twenty-four members was chosen, with
Lord Mountgarret as president; and a day was appointed for a national
assembly, which, without the name, should assume the form and exercise the
rights of a parliament.[1]
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 516. Vindiciae Cath. Hib. 4-7. This work has
often been attributed to Sir Rich. Belling, but Walsh (Pref. to Hist. of
Remonstrance, 45) says that the real author was Dr. Callaghan, presented by
the supreme council to the see of Waterford.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. May 10.]
This assembly gave stability to the plan of government devised by the
leaders. The authority of the statute law was acknowledged, and for its
administration a council was established[a] in each county. From the
judgment of this tribunal there lay an appeal to the council of the
province, which in its turn acknowledged the superior jurisdiction of "the
supreme council of the confederated Catholics in Ireland." For the conduct
of the war four generals were appointed, one to lead the forces of each
province, Owen O'Neil in Ulster, Preston in Leinster, Barry Garret in
Munster, and John Burke in Connaught, all of them officers of experience
and merit, who had relinquished their commands in the armies of foreign
princes, to offer their services to their countrymen. Aware that these
regulations amounted to an assumption of the sovereign authority, they
were careful to convey to the king new assurances of their devotion to his
person, and to state to him reasons in justification of their conduct.
Their former messengers, though Protestants of rank and acknowledged
loyalty, had been arrested, imprisoned, and, in one instance at least,
tortured by order of their enemies. They now adopted a more secure channel
of communication, and transmitted their petitions through the hands of the
commander-in-chief. In these the supreme council detailed a long list of
grievances which they prayed might be redressed. They repelled with warmth
the imputation of disloyalty or rebellion. If they had taken up arms, they
had been compelled by a succession of injuries beyond human endurance, of
injuries in their religion, in their
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 1.]
honour and estates, and in the liberties of their country. Their enemies
were the enemies of the king.
The men who had sworn to extirpate them from their native soil were the
same who sought to deprive him of his crown. They therefore conjured him
to summon a new parliament in Ireland, to allow them the free exercise of
that religion which they had inherited from their fathers, and to confirm
to Irishmen their national rights, as he had already done to his subjects
of England and Scotland.[1]
The very first of these petitions, praying for a cessation of arms, had
suggested a new line of policy to the king.[2] He privately informed the
marquess of Ormond of his wish to bring over a portion of his Irish army
that it might be employed in his service in England; required him for that
purpose to conclude[a] an armistice with the insurgents, and sent to him
instructions for the regulation of his conduct. This despatch was secret;
it was followed by a public warrant; and that was succeeded by a peremptory
command. But much occurred to retard the object, and irritate the
impatience of the monarch. Ormond, for his own security, and the service of
his sovereign, deemed it politic to assume a tone of superiority, and to
reject most of the demands of the confederates, who, he saw, were already
divided into parties, and influenced by opposite counsels. The ancient
Irish and the clergy, whose efforts were directed by Scaramp, a papal
envoy, warmly opposed the project. Their enemies, they observed, had been
reduced to extreme distress; their victorious army under Preston made daily
inroads to the very gates of the capital. Why should they descend from the
vantage-ground which they had
[Footnote 1: Carte, iii. 110, 111, 136.]
[Footnote 2: Carte, iii. 90.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 23.]
gained? why, without a motive, resign the prize when it was brought within
their reach? It was not easy to answer their arguments; but the lords of
the pale, attached through habit to the English government, anxiously
longed for an armistice as the preparatory step to a peace. Their exertions
prevailed. A cessation of arms was concluded[a] for twelve months; and the
confederates, to the surprise of their enemies, consented to contribute
towards the support of the royal army the sum of fifteen thousand pounds in
money, and the value of fifteen thousand pounds in provisions.[1]
At the same time Charles had recourse to other expedients, from two of
which he promised himself considerable benefit, 1. It had been the policy
of the cardinal Richelieu to foment the troubles in England as he had
previously done in Scotland; and his intention was faithfully fulfilled by
the French ambassador Senneterre. But in the course of the last year both
Richelieu and Louis XIII. died; the regency, during the minority of the
young king, devolved on Anne of Austria, the queen-mother; and that
princess had always professed a warm attachment for her sister-in-law,
Henrietta Maria. Senneterre was superseded
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 548. Carte, ii. App. 1; iii. 117, 131, 159, 160,
166, 168, 172, 174. No one, I think, who has perused all the documents, can
doubt that the armistice was necessary for the preservation of the army in
Ireland. But its real object did not escape the notice of the two houses,
who voted it "destructive to the Protestant religion, dishonourable to the
English nation, and prejudicial to the interests of the three kingdoms;"
and, to inflame the passions of their partisans, published a declaration,
in which, with their usual adherence to truth, they assert that the
cessation was made at a time when "the famine among the Irish had made
them, unnatural and cannibal-like, eat and feed one upon another;" that it
had been devised and carried on by popish instruments, and was designed for
the better introduction of popery, and the extirpation of the Protestant
religion.--Journals, vi. 238, 289.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Sept. 15.]
by the count of Harcourt, a prince of the house of Lorrain, with the title
of ambassador extraordinary. The parliament received him with respect
in London, and permitted him to proceed to Oxford. Charles, whose
circumstances would not allow him to spend his time in diplomatic finesse,
immediately[a] demanded a loan of money, an auxiliary army, and a
declaration against his rebellious subjects. But these were things which
the ambassador had no power to grant. He escaped[b] with difficulty from
the importunity of the king, and returned to the capital to negotiate
with the parliament. There, offering himself in quality of mediator, he
requested[c] to know the real grounds of the existing war; but his hope of
success was damped by this cold and laconic answer, that, when he had any
proposal to submit in the name of the French king, the houses would be
ready to vindicate their conduct. Soon afterwards[d] the despatches from
his court were intercepted and opened; among them was discovered a letter
from Lord Goring to the queen; and its contents disclosed that Harcourt
had been selected on her nomination; that he was ordered to receive his
instructions from her and the king; and that Goring was soliciting succour
from the French court. This information, with an account of the manner
in which it had been obtained, was communicated to the ambassador, who
immediately[e] demanded passports and left the kingdom.[1]
2. Experience had proved to Charles that the very name of parliament
possessed a powerful influence over the minds of the lower classes in
favour of his adversaries.
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iii. 398-403. Journals, vi. 245, 302, 305, 309,
375, 379, 416. Commons, Sept. 14; Oct. 11; Nov. 15, 22; Jan. 10, 12; Feb.
12.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643 Oct. 18.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643 Nov. 15.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643 Nov. 22.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1644 Jan. 10.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1644 Feb. 12.]
To dispel the charm, he resolved to oppose the loyal members to those who
remained at Westminster, and summoned by proclamation both houses to meet
him at Oxford on the twenty-second of January in the[a] succeeding year.
Forty-three peers and one hundred and eighteen commoners obeyed;[1] the
usual forms of parliament were observed, and the king opened the session
with a gracious speech, in which he deplored[b] the calamities of the
kingdom, desired them to bear witness to his pacific disposition, and
promised them all the freedom and privileges belonging to such assemblies.
Their first measure was a letter subscribed by all the members of both
houses, and directed to the earl of Essex, requesting him to convey to
those "by whom he was trusted," their earnest desire that commissioners
might be appointed[c] on both sides to treat of an accommodation. Essex,
having received instructions, replied that he could not deliver a letter
which, neither in its address nor in its contents, acknowledged the
authority of the parliament. Charles himself was next brought forward.[d]
He directed his letter to "the lords and commons of parliament assembled
at Westminster," and requested, "by the advice of the lords and commons of
parliament assembled at Oxford," the appointment
[Footnote 1: If we may believe Whitelock (80), when the two houses at
Westminster were called over (Jan. 30), there were two hundred and eighty
members present, and one hundred employed on different services. But I
suspect some error in the numbers, as the list of those who took the
covenant amounts only to two hundred and twenty names, even including such
as took it after that day. (Compare Rushworth, v. 480, with the Journals.)
The lords were twenty-two present, seventy-four absent, of whom eleven were
excused.--Journals, vi. 387. The two houses at Oxford published also
their lists of the members, making the commons amount to one hundred and
seventy-five, the lords to eighty-three. But of the latter several had been
created since the commencement of the war.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Jan. 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Jan. 29.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Jan. 30.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. March. 3.]
of commissioners to settle the distractions of the kingdom, and
particularly the manner "how all the members of both houses might meet in
full and free convention of parliament, to consult and treat upon such
things as might conduce to the maintenance of the true Protestant religion,
with due consideration to the just ease of tender consciences, to the
settling of the rights of the crown and of parliament, the laws of the
land, and the liberties and property of the subject." This message the two
houses considered an insult,[a] because it implied that they were not a
full and free convention of parliament. In their answer they called on the
king to join them at Westminster; and in a public declaration denounced
the proceeding as "a popish and Jesuitical practice to allure them by the
specious pretence of peace to disavow their own authority, and resign
themselves, their religion, laws, and liberties, to the power of idolatry,
superstition, and slavery."[1] In opposition, the houses at Oxford declared
that the Scots had broken the act of pacification, that all English
subjects who aided them should be deemed traitors and enemies of the state,
and that the lords and commons
[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 451, 459. The reader will notice in the king's
letter an allusion to religious toleration ("with due consideration to
the ease of tender consciences"), the first which had yet been made by
authority, and which a few years before would have scandalized the members
of the church of England as much as it did now the Presbyterians and Scots.
But policy had taught that which reason could not. It was now thrown out
as a bait to the Independents, whose apprehensions of persecution were
aggravated by the intolerance of their Scottish allies, and who were on
that account suspected of having already made some secret overtures to the
court. "Bristol, under his hand, gives them a full assurance of so full a
liberty of their conscience as they could wish, inveighing withal against
the Scots' cruel invasion, and the tyranny of our presbytery, equal to the
Spanish inquisition."--Baillie, i. 428.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. March 9.]
remaining at Westminster, who had given their consent to the coming in of
the Scots, or the raising of forces under the earl of Essex, or the making
and using of a new great seal, had committed high treason, and ought to
be proceeded against as traitors to the king and kingdom.[1] Thus again
vanished the prospect of peace; and both parties, with additional
exasperation of mind, and keener desires of revenge, resolved once more to
stake their hope of safety on the uncertain fortune of war.
But the leaders at Westminster found it necessary to silence the murmurs of
many among their own adherents, whose anxiety for the restoration of peace
led them to attribute interested motives to the advocates of war. On the
first appearance of a rupture, a committee of safety had been appointed,
consisting of five lords and ten commoners, whose office it was to perform
the duties of the executive authority, subject to the approbation and
authority of the houses; now that the Scots had agreed to join in the war,
this committee, after a long resistance on the part of the Lords, was
dissolved,[a] and another established in its place, under the name of the
committee of the two kingdoms, composed of a few members from each house,
and of certain commissioners from the estates of Scotland.[2] On this new
body the Peers looked with an eye of jealousy, and, when the Commons, in
consequence of unfavourable reports, referred to it the task of "preparing
some grounds for settling a just and safe peace in all the king's
dominions," they objected not
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iii. 440-454. Journals, 399, 404, 451, 459, 484,
485; Dec. 30; Jan. 16, 30; March 6, 11. Rushworth, v. 559-575, 582-602.]
[Footnote 2: Journals of Commons, Jan. 30; Feb. 7, 10, 12, 16; of Lords,
Feb. 12, 16.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Feb. 16.]
to the thing, but to the persons, and appointed for the same purpose a
different committee. The struggle lasted six weeks: but the influence of
the upper. house had diminished with the number of its members, and the
Lords were compelled to submit,[a] under the cover of an unimportant
amendment to maintain their own honour. The propositions now[b] brought
forward as the basis of a reconciliation were in substance the following:
that the covenant with the obligation of taking it, the reformation
of religion according to its provisions, and the utter abolition of
episcopacy, should be confirmed by act of parliament; that the cessation of
war in Ireland should be declared void by the same authority; that a new
oath should be framed for the discovery of Catholics; that the penalties
of recusancy should be strictly enforced; that the children of Catholics
should be educated Protestants; that certain English Protestants by name,
all papists, who had borne arms against the parliament, and all Irish
rebels, whether Catholics or Protestants, who had brought aid to the royal
army, should be excepted from the general pardon; that the debts contracted
by the parliament should be paid out of the estates of delinquents; and
that the commanders of the forces by land and sea, the great officers
of state, the deputy of Ireland and the judges, should be named by the
parliament, or the commissioners of parliament, to hold their places during
their good behaviour. From the tone of these propositions it was evident
that the differences between the parties had become wider than before, and
that peace depended on the subjugation of the one by the superior force or
the better fortune of the other.[1]
[Footnote 1: Journals, March 15, 20, 23, 29, 30; April 3, 5, 13, 16. On the
question whether they should treat in union with the Scots, the Commons
divided sixty-four against sixty-four: but the noes obtained the casting
vote of the speaker.--Baillie, i. 446. See also the Journals of the
Lords, vi. 473, 483, 491, 501, 514, 519, 527, 531. Such, indeed, was the
dissension among them, that Baillie says they would have accepted the first
proposal from the houses at Oxford, had not the news that the Scots had
passed the Tweed arrived a few hours before. This gave the ascendancy to
the friends of war.--Baillie, i. 429, 430.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. April 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. April 29.]
Here the reader may pause, and, before he proceeds to the events of the
next campaign, may take a view of the different financial expedients
adopted by the contending parties. Want of money was an evil which pressed
equally on both; but it was more easily borne by the patriots, who
possessed an abundant resource in the riches of the capital, and were less
restrained in their demands by considerations of delicacy or justice. 1.
They were able on sudden emergencies to raise considerable supplies by loan
from the merchants of the city, who seldom dared to refuse, or, if they
did, were compelled to yield by menaces of distraint and imprisonment. For
all such advances interest was promised at the usual rate of eight per
cent., and "the public faith was pledged for the repayment of the capital."
2. When the parliament ordered their first levy of soldiers, many of their
partisans subscribed considerable sums in money, or plate, or arms, or
provisions. But it was soon asked, why the burthen should fall exclusively
on the well-affected; and the houses improved the hint to ordain that all
non-subscribers, both in the city and in the country, should be compelled
to contribute the twentieth part of their estates towards the support of
the common cause. 3. Still the wants of the army daily increased, and, as a
temporary resource, an order was made that each county should provide for
the subsistence of the men whom it had furnished; 4. and this was followed
by a more permanent expedient, a weekly assessment of ten thousand pounds
on the city of London, and of twenty-four thousand pounds on the rest of
the kingdom, to be levied by county-rates after the manner of subsidies. 5.
In addition, the estates both real and personal of all delinquents, that
is, of all individuals who had borne arms for the king, or supplied him
with money, or in any manner, or under any pretence, had opposed the
parliament, were sequestrated from the owners, and placed under the
management of certain commissioners empowered to receive the rents, to
seize the moneys and goods, to sue for debts, and to pay the proceeds into
the treasury. 6. In the next place came the excise, a branch of taxation of
exotic origin, and hitherto unknown in the kingdom. To it many objections
were made; but the ample and constant supply which it promised insured its
adoption; and after a succession of debates and conferences, which occupied
the houses during three months, the new duties, which were in most
instances to be paid by the first purchaser, were imposed both on the
articles already subject to the customs, and on a numerous class of
commodities of indigenous growth or manufacture.[1] Lastly, in aid of these
several sources of revenue, the houses did not refuse another of a more
singular description. It was customary for many of the patriots to observe
a weekly fast for the success of their cause; and, that their purses might
not profit by the exercise of their piety,
[Footnote 1: It should be observed that the excise in its very infancy
extended to strong beer, ale, cider, perry, wine, oil, figs, sugar,
raisins, pepper, salt, silk, tobacco, soap, strong waters, and even flesh
meat, whether it were exposed for sale in the market, or killed by private
families for their own consumption.--Journals, vi. 372.] they were careful
to pay into the treasury the price of the meal from which they had
abstained. If others would not fast, it was at least possible to make them
pay; and commissioners were appointed by ordinance to go through the city,
to rate every housekeeper at the price of one meal for his family, and to
collect the money on every Tuesday during the next six months. By these
expedients the two houses contrived to carry on the war, though their
pecuniary embarrassments were continually multiplied by the growing
accumulation of their debts, and the unavoidable increase of their
expenditure.[1] With respect to the king, his first resource was in the
sale of his plate and jewels, his next in the generous devotion of his
adherents, many of whom served him during the whole war at their own cost,
and, rather than become a burthen to their sovereign, mortgaged their last
acre, and left themselves and their families without the means of future
subsistence. As soon as he had set up his standard, he solicited loans from
his friends, pledging his word to requite their promptitude, and allotting
certain portions of the crown lands for their repayment--a very precarious
security as long as the issue of the contest should remain uncertain. But
the appeal was not made in vain. Many advanced considerable sums without
reserving to themselves any claim to remuneration, and others lent so
freely and abundantly, that this resource was productive beyond his most
sanguine expectations. Yet, before the commencement of the third campaign,
[Footnote 1: Journals, v. 460, 466, 482; vi. 108, 196, 209, 224, 248, 250,
272. Commons' Journals, Nov. 26, Dec. 8, 1642; Feb. 23, Sept. 1643; March
26, 1644. Rushworth, v. 71, 150, 209, 313, 748. It should be recollected
that, according to the devotion of the time, "a fast required a total
abstinence from all food, till the fast was ended."--Directory for the
Publique Worship, p. 32.]
he was compelled to consult his parliament at Oxford. By its advice he
issued privy seals, which raised one hundred thousand pounds, and, in
imitation of his adversaries, established the excise, which brought him
in a constant, though not very copious supply. In addition, his garrisons
supported themselves by weekly contributions from the neighbouring
townships, and the counties which had associated in his favour willingly
furnished pay and subsistence to their own forces. Yet, after all, it was
manifest that he possessed not the same facilities of raising money with
his adversaries, and that he must ultimately succumb through poverty alone,
unless he could bring the struggle to a speedy termination.[1]
For this purpose both parties had made every exertion, and both Irishmen
and Scotsmen had been called into England to fight the battles of the king
and the parliament. The severity of the winter afforded no respite from the
operations of war. Five Irish regiments, the first fruits of the cessation
in Ireland, arrived[a] at Mostyn in Flintshire; their reputation, more than
their number, unnerved the prowess of their enemies; no force ventured to
oppose them in the field; and, as they advanced, every post was abandoned
or surrendered. At length the garrison of Nantwich arrested[b] their
progress; and whilst they were occupied with the siege, Sir Thomas Fairfax
approached with a superior force from Yorkshire. For two hours[c] the
Anglo-Irish, under Lord Byron, maintained an obstinate resistance against
the assailants from without, and the garrison from within the town; but in
a moment of despair one thousand six hundred men in the works threw down
their arms,
[Footnote: 1 Rushworth, v. 580, 601. Clarendon, ii. 87, 453.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. November.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Jan. 15.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Jan. 25.]
and, with a few exceptions, entered the ranks of their adversaries. Among
the names of the officers taken, occurs that of the celebrated Colonel
Monk, who was afterwards released from the Tower to act a more brilliant
part, first in the service of the Commonwealth, and then in the
re-establishment of the throne.[1]
A few days before this victory, the Scots had passed the Tweed.[a] The
notion that they were engaged in a holy crusade for the reformation of
religion made them despise every difficulty; and, though the weather was
tempestuous, though the snow lay deep on the ground, their enthusiasm
carried them forward in a mass which the royalists dared not oppose. Their
leader sought to surprise Newcastle; he was disappointed by the promptitude
of the marquess of Newcastle, who, on the preceding day,[b] had thrown
himself into the town; and famine compelled the enemy, after a siege of
three weeks, to abandon the attempt.[c] Marching up the left bank of the
Tyne,[d] they crossed the river at Bywell,[e] and hastening by Ebchester
to Sunderland, took possession of that port to open a communication by sea
with their own country. The marquess, having assembled his army, offered
them battle, and, when they refused to fight, confined them for five weeks
within their own quarters. In proportion as their advance into England
had elevated the hopes of their friends in the capital, their subsequent
inactivity provoked surprise and complaints. But Lord Fairfax, having been
joined by his victorious son from Cheshire, dispersed the royalists at
Leeds,[f] under Colonel Bellasis, the son of Lord Falconberg; and the
danger of being enclosed between two armies induced the marquess of
Newcastle to retire[g] from Durham
[Footnote 1: Rush. v. 299, 303. Fairfax, 434, ed. of Maseres.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Jan. 16.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Feb. 2.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Feb. 28.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. March 2.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1644. March 4.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1644. April 11.]
[Sidenote g: A.D. 1644. April 23.]
to York. He was quickly followed by the Scots; they were joined by Fairfax,
and the combined army sat down before the city. Newcastle at first despised
their attempts; but the arrival[a] of fourteen thousand parliamentarians,
under the earl of Manchester, convinced him of his danger, and he earnestly
solicited[b] succour from the king.[1]
But, instead of proceeding with the military transactions in the north, it
will here be necessary to advert to those which had taken place in other
parts of the kingdom. In the counties on the southern coast several
actions had been fought, of which, the success was various, and the result
unimportant. Every eye fixed itself on the two grand armies in the vicinity
of Oxford and London. The parliament had professed a resolution to stake
the fortune of the cause on one great and decisive battle; and, with this
view, every effort had been made to raise the forces of Essex and Waller to
the amount of twenty thousand men. These generals marched in two separate
corps, with the hope of enclosing the king, or of besieging him in
Oxford.[2] Aware of his inferiority, Charles, by a skilful manoeuvre,
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 222. Baillie, ii. 1, 6, 10, 28, 32. Journals,
522.]
[Footnote 2: When Essex left London he requested the assembly of divines to
keep a fast for his success. The reader may learn from Baillie how it was
celebrated. "We spent from nine to five graciously. After Dr. Twisse had
begun with a brief prayer, Mr. Marshall prayed large two hours, most
divinely confessing the sins of the members of the assembly in a wonderful,
pathetick, and prudent way. After Mr. Arrowsmith preached an hour, then a
psalm; thereafter Mr. Vines prayed near two hours, and Mr. Palmer preached
an hour, and Mr. Seaman prayed near two hours, then a psalm; after Mr.
Henderson brought them to a sweet conference of the heat confessed in the
assembly, and other seen faults to be remedied, and the conveniency to
preach against all sects, especially Anabaptists and Antinomians. Dr.
Twisse closed with a short prayer and blessing. God was so evidently in all
this exercise, that we expect certainly a blessing."--Baillie, ii. 18, 19.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. April 20.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. June 3.]
passed with seven thousand men between the hostile divisions, and arrived
in safety at Worcester.[a] The jealousy of the commanders did not allow
them to act in concert. Essex directed his march into Dorsetshire;[b]
Waller took on himself the task of pursuing the fugitive monarch. Charles
again deceived him. He pretended to advance along the right bank of the
Severn from Worcester to Shrewsbury;[c] and when Waller, to prevent him,
hastened from Broomsgrove to take possession of that town, the king turned
at Bewdley, retraced his steps to Oxford,[d] and, recruiting his army, beat
up the enemy's quarters in Buckinghamshire. In two days Waller had returned
to the Charwell, which separated the two armies; but an unsuccessful action
at Copredy Bridge[e] checked his impetuosity, and Charles, improving the
advantage to repass the river, marched to Evesham in pursuit of Essex.
Waller did not follow; his forces, by fatigue, desertion, and his late
loss, had been reduced from eight thousand to four thousand men, and the
committee of the two kingdoms recalled their favourite general from his
tedious and unavailing pursuit.[1]
During these marches and counter-marches, in which the king had no other
object than to escape from his pursuers, in the hope that some fortunate
occurrence might turn the scale in his favour, he received the despatch
already mentioned from the marquess of Newcastle. The ill-fated prince
instantly saw the danger which threatened him. The fall of York would
deprive him of the northern counties, and the subsequent junction of the
besieging army with his opponents in the south would constitute a force
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 670-676. Clarendon, iv. 487-493, 497-502.
Baillie, ii. 38.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. June 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. June 6.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. June 15.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. June 20.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1644. June 29.]
against which it would be useless to struggle. His only resource was in
the courage and activity of Prince Rupert. He ordered[a] that commander to
collect all the force in his power, to hasten into Yorkshire, to fight
the enemy, and to keep in mind that two things were necessary for the
preservation of the crown,--both the relief of the city, and the defeat of
the combined army.[1]
Rupert, early in the spring, had marched from his quarters at Shrewsbury,
surprised the parliamentary army before Newark,[b] and after a sharp
action, compelled it[c] to capitulate. He was now employed in Cheshire and
Lancashire, where he had taken Stockport, Bolton, and Liverpool, and had
raised[d] the siege of Latham House, after it had been gallantly defended
during eighteen weeks by the resolution of the countess of Derby. On the
receipt of the royal command, he took with him a portion of his own men,
and some regiments lately arrived from Ireland; reinforcements poured in
on his march, and on his approach the combined army deemed it prudent to
abandon the works before the city. He was received[e] with acclamations of
joy; but left York the next day[f] to fight the bloody and decisive battle
of Marston Moor.[2] Both armies, in accordance with the military tactics
of the age, were drawn up in line, the infantry in three divisions, with
strong bodies of cavalry on each flank. In force they were nearly equal,
amounting to twenty-three or twenty-five thousand men; but there was this
peculiarity in the arrangement of the parliamentarians, that in each
division the
[Footnote 1: See his letter in Evelyn's Memoirs, ii. App. 88. It completely
exculpates Rupert from the charges of obstinacy and rashness in having
fought the subsequent battle of Marston Moor.]
[Footnote 2: Rushworth, v. 307, 623, 631.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. June 14.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. March 21.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. May 25.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. June 11.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1644. July 1.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1644. July 2.]
English and the Scots were intermixed, to preclude all occasion of jealousy
or dispute. It was now five in the afternoon, and for two hours a solemn
pause ensued, each eyeing the other in the silence of suspense, with
nothing to separate them but a narrow ditch or rivulet. At seven the signal
was given, and Rupert, at the head of the royal cavalry on the right,
charged with his usual impetuosity, and with the usual result. He bore down
all before him, but continued the chase for some miles, and thus, by his
absence from the field, suffered the victory to slip out of his hands.[1]
At the same time the royal infantry, under Goring, Lucas, and Porter, had
charged their opponents with equal intrepidity and equal success. The line
of the confederates was pierced in several points; and their generals,
Manchester, Leven, and Fairfax, convinced that the day was lost, fled in
different directions. By their flight the chief command devolved upon
Cromwell, who improved the opportunity to win for himself the laurels of
victory. With "his ironsides" and the Scottish horse he had driven the
royal cavalry, under the earl of Newcastle, from their position on the
left. Ordering a few squadrons to observe and harass the fugitives, he
wheeled round on the flank of the royal infantry, and found them in
separate bodies, and in disorder, indulging in the confidence and license
of victory. Regiment after regiment was attacked and dispersed; but the
"white coats," a body of veterans raised by Lord Newcastle, formed in a
circle; and, whilst their pikemen kept the cavalry at bay, their
[Footnote 1: Sir Thomas Fairfax says that at first he put to flight part of
the loyal cavalry, and pursued them on the road to York. On his return he
found that the rest of his wing had been routed by the prince.--Fairfax,
438.]
musketeers poured repeated volleys into the ranks of the enemy. Had these
brave men been supported by any other corps, the battle might have been
restored; but, as soon as their ammunition was spent, an opening was made,
and the white coats perished, every man falling on the spot on which he had
fought.
Thus ended the battle of Marston Moor. It was not long, indeed, before
the royal cavalry, amounting to three thousand men, made their appearance
returning from the pursuit. But the aspect of the field struck dismay into
the heart of Rupert. His thoughtless impetuosity was now exchanged for an
excess of caution; and after a few skirmishes he withdrew. Cromwell spent
the night on the spot; but it was to him a night of suspense and anxiety.
His troopers were exhausted with the fatigue of the day; the infantry was
dispersed, and without orders; and he expected every moment a nocturnal
attack from Rupert, who had it in his power to collect a sufficient force
from the several corps of royalists which had suffered little in the
battle. But the morning brought him the pleasing intelligence that the
prince had hastened by a circuitous route to York. The immediate fruit
of the victory were fifteen hundred prisoners and the whole train of
artillery. The several loss of the two parties is unknown; those who
buried the slain numbered the dead bodies at four thousand one hundred and
fifty.[1]
This disastrous battle extinguished the power of the
[Footnote 1: For this battle see Rushworth, v. 632; Thurloe, i. 39;
Clarendon, iv. 503; Baillie, II, 36, 40; Whitelock, 89; Memorie of the
Somervilles, Edin. 1815. Cromwell sent messengers from the field to recall
the three generals who had fled. Leven was found in bed at Leeds about
noon; and having read the despatch, struck his breast, exclaiming, "I would
to God I had died upon the place."--Ibid.; also Turner, Memoirs, 38.]
royalists in the northern counties. The prince and the marquess had long
cherished a deeply-rooted antipathy to each other. It had displayed itself
in a consultation respecting the expediency of fighting; it was not
probable that it would be appeased by their defeat. They separated the next
morning; Rupert, hastening to quit a place where he had lost so gallant an
army, returned to his former command in the western counties; Newcastle,
whether he despaired of the royal cause, or was actuated by a sense of
injurious treatment, taking with him the lords Falconberg and Widerington,
sought an asylum on the continent. York, abandoned to its fate, opened its
gates to the enemy, on condition that the citizens should not be molested,
and that the garrison should retire to Skipton. The combined army
immediately separated by order of the committee of both kingdoms.
Manchester returned into Nottinghamshire, Fairfax remained in York, and
the Scots under Leven retracing their steps, closed the campaign with the
reduction of Newcastle. They had no objection to pass the winter in the
neighbourhood of their own country; the parliament felt no wish to see them
nearer to the English capital.[1]
In the mean time Essex, impatient of the control exercised by that
committee, ventured to act in opposition to its orders; and the two houses,
though they reprimanded him for his disobedience, allowed him to pursue the
plan which he had formed of dissolving with his army the association of
royalists in Somersetshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall.[a] He relieved Lime,
which had long been besieged by Prince Maurice, one[a] of the king's
nephews, and advanced in the direction
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 504.]
[Sidenote a: A.D.. 1644. June 25.]
of Exeter, where the queen a few days before[a] had been delivered of a
daughter. That princess, weary of the dangers to which she was exposed in
England, repaired to Falmouth, put to sea[b] with a squadron of ten Dutch
or Flemish vessels, and, escaping the keen pursuit of the English fleet
from Torbay, reached[c] in safety the harbour of Brest.[1]
Essex, regardless of the royalists who assembled in the rear of his
army, pursued[d] his march into Cornwall. To most men his conduct was
inexplicable. Many suspected that he sought to revenge himself on the
parliament by betraying his forces into the hands of the enemy. At
Lestwithiel he received[e] two letters, one, in which he was solicited by
the king to unite with him in compelling his enemies to consent to a peace,
which while it ascertained the legal rights of the throne, might secure
the religion and liberties of the people; another from eighty-four of the
principal officers in the royal army, who pledged themselves to draw the
sword against the sovereign himself, if he should ever swerve from the
principles which he had avowed in his letter. Both were disappointed. Essex
sent the letters to the two houses, and coldly replied that his business
was to fight, that of the parliament to negotiate.
[Footnote 1: I doubt whether Essex had any claim to that generosity of
character which is attributed to him by historians. The queen had been
delivered of a princess, Henrietta Maria, at Exeter, and sent to him for
a passport to go to Bath or Bristol for the recovery of her health. He
refused, but insultingly offered to attend her himself, if she would go to
London, where she had been already impeached of high treason.--Rushworth,
v. 684. I observe that even before the war, when the king had written to
the queen to intimate his wish to Essex, as lord chamberlain, to prepare
the palace for his reception, she desired Nicholas to do it adding,
"their lordships are to great princes to receave anye direction from
me."--Evelyn's Mem. ii. App. 78.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. June 16.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. July 14.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. July 15.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. June 26.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1644. August 6.]
But he now found himself in a most critical situation, cut off from all
intercourse with London, and enclosed between the sea and the combined
forces of the king, Prince Maurice, and Sir Richard Grenville.[a] His
cavalry, unable to obtain subsistence, burst in the night, though not
without loss, through the lines of the enemy. But each day the royalists
won some of his posts; their artillery commanded the small haven of Foy,
through which, alone he could obtain provisions; and his men, dismayed by
a succession of disasters, refused to stand to their colours. In this
emergency Essex, with two other officers, escaped from the beach in a boat
to Plymouth; and Major-General Skippon offered to capitulate for the rest
of the army.[b] On the surrender of their arms, ammunition, and artillery,
the men were allowed to march to Pool and Wareham, and thence were conveyed
in transports to Portsmouth, where commissioners from the parliament met
them with a supply of clothes and money. The lord general repaired to his
own house, calling for an investigation both into his own conduct and into
that of the committee, who had neglected to disperse the royalists in the
rear of his army, and had betrayed the cause of the people, to gratify
their own jealousy by the disgrace of an opponent. To soothe his wounded
mind, the houses ordered a joint deputation to wait on him, to thank him
for his fidelity to the cause, and to express their estimation of the many
and eminent services which he had rendered to his country.
This success elevated the hopes of the king, who, assuming a tone of
conscious superiority, invited all his
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 683, 684, 690-693, 699-711. Clarend. iv.
511-518-527.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Aug 30.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Sept. 1.]
subjects to accompany him to London, and aid him in compelling the
parliament to accept of peace.[a]But the energies of his opponents were
not exhausted. They quickly recruited their diminished forces; the several
corps under Essex, Waller, and Manchester were united; and, while the
royalists marched through Whitechurch to Newbury, a more numerous army
moved in a parallel direction through Basingstoke to Reading.[b]There the
leaders (the lord general was absent under the pretence of indisposition),
hearing of reinforcements pouring into Oxford, resolved to avail themselves
of their present superiority, and to attack, at the same moment, the
royalist positions at Show on the eastern, and at Speen on the western side
of the town. The action in both places was obstinate, the result, as late
as ten at night, doubtful; but the king, fearing to be surrounded the next
day, assembled his men under the protection of Donnington Castle, and[c]
marched towards Wallingford, a movement which was executed without
opposition by the light of the moon, and in full view of the enemy.[d]In
a few days he returned with a more numerous force, and, receiving the
artillery and ammunition, which for security he had left in Donnington
Castle, conveyed it without molestation to Wallingford. As he passed and
repassed, the parliamentarians kept within their lines, and even refused
the battle which he offered. This backwardness, whether it arose from
internal dissension, or from inferiority of numbers, provoked loud
complaints, not only in the capital, where the conflict at Newbury had been
celebrated as a victory, but in the two houses, who had ordered the army
to follow up its success. The generals, having dispersed their troops in
winter quarters, hastened to vindicate their
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Sept. 30.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Oct. 27.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Nov. 6.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. Nov. 9.]
own conduct. Charges of cowardice, or disaffection, or incapacity, were
made and retorted by one against the other; and that cause which had nearly
triumphed over the king seemed now on the point of being lost through the
personal jealousies and contending passions of its leaders.[1]
The greater part of these quarrels had originated in the rivalry of
ambition; but those in the army of the earl of Manchester were produced by
religious jealousy, and on that account were followed by more important
results. When the king attempted to arrest the five members, Manchester,
at that time Lord Kymbolton, was the only peer whom he impeached. This
circumstance endeared Kymbolton to the party; his own safety bound him
more closely to its interests. On the formation of the army of the seven
associated counties, he accepted, though with reluctance, the chief
command; for his temper and education had formed him to shine in the senate
rather than the camp; and, aware of his own inexperience, he devolved
on his council the chief direction of military operations, reserving to
himself the delicate and important charge of harmonizing and keeping
together the discordant elements of which his force was composed. The
second in command, as the reader is aware, was Cromwell, with the rank of
lieutenant-general. In the parade of sanctity both Manchester and Cromwell
seemed equal proficients; in belief and practice they followed two opposite
parties. The first sought the exclusive establishment of the presbyterian
system; the other contended for the common right of mankind to worship God
according to the dictates of conscience. But this difference of opinion
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 715-732. Clarendon, 546-552.]
provoked no dissension between them. The more gentle and accommodating
temper of Manchester was awed by the superior genius of Cromwell, who
gradually acquired the chief control of the army, and offered his
protection to the Independents under his command. In other quarters these
religionists suffered restraint and persecution from the zeal of the
Presbyterians; the indulgence which they enjoyed under Cromwell scandalized
and alarmed the orthodoxy of the Scottish commissioners, who obtained, as
a counterpoise to the influence of that officer, the post of major-general
for Crawford, their countryman, and a rigid Presbyterian. Cromwell and
Crawford instantly became rivals and enemies. The merit of the victory
at Marston Moor had been claimed by the Independents, who magnified the
services of their favourite commander, and ridiculed the flight and
cowardice of the Scots. Crawford retorted the charge, and deposed that
Cromwell, having received a slight wound in the neck at the commencement
of the action, immediately retired and did not afterwards appear in the
field.[a]The lieutenant-general in revenge exhibited articles against
Crawford before the committee of war, and the colonels threatened to
resign their commissions unless he were removed; while on the other hand
Manchester and the chaplains of the army gave testimony in his favour,
and the Scottish commissioners, assuming the defence of their countryman,
represented him as a martyr in the cause of religion.[1]
But before this quarrel was terminated a second of greater importance
arose. The indecisive action at Newbury, and the refusal of battle at
Donnington, had
[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 40, 41, 42, 49, 57, 60, 66, 69. Hollis, 15.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Sept. 5.]
excited the discontent of the public;[a]the lower house ordered an inquiry
into the conduct of the generals and the state of the armies; and the
report made by the committee of both kingdoms led to a vote that a plan for
the organization of the national force, in a new and more efficient form,
should be immediately prepared. Waller and Cromwell, who were both members
of the house, felt dissatisfied with the report. At the next meeting
each related his share in the transactions which had excited such loud
complaints; and the latter embraced the opportunity to prefer a charge
of disaffection against the earl of Manchester, who, he pretended, was
unwilling that the royal power should suffer additional humiliation, and
on that account would never permit his army to engage, unless it were
evidently to its disadvantage. Manchester in the House of Lords repelled
the imputation with warmth, vindicated his own conduct, and retorted on his
accuser, that he had yet to learn in what place Lieutenant General Cromwell
with his cavalry had posted himself on the day of battle.[1]
It is worthy of remark, that, even at this early period, Essex, Manchester,
and the Scottish commissioners suspected Cromwell with his friends of a
design to obtain the command of the army, to abolish the House of Lords,
divide the House of Commons, dissolve the covenant between the two nations,
and erect a new government according to his own principles. To defeat this
project it was at first proposed that the chancellor of Scotland should
denounce him as an incendiary, and demand his punishment according to the
late treaty; but, on the reply of the
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 732. Journals, Nov. 22, 23, 25. Lords' Journals,
vii. 67, 78, 80, 141. Whitelock, 116.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Nov. 25.]
lawyers whom they consulted, that their proofs were insufficient to sustain
the charge, it was resolved that Manchester should accuse him before the
Lords of having expressed a wish to reduce the peers to the state of
private gentlemen; of having declared his readiness to fight against the
Scots, whose chief object was to establish religious despotism; and of
having threatened to compel, with the aid of the Independents, both king
and parliament to accept such conditions as he should dictate.[a]This
charge, with a written statement by Manchester in his own vindication, was
communicated to the Commons; and they, after some objections in point of
form and privilege, referred it to a committee, where its consideration
was postponed from time to time, till at last it was permitted to sleep in
silence.[1]
Cromwell did not hesitate to wreak his revenge on Essex and Manchester,
though the blow would probably recoil upon himself.[b]He proposed in the
Commons what was afterwards called the "self-denying ordinance," that the
members of both houses should be excluded from all offices, whether civil
or military. He would not, he said, reflect on what was passed, but suggest
a remedy for the future. The nation was weary of the war; and he spoke
the language both of friends and foes, when he said that the blame of its
continuance rested with the two houses, who could not be expected to bring
it to a speedy termination as long as so many of their members derived from
military commands wealth and authority, and consideration. His real object
was open to every eye; still the motion met with the concurrence of his own
party,
[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 76, 77. Journals, Dec. 2, 4; Jan. 18. Lords'
Journals, 79, 80. Whitelock, 116, 117. Hollis, 18.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Dec. 2.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Dec. 9.]
and of all whose patience had been exhausted by the quarrels among
the commanders; and, when an exemption was suggested in favour of the
lord-general, it was lost on a division by seven voices, in a house of
one hundred and ninety-three members.[a] However, the strength of the
opposition encouraged the peers to speak with more than their usual
freedom.[b] They contended, that the ordinance was unnecessary, since the
committee was employed in framing a new model for the army; that it was
unjust, since it would operate to the exclusion of the whole peerage from
office, while the Commons remained equally eligible to sit in parliament,
or to fill civil or military employments. It was in vain that the lower
house remonstrated.[c] The Lords replied that they had thrown out the bill,
but would consent to another of similar import, provided it did not extend
to commands in the army.
But by this time the committee of both kingdoms had completed their plan of
military reform, which, in its immediate operation, tended to produce the
same effect as the rejected ordinance.[d] It obtained the sanction of the
Scottish commissioners, who consented, though with reluctance, to sacrifice
their friends in the upper house, for the benefit of a measure which
promised to put an end to the feuds and delays of the former system, and to
remove from the army Cromwell, their most dangerous enemy. If it deprived
them of the talents of Essex and Manchester, which they seem never to have
prized, it gave them in exchange a commander-in-chief, whose merit they had
learned to appreciate during his service in conjunction[e]
[Transcriber's Note: Footnote 1 not found in the text]
[Footnote 1: Journals, Dec. 9, 17; Jan. 7, 10, 13. Lords' Journals, 129,
131, 134, 135. Rushworth, vi. 3-7.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Dec. 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Dec. 21.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. Jan. 15.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1645. Jan. 9.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1645. Jan. 21.]
with their forces at the siege of York. By the "new model" it was proposed
that the army should consist of one thousand dragoons, six thousand six
hundred cavalry in six, and fourteen thousand four hundred infantry in
twelve regiments, under Sir Thomas Fairfax as the first, and Major-General
Skippon as the second, in command. The Lords hesitated;[a] but after
several conferences and debates they returned it with a few amendments
to the Commons, and it was published by sound of drum in London and
Westminster.[1]
This victory was followed by another. Many of the peers still clung to the
notion that it was intended to abolish their privileges, and therefore
resolved not to sink without a struggle. They insisted that the new army
should take the covenant, and subscribe the directory for public worship;
they refused their approbation to more than one half of the officers named
by Sir Thomas Fairfax; and they objected to the additional powers offered
by the Commons to that general. On these subjects the divisions in the
house were nearly equal, and whenever the opposite party obtained the
majority, it was by the aid of a single proxy, or of the clamours of the
mob. At length a declaration was made by the Commons, that "they held
themselves obliged to preserve the peerage with the rights and privileges
belonging to the House of Peers equally as their own, and would really
perform the same."[b] Relieved from their fears, the Lords yielded to a
power which they knew not how to control; the different bills were passed,
and among them a new self-denying ordinance, by which every member of
either house was discharged from all[c]
[Footnote 1: Journals, Jan. 9, 13, 25, 27; Feb. 11, 15; of Lords, 159, 175,
169, 193, 195, 204. Clarendon, ii. 569.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Feb. 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. March 25.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. April 3.]
civil and military offices, conferred by authority of parliament after the
expiration of forty days.[1]
Hitherto I have endeavoured to preserve unbroken the chain of military and
political events: it is now time to call the attention of the reader to the
ecclesiastical occurrences of the two last years.
I. As religion was acknowledged to be the first of duties, to put down
popery and idolatry, and to purge the church from superstition and
corruption, had always been held out by the parliament as its grand and
most important object. It was this which, in the estimation of many of the
combatants, gave the chief interest to the quarrel; this which made it,
according to the language of the time, "a wrestle between Christ and
antichrist," 1. Every good Protestant had been educated in the deepest
horror of popery; there was a magic in the very word which awakened the
prejudices and inflamed the passions of men; and the reader must have
observed with what art and perseverance the patriot leaders employed it
to confirm the attachment, and quicken the efforts of their followers.
Scarcely a day occurred in which some order or ordinance, local or general,
was not issued by the two houses; and very few of these, even on the most
indifferent subjects, were permitted to pass without the assertion that the
war had been originally provoked, and was still continued by the papists,
for the sole purpose of the establishment of popery on the ruins of
Protestantism. The constant repetition acted on the minds of the people as
a sufficient proof of the charge; and the denials, the protestations, the
appeals to heaven made by the king, were disregarded and condemned as
unworthy artifices, adopted to deceive
[Footnote 1: Journals, Feb. 25, March 21; of Lords, 287, 303.]
the credulous and unwary. Under such circumstances, the Catholics found
themselves exposed to insult and persecution wherever the influence of the
parliament extended: for protection they were compelled to flee to the
quarters of the royalists, and to fight under their banners; and this
again confirmed the prejudice against them, and exposed them to additional
obloquy and punishment.
But the chiefs of the patriots, while for political purposes they pointed
the hatred of their followers against the Catholics, appear not to have
delighted unnecessarily in blood. They ordered, indeed, searches to be
made for Catholic clergymen; they offered and paid rewards for their
apprehension, and they occasionally gratified the zealots with the
spectacle of an execution. The priests who suffered death in the course of
the war amounted on an average to three for each year, a small number, if
we consider the agitated state of the public mind during that period.[1]
But it was the property of the lay Catholics which they chiefly sought,
pretending that, as the war had been caused by their intrigues, its
expenses ought to be defrayed by their forfeitures. It was ordained that
two-thirds of the whole estate, both real and personal, of every papist,
should be seized and sold for
[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 133, 254. See their Memoirs in Challoner, ii.
209-319. In 1643, after a solemn fast, the five chaplains of the queen were
apprehended and sent to France, their native country, and the furniture
of her chapel at Somerset House was publicly burnt. The citizens were so
edified with the sight that they requested and obtained permission to
destroy the gilt cross in Cheapside. The lord mayor and aldermen graced the
ceremony with their presence, and "antichrist" was thrown into the flames,
while the bells of St. Peter's rang a merry peal, the city waits played
melodious tunes on the leads of the church, the train bands discharged
volleys of musketry, and the spectators celebrated the triumph with
acclamations of joy.--Parl. Chron. 294, 327.]
the benefit of the nation; and that by the name of papist should be
understood all persons who, within a certain period, had harboured any
priest, or had been convicted of recusancy, or had attended at the
celebration of mass, or had suffered their children to be educated in the
Catholic worship, or had refused to take the oath of abjuration; an oath
lately devised, by which all the distinguishing tenets of the Catholic
religion were specifically renounced.[1]
II. A still more important object was the destruction of the episcopal
establishment, a consummation most devoutly wished by the saints, by all
who objected to the ceremonies in the liturgy, or had been scandalized by
the pomp of the prelates, or had smarted under the inflictions of their
zeal for the preservation of orthodoxy. It must be confessed that these
prelates, in the season of prosperity, had not borne their facilities with
meekness; that the frequency of prosecutions in the ecclesiastical courts
had produced irritation and hatred; and that punishments had been often
awarded by those courts rigorous beyond the measure of the offence. But
the day of retribution arrived. Episcopacy was abolished; an impeachment
suspended over the heads of most of the bishops, kept them in a state of
constant apprehension; and the inferior clergy, wherever the parliamentary
arms prevailed, suffered all those severities which they had formerly
inflicted on their dissenting brethren. Their enemies accused them of
immorality or malignancy; and the two houses invariably sequestrated their
livings, and assigned the profits to other ministers, whose sentiments
accorded better with the new
[Footnote 1: Journals, Aug. 17, 1643. Collections of Ordinances, 22.]
standard of orthodoxy and patriotism admitted at Westminster.
The same was the fate of the ecclesiastics in the two universities, which
had early become objects of jealousy and vengeance to the patriots. They
had for more than a century inculcated the doctrine of passive obedience,
and since the commencement of the war had more than once advanced
considerable sums to the king. Oxford, indeed, enjoyed a temporary
exemption from their control; but Cambridge was already in their power,
and a succession of feuds between the students and the townsmen afforded
a decent pretext for their interference. Soldiers were quartered in
the colleges; the painted windows and ornaments of the churches were
demolished; and the persons of the inmates were subjected to insults and
injuries. In January, 1644, an ordinance passed for the reform of the
university;[a] and it was perhaps fortunate that the ungracious task
devolved in the first instance on the military commander, the earl of
Manchester, who to a taste for literature added a gentleness of disposition
adverse from acts of severity. Under his superintendence the university
was "purified;" and ten heads of houses, with sixty-five fellows, were
expelled. Manchester confined himself to those who, by their hostility to
the parliament, had rendered themselves conspicuous, or through fear had
already abandoned their stations; but after his departure, the meritorious
undertaking was resumed by a committee, and the number of expulsions was
carried to two hundred.[1] Thus the clerical establishment gradually
crumbled
[Footnote 1: Journals of Lords, vi. 389; of Commons, Jan. 20, 1644. Neal,
1, iii. c. 3. Walker, i. 112. Querela Cantab. in Merc. Rust. 178-210.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Jan. 22.]
away; part after part was detached from the edifice; and the reformers
hastened to raise what they deemed a more scriptural fabric on the ruins.
In the month of June, 1643, one hundred and twenty individuals selected
by the Lords and Commons, under the denomination of pious, godly, and
judicious divines, were summoned to meet at Westminster; and, that their
union might bear a more correct resemblance to the assembly of the Scottish
kirk, thirty laymen, ten lords, and twenty commoners were voted additional
members. The two houses prescribed the form of the meetings, and the
subject of the debates: they enjoined an oath to be taken on admission, and
the obligation of secrecy till each question should be determined; and
they ordained that every decision should be laid before themselves, and
considered of no force until it had been confirmed by their approbation.[1]
Of the divines summoned, a portion was composed of Episcopalians; and
these, through motives of conscience or loyalty, refused to attend:
the majority consisted of Puritan ministers, anxious to establish the
Calvinistic discipline and doctrine of the foreign reformed churches; and
to these was opposed a small but formidable band of Independent clergymen,
who, under the persecution of Archbishop Laud, had formed congregations in
Holland, but had taken the present opportunity to return from exile, and
preach the gospel in their native country. The point at issue between these
two parties was one of the first importance, involving in its result the
great question of liberty of conscience. The Presbyterians sought to
introduce a
[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 114, 254. Commons, 1643, May 13, June 16, July
6, Sept. 14. Rush. v. 337, 339.]
gradation of spiritual authorities in presbyteries, classes, synods, and
assemblies, giving to these several judicatories the power of the keys,
that is, of censuring, suspending, depriving, and excommunicating
delinquents. They maintained that such a power was essential to the church;
that to deny it was to rend into fragments the seamless coat of Christ, to
encourage disunion and schism, and to open the door to every species of
theological war. On the other hand, their adversaries contended that all
congregations of worshippers were co-ordinate and independent; that synods
might advise, but could not command; that multiplicity of sects must
necessarily result from the variableness of the human judgment, and the
obligation of worshipping God according to the dictates of conscience; and
that religious toleration was the birthright of every human being, whatever
were his speculative creed or the form of worship which he preferred.[1]
The weight of number and influence was in favour of the Presbyterians. They
possessed an overwhelming majority in the assembly, the senate, the city,
and the army; the solemn league and covenant had enlisted the whole
Scottish nation in their cause; and the zeal of the commissioners from
the kirk, who had also seats in the assembly, gave a new stimulus to the
efforts of their English brethren. The Independents, on the contrary, were
few, but their deficiency in point of number was supplied by the energy and
talents of their leaders. They never exceeded a dozen in the assembly; but
these were veteran disputants, eager, fearless, and persevering, whose
attachment to their favourite doctrines had been riveted by persecution and
exile, and who had not escaped from the intolerance
[Footnote 1: Baillie, i. 420, 431; ii. 15, 24, 37, 43, 61.]
of one church to submit tamely to the control of another. In the House of
Commons they could command the aid of several among the master spirits
of the age,--of Cromwell, Selden, St. John, Vane, and Whitelock; in the
capital some of the most wealthy citizens professed themselves their
disciples, and in the army their power rapidly increased by the daily
accession of the most godly and fanatic of the soldiers. The very nature
of the contest between the king and the parliament was calculated to
predispose the mind in favour of their principles. It taught men to
distrust the claims of authority, to exercise their own judgment on matters
of the highest interest, and to spurn the fetters of intellectual as well
as of political thraldom. In a short time the Independents were joined by
the Antinomians, Anabaptists, Millenarians, Erastians, and the members
of many ephemeral sects, whose very names are now forgotten. All had one
common interest; freedom of conscience formed the chain which bound them
together.[1]
In the assembly each party watched with jealousy, and opposed with warmth,
the proceedings of the other. On a few questions they proved unanimous. The
appointment of days of humiliation and prayer, the suppression of public
and scandalous sins, the prohibition of copes and surplices, the removal
of organs from the churches, and the mutilation or demolition of monuments
deemed superstitious or idolatrous, were matters equally congenial to their
feelings, and equally gratifying to their zeal or fanaticism.[2] But when
they
[Footnote 1: Baillie, 398, 408; ii. 3, 19, 43. Whitelock, 169, 170.]
[Footnote 2: Journals, 1643, July 5; 1644, Jan. 16, 29, May 9. Journals of
Lords, vi. 200, 507, 546. Baillie, i. 421, 422, 471. Rush. v. 358, 749.]
came to the more important subject of church government, the opposition
between them grew fierce and obstinate; and day after day, week after week,
was consumed in unavailing debates. The kirk of Scotland remonstrated, the
House of Commons admonished in vain. For more than a year the perseverance
of the Independents held in check the ardour and influence of their more
numerous adversaries. Overpowered at last by open force, they had recourse
to stratagem; and, to distract the attention of the Presbyterians, tendered
to the assembly a plea for indulgence to tender consciences; while their
associate, Cromwell, obtained from the lower house an order that the same
subject should be referred to a committee formed of lords and commoners,
and Scottish commissioners and deputies from the assembly. Thus a new apple
of discord was thrown among the combatants. The lords Say and Wharton, Sir
Henry Vane, and Mr. St. John, contended warmly in favour of toleration;
they were as warmly opposed by the "divine eloquence of the chancellor" of
Scotland, the commissioners from the kirk, and several eminent members
of the English parliament. The passions and artifices of the contending
parties interposed additional delays, and the year 1644 closed before this
interesting controversy could be brought to a conclusion.[1] Eighteen
months had elapsed since the assembly was first convened, and yet it had
accomplished nothing of importance except the composition of a directory
for the public worship, which regulated the order of the service, the
administration of the sacraments, the ceremony of marriage, the visitation
of the sick, and the burial of the dead.
[Footnote 1: Baillie, ii. 57, 61, 62, 66-68. Journals, Sept. 13, Jan. 24;
of Lords, 70.]
On all these subjects the Scots endeavoured to introduce the practice of
their own kirk; but the pride of the English demanded alterations; and both
parties consented to a sort of compromise, which carefully avoided every
approach to the form of a liturgy, and, while it suggested heads for the
sermon and prayer, left much of the matter, and the whole of the manner,
to the talents or the inspiration of the minister. In England the Book of
Common Prayer was abolished, and the Directory substituted in its place by
an ordinance of the two houses; in Scotland the latter was commanded to be
observed in all churches by the joint authority of the assembly and the
parliament.[1]
To the downfall of the liturgy succeeded a new spectacle,--the decapitation
of an archbishop. The name of Laud, during the first fifteen months after
his impeachment, had scarcely been mentioned; and his friends began
to cherish a hope that, amidst the din of arms, the old man might be
forgotten, or suffered to descend peaceably into the grave. But his death
was unintentionally occasioned by the indiscretion of the very man whose
wish and whose duty it was to preserve the life of the prelate. The Lords
had ordered Laud to collate the vacant benefices in his gift on persons
nominated by themselves, the king forbade him to obey. The death[a] of the
rector of Chartham, in Kent, brought his constancy to the test. The Lords
named one person to the living, Charles another; and the archbishop, to
extricate himself from the dilemma, sought to defer his decision till the
right should have
[Footnote 1: Baillie, i. 408, 413, 440; ii. 27, 31, 33, 36, 73, 74, 75.
Rush. v. 785. Journals, Sept. 24, Nov. 26, Jan. 1, 4, March 5. Journals of
Lords, 119, 121. See "Confessions of Faith, &c. in the Church of Scotland,"
159-194.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643 Feb. 3.] lapsed to the crown; but the Lords made a
peremptory order, and when he attempted to excuse his disobedience, sent a
message[a] to the Commons to expedite his trial. Perhaps they meant only
to intimidate; but his enemies seized the opportunity; a committee was
appointed; and the task of collecting and preparing evidence was committed
to Prynne, whose tiger-like revenge still thirsted for the blood of his
former persecutor.[1] He carried off[b] from the cell of the prisoner his
papers, his diary, and even his written defence; he sought in every quarter
for those who had formerly been prosecuted or punished at the instance of
the archbishop, and he called on all men to discharge their duty to God and
their country, by deposing to the crimes of him who was the common enemy of
both.
At the termination of six months[c] the committee had been able to add ten
new articles of impeachment to the fourteen already presented; four months
later,[d] both parties were ready to proceed to trial, and on the 12th of
March, 1644, more than three years after his commitment, the archbishop
confronted his prosecutors at the bar of the House of Lords.
I shall not attempt to conduct the reader through, the mazes of this long
and wearisome process, which occupied twenty-one days in the course of six
months. The many articles presented by the Commons might be reduced to
three,--that Laud had endeavoured to subvert the rights of parliament, the
laws and the religion of the nation. In support of these, every instance
that could be raked together by the industry and ingenuity of Prynne, was
brought forward. The familiar discourse, and the secret writings of the
[Footnote 1: Laud's History written by himself in the Tower, 200-206.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 21.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. May 31.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. Oct. 23.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1644. March 4.]
prelate, had been scrutinized; and his conduct both private and public,
as a bishop and a counsellor, in the Star-chamber and the High Commission
court, had been subjected to the most severe investigation. Under every
disadvantage, he defended himself with spirit, and often with success. He
showed that many of the witnesses were his personal enemies, or undeserving
of credit; that his words and writings would bear a less offensive and more
probable interpretation; and that most of the facts objected to him were
either the acts of his officers, who alone ought to be responsible, or the
common decision of those boards of which he was only a single member.[1]
Thus far[a] he had conducted his defence without legal aid. To speak to
matters of law, he was allowed the aid of counsel, who contended that not
one of the offences alleged against him amounted to high treason; that
their number could not change their quality; that an endeavour to subvert
the law, or religion, or the rights of parliament, was not treason by any
statute; and that the description of an offence, so vague and indeterminate
ought never to be admitted;: otherwise the slightest transgression might,
under that denomination, be converted into the highest crime known to the
law.[2]
But the Commons, whether they distrusted the patriotism of the Lords, or
doubted the legal guilt of the prisoner, had already resolved to proceed by
attainder. After the second reading[b] of the ordinance, they sent for the
venerable prisoner to their bar, and ordered Brown, one of the managers, to
recapitulate in his
[Footnote 1: Compare his own daily account of his trial in History,
220-421, with that part published by Prynne, under the title of
Canterburies Doome, 1646; and Rushworth, v. 772.]
[Footnote 2: See it in Laud's History, 423.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. March 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Nov. 2.]
hearing the evidence against him, together with his answers. Some days
later[a] he was recalled, and suffered to speak in his own defence. After
his departure, Brown made a long reply; and the house, without further
consideration, passed[b] the bill of attainder, and adjudged him to suffer
the penalties of treason.[1] The reader will not fail to observe this
flagrant perversion of the forms of justice. It was not as in the case of
the earl of Strafford. The commons had not been present at the trial
of Laud; they had not heard the evidence, they had not even read the
depositions of the witnesses; they pronounced judgment on the credit of
the unsworn and partial statement made by their own advocate. Such a
proceeding, so subversive of right and equity, would have been highly
reprehensible in any court or class of men; it deserved the severest
reprobation in that house, the members of which professed themselves the
champions of freedom, and were actually in arms against the sovereign, to
preserve, as they maintained, the laws, the rights, and the liberties of
the nation.
To quicken the tardy proceedings of the Peers, the enemies of the
archbishop had recourse to their usual expedients. Their emissaries
lamented the delay in the punishment of delinquents, and the want of
unanimity between the two houses. It was artfully suggested as a remedy,
that both the Lords and Commons ought to sit and vote together in one
assembly; and a petition, embodying these different subjects, was prepared
and circulated for signatures through the city. Such manoeuvres aroused the
spirit of the Peers. They threatened[c] to punish all disturbers
[Footnote 1: Journals, Oct. 31, Nov. 2, 11, 16. Laud's History, 432-440.
Rushworth, v. 780.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Nov. 11.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Nov. 13.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644. Nov. 28.]
of the peace; they replied with dignity to an insulting message from the
Commons; and, regardless of the clamours of the populace, they spent
several days in comparing the proofs of the managers with the defence of
the archbishop. At last,[a] in a house of fourteen members, the majority
pronounced him guilty of certain acts, but called upon the judges to
determine the quality of the offence; who warily replied, that nothing of
which he had been convicted was treason by the statute law; what it might
be by the law of parliament, the house alone was the proper judge. In these
circumstances the Lords informed the Commons, that till their consciences
were satisfied, they should "scruple" to pass the bill of attainder.[1]
It was the eve of Christmas,[b] and to prove that the nation had thrown off
the yoke of superstition, the festival was converted, by ordinance of the
two houses, into a day of "fasting and public humiliation."[2] There was
much policy in the frequent repetition of these devotional observances.
The ministers having previously received instructions from the leading
patriots, adapted their prayers and sermons to the circumstances of the
time, and never failed to add a new stimulus to the fanaticism of their
hearers. On the present occasion[c] the crimes of the archbishop offered a
tempting theme to their eloquence; and the next morning the Commons, taking
into consideration the last message, intrusted[d] to a committee the task
of enlightening the ignorance of the Lords. In a conference
[Footnote 1: Journals, vii. 76, 100, 111.]
[Footnote 2: Ibid. 106. In the preceding year, the Scottish commissioners
had "preached stoutly against the superstition of Christmas;" but only
succeeded in prevailing on the two houses "to profane that holyday
by sitting on it, to their great joy, and some of the assembly's
shame."--Baillie, i. 411.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644 Dec. 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644 Dec. 23.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1644 Dec. 26.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1645 Jan. 2.]
the latter were told that treasons are of two kinds: treasons against
the king, created by statute, and cognizable by the inferior courts; and
treasons against the realm, held so at common law, and subject only to the
judgment of parliament; there could not be a doubt that the offence of Laud
was treason of the second class; nor would the two houses perform their
duty, if they did not visit it with the punishment which it deserved. When
the question was resumed, several of the Lords withdrew; most of the others
were willing to be persuaded by the reasoning of the Commons; and the
ordinance of attainder was passed[a] by the majority, consisting only, if
the report be correct, of six members.[1]
The archbishop submitted with resignation to his fate, and appeared[b] on
the scaffold with a serenity of countenance and dignity of behaviour, which
did honour to the cause for which he suffered. The cruel punishment of
treason had been, after some objections, commuted for decapitation, and the
dead body was delivered for interment to his friends.[2] On Charles the
melancholy intelligence made a deep impression;
[Footnote 1: Journals, 125, 126. Commons, Dec. 26. Laud's Troubles, 452,
Rushworth, v. 781-785. Cyprianus Aug. 528. From the journals it appears
that twenty lords were in the house during the day: but we are told in the
"Brief Relation" printed in the second collection of Somers's Tracts, ii.
287, that the majority consisted of the earls of Kent, Pembroke, Salisbury,
and Bolingbroke, and the lords North, Gray de Warke, and Bruce. Bruce
afterwards denied that he had voted. According to Sabran, the French
ambassador, the majority amounted to five out of nine.--Raumer, ii. 332.]
[Footnote 2: Several executions had preceded that of the archbishop.
Macmahon, concerned in the design to surprise the castle of Dublin,
suffered Nov. 22; Sir Alexander Carew, who had engaged to surrender
Plymouth to the king, on Dec. 23, and Sir John Hotham and his son, who,
conceiving themselves ill-treated by the parliament, had entered into a
treaty for the surrender of Hull, on the 1st and 2nd of January; Lord
Macguire followed on Feb. 20.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Jan. 4.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. Jan. 10.]
yet he contrived to draw from it a new source of consolation. He had sinned
equally with his opponents in consenting to the death of Strafford, and
had experienced equally with them the just vengeance of heaven. But he was
innocent of the blood of Laud; the whole guilt was exclusively theirs; nor
could he doubt that the punishment would speedily follow in the depression
of their party, and the exaltation of the throne.[1]
The very enemies of the unfortunate archbishop admitted that he was learned
and pious, attentive to his duties, and unexceptionable in his morals;
on the other hand, his friends could not deny that he was hasty and
vindictive, positive in his opinions, and inexorable in his enmities. To
excuse his participation in the arbitrary measures of the council, and his
concurrence in the severe decrees of the Star-chamber, he alleged, that he
was only one among many; and that it was cruel to visit on the head of a
single victim the common faults of the whole board. But it was replied,
with great appearance of truth, that though only one, he was the chief;
that his authority and influence swayed the opinions both of his sovereign
and his colleagues; and that he must not expect to escape the just reward
of his crimes, because he had possessed the ingenuity to make others his
associates in guilt. Yet I am of opinion that it was religious, and not
political rancour, which led him to the block; and that, if the zealots
could have forgiven his conduct as archbishop, he might have lingered out
the remainder of his life in the Tower. There was, however, but little
difference in that respect between
[Footnote 1: See his letter to the queen, Jan. 14th, in his Works, 145.]
them and their victim. Both were equally obstinate, equally infallible,
equally intolerant. As long as Laud ruled in the zenith of his power,
deprivation awaited the non-conforming minister, and imprisonment, fine,
and the pillory were the certain lot of the writer who dared to lash the
real or imaginary vices of the prelacy. His opponents were now lords of
the ascendant, and they exercised their sway with similar severity on the
orthodox clergy of the establishment, and on all who dared to arraign
before the public the new reformation of religion. Surely the consciousness
of the like intolerance might have taught them to look with a more
indulgent eye on the past errors of their fallen adversary, and to spare
the life of a feeble old man bending under the weight of seventy-two years,
and disabled by his misfortunes from offering opposition to their will, or
affording aid to their enemies.[1]
[Footnote 1: I have not noticed the charge of endeavouring to introduce
popery, because it appears to me fully disproved by the whole tenor of his
conduct and writings, as long as he was in authority. There is, however,
some reason to believe that, in the solitude of his cell, and with the
prospect of the block before his eyes, he began to think more favourably
of the Catholic church. At least, I find Rosetti inquiring of Cardinal
Barberini whether, if Laud should escape from the Tower, the pope would
afford him an asylum and a pension in Rome. He would be content with one
thousand crowns--"il quale, quando avesse potuto liberarsi dalle carceri,
sarebbe ito volontieri a vivere e morire in Roma, contendandosi di mille
scudi annui."--Barberini answered, that Laud was in such bad repute in
Rome, being looked upon as the cause of all the troubles in England, that
it would previously be necessary that he should give good proof of his
repentance; in which case he should receive assistance, though such
assistance would give a colour to the imputation that there had always been
an understanding between him and Rome. "Era si cattivo il concetto, che di
lui avevasi in Roma, cioč che fosse stato autore di tutte le torbolenze
d'Inghilterra, che era necessario dasse primo segni ben grandi del suo
pentimento. Ed in tal caso sarebbe stato ajutato; sebene saria paruto che
nelle sue passate resoluzioni se la fosse sempre intesa con Roma."--From
the MS. abstract of the Barberini papers made by the canon Nicoletti soon
after the death of the cardinal.]
Belloc-Lingard - The History of England