gathered for service against the Scots, is lying near; where a
great Earl of Newcastle, and other Northern potentates, will
help him; where at least London and its Puritanism, now grown
so fierce, is far off. There we will leave him; attempting
Hull Magazine, in vain; exchanging messages with his
Parliament; messages, missives, printed and written Papers
without limit: Law-pleadings of both parties before the great
tribunal of the English Nation, each party striving to prove
itself right and within the verge of Law: preserved still in
acres of typography, once thrillingly alive in every fibre of
them; now a mere torpor, readable by few creatures, not
rememberable by any."
_T. Carlyle,
Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,
part 2, preliminary._
"As early as June 2 a ship had arrived on the North English
coast, bringing the King arms and ammunition from Holland,
purchased by the sale of the crown-jewels which the Queen had
taken abroad. On the 22d of the same month more than forty of
the nobles and others in attendance on the King at York had
put down their names for the numbers of armed horse they would
furnish respectively for his service. Requisitions in the
King's name were also out for supplies of money; and the two
Universities, and the Colleges in each, were invited to send
in their plate. On the other hand, the Parliament had not been
more negligent. There had been contributions or promises from
all the chief Parliamentarian nobles and others; there was a
large loan from the city; and hundreds of thousands, on a
smaller scale, were willing to subscribe. And already, through
all the shires, the two opposed powers were grappling and
jostling with each other in raising levies. On the King's side
there were what were called Commissions of Array, or powers
granted to certain nobles and others by name to raise troops
for the King. On the side of Parliament, in addition to the
Volunteering which had been going on in many places (as, for
example, in Cambridgeshire, where Oliver Cromwell was forming
a troop of Volunteer horse ... ), there was the Militia
Ordinance available wherever the persons named in that
ordinance were really zealous for Parliament, and able to act
personally in the districts assigned them. And so on the 12th
of July the Parliament had passed the necessary vote for
supplying an army, and had appointed the Earl of Essex to be
its commander-in-chief, and the Earl of Bedford to be its
second in command as general of horse. It was known, on the
other side, that the Earl of Lindsey, in consideration of his
past experience of service both on sea and land, was to have
the command of the King's army, and that his master of horse
was to be the King's nephew, young Prince Rupert, who was
expected from the Continent on purpose. Despite all these
preparations, however, it was probably not till August had
begun that the certainty of Civil War was universally
acknowledged. It was on the 9th of that month that the King
issued his proclamation 'for suppressing the present Rebellion
under the command of Robert, Earl of Essex,' offering pardon
to him and others if within six days they made their
submission. The Parliamentary answer to this was on the 11th;
on which day the Commons resolved, each man separately rising
in his place and giving his word, that they would stand by the
Earl of Essex with their lives and fortunes to the end. Still,
even after that, there were trembling souls here and there who
hoped for a reconciliation.
{868}
Monday the 22d of August put an end to all such fluttering:
--On that day, the King, who had meanwhile left York, and come
about a hundred miles farther south, into the very heart of
England, ... made a backward movement as far as the town of
Nottingham, where preparations had been made for the great
scene that was to follow. ... This consisted in bringing out
the royal standard and setting it up in due form. It was about
six o'clock in the evening when it was done. ... A herald read
a proclamation, declaring the cause why the standard had been
set up, and summoning all the lieges to assist his Majesty.
Those who were present cheered and threw up their hats, and,
with a beating of drums and a sounding of trumpets, the
ceremony ended. ... From that evening of the 22d of August,
1642, the Civil War had begun."
_D. Masson,
Life of John Milton,
book 2, chapter 8 (volume 2)._
ALSO IN:
_John Forster,
Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Pym; Hampden._
_S. R. Gardiner,
History of England, 1603-1642,
chapters 104-105 (volume 10)._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).
The nation choosing sides.
"In wealth, in numbers, and in cohesion the Parliament was
stronger than the king. To him there had rallied most of the
greater nobles, many of the lesser gentry, some proportion of
the richer citizens, the townsmen of the west, and the rural
population generally of the west and north of England. For the
Parliament stood a strong section of the peers and greater
gentry, the great bulk of the lesser gentry, the townsmen of
the richer parts of England, the whole eastern and home
counties, and lastly, the city of London. But as the Civil War
did not sharply divide classes, so neither did it
geographically bisect England. Roughly speaking, aristocracy
and peasantry, the Church, universities, the world of culture,
fashion, and pleasure were loyal: the gentry, the yeomanry,
trade, commerce, morality, and law inclined to the Parliament.
Broadly divided, the north and west went for the king; the
south and east for the Houses; but the lines of demarcation
were never exact: cities, castles, and manor-houses long held
out in an enemy's county. There is only one permanent
limitation. Draw a line from the Wash to the Solent. East of
that line the country never yielded to the king; from first to
last it never failed the Parliament. Within it are enclosed
Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford,
Bucks, Herts, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Sussex. This was the
wealthiest, the most populous, and the most advanced portion
of England. With Gloucester, Reading, Bristol, Leicester, and
Northampton, it formed the natural home of Puritanism."
_F. Harrison,
Oliver Cromwell,
chapter 4._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER).
Edgehill--the opening battle of the war.
The Eastern Association.
Immediately after the raising of his standard at Nottingham,
the King, "aware at last that he could not rely on the
inhabitants of Yorkshire, moved to Shrewsbury, at once to
collect the Catholic gentry of Lancashire and Cheshire, to
receive the Royalist levies of Wales, and to secure the valley
of the Severn. The movement was successful. In a few days his
little army was increased fourfold, and he felt himself strong
enough to make a direct march towards the capital. Essex had
garrisoned Northampton, Coventry and Warwick, and lay himself
at Worcester; but the King, waiting for no sieges, left the
garrisoned towns unmolested and passed on towards London, and
Essex received peremptory orders to pursue and interpose if
possible between the King and London. On the 22nd of October
he was close upon the King's rear at Keynton, between
Stratford and Banbury. But his army was by no means at its
full strength; some regiments had been left to garrison the
West, others, under Hampden had not yet joined him. But delay
was impossible, and the first battle of the war was fought on
the plain at the foot of the north-west slope of Edgehill,
over which the royal army descended, turning back on its
course to meet Essex. Both parties claimed the victory. In
fact it was with the King. The Parliamentary cavalry found
themselves wholly unable to withstand the charge of Rupert's
cavaliers. Whole regiments turned and fled without striking a
blow; but, as usual, want of discipline ruined the royal
cause. Rupert's men fell to plundering the Parliamentary
baggage, and returned to the field only in time to find that
the infantry, under the personal leading of Essex, had
reestablished the fight. Night closed the battle [which is
sometimes named from Edgehill and sometimes from Keynton]. The
King's army withdrew to the vantage-ground of the hills, and
Essex, reinforced by Hampden, passed the night upon the field.
But the Royalist army was neither beaten nor checked in its
advance, while the rottenness of the Parliamentary troops had
been disclosed." Some attempts at peace-making followed this
doubtful first collision; but their only effect was to
embitter the passions on both sides. The King advanced,
threatening London, but the citizens of the capital turned out
valiantly to oppose him, and he "fell back upon Oxford, which
henceforward became the centre of their operations. ... War
was again the only resource, and speedily became universal.
... There was local fighting over the whole of England. ...
The headquarters of the King were constantly at Oxford, from
which, as from a centre, Rupert would suddenly make rapid
raids, now in one direction, now in another. Between him and
London, about Reading, Aylesbury, and Thame, lay what may be
spoken of as the main army of Parliament, under the command of
Lord-General Essex. ... The other two chief scenes of the war
were Yorkshire and the West. In Yorkshire the Fairfaxes,
Ferdinando Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas, made what head
they could against what was known as the Popish army under the
command of the Earl, subsequently Marquis of Newcastle, which
consisted mainly of the troops of the Northern counties, which
had become associated under Newcastle in favour of Charles.
Newark, in Nottinghamshire, was early made a royal garrison,
and formed the link of connection between the operations in
Yorkshire and at Oxford. In the extreme South-west, Lord
Stamford, the Parliamentary General, was making a somewhat
unsuccessful resistance against Sir Ralph, afterwards Lord
Hopton. Wales was wholly Royalist, and one of the chief
objects of Charles's generals was to secure the Severn valley,
and thus connect the war in Devonshire with the central
operations at Oxford. In the Eastern counties matters assumed
rather a different form. The principle of forming several
counties into an association ... was adopted by the
Parliament, and several such associations were formed, but
none of these came to much except that of the Eastern
counties, which was known by way of preeminence as 'The
Association.' Its object was to keep the war entirely beyond
the borders of the counties of which it consisted. The reason
of its success was the genius and energy of Cromwell."
_J. F. Bright,
History of England, period 2,
page 659._
{869}
"This winter there arise among certain Counties 'Associations'
for mutual defence, against Royalism and plunderous Rupertism;
a measure cherished by the Parliament, condemned as
treasonable by the King. Of which 'Associations,' countable to
the number of five or six, we name only one, that of Norfolk,
Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Herts; with Lord Gray of Wark for
Commander; where and under whom Oliver was now serving. This
'Eastern Association' is alone worth naming. All the other
Associations, no man of emphasis being in the midst of them,
fell in a few months to pieces; only this of Cromwell
subsisted, enlarged itself, grew famous;--and kept its own
borders clear of invasion during the whole course of the War."
_T. Carlyle,
Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches,
part 2, preliminary._
ALSO IN:
_S. R. Gardiner,
History of the Great Civil War,
chapters 2-4 (volume l)._
_W. Godwin,
History of the Commonwealth,
chapter 2 (volume 1)._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (May).
Cromwell's Ironsides.
"It was ... probably, a little before Edgehill, that there
took place between Cromwell and Hampden the memorable
conversation which fifteen years afterwards the Protector
related in a speech to his second Parliament. It is a piece of
autobiography so instructive and pathetic that it must be set
forth in full in the words of Cromwell himself:
'I was a person who, from my first employment, was suddenly
preferred and lifted up from lesser trusts to greater; from my
first being Captain of a Troop of Horse. ... I had a very
worthy friend then; and he was a very noble person, and I know
his memory was very grateful to all,--Mr. John Hampden. At my
first going out into this engagement, I saw our men were
beaten at every hand. ... Your troops, said I, are most of
them old decayed serving-men, and tapsters, and such kind of
fellows; and, said I, their troops are gentlemen's sons,
younger sons and persons of quality: do you think that the
spirits of such base mean fellows will ever be able to
encounter gentlemen, that have honour and courage and
resolution in them? Truly I did represent to him in this
manner conscientiously; and truly I did tell him: You must get
men of a spirit: and take it not ill what I say,--I know you
will not,--of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as
gentlemen will go: or else you will be beaten still. I told
him so; I did truly. He was a wise and worthy person; and he
did think that I talked a good notion, but an impracticable
one. ... I raised such men as had the fear of God before them,
as made some conscience of what they did; and from that day
forward, I must say to you, they were never beaten, and
wherever they were engaged against the enemy they beat
continually.' ... The issue of the whole war lay in that word.
It lay with 'such men as had some conscience in what they
did.' 'From that day forward they were never beaten.' ... As
for Colonel Cromwell,' writes a news-letter of May, 1643, 'he
hath 2,000 brave men, well disciplined; no man swears but he
pays his twelve-pence; if he be drunk, he is set in the
stocks, or worse; if one calls the other roundhead he is
cashiered: insomuch that the countries where they come leap
for joy of them, and come in and join with them. How happy
were it if all the forces were thus disciplined!' These were
the men who ultimately decided the war, and established the
Commonwealth. On the field of Marston, Rupert gave Cromwell
the name of Ironside, and from thence this famous name passed
to his troopers. There are two features in their history which
we need to note. They were indeed 'such men as had some
conscience in their work'; but they were also much more. They
were disciplined and trained soldiers. They were the only body
of 'regulars' on either side. The instinctive genius of
Cromwell from the very first created the strong nucleus of a
regular army, which at last in discipline, in skill, in
valour, reached the highest perfection ever attained by
soldiers either in ancient or modern times. The fervour of
Cromwell is continually pressing towards the extension of this
'regular' force. Through all the early disasters, this body of
Ironsides kept the cause alive: at Marston it overwhelmed the
king: as soon as, by the New Model, this system was extended
to the whole army, the Civil War was at an end."
_F. Harrison,
Oliver Cromwell,
chapter 4._
ALSO IN:
_J. Forster,
Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER).
The King calls in the Irish.
"To balance the accession of power which the alliance with
Scotland brought to the Parliament, Charles was so unwise, men
then said so guilty, as to conclude a peace with the Irish
rebels, with the intent that thus those of his forces which
had been employed against them, might be set free to join his
army in England. No act of the King, not the levying of
ship-money, not the crowd of monopolies which enriched the
court and impoverished the people, neither the extravagance of
Buckingham, the tyranny of Strafford nor the prelacy of Laud, not
even the attempted arrest of the five members, raised such a
storm of indignation and hatred throughout the kingdom, as did
this determination of the King to withdraw (as men said), for
the purpose of subduing his subjects, the force which had been
raised to avenge the blood of 100,000 Protestant martyrs. ...
To the England of the time this act was nauseous, was
exasperating to the highest degree, while to the cause of the
King it was fatal; for, from this moment, the condition of the
Parliamentary party began to mend."
_N. L. Walford,
Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War,
chapter 2._
"None of the king's schemes proved so fatal to his cause as
these. On their discovery, officer after officer in his own
army flung down their commissions, the peers who had fled to
Oxford fled back again to London, and the Royalist reaction in
the Parliament itself came utterly to an end."
_J. R. Green,
Short History of England,
chapter 8, section 7._
ALSO IN:
_S. R. Gardiner,
History of the Great Civil War,
chapter 11 (volume 1)._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JULY).
Meeting of the Westminster Assembly of Divines.
At the beginning of July, 1643, "London was astir with a new
event of great consequence in the course of the national
revolution. This was the meeting of the famous Westminster
Assembly. The necessity of an ecclesiastical Synod or
Convocation, to cooperate with the Parliament, had been long
felt.
{870}
Among the articles of the Grand Remonstrance of December 1641
had been one desiring a convention of 'a General Synod of the
most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of this
island, assisted by some from foreign parts,' to consider of
all things relating to the Church and report thereon to
Parliament. It is clear from the wording of this article that
it was contemplated that the Synod should contain
representatives from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Indeed, by that time, the establishment of a uniformity of
Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship between the Churches of
England and Scotland was the fixed idea of those who chiefly
desired a Synod. ... In April, 1642 ... it was ordered by the
House, in pursuance of previous resolutions on the subject,
'that the names of such divines as shall be thought fit to be
consulted with concerning the matter of the Church be brought
in tomorrow morning,' the understood rule being that the
knights and burgesses of each English county should name to
the House two divines, and those of each Welsh county one
divine, for approval. Accordingly, on the 20th, the names were
given in. ... By the stress of the war the Assembly was
postponed. At last, hopeless of a bill that should pass in the
regular way by the King's consent, the Houses resorted, in
this as in other things, to their peremptory plan of Ordinance
by their own authority. On the 13th of May, 1643, an Ordinance
for calling an Assembly was introduced in the Commons; which
Ordinance, after due going and coming between the two Houses,
came to maturity June 12, when it was entered at full length
in the Lords' Journals. 'Whereas, amongst the infinite
blessings of Almighty God upon this nation,'--so runs the
preamble of the Ordinance,--'none is, or can be, more dear to
us than the purity of our religion; and for as much as many
things yet remain in the discipline, liturgy and government of
the Church which necessarily require a more perfect
reformation: and whereas it has been declared and resolved, by
the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, that the
present Church Government by Archbishops, Bishops, their
Chancellors, Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters,
Archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical officers depending on
the hierarchy, is evil and justly offensive and burdensome to
the kingdom, and a great impediment to reformation and growth
of religion, and very prejudicial to the state and government
of this kingdom, and that therefore they are resolved the same
shall be taken away, and that such a government shall be
settled in the Church as may be agreeable to God's Holy Word,
and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the Church
at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland, and
other reformed Churches abroad. ... Be it therefore ordained,
&c.' What is ordained is that 149 persons, enumerated by name
in the Ordinance ... shall meet on the 1st of July next in
King Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster; ... 'to confer and
treat among themselves of such matters and things, concerning
the liturgy, discipline and government of the Church of
England ... as shall be proposed by either or both Houses of
Parliament, and no other.' ... Notwithstanding a Royal
Proclamation from Oxford, dated June 22, forbidding the
Assembly and threatening consequences, the first meeting duly
took place on the day appointed--Saturday, July 1, 1643; and
from that day till the 22d of February, 1648-9, or for more
than five years and a half, the Westminster Assembly is to be
borne in mind as a power or institution in the English realm,
existing side by side with the Long Parliament, and in
constant conference and cooperation with it. The number of its
sittings during these five years and a half was 1,163 in all;
which is at the rate of about four sittings every week for the
whole time. The earliest years of the Assembly were the most
important."
_D. Masson,
Life of John Milton,
book 3, chapter 3 (volume 2)._
ALSO IN:
_A. F. Mitchell,
The Westminster Assembly,
lectures 4-5._
_D. Neal,
History of the Puritans,
volume 3, chapters 2 and 4._
SEE, also, INDEPENDENTS.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JULY-SEPTEMBER).
The Solemn League and Covenant with the Scottish nation.
"Scotland had been hitherto kept aloof from the English
quarrel. ... Up to this time the pride and delicacy of the
English patriots withheld them, for obvious reasons, from
claiming her assistance. Had it been possible, they would
still have desired to engage no distant party in this great
domestic struggle; but when the present unexpected crisis
arrived ... these considerations were laid aside, and the
chief leaders of the Parliament resolved upon an embassy to
the North, to bring the Scottish nation into the field. The
conduct of this embassy was a matter of the highest difficulty
and danger. The Scots were known to be bigoted to their own
persuasions of narrow and exclusive church government, while
the greatest men of the English Parliament had proclaimed the
sacred maxim that every man who worshipped God according to
the dictates of his conscience was entitled to the protection
of the State. But these men, Vane, Cromwell, Marten and St.
John, though the difficulties of the common cause had brought
them into the acknowledged position of leaders and directors
of affairs, were in a minority in the House of Commons, and
the party who were their superiors in numbers were as bigoted
to the most exclusive principles of Presbyterianism as the
Scots themselves. Denzil Holies stood at the head of this
inferior class of patriots. ... The most eminent of the
Parliamentary nobility, particularly Northumberland, Essex and
Manchester belonged also to this body; while the London
clergy, and the metropolis itself, were almost entirely
Presbyterian. These things considered, there was indeed great
reason to apprehend that this party, backed by the Scots, and
supported with a Scottish army, would be strong enough to
overpower the advocates of free conscience, and 'set up a
tyranny not less to be deplored than that of Laud and his
hierarchy, which had proved one of the main occasions of
bringing on the war.' Yet, opposing to all this danger only
their own high purposes and dauntless courage, the smaller
party of more consummate statesmen were the first to propose
the embassy to Scotland. ... On the 20th of July, 1643, the
commissioners set out from London. They were four; and the man
principally confided in among them was Vane [Sir Henry, the
younger]. He, indeed, was the individual best qualified to
succeed Hampden as a counsellor in the arduous struggle in
which the nation was at this time engaged. ... Immediately on
his arrival in Edinburgh the negotiation commenced, and what
Vane seems to have anticipated at once occurred. The Scots
offered their assistance heartily on the sole condition of an
adhesion to the Scottish religious system on the part of
England.
{871}
After many long and very warm debates, in which Vane held to
one firm policy from the first, a solemn covenant was
proposed, which Vane insisted should be named a solemn league
and covenant, while certain words were inserted in it on his
subsequent motion, to which he also adhered with immovable
constancy, and which had the effect of leaving open to the
great party in England, to whose interests he was devoted,
that last liberty of conscience which man should never
surrender. ... The famous article respecting religion ran in
these words;