Chapter XXIV.

Charles I. And The Civil War.

War was resolved upon by the Parliamentary leaders as well as by

the king. Preparations were being made with ardor on both sides;

but all official relations were not yet broken off between the

monarch and his subjects. The Houses, however, now negotiated

with Charles I. on the footing of one power with another. They

sent to York, as their permanent ambassadors at the court of the

king, a committee of rich and consequential men well known in the

northern provinces, commissioned to render an account to

Parliament of all that took place under their eyes. The situation

was difficult and unpleasant. The commissioners maintained their

ground with firmness and resolution.

Even at York, in the presence of the king, the resistance of the

country made itself felt. Charles had been desirous of raising a

guard, and had applied to the gentry of the neighborhood; they

had assembled in great numbers, but when it was desired to

inscribe their names, fifty refused to enroll themselves. At

their head was Sir Thomas Fairfax, young as yet, but already a

resolute and sincere patriot. The freeholders and farmers claimed

the right of discussing the affairs of the country with the

gentlemen. The king convoked a great assemblage upon Heyworth

Moor; it was numerous and animated, more than forty thousand men

had hastened thither, but soon intelligence reached the king that

a petition was being circulated in the ranks, imploring his

Majesty to abandon all thoughts of war and come to an agreement

with Parliament. Charles would not receive the petition.

{93}

He hastened to say a few hesitating words, and was withdrawing

precipitately, when young Fairfax, suddenly kneeling before his

horse, deposited the document upon the pommel of his saddle. The

king urged his steed violently forward, and ran against the bold

petitioner without compelling him to give way.

The royal partisans who arrived from London having officially

severed their connection with Parliament, were struck painfully

with the contrast which they observed between the bold efficiency

of the Parliamentary government and the ostentatious feebleness

which reigned around the king. Charles was poor. He had no money

and had appealed to the zeal of his servants; but the resources

which reached him were inconsiderable, and the sums which the

queen enabled him to keep out of the sale of the crown jewels

scarcely sufficed for daily wants. Parliament had also appealed

to the popular patriotism. A loan was announced, and the sums

received in ten days, the plate, the jewels offered to the public

service, so greatly exceeded the expectations, that the poor

women who brought their wedding-rings or the gold pins out of

their hair, often waited for a long time until time was found for

receiving them. Squadrons of cavalry began to be formed.

The majority of Parliament, delivered from the royalist members

who had joined the king at York, voted nineteen propositions of

reconciliation, which were sent to Charles as a supreme

ultimatum. It was the complete subjugation of the crown to

Parliament.

{94}

Even as regarded the education and marriage of the children of

the king, nothing was henceforth to be decided without the formal

approbation of the Houses. Upon reading these propositions, the

king's countenance flushed deeply. "Should I grant these

demands," he said, "I may be waited on bareheaded, I may have my

hand kissed; the title of Majesty may be continued to me, and the

king's authority signified by both Houses may still be the style

of your commands; I may have swords and maces carried before me,

and please myself with the sight of a crown and sceptre (though

even these twigs would not long flourish when the block upon

which they grew was dead), but as to true and real power, I

should remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a

king." And he broke off the negotiation.

Parliament had only waited for this. Civil war was put to the

vote and immediately decided on. The Houses seized upon all the

public revenues for their benefit; the counties had orders to

hold themselves ready at the first signal. The Earl of Essex was

nominated commander of the army of Parliament, and the most

illustrious men of the popular party, Lord Kimbolton, Lord Brook,

Hampden, Hollis, Cromwell, received command of regiments.

All was ready in London, as in York. The assemblages of the

partisans of the king or Parliament, the tours of the king in the

counties of the north to encourage his friends or repress their

violence, the gentlemen raising bodies of troops on their

estates, the soldiery forming in the name of Parliament, the

roads covered with armed travelers, everything bore the impress

of hostilities; but both parties hesitated to declare war, ready

as they were to risk all to maintain their rights, both trembled

before the responsibility of the future.

{95}

The king at length took his resolve. On the 23d of August, he

caused the royal standard to be set up at Nottingham. At six

o'clock in the evening a small body of eight hundred horse

surrounded Charles who caused his proclamation to be read by a

herald. The standard bore the device: "Render unto Caesar that

which is Caesar's." It was fixed at the summit of a tower. On the

morrow the wind had blown it down. When it was desired to plant

it in the ground in the level country, there was nothing to be

found but rock, and it was necessary to scoop out a hole with

daggers, and then to support by hand the tottering standard. All

present were smitten with a deep depression. "What dark

forebodings!" it was said.

The king awaited the result of his appeal, but the people did not

rise. The army of Parliament was being formed at Northampton. "If

they wish to attempt a bold stroke," said Sir Jacob Astley,

major-general of the royal troops, "I do not answer for it but

the king might be carried off from his bed." Charles was urged to

open negotiations again. He yielded with reluctance, and sent to

London four deputies who returned without success. A few days

later, the king refused in his turn to receive a petition with

which the commissioners of Parliament accompanying the Earl of

Essex, were entrusted. It implored Charles to return to London,

and, upon his refusal, it announced the intention to follow him

everywhere, and "by battle or other means, to take away his

Majesty, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, his two sons,

from their perfidious councillors, and to bring them back to

Parliament."

{96}

The king was then at Shrewsbury, more confident and better

served. He had received numerous reinforcements, and, to equip

them, the arms of the soldiery of several counties had been taken

by force; the convoys intended for Ireland had been stopped. The

Catholics sent money; some of them had even come down from

London. The king had about twelve thousand men. At the head of

his cavalry, his nephew, Prince Rupert, son of his sister, had

already made himself dreaded by his daring and detested for his

habit of pillage and his cruelty. The Earl of Essex appeared

disposed to adhere to the terms of the petition of Parliament and

content himself with following the king everywhere. Twenty

thousand men marched under the orange banners of his house; but

he had been for three weeks at Worcester without doing anything

when Charles, emboldened by this inaction, took the course of

marching upon London, in order to end the war at one stroke.

Essex thereupon went back to defend Parliament.

The agitation was great in London, and fear soon gave way to

anger. Parliament took defensive measures against the king, and

redoubled its severity towards the malevolents. All the

population proceeded to the hurriedly constructed fortifications.

Barricades were raised in the streets. Night and day the assault

was expected, when, on the 24th of October, in the morning, the

rumor of a great battle was suddenly spread throughout the city.

Contradictory and confused rumors were abroad, some announcing

the complete victory of the king, others that of Essex.

Parliament caused the shops to be closed, armed the soldiery, and

required of each of its members a declaration of firm adhesion to

the parliamentary general as well as to his cause. Upon the

morrow only, Lord Wharton and Mr. Strode arrived in London with

the official news of the battle which had taken place at

Edgehill, in Warwickshire.

{97}

It was the Earl of Essex who commenced the struggle. The king was

about to give the same order; he had been urged to try the

fortune of war. Warwickshire was so hostile to his cause that the

farriers fled, to avoid shoeing the horses of his troops. The

cavalry of Parliament had been broken through by the onslaught of

Prince Rupert, who had thereupon pursued the fugitives. Being

arrested, however, by the regiment of Hampden, who arrived late

with the artillery, the prince, compelled to retreat, had found

the royal infantry destroyed, the Earl of Lindsay, generalissimo,

mortally wounded and a prisoner, and the royal standard in the

hands of the Parliamentarians. Charles, aided by his nephew, had

desired to attempt a fresh charge; but the soldiers and horses

were weary, and it was necessary to abandon the idea. Both armies

encamped upon the battle-field. In the morning it was asked in

the two camps whether the action would be recommenced. The king

soon assured himself that the step was impossible. A great number

of volunteers had already dispersed, a third of the infantry

failed him. On the side of the Parliamentarians, the experienced

soldiers, formed in the wars on the Continent, contested the

opinion of Hampden and Hollis, who desired to give battle again.

The Earl of Essex fell back upon Warwick, and the king removed

his headquarters to Oxford, of all the great towns of the kingdom

the most devoted to his cause. The two armies both claimed the

victory and celebrated thanksgivings.

{98}

London and Parliament found themselves delivered from the attack

which they dreaded, but the king had cause to congratulate

himself upon the state of his affairs. Many towns of which the

Parliamentarians thought themselves assured had opened their

gates to the royal troops. The king therefore came and

established himself at Reading. Prince Rupert carried on, even in

the environs of London, his pillaging incursions. The Houses

became uneasy. Essex was told to draw nearer. When he arrived the

king was at Colebrook, fifteen miles from London; there were

despatched to him five deputies, who were well received. Upon

their advice, Sir Peter Killigrew set out to negotiate for an

armistice. But, while negotiating, the king continued to advance.

He fell unexpectedly upon the quarters of Hollis, situated at

Brentford, seven miles from the capital. Hollis valiantly

resisted; the regiments of Hampden and Lord Brook, encamped in

the environs, had time to arrive, and alone bore, for some hours,

the whole brunt of the attack of the royal army. At the first

sound of the cannon, Essex, who sat in the House, mounted his

horse, gathered together all that he was able, and set out to

succor his troops. The action had ceased when he arrived. The

king occupied Brentford; but the fight had been animated, and he

did not appear to be in haste to press forward.

London was equally exasperated and alarmed. It was at the moment

when he had shown himself disposed to negotiate that the king had

attempted a surprise. He wished (it was said) to take the city by

storm and to deliver it up to pillage. Parliament took advantage

of the terror and anger of the people.

{99}

"Enroll," it was said to the apprentices, "and the time of your

service shall reckon in your apprenticeship." The city supplied

four thousand men taken from its trainbands and commanded by

Skippon. "Come, my children, let us pray with all our heart, and

fight with all our heart," he said, placing himself at the head

of his troops; "remember that this is the cause of God, and He

will bless you." Two days after the fight at Brentford, Essex

reviewed twenty-four thousand men at Turnham Green, about a mile

from the advanced posts of the royal forces.

The two armies thus confronted each other, but Essex still

hesitated to assume the offensive. The Parliamentary officers

urged him to proceed to the front. "Never," they said, "will the

people be found so firmly assured and imperiously compelled to

conquer." The general did not count much upon the people; he

preferred to have time to make soldiers of them; he established

himself everywhere upon the defensive, and the king retired to

Oxford, where he took up his winter quarters.

Essex was not alone in his feelings of repugnance and hesitation.

The popular party no longer marched forward with one same mind

and one firm will as when it was a question of political reforms.

Peace had numerous partisans who spoke more loudly every day.

Strife was in the midst of Parliament, and this constant effort

over itself deprived it of the leisure and energy necessary for

actively urging forward the war. The greater part of the winter

was passed without a single pitched battle.

{100}

The war continued meanwhile to be irregular and spontaneous.

Great noblemen or plain gentlemen, confederations of towns and

counties raised at their expense small corps, asked for a

commission from king or Parliament, and warred against each other

with ardor, but without violence and without cruelty, as men of a

common origin, often of the same family, who did not wish to

break off all amicable relations forever. Blood flowed and the

country already suffered, but the bitterness of the antagonistic

passions had not yet taken possession of the combatants. In the

eastern, central, and southeastern counties, the most thickly

peopled and the richest, the Parliamentarians were in the

ascendant. The preponderance pertained to the king in the north,

in the west, and in the south-west. London was surrounded by

counties devoted to Parliament, which formed, as it were, a

formidable girdle for it. At Oxford, the king found himself

placed in an advanced post.

In the month of February (1643) the queen arrived, animated and

confident. She had succeeded in interesting in the king's favor

the States of Holland. The Stadtholder, her son-in-law, had

helped her with all his resources. She brought four ships loaded

with supplies and troops. Admiral Batten did not contrive in time

to intercept the convoy which landed at Burlington. The town was

immediately cannonaded. The queen saw the balls fall even in her

apartment. She fled into the country and sheltered herself under

a bank. Lord Newcastle went to seek her with a body of troops, to

conduct her to York. She installed herself there, and a mass of

Catholics soon hastened to enroll themselves under her flag.

Henrietta-Maria made no haste to rejoin her husband; she liked to

reign alone and to maintain with her caressing ardor the zeal of

her partisans. Hamilton and Montrose came from Scotland to confer

with her upon the means of attaching that kingdom to the cause of

the king.

{101}

Hamilton wished to win over Parliament. Montrose was desirous of

making use of a corps of Irishmen under the orders of the Earl of

Antrim, to subjugate and massacre the Presbyterian chiefs, rouse

the highlanders, and take possession of the whole of Scotland.

Intrigues with the Parliamentary commanders were carried on as

much as conferences with the Royalists. Sir Hugh Cholmondeley

promised to surrender Scarborough. Sir John Hotham appeared

disposed to open the gates of Hull to the queen. Parliament began

to grow uneasy.

The friends of peace took advantage of this moment to propose

fresh negotiations. "It has been said in this House," said Sir

Benjamin Rudyard, "that we were bound in conscience to finish the

shedding of innocent blood; but who shall answer for all the

innocent blood which is about to flow if we do not march to peace

by the means of a prompt treaty?" His motion, which involved

nothing less than the disbandment of the two armies as a

preliminary of the negotiations, was rejected; but it was agreed

to send to Oxford five commissioners entrusted to discuss, for

twenty days at first, a suspension of arms, then a treaty. The

committee, at the head of which was the Earl of Northumberland,

set out from London on the 20th of March.

The king received the commissioners well, and their relations

with the court were polite and courteous. The Royalists were

magnificently treated at the residence of the Earl of

Northumberland, who had caused his household to follow him; but

when the negotiations were begun ill-feeling reappeared in full

force. Neither the king nor Parliament had abated any of the

conditions resolutely rejected before the war.

{102}

One evening the emissaries of Parliament believed they had gained

something; on the morrow morning, the written reply of Charles

did not resemble his words of the previous day; his councillors

and the emissaries of the queen had induced him to alter his

resolve. Secret and personal intrigues did not succeed better

than official negotiations. The king had promised his wife never

to make peace without her approbation, and she angrily wrote to

him to dissuade him from it. These manœuvres corresponded with

the secret wishes of the king, who did not desire peace. He ended

by offering to the negotiators to return to the Houses, if the

latter were willing to transport the seat of Parliament at least

twenty miles from London. Upon this message the Houses suddenly

recalled their commissioners, and, by an order so pressing that

they deemed themselves compelled to set out on the same day

(April 15th), although it was late, and their travelling coaches

were not ready.

On the same day the Earl of Essex took the field again. Hampden

would have preferred that a hasty march should be made to Oxford,

there to besiege the king. The earl refused this, even when he

had taken Reading, an indispensable town for the safety of

Parliament. Complaints were uttered concerning his delay and

hesitation. The most violent among the leaders of the Commons

spoke even of appointing a successor. Hampden, Fairfax, Lord

Manchester, Sir William Waller, had obtained successes and

rendered great services. Colonel Cromwell, already famous for his

bold strokes, as fortunate as they were skillful, had done more

still.

{103}

He was lamenting one day with Hampden the inferiority of the

Parliamentary cavalry, constantly defeated in the little

engagements which had taken place with the cavaliers. "What would

you?" said Cromwell; "your troops are most of them old, decayed

serving-men and tapsters. Do you think that the spirits of such

base and mean fellows will be ever able to encounter gentlemen

that have honor and courage and resolution in them? I will raise

men who have the fear of God before them, and I warrant you they

will not be beaten." The levies of volunteers which he had

formed, fanatical, proud, and severe of manner, engaged in the

war for conscience sake, and under the orders of Cromwell from

confidence in him. They already composed, at the opening of the

campaign of 1643, a body of a thousand men, the germ and nucleus

of the famous "Ironsides."

The bitter speeches against Essex came to no result. Complaints

were made, but there was a disinclination to separate from him.

The ill-will of the leaders, however, was manifested by the

destitution in which the army was left, through the insufficiency

of the resources and the irregularity of its pay. A royalist

plot, upon the point of bursting forth in the city, was

discovered: two of the conspirators only, Challoner and Tompkins,

rich citizens of London, suffered the extreme penalty. Edmund

Waller, a member of the House of Commons and already a famous

poet, repurchased his life with cowardly revelations. Many

important men were compromised, and while Parliament perceived

that conspiracy was going on at its doors against its safety,

successive disasters overtook its arms and placed its cause in

peril.

{104}

A great loss--that of Hampden--was the signal for these reverses.

A trifling encounter of cavalry had taken place on the 18th of

June, in the plain of Chalgrave, a few leagues from Oxford.

Prince Rupert defeated the Parliamentarians. Hampden was there.

"I saw him," said a prisoner, "go away, contrary to his custom,

from the field of battle before the end of the action. His head

was bent low, his hands rested upon the neck of his horse;

without doubt he is wounded." The people of Oxford were agitated,

almost fearing to rejoice. The king sent one of his physicians, a

country neighbor of Hampden, to know whether he did not want

assistance. A thought of conciliation towards this powerful

adversary had crossed the mind of Charles. Doctor Giles found

Hampden dying: a bullet had shattered his shoulder. He was told,

however, who had sent to enquire after him, and with what

intention. A violent agitation seized the wounded man. He wished

to speak, but death had already frozen his tongue; he expired a

few instants afterwards. When he was no longer to be feared, the

people rejoiced in Oxford; while in London, and in nearly all the

kingdom, the grief was as violent as it was profound.

"Never had man inspired so much confidence in a people. Whoever

belonged to the national party, no matter in what degree or for

what motives, counted upon Hampden for the success of his wishes.

The more moderate believed in his wisdom, the more passionate in

his patriotic devotion, the more honest in his uprightness, the

more intriguing in his skill. Prudent and reserved, while ready

to brave all perils, he who had never yet been wanting suddenly

disappointed all hopes. A marvellous good fortune, which forever

placed his name in the high position assigned to it by the

expectation of his contemporaries, and perhaps saved his virtue

as well as his glory, from the rocks whereon revolutions impel

and shatter their noblest favorites!"

[Image]

Death of Hampden.

{105}

The people wept; they soon began to tremble. Everywhere the

Parliamentary generals were beaten by the royalist chiefs. The

enemies of Essex, by allowing his army to suffer, had reckoned

upon the successes of his rivals. Fairfax had been beaten on the

30th of June at Atherton Moor. Sir John Hotham was upon the point

of surrendering Hull to the queen. Lord Willoughby could no

longer defend Lincolnshire against Lord Newcastle. The

confederation of the eastern states, the great bulwark of

Parliament, seemed about to be broken up. In Cornwall, where the

command was in the hands of the most faithful and best servants

of the king, the Marquis of Hertford, Sir Bevil Grenville, Sir

Ralph Hopton, the peasants hereditarily attached to their lords

had followed them to the war, as in France the Vendéans were to

follow the nobles a hundred and fifty years later. Like them they

seized upon the batteries, assaulting them with their staves. Sir

William Waller there lost two battles in one week. Everywhere the

cities opened their gates to the king. Bristol, the second

stronghold in the kingdom, surrendered at the first attack. The

queen had rejoined the king, bringing three thousand men and some

cannon, upon that same plain of Keynton, where, in the preceding

year, the two parties had for the first time come to blows.

Charles and his wife returned to Oxford in triumph, and Sir

William Waller came back to London without troops.

{106}

Amidst so many disasters, Essex had not stirred, imputing his

inaction to those very persons who reproached him with it. He

caused the Upper House to be advised to sue for peace from the

king. "If this proceeding does not bring about a treaty," he

said, in conclusion, "it will be necessary, I think, to beg his

Majesty to go away from this scene of slaughter, and then, in one

day, the two armies must settle the dispute." A few days earlier

the overtures of Essex might, perhaps, have been well received;

but the king had recently declared officially that the

individuals still assembled at Westminster, after the retirement

of so many members, no longer formed two real Houses, that they

had lost all legal existence, and no longer deserved the name of

Parliament. He forbade all his subjects to obey this set of

traitors and sedition-mongers. Parliament, thus attacked, voted

the formation of a committee entrusted to ask assistance of the

Scots, and the House of Lords declared that it would not address

any proposal for peace to the king until he should have revoked

his proclamation against the legality of Parliament.

It was not merely votes and declarations that were relied upon.

The army of Essex received reinforcements and supplies; the

formation of a new army began in earnest in the eastern counties;

it was to be placed under the command of Lord Manchester, with

Cromwell as lieutenant-general. In Hull, Lord Fairfax succeeded

Sir John Hotham, arrested by order of the Commons before he had

been able to accomplish his treason. Religious services increased

in London. The wives and mothers of the combatants filled the

churches; every morning, at beat of drum, a crowd of citizens,

men and women, rich and poor, issued forth in a mass to work at

the fortifications.

{107}

The effort was great and general, but it was not more than

necessity demanded; for the successes of the king continued, and

the desire for peace began to spring up again in the minds of the

majority of the Lords, with the gleam of hope revealed by a fresh

proclamation of the king, more skillful and more agreeable than

the preceding one. On the 5th of August the Upper House

transmitted to the Commons pacific proposals which they had voted

on the previous day, declaring in a sufficiently haughty tone

that it was time to put an end to the calamities of the country.

The leaders of the Commons grew alarmed. Peace, thus demanded,

was a defeat. They had not been able to prevent the House from

taking into consideration the proposals of the Lords. They called

the people to their assistance; a riotous assemblage demanded

with loud cries the continuation of the hostilities. The vote was

doubtful in the Commons; a first scrutiny gave the majority to

the partisans of peace. The party of war demanded a fresh

examination; they carried this proposal at length, but with a

majority of seven votes only. On the morrow, a crowd of women who

besieged the gates of Westminster, demanding peace, could only be

dispersed by a charge of cavalry; two corpses remained upon the

ground.

The triumph of the popular leaders was complete, but it was

stained with those frauds and acts of violence with which they

had but recently so bitterly reproached the king. Six members of

the Upper House quitted London, to repair to the court of

Charles. Northumberland retired to his castle. The Commons were

soon about to find themselves alone; they were astonished and

uneasy, for the most impetuous sectaries and the most violent

demagogues began to give themselves free play.

{108}

"If the king will not lend himself to every demand," wrote a

pamphleteer, "he must be extirpated, he and his race, and the

crown must be entrusted to some one else." Henry Martyn supported

the pamphlet, attacked before the House. "Without doubt," he

said, "the ruin of a single family is better than that of many."

"I demand," exclaimed Sir Nevil Poole, "that Mr. Martyn be

summoned to say of what family he speaks." "Of the king and his

children," replied Martyn, without hesitating. The most violent

spirits in the House had not yet gone to the length of

proclaiming their hopes aloud. Martyn was suffered to be placed

in the Tower without resistance, and was excluded from

Parliament.

The danger, however, became too pressing to admit of division

among the party. The king laid siege to Gloucester, the only

stronghold which still arrested him in his march upon London, or

impeded the free communication of the royal armies. Common sense

gained the ascendant over party hatreds. The moderate understood

that before negotiating it was necessary to conquer; the fanatics

recognized the truth, that to gain a victory it was for them to

serve, for their rivals to command. Essex and his friends

regained everywhere the authority of which they had but recently

been deprived, and the more impassioned of their adversaries

omitted nothing in assuring them of the confidence of Parliament

and the country. The week had scarcely passed when the earl set

out at the head of fourteen thousand men, to proceed by forced

marches to the relief of Gloucester, which city the king had been

closely blockading for a fortnight.

{109}

Charles had not found even in his most illustrious servants the

intelligence and ready disinterestedness which inspired the

leaders of the popular party. Lord Newcastle, victorious in

Yorkshire, refused to rejoin the king under the walls of London.

"As long as Hull shall not be taken," he said, "I cannot leave

this part of the country." Hull was in the hands of Fairfax, and

the king could not or dared not undertake to attack London

unaided. He thought he had secret understandings with the town of

Gloucester, and resolved to lay siege to it. A garrison of

fifteen hundred men alone defended the town; but the inhabitants

were devoted to Parliament, and replied to the order to

surrender, "We hold this town for the service of his Majesty and

his posterity. We consider ourselves obliged to obey the orders

of his Majesty, as they are transmitted to us by the two Houses

of Parliament; consequently with the help of God, we will guard

the said town with all our might." For twenty-six days they had

kept their word, when the king learnt that the Earl of Essex was

approaching.

Every means, both warlike and peaceful, was tried to arrest him.

Prince Rupert hastened to place himself before him with his

cavalry; the king made proposals for peace to him. Essex did not

fight, still pressing on his march, and he replied to Charles,

"Parliament has not commissioned me to negotiate, but to deliver

Gloucester. I will do it, or I will leave my body under the

walls." As he deployed his army on the morrow, the 5th of

September, upon the hills of Prestbury, two leagues from the

besieged town, the sight of the quarters of the king in flames

informed him that he had accomplished his task without striking a

blow. Charles had raised the siege of Gloucester.

{110}

It was not to avoid a combat that the cavaliers had abandoned an

investment of which they were weary. Gloucester being

revictualled, the Earl of Essex turned back towards London; but

on arriving before Newbury, on the 19th of September, he

perceived that the enemy had preceded him, and that a battle was

inevitable. The action began at daybreak. Valiant was the

fighting upon both sides; "the Royalists therein felt the hope of

redeeming a reverse which had suspended the course of their

triumphs; the Parliamentarians, the desire not to lose, when so

near the goal, the fruit of a triumph which had put an end to so

many reverses." The soldiery of London manifested the most

brilliant courage. At nightfall, both parties maintained their

positions. Essex, however, had gained ground, and was preparing

to resume the action at daybreak; but the enemy withdrew during

the night, and the road was free. On the 22d Essex and his army

arrived at Reading, henceforth sheltered from all danger.

The royal army had suffered losses which cast down the courage of

the chiefs and the soldiers. More than twenty officers of

distinction had fallen; among others, and first of all, Lord

Falkland, the honor of the royalist party. "Still a patriot,

although proscribed in London, still respected by the people,

although a royal counsellor at Oxford, nothing made it incumbent

on him to seek the field of battle, but he sought danger with a

painful ardor. Profoundly saddened by the evils which he

contemplated and those which he foresaw, ill at ease amidst a

party whose successes and reverses he almost equally dreaded, his

temper had become embittered, he had grown taciturn and gloomy.

'Peace! peace!' he often exclaimed amidst the conversations of

his friends; then he relapsed into his despondency.

{111}

On the morning of the combat he had attired himself carefully,

according to his former custom, for some time abandoned, and, as

he was urged to remain at his residence, 'No,' he said, 'too long

has all this been breaking my heart; I hope that I shall be out

of it before it is night,' and he went and joined the regiment of

Lord Byron as a volunteer. He fell at the beginning of the

action, being dead before his fall was noticed. His friends, Hyde

especially, preserved an inconsolable remembrance of him. The

courtiers learnt, without any great emotion, the death of a man

who had been a stranger to them. Charles manifested decent

regrets, and felt himself more at ease in council."

Joy reigned supreme in London. While Essex was re-entering the

city with his triumphant troops, it became known that Vane had

concluded with the Scots, under the name of "a solemn league" or

"covenant," a close alliance, which was sworn to both in

Edinburgh and in London. The Presbyterian leaders and people were

at the summit of their wishes. Their general had conquered, and

their natural allies, the Scots, were coming to their aid. They

took advantage of this situation of affairs to exert their

religious tyranny; the assemblage of theologians received orders

to prepare a scheme of ecclesiastical government, and committees

were formed to examine, in each county, the doctrine and conduct

of the clericals. Those who had escaped the persecutions of Laud

against the nonconformists, now succumbed to the Presbyterian

inquisitions. Some few even, who had resumed possession of their

livings since the fall of the episcopacy, found themselves again

prosecuted.

{112}

More than two thousand clergymen were expelled from their

parishes, and the Anabaptists, the Brownists, and the

Independents, were thrown into prisons, where their tyrants had

but recently groaned with them. Archbishop Laud, forgotten for

three years past in his imprisonment, was summoned to the bar of

the Upper House, to reply to the accusation of the Commons, the

triumphant Presbyterians bringing the weight of their vengeance

and their fears to bear upon adversaries of all parties.

They hastened, for the ground trembled beneath their feet. It was

too much to cope, on the one hand, with the Royalists, and on the

other with the religious or political Independents, who every day

became more numerous and more bold. In religious matters, the

Presbyterians admitted neither discussion nor liberty. They

looked upon their doctrinal and ecclesiastical system as the only

law and the only government permitted and revealed by the word of

God. In politics they were moderate. They liked the monarchy

while fighting against the king; they respected the prerogative

while laboring to subjugate the crown; and they obeyed old

customs as much as new requirements, without knowing precisely

whether they were proceeding by means of the reforms which they

had prosecuted for three years with so much ardor. The leaders

themselves came from different sides, and were not all animated

by the same desires. Hesitation began to discover itself among

them: Rudyard no longer appeared in Parliament, except at rare

intervals. St. John and Pym treated the Independents gently; the

lords quitted Westminster by degrees and withdrew to their

estates, when they did not proceed to rejoin the king. On the

morrow of the battle of Newbury, ten lords only sat in the Upper

House; they were, for the Presbyterians, an incumbrance rather

than a support; the popular movement became every day more

estranged from the high aristocracy, separated from the

Presbyterians by the religious fanaticism of the latter.

Revolution succeeded reform.

{113}

The new party had grown in the shadow of the Presbyterian power;

but from the first it had set up a very different flag. Liberty

was the basis of the structure that liberty yet so misunderstood

and so often dishonored by the very persons who demanded it.

"Whatever may have been the boldness of their ventures, neither

the politicians nor the devotees of the new party were a prey to

vague desires, to unlimited pretensions. No precise design

regulated their course, no historical or legal act comprised the

limits of their belief. It was this very belief which they

wished, at all costs, to set forth. Proud of its elevation, of

its holiness, of its daring, they awarded to it the right of

judging all, of ruling all; and taking it solely for their guide,

the philosophers sought with indefatigable ardor, the truth; the

enthusiasts, the Lord; the libertines, success. All could find

therein full satisfaction for their schemes and hopes. The double

policy of the Presbyterians did not hinder the progress of those

free spirits who claimed to shake off all impediments and remake

the world in their own fashion. Hostility increased every day

between the new party of the Independents, impelled by the breeze

of revolution as well as by popular favor, and the old

Presbyterian party, triumphant and everywhere in power, but

hesitating and uneasy in the very midst of its victories."

{114}

At Oxford, divisions among the enemy were not unknown, and men of

ability would have been ready to profit by them: but in vain were

secret negotiations carried on sometimes with the Presbyterians,

sometimes with the Independents; the plots were neither active

nor efficacious, and they displeased the king even while he

tolerated them. He had less repugnance in negotiating with other

enemies, odious to England and his people. He was in treaty with

the Irish rebels, with the ferocious Papists who had put Ireland

to fire and sword, now organized by the great council which had

been formed at Kilkenny. When Charles heard of the negotiations

of the Scotch with Parliament, and when he saw that a fresh

kingdom was about to slip from his grasp, he hastened to come to

an end with the Irish. The Protestant army, commanded by the Earl

of Ormond, which had always remained faithful to the royal cause,

was disbanded; its regiments crossed the sea and joined the army

of the king. A truce of one year was concluded with the rebels;

Ireland was abandoned to the Papists. It was a terrible blow

struck in England to the traditional respect which many people

still preserved towards the king. His duplicity, his tedious

falsehoods, the haughty tone of his protests, his decided

tendency towards Roman Catholicism, all this recurred to the

recollection of the people, and his name, hitherto treated with

respect amidst the most bitter strife of the contending parties,

was no longer spared from insult.

Charles was deeply offended at the violence which was manifested

towards him. His timid and easily offended dignity was shocked at

the idea that people should dare to judge him according to his

acts. He sent for Hyde. "I desire to dissolve Parliament," he

said. "The act by which I promised only to do so with their own

consent, is, I am assured, null and void; for I could not thus

abolish the prerogatives of the crown, but rather desire to make

use of them.

{115}

Let a proclamation be prepared which shall declare the Houses

dissolved from this time, and expressly forbid them from

reassembling, or any one, whosoever he may be, from recognizing

or obeying them." Hyde listened, surprised and grieved. "I cannot

imagine," he said, "that your Majesty's forbidding them to meet

any more at Westminster will prevent one man the more going

there, and, nevertheless, the kingdom will, without doubt, take

violent umbrage at it. It was the first powerful reproach they

corrupted the people with against your Majesty, that you intended

to dissolve this Parliament, and in the same way repeal all the

other acts made by that Parliament, whereof some are very

precious to the people. As your Majesty has always disclaimed any

such thought, such a proclamation now would confirm all the

jealousies and fears so excited, and trouble many of your true

subjects. I implore your Majesty to reflect well before further

pressing this project."

All the members of the council spoke like Hyde, and the king

abandoned his project, not without ill-humor. It was necessary,

however, to do something. Some one proposed, since the name of

Parliament exercised such a dominion over the people, to convoke

at Oxford all the members of the two Houses who had quitted

Westminster, and thus to oppose to the factious and mutilated

Parliament a real and legal Parliament, since the king would form

part of it. The proposal displeased the king, who detested the

very name of parliament. The queen was still more opposed to it;

but the royalist party received the measure with ecstasy, and no

one dared to withdraw it. The Parliament of the king was convoked

at Oxford for the 22nd January, 1644.

{116}

On the same day, at Westminster, a kind of muster of the Houses

took place. Twenty-two lords still sat in the Upper House, and

two hundred and eighty members of the Commons responded to their

names. A certain number were absent in the service of the country

and by order of Parliament. One of its oldest and most useful

leaders had recently been taken from them. "Pym had died on the

8th of December, after a sickness of a few days. A man of a less

brilliant renown than Hampden, in the secret councils as well as

the public acts of the House, he had not rendered less important

services. Firm, patient, and shrewd, skilled in pursuing an

enemy, in directing a debate, or an intrigue, in fomenting the

anger of the people, in engaging or retaining in his cause the

great lords who were in a state of uncertainty, he was, moreover,

an indefatigable member of the greater number of the committees,

the customary chief mover of decisive measures, always ready to

undertake onerous and dreaded duties; indifferent, in short, to

labor, to mortifications, to fortune, to glory, and placing in

success his sole ambition. The House felt its loss, and rendered

the greatest honors to his memory. He was buried at Westminster."

The new Parliament had attempted to establish relations with

Essex. It received from the Earl of Forth, commander-in-chief of

the army of the king, a packet which it consigned in a sealed

cover to the Upper House. After an examination by a committee of

the two Houses, the papers were sent to Oxford without any

answer.

{117}

A demand for a safe-conduct for the deputies whom the king

desired to send to London was not better received. "My Lord,"

replied Essex, "when you ask for a safe-conduct in order that

these gentlemen may repair, on behalf of the king, to the two

Houses of Parliament, I will do, with all my heart, what shall be

in my power to contribute to all that is desired by all good

men--the re-establishment of an amicable understanding between

his Majesty and his faithful and only council, the Parliament."

The king was delighted to find his adversaries so untractable;

his hopes lay entirely in war and nowise in negotiations. The

assembly of Oxford, consisting of forty-five Lords and a hundred

and eighteen members of the Commons, obtained however a slight

concession from him. The name of Parliament had not, in the first

message rejected by Essex, been applied to the House at

Westminster. A letter of the king was addressed "to the Lords and

Commons of the Parliament assembled at Westminster;" but he spoke

of the Lords and Commons assembled at Oxford as of their equals.

A trumpeter from Essex brought the reply of the Houses. "The

letter of your Majesty," it ran, "gives us, as to peace, the

saddest thoughts. The persons now assembled at Oxford, and who,

against their duty, have deserted your Parliament, are therein

placed in the same rank as the latter, and this Parliament

itself, convoked according to the fundamental laws of the

kingdom, authorized to continue to sit by a special law

sanctioned by your Majesty, finds itself denied even its name. We

cannot betray in this manner the honor of the country entrusted

to our keeping, and it is our duty to make known to your Majesty

that we are firmly resolved to defend and maintain, at the risk

of our fortunes and our lives, the just rights and the full

powers of Parliament."

{118}

The assembly of Oxford did not long resist. Henceforth, without

hope of conciliation, and consequently without object, it

continued to sit until the 16th of April, still faithful to the

king, voting a few loans, and addressing long and bitter

reproaches to the Houses of Westminster; but timid, inactive, and

careful to manifest in presence of the court its ardent desire

for legal order and peace. When their adjournment was at length

pronounced, the king rejoiced with the queen at being delivered

from this mongrel Parliament, the haunt of cowardly and seditious

motions.

Charles counted upon war; but the campaign about to open

presented itself under grievous aspects. All the small

engagements which had taken place during the winter had turned to

the advantage of the Parliamentarians. The Earl of Newcastle had

been compelled by Fairfax to shut himself up in York. Parliament

possessed five armies: those of the Scots, Essex, and Fairfax,

were paid at the expense of the public treasury; those of

Manchester and Waller were supported by the Eastern and Southern

counties commissioned to recruit them. Under the name of

Committee of the Two Kingdoms, a committee of the Chambers,

composed of seven lords, fourteen members of the Commons, and

four Scottish commissioners, was invested with almost absolute

power over the war and foreign relations. The measures of

Parliament were every day becoming more regular and energetic.

Weakness and want of discipline, on the contrary, increased in

the camp of the king.

[Image]

Battle Of Marston Moor.

{119}

Suddenly it became known at Oxford that the army of Essex,

strengthened by that of Waller, was advancing to besiege the

town. The troops of Fairfax and Manchester and the Scots were to

assemble under the walls of York, and besieged that town in

common. The two great towns and the two great armies of the

royalists, the king and Lord Newcastle, were thus attacked at

once by all the forces of Parliament. Such was the simple and

bold plan which the committee of the two kingdoms had adopted.

The queen took alarm. She was in expectation of a child, but she

was anxious not to be delivered within a besieged town. The evil

effect of her departure was represented to her without success;

she flew into a passion, wept, implored. She set out at length

for Exeter, determined to proceed to France in case of danger.

Her husband never saw her again.

A month later, at the end of May, Oxford was almost completely

surrounded. A considerable reinforcement of militiamen coming

from London, was about to put Essex in a position to complete the

investment. The danger was so urgent that one of the faithful

councillors of the king proposed to him to surrender to the earl.

"It may be," said Charles in indignation, "that I may be found in

the hands of the Earl of Essex, but I shall be dead." A week

afterwards the army and Parliament learnt that the investment of

Oxford had become useless, for the king had escaped.

{120}

On the 3d of June, accompanied by the Prince of Wales, and

leaving in the town the Duke of York with all his court, the king

had issued forth from Oxford. Passing between the two hostile

camps, and, joining a corps of light troops who awaited him upon

the northern side, he rapidly placed himself out of reach.

Seventeen days subsequently, while Waller was pursuing him in

Worcestershire and Essex was advancing towards Lyme, which Prince

Maurice kept besieged, Charles, bold and determined for the first

time, reappeared in Oxford, and placing himself once more at the

head of his troops, vigorously resumed the offensive. On the 29th

of June he defeated, in Buckinghamshire, at Cropredybridge, the

army of Waller, which had advanced to cut off his road to London.

At rest upon this point, he resolved to pursue Essex, who had

appeared before the walls of Exeter, and might terrify the queen,

who had been delivered of a child two days before. One of the

armies which had but recently kept him a prisoner was destroyed;

the other, it seemed, would soon share its fate. Satisfied with

his triumph, the king addressed from Evesham a message to the

Houses, in which, without giving to them the name of Parliament,

he made pacific protestations and offered to reopen negotiations;

he then pursued his march towards the west.

Before his message arrived in London everything had assumed a

different aspect. Fresh actors had entered upon the scene, the

battle of Marston Moor, fought by the three armies of Fairfax,

Manchester, and the Scots, against Prince Rupert and Lord

Newcastle, had annihilated the royalist party in the north. York

could not delay surrendering. Neither the defeats of Waller nor

the former triumphs of Essex were thought of any longer.

{121}

It was on the evening of the 2d of July, from seven to ten

o'clock, at Marston Moor, that the battle had taken place which

brought about these great results. At the approach of Prince

Rupert the Parliamentary generals had raised the siege of York

and proceeded towards him to arrest his progress. They had not

succeeded; the prince had entered the town without striking a

blow. The Parliamentarians retired; but notwithstanding the

counsels of Lord Newcastle, Rupert followed them. When the two

armies met, it was five o'clock in the evening; they spent two

hours in sight of each other without engaging. "What position

does your Highness intend for me" asked Newcastle of the prince.

"I do not count upon making the attack before to-morrow morning,"

said Rupert; "you may rest until then." The earl retired and shut

himself up in his coach. Scarcely was he settled there, when the

firing informed him that the battle had begun; he ran thither,

without command, at the head of a few volunteer gentlemen like

himself. The most complete disorder reigned on the plain. The two

armies were fighting helter-skelter, without leaders and without

discipline: Parliamentarians and Royalists, horsemen and

foot-soldiers, were wandering about the field of battle, seeking

their corps, fighting upon meeting the enemy, but without result

as well as without general purpose. The right wing of the

Parliamentarians wavered under a charge of the Royalists; the

Scottish cavalry took to flight. They were pursued, and a rumor

of the victory of Prince Rupert spread as far as Oxford, where

bonfires were lighted. But, as usual, the cavaliers had suffered

themselves to be carried away by their ardor. When they returned

to the field of battle, they found their positions occupied by

the enemy. The cavalry of Prince Rupert had given way before the

squadrons of Cromwell; the infantry of Manchester had completed

his defeat.

{122}

The Parliamentarians had not pursued their adversaries, but had

hastened to secure the field of battle. The combat which took

place between the two victorious corps ended to the advantage of

the Ironsides, a name given upon this occasion to the soldiers of

Cromwell. Three thousand corpses strewed the field. Sixteen

hundred Royalists were prisoners.

Rupert and Newcastle re-entered York in the middle of the night.

Without seeing each other, they merely exchanged messages. "I

have resolved," the prince sent word, "to set out this morning

with my cavalry and what I have left of my infantry." "I start at

once," Newcastle said, "and I am going to cross the sea to retire

to the Continent." Both kept their word. York capitulated at the

end of a fortnight.

Never had Parliament achieved so brilliant a success, and it was

to the Independents that they owed it. The Scots, those allies

whom the Presbyterians had brought from so far, had fled

disgracefully. _The day of the Lord_ was at length coming,

thought the enthusiasts. "My Lord," said Cromwell to Lord

Manchester in their camp intercourse, "place yourself decisively

with us, say no longer that we must hold ourselves in readiness

for peace, or spare the House of Lords, or fear the refusals of

Parliament. What have we to do with peace and the nobility? It

never will be well with England till you are called plain Mr.

Montague. If you will stick firm to honest men, you shall find

yourself at the head of an army which shall give law both to king

and Parliament."

The audacious counsels of Cromwell were not to serve the purpose

of Lord Manchester; but himself and his party were nearing the

goal of their hopes, for Essex had recently been vanquished.

{123}

More and more occupied in the west, the general-in-chief of the

Parliamentary armies had allowed himself to be allured by easy

successes. As he approached Exeter, the queen sent to ask for a

safe-conduct, in order to proceed to Bath to recover from her

accouchment. "If your Majesty wishes to repair to London," he

replied, "not only will I give you a safe-conduct, but I will

accompany you myself. It is there that you will receive the best

advice and the most efficacious cares for the restoration of your

health. For any other place I cannot accede to your desires

without consulting Parliament." Essex might be dispirited, and

disgusted even with the cause he had embraced; he could not fail

in fidelity. Stricken with terror, the queen fled to Falmouth,

where she embarked for France.

Upon the advice of several of his officers, Essex entered

Cornwall. The population were hostile to him, and the king was

pressing him closely. He asked for reinforcements and counselled

that Waller should effect a diversion upon the rear of the royal

army. The committee of the two kingdoms was earnest, agitated,

ordered public prayers, and commanded Waller and Middleton to

march to the aid of the general. "Let money and men be sent to

me," wrote Waller; "God is my witness that it is not my fault if

I do not go more quickly; if the money does not come, I shall go

without money." He did not depart. Middleton moved his army

forward, but stopped at the first obstacle. Essex remained alone.

{124}

Abandoned by Parliament, the general was ardently sought after by

the Royalists, who were incapable of believing that a man of his

rank could earnestly serve any other cause than theirs. The king

wrote him on the 6th of August, at his headquarters at

Lestwithiel, a letter full of esteem and promises, urging him to

restore peace to his country. It was Lord Beauchamp, nephew of

the earl, who brought the royal missive. "I have but one counsel

to give to the king, that is to return to his Parliament."

Charles did not persist, but many cavaliers around him desired

peace, and were beginning to shake off the exclusive yoke of the

royal will. They resolved to offer to the earl their personal

guarantee for the promises of the king. A rough draft of a

letter, signed by Lords Wilmot and Percy, commanders of the

cavalry and infantry, circulated among the officers. The king

concealed his ill-humor. His nephew. Prince Maurice, like the

Earl of Brentford, commander-in-chief of the royal army, signed

the proposals of negotiation addressed to the hostile general.

The king had authorized the proceeding. "My Lords," replied

Essex, "you have been careful to express, in the first lines of

your letter, in virtue of what authorization it has been

addressed to me. I have received from Parliament which I serve no

authority to negotiate, and I could not lend myself to it without

a breach of trust. I am, my Lords, your very humble servant,

Essex."

It remained but to fight with the redoubled ardor which arises

from vexation. The Parliamentary general was hemmed in on all

sides by the royalist forces. Skirmishes took place every day,

without great result. Provisions were becoming scarce in the army

of Parliament. The Royalists had come so near that they could see

all that went on in the camp. Essex resolved to endeavor to reach

the port of Fowey.

{125}

The cavalry, under orders of Sir William Balfour, spent the night

between the two divisions of the royal army; but the infantry

became involved in narrow roads, where they advanced slowly; they

were pursued by all the army of the king: they had lost their

baggage; they spoke aloud of capitulating. Essex could not submit

to so great a disgrace; he reached the coast with two officers,

threw himself into a boat and made sail for Plymouth, leaving his

army under the orders of Major-General Skippon. The soldiers were

discouraged, the officers discontented: the king caused

unexpected terms to be proposed to them; the capitulation was

accepted. The artillery, provisions, and arms remained in the

hands of the Royalists. The men were reconducted to the quarters

of the Parliamentarians. They had saved their lives and liberty,

but without arms and without a leader they traversed, under the

escort of the cavaliers, the counties which they had but recently

overrun as conquerors. Their general had fled from this

humiliation; he did not endeavor to escape the justice of his

country; he wrote to Parliament, on arriving at Plymouth, "It is

the most severe blow which our cause has ever sustained. I desire

nothing so much as to be put upon my trial; such disasters should

not be suppressed."

The English Parliament was worthy to have descended from the old

Roman Senators contending against Hannibal. Instead of placing

Essex upon trial, the formation of a new army for his use was

immediately set about. The imminence of the peril rallied to his

party those men who were uncertain, and the leaders of the

Independents, able and patient, were in no hurry to throw light

upon the causes which had brought about the defeat of the earl.

Manchester and Waller received orders to join the army of Essex.

{126}

When the king, confident from his successes in Cornwall, and glad

to learn that at the instigation of Montrose, war had broken out

in Scotland, commenced his movements towards London, he

encountered by the way imposing forces. The army of Essex was

there, but its general was wanting. The earl, disheartened and

ill, had remained in London. The assurances of the confidence of

Parliament had not sufficed to rouse him from his dejection:

battle was given in his absence on the 29th of October, once more

before Newbury.

The action was long and desperate. The soldiers of Essex

performed on this occasion prodigies of valor to retake the

cannon which they had lost in Cornwall; but they remained

uncertain, and both sides claimed the victory. The king abandoned

his designs upon London, and withdrew towards Oxford, where he

counted upon taking up his winter quarters. Cromwell reproached

the Earl of Manchester with having attacked without vigor, and

with having but feebly followed up his advantages. The struggle

became more resolute every day between the Presbyterians and the

Independents--between the partisans of peace and those who

desired war at any price. Of these latter, Cromwell was becoming

the acknowledged leader.

Essex and his friends resolved to attempt a great effort. They

urged the committee of the House which, for six months, had

worked with the Scotch commissioners, to prepare the proposals

for peace. In a few days these proposals were presented to the

Houses, discussed and adopted. On the 20th of November, nine

commissioners set out to present them to the king.

{127}

They found him at Oxford, and on the first day the insults of the

cavaliers towards the Parliamentarians threatened to bring about

personal encounters between the emissaries of the Parliament and

the partisans of the king. "Have you power to negotiate?" asked

Charles of Lord Denbigh. "No, Sire, our mission is limited to

presenting to your Majesty the proposals, and to soliciting your

answer in writing." "Well; I will remit it to you (he replied) as

soon as I am able." The commissioners waited for three days. The

proposals of Parliament were not conciliatory; they involved a

veritable abdication of the royal power. When the commissioners

from Parliament were at length summoned before the king, he

consigned a sealed document to them, saying, "This is my answer;

take it to those who have sent you." Lord Denbigh in vain

endeavored to ascertain what the document contained; the king

would not give to the Houses the name of Parliament. "Your duty

is to take my answer, were it only the ballad of Robin Hood."

"The matter which has brought us, Sire, is a trifle more serious

than a ballad." "I know it; but you told me that you had no power

to negotiate. My memory is as good as yours; you were only

charged to remit the proposals to me. A post-boy would have done

as much in the matter as you." The conversation became more and

more bitter. The commissioners set out on their return, without

obtaining from the king an admission that his message was

addressed to Parliament. He only asked for a safe-conduct for the

Duke of Richmond and the Earl of Southampton. They proceeded to

London, and conferences were resolved upon; these were to take

place at Uxbridge. Forty commissioners, twenty-three in the name

of Parliament, and seventeen in the name of the king, were to

discuss that peace which was every day becoming more the object

of all the desires as well as the only hope of the Presbyterians.

{128}

The Independents knew this well, but they also knew the

passionate pride and the deceptions of the king, and the

fanaticism and haughtiness of the Parliamentarians. While

dreading the pacific conferences which might have caused the

triumph of their rivals, they occupied themselves in preparing

for war. Cromwell made a great speech condemning the division of

power and the slowness of the military operations. "If the army

be not put into another method, and the war more vigorously

prosecuted, the people can bear the war no longer, and will

enforce you to a dishonorable peace. Let us waive a strict

inquiry into the causes of these things; let us apply ourselves

to the remedy which is most necessary. And I hope we have such

true English hearts and zealous affections towards the general

weal of our mother-country, as no members of either House will

scruple to deny themselves and their own private interest for the

public good, nor account it to be a dishonor done to them

whatever Parliament shall resolve upon." "There is but one way to

end the matter," said Zouch Tate, an obscure fanatic, "each of us

must freely sacrifice himself. I propose that no member of either

House shall, during the war, enjoy or execute any office or

command, civil or military, and that an ordinance be brought in

accordingly."

After the first moment of astonishment, a violent discussion

arose. It was in the Houses that lay all the strength of the

Presbyterians, until then the real leaders of the revolution. The

"self-denying" ordinance deprived them of the executive power and

created an army of strangers to Parliament.

{129}

They did not deceive themselves as to the pretended

disinterestedness which had inspired the proposals of Cromwell

and his friends. "There is some talk here of self-denial," they

said; "it will be the triumph of personal envy and interest." But

this time public opinion was with the Independents. The

Presbyterian party was worn-out and discredited. Notwithstanding

their real strength in the House of Commons, the ordinance was

voted and sent up to the House of Lords on the 21st of September.

In voting the proposal of Zouch Tate, the Upper House abandoned

the remnant of power which it still retained, for nearly all its

members were affected. While they deliberated, the political

leaders of the party in the House of Commons increased the

concessions to the religious prejudices, as well as to the

malignant resentments of the multitude. Long-forgotten

prosecutions were resumed. Archbishop Laud, imprisoned for four

years, was condemned by a simple ordinance of the two Houses,

illegal even according to the traditions of Parliamentary

tyranny. He died with pious courage, filled with scorn for his

adversaries and with uneasiness for the future of the king. Sir

John Hotham and his son, accused of having plotted to deliver to

the king the town of Hull; Lord Macguire, who had fomented the

Irish insurrection, and Sir Alexander Carew, governor of the

island of St. Nicholas, who had relaxed his zeal in favor of the

royalist conspiracies, expiated their transgressions by capital

punishment. At the same time, the litany of the Church of

England, hitherto tacitly tolerated, was definitively abolished.

A book entitled _Directions for Public Worship_ received

instead the sanction of Parliament, which no longer refused

anything to the fanatics whose support it claimed. The House of

Lords did not deceive their hopes. On the 15th of January, 1645,

it rejected the self-denying ordinance.

{130}

A few days later, on the 29th of January, the negotiations at

Uxbridge were at length opened. The king had consented to accord

to the Houses at Westminster the name of Parliament. "If I had

had in my council," he wrote to the queen, "two persons of my own

opinion, I should never have yielded." The negotiators wished for

peace, with the exception of Vane, St. John, and Prideaux, who

formed other projects.

The will of men soon yields to the irresistible force of

circumstances. Each of the Parliamentary factions had its private

interest. The two parties endeavored to secure power in case

peace should be concluded. Theological discussions inflamed the

political negotiations. The conferences, begun with mutual

good-will and courtesy, soon became bitter and difficult to

manage. On each side, the ebullition of popular passions

aggravated the difficulties. An obscure minister arriving from

London, preached in the parish church of Uxbridge, in presence of

a numerous gathering. "No good must be expected from those men,"

he said, speaking of the Royalists; "they have come from Oxford

with their hearts full of blood. They only wish to divert the

people until they may be able to cause them some great evil.

There is as great a distance between this treaty and peace as

between earth and heaven." The people were convinced that in his

heart the king did not wish for peace.

{131}

His councillors were as distrustful as the mob. The end of the

negotiations was approaching. Some concession which might at

length cause the scale to turn was insisted upon at the court of

Charles. He gave way to entreaties, and promised to propose to

Parliament a certain number of leaders of the army, among whom

were Cromwell and Fairfax. The friends of peace were joyful. Lord

Southampton, who had negotiated the whole affair, was preparing

to depart for Uxbridge, in order to announce the favors accorded

by his Majesty. When he presented himself at the king's quarters

to receive his final instructions, Charles had altered his mind

and withdrawn his promise. News of a victory achieved in Scotland

by Montrose, over the army commanded by Argyle, had revived all

his high hopes. The conferences at Uxbridge were broken up, on

the 22nd of February, without having brought about any result.

The Presbyterian leaders, sorrowful and dejected, returned to

Westminster, to convince themselves personally that their

adversaries had contrived to make profitable use of the time

during their absence. The military reorganization was effected. A

single army, mustering twenty-one thousand men, was henceforth to

maintain the struggle. On the 15th of February, the command of

this army had been entrusted to Fairfax, for whom Cromwell had

answered in public to Parliament, in secret to the parties. The

almost constant successes of the young general, besides, spoke

for him. He had already received the official compliments of the

speaker in the House of Commons, in the midst of which body he

had been introduced.

{132}

The Presbyterian leaders in vain attempted to recover from this

defeat. Their friends even were becoming weary of the constant

efforts necessary to support them. The Marquis of Argyle had

arrived from Scotland; bitterly resolved to wipe out the

remembrance of his defeat at Inverlochy, he made use of his

influence to turn aside the Scottish commissioners from a longer

opposition. "We must yield to necessity," he said; "this division

places everything on sufferance." The vote which had consigned to

Fairfax the effective power, had preserved Essex in his command,

as well as Manchester and Waller. The earl resolved to give in

his resignation. He rose, on the 1st of April, in the Upper

House, with a written paper in his hand, for he could not make a

speech. "My Lords," he said, "having received this great charge,

in obedience to the commands of both Houses, and taken their

sword into my hand, I can with confidence say that I have for

this now almost three years faithfully served you, and I hope

without loss of honor to myself, or prejudice to the public. I

see by the now coming up of these ordinances that it is the

desire of the House of Commons, that my commission may be

vacated. I return my commission into those hands that gave it me,

wishing it may prove as good an expedient to the present

distempers as some will have it believed. My Lords, I know that

jealousies cannot be avoided, yet wisdom and charity should put

such restraints thereto as not to allow it to become destructive.

I hope that this advice from me is not unseasonable, wishing

myself and my friends may, among others, participate the benefit

thereof. This proceeding from my affection to Parliament, the

prosperity whereof I shall ever wish from my heart, what return

soever it may bring me, I being no single example in that kind of

that fortune I now undergo."

{133}

Manchester and Waller followed the example of Essex. The Upper

House, delivered from an obligation of fidelity which weighed

upon it, hastened to adopt the scheme of remodelling the army,

and on the morrow a fresh self-denying ordinance, slightly

different from the first, though tending towards the same result,

was voted by the two Houses. The power was now definitively

displaced. It passed from the hands of Parliament into those of

the army.

Fairfax encountered little difficulty on the part of the officers

and soldiers called upon to serve under his orders. Essex loyally

advised his friends, Cromwell hastened to proceed to preach

submission to the battalions of the Ironsides. As he had fully

resolved, he was not long separated from them. Towards the end of

April, Fairfax was about to open the campaign, when Cromwell

arrived at Windsor to kiss, he said, the hand of the general and

to bring his resignation to him. "I have just," Fairfax said,

"received from the Committee of the Two Kingdoms orders enjoining

you to proceed immediately, with a few squadrons, to the road

from Oxford to Worcester to intercept communications between

Prince Rupert and the king." Cromwell immediately set out. Three

brilliant skirmishes and the capture of the town of Blechingdon

signalized his march. Parliament voted that Cromwell should

retain his command for forty days longer. Three other members of

the House of Commons, distinguished officers, received the same

instructions, doubtless in order that Cromwell should not appear

to be alone excepted from the operation of the law.

{134}

Meanwhile the king, having issued forth from Oxford, had joined

Prince Rupert, and was advancing rapidly towards the north. The

siege of Chester was raised at his approach, and he directed his

course towards the associated counties of the east. A few days

later, he took possession of Leicester. Fairfax, who was

besieging Oxford by the order of the Committee of the two

kingdoms, had made no movement to hinder the course of his

successes. The Presbyterians were already triumphant. "There then

is the fruit of this reorganization which was so much vaunted,"

they said; "the king in one day takes our best towns, and your

general remains motionless before Oxford, waiting, doubtless, for

the women of the court to take alarm and open the gates to him."

They did not speak of the inaction of the Scotch, who had fallen

back upon their frontiers instead of marching to meet the king.

Fairfax received orders to raise the siege of Oxford, to seek the

king and give battle to him at all costs. In his turn, he wrote

to the Houses to demand the prolongation of the service of

Cromwell. Sixteen colonels signed the letter. On the 12th of

June, in the environs of Northampton, some Parliamentary

horsemen, sent to reconnoitre, suddenly came up with a detachment

of the army of the king.

Charles was advancing, in fact, to relieve Oxford. The successes

of Montrose in Scotland renewed his confidence. "Since the

rebellion," he wrote to the queen, "my affairs have never been in

so good a state." He made no haste, but enjoyed the amusement of

hunting upon his way, allowing full liberty to his cavaliers, who

were even more confident than their master. He was expecting

troops which were to arrive from Wales and the western counties.

When he obtained tidings of the approach of the Parliamentarians,

he fell back towards Leicester. Meanwhile, the hostile squadrons

caused uneasiness to his rear-guard. Cromwell had joined the

army. The king resolved to give battle without awaiting his

reinforcements.

[Image]

"Will You Go Upon Your Death?"

{135}

The encounter took place on the morrow, the 14th of June, upon

the table-land of Naseby, north-west of Northampton. At daybreak,

the army of the king, posted in an advantageous position, awaited

the Parliamentarians. The latter did not attack. Prince Rupert,

always impatient, advanced to the front with his cavalry. He soon

encountered the advanced guard of the enemy. Fearing that they

would withdraw, the prince continued his advance, giving orders

for the army to support the movement. About ten o'clock the

Royalists arrived, somewhat distressed by the rapidity of their

movements. The action commenced at once, and was fierce and

general. The two armies were of about equal strength. The

cavaliers, intoxicated by anticipation with the joy of victory,

had taken for their rallying-cry the words, "Queen Mary." The

Parliamentarians cried aloud, "God is with us." Prince Rupert

broke the squadrons of Ireton, who was afterwards to marry one of

the daughters of Cromwell. He immediately pursued the fugitives;

but Cromwell, master of himself and his men as at Marston Moor,

had broken up the cavaliers commanded by Sir Marmaduke Langdale,

and, entrusting two of his officers with the duty of preventing

them from rallying, he returned, with a portion of his troops, to

the field of battle. There the infantry of both sides were

engaged: Skippon was seriously wounded, but he remained

obstinately at the head of his soldiers. The helmet of Fairfax

had been battered in by a blow from a sword, and he fought

bare-headed. Meanwhile the cavaliers held their ground, and a

corps of royal infantry remained immovable notwithstanding the

reiterated attacks of Doyley, the colonel of the guards of

Fairfax.

{136}

"Take them in front, I will take them in the rear," said the

general; "we shall meet again in the midst of them." They did so,

in effect, at the moment when Cromwell, with his victorious

squadrons, arrived to support them. At the sight of this new and

dangerous enemy, the king, in great distress, placed himself in

person at the head of the regiment of guards. These were all that

remained to him, and he was preparing to charge the Ironsides,

when the Earl of Carnewarth, a Scotchman, who galloped beside

him, abruptly seized the bridle of his horse, exclaiming, "Will

you go upon your death?" and compelled him to turn to the right.

The cavaliers followed the movement without understanding the

reason for it. In an instant the regiment turned their backs upon

the enemy. All disbanded, some to seek safety in flight, others

to restrain the fugitives. The king, surrounded by a few

officers, in vain cried, "Halt! halt!" Prince Rupert returned. A

small corps was re-formed around the king, but the soldiers were

weary and dismayed. Charles, sword in hand, with eager eyes and

despair visible upon his countenance, threw himself twice in

front, exclaiming with all his energy, "Gentlemen, another

charge, and we shall win the day." None followed him. The

infantry were routed or prisoners. The only safety lay in flight.

The king precipitated himself towards Leicester with about two

thousand cavalry. His artillery, his supplies, his baggage, his

standards, and all the papers in his cabinet, together with five

thousand prisoners, remained in the hands of the

Parliamentarians.

{137}

No loss could have been more damaging to the cause of the king

than that of his secret correspondence. After Fairfax had

modestly informed the House of this unexpected success, and

Cromwell had joined to the news some pious reflections and some

of his politic counsels, the papers of the king were opened,

notwithstanding the scruples of Fairfax. Proof was therein found

that he had never desired peace; that no concession was, in his

eyes, definitive; no promise binding; that in his heart he always

counted upon force, and still claimed absolute power. Finally,

that, in spite of his reiterated denials, he had applied to the

King of France, the Duke of Lorraine--to all the princes of the

Continent, in fact--to introduce foreign troops into the kingdom.

A protestation was even found, inscribed upon the registers of

the council of Oxford, against that name of Parliament which he

had consented to accord to the Houses for the purposes of the

conferences at Uxbridge. Falsehood was in every part written by

the very hand of the king. After the public assemblage at the

Guildhall, where an immense crowd was present at the reading of

the papers, Parliament caused them to be published. The king did

not dispute their authenticity.

Exasperation was general, and the warlike ardor revived on all

hands. In order to make peace it would have been necessary to put

trust in the king; it was now known what his word was worth.

Fairfax advanced towards the western counties, only recently

devoted to the royal cause; but the great noblemen or the popular

and disinterested gentlemen, the Marquis of Hertford, Sir Bevil

Grenvil, Sir Ralph Hopton, were dead, or had been removed by

court conspiracies, which were favored by the weakness of the

king.

{138}

The young Prince of Wales, fifteen years of age, accompanied by

Hyde, Colepepper, and Lord Capel, commanded in the capacity of

generalissimo. The troops were entrusted to Lord Goring and Sir

Richard Grenville, one the most dissolute, the other the most

avaricious of the cavaliers. Disorder and extortions had

alienated the people. Bodies of peasants were formed under the

name of "Clubmen," to resist pillage. When Fairfax appeared in

the west, the Royalists ceased devastating the country, and the

Clubmen turned against Fairfax and his soldiers; but the

Parliamentary general did not permit any license. He treated the

peasants with gentleness, and entered into negotiations with

them, while he was actively prosecuting the war. On the 10th of

July Goring was surprised and defeated at Langport, in

Somersetshire, and the troops which remained with him were

dispersed. Sir Richard Grenville, being no longer able to

plunder, sent back to the Prince of Wales his commission as

Field-Marshal, complaining with effrontery of the burdens which

the war had imposed upon him, and the cavaliers remaining

faithful withdrew into the towns which Fairfax was preparing to

besiege.

Meanwhile the king appeared to have forgotten for a moment his

misfortunes and anxieties. Wandering about, after the disaster of

Naseby, he had finally arrived in Wales, where he hoped to

recruit some infantry, while Prince Rupert set out for Bristol.

Charles accepted the splendid hospitality of the Marquis of

Worcester, the leader of the Catholic party and the richest of

the great noblemen of England. For a fortnight the fugitive king

found once more in Ragland Castle all the homage and pleasures of

a court, and he thought of nothing but enjoying that royalty of

which he had so long tasted the bitterness and mortifications.

{139}

The successes of his adversaries did not leave the king long in

repose. To the news of the reverses in the west was added that of

the success of the Scotch army which had taken Carlisle and was

advancing towards the south to lay siege to Hereford. Charles

desired to march to the aid of Goring; but he was arrested at

every step by the bad condition of his troops. He fell back upon

Cardiff, where the Duke of Richmond brought him a letter written

by Prince Rupert, and intended to be shown him. The prince

considered that all was lost, and counselled peace at all costs.

This time the honor of the king was in question, and he regained

all his energy. He immediately wrote to his nephew: "If I had any

other quarrel but the defence of my religion, crown, and friends,

you had full reason for your advice. Speaking rather as a mere

soldier or statesman, I confess there is probability of my ruin.

As a Christian, however, I must tell you that God will not suffer

rebels to prosper, or His cause to be overthrown. Of this I warn

my friends without evasion. Henceforth whoever remains with me

must expect to die for a good cause; or, worse still, to live

while sustaining it as miserable as insolent rebels can render

him. In God's name let us not flatter ourselves with vain

chimeras. The idea alone that you desire a treaty would hasten my

ruin." A few days later, the king, quitting Wales, passed,

without being perceived, beyond the quarters of the Scotch army,

already encamped before Hereford, and arrived by forced marches

in Yorkshire. He convoked, at Doncaster, his faithful cavaliers,

to proceed with him to join Montrose, still faithful and still

victorious.

{140}

The cavaliers hastened at the summons. The king found himself in

a few days at the head of a body of three thousand men. They were

preparing to join Montrose, and only awaited their instructions,

when it was learned that David Lesley, at the head of the Scotch

cavalry, was approaching Doncaster. The Royalists took alarm.

Many retired, and when the news of the recent and brilliant

successes of Montrose reached the king, he had no longer

sufficient forces to attempt the venture. He was urged not to

expose his person. He re-entered Oxford, on the 29th of August,

not knowing what to do with the few troops which he had left.

The victories of Montrose, however, revived the dejected monarch.

Edinburgh and Glasgow were in the hands of the conqueror. He had

set free all the Royalists whom the Scotch Parliament had kept in

prison, and timid men hastened to place themselves under his

standard. The Scotch had recalled David Lesley with his cavalry.

They needed all their strength to protect their country.

The king wished to take advantage of the enfeeblement of the

Scotch army. He advanced towards Hereford; but the besiegers did

not await him, and fell back towards the north. He was urged to

pursue them, but refused to do so, being already wearied by this

effort so little in accord with his tastes and habits. Prince

Rupert held Bristol, which town Fairfax was besieging. He

promised to resist for four months. The king did not trouble

himself about the matter and repaired to take rest at Ragland, at

the residence of Lord Worcester, with whom he had constant

conferences.

{141}

Scarcely had he arrived when he learnt that Bristol was occupied

by Fairfax. Prince Rupert had surrendered the town at the first

assault, almost without resistance, when as yet nothing had

failed him--neither provisions nor soldiers. Charles was

dismayed. It was his ruin in the west and the most bitter

disappointment of the hopes he had placed in his nephew. His

courtiers, especially Lord Digby, who detested Rupert, envenomed

his anger. He wrote to the prince an offensive letter, which

concluded with these words: "My conclusion is to desire you to

seek your subsistence, until it shall please God to determine of

my conditions, somewhere beyond seas; to which end I send you

herewith a pass, and I pray God to make you sensible of your

present position and give you means to recover what you have

lost, for I shall have no greater joy in a victory than a just

occasion without blushing to assure you of my being your loving

uncle and most faithful friend,--C. R."

Prince Rupert had taken refuge in Oxford. He did not depart,

despite the injunctions of the king. He asserted that he had been

calumniated, and asked to make an explanation to his uncle; but

Lord Digby had taken care to prevent the interview. Charles

resumed the road to the north. He wished to relieve Chester,

which was again besieged, and was now the only port in which the

assistance expected from Ireland could arrive. He was in sight of

the town with five thousand men, Welsh foot-soldiers or cavaliers

of the north, when he was attacked in the rear by a Parliamentary

corps, commanded by Major-General Poyntz.

{142}

A detachment coming from the little army which was investing

Chester, attacked the advance guard at the same time. The king,

pressed between two fires, after a desperate resistance, saw his

best officers fall around him, and was compelled to return to

Wales, abandon Chester to its fate and once more separated as

though by an insurmountable barrier from that camp of Montrose

which constituted his only hope.

The army of Montrose no longer existed. For ten days already, the

marquis had, like the king, been seeking a shelter while

endeavoring to collect his soldiers. On the 30th of September he

had been beaten at Philip-Haugh by David Lesley. His forces had

dissolved at the first blow. Brilliant and rash, in the base he

excited envy, while in the timid he inspired no sense of

security. A reverse sufficed to dissipate all his successes, and

on the morrow of his defeat the conqueror of Scotland was only an

audacious outlaw.

This last blow overwhelmed the king. He no longer knew where to

rest his hopes. Urged by Lord Digby, he retired to Newark, while

the courtier, determined to avoid an interview with Prince

Rupert, who had set out to rejoin the king, placed himself at the

head of fifteen hundred horse, which Charles still possessed.

Under the pretext of taking succor to Montrose, he started for

the north.

The explanations of Prince Rupert did not satisfy the king,

notwithstanding the favorable declaration of the council of war.

The insolence of the cavaliers who accompanied his nephew hurt

his dignity. A quarrel began. "Begone, begone!" exclaimed Charles

angrily, "and do not appear again before me." Agitated in their

turn, Rupert, his brother Maurice, and their partisans quitted

Newark in the middle of the night.

{143}

The king was no longer safe there. Lord Digby had been defeated

at Sherborne, in his march towards the north. There were now on

the king's side neither soldiers nor generals. Charles assembled

together four or five hundred cavaliers, the remnants of several

regiments, and, on the 3d of November, at eleven o'clock at

night, he left the town, taking the road to Oxford. He re-entered

the city after a forced march, thinking himself saved, for he had

once more found his council and his court, and could indulge his

habits and find some repose.

The relief was not of long duration. The royalist towns were

falling one by one into the power of Fairfax and Cromwell.

Fifteen had surrendered or had been taken by assault within five

months. Scarcely had Charles returned to Oxford, when he wrote to

the Prince of Wales to hold himself in readiness to proceed to

the Continent. At the same time he made overtures of peace to

Parliament, demanding a safe-conduct for four negotiators.

Never had Parliament been less inclined towards peace. The

hundred and thirty new members, who had replaced in the House of

Commons those who had followed the king, had increased the power

and daring of the Independents, though all did not belong to

their party. The severities towards the Royalists were redoubled.

The war everywhere became harsher, sometimes cruel. Fairfax alone

still preserved the fine humanity which distinguished nearly all

the leaders at the opening of the war. Misunderstandings broke

out even between the Scots and the Houses. The former complained

that their army was not paid; the latter, that an army of allies

plundered and devastated, like a hostile body, the counties which

it occupied.

{144}

The strongest fermentation, the deepest hostility, the bitterest

and most decisive measures on all hands, left little chance for

peace to arrest or even suspend the rapid course of events.

The overtures of the king were rejected, and a safe-conduct was

refused to the negotiators. Charles persisted, but without

success, and as he proposed to repair to Westminster to negotiate

in person with Parliament, his enemies solemnly declared that

they at length possessed proof of the falsity of his words. The

king had concluded a treaty of alliance with the Catholic

Irishmen still in revolt. Ten thousand of these barbarians, under

the orders of the Earl of Glamorgan, were soon to land at

Chester. They had obtained, as the price of their assistance, the

complete abolition of the penal laws against the Catholics, and

the freedom of their worship. Ireland, in fact, was delivered up

to the Papacy. For two months the Committee of the two kingdoms

had known of the conspiracy and reserved the publication of it

for an important occasion. The day had at length arrived.

The king was struck down by this discovery. For two years he had

personally conducted this negotiation with the Earl of Glamorgan,

the eldest son of the Marquis of Worcester. Brave, generous,

thoughtless, passionately devoted to his master in danger, and to

his oppressed religion, Glamorgan had plotted in every form,

proceeding incessantly from England to Ireland, often entrusted

with secret missions unknown to the Marquis of Ormond, lieutenant

of the king in Ireland, and alone knowing to what point the

concessions of the king might reach. The treaty had been

concluded since the 20th of August preceding, and Parliament did

not know all that Charles had promised in its name.

{145}

When it was learned in Dublin that the plot was known in London,

Ormond easily saw what a blow the affairs of the king had

sustained even among his own party. He immediately caused

Glamorgan to be arrested as having exceeded his powers. The earl

kept his counsel, and did not produce the secret documents signed

"Charles," which he held in his hands. He even said that the king

was not bound to ratify what he had thought himself able to

promise for him. On his part, Charles hastened to disown the

affair in the proclamation which he addressed to the Houses, as

well as in his official letters to the Council of Dublin.

Glamorgan, he said, had no other mission than to recruit soldiers

and to second the efforts of the Lord Lieutenant. Neither

Parliament nor the people believed this. Glamorgan, being soon

released, recommenced his attempts to assemble an Irish army to

proceed to England. In reply, the command of Cromwell, already

several times renewed, was again prolonged, and the king found

himself compelled to resume hostilities as though he had been in

a position to sustain them.

The last remnants of the royalist armies still fought, but

without ardor and without hope. When the Prince of Wales found

himself abandoned by his generals, Goring and Grenville, he

implored Sir Ralph, now Lord Hopton, to resume command of the

troops in the west. "Your Highness," replied the brave soldier,

"I cannot obey you without resigning myself to the sacrifice of

my honor, for with the troops which you have entrusted to me how

can I preserve it?

{146}

Their friends alone fear them; their enemies despise them; they

are only terrible on the day of pillage; and only determined when

they are resolved to fly. However, since your Highness has judged

it well to summon me, I am ready to follow you at the risk of

losing my honor;" and he resumed the command of seven or eight

thousand men who detested him, and to whom his discipline was

odious. On the 16th of February he was defeated by Fairfax at

Torrington, upon the borders of Cornwall. All the troops that had

remained with him were dispersed. Fairfax pursued him, while the

Prince of Wales, driven into a corner at the Land's End, in

Cornwall, embarked for the Scilly Isles, being unwilling to leave

English soil. Fairfax offered honorable conditions. Hopton, free

from all anxiety as to the safety of the prince, desired to

attempt once more to fight with the small corps which he had

re-formed with great difficulty; but the soldiers called upon him

to capitulate. "Bargain, then," said Hopton, "but not for me." He

embarked with Lord Chapel to join the Prince of Wales. The king

now possessed in the south-west only insignificant garrisons,

scattered in a few towns.

Sir Jacob Astley was defeated at Stow, in Gloucestershire, as he

was advancing with three thousand men to join the king, who had

issued forth with fifteen hundred horse from Oxford to meet him.

The rout was complete. The aged Astley resisted for a long while,

then fell into the hands of the enemy. The soldiers, touched by

his white hairs and his courage, brought him a drum. He sat down;

then addressing the Parliamentary officers, he said, "Gentlemen,

you may now sit down and play, for you have done all your work,

if you fall not out among yourselves."

{147}

The king had no longer any hope save in the dissensions which he

might foment among his enemies. He had for a long while been

maintaining secret relations with the Independents, especially

with Vane. He wrote himself to the latter after Astley's

disaster, "Be assured that everything shall come to pass

according to my promise. By all that is dearest to a man, I

implore you to hasten your good offices, for otherwise it will be

too late, and I shall perish before gathering the fruit. Trust to

me. I will fully reward your services. I have said all. If in

four days I should not have an answer I shall be compelled to

find some other expedient. May God direct you! I have done my

duty." He at the same time addressed a message to the Houses,

offering to disband his troops, to open all his towns, and to

take up his residence again at Whitehall.

Great was the emotion at Westminster; all knew that if the king

were at Whitehall he would no longer be the object of the

disturbances if the city should break out, and all were equally

determined not to fall into his power. All the necessary

precautions were adopted to prevent Charles from appearing

unexpectedly in the capital. Violent measures were taken against

those who should negotiate secretly or who should maintain any

relations with him. Vane left the letter of the king unanswered.

Meanwhile Fairfax advanced, and Oxford was about to be invested.

The king made an offer to Colonel Rainsborough, who had already

arrived before the town, to surrender to him on condition that he

should conduct him to Parliament at once. The colonel refused.

Charles was about to fall as a prisoner of war into the hands of

his enemies.

{148}

One resource only remained to him. For two months M. de

Montreuil, the French ambassador, had been laboring to procure

him an opportunity of taking refuge in the camp of the Scots. He

thought himself secure of the personal safety of the king in the

midst of an army which looked upon Charles as its legitimate

sovereign. The queen, still in France, also kept up relations

with the Scotch military leaders. She urged her husband to put

trust in them. He still hesitated, but he issued forth from

Oxford on the 27th of April, at midnight, followed only by his

valet-de-chambre, Ashburnham, and a clergyman. Dr. Hudson, well

versed in all the roads.

For a moment, when at Harrow-on-the-Hill, in sight of London, the

king stopped. Should he take a bold step and suddenly appear in

the midst of the city? It was too venturesome a stroke for his

timid and sensitive dignity. He turned away, directing his course

towards the north, still desiring to join Montrose. Hudson, who

had gone forward to reconnoitre, came back to say that M. de

Montreuil still answered for the Scots. The king at length made

up his mind, though from weariness rather than from choice. On

the morning of the 5th of May he arrived at Kelham, the

headquarters of the Scotch commander.

The Earl of Leven and his officers at first affected surprise,

but they received the king with great respect. They however

hastened to apprise the Parliaments of Edinburgh and London, and,

in the evening, when the king wished to give the watchword to the

sentinels placed at his door, "Pardon me, Sire," Leven said, "I

am the oldest soldier here; your Majesty will permit me to

undertake that duty."

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It was soon known in London that the king had quitted Oxford, but

nothing indicated the direction of his flight. On the 6th of May

it was at length learned that he had confided his person to the

Scotch, who had raised their camp and were marching in great

haste towards the border. They only stopped at Newcastle. From

there the king could negotiate with the Presbyterians of the two

kingdoms.

This was what all the Independents dreaded. For a year past

everything had prospered with them. They were masters of the

army, and all daring spirits, the energetic and ambitious had

placed themselves under their banner. Their influence continued

to increase on all hands. They were ruined if at the moment of

reaching the summit of power, the king should ally himself with

the Presbyterians against them.

They adopted every means to ward off the blow, without scrupling

to offend the Scotch, whom they desired to separate from the

Presbyterian party in England. The Commons voted that the Scotch

army was no longer necessary; that a hundred thousand pounds

would be paid to it in advance on account of their claims, and

that it should be induced to return to Scotland. Insults were

lavished upon those allies, of whom it was now desired to be rid

at all costs.

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The Scotch and their illustrious guest facilitated the task of

their enemies. They were not angry, but they hesitated, they felt

their way carefully, they were afraid to take sides. The king

still endeavored to deceive his rebellious subjects. "I do not

despair," he wrote to Lord Digby before his departure from

Oxford, "of inducing the Presbyterians or the Independents to

join with me to exterminate each other, and then I shall become

once more king in reality." On their side, the Presbyterians,

passionately attached to the Covenant, would not hear of any

arrangement which did not secure the triumph of their Church.

While promising the king to negotiate for peace, they gave

further tokens of fidelity towards their brothers, the English,

and caused the execution of the most illustrious companions of

Montrose, who had been prisoners of war since the battle of

Philip-Haugh. The Marquis of Ormond published a letter of the

king, asserting that he only repaired to the camp of the Scotch

upon their promise, in case of need, to support him and his just

rights. The Scotch immediately caused this almost exact

interpretation of their words to be belied. The cavaliers could

no longer have access to their master, and the clergy were

invited to instruct the monarch in the true doctrine of Christ.

Charles did not resist, but even bore with the theological

discussions; though the learned preacher, Henderson, who had

undertaken his conversion, was not able to congratulate himself

upon having shaken the king's fidelity to the Anglican Church.

Charles was expecting proposals from the House, to whom he caused

to be surrendered all the towns which still held out for him. But

he hoped for aid from Ireland, and he wrote to Glamorgan, who was

still the sole depositary of his secret designs, "If you can

procure a large sum of money for me, pledging my kingdoms as a

guarantee, I shall be delighted, and as soon as I shall have

recovered the possession, I will amply pay this debt. Tell the

nuncio that if I find some means of placing myself in his hands

and yours, I will certainly not neglect it, for all the others

despise me as I fully see."

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At length the proposals of Parliament arrived: they were more

humiliating and harsh than those which the king had hitherto

rejected. He was asked to adopt the Covenant, to abolish the

Church of England, to consign to the Houses for twenty years the

command of the army, the militia, and the navy; to allow to be

excluded from the armistice seventy-one of his most faithful

friends, while all those who had taken arms for him were to be

removed from all public functions at the good pleasure of

Parliament. On all sides he was urged to accept this disgraceful

peace. The queen sent messenger after messenger to him. M. de

Bellièvre, the French ambassador, proceeded to Newcastle to

advise him to accept it in the name of his court. Several towns

in Scotland sent amicable petitions to him. The city of London

wished to do likewise: a formal prohibition only prevented it.

Threats were coupled with entreaties. The general assembly of the

Scotch Church demanded, if the king should refuse the Covenant,

that he should be forbidden to remain on Scottish soil, and the

Chancellor of Scotland, Lord Lowsden, made him understand that,

deprived of his hereditary kingdom, he might very probably find

himself deposed in England.

All was powerless against the pride of the king, his religious

scruples and also some secret hope which credulous or intriguing

friends still kept alive. After having delayed his reply from day

to day, he at length consigned to the commissioners on the 1st of

August, a written message, in which, without absolutely rejecting

the proposals, he again demanded that he should be received in

London to negotiate in person with Parliament.

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The Independents were unable to restrain their joy. "What is to

become of us," said a Presbyterian, "now that the king has

refused our proposals?" "What would have become of us if he had

accepted them?" replied an Independent. The Scotch proposed to

withdraw from England; but they required first the settlement of

the arrears, and their claims were enormous. It was necessary to

decide who should dispose of the person of the king. The parties

commenced the struggle upon this point.

An understanding was arrived at, however, after bitter words and

reciprocal recriminations. The arrears were fixed at four hundred

thousand pounds sterling, and the House of Commons finally

brought the Lords to accept the vote in the terms it had given

out for five months past, "that to Parliament alone belonged the

right of disposing of the king's person." The Scots resisted

feebly, saying that Charles was their king as well as the

sovereign of the English. Charles continued to demand to

negotiate in person with Parliament.

The wish was as useless the fifth time as the first. The Houses

had just signed the treaty which arranged for the withdrawal of

the Scotch army, and how the price should be paid. The name of

the king was not mentioned in all the clauses of this

negotiation, but, on the 3d of December, 1646, at the moment when

the convoy of wagons bearing twenty thousand pounds sterling to

the Scotch, entered York, the Houses voted that the king should

be conducted to Holmby Castle, in Northamptonshire.

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On the 12th of January, 1647, nine commissioners, three Lords,

and six members of the Commons departed from London to take

possession respectfully of their sovereign. The dignity of the

king proudly resisted this terrible blow. "I am bought and sold,"

he said, when he learnt that the Parliament of Scotland

officially consented to his being consigned into the hands of the

English; but he quietly finished his game of chess, replying to

the growing anxiety of his servants that he would make known his

will to the commissioners when they should arrive. He awaited

them without countenancing the confused projects of flight or

insurrection which were being hatched around him. The people

began to take pity on him. One Sunday, at Newcastle, the Scotch

minister who preached before him having chosen his text from a

version of the 52d Psalm, beginning,

Why dost thou, tyrant, boast thyself,

Thy wicked deeds to praise?

the king suddenly rose and began instead of this the 56th Psalm,

commencing,

Have mercy on me, Lord, I pray,

For men would me devour!

The whole congregation joined with him. A last attempt of the

Scotch in favor of the Covenant having miscarried, the Scotch

army delivered both Newcastle and the king into the hands of the

English. On the 9th of February, Charles left that town under the

escort of a regiment of cavalry, everywhere followed by a

numerous crowd which thronged on his way, not hostile, but

respectful, and asking him to touch the sick persons afflicted

with king's evil. The commissioners became uneasy at this

gathering, but their prohibitions were ineffectual. When the king

arrived at Holmby, where many gentlemen from the neighborhood had

assembled, he congratulated himself upon the reception which he

had received from his subjects.

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Dissensions at Westminster broke out afresh. Assured of the

person of the king, the Presbyterians, whose influence had once

more become paramount in the House, in consequence of the terror

which the Independents began to inspire among moderate men,

carried a motion for disbanding the army, except the troops

required by the war in Ireland and the service of the garrisons.

Fairfax was to retain the command of the reduced forces, but no

officer under his orders was to rise above the rank of colonel.

All were obliged to conform to the Presbyterian form of

government. A loan was voted to pay the arrears due the soldiers.

Cromwell sat in the House, when this vote dealt a death-blow to

the army he had been instrumental in forming, and among whom his

authority continued to increase. He remained in London, and burst

into protestations of devotion towards Parliament, but the

numerous friends who followed his secret inspiration secretly

entertained the natural discontent of the army. A petition,

modest and friendly in tone, reached the Houses, signed only by

fourteen officers. They promised to repair to Ireland at the

first order, merely offering their humble advice upon the payment

of the troops and the guarantees to which they were entitled.

After this petition, which was somewhat ill-received, came

another, more firm and precise, demanding the prompt settlement

of the arrears, the pensions for the widows of the soldiers, and

asserting the right of the troops to decline service in Ireland.

The petition was read at the head of the regiments, and the

officers who refused to sign were assailed with threats.

{155}

Parliament became incensed and commanded Fairfax to put an end to

all these disorders. The facts were impudently denied. The House

sent five commissioners to headquarters, to urge forward the

disbandment. Two hundred officers came to meet them. "Who are to

command us in Ireland?" asked Lambert, a brilliant soldier,

ambitious and skilled in oratory. "Major-General Skippon and

Major-General Massey." "They are brave soldiers, but we must have

general officers whom we have so many times put to the proof."

And all the officers exclaimed at once, "Yes, all, Fairfax and

Cromwell." A few days afterwards, eight regiments of cavalry

refused to repair to Ireland. "A treacherous snare," said the

petition brought to the House, "to separate the soldiers from the

officers whom they love, and to cover the ambition of a few men

who have tasted sovereignty, and who in order to remain masters,

degenerate into tyrants." The attack was personal. The soldiers

who had brought the petitions were sent for. "Where was this

letter taken into consideration?" the speaker asked them. "At a

meeting of regiments." "Have your officers approved of it?" "Very

few know it." "Have you not been cavaliers?" "We entered the

service of Parliament before the battle of Edgehill, and we have

never quitted it. We are only the agents of our regiments."

{156}

A great uproar arose in the House. Cromwell leant over Ludlow.

"Those men," he said, "will have no rest until the army has put

them outside by the ears." The instrument was being prepared for

the execution. Two councils, one composed of the officers, the

other of the representatives of the soldiers, fixed all the

proceedings of the army. It was said that it had proposed to the

king, if he would place himself at its head, to restore to him

his just rights. The Presbyterian leaders took alarm; concessions

were made to the soldiers. Cromwell, Ireton, Skippon, Fleetwood,

all members of the Commons, were empowered to re-establish a good

understanding between Parliament and the army. They repaired to

headquarters, where their efforts, certainly not very sincere,

brought about no result. The same demands continued to arrive

from the army; immediate disbandment was ordered, and five

Presbyterian commissioners set out to see to the execution of the

decree. They found the army in a full state of insurrection. In

the council of war which Fairfax convoked, all the officers, with

the exception of six, voted that the resolutions of Parliament

were not sufficient, and that the army could not separate without

more substantial guarantees. Fairfax had become powerless; the

power was passing into the hands of the soldiers and the leaders

who possessed their confidence. The Presbyterians had now to

struggle against a new enemy. If the army joined the king, they

were ruined. Their leaders thought of becoming reconciled with

the king.

[Image]

Fairfax Kissing The King's Hand.

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