The History of England
From The First Invasion By The Romans To The Accession Of King George The
Fifth
BY
JOHN LINGARD, D.D. AND HILAIRE BELLOC, B.A.
With an Introduction By
HIS EMINENCE JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS
IN ELEVEN VOLUMES
1912
CONTENTS of THE EIGHTH VOLUME.
CHAPTER I
CHARLES I.--_continued_.
Battle Of Edge Hill--Treaty At Oxford--Solemn Vow And Covenant--Battle
Of Newbury--Solemn League And Covenant Between The English And Scottish
Parliaments--Cessation Of War In Ireland-Royalist Parliament At
Oxford--Propositions Of Peace--Battle Of Marston Moor--The Army Of
Essex Capitulates In The West--Self-Denying Ordinance--Synod Of
Divines--Directory For Public Worship--Trial Of Archbishop Laud--Bill Of
Attainder--His Execution.
Treaty proposed and refused.
Royalists.
Parliamentarians.
State of the two armies.
The king's protestation.
Battle of Edge Hill.
Action at Brentford.
King retires to Oxford.
State of the kingdom.
Treaty at Oxford.
Intrigues during the treaty.
Return of the Queen.
Fall of Reading.
Waller's plot.
Solemn vow and covenant.
Death of Hampden.
Actions of Sir William Waller.
The Lords propose a peace.
Are opposed by the Commons.
New preparations for war.
Battle of Newbury.
New great seal.
Commissioners sent to Scotland.
Solemn league and covenant.
Scots prepare for war.
Covenant taken in England.
Charles seeks aid from Ireland.
Federative assembly of the Catholics.
Their apologies and remonstrance.
Cessation concluded.
A French envoy.
Royal parliament at Oxford.
Propositions of peace.
Methods of raising money.
Battle of Nantwich.
Scottish army enters England.
Marches and Countermarches.
Rupert sent to relieve York.
Battle of Marston Moor.
Surrender of Newcastle.
Essex marches into the west.
His army capitulates.
Third Battle of Newbury.
Rise of Cromwell.
His quarrel with Manchester.
First self-denying ordinance.
Army new modelled.
Second self-denying ordinance.
Ecclesiastical concurrences.
Persecution of the Catholics.
Of the Episcopalians.
Synod of divines.
Presbyterians and Independents.
Demand of toleration.
New directory.
Trial of Archbishop Land.
His defence.
Bill of attainder.
Consent of the Lords.
Execution.
CHAPTER II.
Treaty At Uxbridge--Victories Of Montrose In Scotland--Defeat Of The King
At Naseby--Surrender Of Bristol--Charles Shut Up Within Oxford--Mission Of
Glamorgan To Ireland--He Is Disavowed By Charles, But Concludes A Peace
With The Irish--The King Intrigues With The Parliament, The Scots, And The
Independents--He Escapes To The Scottish Army--Refuses The Concessions
Required--Is Delivered Up By The Scots.
Dissensions at court.
Proposal of treaty.
Negotiation at Uxbridge.
Demands of Irish Catholics.
Victories of Montrose in Scotland.
State of the two parties in England.
The army after the new model.
Battle of Naseby.
Its consequences.
Victory of Montrose at Kilsyth.
Surrender of Bristol.
Defeat of Royalists at Chester.
Of Lord Digby at Sherburn.
The king retires to Oxford.
His intrigues with the Irish.
Mission of Glamorgan.
Who concludes a secret treaty.
It is discovered.
Party violence among the parliamentarians.
Charles attempts to negotiate with them.
He disavows Glamorgan.
Who yet concludes a peace in Ireland.
King proposes a personal treaty.
Montreuil negotiates with the Scots.
Ashburnham with the Independents.
Charles escapes to the Scots.
The royalists retire from the contest.
King disputes with Henderson.
Motives of his conduct.
He again demands a personal conference.
Negotiation between the parliament and the Scots.
Expedients proposed by the king.
Scots deliver him up to the parliament.
He still expects aid from Ireland.
But is disappointed.
Religious disputes.
Discontent of the Independents.
And of the Presbyterians.
CHAPTER III.
Opposite Projects Of The Presbyterians And Independents--The King
Is Brought From Holmby To The Army--Independents Driven From
Parliament--Restored By The Army--Origin Of The Levellers--King Escapes
From Hampton Court, And Is Secured In The Isle Of Wight--Mutiny In The
Army--Public Opinion In Favour Of The King--Scots Arm In His Defence--The
Royalists Renew The War--The Presbyterians Assume The Ascendancy--Defeat
Of The Scots--Suppression Of The Royalists--Treaty Of Newport--The King Is
Again Brought To The Army--The House Of Commons Is Purified--The King's
Trial--Judgment--And Execution--Reflections.
The king at Holmby.
Character of Fairfax.
Opposition of the Independents.
Demands of the Army.
Refusal of parliament.
The army carries off the king.
Marches towards London.
And treats the king with indulgence.
The Independents are driven from parliament.
Charles refuses the offers of the army.
Which marches to London.
Enters the city.
And gives the law to the parliament.
The king listens to the counsels of the officers.
And intrigues against them.
Rise of the Levellers.
The king's escape.
He is secured in the Isle of Wight.
Mutiny suppressed.
King rejects four bills.
Vote of non-addresses.
King subjected to farther restraint.
Public opinion in his favour.
Levellers prevail in the army.
The Scots take up arms for the king.
Also the English royalists.
Feigned reconciliation of the army and the city.
Insurrection in Kent.
Presbyterians again superior in parliament.
Defeat of the Scots.
And of the earl of Holland.
Surrender of Colchester.
Prince of Wales in the Downs.
Treaty of Newport.
Plan of new constitution.
Hints of bringing the king to trial.
Petition for that purpose.
King's answer to the parliament.
His parting address to the commissioners.
He is carried away by the army.
Commons vote the agreement with the king.
The House of Commons is purified.
Cromwell returns from Scotland.
Independents prevail.
Resolution to proceed against the king.
Appointment of the High Court of Justice.
Hypocrisy of Cromwell.
Conduct of Fairfax.
King removed from Hurst Castle.
Few powers interest themselves in his favour.
Proceedings at the trial.
Behaviour of the king.
He proposes a private conference.
Is condemned.
Lady Fairfax.
King prepares for death.
Letter from the prince.
The king is beheaded.
CHAPTER IV.
THE COMMONWEALTH.
Establishment Of The Commonwealth--Punishment Of The Royalists--Mutiny And
Suppression Of The Levellers--Charles Ii Proclaimed In Scotland--Ascendancy
Of His Adherents In Ireland--Their Defeat At Rathmines--Success Of Cromwell
In Ireland--Defeat Of Montrose, And Landing Of Charles In Scotland-Cromwell
Is Sent Against Him--He Gains A Victory At Dunbar--The King Marches Into
England--Loses The Battle Of Worcester--His Subsequent Adventures And
Escape.
Abolition of the monarchy.
Appointment of a council of state.
Other changes.
Attempt to fill up the house.
Execution of the royalists.
Opposition of the Levellers.
Their demands.
Resisted by the government.
The mutineers suppressed.
Proceedings in Scotland.
Charles II proclaimed in Edinburgh.
Answer of the Scots.
Their deputies to the king.
Murder of Dr. Dorislaus.
State of Ireland.
Conduct of the nuncio.
His flight from Ireland.
Articles of peace.
Cromwell appointed to the command.
Treaty with O'Neil.
Cromwell departs for Ireland.
Jones gains the victory at Rathmines.
Cromwell lands.
Massacre at Drogheda.
Massacre at Wexford.
Cromwell's further progress.
Proceedings in Scotland.
Charles hesitates to accept the conditions offered by the commissioners.
Progress and defeat of Montrose.
His condemnation.
His death.
Charles lands in Scotland.
Cromwell is appointed to command in Scotland.
He marches to Edinburgh.
Proceedings of the Scottish kirk.
Expiatory declaration required from Charles.
He refuses and then assents.
Battle of Dunbar.
Progress of Cromwell.
The king escapes and is afterwards taken.
The godliness of Cromwell.
Dissensions among the Scots.
Coronation of Charles.
Cromwell lands in Fife.
Charles marches into England.
Defeat of the earl of Derby.
Battle of Worcester.
Defeat of the royalists.
The king escapes.
Loss of the royalists.
Adventures of the king at Whiteladies.
At Madeley.
In the royal oak.
At Moseley.
At Mrs. Norton's.
His repeated disappointments.
Charles escapes to France.
CHAPTER V.
Vigilance Of The Government--Subjugation Of Ireland--Of
Scotland--Negotiation With Portugal--With Spain--With The
United Provinces--Naval War--Ambition Of Cromwell--Expulsion Of
Parliament--Character Of Its Leading Members--Some Of Its Enactments.
The Commonwealth, a military government.
Opposition of Lilburne.
His trial and acquittal.
And banishment.
Plans of the royalists.
Discovered and prevented.
Execution of Love.
Transactions in Ireland.
Discontent caused by the king's declaration in Scotland.
Departure of Ormond.
Refusal to treat with the parliament.
Offer from the duke of Lorraine.
Treaty with that prince.
It is rejected.
Siege of Limerick.
Submission of the Irish.
State of Ireland.
Trials before the High Court of Justice.
Transportation of the natives.
First act of settlement.
Second act of settlement.
Transplantation.
Breach of articles.
Religious persecution.
Subjugation of Scotland.
Attempt to incorporate it with England.
Transactions with Portugal.
With Spain.
With United Provinces.
Negotiations at the Hague.
Transferred to London.
Recontre between Blake and Van Tromp.
The States deprecate a rupture.
Commencement of hostilities.
Success of De Ruyter.
Of Van Tromp over Blake.
Another battle between them.
Blake's victory.
Cromwell's ambition.
Discontent of the military.
Cromwell's intrigues.
His conference with Whitelock.
With the other leaders.
He expels the parliament.
And the council of state.
Addresses of congratulation.
Other proceedings of the late parliament.
Spiritual offences.
Reformation of law.
Forfeitures and sequestrations.
Religious intolerance.
CHAPTER VI.
THE PROTECTORATE.
Cromwell Calls The Little Parliament--Dissolves It--Makes Himself
Protector--Subjugation Of The Scottish Royalists--Peace With The Dutch--New
Parliament--Its Dissolution--Insurrection In England--Breach With
Spain--Troubles In Piedmont--Treaty With France.
Establishment of a new government.
Selection of members.
Meeting of Parliament.
Its character.
Prosecution of Lilburne.
His acquittal.
Parties in parliament.
Registration of births.
Taxes.
Reform of law.
Zeal for religion.
Anabaptist preachers.
Dissolution of parliament.
Cromwell assumes the office of protector.
Instrument of government.
He publishes ordinances.
Arrests his opponents.
Executes several royalists.
Executes Don Pantaleon Sa.
Executes a Catholic clergyman.
Conciliates the army in Ireland.
Subdues the Scottish royalists.
Incorporates Scotland.
Is courted by foreign powers.
War with the United Provinces.
Victory of the English.
The Dutch offer to negotiate.
Second victory.
Progress of the negotiation.
Articles of peace.
Secret treaty with Holland.
Negotiation with Spain.
Negotiation with France.
Negotiation respecting Dunkirk.
Cromwell comes to no decision.
The new parliament meets.
Is not favourable to his views.
Debates respecting the Instrument.
The protector's speech.
Subscription required from the members.
Cromwell falls from his carriage.
The parliament opposes his projects.
Reviews the instrument.
Is addressed by Cromwell.
And dissolved.
Conspiracy of the republicans.
Conspiracy of the royalists.
Executions.
Decimation.
Military government.
Cromwell breaks with Spain.
Secret expedition to the Mediterranean.
Another to the West Indies.
Its failure.
Troubles in Piedmont.
Insurrection of the Vaudois.
Cromwell seeks to protect them.
Sends an envoy to Turin.
Refuses to conclude the treaty with France.
The Vaudois submit and Cromwell signs the treaty.
CHAPTER VII.
Poverty And Character Of Charles Stuart--War With
Spain--Parliament--Exclusion Of Members--Punishment Of Naylor--Proposal
To Make Cromwell King--His Hesitation And Refusal--New
Constitution--Sindercomb--Sexby--Alliance With France--Parliament Of
Two Houses--Opposition In The Commons--Dissolution--Reduction Of
Dunkirk--Sickness Of The Protector--His Death And Character.
Poverty of Charles in his exile.
His court.
His amours.
His religion.
He offers himself an ally to Spain.
Account of Colonel Sexby.
Quarrel between the king and his brother.
Capture of a Spanish fleet.
Exclusion of members from parliament.
Speech of the protector.
Debate on exclusion.
Society of Friends.
Offence and punishment of Naylor.
Cromwell aspires to the title of king.
He complains of the judgment against Naylor.
Abandons the cause of the major-generals.
First mention of the intended change.
It is openly brought forward.
Opposition of the officers.
Cromwell's answer to them.
Rising of the Anabaptists.
Cromwell hesitates to accept the title.
Confers on it with the committee.
Seeks more time.
Resolves to accept the title.
Is deterred by the officers.
Refuses.
His second inauguration.
The new form of government.
Plot to assassinate him.
It is discovered.
Arrest and death of Sexby.
Blake's victory at Santa Cruz.
His death.
Alliance with France.
New parliament of two houses.
The Commons inquire into the rights of the other house.
Cromwell dissolves the parliament.
Receives addresses in consequence.
Arrival of Ormond.
Treachery of Willis.
Royal fleet destroyed.
Trials of royalists.
Execution of Slingsby and Hewet.
Battle of the Dunes.
Capitulation of Dunkirk.
Cromwell's greatness.
His poverty.
His fear of assassination.
His grief for his daughter's death.
His sickness.
His conviction of his recovery.
His danger.
His discourse.
His death.
His character.
CHAPTER VIII.
Richard Cromwell Protector--Parliament Called--Dissolved--Military
Government--Long Parliament Restored--Expelled Again--Reinstated--Monk In
London--Re-Admission Of Secluded Members--Long Parliament Dissolved--The
Convention Parliament--Restoration Of Charles II.
The two sons of Cromwell.
Richard succeeds his father.
Discontent of the army.
Funeral of Oliver.
Foreign transactions.
New parliament.
Parties in parliament.
Recognition of Richard.
And of the other house.
Charges against the late government.
The officers petition.
The parliament dissolved.
The officers recall the long parliament.
Rejection of the members formerly excluded.
Acquiescence of the different armies.
Dissension between parliament and the officers.
The officers obliged to accept new commissions.
Projects of the royalists.
Rising in Cheshire.
It is suppressed.
Renewal of the late dissension.
Expulsion of the parliament.
Government by the council of officers.
Monk's opposition.
His secrecy.
Lambert sent against him.
Parliament restored.
Its first acts.
Monk marches to York.
Monk marches to London.
Mutiny in the capital.
Monk addresses the house.
He is ordered to chastise the citizens.
He joins them.
Admits the secluded members.
Perplexity of the royalists.
Proceedings of the house.
Proceedings of the general.
Dissolution of the long parliament.
Monk's Interview with Grenville.
His message to the king.
The elections.
Rising under Lambert.
Influence of the Cavaliers in the new Parliament.
The king's letters delivered.
Declaration from Breda.
The two houses recall the King.
Charles lands at Dover.
Charles enters London.
NOTES
* * * * *
HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
CHARLES I.--(_Continued._)
Battle Of Edge Hill--Treaty At Oxford--Solemn Vow And Covenant--Battle
Of Newbury--Solemn League And Covenant Between The English And Scottish
Parliaments--Cessation Of War In Ireland-Royalist Parliament At
Oxford--Propositions Of Peace--Battle Of Marston Moor--The Army Of
Essex Capitulates In The West--Self-Denying Ordinance--Synod Of
Divines--Directory For Public Worship--Trial Of Archbishop Laud--Bill Of
Attainder--His Execution.
It had been suggested to the king that, at the head of an army, he might
negotiate with greater dignity and effect. From Nottingham he despatched to
London the earl of Southampton, Sir John Colepepper, and William Uvedale,
the bearers of a proposal, that commissioners should be appointed on both
sides, with full powers to treat of an accommodation.[a] The two houses,
assuming a tone of conscious superiority, replied that they could
receive no message from a prince who had raised his standard against his
parliament, and had pronounced their general a traitor.[b] Charles (and his
condescension may be taken as a[c]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. August 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. August 27.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 4]
proof of his wish to avoid hostilities) offered to withdraw his
proclamation, provided they on their part would rescind their votes against
his adherents.[a] They refused: it was their right and their duty to
denounce, and bring to justice, the enemies of the nation.[b] He conjured
them to think of the blood that would be shed, and to remember that it
would lie at their door; they retorted the charge; he was the aggressor,
and his would be the guilt.[c] With this answer vanished every prospect
of peace; both parties appealed to the sword; and within a few weeks the
flames of civil war were lighted up in every part of the kingdom.[1]
Three-fourths of the nobility and superior gentry, led by feelings of
honour and gratitude, or by their attachment to the church, or by a
well-grounded suspicion of the designs of the leading patriots, had ranged
themselves under the royal banner. Charles felt assured of victory, when he
contemplated the birth, and wealth, and influence of those by whom he was
surrounded; but he might have discovered much to dissipate the illusion,
had he considered their habits, or been acquainted with their real, but
unavowed sentiments. They were for the most part men of pleasure, fitter to
grace a court than to endure the rigour of military discipline, devoid of
mental energy, and likely, by their indolence and debauchery, to offer
advantages to a prompt and vigilant enemy. Ambition would induce them to
aspire to office, and commands and honours, to form cabals against their
competitors, and to distract the attention of the monarch by their
importunity or their complaints. They contained among them many who
secretly disapproved of the war,
[Footnote 1: Journals, v. 327, 328, 338, 341, 358. Clarendon, ii, 8, 16.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Sept. 6.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Sept. 11.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 16.]
conceiving that it was undertaken for the sake of episcopacy,--an
institution in the fate of which they felt no interest, and others who
had already in affection enrolled themselves among the followers of the
parliament, though shame deterred them for a time from abandoning the royal
colours.[1]
There was another class of men on whose services the king might rely with
confidence,--the Catholics,--who, alarmed by the fierce intolerance and the
severe menaces of the parliament, saw that their own safety depended on the
ascendancy of the sovereign. But Charles hesitated to avail himself of
this resource. His adversaries had allured the zealots to their party, by
representing the king as the dupe of a popish faction, which laboured to
subvert the Protestant, and to establish on its ruins the popish worship.
It was in vain that he called on them to name the members of this invisible
faction, that he publicly asserted his attachment to the reformed faith,
and that, to prove his orthodoxy, he ordered two priests to be put to death
at Tyburn, before his departure from the capital, and two others at York,
soon after his arrival in that city.[2] The houses still persisted in the
charge; and in all their votes and remonstrances attributed the measures
adopted by the king to the advice and influence of the papists
[Footnote 1: Thus Sir Edward Varney, the standard-bearer, told Hyde, that
he followed the king because honour obliged him; but the object of the war
was against his conscience, for he had no reverence for the bishops, whose
quarrel it was.--Clarendon's Life, 69. Lord Spencer writes to his lady,
"If there could be an expedient found to salve the punctilio of honour, I
would not continue here an hour."--Sidney Papers, ii. 667.]
[Footnote 2: Thomas Reynolds and Bartholomew Roe, on Jan. 21; John Lockwood
and Edmund Caterick, on April 13.--Challoner, ii. 117, 200.]
and their adherents.[1] Aware of the impression which such reports made on
the minds of the people, he at first refused to intrust with a commission,
or even to admit into the ranks, any person, who had not taken the oaths of
allegiance and supremacy; but necessity soon taught him to accept of the
services of all his subjects without distinction of religion, and he not
only granted[a] permission to the Catholics to carry arms in their own
defence, but incorporated them among his own forces.[2]
While the higher classes repaired with their dependants to the support of
the king, the call of the parliament was cheerfully obeyed by the yeomanry
in the country, and by the merchants and tradesmen in the towns. All these
had felt the oppression of monopolies and ship-money; to the patriots they
were indebted for their freedom from such grievances; and, as to them they
looked up with gratitude for past benefits,
[Footnote 1: In proof of the existence of such a faction, an appeal has
been made to a letter from Lord Spencer to his wife.--Sidney Papers, ii.
667. Whether the cipher 243 is correctly rendered "papists," I know not. It
is not unlikely that Lord Spencer may have been in the habit of applying
the term to the party supposed to possess the royal confidence, of which
party he was the professed adversary. But when it became at last necessary
to point out the heads of this popish faction, it appeared that, with
one exception, they were Protestants--the earls of Bristol, Cumberland,
Newcastle, Carnarvon, and Rivers, secretary Nicholas, Endymion Porter,
Edward Hyde, the duke of Richmond, and the viscounts Newark and
Falkland.--Rushworth, v. 16. May, 163. Colonel Endymion Porter was a
Catholic.--Also Baillie, i. 416, 430; ii. 75.]
[Footnote 2: Rushworth, iv. 772; v. 49, 50, 80. Clarendon, ii. 41. On
September 23, 1642, Charles wrote from Shrewsbury, to the earl of
Newcastle: "This rebellion is growen to that height, that I must not looke
to what opinion men are, who at this tyme are willing and able to serve me.
Therefore I doe not only permit, but command you, to make use of all my
loving subjects' services, without examining ther contienses (more than
there loyalty to me) as you shall fynde most to conduce to the upholding of
my just regall power."--Ellis, iii. 291.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642 August 10.]
so they trusted to their wisdom for the present defence of their liberties.
Nor was this the only motive; to political must be added religious
enthusiasm. The opponents of episcopacy, under the self-given denomination
of the godly, sought to distinguish themselves by the real or affected
severity of their morals; they looked down with contempt on all others, as
men of dissolute or irreligious habits; and many among them, in the belief
that the reformed religion was in danger, deemed it a conscientious duty
to risk their lives and fortunes in the quarrel.[1] Thus were brought into
collision some of the most powerful motives which can agitate the human
breast,--loyalty, and liberty, and religion; the conflict elevated the
minds of the combatants above their ordinary level, and in many instances
produced a spirit of heroism, and self-devoted-ness, and endurance, which
demands our admiration and sympathy. Both parties soon distinguished their
adversaries by particular appellations. The royalists were denominated
Cavaliers; a word which, though applied to them at first in allusion to
their quality, soon lost its original acceptation, and was taken to be
synonymous with papist, atheist, and voluptuary; and they on their part
gave to their enemies the name of Roundheads, because they cropped their
hair short, dividing "it into so many little peaks as was something
ridiculous to behold."[2]
Each army in its composition resembled the other. Commissions were given,
not to persons the most fit to
[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 76.]
[Footnote 2: Life of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 100. "The godly of those days,
when the colonel embraced their party, would not allow him to be
religious, because his hair was not in their cut, nor his words in their
phrase."--Ibid. The names were first given a little before the king left
Whitehall.--Clarendon, i. 339.]
command, but to those who were most willing and able to raise men; and
the men themselves, who were generally ill paid, and who considered their
services as voluntary, often defeated the best-concerted plans, by their
refusal to march from their homes, or their repugnance to obey some
particular officer, or their disapproval of the projected expedition. To
enforce discipline was dangerous; and both the king and the parliament
found themselves compelled to entreat or connive, where they ought to
have employed authority and punishment. The command of the royal army was
intrusted to the earl of Lindsey, of the parliamentary forces to the earl
of Essex, each of whom owed the distinction to the experience which he was
supposed to have acquired in foreign service. But such experience
afforded little benefit. The passions of the combatants despised the cool
calculations of military prudence; a new system of warfare was necessarily
generated; and men of talents and ambition quickly acquired that knowledge
which was best adapted to the quality of the troops and to the nature of
the contest.
Charles, having left Nottingham, proceeded to Shrewsbury, collecting
reinforcements, and receiving voluntary contributions on his march.
Half-way between Stafford and Wellington he halted the army, and placing
himself in the centre, solemnly declared in the presence of Almighty God
that he had no other design, that he felt no other wish, than to maintain.
the Protestant faith, to govern according to law, and to observe all
the statutes enacted in parliament. Should he fail in any one of these
particulars, he renounced all claim to assistance from man, or protection
from God; but as long as he remained faithful to his promise, he hoped for
cheerful aid from his subjects, and was confident of obtaining the blessing
of Heaven. This solemn and affecting protestation being circulated through
the kingdom, gave a new stimulus to the exertions of his friends; but it
was soon opposed by a most extraordinary declaration on the part of[a]
the parliament; that it was the real intention of the king to satisfy the
demands of the papists by altering the national religion, and the rapacity
of the Cavaliers by giving up to them the plunder of the metropolis; and
that, to prevent the accomplishment of so wicked a design, the two houses
had resolved to enter into a solemn covenant with God, to defend his truth
at the hazard of their lives, to associate with the well-affected in London
and the rest of the kingdom, and to request the aid of their Scottish
brethren, whose liberties and religion were equally at stake.[1]
In the meantime Waller had reduced Portsmouth,[b] while Essex concentrated
his force, amounting to fifteen thousand men, in the vicinity of
Northampton. He received orders from the houses to rescue, by force[c] if
it were necessary, the persons of the king, the prince, and the duke of
York, from the hands of those desperate men by whom they were surrounded,
to offer a free pardon to all who, within ten days, should return to their
duty, and to forward to the king a petition that he would separate himself
from his evil counsellors, and rely once more on the loyalty of his
parliament. From Northampton Essex hastened to[d] Worcester to oppose the
advance of the royal army.
At Nottingham the king could muster no more than six thousand men; he left
Shrewsbury at the head of[e] thrice that number. By a succession of skilful
manoeuvres
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 16. Rushworth, v. 20, 21. Journals, v.
376,418.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Oct. 22.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 9.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1642. Sept. 16.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1642. Sept. 23.]
[Sidenote f: A.D. 1642. Oct. 12.]
he contrived to elude the vigilance of the enemy; and had advanced two
days' march on the road to the metropolis before Essex became aware of his
object. In London the news was received with terror. Little reliance could
be placed on the courage, less on the fidelity of the trained bands; and
peremptory orders were despatched to Essex, to hasten with his whole force
to the protection of the capital and the parliament. That general had seen
his error; he was following the king with expedition; and his vanguard
entered the village of Keynton on the same evening on which the royalists
halted on Edgehill, only a few miles in advance. At midnight[a] Charles
held a council of war, in which it was resolved to turn upon the pursuers,
and to offer them battle. Early in the morning the royal army was seen in
position[b] on the summit of a range of hills, which gave them a decided
superiority in case of attack; but Essex, whose artillery, with one-fourth
of his men, was several miles in the rear, satisfied with having arrested
the march of the enemy, quietly posted the different corps, as they
arrived, on a rising ground in the Vale of the Red Horse, about half a mile
in front of the village. About noon the Cavaliers grew weary of inaction;
their importunity at last prevailed; and about two the king discharged a
cannon with his own hand as the signal of battle. The royalists descended
in good order to the foot of the hill, where their hopes were raised by the
treachery of Sir Faithful Fortescue, a parliamentary officer, who, firing
his pistol into the ground, ranged himself with two troops of horse under
the royal banner. Soon afterwards Prince Rupert, who commanded the cavalry
on the right, charged twenty-two troops of parliamentary horse led by Sir
James
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 22.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Oct. 23.]
Ramsay; broke them at the very onset; urged the pursuit two miles beyond
Keynton, and finding the baggage of the enemy in the village, indulged his
men for the space of an hour in the work of plunder. Had it not been for
this fatal imprudence, the royalists would probably have gained a decisive
victory.
During his absence the main bodies of infantry were engaged under their
respective leaders, the earls of Lindsey and Essex, both of whom,
dismounting, led their men into action on foot. The cool and determined
courage of the Roundheads undeceived and disconcerted the Cavaliers.
The royal horse on the left, a weak body under lord Wilmot, had sought
protection behind a regiment of pikemen; and Sir William Balfour, the
parliamentary commander, leaving a few squadrons to keep them at bay,
wheeled round on the flank of the royal infantry, broke through two
divisions, and made himself master of a battery of cannon. In another part
of the field the king's guards, with his standard, bore down every corps
that opposed them, till Essex ordered two regiments of infantry and a
squadron of horse to charge them in front and flank, whilst Balfour,
abandoning the guns which he had taken, burst on them from the rear. They
now broke; Sir Edward Varner was slain, and the standard which he bore was
taken; the earl of Lindsey received a mortal wound; and his son, the lord
Willoughby, was made prisoner in the attempt to rescue his father[1].
Charles, who, attended by his troop of pensioners, watched the fortune of
the field, beheld with dismay the slaughter of his guards;
[Footnote 1: The standard was nevertheless recovered by the daring or the
address of a Captain Smith, whom the king made a banneret in the field.]
and ordering the reserve to advance, placed himself at their head; but
at the moment Rupert and the cavalry reappeared; and, though they had
withdrawn from Keynton to avoid, the approach of Hampden with the rear of
the parliamentary army, their presence restored the hopes of the royalists
and damped the ardour of their opponents. A breathing-time succeeded; the
firing ceased on both sides, and the adverse armies stood gazing at each
other till the darkness induced them to withdraw,--the royalists to their
first position on the hills, and the parliamentarians to the village of
Keynton. From the conflicting statements of the parties, it is impossible
to estimate their respective losses. Most writers make the number of the
slain to amount to five thousand; but the clergyman of the place, who
superintended the burial of the dead, reduces it to about one thousand two
hundred men.[1]
Both armies claimed the honour, neither reaped the benefit, of victory.
Essex, leaving the king to pursue his march, withdrew to Warwick, and
thence to Coventry; Charles, having compelled the garrison[a] of Banbury to
surrender, turned aside to the city of Oxford. Each commander wished for
leisure to
[Footnote 1: This is the most consistent account of the battle, which I can
form out of the numerous narratives in Clarendon, May, Ludlow, Heath, &c.
Lord Wharton, to silence the alarm in London, on his arrival from the
army, assured the two houses that the loss did not exceed three hundred
men.--Journ. v. 423. The prince of Wales, about twelve years old, who was
on horseback in a field under the care of Sir John Hinton, had a narrow
escape, "One of the troopers observing you," says Hinton, "came in fall
career towards your highness. I received his charge, and, having spent a
pistol or two on each other, I dismounted him in the closing, but being
armed cap-a-pie I could do no execution on him with my sword: at which
instant one Mr. Matthews, a gentleman pensioner, rides in, and with a
pole-axe decides the business."--MS. in my possession.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 27.]
reorganize his army after the late battle. The two houses, though they
assumed the laurels of victory, felt alarm at the proximity of the
royalists, and at occasional visits from parties of cavalry. They ordered
Essex to come to their protection; they[a] wrote for assistance from
Scotland; they formed a new army under the earl of Warwick; they voted an
address to the king; they even submitted to his refusal of receiving as
one of their deputies Sir John Evelyn, whom he had previously pronounced a
traitor.[1] In the meanwhile the royal army, leaving Oxford, loitered-for
what reason is unknown-in the vicinity of Reading, and permitted Essex
to march without molestation by the more eastern road to the capital.
Kingston, Acton, and Windsor were already garrisoned[b] for the parliament;
and the only open passage to London lay through the town of Brentford.
Charles had reached Colnbrook in this direction, when he was[c] met by the
commissioners, who prevailed on him to suspend his march. The conference
lasted two days; on the second of which Essex threw a brigade,[d]
consisting of three of his best regiments, into that town. Charles felt
indignant at this proceeding. It was in his opinion a breach of faith; and
two days[e] later, after an obstinate resistance on the part of the enemy,
he gained possession of Brentford, having driven part of the garrison into
the river, and taken fifteen pieces of cannon and five hundred men. The
latter he ordered to be discharged, leaving it to their option either to
enter among his followers or to
[Footnote 1: Journals, 431-466. On Nov. 7 the house voted the king's
refusal to receive Evelyn a refusal to treat; but on the 9th ingeniously
evaded the difficulty, by leaving it to the discretion of Evelyn, whether
he would act or not. Of course he declined.--Ibid. 437, 439.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Nov. 2.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Nov. 7.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Nov. 10.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1642. Nov. 11.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1642. Nov. 13.]
promise on oath never more to bear arms against him.[1]
This action put an end to the projected treaty. The parliament reproached
the king that, while he professed the strongest repugnance to shed the
blood of Englishmen, he had surprised and murdered their adherents at
Brentford, unsuspicious as they were, and relying on the security of a
pretended negotiation. Charles indignantly retorted the charge on his
accusers. They were the real deceivers, who sought to keep him inactive
in his position, till they had surrounded him with the multitude of
their adherents. In effect his situation daily became more critical. His
opponents had summoned forces from every quarter to London, and Essex found
himself at the head of twenty-four thousand men. The two armies faced[a]
each other a whole day on Turnham Green; but neither ventured to charge,
and the king, understanding that the corps which, defended the bridge
at Kingston had been withdrawn, retreated first to Beading, and then to
Oxford. Probably he found himself too weak to cope with the superior number
of his adversaries; publicly he alleged his unwillingness to oppose by a
battle any further obstacle to a renewal of the treaty.[2]
The whole kingdom at this period exhibited a most melancholy spectacle.
No man was suffered to remain neuter. Each county, town, and hamlet was
divided into factions, seeking the ruin. of each other. All stood upon
their guard, while the most active of either
[Footnote 1: Each party published contradictory accounts. I have adhered to
the documents entered in the Journals, which in my opinion show that, if
there was any breach of faith in these transactions, it was on the part of
the parliament, and act of the king.]
[Footnote 2: May, 179. Whitelock, 65, 66. Clarendon, ii. 76.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Nov. 14.]
party eagerly sought the opportunity of despoiling the lands and surprising
the persons of their adversaries. The two great armies, in defiance of the
prohibitions of their leaders, plundered wherever they came, and their
example was faithfully copied by the smaller bodies of armed men in other
districts. The intercourse between distant parts of the country was
interrupted; the operations of commerce were suspended; and every person
possessed of property was compelled to contribute after a certain rate
to the support of that cause which obtained the superiority in his
neighbourhood. In Oxford and its vicinity, in the four northern counties,
in Wales, Shropshire, and Worcestershire, the royalists triumphed without
opposition; in the metropolis, and the adjoining counties, on the southern
and eastern coast, the superiority of the parliament was equally decisive.
But in many parts the adherents of both were intermixed in such different
proportions, and their power and exertions were so variously affected by
the occurrences of each succeeding day, that it became difficult to decide
which of the two parties held the preponderance. But there were four
counties, those of York, Chester, Devon, and Cornwall, in which the leaders
had[a] already learned to abhor the evils of civil dissension. They met
on both sides, and entered into engagements to suspend their political
animosities, to aid each other in putting down the disturbers of the public
peace, and to oppose the introduction, of any armed force, without the
joint consent both of the king and the parliament. Had the other counties
followed the example, the war would have been ended almost as soon as it
began. But this was a consummation which the patriots deprecated. They
pronounced such engagements
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Dec. 23.]
derogatory from the authority of parliament; they absolved their partisans
from the obligations into which they had entered; and they commanded them
once more to unsheath the sword in the cause of their[a] God and their
country.[1]
But it soon became evident that this pacific feeling was not confined to
the more distant counties. It spread rapidly through the whole kingdom; it
manifested itself without disguise even in the metropolis. Mea were anxious
to free themselves from the forced contribution of one-twentieth part of
their estates for the support of the parliamentary army[2] and the citizens
could not forget the alarm which had been created by the late approach
of the royal forces. Petitions for peace, though they were ungraciously
received, continued to load the tables of both houses; and, as the king
himself had proposed a cessation of hostilities, prudence taught the
most sanguine advocates for war to accede to the wishes of the people, A
negotiation was opened at Oxford. The demands of[b] the parliament amounted
to fourteen articles; those of Charles were confined to six. But two only,
the[c] first in each class, came into discussion. No argument[d] could
induce the houses to consent that the king should name to the government of
the forts and castles without their previous approbation of the persons to
be appointed; and he demurred to their proposal that both armies should
be disbanded, until he knew on what conditions he was to return to his
capital. They had limited the duration of the conference to twenty days; he
proposed a prolongation of[e]
[Footnote 1: Journals, 535. Rushworth, v. 100. Clarendon, ii, 136, 139.]
[Footnote 2: Journals, 463, 491, 594, Commons' Journals, Dec. 13. It was
imposed Nov. 29, 1642.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Jan. 7.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. Jan. 30.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. Feb. 3.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1643. March 20.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1643. March 30.]
the term; they refused; and he offered, as his ultimatum, that, whenever he
should be reinstated in the possession of his revenues, magazines, ships,
and[a] forts, according to law; when all the members of parliament, with
the exception of the bishops, should be restored to their seats, as they
held them on the 1st of January, 1641; and when the two houses should be
secure from the influence of tumultuary assemblies, which could only be
effected by an adjournment to some place twenty miles distant from London,
he would consent to the immediate disbanding of both armies, and would meet
his parliament in person. The Commons instantly passed a vote to recall
the[b] commissioners from Oxford; the Lords, though at first they
dissented, were compelled to signify their concurrence; and an end was put
to the treaty, and to[c] the hopes which it had inspired.[1]
During this negotiation the houses left nothing to the discretion of their
commissioners, the earl of Northumberland, Pierrepoint, Armyn, Holland, and
Whitelock. They were permitted to propose and argue; they had no power to
concede.[2] Yet, while they acted in public according to the tenour of
their instructions, they privately gave the king to understand that he
might probably purchase the preservation, of the church by surrendering the
command of the militia,--a concession which his opponents deemed
[Footnote 1: See the whole proceedings relative to the treaty in the king's
works, 325-397; the Journals of the Lords, v. 659-718; and Rushworth,
v. 164-261.]
[Footnote 2: This was a most dilatory and inconvenient arrangement. Every
proposal, or demand, or suggestion front the king was sent to the
parliament, and its expediency debated. The houses generally disagreed.
Conferences were therefore held, and amendments proposed; new
discussions followed, and a week was perhaps consumed before a point of
small importance could be settled.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 12.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. April 14.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. April 17.]
essential to their own security. At one period they indulged a strong hope
of success. At parting, Charles had promised to give them satisfaction, on
the following day; but during the night he was dissuaded from his purpose;
and his answer in the morning proved little short of an absolute denial.
Northumberland also made a secret offer of his influence to mollify the
obstinacy of the patriots; but Charles, who called that nobleman the most
ungrateful of men, received the proposal with displeasure, and to the
importunity of his advisers coldly replied, that the service must come
first and the reward might follow afterwards. Whether the parliament began
to suspect the fidelity of the commissioners, and on that account recalled
them, is unknown. Hyde maintains that the king protracted the negotiation
to give time for the arrival of the queen, without whom he would come to
no determination; but of this not a vestige appears in the private
correspondence between Charles and his consort; and a sufficient reason
for the failure of the treaty may be found in the high pretensions of each
party, neither of whom had been sufficiently humbled to purchase peace with
the sacrifice of honour or safety.[1]
It was owing to the indefatigable exertions of Henrietta, that the king had
been enabled to meet his opponents in the field. During her residence in
[Footnote 1: See Clarendon's Life, 76-80; Whitelock, 68; and the letters in
the king's works, 138-140. Before Henrietta left England, he had promised
her to give away no office without her consent, and not to make peace but
through her mediation. Charles, however, maintained that the first regarded
not offices of state, but offices of the royal household; and the second
seems to have been misunderstood. As far as I can judge, it only meant that
whenever he made peace, he would put her forward as mediatrix, to the end
that, since she had been calumniated as being the cause of the rupture
between him and his people, she might also have in the eyes of the public
the merit of effecting the reconciliation.--Clarendon's Life, ibid.]
[a]Holland she had repeatedly sent him supplies of arms and ammunition,
and, what he equally wanted, of veteran officers to train and discipline
his forces.[b] In February, leaving the Hague, and trusting to her good
fortune, she had eluded the vigilance of Batten, the parliamentary
admiral, and landed in safety in the port of Burlington, on the coast of
Yorkshire.[c] Batten, enraged at his disappointment, anchored on the second
night, with four ships and a pinnace, in the road, and discharged above
one hundred shot at the houses on the quay, in one of which the queen was
lodged.[d] Alarmed at the danger, she quitted her bed, and, "bare foot and
bare leg," sought shelter till daylight behind the nearest hill. No action
of the war was more bitterly condemned by the gallantry of the Cavaliers
than this unmanly attack on a defenceless female, the wife of the
sovereign. The earl of Newcastle hastened to Burlington, and escorted her
with his army to York. To have pursued her journey to Oxford would have
been to throw herself into the arms of her opponents. She remained
four months in Yorkshire, winning the hearts of the inhabitants by her
affability, and quickening their loyalty by her words and example.[1]
During the late treaty every effort had been made to recruit the
parliamentary army; at its expiration, Hampden, who commanded a regiment,
proposed to besiege the king within the city of Oxford. But the ardour of
the patriots was constantly checked by the caution of the officers who
formed the council of war. Essex invested Reading; at the expiration of ten
days[e]
[Footnote 1: Mercurius Belgic. Feb. 24. Michrochronicon, Feb. 24, 1642-3.
Clarendon, ii. 143. According to Rushworth, Batten fired at boats which
were landing ammunition on the quay.]
[Sidenote a: CHAP.I.A.D. 1643]
[Sidenote b: 1643 Feb. 16.]
[Sidenote c: 1643 Feb. 22.]
[Sidenote d: 1643 Feb. 24.]
[Sidenote e: 1643 April 27.]
it capitulated; and Hampden renewed his proposal. But the hardships of the
siege had already broken the health of the soldiers; and mortality and
desertion daily thinned their numbers, Essex found himself compelled to
remain six weeks in his new quarters at Reading.
If the fall of that town impaired the reputation of the royalists, it added
to their strength by the arrival of the four thousand men who had formed
the garrison. But the want of ammunition condemned the king to the same
inactivity to which sickness had reduced his adversaries. Henrietta
endeavoured to supply this deficiency. In May a plentiful convoy [a]
arrived from York; and Charles, before he put his forces in motion, made
another offer of accommodation. By the Lords it was received with respect;
the Commons imprisoned the messenger; and Pym, in their name, impeached the
queen of high treason against the parliament and kingdom.[b] The charge
was met by the royalists with sneers of derision. The Lords declined the
ungracious task of sitting in judgment on the wife of their sovereign;
and the Commons themselves, but it was not till after the lapse of
eight months, yielded to their reluctances and silently dropped the
prosecution.[1]
In the lower house no man had more distinguished himself of late, by the
boldness of his language, and his fearless advocacy of peace, than Edmund
Waller, the poet. In conversation with his intimate friends he had
frequently suggested the formation of a third party, of moderate men, who
should "stand in the gap, and unite the king and the parliament." In
[Footnote 1: Journals, 104, 111, 118, 121, 362. Commons' Journals, May 23,
June 21, July 3, 6, 1644, Jan. 10.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. May 20]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. May 23]
this work they calculated on the co-operation of all the Lords excepting
three, of a considerable number of the lower house, and of the most able
among the advisers of the king at Oxford; and that they might ascertain the
real opinion of the city, they agreed to portion it into districts, to
make lists of the inhabitants, and to divide them into three classes,--of
moderate men, of royalists, and of parliamentarians. The design had been
communicated to Lord Falkland, the king's secretary; but it remained
in this imperfect state, when it was revealed to Pym by the perfidy or
patriotism of a servant, who had overheard the discourse of his master.[a]
Waller, Tomkins his brother-in-law, and half-a-dozen others, were
immediately secured; and an annunciation was made to the two houses of "the
discovery of a horrid plot to seize the city, force the parliament, and
join with the royal army."[1]
The leaders of the patriots eagerly improved this opportunity to quell that
spirit of pacification which had recently insinuated itself among their
partisans. While the public mind was agitated by rumours respecting the
bloody designs of the conspirators, while every moderate man feared that
the expression of his sentiments might be taken as an evidence of his
participation in the plot, they proposed a new oath and covenant to the
House of Commons.[b] No one dared to object; and the members unanimously
swore "never to consent to the laying down of arms, so long as the papists,
in open war against the parliament, should be protected from the justice
thereof, but according to their power and vocation, to assist the forces
raised by the parliament against the forces
[Footnote 1: Journals, June 6.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. May 31]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. June 6]
raised by the king." The Lords, the citizens, the army followed their
example; and an ordinance was published that every man in his parish church
should make the same vow and covenant.[1][a] As for the prisoners, instead
of being sent before a court of law, they were tried by a court-martial.[b]
Six were condemned to die: two suffered.[c] Waller saved his life by the
most abject submission. "He seemed much smitten in conscience: he desired
the help of godly ministers," and by his entreaties induced the Commons to
commute his punishment into a fine of ten thousand pounds and an order
to travel on the continent. To the question why the principal should be
spared, when his assistants suffered, it was answered by some that a
promise of life had been made to induce him to confess, by others that too
much
[Footnote 1: Journals, May 31; June 6, 14, 21, 27, 29. Rushworth, v.
322-333. Whitelock, 67, 70, 105. The preamble began thus: "Whereas there
hath been and now is in this kingdom a popish and traitorous plot for the
subversion of the true Protestant religion, and liberty of the subject,
in pursuance whereof a popish army hath been raised and is now on foot in
divers parts of the kingdom," &c.--Journals, June 6. Lords' Journals, vi.
87. I am loath to charge the framers and supporters of this preamble with
publishing a deliberate falsehood, for the purpose of exciting odium
against the king; but I think it impossible to view their conduct in any
other light. The popish plot and popish army were fictions of their own to
madden the passions of their adherents. Charles, to refute the calumny, as
he was about to receive the sacrament from the hands of Archbishop
Ussher, suddenly rose and addressed him thus, in the hearing of the whole
congregation: "My Lord, I have to the utmost of my soul prepared to become
a worthy receiver; and may I so receive comfort by the blessed sacrament,
as I do intend the establishment of the true reformed Protestant religion,
as it stood in its beauty in the happy days of Queen Elizabeth, without
any connivance at popery. I bless God that in the midst of these publick
distractions I have still liberty to communicate; and may this sacrament
be my damnation, if my heart do not joyn with my lipps in this
protestation."--Rush. v. 346. _Connivance_ was an ambiguous and therefore
an ill-chosen word. He was probably sincere in the sense which _he_
attached to it, but certainly forsworn in the sense in which it would be
taken by his opponents.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. June 27]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. June 30]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. July 5]
blood had already been shed in expiation of an imaginary plot.[1]
In the meanwhile Essex, after several messages from the parliament, had
removed from Reading, and fixed his head-quarters at Tame. One night Prince
Rupert, making a long circuit, surprised Chinnor in the rear of the army,
and killed or captured the greater part of two regiments that lay in the
town.[a] In his retreat to Oxford, he was compelled to turn on his pursuers
at Chalgrove; they charged with more courage than prudence, and were
repulsed with considerable loss. It was in this action that the celebrated
Hampden received the wound of which he died. The reputation which he had
earned by his resistance to the payment of the ship-money had deservedly
placed him at the head of the popular leaders. His insinuating manner, the
modesty of his pretensions, and the belief of his integrity, gave to his
opinions an irresistible weight in the lower house; and the courage and
activity which he displayed in the army led many to lament that he did not
occupy the place held by the more tardy or more cautious earl of Essex. The
royalists exulted at his death as equal to a victory; the patriots lamented
it as a loss which could not be repaired. Both were deceived. Revolutions
are the seed-plots of talents and energy. One great leader had been
withdrawn; there was no dearth of others to supply his place.[2]
[Footnote 1: After a minute investigation, I cannot persuade myself that
Waller and his friends proceeded farther than I have mentioned. What
they might have done, had they not been interrupted, is matter of mere
conjecture. The commission of array, which their enemies sought to couple
with their design, had plainly no relation to it.]
[Footnote 2: Rushworth, v. 265, 274. Whitelock, 69, 70. Clarendon, ii. 237,
261.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. June 18]
To the Root-and-branch men the rank, no less than the inactivity of Essex,
afforded a legitimate ground of suspicion. In proportion as he sank in
their esteem, they were careful to extol the merits and flatter the
ambition of Sir William Waller. Waller had formerly enjoyed a lucrative
office under the crown, but he had been fined in the Star-chamber, and his
wife was a "godly woman;" _her_ zeal and his own resentment made him a
patriot; he raised a troop of horse for the service, and was quickly
advanced to a command. The rapidity of his movements, his daring spirit,
and his contempt of military rules, were advantageously contrasted with
the slow and cautious experience of Essex; and his success at Portsmouth,
Winchester, Chichester, Malmesbury, and Hereford, all of which he reduced
in a short time, entitled him, in the estimation of his admirers, to the
quaint appellation of William the Conqueror. While the forces under Essex
were suffered to languish in a state of destitution,[1] an army of eight
thousand men, well clothed and appointed, was prepared for Waller. But the
event proved that his abilities had been overrated. In the course of a week
he fought two battles, one near Bath, with Prince Maurice,[a] the other
with Lord Wilmot, near Devizes[b]: the first was obstinate but indecisive,
the second bloody and disastrous. Waller hastened from the field to the
capital, attributing the loss of his army, not to his own errors, but
to the jealousy of Essex. His patrons did not abandon their favourite.
Emulating the example of the Romans,
[Footnote 1: His army was reduced to "four thousand or five thousand
men, and these much malcontented that their general and they should be
misprised, and Waller immediately prized."--Baillie, i. 391. He had three
thousand marching men, and three hundred sick.--Journals, vi. 160.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 5]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. July 13]
they met the unfortunate general in triumphal procession, and the speaker
of the Commons officially returned him thanks for his services to his
country.[1][a]
This tone of defiance did not impose on the advocates of peace. Waller's
force was annihilated; the grand army, lately removed to Kingston, had been
so reduced by want and neglect, that Essex refused to give to it the name
of an army; the queen had marched without opposition from Yorkshire to
Oxford, bringing to her husband, who met her on Edge-hill, a powerful
reinforcement of men, artillery, and stores[b]; and Prince Rupert, in the
course of three days, had won the city and castle of Bristol, through the
cowardice or incapacity of Nathaniel Fiennes, the governor.[2][c] The cause
of the parliament seemed to totter on the brink of ruin; and the Lords,
profiting of this moment of alarm, sent to the Commons six resolutions to
form the basis of a new treaty. They were favourably received; and after a
debate, which lasted till ten at night, it was resolved by a majority of
twenty-nine to take them into consideration.[3][d]
But the pacific party had to contend with men of
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 284, 285. Clarendon, ii. 278, 290. Journals,
July 27. May, 201--205. His first successes were attributed to Colonel
Hurry, a Scotsman, though Waller held the nominal command--Baillie, i. 351.
But Hurry, in discontent, passed over to the king, and was the planner of
the expedition which led to the death of Hampden.--Clarendon, ii. 264.
Baillie, i. 371.]
[Footnote 2: Fiennes, to clear himself from the imputation of cowardice,
demanded a court-martial, and Prynne and Walker, who had accused him in
their publications, became the prosecutors. He was found guilty, and
condemned to lose his head, but obtained a pardon from Essex, the
commander-in-chief.--Howell, State Trials, iv. 186-293.]
[Footnote 3: Clarendon Papers, ii. 149. The Lords had in the last month
declared their readiness to treat; but the proceedings had been suspended
in consequence of a royal declaration that the houses were not free, nor
their votes to be considered as the votes of parliament.--Journals, vi. 97,
103, 108.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 27]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. July 13]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. July 27]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1643. August 5]
the most determined energy, whom no dangers could appal, no difficulties
subdue. The next day was Sunday, and it was spent by them in arranging a
new plan of opposition.[a] The preachers from their pulpits described peace
as the infallible ruin of the city; the common council voted a petition,
urging, in the most forcible terms, the continuation of the war; and
placards were affixed in the streets, calling on the inhabitants to rise
as one man, and prevent the triumph of the malignants.[b] The next morning
Alderman Atkins carried the petition to Westminster, accompanied by
thousands calling out for war, and utterings threats of vengeance against
the traitors. Their cries resounded through both the houses. The Lords
resolved to abstain from all public business till tranquillity was
restored, but the Commons thanked the petitioners for their attachment to
the cause of the country. The consideration of the resolutions was then
resumed; terror had driven the more pusillanimous from the house; and on
the second division the war party obtained a majority of seven.[1]
Their opponents, however, might yet have triumphed, had they, as was
originally suggested, repaired to the army, and claimed the protection of
the earl of Essex. But the lord Saye and Mr. Pym hastened to that nobleman
and appeased his discontent with
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 320. Journals, Aug. 5, 7, Lords', vi, 171, 172.
Baillie, i. 390. On the Saturday, the numbers were 94 and 65; on the Monday
81 and 79; but the report of the tellers was disputed, and on the second
division it gave 81 and 89. Two days later, between two thousand and three
thousand women (the men dared mot appear) presented a petition for peace,
and received a civil answer; but as they did not depart, and some of them
used menacing language, they were charged and dispersed by the military,
with the loss of several lives.--Journals, June 9. Clarendon, iii. 321
Baillie. i. 390.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August 6]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 7]
excuses and promises. They offered to punish those who had libelled his
character; they professed an unbounded reliance on his honour; they
assured him that money, clothing, and recruits were already prepared to
re-establish his army. Essex was won; and he informed his friends, that he
could not conscientiously act against the parliament from which he held his
commission. Seven of the lords, almost half of the upper house, immediately
retired from Westminster.[1]
The victorious party proceeded with new vigour in their military
preparations. Measures were taken to recruit to its full complement the
grand army under Essex; and an ordinance was passed to raise a separate
force of ten thousand horse for the protection of the metropolis.
Kimbolton, who on the death of his father had succeeded to the title of
earl of Manchester, received a commission to levy an army in the associated
counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Ely, and Hertford.[2]
Committees were appointed to raise men and money in numerous other
districts, and were invested with almost unlimited powers; for the exercise
of which in the service of the parliament,
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, 323-333. Northumberland repaired to his house at
Petworth; the earls of Bedford, Holland, Portland, and Clare, and the
lords Lovelace and Conway, to the king at Oxford. They were ungraciously
received, and most of them returned to the parliament.]
[Footnote 2: The first association was made in the northern counties by the
earl of Newcastle in favour of the king, and was afterwards imitated by
the counties of Devon and Cornwall. The patriots saw the advantage to be
derived from such unions, and formed several among their partisans. The
members bound themselves to preserve the peace of the associated counties;
if they were royalists, "against the malevolent and ambitious persons who,
in the name of the two houses, had embroiled the kingdom in a civil war;"
if they were parliamentarians, "against the papists and other ill-affected
persons who surrounded the king." In each, regulations were adopted, fixing
the number of men to be levied, armed, and trained, and the money which for
that purpose was to be raised in each township.--Rushworth, v. 66, 94-97,
119, 381.]
they were made responsible to no one but the parliament itself. Sir Henry
Vane, with three colleagues from the lower house, hastened to Scotland to
solicit the aid of a Scottish army; and, that London might be secure from
insult, a line of military communication was ordered to be drawn round the
city. Every morning thousands of the inhabitants, without distinction of
rank, were summoned to the task in rotation; with drums beating and colours
flying they proceeded to the appointed place, and their wives and daughters
attended to aid and encourage them during the term of their labour.[a] In a
few days this great work, extending twelve miles in circuit, was completed,
and the defence of the line, with the command of ten thousand men, was
intrusted to Sir William Waller. Essex, at the repeated request of the
parliament, reluctantly signed the commission, but still refused to insert
in it the name of his rival. The blank was filled up by order of the House
of Commons.[1]
Here, however, it is time to call the attention of the reader to the
opening career of that extraordinary man, who, in the course of the next
ten years, raised himself from the ignoble pursuits of a grazier to the
high dignity of lord protector of the three kingdoms. Oliver Cromwell
was sprung from a younger branch of the Cromwells, a family of note and
antiquity in Huntingdonshire, and widely spread through that county and the
whole of the Fenn district. In the more early part of his life he fell into
a state of profound and prolonged melancholy; and it is plain from the
few and disjointed documents which have come down to us, that his mental
faculties were
[Footnote 1: May, 214. Journals, July 18, 19, 27; Aug. 3, 7, 9, 15, 26.
Lords', vi. 149, 158, 175, 184.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August.]
impaired, that he tormented himself with groundless apprehensions of
impending death, on which account he was accustomed to require the
attendance of his physician at the hour of midnight, and that his
imagination conjured up strange fancies about the cross in the market-place
at Huntingdon,[1] hallucinations which seem to have originated in the
intensity of his religious feelings, for we are assured that "he had spent
the days of his manhood in a dissolute course of life in good fellowship
and gaming;"[2] or, as he expresses it himself, he had been "a chief, the
chief of sinners, and a hater of godliness." However, it pleased "God the
light to enlighten the darkness" of his spirit, and to convince him of
the error and the wickedness of his ways; and from the terrors which
such conviction engendered, seems to have originated that aberration of
intellect, of which he was the victim during great part of two years.
On his recovery he had passed from one extreme to the other, from the
misgivings of despair to the joyful assurance of salvation. He now felt
that he was accepted by God, a vessel of election to work the work of God,
and bound through gratitude "to put himself forth in the cause of the
Lord."[3] This flattering belief, the
[Footnote 1: Warwick's Memoirs, 249. Warwick had his information from Dr.
Simcott, Cromwell's physician, who pronounced him _splenetic_. Sir Theodore
Mayerne was also consulted, who, in his manuscript journal for 1628,
describes his patient as _valde melancholicus_.--Eliis, Orig. Letters, 2nd
series, iii. 248.]
[Footnote 2: Warwick, 249.]
[Footnote 3: In 1638 he thus writes of himself to a female saint, one of
his cousins: "I find that God giveth springs in a dry barren wilderness,
where no water is. I live, you know where, in Meshec, which they say
signifies prolonging,--in Kedar, which signifies blackness. Yet the Lord
forsaketh me not, though he do prolong. Yet he will, I trust, bring me to
his tabernacle, his resting place." If the reader wish to understand this
Cromwellian effusion, let him consult the Psalm cxix. in the Vulgate., or
cxx. in the English translation. He says to the same correspondent, "You
know what my manner of life hath been. Oh! I lived in and loved darkness,
and hated light. I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true. I
hated godliness. Yet God had mercy on me. Oh, the riches of his
mercy!"--Cromwell's Letters and Speeches by Carlyle, i. 121. Warwick bears
testimony to the sincerity of his conversion; "for he declared he was ready
to make restitution to any man who would accuse him, or whom he could
accuse himself to, to have wronged."--Warwick, 249.]
fruit of his malady at Huntingdon, or of his recovery from it, accompanied
him to the close of his career: it gave in his eyes the sanction of Heaven
to the more questionable events in his life, and enabled him to persevere
in habits of the most fervent devotion, even when he was plainly following
the unholy suggestions of cruelty, and duplicity, and ambition.
It was probably to withdraw him from scenes likely to cause the
prolongation or recurrence of his malady, that he was advised to direct
his attention to the pursuits of agriculture. He disposed by sale of his
patrimonial property in Huntingdon, and took a large grazing farm in the
neighbourhood of the little town of St. Ives.[a] This was an obscure, but
tranquil and soothing occupation, which he did not quit till five years
later, when he migrated to Ely, on the death of his maternal uncle, who had
left to him by will the lucrative situation of farmer of the tithes and of
churchlands belonging to the cathedral of that city. Those stirring
events followed, which led to the first civil war; Cromwell's enthusiasm
rekindled, the time was come "to put himself forth in the cause of the
Lord," and that cause he identified in his own mind with the cause of the
country party in opposition to the sovereign and the church. The energy
with which he entered into the controversies of the time attracted public
notice, and the burgesses of Cambridge chose him for their representative
in both the parliaments called by the king in 1640. He carried with him to
the house the simplicity of dress, and the awkwardness of manner, which
bespoke the country farmer; occasionally he rose to speak, and then, though
his voice was harsh, his utterance confused, and his matter unpremeditated,
yet he seldom failed to command respect and attention by the originality
and boldness of his views, the fervour with which he maintained them, and
the well-known energy and inflexibility of his character.[1] It was not,
however, before the year 1642 that he took his place among the leaders of
the party. Having been appointed one of the committees for the county
of Cambridge and the isle of Ely, he hastened down to Cambridge, took
possession of the magazine, distributed the arms among the burgesses, and
prevented the colleges from sending their plate to the king at Oxford.[a]
From the town he transferred his services to the district committed to his
charge. No individual of suspicious or dangerous principles, no secret plan
or association of the royalists, could elude his vigilance and activity. At
the head of a military force he was everywhere present, making inquiries,
inflicting punishments, levying weekly the weekly assessments, impressing
men, horses, and stores, and exercising with relentless severity all those
repressive and vindictive powers with which the recent ordinances had armed
the committees. His exertions were duly appreciated. When the parliament
selected officers to command the seventy-five troops of horse, of sixty men
each, in the new army under the earl of Essex,[b] farmer Cromwell received
the
[Footnote 1: Warwick, 247]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. August. 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Sept. 14.]
commission of captain; within six months afterwards, he was raised to the
higher rank of colonel, with permission to levy for himself a regiment of
one thousand horse out of the trained bands in the Eastern association.[a]
To the sentiment of honour, which animated the Cavaliers in the field, he
resolved to oppose the energy which is inspired by religious enthusiasm.
Into the ranks of his _Ironsides_--their usual designation--he admitted no
one who was not a freeholder, or the son of a freeholder, and at the same
time a man fearing God, a known professor of godliness, and one who would
make it his duty and his pride to execute justice on the enemies of
God.[1] Nor was he disappointed. The soldiers of the Lord of Hosts proved
themselves a match for the soldiers of the earthly monarch. At their head
the colonel, by his activity and daring, added new laurels to those which
he had previously won; and parliament, as a proof of confidence, appointed
him military governor of a very important post, the isle of Ely.[b] Lord
Grey of Werke held at that time the command of the army in the Eastern
association; but Grey was superseded by the earl of Manchester, and Colonel
Cromwell speedily received the commission of lieutenant-general under that
commander.[2][c]
But to return to the general narrative, which has been interrupted to
introduce Cromwell to the reader,
[Footnote 1: Cromwell tells us of one of them, Walton, the son of Colonel
Walton, that in life he was a precious young man fit for God, and at his
death, which was caused by a wound received in battle, became a glorious
saint in heaven. To die in such a cause was to the saint a "comfort great
above his pain. Yet one thing hung upon his spirit. I asked him what
that was. He told me, that God had not suffered him to be any more the
executioner of His enemies."--Ellis, first series, iii. 299.]
[Footnote 2: See Cromwelliana, 1--7; May, 206, reprint of 1812; Lords'
Journ. iv. 149; Commons', iii. 186.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. March 2.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. July 28.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. August 8.]
London was preserved from danger, not by the new lines of circumvallation,
or the prowess of Waller, but through the insubordination which prevailed
among the royalists. The earl, now marquess, of Newcastle, who had
associated the northern counties in favour of the king, had defeated the
lord Fairfax, the parliamentary general, at Atherton Moor, in Yorkshire,
and retaken Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, from the army under Cromwell.
Here, however, his followers refused to accompany him any further. It was
in vain that he called upon them to join the grand army in the south, and
put an end at once to the war by the reduction of the capital. They had
been embodied for the defence of the northern counties, and could not
be induced to extend the limits of that service for which they had been
originally enrolled. Hence the king, deprived of one half of his expected
force, was compelled to adopt a new plan of operations. Turning his back on
London, he hastened towards the Severn, and invested Gloucester, the only
place of note in the midland counties which admitted the authority of
the parliament.[a] That city was defended by Colonel Massey, a brave and
determined officer, with an obstinacy equal to its importance; and Essex,
at the head of twelve thousand men, undertook to raise the siege. The
design was believed impracticable; but all the attempts of the royalists
to impede his progress were defeated;[b] and on the twenty-sixth day the
discharge of four pieces of cannon from Presbury Hills announced his
arrival to the inhabitants.[c] The besiegers burnt their huts and
retired;[d] and Essex, having spent a few days to recruit his men and
provision the place, resumed his march in the direction of London.[e] On
his approach to Newbury,
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August 10.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 26.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1643. Sept. 5.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1643. Sept. 6.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1643. Sept. 19.]
he found the royal army in possession of the road before him. I shall not
attempt to describe a conflict which has been rendered unintelligible by
the confused and discordant narratives of different writers. The king's
cavalry appears to have been more than a match for that of the enemy;
but it could make no impression on the forest of pikes presented by the
infantry, the greater part of which consisted of the trained bands from the
capital. The battle raged till late in the evening, and both armies passed
the night in the field, but in the morning the king allowed Essex to march
through Newbury; and having ordered Prince Rupert to annoy the rear,
retired with his infantry to Oxford. The parliamentarians claimed, and
seem to have been justified in claiming, the victory; but their commander,
having made his triumphal entry into the capital, solicited permission to
resign his command and travel on the continent. To those who sought to
dissuade him, he objected the distrust with which he had been treated, and
the insult which had been offered to him by the authority intrusted to
Waller. Several expedients were suggested; but the lord general was aware
of his advantage; his jealousy could not be removed by adulation or
submission; and Waller, after a long struggle, was compelled to resign the
command of the army intrusted with the defence of the capital.[1][a]
As soon as the parliament had recovered from the alarm occasioned by the
loss of Bristol, it had found leisure to devote a part of its attention to
the civil government of the kingdom. I. Serious inconveniences
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 286, 290, 293. May, 220-228. Clarendon, iii,
347. Journals, Sept. 26, 28; Oct. 7, 9. Lords', vi. 218, 242, 246, 247,
347, 356.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Oct. 9.]
had been experienced from the absence of the great seal, the application
of which was held by the lawyers necessary to give validity to several
descriptions of writs. Of this benefit the two houses and their adherents
were deprived, while the king on his part was able to issue patents and
commissions in the accustomed form. To remedy the evil, the Commons had
voted a new seal;[a] the Lords demurred; but at last their consent was
extorted:[b] commissioners were appointed to execute the office of lord
keeper, and no fewer than five hundred writs were sealed in one day. 2. The
public administration of justice had been suspended for twelve months. The
king constantly adjourned the terms from Westminster to Oxford, and the two
houses as constantly forbade the judges to go their circuits during the
vacations. Now, however, under the authority of the new seal, the courts
were opened. The commissioners sat in Chancery, and three judges, all that
remained with the parliament, Bacon, Reeve, and Trevor, in those of the
King's Bench, the Common Pleas, and the Exchequer. 3. The prosecution of
the judges on account of their opinions in the case of the ship-money
was resumed. Of those who had been impeached, two remained, Berkeley and
Trevor. The first was fined in twenty, the second in six, thousand pounds.
Berkeley obtained the remission of a moiety of the fine, and both were
released from the imprisonment to which they were adjudged.[1]
Ever since the beginning of the troubles, a thorough understanding had
existed between the chief of the Scottish Covenanters, and the principal of
the English
[Footnote 1: Lords' Journals, vi. 214, 252, 264, 301, 318. Commons'
Journals, May 15; July 5; Sept. 28. Rushworth, v. 144, 145, 339, 342, 361.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. Oct. 11.]
reformers. Their views were similar; their object the same. The Scots had,
indeed, fought and won; but they held the fruit of their victory by a
doubtful tenure, as long as the fate of their "English brethren" depended
on the uncertain chances of war. Both policy and religion prompted them to
interfere. The triumph of the parliament would secure their own liberties;
it might serve to propagate the pure worship of their kirk. This had been
foreseen by the Scottish royalists, and Montrose, who by the act against
the plotters was debarred from all access to the king, took advantage of
the queen's debarkation at Burlington to visit her at York. He pointed out
to her the probability of the Scottish Covenanters sending their army to
the aid of the parliament, and offered to prevent the danger by levying in
Scotland an army of ten thousand royalists. But he was opposed by his enemy
the marquess of Hamilton, who deprecated the arming of Scot against Scot,
and engaged on his own responsibility to preserve the peace between the
Scottish people and their sovereign. His advice, prevailed; the royalists
in Scotland were ordered to follow him as their leader; and, to keep him
true to the royal interest, the higher title of duke was conferred upon
him.[1]
If Hamilton was sincere, he had formed a false notion of his own
importance. The Scottish leaders, acting as if they were independent of the
sovereign, summoned a convention of estates. The estates met[a] in defiance
of the king's prohibition; but, to their surprise and mortification, no
commissioner had arrived from the English parliament. National jealousy,
the known intolerance of the Scottish kirk, the exorbitant
[Footnote 1: Clarendon, iv. 624. Guthrie, 127.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. June 22.]
claims set up by the Scottish leaders in the late invasion, contributed to
deter many from accepting their new offers of assistance;[1] and more than
two months were suffered to elapse before the commissioners, Vane, Armyn,
Hatcher, and Darley, with Marshall, a Presbyterian, and Nye, an Independent
divine, were despatched[a] with full powers to Scotland.[2] Both the
convention of the estates and the assembly of the kirk had long waited to
receive them; their arrival[b] was celebrated as a day of national triumph;
and the letters which they delivered from the English parliament were read
with shouts of exultation and tears of joy.[3]
In the very outset of the negotiation two important difficulties occurred.
The Scots professed a willingness to take up arms, but sought at the same
time to assume the character of mediators and umpires, to dictate the terms
of reconciliation, and to place themselves in a condition to extort the
consent of the opposite parties. From these lofty pretensions they were
induced to descend by the obstinacy of Vane and the persuasions of Johnston
of Wariston, one of their subtlest statesmen; they submitted to act as the
allies of the parliament; but required as an indispensable
[Footnote 1: "The jealousy the English have of our nation, beyond all
reason, is not well taken. If Mr. Meldrum bring no satisfaction to
us quickly as to conformity of church government, it will be a great
impediment in their affairs here."--Baillie, July 26, i. 372. See also
Dalrymple, ii. 144.]
[Footnote 2: The Scots did not approve of this mission of the Independent
ministers. "Mr. Marshall will be most welcome; but if Mr. Nye, the head of
the Independents, be his fellow, we cannot take it well."--Baillie, i. 372.
They both preached before the Assembly. "We heard Mr. Marshall with great
contentment. Mr. Nye did not please. He touched neither in prayer or
preaching the common business. All his sermon was on the common head of
spiritual life, wherein he ran out above all our understandings."--Id.
388.]
[Footnote 3: Baillie, i. 379, 380. Rushworth, v. 467, 470.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. July 20.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 27.]
preliminary, the sanction of the kirk. It was useless to reply that this
was a civil, and not a religious treaty. The Scots rejoined, that the two
houses had always announced the reformation of religion as the chief of
their objects; that they had repeatedly expressed their wish of "a nearer
union of both churches;" and that, in their last letters to the Assembly,
they had requested the members to aid them with their prayers and
influence, to consult with their commissioners, and to send some Scottish
ministers to join the English divines assembled at Westminster.[1] Under
these circumstances, Vane and his colleagues could not refuse to admit a
deputation from the Assembly, with Henderson the moderator at its head. He
submitted to their consideration the form of a "solemn league and covenant"
which should bind the two nations to prosecute the public incendiaries, to
preserve the king's life and authority in defence of the true religion
and the liberties of both kingdoms, to extirpate popery, prelacy, heresy,
schism, and profaneness, and to establish a conformity of doctrine,
discipline, and church government throughout the island. This last clause
alarmed the commissioners. They knew that, though the majority of the
parliamentarians inclined to the Presbyterian tenets, there existed among
them a numerous and most active party (and of these Vane himself was among
the most distinguished) who deemed all ecclesiastical authority an invasion
of the rights of conscience; and they saw that, to introduce an obligation
so repugnant to the principles of the latter, would be to provoke an open
rupture, and to marshal the two sects in hostile array against each other.
But the zeal of the
[Footnote 1: Journals, vi. 140.]
Scottish theologians was inexorable; they refused to admit any opening to
the toleration of the Independents; and it was with difficulty that they
were at last persuaded to intrust the working of the article to two
or three individuals of known and approved orthodoxy. By these it was
presented in a new and less objectionable form, clothed in such happy
ambiguity of language, as to suit the principles and views of all parties.
It provided that the kirk should be preserved in its existing purity, and
the church of England "be reformed according to the word of God" (which the
Independents would interpret in their own sense), and "after the example
of the best reformed churches," among which the Scots could not doubt that
theirs was entitled to the first place. In this shape, Henderson, with an
appropriate preface, laid[a] the league and covenant before the Assembly;
several speakers, admitted into the secret, commended it in terms of the
highest praise, and it was immediately approved, without one dissentient
voice.[1]
As soon as the covenant, in its amended shape, had received the sanction of
the estates, the most eloquent pens were employed to quicken the flame of
enthusiasm. The people were informed,[b] in the cant language of the time,
1. that the controversy in England was between the Lord Jesus, and the
antichrist with his followers; the call was clear; the curse of Meroz would
light on all who would not come to help the Lord against the mighty: 2.
that both kirks and kingdoms were in imminent danger; they sailed in one
bottom, dwelt in one house, and were members of one body; if either were
ruinated, the other could not subsist; Judah could not long continue in
liberty, if
[Footnote 1: Baillie, i. 381. Clarendon, iii. 368-384.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. August 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 24.]
Israel were led away captive: and 3. that they had now a fair opportunity
of advancing uniformity in discipline and worship; the English had already
laid the foundation of a good building by casting out that great idol,
prelacy; and it remained for the Scots to rear the edifice and in God's
good time to put on the cap-stone. The clergy called on their hearers "to
turn to God by fasting and prayer;" a proclamation was issued summoning all
the lieges between the ages of sixteen and sixty to appear in arms; and the
chief command of the forces was, at the request of the parliament, accepted
by Leslie, the veteran general of the Covenanters in the last war. He had,
indeed, made a solemn promise to the king, when he was created earl of
Leven, never more to bear arms against him; but he now recollected that it
was with the reservation, if not expressed, at least understood, of all
cases in which liberty or religion might be at stake.[1]
In England the covenant, with some amendments was approved by the two
houses, and ordered to be taken and subscribed by all persons in office,
and generally by the whole nation. The Commons set[a] the example; the
Lords, with an affectation of dignity which exposed them to some sarcastic
remarks, waited till it had previously been taken by the Scots. At the same
time a league of "brotherly assistance" was negotiated, stipulating that
the estates should aid the parliament with an army of twenty-one thousand
men; that they should place a Scottish garrison in Berwick, and dismantle
the town at the conclusion of the war;[b]
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 472, 482, 492. Journals, 139, 312. Baillie,
i. 390, 391. "The chief aim of it was for the propagation of our church
discipline in England and Ireland."--Id. 3.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. Sept. 25.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. Nov. 29.]
and that their forces should be paid by England at the rate of thirty-one
thousand pounds per month, should receive for their outfit an advance
of one hundred thousand pounds, besides a reasonable recompense at the
establishment of peace, and should have assigned to them as security the
estates of the papists, prelates, and malignants in Nottinghamshire and the
five northern counties. On the arrival of sixty thousand pounds the levies
began; in a few weeks they were completed; and before the end of the
year Leslie mustered his forces at Hairlaw, the appointed place of
rendezvous.[1]
This formidable league, this union, cemented by interest and fanaticism,
struck alarm into the breasts of the royalists. They had found it difficult
to maintain their ground against the parliament alone; they felt unequal to
the contest with a new and powerful enemy. But Charles stood undismayed; of
a sanguine disposition, and confident in the justice of his cause, he saw
no reason to despond; and, as he had long anticipated, so had he prepared
to meet, this additional evil. With this view he had laboured to secure
the obedience of the English army in Ireland against the adherents and
emissaries of the parliament. Suspecting the fidelity of Leicester, the
lord lieutenant, he contrived to detain him in England; gave to the
commander-in-chief, the earl of Ormond, who was raised to the higher rank
of marquess, full authority to
[Footnote 1: Journals, Sept. 14, 21, 25; Oct. 3; Dec. 8. Lords' Journals,
vi. 220-224, 243, 281, 289, 364. The amendments were the insertion of
"the church of Ireland" after that of England, an explanation of the
word prelacy, and the addition of a marginal note, stating, that by the
expression "according to the word of God," was meant "so far as we do
or shall in our consciences conceive the same according to the word of
God."--Journals, Sept. 1, 2.]
dispose of commissions in the army; and appointed Sir Henry Tichborne lord
justice in the place of Parsons. The commissioners sent by the two houses
were compelled[a] to leave the island; and four of the counsellors, the
most hostile to his designs, were imprisoned[b] under a charge of high
treason.[1]
So many reinforcements had successively been poured into Ireland, both from
Scotland and England, that the army which opposed the insurgents was at
length raised to fifty thousand men;[2] but of these the Scots seemed to
attend to their private interests more than the advancement of the common
cause; and the English were gradually reduced in number by want, and
desertion, and the casualties of war. They won, indeed, several battles;
they burnt and demolished many villages and towns; but the evil of
devastation recoiled upon themselves, and they began to feel the horrors of
famine in the midst of the desert which they had made. Their applications
for relief were neglected by the parliament, which had converted to its own
use a great part of the money raised for the service of Ireland, and felt
little inclination to support an army attached to the royal cause. The
officers remonstrated in free though respectful language, and the failure
of their hopes embittered their discontent, and attached them more closely
to the sovereign.[3]
In the meanwhile, the Catholics, by the establishment of a federative
government, had consolidated their power, and given an uniform direction to
their efforts. It was the care of their leaders to copy the example given
by the Scots during the successful war
[Footnote 1: Carte's Ormond, i. 421, 441; iii. 76, 125, 135.]
[Footnote 2: Journals, v. 226.]
[Footnote 3: Clarendon, iii. 415-418, 424. Carte's Ormond, iii. 155, 162,
164.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1643. April 3.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1643. August 1.]
of the Covenant. Like them they professed a sincere attachment to the
person, a profound respect for the legitimate authority of the monarch; but
like them they claimed the right of resisting oppression, and of employing
force in defence of their religion and liberties. At their request, and in
imitation of the general assembly of the Scottish kirk, a synod of Catholic
prelates and divines was convened at Kilkenny; a statement[a] of the
grievances which led the insurgents to take up arms was placed before them;
and they decided that the grounds were sufficient, and the war was lawful,
provided it were not conducted through motives of personal interest or
hatred, nor disgraced by acts of unnecessary cruelty. An oath and covenant
was ordered to be taken, binding the subscribers to protect, at the risk of
their lives and fortunes, the freedom of the Catholic worship, the person,
heirs, and rights of the sovereign, and the lawful immunities and liberties
of the kingdom of Ireland, against all usurpers and invaders whomsoever;
and excommunication was pronounced against all Catholics who should abandon
the covenant or assist their enemies, against all who should forcibly
detain in their possession the goods of English or Irish Catholics, or of
Irish Protestants not adversaries to the cause, and against all who should
take advantage of the war, to murder, wound, rob, or despoil others. By
common consent a supreme council of twenty-four members was chosen, with
Lord Mountgarret as president; and a day was appointed for a national
assembly, which, without the name, should assume the form and exercise the
rights of a parliament.[1]
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, v. 516. Vindiciae Cath. Hib. 4-7. This work has
often been attributed to Sir Rich. Belling, but Walsh (Pref. to Hist. of
Remonstrance, 45) says that the real author was Dr. Callaghan, presented by
the supreme council to the see of Waterford.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. May 10.]
This assembly gave stability to the plan of government devised by the
leaders. The authority of the statute law was acknowledged, and for its
administration a council was established[a] in each county. From the
judgment of this tribunal there lay an appeal to the council of the
province, which in its turn acknowledged the superior jurisdiction of "the
supreme council of the confederated Catholics in Ireland." For the conduct
of the war four generals were appointed, one to lead the forces of each
province, Owen O'Neil in Ulster, Preston in Leinster, Barry Garret in
Munster, and John Burke in Connaught, all of them officers of experience
and merit, who had relinquished their commands in the armies of foreign
princes, to offer their services to their countrymen. Aware that these
regulations amounted to an assumption of the sovereign authority, they
were careful to convey to the king new assurances of their devotion to his
person, and to state to him reasons in justification of their conduct.
Their former messengers, though Protestants of rank and acknowledged
loyalty, had been arrested, imprisoned, and, in one instance at least,
tortured by order of their enemies. They now adopted a more secure channel
of communication, and transmitted their petitions through the hands of the
commander-in-chief. In these the supreme council detailed a long list of
grievances which they prayed might be redressed. They repelled with warmth
the imputation of disloyalty or rebellion. If they had taken up arms, they
had been compelled by a succession of injuries beyond human endurance, of
injuries in their religion, in their
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 1.]
honour and estates, and in the liberties of their country. _Their_ enemies
were the enemies of the king.