1. The English Parliament call in the Scots, to invade their king, and
are invaded themselves by the same Scots, in defence of the king whose
case, and the design of the Parliament, the Scots had mistaken.
2. The Scots, who unjustly assisted the Parliament to conquer their
lawful sovereign, contrary to their oath of allegiance, and without
any pretence on the king's part, are afterwards absolutely conquered
and subdued by the same Parliament they assisted.
3. The Parliament, who raised an army to depose their king, deposed by
the very army they had raised.
4. The army broke three Parliaments, and are at last broke by a free
Parliament; and all they had done by the military power, undone at
once by the civil.
5. Abundance of the chief men, who by their fiery spirits involved the
nation in a civil war, and took up arms against their prince, first or
last met with ruin or disgrace from their own party.
(1.) Sir John Hotham and his son, who struck the first stroke, both
beheaded or hanged by the Parliament.
(2.) Major-General Massey three times taken prisoner by them, and once
wounded at Worcester.
(3.) Major-General Langhorn, (4.) Colonel Poyer, and (5.) Colonel
Powell, changed sides, and at last taken, could obtain no other favour
than to draw lots for their lives; Colonel Poyer drew the dead lot,
and was shot to death.
(6.) Earl of Holland: who, when the House voted who should be
reprieved, Lord Goring, who had been their worst enemy, or the Earl of
Holland, who excepting one offence, had been their constant servant,
voted Goring to be spared, and the Earl to die.
(7.) The Earl of Essex, their first general;
(8.) Sir William Waller;
(9.) Lieutenant-General Ludlow;
(10.) The Earl of Manchester;
--all disgusted and voted out of the army, though they had stood the
first shock of the war, to make way for the new model of the army, and
introduce a party.
* * * * *
In all these confusions I have observed two great errors, one of the
king, and one of his friends.
Of the king, that when he was in their custody, and at their mercy,
he did not comply with their propositions of peace, before their army,
for want of employment, fell into heats and mutinies; that he did not
at first grant the Scots their own conditions, which, if he had done,
he had gone into Scotland; and then, if the English would have fought
the Scots for him, he had a reserve of his loyal friends, who would
have had room to have fallen in with the Scots to his assistance,
who were after dispersed and destroyed in small parties attempting to
serve him.
While his Majesty remained at Newcastle, the queen wrote to him,
persuading him to make peace upon any terms; and in politics her
Majesty's advice was certainly the best. For, however low he was
brought by a peace, it must have been better than the condition he was
then in.
The error I mention of the king's friends was this, that after they
saw all was lost, they could not be content to sit still, and reserve
themselves for better fortunes, and wait the happy time when the
divisions of the enemy would bring them to certain ruin; but must
hasten their own miseries by frequent fruitless risings, in the face
of a victorious enemy, in small parties; and I always found these
effects from it:--
1. The enemy, who were always together by the ears, when they were let
alone, were united and reconciled when we gave them any interruption;
as particularly, in the case of the first assault the army made upon
them, when Colonel Pride, with his regiment, garbled the House, as
they called it. At that time a fair opportunity offered; but it was
omitted till it was too late. That insult upon the House had been
attempted the year before, but was hindered by the little insurrection
of the royal party, and the sooner they had fallen out, the better.
2. These risings being desperate, with vast disadvantages, and always
suppressed, ruined all our friends; the remnants of the Cavaliers were
lessened, the stoutest and most daring were cut off, and the king's
interest exceedingly weakened, there not being less than 30,000 of
his best friends cut off in the several attempts made at Maidstone,
Colchester, Lancashire, Pembroke, Pontefract, Kingston, Preston,
Warrington, Worcester, and other places. Had these men all reserved
their fortunes to a conjunction with the Scots, at either of the
invasions they made into this kingdom, and acted with the conduct and
courage they were known masters of, perhaps neither of those Scots
armies had been defeated.
But the impatience of our friends ruined all; for my part, I had as
good a mind to put my hand to the ruin of the enemy as any of them,
but I never saw any tolerable appearance of a force able to match the
enemy, and I had no mind to be beaten and then hanged. Had we let them
alone, they would have fallen into so many parties and factions, and
so effectually have torn one another to pieces, that whichsoever party
had come to us, we should, with them, have been too hard for all the
rest.
This was plain by the course of things afterwards; when the
Independent army had ruffled the Presbyterian Parliament, the soldiery
of that party made no scruple to join us, and would have restored the
king with all their hearts, and many of them did join us at last.
And the consequence, though late, ended so; for they fell out so
many times, army and Parliament, Parliament and army, and alternately
pulled one another down so often till at last the Presbyterians who
began the war, ended it, and, to be rid of their enemies, rather than
for any love to the monarchy, restored King Charles the Second, and
brought him in on the very day that they themselves had formerly
resolved the ruin of his father's government, being the 29th of May,
the same day twenty years that the private cabal in London concluded
their secret league with the Scots, to embroil his father King Charles
the First.
[Footnote 1: General Ludlow, in his Memoirs, p. 52, says their men
returned from Warwick to London, not like men who had obtained a
victory, but like men that had been beaten.]