THE NEW MODEL ARMY AND THE PRESBYTERIANS.
The New Model Army had been accepted by both Houses and by both parties
in either House, because in no other way could the difficulties of
the situation be met. The failure of the negotiations at Uxbridge had
convinced the Presbyterians--at least for the moment--that Charles
would give no help towards the settlement of the nation on any basis
that their narrow minds could recognise as acceptable, and if the war
was to be continued, what prospect was there of success under the old
conditions? Nevertheless, the creation of the New Model was, in the
main, Cromwell's work. Men are led by their passions more than by
their reason, and if Cromwell had continued his invectives against
Manchester, he would have roused an opposition which would have left
little chance of the realisation of the hopes which he cherished most
deeply in his heart. All through the discussion he had shown not only a
readiness to sacrifice his own personal interests, but a determination
to avoid even criticism of the actions of his opponents in all matters
of less importance, provided that he had his way in the one thing
most important of all. Without a word of censure he had left the
Presbyterians not only to negotiate with Charles, but to pass votes for
the establishment of intolerant Presbyterianism in England. The skill
with which he avoided friction by keeping himself in the background,
whilst he allowed others to work for him, doubtless contributed much
to his success. It revealed the highest qualities of statesmanship on
the hypothesis that he was acting with a single eye to the public good.
It revealed the lowest arts of the trickster, on the hypothesis that
he was scheming for his own ultimate advantage. As human nature is
constituted, there would be many who would convince themselves that the
lower interpretation of his conduct was the true one.
At all events, the New Model Army was being brought into shape in
the spring of 1645. It was composed partly of men pressed into the
service, partly of soldiers who had served in former armies. That
the Puritan, and even the Independent element, was well represented
amongst the cavalry of which Cromwell's troops formed the nucleus,
there can be little doubt; and even amongst the infantry, the fact
that it could only be recruited from those parts of England which at
that time acknowledged the authority of the Houses, and that in those
counties Puritanism was especially rife, would naturally introduce
into the ranks a considerable number of Puritans, whether Independent
or not. The army, however, was certainly not formed on the principles
which had guided Cromwell in the selection of his first troopers, and
indeed it was impossible to select 30,000 men on the exclusive plan
which had been found possible in the enlistment of a single troop or
a single regiment. What chiefly--so far as the rank and file were
concerned--distinguished the New Model from preceding armies was that
it was regularly paid. Hitherto the soldiers had been dependent on
intermittent Parliamentary grants, or still more intermittent efforts
of local committees. All this was now to be changed. A regular taxation
was assessed on the counties for the support of the new army, and the
constant pay thus secured was likely to put an end to the desertions on
a large scale which had afflicted former commanders, thus rendering it
possible to bring the new force under rigorous discipline, a discipline
which punished even more severely offences against morality than those
directed against military efficiency.
The higher the state of discipline the more important is the selection
of officers; and here at least Cromwell's views had full scope. On
the mere ground that it was desirable to place command in the hands
of those who were most strenuous in the prosecution of the war, the
preference was certain to be given to men who were least hampered by
a desire to make terms with an unbeaten King--in other words, to
Independents rather than to Presbyterians. In another way Cromwell's
ideas were carried out. "I had rather," he had once said, "have a plain
russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he
knows, than that which you call a gentleman and nothing else. I honour
a gentleman that is so indeed." There was no distinction of social
rank amongst the officers of the New Model. Amongst them were men of
old families such as Fairfax and Montague, side by side with Hewson,
the cobbler, and Pride, the drayman. If ever the army should be drawn
within the circle of politics, much would follow from the adoption of a
system of promotion which grounded itself on military efficiency alone.
For the present the services of the new army were required solely
in the field. On April 20 Cromwell, who was permitted to retain his
commission forty days after the ordinance had passed, and whose
allotted term had not yet expired, was sent with his cavalry to sweep
round the King's head-quarters at Oxford in order to break up his
arrangements for sending out the artillery needed by Rupert if he was
again to take the field. Cromwell's movement was completely successful.
He not only scattered a Royalist force at Islip, and captured
Blechington House by sheer bluff, but he swept up all the draught
horses on which Charles had counted for the removal of the guns, and
thus incapacitated the enemy from immediate action. Rupert had to wait
patiently for some time before he could leave his quarters.
It is seldom that men realise at first the necessary consequences of
an important change, and, on this occasion, the Committee of Both
Kingdoms and the Parliament itself were slow to discover that, if the
new army was to achieve victory, its movements must be guided, not by
politicians at Westminster, but by the general in the field. The first
act of the Committee was to send Fairfax with eleven thousand men to
the relief of Taunton, where Blake, who not long before had defended
Lyme against all the efforts of the Royalists to take it, was now
holding out to the last with scanty protection from the fortifications
he had improvised. The Committee's orders, necessary perhaps at first,
were persisted in even after it was known that Charles had been joined
at Oxford by the field army which had hitherto protected the besiegers
of Taunton in the West, and that, whilst a much smaller force than
eleven thousand men would be now sufficient to raise the siege, every
soldier that could be spared was needed farther east. The next blunder
of the Committee was even worse. Charles had marched to the North with
all the force he could gather, in the hope of undoing the consequences
of Marston Moor. If there was one lesson which the Committee ought
to have learnt from the campaign of the preceding year it was that
it is useless to besiege towns whilst the enemy's army remains
unbeaten in the field. Yet when every military consideration spoke
with no uncertain voice for the policy of following up Charles's army
without remission till it had been defeated, the sage Committee-men
at Westminster ordered Fairfax to besiege Oxford. Charles, at liberty
to direct his movements where he would, had been deflected from his
course, and on May 31 had stormed Leicester. The news shook the
Committee's resolution to keep the direction of the army in its own
feeble hands. On June 2 it directed Fairfax to break up the siege of
Oxford. On the 4th a petition from the London Common Council asked
that, though the forty days during which Cromwell kept his appointment
under the Self-Denying Ordinance had now elapsed, he might be placed at
the head of a new army to be raised in the Eastern Association. Another
petition from Fairfax's officers asked that he might be placed in the
vacant lieutenant-generalship. The Commons agreed, but, for the present
at least, the Lords withheld their consent. At a later time, when
events had rendered refusal impossible, the Lords gave their consent
to an appointment for which Cromwell was certainly not disqualified by
anything in the Self-Denying Ordinance in the form in which they had
allowed it to pass; considering that that Ordinance merely demanded
the surrender of his commission, without imposing any bar to his
reappointment.
When on June 14 the army under Fairfax found itself in presence of the
King at Naseby, Cromwell was once more in command of the horse. As
usual in those days the infantry was in the centre. On the two wings
were the cavalry, that on the right under Cromwell in person, that on
the left under Ireton. Ireton was driven back by Rupert, who, having
learned nothing since his headlong charge at Edgehill, dashed in
pursuit without a moment's thought for the fortunes of the remainder
of the King's army. Cromwell, after driving off the horse opposed to
him, drew rein, as he had done at Marston Moor, to watch the sway of
the battle he had left behind him. Seeing his duty clear, he left three
regiments to continue the pursuit, and with the remainder fell upon the
Royalist infantry, and with the help of Fairfax's own foot destroyed or
captured the whole body. Rupert returned too late to do anything but
join Charles in his flight. Five thousand prisoners had been taken, of
whom no less than five hundred were officers, while Charles's whole
train of artillery remained in the hands of the victors. That Cromwell
had contributed more than any other man to this crushing victory was
beyond dispute.
Cromwell, as was his usual habit, ascribed this success to Divine
aid. "I can say this of Naseby," he wrote, "that when I saw the enemy
draw up and march in gallant order towards us, and we a company of
poor ignorant men to seek to order our battle, the General having
commanded me to order all the horse, I could not--riding alone about
my business--but smile out to God praises in assurance of victory,
because God would, by things that are not, bring to naught things that
are, of which I had great assurance--and God did it." No doubt, as has
been said, Cromwell omitted to mention that the Parliamentary army had
numbers on its side--not much less than 14,000, opposed to 7,500. But
it was not the numerical superiority of the Parliamentarians which won
the day. It did not enable Ireton to withstand Rupert, and the infantry
in the centre was already giving way when Cromwell returned to assist
it. It was the discipline rather than the numbers of Cromwell's horse
aided by the superb generalship of their commander that gained the day.
Cromwell, when he wrote of his soldiers as 'poor ignorant men,' was
doubtless glancing back in thought at his own early criticism of the
fugitives at Edgehill. The yeomen and peasants whom he had gathered
round him owed much to discipline and leadership; but they owed much
also to the belief embedded in their hearts that they were fighting in
the cause of God.
After the victory at Naseby the issue of the struggle was practically
decided. There was another fight at Langport, where Fairfax defeated a
force with which Goring attempted to guard the western counties; but
after this the war resolved itself into a succession of sieges which
could end but in one way as Charles had no longer a field army to
bring to the relief of Royalist garrisons. For some months Cromwell,
sometimes in combination with Fairfax, sometimes in temporary command
of a separate force, was untiring in the energy which he threw into
his work. Charles was full of combinations which never resulted in
practical advantage to his cause. At one time his hopes were set upon
Montrose, who, after his brilliant victories, expected to bring an
army of Highlanders to aid of the royal cause. At another time he
looked with equal hopefulness to Glamorgan, who was to conduct an
Irish army to England. Montrose's scheme was wrecked at Philiphaugh,
and Glamorgan's concessions to the Irish Catholics were divulged and
had to be disavowed. On March 31, 1646 Sir Jacob Astley bringing 3,000
men, the last Royalist force in existence, to the relief of Charles at
Oxford, was forced to surrender at Stow-on-the-Wold. "You have done
your work," said the veteran to his captors, "and may go play, unless
you will fall out among yourselves." Though Oxford and Newark were
still untaken, the end of the war was now a mere question of days.
"Honest men," wrote Cromwell to Speaker Lenthall soon after the
victory of Naseby "served you faithfully in this action. Sir, they are
trusty--I beseech you in the name of God, not to discourage them--I
wish this action may beget thankfulness and humility in all that are
concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his
country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and
you for the liberty he fights for." "All this," he continued three
months later, in the same strain, after the storm of Bristol, "is none
other than the work of God; he must be a very atheist that doth not
acknowledge it. It may be thought that some praises are due to those
gallant men of whose valour so much mention is made:--Their humble suit
to you and all that have an interest in this blessing is that, in the
remembrance of God's praises, they may be forgotten. It's their joy
that they are instruments of God's glory and their country's good. It's
their honour that God vouchsafes to use them.... Sir, they that have
been employed in this service know that faith and prayer obtained this
city for you: I do not say ours only, but of the people of God with
you and all England over, who have wrestled with God for a blessing
in this very thing. Our desires are that God may be glorified by the
same spirit of faith by which we ask all our sufficiency and have
received it. It is meet that He have all the praise. Presbyterians,
Independents, all had here the same spirit of faith and prayer, the
same presence and answer; they agree here, know no names of difference;
pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere! All that believe have the
real unity which is most glorious because inward and spiritual in the
Body and to the Head. As for being united in forms, commonly called
uniformity, every Christian will, for peace sake, study and do as far
as conscience will permit. And from brethren, in things of the mind, we
look for no compulsion but that of light and reason. In other things,
God hath put the sword in the Parliament's hands for the terror of
evil-doers and the praises of them that do well. If any plead exemption
from that, he knows not the Gospel; if any would wring that out of your
hands, or steal it from you, under what pretence soever, I hope they
shall do it without effect."
No words can better depict the state of Cromwell's mind at this time.
Of the religion to which the King and his followers clung there is
no question in his thoughts. He would be unwilling to listen to the
suggestion that it was to be counted as religion in any worthy sense.
Parliament, mutilated as it was, is the authority ordained by God to
keep order in the land. For that very reason Parliament was bound
to allow full liberty to God's children, whatever might be their
differences on matters of discipline or practice. Within the limits
of Puritanism, no intolerance might be admitted. A common spiritual
emotion--not external discipline or intellectual agreement--was
the test of brotherhood. So resolved was the House of Commons to
discountenance this view of the case, that in ordering the publication
of Cromwell's two despatches, it mutilated both of them by the omission
of the passages advocating liberty of conscience.
At the present day we are inclined to blame Cromwell, not for going
too far in the direction of toleration, but for not going far enough.
In the middle of the seventeenth century the very idea of toleration
in any shape was peculiar to a chosen few. That the majority of
the Puritan clergy were bitterly opposed to it affords no matter
for surprise. As men of some education and learning, and with a
professional confidence in the certainty of their own opinions, they
looked with contempt not merely on views different from their own, but
also on the persons who, often without the slightest mental culture,
ventured to produce out of the Bible schemes of doctrine sometimes
immoral, and very often--at least in the opinions of the Presbyterian
divines--blasphemous and profane. Even where this was not the case,
there remained the danger of seeing the Church of England--which was
held to have been purified by the abolition of episcopacy and the
banishment of the ceremonies favoured by the bishops--degenerate
into a chaos in which a thousand sects battled for their respective
creeds, instead of meekly accepting the gospel dealt out to them
by their well-instructed pastors. Richard Baxter was a favourable
specimen of the Presbyterian clergy. Conciliatory in temper, he
was yet an ardent controversialist, and, for a few months after the
battle of Naseby, he accepted the position of chaplain to Whalley's
regiment, with the avowed intention of persuading the sectaries to
abandon their evil ways. He soon discovered that the greater part of
the infantry of the New Model Army was by no means sectarian or even
Puritan in its opinions. "The greatest part of the common soldiers," he
wrote, "especially of the foot, were ignorant men of little religion,
abundance of them such as had been taken prisoners or turned out of
garrisons under the King, and had been soldiers in his army; and these
would do anything to please their officers." In other words, the
sectarian officers could command the services of the army as a whole,
backed as they would be by the most energetic of the private soldiers.
Nor was Baxter longer in discovering that the military preachers
were ready to question received doctrine in politics as well as in
religion. "I perceived," he declared, "they took the King for a tyrant
and an enemy, and really intended to master him, and they thought if
they might fight against him they might kill or conquer him, and if
they might conquer they were never more to trust him further than he
was in their power; and that they thought it folly to irritate him
either by wars or contradictions in Parliament, if so be they must
needs take him for their King, and trust him with their lives when
they had thus displeased him." These audacious reasoners went further
still. "What," they asked, "were the Lords of England but William the
Conqueror's colonels, or the Barons but his majors, or the Knights
but his captains?" "They plainly showed me," complained Baxter, "that
they thought God's providence would cast the trust of religion and the
Kingdom upon them as conquerors; they made nothing of all the most wise
and godly in the armies and garrisons that were not of their way. _Per
fas aut nefas_, by law or without it, they were resolved to take down
not only Bishops and liturgy and ceremonies, but all that did withstand
their way. They ... most honoured the Separatists, Anabaptists and
Antinomians; but Cromwell and his council took on them to join
themselves to no party, but to be for the liberty of all."
'To be for the liberty of all' was recognised as being Cromwell's
position. There is every reason to suppose that he had at this time
little sympathy with the aspirations of those who would have made
the army the lever wherewith to obtain political results otherwise
unobtainable. In his Bristol despatch he had pointedly adhered to
the doctrine that the sword had been placed by God in the hands of
Parliament, and for the present he was inclined to look to Parliament
alone for the boon he asked of it. What makes Cromwell's biography
so interesting is his perpetual effort to walk in the paths of
legality--an effort always frustrated by the necessities of the
situation.
It is difficult for us, nursled as we are under a regime of religious
liberty, to understand how hateful Cromwell's proposal was in the eyes
of the vast majority of his contemporaries. Not only did it shock those
who looked down with scorn on the vagaries of the tub-preacher, but
it aroused fears lest religious sectarianism should, by splitting up
the nation into hostile parties, lead the way to political weakness.
To every nation it is needful that there be some bond of common
emotion which shall enable it to present an undivided front against
its enemies, and such a bond was more than ever needful at a time when
loyalty to the throne had been suspended. It was Cromwell's merit to
have seen that this bond would be strengthened, not weakened, by the
permission of divergencies in teaching and practice, so long as there
was agreement on the main grounds of spiritual Puritanism. If on the
one hand he was behind Roger Williams in theoretical conception, he
was in advance of him in his attempt to fit in his doctrines with the
practical needs of his time.
Some assistance Cromwell had from men with whom, on other grounds, he
had little sympathy. The Westminster Assembly of divines, which had
been sitting since 1643, had done its best to impose the Presbyterian
system on England, but in the House of Commons there was a small
group of Erastian lawyers, with the learned Selden at their head,
which was strong enough to carry Parliament with it in resistance
to the imposition upon England of a Scottish Presbyterianism--that
is to say, of an ecclesiastical system in which matters of religion
were to be disposed of in the Church Courts without any appeal to
the lay element in the State; though, on the other hand, it must not
be forgotten that in those very Church Courts the lay element found
its place. The Erastians, however, preferred to uphold the supreme
authority of the laity represented in Parliament--as the lawyers of the
preceding century had upheld the authority of the laity represented
in the King--probably because they knew that the lay members of the
Presbyterian assemblies were pretty sure to fall under the influence
of the clergy. Selden indeed was no admirer of the enthusiasms of the
sects; but his cool, dispassionate way of treating their claims would,
in the end, make for liberty even more certainly than the burning zeal
of a Williams or a Cromwell.
With the surrender of Astley at Stow-on-the-Wold a new situation was
created. The time had arrived to which Cromwell had looked forward
after the second battle of Newbury, the time when Charles--no longer
having any hope of dictating terms to his enemies--would probably be
ready to accept some compromise which might give to Cromwell and the
Independent party that religious freedom which the Presbyterians at
Westminster found it so hard to concede. It did not need a tithe of
Cromwell's sagacity to convince him that a settlement would have a far
greater chance of proving durable if it were honestly accepted by the
King than if it were not. Yet it did not augur well for a settlement
that Charles, knowing that if he remained at Oxford a few weeks would
see him a prisoner in the hands of the army, rode off towards Newark,
which was at that time besieged by the Scots, and on May 5, 1646, gave
himself up to the Scottish commander at Southwell. The Scots having
extracted from him an order to the Governor of Newark to surrender the
place, marched off, with him in their train, to Newcastle, where they
would be the better able to maintain their position against any attack
by the army of the English Parliament. If Charles expected to make the
Scots his tools, he was soon undeceived. He was treated virtually as a
prisoner under honourable restraint, and given to understand that he
was expected to establish Presbyterianism in England.
A few days before Charles left Oxford, Cromwell had come up to
Westminster to take part in the discussions on a settlement which
were certain to follow on the close of the war. He saw his views
better supported in the House of Commons than they had been when he
was last within its walls. A series of elections had taken place to
fill the seats vacated by the expulsion of Royalists, and the majority
of the recruiters--as the new members were called--were determined
Independents, that is to say, favourers of religious liberty within the
bounds of Puritanism. Amongst them were Ireton, who had commanded the
left wing at Naseby, and who was soon to become Cromwell's son-in-law;
Fleetwood, now a colonel in the New Model Army, Blake, the defender
of Taunton, hereafter to be the great admiral of the Commonwealth
and Protectorate, together with other notables of the army. Yet the
Presbyterians still kept a majority in the House. They had already,
on March 14, secured the passing of an ordinance establishing
Presbyterianism in England, though it was to differ from the Scottish
system in that the Church was placed, in the last resort, under the
supreme authority of Parliament. An English Presbyterian could not,
even when we needed Scottish help, conform himself entirely to the
Scottish model. It is true that the ordinance was only very partially
carried out, but there can be little doubt that it would have been
more generally obeyed if the negotiations, which the Parliamentary
majority in accordance with the Scots were conducting with the King at
Newcastle, had been attended with success.
That Cromwell watched these negotiations with the keenest interest
may be taken for granted; but he does not seem to have had any
opportunity, as a simple member of the House, for doing more. We can
indeed only conjecture, though with tolerable certitude, that he was
well pleased with the widening of the breach between the Presbyterians
and the King, caused by the determination of Charles to make no
stipulation which would lead to the abolition of episcopacy. Nor can
he have been otherwise than well pleased when, on January 30, 1647,
the Scottish soldiers, having received part of the sum due to them
for their services in England with promise of the remainder, marched
for Scotland, having first delivered Charles over to commissioners
appointed by the English Parliament, who conducted him to Holmby House
in Northamptonshire, which had been assigned to him by Parliament as a
residence.
At last the time had arrived when a peaceful settlement of the
distracted country appeared to have come in sight and, for the time
at least, the Presbyterians seemed to have the strongest cards in
their hands. They had a majority in Parliament, and it was for
them, therefore, to formulate the principles on which the future
institutions of the country were to be built. That the country was
with them in wishing, on the one hand, for an arrangement in which
the King could reappear as a constitutional factor in the Government,
and, on the other hand, for a total or partial disbandment of the
army and a consequent relief from taxation, can hardly be denied. The
great weakness, and, as it proved, the insuperable weakness of the
Presbyterians lay in the incapacity of their leaders to understand the
characters of the men with whom they had to deal. Right as they were
in their opinion that the nation would readily accept a constitutional
monarchy, it was impossible to persuade them, as was really the
case, that Charles would never willingly submit to be bound by the
limitations of constitutional monarchy, and still less to allow,
longer than he could possibly help, the Church to be modelled after
any kind of Presbyterian system. That he had the strongest possible
conviction on religious grounds that episcopacy was of Divine ordinance
is beyond doubt, and on this point his tenacious, though irresolute,
mind was strengthened by an assurance that in fighting in the cause
of the bishops he was really fighting in the cause of God. Yet the
controversy had a political as well as a religious side. In Scotland
Presbyterianism meant the predominance of the clergy. In England
it would mean the predominance of the country nobility and gentry,
who, either in their private capacity or collectively in Parliament,
presented to benefices, and in Parliament kept the final control over
the Church in their own hands. Episcopacy, on the other hand, meant
that the control over the Church was in the hands of men appointed by
the King.
The folly of the Presbyterians appeared, not in their maintenance of
their own views, but in their fancying that if they could only persuade
Charles to agree to give them their way temporarily, they would have
done sufficient to gain their cause. Early in 1647 they proposed that
Presbyterianism should be established in England for three years, and
that the militia should remain in the power of Parliament for ten. They
could not see that at the end of the periods fixed Charles would have
the immense advantage of finding himself face to face with a system
which had ceased to have any legal sanction. Common prudence suggested
that whatever settlement was arrived at it should, at least, have in
favour of its continuance the presumption of permanency accorded to
every established institution which is expected to remain in possession
of the field till definite steps are taken for its abolition.
It is possible indeed that the Presbyterians calculated on the
unpopularity of episcopacy and of all that episcopacy was likely to
bring with it. It is true that not even an approximate estimate can be
given of the numerical strength of ecclesiastical parties. No religious
census was taken, and there is every reason to believe that, if it had
been taken, it would have failed to convey any accurate information.
There is little doubt that very considerable numbers, probably much
more than a bare majority of the population, either did not care for
ecclesiastical disputes at all, or at least did not care for them
sufficiently to offer armed resistance to any form of Church-Government
or Church-teaching likely to be established either by Parliament or by
King. Yet all the evidence we possess shows the entire absence of any
popular desire amongst the laity outside the families of the Royalist
gentry and their immediate dependants to bring back either episcopacy
or the Prayer Book. Riots there occasionally were, but these were
riots because amusements had been stopped, and especially because the
jollity of Christmas was forbidden; not because the service in church
was conducted in one way or another. It is sometimes forgotten that
the Puritan or semi-Puritan clergy had a strong hold upon the Church
down to the days of Laud, and that the Calvinistic teaching which had
been in favour even with the bishops towards the close of the reign of
Elizabeth had been widely spread down to the same time, so that the
episcopalians could not count on that resistance to organic change
which would certainly have sprung up if the Laudian enforcement of
discipline had continued for seventy years instead of seven.
Whilst episcopacy found its main support in the King, the sects found
their main support in the army, and Parliament at once fell in with
the popular demand for weakening the army. Before February was over,
it had resolved that 6,600 horse and dragoons should be retained in
England, but that, except the men needed for a few garrisons, none of
the infantry of the New Model Army should be kept in the service. Their
place was to be supplied by a militia which, consisting as it did of
civilians pursuing their usual avocations for the greater part of the
year, and, except in times of invasion or rebellion, only called out
for a few days' drill, would be most unlikely to join in any attempt
to cross the wishes of Parliament. Cavalry, moreover, being, in the
long run, unable to act without the support of infantry, the 6,600
horse kept on foot would be powerless to impose a policy by force on
the Parliament. As more than half of the infantry, whose services in
England were no longer required, would be needed to carry on the war in
Ireland, now almost entirely in the hands of the so-called rebels, it
was thought that the number necessary for this purpose would volunteer
for service in that country, and the rest be readily induced to return
amongst the civilian population out of which they had sprung.
Having thus, in imagination, weakened the army as a whole, the
Presbyterian majority proceeded to deal with the officers of
the cavalry destined for service in England. Retaining Fairfax
as Commander-in-Chief, they voted that no officer should serve
under him who refused to take the Covenant, and to conform to the
Church-government established by Parliament. They also voted that,
with the exception of Fairfax, no officer should hold a higher rank
than that of colonel; in other words, they pronounced the dismissal of
Lieutenant-General Cromwell from the service. It was characteristic
of Cromwell that in a letter written by him to Fairfax his personal
grievance finds no place. "Never," he writes, "were the spirits of men
more embittered than now. Surely the Devil hath but a short time. Upon
the Fast-day," he adds in a postscript, "divers soldiers were raised,
as I heard, both horse and foot--near two hundred in Covent Garden--to
prevent us soldiers[C] from cutting the Presbyterians' throats! These
are fine tricks to mock God with." Yet, irritated as he was, he gave no
sign of any thought of resistance. "In the presence of Almighty God,
before whom I stand," he declared to the House, "I know the army will
disband and lay down their arms at your door whenever you will command
them." His own dismissal he took calmly. Towards the end of March he
was in frequent conference with the Elector Palatine who had offered
him a command in Germany, where the miserable Thirty Years' War was
still dragging on, and where the cause of toleration, apparently lost
in England, might possibly be served.
[C] This is Carlyle's reading, but the original manuscript
is torn, and what indications there are show that the
words cannot be 'us soldiers'. But I have no emendation
to suggest.
The Presbyterian leaders, Holles, Stapleton, Maynard, and the rest
of them, must have flattered themselves that they were at last in
the full career of success. To have Cromwell's word for it that the
army would accept disbandment, and to see the back of the man whom
they most feared, was a double stroke of fortune on which they could
hardly have calculated. In their delight at the good fortune which had
fallen into their laps, they forgot, in the first place, that there
were many officers, besides Cromwell, who mistrusted their policy;
and in the second place that, if these officers were to be deprived
of their influence over the private soldiers, care must be taken to
leave no material grievance of the latter unrelieved. On March 21 and
22 a deputation from Parliament which met forty-three officers in
Saffron Walden Church was told that no one present would volunteer for
Ireland unless a satisfactory answer were given to four questions:
What regiments were to be kept up in England? Who was to command in
Ireland? What was to be the assurance for the pay and maintenance of
the troops going to Ireland? Finally, what was to be done to secure
the arrears due to the men and indemnity for military actions in the
past war which a civil court might construe into robbery and murder? In
addition to these demands, a petition was drawn up in the name of the
soldiers, asking for various concessions, of which the principal ones
concerned the arrears and the indemnity. If the Presbyterian leaders
had been possessed of a grain of common sense, they would have seen
that they could not retain the submission of an army and be oblivious
of its material interests. As it was, they treated the action of the
soldiers as mere mutiny, summoned the leading officers to the bar, and
declared all who supported the petition to be enemies of the State and
disturbers of the peace.
Cromwell's position was one of great difficulty. As a soldier and a
man of order, he abhorred any semblance of mutiny, and he had shown
by his readiness to accept a command in Germany that he had no wish
to redress the balance of political forces by throwing his sword into
the scale; but it did not need his distrust of the political capacity
of the Presbyterian leaders to help him to the conclusion that they
were wholly in the wrong in their method of dealing with the army.
It was not a case in which soldiers refused to obey the commands of
their superiors in accordance with the terms of their enlistment. They
were asked to undertake new duties, and in the case of those who were
expected to betake themselves to Ireland, actually to volunteer for a
new service, and yet, forsooth, they were to be treated as mutineers,
because they asked for satisfaction in their righteous claims.
Cromwell, even if he had wished to oppose the army to the Parliament,
would have had nothing to do but to sit still, whilst his opponents
accumulated blunder after blunder. The House of Commons being unable to
extract any signs of yielding from the officers whom it had summoned
to the bar, sent them back to their posts. It then appointed Skippon,
a good disciplinarian, of no special repute as a general, to command
in Ireland; after which, without offering in any way to meet the
soldiers' demands, it sent a new body of commissioners, amongst whom
was Sir William Waller, a stout adherent of the Presbyterian cause, to
urge on the formation of a new army for Ireland. The commissioners, on
their arrival at Saffron Walden, were not slow in discovering that the
officers did not take kindly to the idea of Skippon's command. "Fairfax
and Cromwell," they shouted, "and we all go." The commissioners gained
the promise of a certain number of officers and soldiers to go to
Ireland; but, on the whole, their mission was a failure. They had not
been empowered to offer payment of arrears, and, as they ought to
have foreseen, the indignation of the large number of soldiers who
complained that they were being cheated of their pay, threw power into
the hands of the minority, known as the "Godly party," which held
forth the doctrine that, now that Parliament was shrinking from the
fulfilment of its duty, it was time for the army to step forward as a
political power, and to secure the settlement of the nation on the
basis of civil and religious liberty. The idea was also entertained
that it would be easier for the army than it had been for Parliament to
come to terms with the King, and that it was for the soldiers to fetch
him from Holmby and to replace him, on fair conditions, on the throne.
Of Cromwell's feelings during these weeks we have little evidence.
From the house which, since the preceding year, he had occupied with
his family in Drury Lane, he watched events, without attempting to
modify them. In the latter part of April both he and Vane, who was
now his fast friend, with a tie cemented by a common interest in
religious liberty, absented themselves, save on a few rare occasions,
from the sittings of Parliament. The incalculable stupidity of the
Presbyterian leaders must have made Cromwell more than ever doubtful
of the possibility of getting from them a remedy for the evils of the
nation. By the end of April it was known that only 2,320 soldiers had
volunteered for Ireland. Then, and not till then, Parliament came to
the conclusion that something ought to be done about the arrears,
and ordered that six weeks' pay should be offered to every disbanded
soldier. It was a mere fraction of what was due, and a soldier need
not be abnormally suspicious to come to the conclusion that, when
once he had left the ranks, his prospect of getting satisfaction for
the remainder of his claim was exceedingly slight. Thus driven to
the wall, eight of the cavalry regiments chose, each of them, two
Agitators, or, as in modern speech they would be styled, Agents, to
represent them in the impending negotiation for their rights, and the
sixteen thus chosen drew up letters to the Generals, Fairfax, Cromwell,
Ireton and Skippon. As the cavalry was the most distinctively political
portion of the army, the writers of these letters for the first time
stepped beyond the bounds of material grievance, complaining of a
design to break and ruin the army, and of the intention of 'some who
had lately tasted of sovereignty to become masters and degenerate into
tyrants'. The House, beyond measure indignant, summoned to the bar
three of the Agitators who brought the letters to Westminster; but on
their refusal to answer questions put to them without order from their
military constituents, sent Cromwell, Ireton and Skippon to assure the
soldiers that they should have the indemnity they craved, together with
a considerable part of their arrears and debentures for the rest.
There is no reason to doubt that Cromwell sympathised with the soldiers
in their desire for a just settlement of their claims, whilst he was
still disinclined to support them in their design of gaining influence
over the Government. When he reached Saffron Walden he found that the
infantry regiments had followed the example of the cavalry, and that
a body of Agitators had been chosen to represent the whole army. The
result of their conferences with the officers was the production of
_A Declaration of the Army_, drawn up on May 16, with which Cromwell
appears to have been entirely satisfied, as, while it insisted on a
redress of practical grievances, it contained no claim to political
influence. If the Houses had frankly accepted the situation, Cromwell
and his colleagues would have succeeded in averting, at least for a
time, the danger of investing the army with political power.
On his return Cromwell found signs that the Parliamentary majority was
even less inclined to do justice to the soldiers than when he had left
Westminster. During his absence, Parliamentary authority to discipline
and train the militia of the City had been given to a committee named
by the Common Council of London. The Common Council was a Presbyterian
body, and its committee proceeded to eject every officer tainted with
Independency. The city militia numbered 18,000 men, and it looked as
if the majority in Parliament was preparing a force which might be
the nucleus of an army to be opposed to the soldiers of Fairfax and
Cromwell. In Scotland, too, there was an army of more than 6,000 men,
under the command of David Leslie--no inconsiderable general--which
might perhaps be brought to the help of the Parliament against its own
soldiers, as Leven's army had, three years before, been brought to its
assistance against the King. Charles, too, on May 12--Cromwell being
still absent from Westminster--had at last replied to the proposals
made to him early in the year, and had offered to concede the militia
for ten years, and a Presbyterian establishment for three, the clergy
being allowed to discuss in the meanwhile the terms of a permanent
settlement. In the very probable event of their disagreeing, it would
be easy for Charles, at the end of the three years, to contend that
episcopacy was again the legal government of the Church--especially
as he was at once to return to Westminster, where he would be able to
exercise all the influence which would again be at his command. On
May 18 this offer was however accepted by the English Presbyterians,
as well as by the Scottish Commissioners, as a fair basis of an
understanding with the King. No wonder that the soldiers took alarm, or
that on the 19th the Agitators issued an appeal to the whole army to
hang together in resistance.
Nevertheless, when Cromwell reappeared in the House on May 21, and read
out the joint report of the deputation, he was able to declare his
belief that the army would disband, though it would refuse to volunteer
for Ireland. At first the House seemed ready to take the reasonable
course, approving of an ordinance granting the required indemnity, and
favourably considering another to provide a real and visible security
for so much of the arrears as was left unpaid. At the same time the
arrears to be given in hand were raised from the pay of six weeks
to that of eight. Yet whatever the Presbyterians might offer, they
were unable to trust the army, and on the 23rd they discussed with
Lauderdale, who was in England as a Scottish member of the Committee
of Both Kingdoms, and Bellièvre, who was the Ambassador of the King
of France, a scheme for bringing a Scottish army into England. Talk
about securing the King's person, which had prevailed in some regiments
a short time before, had come to their ears, and furnished them with
the excuse that they were but anticipating their opponents. They
accordingly proposed to counteract this design by removing Charles
either to some English town, or even to Scotland. Their hopes of being
able to carry out this daring project were the higher as Colonel
Graves, who commanded the guard at Holmby, was himself a Presbyterian
on whom they could depend to carry out their instructions.
Though nothing was absolutely settled, the conduct of the House
of Commons reflected the policy of its leaders. It dropped its
consideration of the ordinance assigning security for the soldiers'
arrears and resolved to proceed at once to disband the army, beginning
on June 1. The announcement of this resolution brought consternation
to those who were doing their best to keep the soldiers within the
bounds of obedience. "I doubt," wrote the author of a letter which was
probably addressed by Ireton to his father-in-law, "the disobliging of
so faithful an army will be repented of; provocation and exasperation
make men think of what they never intended. They are possessed, as far
as I can discern, with this opinion that if they be thus scornfully
dealt with for their faithful services whilst the sword is in their
hands, what shall their usage be when they are dissolved?" Two days
later, another writer, speaking of the commissioners appointed by
Parliament to disband the regiments, added the prophetic words: "They
may as well send them among so many bears to take away their whelps".
It was perfectly true. When on June 1 the commissioners attempted to
disband Fairfax's regiment at Chelmsford, it broke into mutiny and
marched for Newmarket, where Fairfax had appointed a rendezvous to
consider the situation. It was not that the mass of the army had any
inclination to interfere in politics. "Many of the soldiers," wrote
the commissioners, "being dealt with, profess that money is the only
thing they insist upon, and that four months' pay would have given
satisfaction."
Such an event could not but drive Cromwell to reconsider his position.
Whether he liked it or not, the army had, through the bungling of the
Presbyterian leaders, broken loose from the authority of Parliament. It
was impossible for him to give his support to Parliament when it was
about, with the aid of the Scottish army, to restore the King on terms
which, whether the King or the Presbyterians gained the upper hand
in the game of intrigue which was sure to follow, could only end in
the destruction of that religious liberty for the sects which, though
without legal sanction, had been gained as a matter of fact. Yet the
alternative seemed to be the abandonment of the country to military
anarchy, or if that were averted to the sway of the army over the
State. Only one way of escape from the dilemma presented itself, and
that way Cromwell seized.
Cromwell, it must once more be said, was no Republican or Parliamentary
theorist. Parliament was to him mainly an authority under which he
had fought for the great ends he had in view. Now that it had sunk
to be no more than a tool in the hands of politicians who, aiming at
the establishment of an ecclesiastical despotism, could think of no
better means wherewith to compass their evil ends than the rekindling
of the conflagration of civil war with the aid of a Scottish army and
of French diplomacy, and who had proved themselves bunglers in their
own noxious work, it was necessary to look about for some fresh basis
of authority, which would save England from the danger of falling
under the sway of a Prætorian guard. Nor was that basis far to seek.
Cromwell had fought the King unsparingly--not to destroy him, but to
reduce him to the acceptance of honourable terms. The terms which the
Presbyterians had offered to Charles had not been honourable. They had
demanded that he should proscribe his own religion and impose upon his
subjects an ecclesiastical system which he believed to be hateful to
God and man. Was this to be the result of all the blood and treasure
that had been expended? What if the King could be won to bring back
peace and good government to the land by fairer treatment and by the
restoration of his beneficent authority? The call for a restoration of
the King to power did not arise merely from the monarchical theories
of a few enthusiasts. It was deeply rooted in the consciousness of
generations. A few years before it had been inconceivable to Englishmen
that order could be maintained without a king, and with the great mass
of Englishmen this view was still prevalent. We can hardly go wrong if
we suppose that Cromwell shared the hope that Charles, by more generous
treatment than that which Parliament had accorded to him, would allow
the chiefs of the army to mediate between him and Parliament, and
consent to accept the restitution of so much of his authority as would
safeguard the religious and political development of the country on
the lines of reform rather than on those of revolution. If this, or
anything like this, was to be accomplished, the conjuncture would admit
of no delay. In a few days--perhaps in a few hours--the plans of the
Presbyterian leaders would be matured, and Charles would be spirited
away from Holmby, either to be hurried off to Scotland, or to be placed
under the care of the new Presbyterian militia in London. The commander
of the guard at Holmby, Colonel Graves, was prepared to carry out any
instructions which might reach him from his leaders at Westminster. Not
only this, but on May 31, the day before the meeting at Chelmsford,
a Parliamentary committee had issued orders to seize the artillery
of the army at Oxford, and thus to weaken its powers of action as a
military force. The situation was one which, by the necessity of the
case, must have occupied the attention of the Agitators, and though no
certainty is to be reached, it is probable that it was with them that
the plan adopted originated rather than with Cromwell. Again and again
in the course of his career he will be found hanging back from decisive
action involving a change of front in his political action, and there
is every indication that, on this occasion too, he accepted--and that
not without considerable hesitation--a design which had been formed by
others.
Such hesitation, however, was with him perfectly consistent with the
promptest and most determined action when the time for hesitation
was at an end. On May 31, the day on which the order for seizing the
artillery at Oxford was despatched from London, a meeting was held at
Cromwell's house in Drury Lane, at which was present a certain Cornet
Joyce, who had apparently been authorised by the Agitators to secure
the artillery at Oxford, and then to proceed to Holmby to hinder the
removal of the King by the Presbyterians, if not to carry him off to
safer quarters. For such an action as this the Agitators, as they well
knew, had no military authority to give, and for that authority it
was useless to apply to Fairfax, who, much as he sympathised with the
soldiers in their grievances, had none of the revolutionary decision
required by the situation. Cromwell, whose general approbation had
probably been secured beforehand, now gave the required instructions,
and Joyce was able to set out with the assurance that he was about to
act under the orders of the Lieutenant-General.
There is reason to believe that Cromwell's instructions only gave
authority for the removal of the King from Holmby conditionally on its
appearing that he could in no other way be preserved from abduction by
the Presbyterians. When on June 1 Joyce arrived at Oxford, he found
that the garrison had resolved to refuse the delivery of the guns, and
on the following day he marched on to Holmby with some 500 horsemen
at his back. On his arrival Graves took to flight, and the garrison
of the place at once fraternised with the new-comers. In the early
morning of the 3rd Joyce, followed by his men, was let in by a back
door asserting that he had come to hinder a plot 'to convey the King
to London without directions of the Parliament'. "His mission," he
further stated, was "to prevent a second war discovered by the design
of some men privately to take away the King, to the end he might side
with that intended army to be raised; which, if effected, would be the
utter undoing of the kingdom." To this profession his actions were
suitable. During the whole of the day he remained quiet, never hinting
for an instant that he had any intention of doing more than preserve
the King's person against violence. In the course of the day, however,
he took alarm at some rumours of an impending attack, and made up his
mind, probably nothing loth, that the danger could only be met by
removing the King to safer quarters. About half-past ten at night he
roused Charles from his slumbers, invited him to follow him on the
following morning, and on giving assurances that no harm would follow
received the promise he required. On the morning of the 4th, as Charles
stepped from the door of the house, he was confronted by Joyce and his
500 troopers. The King at once asked whether Joyce had any commission
for what he was doing. "Here," replied Joyce, turning in the saddle as
he spoke, and pointing to the soldiers he headed, "is my commission. It
is behind me." "It is a fair commission," replied Charles, "and as well
written as I have seen a commission in my life: a company of handsome,
proper gentlemen, as I have seen a great while." Having selected
Newmarket as his place of residence, Charles not unwillingly, as it
seemed, set out in this strange companionship. On that very morning, or
on the previous evening, Cromwell, feeling himself no longer safe at
Westminster, slipped away and rode off to join the army at Newmarket.
Both Fairfax and Cromwell declared for the King's return to Holmby,
no doubt considering Joyce's removal of the King to be unnecessary,
and, under the circumstances, unauthorised. It was only on Charles's
positive refusal to return that he was allowed to continue his journey.
It would not be long before the army would have to experience the
difficulties which beset a negotiation with Charles. It had first
to come to an understanding with Parliament. Before Cromwell's
arrival, the Agitators had presented to Fairfax a representation of
their old complaints, accompanied with a reminder to Parliament that
some particular persons--the Presbyterian leaders were evidently
aimed at--had been to blame. In another declaration, known as _A
Solemn Engagement of the Army_, these complaints were more forcibly
reiterated, with the addition, first of a demand for the erection
of a Council of the army, composed partly of officers and partly of
Agitators; and secondly, of a vindication of the army from harbouring
wild schemes, 'such as to the overthrow of magistracy, the suppression
or hindering of Presbytery, the establishment of Independent
government, or the upholding of a general licentiousness in religion
under pretence of liberty of conscience'. That these two clauses were
added under Cromwell's influence--if not by his own pen--can hardly be
doubted. On the one hand, if the army was to intervene in politics,
it must speak through some organ, having, as far as possible, the
character of a political assembly; and, on the other hand, it must be
made clear to all that its aims were as little subversive as possible.
If the Presbyterians would acknowledge that their designs had met with
an insuperable obstacle, and would resign power into hands more likely
to use it with prudence, the crisis might be tided over without leaving
behind it more evil consequences than were necessarily connected with
the intervention of an armed force.
Unhappily the Presbyterians were the most unlikely persons in the
world to grasp the realities of the situation. They firmly believed,
not only that their cause was just, but that the army--without a
shadow of excuse--had deliberately, even before the London militia had
been reorganised, plotted the seizure of the King's person, with the
object of establishing anarchy in the Church and military despotism
in the State. Each party, in short, was convinced that it was acting
on the defensive; and, in politics, as in all other spheres of life,
results are to be traced less to facts which actually exist than to
the assumptions relating to those facts in the minds of the actors.
Parliament actively pursued its preparations for resistance, planning
the formation of the nucleus of a fresh army at Worcester, and granting
permission to the City to raise cavalry as well as infantry. The
soldiers were undoubtedly right in holding that nothing less than the
outbreak of another civil war was impending.
Before the irrevocable step was taken, Parliament sent commissioners to
persuade the army to disband on the payment of an additional £10,000.
On the 10th, the commissioners finding the soldiers at a rendezvous on
Triploe Heath were received by a general refusal to accept the terms
till they had been examined by the new Army Council. The army then
significantly marched to Royston, several miles on the road to London.
In the evening a letter was sent off to the magistrates of the City,
the chief supporters of the new Presbyterian military organisation.
It can hardly be questioned that this letter represented the ideas
at that time entertained by Cromwell, or that in great part, if not
entirely, it was written by him. Striving to blind himself to the
fact that he was heading military resistance to the civil power,
he announced that those in whose name he spoke were acting, not as
soldiers, but as Englishmen. "We desire," he proceeded, "a settlement
of the kingdom and of the liberties of the subject according to the
votes and declarations of Parliament which, before we took up arms,
were by Parliament used as arguments and inducements to invite us and
divers of our dear friends out--some of whom have lost their lives in
this war, which being by God's blessing finished, we think we have as
much right to demand and see a happy settlement, as we have to our
money, or the other common interest of soldiers that we have insisted
upon." Then followed a renewal of the protest that the army had no wish
to introduce licentious liberty, or to subvert the Civil Government.
"We profess," continued Cromwell, "as ever in these things, when the
State has once made a settlement, we have nothing to say, but submit or
suffer. Only we could wish that every good citizen and every man that
walks peacefully in a blameless conversation, may have liberties and
encouragements, it being according to the just policy of all States,
even to justice itself." Then followed the practical conclusion. "These
things are our desires--beyond which we shall not go, and for the
obtaining these things we are drawing near your city--declaring with
all confidence and assurance that, if you appear not against us in
these our just desires, to assist that wicked party that would embroil
us and the kingdom, neither we nor our soldiers shall give you the
least offence." Should things proceed otherwise, it would not be the
army that would give way. "If after all this," continued Cromwell,
"you, or a considerable number of you, be seduced to take up arms in
opposition to, or hindrance of these our just undertakings, we hope, by
this brotherly premonition, we have freed ourselves from all that ruin
which may befall that great and populous city; having hereby washed our
hands thereof."
The army marched, and the City at once made its submission. The bare
facts of the case told heavily against Cromwell in the eyes of those
whose schemes he had frustrated. In May he had protested that the army
would disband at a word from Parliament, and had renounced all thought
of bringing military force to control affairs of State. In June he had
made himself the leader of the army to disperse a force which was being
raised by the orders of Parliament. The very words in which he, writing
in the army's name, had announced his decision must also have told
against him. It would have been far better if he had simply announced
that the new circumstances which had arisen had forced upon him the
conviction that he had gone too far and had driven him to acknowledge
to himself and others that obedience to a Parliament might have its
limits, and that those limits had now been reached. The line, it would
have been easy to say, must be drawn when Parliament was preparing
civil war, not in defence of the rights of Englishmen, but to impose
upon the country a system alien to its habits with the assistance of
a Scottish army. Unhappily it was in Cromwell's nature to meet the
difficulty in another way. When most inconsistent he loved to persuade
himself that he had always been consistent, and in taking refuge in
the statement that the army put forward its claim to be heard as
Englishmen rather than as soldiers, he committed himself to a doctrine
so manifestly absurd that it could only be received with a smile of
contemptuous disbelief. Cromwell, in fact, stood at the parting of
the ways. For him there was but one choice--the choice between entire
submission to Parliamentary authority and the establishment of military
control. No wonder that he instinctively shrunk from acknowledging,
even to himself, the enormous importance of the step he was taking:
still less wonder that he did not recognise in advance the unavoidable
consequences of the choice--the temporary success which follows in the
wake of superior force, and the ultimate downfall of the cause which
owes its acceptance to such means.
The immediate results developed themselves without long delay. The
army, doing its best to carry on the work of violence under legal
forms, proceeded to charge eleven of the leading Presbyterian members
with attempting to throw the kingdom into fresh war, as well as with
other misdemeanours. The accused persons retaliated by pressing
forward their scheme for gaining the assistance of a Scottish army,
and for bringing up English forces devoted to their cause against the
army under Fairfax and Cromwell. Fairfax and Cromwell were too near
the centre of affairs to be so easily baffled by specious words. On
June 26 a menacing letter from the army made the eleven members feel
that their position was untenable, and voluntarily--so at least they
asserted--they withdrew from their seats in Parliament. Who could now
doubt that--under the thinnest of veils--the army had taken the supreme
control of the government into its hands?