NASEBY AND LANGPORT
1645–1646
The “New Model” army which Fairfax commanded had a better chance of
success than that of Essex. Essex had failed partly through incapacity,
but partly because his forces were never properly maintained or
recruited. His regiments melted away without much fighting, because
their pay was always in arrears and their supplies irregular and
insufficient. But now Parliament had rectified the worst defects of its
financial system, and provided for the regular payment of the soldiers
during the campaign by a monthly assessment levied on all the counties
under its power. The new army consisted of eleven regiments of horse,
each numbering six hundred men, twelve regiments of foot, each of twelve
hundred, with a thousand dragoons, and a small train of artillery. About
half the infantry was composed of men who had served under Essex,
Manchester, and Waller; the rest were pressed-men raised by the county
authorities. Of the cavalry, more than half was drawn from the former
army of the Eastern Association. Cromwell’s old regiment was made into
two, one commanded by his cousin, Edward Whalley, the other by Sir
Thomas Fairfax himself.
Fairfax owed his appointment partly to his military reputation, partly
to his freedom from political objections. He was religious, but the
question whether he was a Presbyterian or an Independent was a riddle
none had solved. Though he had served a campaign in Holland, his real
training-school had been the long struggle with Newcastle and the
northern Royalists. Swift marches and dashing attacks, resourcefulness
in difficulties and persistency in defeats had made him famous. “Black
Tom” was the idol of his troopers, and whilst friends complained that he
exposed himself too recklessly, enemies spoke of his “irrational and
brutish valour,” and denied him all higher qualities. He was looked upon
as essentially a leader of cavalry, and his selection as General instead
of Lieutenant-General surprised even his friends. To most of the
officers of his army, Fairfax was unknown, except by reputation. When he
took up his command, they saw a man of about thirty-three, tall in
stature and very dark, with the scars of old wounds upon his face. His
bearing was quiet and reserved, but it was soon observed that though he
said little in council he was very tenacious of his opinions, and very
prompt in acting upon them. In battle he seemed transformed, threw off
his reserve, lost his stammer, and was all fire, energy, and decision.
[Illustration:
SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX.
(_From the painting by Gerard Zoust._)
]
Skippon had been made Major-General of the army to supply the scientific
knowledge and the long experience which the commander-in-chief lacked,
but the second place in the army was still unfilled, for no
lieutenant-general had been appointed to command the horse. There can be
little doubt that it was designedly left open in order that Cromwell
might fill it.
Ever since March, Cromwell had been employed in his expedition to the
west. On the 19th of April, he returned to the headquarters at Windsor
in order to take leave of Fairfax, and to lay down his commission as the
Self-Denying Ordinance required. Next morning, a letter came from the
Committee of Both Kingdoms giving him fresh duty to do. The King was
about to take the field and the “New Model” was not ready to fight him.
Ever since the beginning of April, Fairfax had been labouring hard at
the reorganisation of the army, but recruits were slow in coming in, and
the obstructiveness of the Lords had thrown all preparations back. The
most efficient part of the army and the readiest for immediate action
was the brigade of cavalry Cromwell had brought back from the west, and
with it he was now despatched to Oxfordshire to prevent the King from
joining Prince Rupert. Charles lay at Oxford with part of the royal
army, including the artillery train; Rupert with the rest, and with the
bulk of the cavalry, was quartered about Hereford and Worcester.
Cromwell set out at once, and at daybreak on April 24th he routed three
regiments of the King’s horse at Islip, killing two hundred and taking
two hundred prisoners. Part of the fugitives took refuge in Blechington
House, which Cromwell at once attacked and forced, under threat of an
assault, to surrender. By the terms granted, the garrison were allowed
to retire to Oxford, but had to give up their horses and arms. “I did
much doubt the storming of the house,” wrote Cromwell in explanation,
“it being strong and well manned, and I having few dragoons, and this
not being my business.” Two days later, at Bampton in the Bush, he
intercepted a regiment of foot marching from Faringdon to Oxford, took a
couple of hundred, and killed or scattered the rest. On the 29th, he
appeared before Faringdon House, and made an attempt to storm it, but
was repulsed with loss. In spite of this check, Cromwell had effected
the work he was sent to do. The King’s march was stopped. His cavalry
was shattered by defeats, and his artillery could not be moved because
Cromwell had swept up all the draught-horses in the country round.
Charles was obliged to summon Goring’s cavalry from the west to cover
his junction with Rupert, and could not start till the 7th of May.
Meanwhile Fairfax had got his army into marching order, and on May 1st,
leaving Cromwell to observe the King, he set out to relieve Taunton. His
operations were determined not by his own judgment, but by the orders of
the Committee of Both Kingdoms. Half-way to Taunton he got fresh orders
instructing him to send a brigade to relieve it, and to turn back with
the rest of his troops to besiege Oxford. For a fortnight therefore he
invested Oxford, limiting himself to a blockade because his siege train
had not come up, and without heavy guns and intrenching tools he could
do nothing more. During these weeks Rupert and the King with nine
thousand or ten thousand men were marching unopposed about the midlands.
On May 15th, Charles took Hawkesley House in Worcestershire, and then
turned north to relieve Chester, but heard on his way that the siege was
raised. Some of his advisers urged him to march north still in order to
relieve Pontefract and beat Leven and the Scots; others proposed a raid
into the Eastern Association. But reports of the danger of Oxford kept
him in the south, and as a diversion it was resolved to attack
Leicester. On May 31st, that city was stormed and sacked by the King’s
army.
The King’s movements had completely upset the plans of the Committee of
Both Kingdoms. As soon as the news of the capture of Leicester came,
Fairfax was ordered to leave Oxford, and to march against the King.
Taught by experience, the amateur strategists of the Committee left him
free to order his movements as he thought fit, and removed all
limitations they had before imposed. In the alarm caused by the King’s
successes, public opinion imperatively called for Cromwell’s employment.
All felt he was too necessary to be spared. On May 10th, Parliament had
prolonged his command for another forty days. On the 28th, when the King
threatened the eastern counties, Cromwell was sent in hot haste to Ely
to see to their defence. A week later London petitioned that he might
have power to raise and command all the forces of the Association.
Finally, on June 10th, Fairfax and his council of war petitioned
Parliament to appoint Cromwell Lieutenant-General. For they were now
advanced within a few miles of the King’s position, and Fairfax had a
great body of horse, but no general officer to command it in the coming
battle. No one but Cromwell would do, urged Fairfax.
“The general esteem and affection which he hath both with the
officers and soldiers of this whole army, his own personal worth and
ability for the employment, his great care, diligence, courage, and
faithfulness in the services you have already employed him in, with
the constant presence and blessing of God that have accompanied him,
make us look upon it as the duty we owe to you and the public, to
make it our suit.”
The Lords made no answer to this unwelcome petition, but the Commons
agreed to the appointment for so long a time as Cromwell was needed in
the army. So, on June 13th, Cromwell rode into Fairfax’s camp with six
hundred horse from the Association, and was welcomed by the soldiers
“with a mighty shout.” “Ironsides,” they cried, “is come to head us,”
calling him by the name which Rupert had given him after the battle of
Marston Moor.
In the King’s camp there were great divisions of opinion. Rupert, the
commander-in-chief, advocated one course, and the King’s civilian
advisers another. Charles hesitated and delayed till he found Fairfax at
his heels, and then he was forced to fight. On June 14th, the two armies
met. Rupert’s original intention had been to deliver a defensive battle
in a chosen position at Harborough, but his scouts deluded him into the
belief that Fairfax’s troops were retiring, and he advanced to find them
drawing up in battle order on a high plateau in front of the little
village of Naseby. The King’s army amounted at most to about five
thousand horse and four thousand or five thousand foot. Fairfax had
thirteen thousand men, of whom six thousand were horse. In spite of
these odds, the Royalists expected an easy victory. Many of the
parliamentary foot were raw conscripts, whilst the King’s were old
soldiers. Charles himself spoke confidently of beating “the rebels’ new
brutish general” as he had beaten the experienced Essex, and even
supporters of the Parliament had little faith in their untried army.
“Never,” wrote one, “did any army go forth to war who had less of the
confidence of their own friends, or were more the objects of the
contempt of their enemies.” But Cromwell, for his part, had no doubts of
the issue of the battle.
“I can say this of Naseby,” he wrote a month later. “When I saw the
enemy draw up and march in gallant order towards us, and we a
company of poor, ignorant men, to seek how 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 in 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.”
As the royalist line advanced, Fairfax’s artillery fired a few shots,
which went high and did no execution. The King’s guns were too far
behind to do any service. The foot on each side fired one volley, and
then charged each other with levelled pikes and clubbed muskets. So
fierce was the onset of the royalist infantry that four out of the five
regiments in Fairfax’s front line gave way before it. Skippon’s regiment
was broken, its lieutenant-colonel killed, and Skippon himself severely
wounded. But Fairfax’s own regiment stood its ground, and the second
line, coming up, drove the Royalists back and gave the broken regiments
time to rally.
Still worse fared Colonel Ireton and the left wing of the parliamentary
horse. Ireton’s five regiments advanced to meet Rupert, but their charge
was badly delivered and badly supported. At the outset, Ireton himself
gained a temporary success, but, turning prematurely to attack a
regiment of foot, he was unhorsed, wounded, and for a short time a
prisoner. Rupert pushed his advantage with his usual vigour, and, not
content with driving Ireton’s horse from the field, attacked the train
and the baggage guard of the Parliamentarians behind Naseby. As they
stood firm he abandoned the attempt, and returned to see how the battle
went on the plateau.
[Illustration:
The Battle of
NASEBY.
B. V. Darbishire, Oxford, 1899.
]
During this time, the horse of the parliamentary right wing under
Cromwell decided the fate of the day. Cromwell did not wait to be
charged by Sir Marmaduke Langdale, but met his horsemen as they
advanced, and after a stiff struggle swept them back in disorder, and
forced them to take shelter behind their reserve. Cromwell’s troopers,
said an eye-witness, were like a torrent, driving all before them.
Charles put himself at the head of his guards and the rest of the
reserve, and prepared to lead a desperate charge against the advancing
Roundheads. “Will you go upon your death?” said a nobleman, seizing his
bridle rein; so the guards halted, and wheeled about, and drew back for
a quarter of a mile from the field. Leaving four regiments to keep them
in check, Cromwell with the rest of his horse, and with what he could
collect of Ireton’s, turned to fall upon the royalist centre. The
royalist infantry fought with great tenacity, but, attacked
simultaneously by horse and foot, they were soon broken, and regiment
after regiment laid down its arms. A brigade of bluecoats stood “with
incredible courage and resolution” beating back charge after charge with
their pikes. At last Cromwell charged one face of the square with
Fairfax’s regiment of foot, while Fairfax, bareheaded, led his
life-guard against another. It too was broken, and Fairfax took the
colours with his own hand. Of the King’s infantry, scarcely a man
escaped capture.
Fairfax halted the victorious cavalry till the main body of his foot
came up, and then, forming a fresh line of battle, ordered a general
advance. The King’s guards and Langdale’s routed horse had now been
joined by Rupert’s victorious troopers, and were drawn up to make a
second charge. But discouraged as they were, and without artillery or
foot to support them, their position was hopeless. In a few moments they
wavered and broke, and every man, turning his horse’s head towards
Leicester, rode as hard as he could.
The pursuit lasted some thirteen miles. Nearly five thousand prisoners,
more than one hundred colours, all of the King’s baggage and artillery,
and his private papers fell into the hands of the victors. Leicester
surrendered four days later, and Fairfax, leaving the King to take
refuge in Wales, set forth in haste to engage General Goring and the
western army. At the news of his approach, Goring raised the blockade of
Taunton, and took up his position about ten miles from Bridgwater, with
his front covered by the rivers Yeo and Parret. The two armies came into
collision near Langport on July 10th. Goring had posted his men on the
brow of a hill, with enclosures and a marshy valley in their front.
There was a ford across the little stream at the bottom of the valley,
and a lane led up the hill to the open ground at the top where Goring’s
cavalry stood, while the hedges and enclosures on each side of the lane
were filled with his musketeers. Intending to retreat to Bridgwater,
Goring had sent thither his baggage, and all his guns but two.
Langport was one of the few battles of the Civil War in which field
artillery played an important part. Fairfax began by overwhelming
Goring’s two guns with the fire of his own, and forcing the cavalry to
move farther back and leave their musketeers unsupported. Then he
ordered forward fifteen hundred musketeers, who, advancing down one
hillside and up the other, drove Goring’s skirmishers from hedge to
hedge, and cleared the enclosures. Finally, under Cromwell’s direction,
six troops of horse (all drawn from Cromwell’s own old regiment) dashed
through the ford, and up the lane at Goring’s cavalry. Major Bethell
headed the charge, which he performed, writes Cromwell, “with the
greatest gallantry imaginable,” and Major Desborough seconded him with
equal courage. Bethell beat back two bodies of Goring’s horse and “brake
them at sword point”; but, oppressed with numbers, his three troops were
being driven back when Desborough and the other three came up to relieve
them. Then they charged again, and both together routed another body of
Goring’s horse. At the same time, Fairfax’s musketeers, coming close up
to the cavalry, poured in their shot, and Goring’s men began to run.
Cromwell halted Desborough and Bethell on the ground they had won,
allowing no pursuit till the rest of the horse joined them. Two miles
farther back, the royalist cavalry made another stand, but one charge
proved sufficient, and they were sent flying towards Bridgwater. Through
the burning streets of Langport Cromwell dashed after them, capturing
during the chase both their two guns and fourteen hundred prisoners.
Immediately after his victory, Fairfax laid siege to Bridgwater. Like
Gustavus Adolphus, his method was to risk an assault wherever success
seemed possible, rather than to spend time on elaborate siege works. The
part of the town on the east bank of the Parret was taken by escalade on
July 21st, and the other half surrendered after a short bombardment. The
possession of Bridgwater, added to that of Taunton, Langport, and Lyme,
gave Fairfax a line of garrisons which cut off Cornwall and Devon from
the rest of England, and confined what remained of Goring’s army to
those two counties. He turned back, therefore, to complete the conquest
of the west by taking the strongholds he had left in his rear. Bath was
captured on July 29th, the strong castle of Sherborne stormed after a
fortnight’s siege on August 15th, and a week later Bristol was invested.
Rupert with thirty-five hundred men held the city, but its
fortifications were very extensive, and in many places weak. On
September 10th, about one o’clock in the morning, Fairfax made a general
assault on the whole circuit of the works, and by daybreak the most
important fort and a mile of the line were in his possession. Rupert had
no choice but to capitulate at once.
Cromwell was now put in command of four regiments of foot and three of
horse, and sent to clear Wiltshire and Hampshire of hostile garrisons.
Devizes and Laycock House surrendered to him on September 23rd;
Winchester cost a week’s siege, but gave in as soon as a breach was
made. “You see,” wrote Cromwell to the Speaker, “God is not weary in
doing you good. His favour to you is as visible, when He comes by His
power upon the hearts of your enemies, making them quit places of
strength to you, as when He gives courage to your soldiers to attempt
hard things.” Basing House, the next place attacked, was very strong,
had stood many sieges, and was garrisoned by determined men. Its owner,
the Marquis of Winchester, was a Catholic, and many of its defenders
were of the same creed. Cromwell breached its walls with his cannon and
ordered a storm. The night before it, he spent much time in prayer. “He
seldom fights,” said his chaplain, “without some text of Scripture to
support him.” This time his eye fell upon a text in the Psalms
foretelling the doom of idols and idolaters—“They that make them are
like unto them; so is every one that putteth his trust in them.” To a
Puritan it seemed a promise of certain victory, and Cromwell gave the
word to assault in complete assurance of success. His soldiers “fell on
with great resolution and cheerfulness,” clapped their scaling ladders
to the walls, beat the enemy from their works, and made the house their
own. Some three hundred of the garrison were killed, and about as many
taken prisoners, while the house itself was thoroughly sacked by the
soldiers, and then burnt. “I thank God,” wrote Cromwell to the Speaker,
“I can give you a good account of Basing.”
At the end of October, Cromwell, having completed his task, joined
Fairfax before Exeter. Except Devon and Cornwall, all the west had now
been cleared of the Royalists. On the Welsh border, the King had
Worcester and Hereford and a number of smaller places, but Chester was
besieged, and in the north Newark was the only important fortress in his
possession. Between these different places and his headquarters at
Oxford, Charles, attended by two or three thousand horse, had aimlessly
wandered, since his defeat at Naseby. At first, he thought of joining
Goring and Prince Charles in the west, but Langport put an end to that
plan. In August, he tried a raid into the Eastern Association, and took
and plundered Huntingdon. In September, the rumour of his approach led
Leven and the Scots to raise the siege of Hereford. More than once the
King thought of joining Montrose in Scotland. In September, 1644,
Montrose had begun the marvellous series of victories which threatened
to oblige the Covenanters to withdraw their army from England. He beat
them at Tippermuir, Aberdeen, Inverlochy, Auldearne, and Alford, and
dreamt of subduing all Scotland and coming to the assistance of the
King. At Kilsyth, on August 15, 1645, he won a still greater and more
decisive victory than all the rest. Glasgow was occupied; Edinburgh and
the south of Scotland submitted; the Covenanting leaders took refuge at
Berwick. Montrose sent a triumphant message to the King saying that he
would soon cross the border with twenty thousand men. But his
Highlanders went home with their plunder, the Lowland Scots declined to
enlist under his banner, and he had less than two thousand men with him
when David Leslie, with four thousand horse from the Scottish army in
England, surprised his little force at Philiphaugh, and cut it in pieces
(September 13th). Ignorant of this disaster, Charles set out from Raglan
Castle with three thousand horse to join Montrose. At Rowton Heath, on
September 24th, he was defeated by Major-General Poyntz in an attempt to
relieve Chester, and lost nine hundred men. Forced to abandon the plan
of marching north through Lancashire, the King made his way to Newark,
and thence, in November, back to Oxford. From Newark, Lord Digby made a
desperate attempt to get to Scotland, but the sole result was the loss
of the fifteen hundred horse he took with him.
From a military point of view, the King’s position was now utterly
hopeless. If after Naseby he had collected the men wasted in petty
garrisons he could have got together a force sufficient to meet the “New
Model” in the field. But he neglected the moment, one after another his
garrisons were taken, and his new levies were scattered before they
could combine. His generals lost hope, and while the quarrels of Goring
and Grenville paralysed the King’s western army, Rupert urged his uncle
to make peace. Charles obstinately refused to listen either to him or to
the rest of the peace party.
“If I had any other quarrel but the defence of my religion, crown,
and friends,” wrote Charles, “you had full reason for your advice;
for I must confess that speaking as a mere soldier or statesman,
there is no probability but of my ruin. Yet as a Christian I must
tell you that God will not suffer rebels to prosper, nor His cause
to be overthrown, and whatever personal punishment it shall please
Him to inflict upon me must not make me repine, much less give over
this quarrel.”
The nation in general was weary of the war and impatient for peace. In
the west and the south of England the country people began to form
associations in order to keep all armed men of either party out of their
districts, and to put an end to free quarter and the plunder of their
cattle. In the south-west, these “Clubmen,” as they were called, fell
under the influence of royalist agents, but generally they remained
neutral. When Fairfax marched into Dorsetshire, he employed Cromwell to
disperse gathering after gathering of rustics armed with clubs and
muskets.
“I assured them,” wrote Cromwell to Fairfax, “that it was your great
care, not to suffer them in the least to be plundered, and that they
should defend themselves from violence, and bring to your army such
as did them any wrong, where they should be punished with all
severity; upon this very quietly and peaceably they marched away to
their houses, being very well satisfied and contented.”
Another body fired on Cromwell’s men, and had to be dispersed by a
cavalry charge. Some dozen were killed, and about three hundred made
prisoners—“poor silly creatures” whom he released with an admonition.
The moderation and just dealing of Cromwell and Fairfax, and the
excellent discipline of their soldiers, speedily restored confidence.
The countrymen came to perceive that the best hope of peace lay in the
triumph of the Parliament. At the siege of Bristol, the Clubmen of the
neighbourhood helped in the investment of the city, and at its surrender
Rupert had to be guarded to prevent their taking vengeance for the
plunderings he had sanctioned.
The feeling in favour of the parliamentary cause was still further
strengthened by the discovery of the King’s negotiations for the
introduction of foreign forces into England. The letters taken at Naseby
in June showed that the King was negotiating with the Duke of Lorraine
to send an army of ten thousand men into England. Those captured when
Digby was defeated in his attempt to reach Scotland proved that Charles
was trying to get troops from Denmark. In October, some more captured
correspondence revealed a treaty made with the Irish rebels in the
previous August, by which they were to furnish Charles with ten thousand
men in return for the legal establishment of Catholicism in Ireland.
Finally, in January, 1646, Fairfax intercepted letters from royalist
agents in France concerning five thousand Frenchmen who were to be
landed in the west. These successive discoveries alienated men who had
fought for the King, and turned neutrals into supporters of the
Parliament.
It was to anticipate any such landing of foreign forces in England that
Fairfax took the field so early in 1646. During the last two months of
1645 he had been blockading Exeter, but at the beginning of January,
though the snow was on the ground and there was a hard frost, a general
advance was ordered. The royalist forces in Cornwall and Devon numbered
not less than twelve thousand men, besides the garrisons, but, as
Clarendon confesses, they were a “dissolute, undisciplined, wicked,
beaten army,” more formidable to their friends than to their foes.
Goring, to whose misconduct this disorganisation was due, had resigned
his command at the end of 1645, and the brave and blameless Hopton, who
succeeded him, could effect nothing with such troops. In two months, the
resistance of the west collapsed. Cromwell opened the campaign by
surprising Lord Wentworth’s brigade at Bovey Tracy on January 9th;
Wentworth and most of his men escaped in the darkness, but four hundred
horses were taken, and the whole brigade scattered. Ten days later,
Fairfax took the strong fortress of Dartmouth by storm, capturing one
hundred guns and over one thousand prisoners. On February 16th, a chance
collision between outposts at Torrington in North Devon developed into a
general engagement in which Hopton was driven from the town with the
loss of six hundred men, and his infantry were completely dispersed.
Hopton had still about five thousand horse left, so, in spite of the
sufferings of his soldiers from hard marches and winter weather, Fairfax
resolved to follow him into Cornwall, “the breaking of that body of
horse there being the likeliest means to prevent or discourage the
landing of any foreign forces in those parts.” When he entered the
county, the Cornishmen, won by his good treatment of his prisoners and
by the good behaviour of his soldiers, offered no opposition. Hopton’s
troopers deserted daily, and those who stayed by their colours had no
fight left in them. The Prince of Wales and his councillors fled to the
Channel Islands, and on the 14th of March Hopton’s army capitulated.
Fairfax wisely granted liberal terms, and every common soldier, on
giving up horse and weapons, and promising not to bear arms any more
against the Parliament, was given twenty shillings to carry him to his
home.
From Cornwall, Fairfax now marched back to Exeter, which surrendered to
him on April 9th, and thence to besiege Oxford, which he invested at the
beginning of May. Cromwell stayed with Fairfax until Exeter fell, and
then went to London at the General’s desire, to give Parliament an
account of the state of the west. On April 23rd, he was thanked by the
House of Commons for his “great and faithful services.” Rewards of
another nature they had already conferred upon him. On December 1, 1645,
the Commons, in drawing up the peace propositions to be offered to the
King, had resolved that an estate of twenty-five hundred pounds a year
should be settled on Lieutenant-General Cromwell, and that the King
should be asked to make him a baron. The negotiations fell through, but
on January 23rd the House ordered that the lands in Hampshire belonging
to the Marquis of Worcester and his sons should be settled on Cromwell,
and an ordinance for that purpose finally passed both Houses. As the
rents of these lands fell short of the income promised, other estates of
the same nobleman in Glamorganshire, Gloucestershire, and Monmouthshire
were subsequently added to make up the sum.
Cromwell rejoined Fairfax at Oxford in time to take part in the
negotiations for its surrender. Contemporary rumour attributed the
leniency of the terms granted to the garrisons of Exeter and Oxford
largely to his influence with Fairfax and the council of war. Oxford was
strongly fortified, and it would have cost many men to take it, but,
apart from this, there were political reasons of great weight which must
have appealed to Cromwell. Just before Fairfax invested Oxford, King
Charles escaped in disguise from the city, and took refuge in the camp
of the Scottish army at Newark. For some months he had been negotiating
with the Scots through the French Ambassador, and he hoped to be able to
persuade them to adopt his cause against the English Parliament. There
were rumours that the Scots meant to employ their army on his behalf,
their complicity in his flight seemed proved, and an open breach between
the two nations seemed more than possible. “The scurvy, base
propositions which Cromwell has given to the Malignants of Oxford,”
writes Baillie, “have offended many more than his former capitulation at
Exeter; all seeing the evident design of these conscientious men to
grant the greatest conditions to the worst men, that they may be
expedited for their northern warfare.”
Even if the political situation had been otherwise, the necessity of
healing the wounds of the war by liberal treatment of the conquered was
an axiom with the army and its leaders. Politicians were as usual less
generous than soldiers. The articles were reluctantly ratified by
Parliament, and there were repeated complaints of their infringement.
Cromwell and the officers of the army never ceased to represent that
honour and policy alike demanded their exact observance. “There hath
been of late a dispute about the Oxford articles,” said a royalist
news-letter in February, 1648. “One gentleman being discontented at the
largeness of them told the Lieutenant-General they should lose two
hundred thousand pounds by keeping them; he replied they had better lose
double as much than break one article.”
With the capitulation of Oxford on June 24, 1646, the war was over.
Worcester, it is true, held out till July, and isolated castles in
Wales, such as Raglan, Denbigh, and Harlech, for some months longer, but
their reduction was only a question of a short time.
Cromwell left these little sieges to be conducted by others, and
returned to his duties in Parliament. He removed his family from Ely to
London, and took a house in Drury Lane, moving thence about a year later
to King Street, Westminster. His household was diminished by the
marriage of his two elder daughters. Bridget, the eldest, had married,
on June 15, 1646, Commissary-General Henry Ireton, her father’s most
trusted subordinate, and Elizabeth, Cromwell’s favourite daughter,
became, on January 13, 1646, the wife of John Claypole, a
Northamptonshire squire. Only the two youngest daughters, Mary and
Frances, were still at home. Of his four sons, two were already dead:
Robert died in May, 1639, before the war began, and Captain Oliver five
years later, while serving in his father’s regiment. Richard, the elder
of the two who survived, was now in Fairfax’s life-guard, and Henry, who
was about nineteen, was a cornet or lieutenant in some cavalry regiment.
Cromwell had offered his sons to the cause as freely as he gave himself
to it.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]