THE GREAT CIVIL WAR.
1642-1651.
Nine years of almost continuous war, broken by only one short interval
in 1647-48, followed the raising of the royal standard at Nottingham,
on the 22nd of August, 1642. The first half of the contest (1642-46)
may be defined as the struggle against the person of Charles, the
second as the struggle against the principle of kingly government after
Charles himself had fallen.
[Sidenote: =Principles of the two parties.--The king.=]
When the war began there was hardly a man on either side who did not
believe that he was fighting in behalf of constitutional monarchy. The
king and his party disavowed all intention of restoring autocratic
government. On the royal standard and the royal coinage Charles bade
the motto be placed, "I will defend the laws of England, the liberties
of Parliament, and the Protestant religion." He declared that he was
in arms to protect the old constitution against the encroachments of a
Parliamentary faction who wished to degrade the crown and to destroy
the Church.
[Sidenote: =The Parliamentarians.=]
The followers of Pym and Hampden, on the other hand, were equally
loud in protesting that they were in arms only to protect the ancient
liberties of the realm, not to set up a new polity. They professed the
greatest respect for the Crown, used the king's name in all their acts
and documents, and stated that they were only anxious to come to terms
with him on conditions which should give sufficient guarantees for the
future welfare of the realm.
[Sidenote: =Mutual mistrust.=]
But there was a fatal weakness in the programme, both of the royal
and the Parliamentary party. The king's friends could never trust the
Parliament's professions, because they believed it to be led by a
band of fanatical schismatics. The Parliamentarians could never bring
themselves to confide in the ruler against whom there stood the evil
record of the years 1629-1640, and the even more discreditable incident
of the attempt to seize the five members. When two enemies cannot trust
each other's plighted word, they can do nothing but fight out their
quarrel to the bitter end.
[Sidenote: =Local distribution of the parties.=]
At the moment when Charles marched from Nottingham, and Lord Essex
from London, in August, 1642, neither party had yet any correct notion
as to its own or its enemy's strength. In every county and borough
of England each side had a following; as to which following was the
stronger in each case, it was hard to make a guess. One thing only was
clear--rural England was, on the whole, likely to cleave to the king;
urban England to oppose him. Wherever the towns lay thick, Puritanism
was strong; London, the populous Eastern Counties, Kent, the cluster of
growing places on the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire, from Leeds
to Liverpool, were all Parliamentarian strongholds. On the other hand,
in the West and the North, and among the Welsh hills, the Church was
still omnipotent, and Nonconformity was weak. These districts were led
by the local peers, and still more by the county gentry, and of both
those classes a large majority held to the king.
But no general rule could be drawn. There were towns like Worcester,
York, Oxford, Exeter, where for various local reasons the king's party
was the stronger. Similarly, there were many peers--about a third
of the House of Lords--who adhered to the Parliamentary interest,
and where they dominated the countryside it stood by the cause of
the Commons. We need only mention the local influence of the Earl of
Warwick in his own district of the Midlands, of the Earl of Manchester
in Huntingdonshire, of Lord Fairfax in Mid-Yorkshire, as examples of
the fact that the Parliamentary cause could draw much assistance from
the magnates of the land. Still more was this the case among the lesser
landholders. In the east of England a very large proportion of the
gentry and all the yeomanry were zealous Puritans; even in the west
there was a sprinkling of "Roundheads"[41] among the Royalist majority.
[Sidenote: =Humane character of the war.=]
It was the saddest feature of the war, therefore, that every man had to
draw the sword against his nearest neighbour, and that the opponents
differed from each other, not so much on principle as on a point of
judgment--the doubt whether the king or the Parliamentary majority
could best be trusted to defend the old constitution. On each side
there were many who armed with a doubting heart, not fully convinced
that they had chosen their side wisely. This, at any rate, had one
good effect--the war was, on the whole, mercifully waged; there were
few executions, no massacres, very little plundering. If we compare
it with the civil wars of France or Germany, we are astonished at the
moderation and self-restraint of our ancestors.
[Sidenote: =The king's forces.=]
It was in August, 1642, as we have already mentioned, that King Charles
bade his followers meet him at Nottingham. The Royalists of the
Northern Midlands came to him in numbers far less than he had expected,
wherefore he moved west to Shrewsbury, to rally his partisans from
Lancashire, Cheshire, and Wales, where he knew that they were many and
loyal. They came forward in great strength, and Charles was able to
begin to organize his army into regiments and brigades. The cavalry was
very numerous, if wholly untrained; the nobles and gentry turned out
in vast throngs, and brought every tenant and servant that could sit a
horse. The infantry were the weaker arm; the squires preferred to serve
among the cavalry; the townsfolk and peasantry, who should have swelled
the foot-levies, were often apathetic where they were not disloyal.
It was only in certain limited districts--Wales, Cornwall, and the
North were the most noted--that the king could raise a trustworthy
foot-soldiery. In the army that mustered at Shrewsbury he had 6000
cavalry to 8000 infantry--far too large a proportion of the former. Nor
was it easy to arm the foot; pikes and muskets were hard to procure,
as compared with the trooper's sword. The king gave the command of the
army to Lord Lindsey, but made his nephew, Rupert of the Palatinate,
general of the horse.
[Sidenote: =The Parliamentary forces.=]
Among the troops which Essex was enrolling and drilling at Northampton,
the exact reverse was the case. The infantry were numerous and willing;
the artisans of London and the men of the Eastern Counties had
volunteered in thousands. But the cavalry was weak; the admixture of
gentry and yeomen in its ranks did not suffice to leaven the mass; many
were city-bred men, unaccustomed to riding, many more were wastrels who
had enlisted to get the better pay of the horse-soldier. Cromwell, who
served in one of these regiments, denounced them to Hampden as "mostly
old decayed tapsters and serving-men," and asked, "How shall such base
and mean fellows be able to encounter gentlemen of honour and courage
and resolution?"
[Sidenote: =Charles moves towards London.=]
In September the two raw armies were both moving westward, but
when Charles had filled his ranks and got his men into some order,
he determined to advance on London. Marching by Bridgenorth and
Birmingham, he reached the slopes of Edgehill, on the borders of
Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, on October 23. He had slipped round the
flank of Lord Essex, who was waiting for him at Worcester, and the
Parliamentary army only overtook him by hard marching. When he saw the
enemy approaching, Charles ranged his order of battle on the hillside,
and charged down on Essex, who was getting into array on the plain
below.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Edgehill.=]
The incidents of Edgehill were typical of the whole struggle. On each
flank the king's gallant horsemen swept off the Parliamentarian cavalry
like chaff before the wind; and a third of the infantry of Essex was
also carried away in the disaster. But the reckless Cavaliers, headed
by Prince Rupert, were so maddened by the joy of victory, that they
rode on for miles, driving the fugitives before them, and gave no
thought to the main battle. Meanwhile, in the centre, Lord Essex, at
the head of the two-thirds of his infantry which had stood firm, had
encountered the king's foot with very different results. After a short
struggle, he burst through the Royalist centre, and captured the king's
standard and the whole of his artillery. A few hundred Parliamentary
horse--Oliver Cromwell was among them--had escaped from the general
flight of their comrades, and by their aid Essex cut several regiments
of the Royalists to pieces, and thrust the rest in disorder up the
slopes of Edgehill.
[Illustration: EDGEHILL
Sept. 1642.]
[Sidenote: =Charles at Brentford.=]
When Rupert and his horse returned at eventide, they found to their
surprise that they had taken part in a drawn battle, not in a victory.
Both sides were left in the same position as before the fight, but
the king had one advantage--he was the nearer to London, and was able
to march off in the direction of the capital. Essex, with his cavalry
gone and his infantry much mauled, could not detain him, and was
constrained to make for London by the long route of Warwick, Towcester,
and St. Albans, while the king moved by a shorter line through Oxford
and Reading. But Charles lingered on the way, and the travel-worn
troops of the earl reached the goal first. Even now, if Charles had
struck desperately at London, he might perhaps have taken it. But his
irresolute mind was cowed by a strong line of earthworks at Turnham
Green, behind which lay not only Essex, but the whole train-bands of
the capital, 20,000 strong. Instead of assaulting the lines, he drew
back to Reading, and sent proposals of peace to the Parliament, hoping
that their confidence was sufficiently shaken to make them listen to
his offers (November 11).
[Sidenote: =Charles retires to Oxford.=]
This retrograde movement was his ruin. The City had trembled while
the host of the Cavaliers lay at Brentford and Kingston; but when it
withdrew without daring an assault, the spirits of leaders and people
rose again, and there was no talk of surrender or compromise. For
the rest of the winter, however, the operations languished in front
of London. The king retired to Oxford, which he made his arsenal and
base of operations; the Parliamentarians remained quiet, guarding the
capital.
[Sidenote: =Local contests throughout England.=]
While the campaign of Edgehill and Brentford was in progress, there
was fighting going on all over England. In each district the local
partisans of king and Commons were striving for the mastery. In the
East the Roundheads carried the day everywhere; the whole coast from
Portsmouth to Hull, with all the seaboard counties, fell into their
hands. In the West and North the result was very different; Sir Ralph
Hopton beat the king's enemies out of Cornwall and the greater part
of Devon. The whole of Wales, except the single port of Pembroke, was
won for Charles. In Yorkshire there was fierce fighting between two
local magnates, the Marquis of Newcastle on the royal, Lord Fairfax
on the Parliamentary side. By the end of the winter Newcastle had
got possession of the whole county except Hull, and the cluster of
manufacturing towns in the West Riding and on the Lancashire border. He
had raised an army of 10,000 men, and controlled the whole countryside
from the borders of the Scots as far as Newark-on-Trent. But in the
Midlands the first campaign settled nothing; districts that held for
the king and districts that held for the Parliament were intermixed
in hopeless confusion. It would obviously need much further fighting
before any definite result could be secured.
[Sidenote: =Charles in want of money.=]
After futile negotiations had filled the winter months, the spring
of 1643 saw the renewal of operations all over the face of the land.
The negotiations, indeed, were but a foolish waste of time. It was
not likely that the king would accept the two conditions which the
Parliament made a _sine quâ non_--the grant to them of the power of
the sword by the Militia Bill, and of the right to "reform" the Church
by turning it into a Presbyterian Kirk. The struggle had to proceed,
though both parties found it extremely hard to maintain. The king more
especially had the greatest difficulty in finding the "sinews of war."
The sale of the crown jewels was but a temporary expedient; the loyal
offerings of the Oxford Colleges, who sent all their gold and silver
plate to be melted down at the mint which the king had set up in their
midst, could not last for long. The Royalist gentry soon stripped
their sideboards and strong boxes bare. The want of a regular supply of
money was always checking the king's movements. He called together a
Parliament at Oxford, to which came a majority of the House of Lords,
and nearly a third of the House of Commons, and this body granted him
the right to raise forced loans under his privy seal, and to take
excise duties all over the realm; but as the richest part of England
was not in his hands, this financial scheme was not very successful.
Charles was always on the verge of seeing his army disband for want
of pay. The Parliamentarians were somewhat better off, owing to their
control of London and the other chief ports of the kingdom, but even
they were often in dire straits for money, and heard unpaid regiments
clamouring in vain for food and raiment.
[Sidenote: =1643. Royalist successes--(1) in the West.=]
The events of the campaign of 1643 were no more decisive than those
of the previous autumn. In the centre the king and Essex watched each
other all through the summer without coming to a pitched battle. The
only event of note in these months was the death of Hampden, the
second man in importance among the Parliamentary leaders, in a cavalry
skirmish at Chalgrove Field. But on the two flanks the Royalists gained
important successes. Hopton, with the army of the West, swept over
Somerset and Wilts, routing Sir William Waller--an enterprising but
very unlucky general--at Lansdown (July 5), and afterwards at Roundway
Down near Devizes (July 13). In consequence of these victories,
Bristol, the second town in the kingdom, fell into Royalist hands
(July 26). A further advance put the army of the West in possession
of Hampshire and Dorsetshire, so the Roundheads retained nothing in
the South, except the ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth, with a few
scattered garrisons more.
[Sidenote: =(2) in the North.--The "Associated Counties."=]
At the same time, the Marquis of Newcastle beat Lord Fairfax and
his son Sir Thomas, the mainstays of the Parliamentary cause in
the North--at Adwalton Moor (June 30)--a victory which enabled him
to conquer the Puritan stronghold in the West Riding, and to drive
the last wrecks of the enemy into Hull. Newcastle would have won
Lincolnshire also, but for the resistance made by a new force, the levy
of the "Associated Counties." The shires of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex,
Cambridge, and Huntingdon, had banded themselves together to raise a
local army. It was a zealous and well-disciplined force, commanded by
Lord Manchester, under whom Oliver Cromwell served as general of horse.
It was Cromwell's ability as a cavalry leader which saved Lincolnshire
to the Parliament, by the winning of the hard-fought engagements of
Gainsborough (July 28) and Winceby (October 11).
[Sidenote: =Siege of Gloucester.--First Battle of Newbury.=]
Charles should now have called in Hopton and Newcastle to his aid,
and marched straight on London. But both the West-country and the
Yorkshire Royalists disliked leaving their own districts. Hopton's and
Newcastle's men protested against being called up to Oxford before
they had made a complete end of their own local enemies. Charles was
weak enough to yield to their wish, and meanwhile resolved to take
Gloucester, the one great Roundhead stronghold left in the West. He
laid siege to it on August 10; but on the news of his march westward,
the Parliament gave Lord Essex peremptory orders to attempt its relief
at all costs. Reinforced by six strong regiments of London train-bands,
zealous but new to war, he marched with 15,000 men into the West. When
he approached the besiegers, Charles resolved not to fight in his
siege-lines, but to attack Essex in the open. He therefore raised the
siege, allowed the earl to revictual Gloucester, but placed himself
across the line of retreat to London. At Newbury, in Berkshire, Essex
found the king's army arrayed on both sides of the London road, and
ready to receive him (September 19). There followed a fierce fight
among lanes and hedges, as Essex strove to pierce or outflank the royal
line. Prince Rupert threw away the best of his horsemen in attempts
to break the solid masses of the London train-bands, who showed a
steady power of resistance very admirable in such young soldiers. In
one of these desperate charges fell Lord Falkland, the wisest and most
moderate of the king's councillors, who is said to have deliberately
thrown away his life because of his sorrow at the long continuance
of the war. After a hard day's work, the earl had partly cut his way
through; and in the night the king, alarmed at the fact that his
infantry and artillery had exhausted all their powder, ordered his army
to retreat on Oxford. Then the Parliamentarians were able to force
their way to Reading without further molestation.
[Illustration: ENGLAND
AT THE END OF 1643.]
[Sidenote: =The Solemn League and Covenant.=]
Thus the end of the campaign of 1643 left matters in the centre much
as they had been nine months before. But on the flanks, in Yorkshire
and the south-west, the Royalists had won much ground, and were in
full communication with the king through their strong posts in Bristol
and Newark. While arms had proved unable to settle the struggle, both
sides had been trying to gain help from without--the Parliament in
Scotland, the king in Ireland. The zealous Covenanters of the North,
before consenting to give armed support to the Roundheads, insisted
on receiving pledges from their allies. Accordingly, the Parliament
swore a Solemn League and Covenant, "to preserve the Kirk of Scotland
in doctrine, worship, and governance, and to reform religion in the
Church of England according to God's Holy Word." The second clause
implied the destruction of Episcopacy, and the introduction of
Presbyterianism into the southern kingdom (September 25). In return for
this pledge the Scots promised to send an army of 10,000 or 15,000 men
over the Tweed in the following spring. The conclusion of this treaty
was the last work of Pym, the king of the Commons, who died six weeks
later. No civilian came forward among the ranks of the Parliamentarians
to take up his mantle.
[Sidenote: =Charles seeks aid from Ireland.=]
Meanwhile the king had sought aid from Ireland. Ever since the massacre
of 1641, the Irish rebels had been fighting with the Marquis of
Ormonde, Strafford's successor in the governance of that unruly realm.
They had occupied six-sevenths of the country, and held Ormonde's men
pinned up in Dublin, Cork, and a few other strongholds. Charles now
conceived a scheme for patching up a peace with the rebels, and thus
making it possible to bring over Ormonde's army, Strafford's veteran
regiments, to join in the English war. With this end he negotiated a
truce called "the Cessation" with the Irish (September 15), leaving the
"Catholic Confederates" to govern all the districts that were in their
hands, and promising to devise a scheme of toleration for Romanists.
This truce enabled Ormonde to begin sending over his troops to England;
it was also arranged that native Irish levies should be lent to the
king by the "Catholic Confederates," and Lord Taaffe, one of the
leading rebels, promised to make a beginning by bringing over 2000 men.
This alliance with the fanatical Romanists of Ireland, the perpetrators
of the Ulster Massacre of 1641, did Charles much harm. The Puritans
began to dream of England dragooned by wild Irish Papists, and thought
that the fires of Smithfield would ere long be relighted. They grew
fiercer than ever against the king.
[Sidenote: =1644. Rout of the Irish levies.--The Scots in England.=]
In December, 1643, Ormonde's first regiments began to pass the Channel
and arrive at Chester. In January, 1644, the Scots crossed the Tweed
under the Earl of Leven. Before winter was over the strife had begun,
and the new forces on each side were engaged. In January Sir Thomas
Fairfax, with the Yorkshire Parliamentarians, had slipped out of Hull,
whose siege had been raised by the Marquis of Newcastle, and fell
suddenly upon the Irish army at Nantwich, near Chester. He completely
routed it, and dispersed or took almost the whole. Meanwhile the Scots
were slowly pushing southward, driving the marquis before them through
Durham and the North Riding. In April they joined Fairfax at Selby,
near York, and the united forces so much outnumbered Newcastle's
force, that he sent in haste to the king at Oxford, to say that all
the North would be lost if he were not promptly aided by troops
from the Midlands. Charles, though he could ill spare men, gave his
nephew Rupert a large force of cavalry, and bade him march rapidly
on York, picking up on his way all the reinforcements he could raise
in Shropshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire. In June the prince reached
York with nearly 10,000 men, and joined Newcastle's army. Even before
his arrival the enemy received a corresponding reinforcement: Lord
Manchester and Oliver Cromwell, with the army of the "Associated
Counties," had crossed the Trent and entered Yorkshire to join Fairfax
and the Scots. A great battle was imminent, and one that would be
fought by forces far larger than had yet met in line during the war,
for each side mustered more than 20,000 men.
[Illustration: MARSTON MOOR
July 2, 1644.]
[Sidenote: =Battle of Marston Moor.--The North lost to Charles.=]
The fate of the Northern Counties was settled by the meeting of
the two armies at Marston Moor, near York, on the 2nd of July. The
Parliamentarians and their Scottish allies had drawn themselves up on
a hillside overlooking the moor, Fairfax and his Yorkshiremen on the
right, the Scots in the centre, Manchester and the men of the Eastern
Counties on the left. Rupert marched out from York to meet them, and
ranged his men on the moor below--he himself taking the right wing,
while Newcastle's northern levies had the left. Before the prince's
host was fully arrayed, the enemy charged down the hill, and the two
armies clashed all along the line. On the Royalist left, Lord Goring
with the northern horse completely routed the troops of Fairfax, and
then turned against the Scots, and broke their flank regiments to
pieces. Then, thinking the day their own, the Cavaliers rushed on in
pursuit, and swept off the field. But on the Royalist right the matter
had gone very differently. Cromwell, with the eastern horse, had there
met the fiery Rupert in person; the struggle was long and fierce, but
at last Cromwell's men, godly yeomen of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire,
whom their general had picked and trained with long care, showed that
religious fervour was even better in battle than the reckless courage
of the Cavaliers. Rupert's regiments were driven off the field, and
then the cool-headed Cromwell, instead of flying in pursuit, led his
troopers to aid the much-tried Scots in the centre. By his charge
the Royalist foot was broken, and Goring's horse dispersed when it
straggled back to the battle. The day, which had begun so doubtfully,
ended in a complete victory for the Parliament. Rupert rallied 6000
horse, and took them back to Oxford, but the rest of the Royalist army
was lost. Four thousand had fallen, many dispersed, the rest fell back
into York, and there surrendered a few days later. Lord Newcastle,
angry at Rupert's rashness before the fight and his mismanagement in
it, took ship to Holland, and never struck another blow for the king.
Meanwhile Manchester and the Scots overran all the North, and the land
beyond Humber was wholly lost to the king. The northern Royalists had
been utterly destroyed.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Lostwithiel.--Essex's army destroyed.=]
This disaster would have been completely ruinous to the king, if he
had not partly preserved the balance of strength by winning a great
victory in the south. The Parliament had hoped to do great things
with their home army, and had started the campaign successfully, for
Sir William Waller had beaten the west-country troops of Lord Hopton
at Cheriton in March, and driven the Royalists out of Hampshire. But
calamity followed this good fortune; in the summer the Earl of Essex
led a great host into Wilts and Somerset, to complete Waller's success
by recovering the whole of the South-Western Counties. But the king
dropped down from Oxford with his main army, and placed himself between
Essex and London. The position was much the same as it had been a
year before at Newbury Field. But this time the earl displayed great
indecision, and grossly mishandled his men. Instead of forcing his
way home, at any cost, he retreated westward before Charles, and was
gradually driven into Cornwall, where the country was bitterly hostile.
After some ill-fought skirmishes, he was surrounded at Lostwithiel.
His cavalry cut their way out, and got back to Hampshire; he himself
escaped in a boat to Plymouth. But the whole of his infantry, guns, and
stores were taken by the king. The Parliamentarian army of the South
was as completely wiped out in September as the Royalist army of the
North had been in July. But there was one important difference in the
cases--Marston Moor stripped Charles not only of an army, but of six
fair counties; Lostwithiel saw the troops of Essex annihilated, but did
not give the king an inch of new ground. On the whole, the balance of
the campaign of 1644 was against him.
[Sidenote: =Second battle of Newbury.=]
To cover London from the king, the Parliament hastily summoned down
Manchester's victorious army from Yorkshire, and added to it Sir
William Waller's force. Their united hosts fought the indecisive second
battle of Newbury with the royal troops on the 22nd of October. Here
Manchester, by his sloth and indecision, left Waller to do all the
fighting, and almost lost the day. But in the end Charles withdrew to
Oxford, leaving the field to his enemies.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Laud.=]
The winter of 1644-5 was fraught with events of deep importance. The
Parliament made one final attempt to negotiate with the king, only
to receive the answer, "I will not part with these three things--the
Church, my crown, and my friends, and you will yet have much ado
to get them from me." Irritated at the king's unbending attitude,
they took a step which they knew must render all further attempts
at peace impossible. Drawing out of prison the old Archbishop of
Canterbury, they proceeded to pass a bill of attainder against him,
and condemned him to death. Laud went piously and resolutely to the
scaffold, asserting, and truly, that he died the martyr of the Church
of England, not the victim of his political doings. This execution was
an unpardonable act of cruelty and spite. The old man had lingered
three years in prison, was perfectly harmless, and was slain partly
to vex the king, partly to satiate the religious bigotry of the
Presbyterians--a sect quite as intolerant as Laud himself.
[Sidenote: =The "Self-denying Ordinance."=]
But while Laud's attainder was passing, another important matter
was in hand. The campaign of the previous year had been fatal to
the reputation of the two chief Parliamentary generals, Essex and
Manchester--the one for losing his army at Lostwithiel, the other for
his perverse malingering at Newbury. Waller and several more were in
little better odour. Cromwell, who had long served as Manchester's
second in command, led a crusade against his chief, and accused him of
deliberately protracting the war. It was generally felt that the armies
of the Parliament would fare much better if they were entrusted to
professional soldiers, and not to great peers or prominent politicians.
Hence came the celebrated "Self-denying Ordinance," by which the
members of the two Houses pledged themselves to give up their military
posts, and confine their activity to legislative and administrative
work. One exception was made--Oliver Cromwell, whom all acknowledged to
be the best cavalry officer in the Parliamentary army, was permitted
to keep his military post. But Essex, Manchester, and the rest retired
into civil life.
[Sidenote: =The "New-Model Army."=]
At the same time, the Parliament resolved to remodel its army. Much
inconvenience had arisen from the miscellaneous nature of the forces
which took the field. County militia, London train-bands, voluntary
levies, "pressed men" forced to the front, local organizations like
the army of the "Associated Counties," had served side by side in some
confusion. The conscripts were wont to desert, the militia protested
against crossing their county boundary, the train-bands melted back
to their shops if they were kept too long under arms. To do away with
these troubles, the Parliament now created the "New-Model Army," a
standing force of some 20,000 picked men, to be led by Sir Thomas
Fairfax, with Cromwell as his second in command. This proved a very
formidable host. The troops were mainly veterans, all were zealous
and willing, and the officers were most carefully selected. The
horsemen more especially were vastly superior to the old Parliamentary
troopers. Cromwell modelled them on his own East-country regiment,
filled the ranks with "men of religion," who looked upon the war as a
crusade against Popery and tyranny, and drilled his cuirassiers--the
"Ironsides," as they were called--into the highest state of efficiency.
[Illustration: NASEBY
1645.]
[Sidenote: =1645. Battle of Naseby.--The Midlands lost to Charles.=]
Next spring the "New-Model" was sent out to try its fortune against the
Cavaliers. The king had led his army northward to restore the fortunes
of his party in the valley of the Trent, where Newark was now his most
advanced post. On his way he stormed the important Parliamentary town
of Leicester, but his progress was then stayed by the news of the
approach of Fairfax. Despising the "New-Model," the Cavaliers turned
fiercely to attack it, though the royal host was the smaller by several
thousands. They seem to have put only 9000 men into the field against
13,000. Charles and Fairfax met at Naseby, in Northamptonshire, and
there fought out the decisive battle of the first civil war. Once more
it was Rupert who lost the day, and Cromwell who won it. The prince,
with the right wing of the royal horse, routed his immediate opponents,
and rode off the field in reckless pursuit of them. But on the king's
left Cromwell and his Ironsides broke to pieces the Cavaliers of the
North, and then steadied their ranks and rode against the flank of the
Royalist infantry. Charles sent in his reserve to aid his flagging
centre, and prepared to charge himself at the head of his body-guard.
"Will you go to your death?" cried the Earl of Carnwath, who seized the
royal rein, and turned his master out of the press. Charles yielded,
and rode back. Far better would it have been for him and for England
if he had gone on to make his end among the pikes. Cromwell's charge
settled the day; the Royalist foot were ridden down or captured; the
wrecks of the horse joined the late-returning Rupert, and escorted
their master back to Oxford (June 14, 1645).
[Sidenote: =Charles a fugitive.--Career of Montrose.=]
Naseby decided the fate of the war. The king could never raise another
army in the Midlands. His whole infantry force was gone, and for the
next eight months he rode helplessly about the shires with 2000 or
3000 horse, vainly trying to elude his pursuers and scrape together
a new body of foot. His only hope was in an ally who had arisen in
Scotland. James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, a Scottish peer who had
grown discontented with the Covenant, had raised the royal standard
in the Highlands in the preceding year. He was a born leader of men,
and, though at first followed by a mere handful of wild clansmen, soon
made his power felt in the war. After routing two small armies in the
north-east, he turned upon Argyleshire, and almost extirpated the
whole Covenanting clan of the Campbells at Inverlochy (January, 1645).
Then, descending upon the Lowlands, he cut to pieces a large army at
Kilsyth (August 15), seized Glasgow, and mastered the greater part of
Scotland. Charles resolved on joining him, and trusted to turn the fate
of the war by his aid. But Montrose's Highland levies melted home to
stow away their plunder, and he was left at the head of a comparatively
small force for the moment. Then Leslie led back across the Tweed the
Scottish army which had been serving in England, and surprised and
routed Montrose at Philiphaugh (September, 1645).
[Sidenote: =1645-6. End of the war in the West.=]
There was no further hope for Charles from Scotland, and his sole
remaining army, the force in the West, under Hopton and Goring,
was also doomed. After Naseby, Fairfax led the "New-Model" into
Somersetshire, beat Goring at Langport, and captured Bristol
(September, 1645). The Royalists were driven westward towards the
Land's End. In the next spring Fairfax followed them, took Exeter, beat
Hopton at Torrington, and steadily drove the wrecks of the enemy onward
till their back was to the Cornish sea. Escape was impossible, and the
king's army of the West laid down its arms (March, 1646).
[Sidenote: =Charles gives himself up to the Scots.=]
The king had now lost all hope, and when the Roundhead armies began
to muster for the siege of Oxford, his last stronghold, he took a
desperate measure. He thought that the Scottish Covenanters were
less bitterly hostile to him than the English Parliamentary party,
and resolved to give himself up to them rather than to his English
subjects. Slipping out of Oxford in disguise, he rode to the Scottish
camp at Newark, and there surrendered himself (April, 1646). He was
not without hope that he might yet save his crown by coming to terms
with his subjects; for he had an overweening belief in his own power
of diplomacy, and did not understand how deeply his old evasions and
intrigues had shaken men's confidence in his plighted word. Yet he had
his better side; he sincerely believed in his own good intentions and
his hereditary rights, and there were two things which he would never
give up under any pressure--his crown and his adherence to the Church
of England.
[Sidenote: =The Scots deliver him to the Parliament.=]
The Scots were delighted to have Charles in their hands, and proposed
to restore him to his throne if he would promise to take the Covenant
and impose Presbyterianism on England. This demand hit the king on a
point where his conscience was fixed and firm; he would never sell
the Church to its foes, so he temporized and dallied with the Scots'
proposals, but would not accept them. Disgusted at his refusal, the
Covenanters resolved to surrender him to the English Parliament. After
stipulating for the payment of all the arrears of the subsidies which
were owed them for their services in England, they gave up the king to
his enemies--a proceeding which contemporary opinion called "selling
their master for £400,000" (January, 1647).
[Sidenote: =Presbyterians and Independents.=]
Even yet Charles had not abandoned all hope; he knew that his
victorious enemies were much divided among themselves, and thought
that by embroiling them with one another he might yet secure good
terms for himself. The two parties which split the Parliament were
the Presbyterians and the Independents. The former, of whom we have
heard so much already, were desirous of organizing all England into
a Calvinistic Church on the model of the Scottish Kirk; they were as
intolerant as Laud himself in the matter of conformity, and intended
to force the whole nation into their new organization. Papists,
Episcopalians, and Nonconformists of every kind were all to be driven
into the fold. This plan did not please the "Independents"--a party
who consisted of men of all sorts and conditions, who only agreed
in disliking a State Church and a compulsory uniformity. Some of
the Independents were wild sectaries--Anabaptists, Levellers, and
Fifth-Monarchy-men, who held the strangest doctrines of an immediate
Millennium. Others were men who merely insisted on the responsibility
of the individual for his own conscience, and thought that the State
Church, with its compulsory powers, was a mistake, coming between God
and man where no mediator was required. Hence the watchword of the
Independents was the toleration of all sects, and they steadfastly
resisted the Presbyterian doctrine of forced conformity. The
Independents were very strong in the army, and Cromwell, the coming
man, was a pillar of their cause. On the other hand, the Presbyterians
had a decided majority among the members of the Parliament.
[Sidenote: =Parliament offers terms to Charles.=]
As representing the party of toleration, the Independents were quite
prepared to leave Episcopalians alone, and it was therefore with them,
rather than with the rigid and bigoted Presbyterians, that the king
hoped to be able to ally himself. But it was the Presbyterians who
swayed the House, and had possession of Charles's person; with them,
therefore, he had to treat. The Parliamentary majority did not yet
dream of abolishing the monarchy; they were bent on two things--on
tying the present king's hands so tightly that he should never again
be a danger to the common weal, and on forcing him to consent to the
establishment of Presbyterianism as the State religion. The former
was a rational end enough, for Charles could never be trusted; the
latter was a piece of insane bigotry, for the Presbyterians were a mere
minority in the nation, far outnumbered by the Episcopalians and the
Independents. The "Propositions" of the Parliament took the form of a
demand that Charles should surrender all claim to control the militia,
the fleet, and taxation, for twenty years; that he should take the
Covenant himself, assent to its being forced on all his subjects, and
order the persecution of all Romanists.[42] He was also to assent to
the outlawing of his own chief supporters in the civil war.
Now Charles had declared long ago that he would never sacrifice his
crown, his Church, or his friends, and in captivity he did his best
to keep his vow. But his method was not to give a steady refusal, and
bid his enemies do their worst. He answered their demands by long
counter-propositions, flagrant evasions, and endless hair-splitting on
every disputed point. Where he might have appeared a martyr, he chose
to stand as a quibbling casuist. The Parliament kept him in easy and
honourable confinement at Holmby House, in Northamptonshire, while
the negotiations were in progress, and he was so carelessly guarded
that he was able to keep up secret correspondence with all kinds of
possible allies--the King of France, the Scots, and the chiefs of the
Independent party.
[Sidenote: =Parliament and the army.=]
But while king and Commons were haggling for terms, a new difficulty
arose. The Presbyterian majority in Parliament were anxious to
disband the army, both because of the expense of its maintenance, and
still more because they knew it to be a stronghold of their enemies,
the Independents. In March, 1647, they issued an ordinance for the
dismissal of the whole force save a few regiments destined to suppress
the Irish rebellion. But the "New-Model" refused to be dismissed; it
hated Presbyterians, and it had learnt to look upon itself as a truer
representative of the Puritan party than an out-of-date House which
had been sitting more than seven years. Instead of disbanding, the
army began to organize itself for resistance, and each regiment named
two deputies, or "agitators," as they were called, to form a central
military committee. This was done with the approval of Fairfax and
Cromwell, the leaders of the host. The movement was natural, but quite
unconstitutional; still more so was the next step of the soldiery. An
officer named Joyce, with the secret sanction of the agitators and of
Cromwell also, rode to Holmby with 500 men, seized the king's person,
and took him to Newmarket, where the head-quarters of the army lay.
[Sidenote: =The Independents offer terms to Charles.=]
Next the army marched on London, and encamped before its gates (June
16, 1647). Many Presbyterian members fled in dismay from the House
of Commons, and the Independents got for a moment a majority in
Parliament. The victorious party then proceeded to treat with the king,
offering him liberal terms--the complete toleration of all sects, the
restriction of the royal power over the armed force of the realm for
ten years only, and a pardon for all exiled Royalists except five.
[Sidenote: =Charles's intrigues.=]
In a moment of evil inspiration the king refused this moderate offer.
Encouraged by the quarrel of the Presbyterians and the army, he had
formed a secret plot for freeing himself from both. His old partisans
all over England had agreed on a simultaneous rising, and they had
obtained a promise of aid from the Scots; for those stern Presbyterians
so hated the Independents and the English army, that they were prepared
to join the king against them. On the 11th of November, 1647, Charles
slipped away from his military captors, and succeeded in escaping to
the Isle of Wight. Hammond, the governor of the island, kept him in
security at Carisbrooke, but did not send him back to the army. From
Carisbrooke, the king sent new offers of terms of accommodation both to
the army and the Parliament, but he was merely trying to gain time for
his friends to take arms.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the war.=]
On the 28th of April, 1648, he saw his plot begin to work. A body of
north-country Royalists seized Berwick, and raised the royal standard.
A few days later the Scots took arms and raised a large force, which
was placed under the Duke of Hamilton, and ordered to cross the
Border. At the same time a committee of Scots lords sent to France
for the young Prince of Wales, and invited him to come among them
and put himself at the head of his father's friends. The movement in
Scotland was a signal for the general rising of the English Royalists.
Insurrections broke out in May and June all over the land--in Wales,
Kent, Essex, Cornwall, and even among the Eastern Counties of the
"Association," where Puritanism was so strong.
[Sidenote: =English Royalists suppressed.=]
For a moment it looked as if the king would win. It seemed that the
army would be unable to cope with so many simultaneous risings.
But Charles had not calculated on the military skill which Fairfax
and Cromwell could display in the hour of danger. In less than
three months' hard fighting the two generals had put down the whole
insurrection. Fairfax routed the Kentishmen--the most dangerous body
of insurgents in the South--by storming their stronghold of Maidstone.
Then, crossing the Thames, he pacified the Eastern Counties, and drove
all the insurgents of those parts into Colchester. In Colchester he
met a vigorous resistance; the town held out for two months, and only
yielded to starvation (August 27, 1648).
[Sidenote: =Battle of Preston.--The Scottish army dispersed.=]
Meanwhile Cromwell had first struck down the Welsh Royalists, and then
ridden north to oppose the Scots. The Duke of Hamilton had already
crossed the Tweed, and had been joined by 4000 or 5000 Yorkshiremen. He
moved southward, intending to reach Wales, but in Lancashire Cromwell
caught him on the march, with his army spread out over many miles of
road. Falling on the scattered host, Cromwell beat its rear at Preston
(August 17); then, pressing on, he scattered or captured the whole army
in three days of fierce fighting, though his force was far inferior
in numbers to that of the enemy. But the imbecile Hamilton had so
dispersed his men that he never could concentrate them for a battle. On
August 25 the duke, with the last wrecks of his army, surrendered at
Uttoxeter.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Royalist leaders.=]
The second civil war thus ended in utter disaster to the king's
friends. Moreover, it had sealed the fate of Charles himself. There
arose a large party among the victors who were determined that he
should be punished for the reckless intrigue by which he had stirred
up the dying embers of strife, and set the land once more aflame. The
temper of the army was so fierce that, for the first time since the war
began, numerous executions followed the surrender of the vanquished
Royalists. The Duke of Hamilton, who had led the Scots; Lucas and
Lisle, who had defended Colchester; Lord Holland, who had been
designated to command the Royalists of the south, all suffered death.
Hundreds of prisoners of inferior rank were sent to serve as bondmen in
the plantations of Barbados.
[Sidenote: =Pride's Purge.--The Rump.=]
Charles himself was removed from Carisbrooke--he had made two
unsuccessful attempts to escape from its walls--and put under strict
guard at Hurst Castle. The Parliament still continued to negotiate with
him, only making its terms more rigorous. But the army did not intend
that any such agreement should be concluded. While the House of Commons
was still treating, it was subjected to a sudden military outrage.
Colonel Pride, a leading Independent officer, marched his regiment to
Westminster on the 6th of December, 1648, and, as the members began to
muster, seized one by one all the chiefs of the Presbyterian party.
Forty-one were placed in confinement, ninety-six were turned back and
warned never to come near the House again. Only sixty Independent
members were allowed to enter, a body which was for the future known by
the insulting name of "the Rump," as being the "sitting part" of the
House.
Thus ended the famous Long Parliament, destroyed by the military
monster which it had itself created. The "Rump," a ridiculous remnant,
the slave of the soldiery, was alone left to represent the civil power
in England.
[Sidenote: =Trial of the king.=]
The king's fate was now settled. The army had resolved to punish him,
and the Parliament was to be the army's tool. On December 23, the
members of the Rump passed a bill for trying the king. On January 1,
1649, they voted that "to levy war against the Parliament and realm of
England was treason," and appointed a High Court of Justice to try the
king for that offence. When it was seen that the king's life as well as
his crown was aimed at, many of the leaders of the Independents, both
military men and civilians, began to draw back. Fairfax, the chief of
the whole army, refused to sit in the High Court, and of 135 persons
designated to serve in it, only some seventy or eighty appeared. But
the majority of the army, and Cromwell, the guiding spirit of the
whole, were determined to go through with the business. The High
Court met, with an obscure lawyer named Bradshaw as its president;
its ranks were packed with military men, who were blind to all legal
considerations, and had come merely to condemn the king. Charles was
brought before the court, but refused to plead. Such a body, he said,
had no right to try a King of England--it was a mere illegal meeting,
deriving its sole authority from a factious remnant of a mutilated
House of Commons. This was undoubtedly true, and, considering the
temper of his judges, the king knew that all defence was useless.
The course that he took was the only one that suited his dignity and
conscience. While he stood dumb before his judges, they passed sentence
of death upon him (January 26, 1649).
[Sidenote: =His execution.=]
Four days later he was led to execution on a scaffold placed before
the windows of Whitehall Palace. He died with a calm dignity that
amazed the beholders. He was suffered to make a short speech, in which
he bade the multitude remember that he died a victim to the "power of
the sword," that the nation was now a slave to the army, and that it
would never be free again till it remembered its duty to its God and
its king. He must suffer, he said, because he would not assent to the
handing Church and State over to "an arbitrary sway;" it was this that
his captors had required of him. Finally, he said, he died a Christian
according to the profession of the Church of England, which he had
always striven to maintain. Then he laid his head upon the block and
met the axe with unflinching courage, amid the groans of the people.
[Sidenote: =Was his fate deserved?=]
The hateful illegality of the king's trial, the violence of his
enemies, and the dignity of his end have half redeemed his memory.
In our dislike for those who slew him we almost forget his offences.
But when we condemn his slayers we must not forget their provocation.
Charles had ground the nation under his heel for eleven years of
tyranny. He had involved it in a bitter civil war that lasted four
years more. Then, when he fell into the victors' hands, he wasted two
years in shifty and evasive negotiations, which he never intended to
bring to an end. Finally, from his prison he had stirred up a second
and wholly unnecessary civil war. Contemplating these acts, we must
allow that he brought his evil end upon himself; violent and illegal as
it was, we cannot say that it was undeserved.
[Sidenote: =The Commonwealth.=]
The king's execution was immediately followed by the proclamation
of a republic. The Independents and the army wished to be rid of
the monarchy, no less than of the person of Charles. Accordingly a
sweeping series of bills, passed in February, 1649, declared England a
"Commonwealth," and vested its government in a single House of Commons
and a Council of State. The House of Lords was abolished; of late it
had been little more than a farce, for not a dozen peers had been wont
to attend. But the "Rump," which now assumed to be the representative
of the Commonwealth of England, was itself hardly more than a mockery.
It never permitted the victims of "Pride's purge" to return to its
benches, so that it was nothing better than a factious minority,
depending on the swords of the army.
[Sidenote: =Scotland and Ireland.=]
The Rump and the army were masters of England, but in Scotland and
Ireland they were as yet powerless. Ireland was entirely in the
hands of the Catholic confederates, save the two towns of Dublin and
Londonderry. Scotland had never laid down its arms after Preston; there
was no republican party north of the Tweed, and when the news of the
king's execution arrived, it only led the Scots to proclaim his son the
Prince of Wales, under the name of Charles II.
[Sidenote: =Preparations for war.--Mutiny of the Levellers.=]
Unless England, Scotland, and Ireland were to part company, and relapse
into separate kingdoms, it was obvious that the new government must try
its sword upon the lesser realms. This it was fully prepared to do.
In the spring of 1649 an expedition for the conquest of Ireland was
ordered, and the command of it was given to the formidable Cromwell,
who since the king's death had become more and more the recognized
chief of the army, Fairfax having stepped into the background. Before
the expedition sailed, however, Cromwell had no small trouble with
his soldiery. The bad example which the generals and colonels had set
in driving out the Long Parliament and overturning the monarchy, had
turned the rank and file to similar thoughts. There had grown up among
them a body of extreme democratic republicans, called the Levellers,
from their wish to make all men equal; they were mostly members of
obscure and fanatical sects, who looked for the triumph of the saints
and the coming of the millennium. While the army was preparing for the
Irish war, the Levellers broke out into open insurrection, demanding
the dismissal of the "Rump," the introduction of annual Parliaments,
the abolition of the Council of State, and the grant of "true and
perfect freedom in all things spiritual and temporal." The zealots,
however, were weaker than they imagined, and their mutiny was easily
put down. Cromwell shot three or four of their leaders, and pardoned
the rest of the band.
[Sidenote: =Cromwell subdues Ireland.=]
In August, 1649, Cromwell took over a powerful army to Ireland,
where the civil war had never ceased since the rebellion eight years
before. The remnant of the Anglo-Irish Royalists, under the Marquis of
Ormonde, joined with the Romanists to oppose him, but their combined
efforts were useless. So strong a man had never before laid his hand
on Ireland. Starting from Dublin, the only large town in Parliamentary
hands, he began by the conquest of Leinster. From the first he had
determined to strike terror into the enemy. His stern veterans were
capable of any extreme of cruelty against Romanists and rebels. But
Cromwell is personally responsible for the two horrible blows that
broke the Irish resistance. The enemy had made himself strong in the
two towns of Drogheda and Wexford. Cromwell stormed them both, and
forbade the giving of quarter, so that the whole garrison was in each
case slaughtered to a man. Eight or nine thousand Irish perished, and
such terror was struck into the rebels by these massacres that they
made little more resistance. Cromwell had overrun half the island, when
pressing need recalled him to England. He left part of his army under
his son-in-law Ireton to complete the conquest, and hastily returned
with the remainder (May, 1650).
[Sidenote: =Prince Charles in Scotland.=]
The new danger was the Scottish war. Charles, Prince of Wales, had
crossed to Scotland and put himself at the head of the national forces
of the country. The unscrupulous young man had taken the "Covenant,"
and professed himself a Presbyterian to bind the Scots more closely
to him. He suffered the execution of the gallant Marquis of Montrose,
who had tried to raise a purely Royalist revolt in the Highlands,
to pass without rebuke, and allied himself with the slayers of his
friend. Charles was resolved to rouse the English royalists in his
aid, and it was the news that he was proposing to cross the Tweed that
called Cromwell home, for Fairfax had refused to lead an army against
the Scots. Since the tragedy of January, 1649, he had lost his old
confidence in the justice of the Puritan cause.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Dunbar and Worcester.=]
Cromwell entered Scotland in July, 1650, and beat a very superior
army at Dunbar, owing to the bad generalship of his opponents Leven
and Leslie (September 3). He then took Edinburgh, slowly and steadily
conquered the whole of the Lowlands, and pushed on into the interior of
Scotland. But next year, when he had won his way to Perth, he learnt
that Prince Charles and the Scots army had slipped past him and entered
England, trusting to rouse Lancashire and Wales to their aid. Cromwell
followed with fiery speed, and caught the invaders at Worcester
(September 3, 1651). His iron veterans once more carried the day; the
Scots were beaten and dispersed. Prince Charles barely escaped, and
wandered for many days in peril of his life, till faithful friends
enabled him to cross England and take ship at Brighton. From thence he
came safely to France.
[Sidenote: =End of the civil war.=]
The battle of Worcester, which Cromwell called "the crowning mercy,"
put a final end to the civil war. Scotland submitted, Ireland was
thoroughly conquered by Ireton, and the Rump and the army stood
victorious over the last of their foes. It now remained to be seen
whether the three kingdoms could settle down into a united Commonwealth
under their new conditions.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] The term "Roundhead," alluding to the close-cropped hair of the
Puritans, which contrasted so strongly with the long locks which were
then the fashion, is first found in use in the end of 1641.
[42] The children of the Romanists were to be taken forcibly from them,
and educated as Presbyterians.