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Presented  to  the 
LIBRARY  of  the 

UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO 

by 

ONTARIO  LEGISLATIVE 
LIBRARY 


THE  STRUGGLE   FOR   PARLIAMENTARY 
GOVERNMENT. 


,» 
'A$323 


'•'  ; 


- 


THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  STRUGGL 


PARLIAMENTARY  GOVERNMENT 


IN  ENGLAND. 


BY 


ANDREW    BISSET. 


/2V 


VOLUMES. 


r^- 

,5 


ri(9 


VOL.    II. 


MICROFORMED  BY 

PRESERVATION 

SERVICES 

PATE.  ;. MAY  .^..7. 1992.. 


HENRY  S.  KING  &  Co.,  LONDON. 

1877. 


r/v 


{>*//  ngAft  reserved] 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

FAIRFAX  AND  CROMWELL  CHANGE  THE  FACE  OF  THE  WAR — BY 
NO  LONGER,  LIKE  ESSEX  AND  OTHERS,  DEALING  IN  DRAWN 
BATTLES  —  MATERIALS  OF  THE  PARLIAMENTARY  ARMY  AS 
RECONSTRUCTED  BY  CROMWELL  —  COMPARED  WITH  THE 
MATERIALS  OF  THE  KING'S  ARMY — CHADWICK,  AS  DESCRIBED 
BY  MRS.  HUTCHINSON,  MIGHT  HAVE  SAT  FOR  SCOTT'S  TRUSTY 
TOMKINS 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

CROMWELL'S  MODE  OF  USING  HIS  MILITARY  MATERIALS — THE 
SKIRMISH  AT  GAINSBOROUGH,  ETC. — CROMWELL  APPOINTED 
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL  TO  THE  EARL  OF  MANCHESTER — 
EMERGES  FROM  THE  EASTERN  COUNTIES — AND  JOINS  HIS 
FORCES  TO  THE  FORCES  EMPLOYED  IN  THE  SIEGE  OF  YORK  .  2^ 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

THE   BATTLE  OF   MARSTON   MOOR  ...  43 

CHAPTER  XV. 

SECOND  BATTLE  OF  NEWBURY — PRESBYTERIAN  OLIGARCHY'S  PLOT 
AGAINST  CROMWELL — CROMWELL'S  REMARKABLE  SPEECH  IN 
THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS,  QTH  DECEMBER  1644 — SELF-DENY- 
ING ORDINANCE  —  TREATY  OF  UXBRIDGE  —  EXECUTION  OF 
LAUD  ........  79 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE     HIGHLANDERS    OF    SCOTLAND— MONTROSE'S    VICTORIES    AND 

CRUELTIES   ......'•  97 


vi  Contents. 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

PAGE 

THE  NEW  MODEL  OF  THE  PARLIAMENTARY  ARMY — BATTLE  OF 
NASEBY— MONTROSE'S  SUCCESS  AT  AULDERNE,  ALFORD,  AND 
KILSYTH — HIS  DEFEAT  BY  DAVID  LESLIE  AT  PHILIPHAUGH — 
SUCCESSES  OF  FAIRFAX  AND  CROMWELL  AFTER  THE  BATTLE 

OF  NASEBY — SURRENDER  OF  BRISTOL — STORMING"  OF  BASING 
HOUSE — THE  KING'S  INTRIGUES  THROUGH  THE  EARL  OF 
GLAMORGAN — END  OF  THE  FIRST  WAR — THE  KING  GOES  TO 
THE  SCOTS  AT  NEWARK,  AND  IS  BY  THEM  DELIVERED  UP  TO 
THE  ENGLISH  PARLIAMENT  —  EPISCOPACY  ABOLISHED  —  THE 
COURT  OF  WARDS  ABOLISHED  .....  138 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

MISREPRESENTATIONS   OF    THE    ROYALISTS,    PRESBYTERIANS,    AND 

OTHERS  RESPECTING  CROMWELL  AND  IRETON  l8o 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

STRUGGLE  FOR  POWER  BETWEEN  THE  PRESBYTERIANS  AND  THE 
INDEPENDENTS— THE  KING  SEIZED  BY  JOYCE — THE  KING'S 
NEGOTIATIONS  AND  INTRIGUES — MUTINY  IN  THE  ARMY — 
QUELLED— THE  ARMY  MARCHES  TO  LONDON  AND  RESTORES 
THE  MEMBERS  OF  BOTH  HOUSES  WHO  HAD  BEEN  DRIVEN  AWAY 
BY  TUMULTS— THE  KING'S  FLIGHT  TO  THE  ISLE  OF  WIGHT  2O- 


CHAPTER  XX. 

THE  SECOND  CIVIL  WAR — THE  TREATY  OF  NEWPORT  .  257 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

REMONSTRANCE    FROM    THE    ARMY    FOR   JUSTICE   ON    THE    KING — 

PRIDE'S  PURGE — CONDUCT  OF  VANE  AND  FAIRFAX  ON  THIS 
OCCASION    ...  283 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE  KING'S  TRIAL  AND  EXECUTION      .  307 


HISTORY  OF  THE   STRUGGLE   FOR 

PARLIAMENTARY   GOVERNMENT 
IN   ENGLAND. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

FAIRFAX  AND   CROMWELL    CHANGE    THE   FACE   OF    THE    WAR — 
BY    NO     LONGER,     LIKE  ESSEX   AND    OTHERS,    DEALING    IN 

DRAWN    BATTLES MATERIALS     OF    THE  PARLIAMENTARY 

ARMY  AS  RECONSTRUCTED  BY  CROMWELL — COMPARED 
WITH  THE  MATERIALS  OF  THE  KING'S  ARMY — CHAD- 
WICK,  AS  DESCRIBED  BY  MRS.  HUTCHINSON,  MIGHT  HAVE 
SAT  FOR  SCOTT'S  TRUSTY  TOM  KINS. 

WE  have  now  reached  a  critical  point  of  time  in  the  great 
war  between  the  King  and  the  Parliament  of  England. 
The  two  men  who  had  been  hitherto  the  leading  spirits 
on  the  side  of  the  Parliament  had  vanished  from  the 
scene.  Hampden  was  dead,  and  Pym  was  dead  ;  but 
they  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  died  before  their  work 
was  done.  In  such  business  as  the  impeachment  of 
Strafford  and  the  carrying  of  the  Grand  Remonstrance, 
they  had  done  their  work  well  and  thoroughly.  But  work 
of  another  kind  had  now  to  be  done  for  which  they  were 
not  equally  well  fitted  ;  and  two  men  were  now  coming 
upon  the  stage  who  were  the  men  to  do  that  work.  For 
the  great  questions  at  issue  between  the  two  parties  were 

VOL.  II.  A 


2         Striiggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

not  to  be  solved,  in  that  age  at  least,  by  parliamentary 
harangues  and  resolutions,  but  by  blood  and  iron. 

About  this  time,  on  the  side  of  the  parliament,  two 
men  began  to  make  themselves  conspicuous,  of  whom, 
as  has  been  said  of  one  of  them,1  it  may  be  said  as  truly 
as  of  any  men  who  ever  lived,  that  they  were  born  for 
victory.  These  were  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax,  son  of  Lord 
Fairfax,  and  Oliver  Cromwell.  On  the  breaking  out  of 
the  war,  Lord  Fairfax  having  received  a  commission  from 
the  Parliament  to  be  general  of  the  forces  in  the  north, 
his  son,  Sir  Thomas,  had  a  commission  under  him  to  be 
general  of  the  horse.  From  the  time  that  the  younger 
Fairfax  and  Cromwell  appeared  prominently  on  the  scene, 
the  face  of  the  war  was  totally  changed,  for  those  men 
did  not  deal  in  drawn  battles,  but  destroyed  and  scattered 
their  enemies  wherever  they  encountered  them.  Their 
merits  were,  however,  by  no  means  equal ;  for  though  they 
were  both  able,  as  well  as  brave  and  valiant  men,  it  was 
Cromwell  who  was  the  man  of  genius,  and  who  saw  what 
common  men,  among  whom  must  be  ranked  Hampden 
as  well  as  Essex,  could  not  see — how  to  raise  an  army  for 
the  Parliament  that  should  be  invincible,  when  to  the 
stubborn  courage  of  Englishmen  was  joined  the  fierce 
religious  enthusiasm  of  the  Independents.  Now,  in  de- 
scribing these  two  men,  Fairfax  and  Cromwell,  it  is  to 
be  noted  that  Cromwell  could  not  have  done  his  work 
as  he  did  had  he  been  a  Presbyterian  instead  of  an  In- 
dependent, and  liable  to  have  his  orders  disputed,  and 
his  movements  controlled,  by  a  theocracy  in  the  shape 

1  The  first  two  lines  of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham's  poem  on  the  death  of 
Lord  Fairfax,  his  father-in-law  are — 

"  Under  this  stone  does  lie 
One  born  for  victory." 


Sir  Thomas  Fairfax.  3 

of  a  Kirk  Commission,  established  at  his  headquarters. 
Whereas  Fairfax,  as  it  would  appear,  if  not  a  Presbyterian 
himself,  was  completely  under  the  control  of  a  fanatical 
Presbyterian  wife. 

Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  had  received  his  early  education 
from  his  uncle  Edward  Fairfax,  from  whose  translation  of 
Tasso,  Dryden  I  informs  us  that  he  and  many  others  had 
heard  Waller  own  that  he  derived  the  harmony  of  his 
numbers,  and  who,  unlike  his  family,  who  were  mostly  of 
a  military  turn,  led  a  life  of  complete  retirement  at  his 
native  place,  Denton,  in  Yorkshire,  where  his  time  was 
spent  in  literary  pursuits  and  in  the  education  of  his  own 
children  and  those  of  his  brother,  Lord  Fairfax.  He  had 
then  been  sent  to  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  and  as 
soon  as  he  left  college,  he  enlisted  in  the  army  of  Lord 
Vere,2  and  served  under  his  command  in  Holland.3  When 
Fairfax  returned  to  England  he  married  Anne,  the  fourth 
daughter  of  Lord  Vere.  This  lady  was  a  rigid  Presby- 
terian and  exercised  great  influence  over  her  husband.4 
It  is  generally  said  that  Fairfax  was  a  Presbyterian  ;  but 
Mrs.  Hutchinson,  who  had  good  means  of  knowing  his 
religious  opinions,  says  that  his  chaplains  were  Indepen- 
dent ministers,  to  whom  Lady  Fairfax  was  "  exceedingly 
kind,"  till  the  "  Presbyterian  ministers  quite  changed  the 

1  Preface  to  his  "  Fables." 

2  Horatio  Vere,  the  youngest  son  of  Geoffrey  Vere,  brother  of  John,  sixteenth 
Earl  of  Oxford,  created  in  1625  Lord  Vere  of  Tilbury. 

3  Biog.  Brit.,  "  Fairfax." 

4  Andrew  Marvell,  who  resided  some  time  in  the  house  of  Lord  Fairfax, 
where,  to  borrow  the  words  of  Milton  in  a  letter  to  Bradshaw,  written  on 
Marvell's  behalf  respecting  the  office  of  Latin  Secretary,  and  dated  February 
21,  1652,  "he  was  intrusted  to  give  some  instructions  in  the  languages  to  the 
lady  his  daughter,"  in  a  poem  entitled  "  Appleton  House,"  a  seat  of  Lord 
Fairfax,  describes  this  daughter  as —  • 

"  In  a  domestic  heaven  nurs'd, 
Under  the  discipline  severe 
Of  Fairfax,  and  the  starry  Vere." 
Marvell's  Works,  iii.  222.     London,  4to,  1776. 


4         Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

lady  into  such  a  bitter  aversion  against  them  that  they 
could  not  endure  to  come  into  the  General's  presence 
while  she  was  there;  and  the  General  had  an  unquiet, 
unpleasant  life  with  her,  who  drove  away  from  him  many 
of  those  friends  in  whose  conversation  he  had  found 
such  sweetness."1  Nor  does  it  appear  that  Fairfax  ever 
changed  his"  religious  opinions,  but  only  suffered  himself 
to  be  overruled  by  his  wife.  This  working  upon  the  fears 
and  passions  of  women  has  always  been  the  great  weapon 
of  Presbyterianism  as  of  Romanism;  and  in  this  case, 
being  brought  to  bear  upon  this  distinguished  soldier,  and 
brave  and  honourable,  but,  in  this  point,  weak  man,  pro- 
duced an  incalculable  amount  of  public  mischief.  And  if, 
as  Socrates  says  in  Plato's  "  Gorgias,"  it  be  a  disgraceful 
thing  to  work  by  rhetoric  on  the  passions  of  men,  this 
working  upon  the  passions  of  women,  be  they  Lady  Fair- 
faxes or  Mause  Headriggs,  may  be  held  to  be  still  more 
disgraceful,  and  to  be  the  very  lowest  and  basest  way  in 
which  a  man  can  employ  his  mental  faculties. 

At  the  beginning  of  the  struggle  the  Parliamentary 
armies  appear,  as  I  have  said,  to  have  been  in  general 
composed  of  materials  inferior  to  those  which  composed 
the  armies  of  the  King.  According  to  a  great  authority, 
the  troops  of  the  Parliament  were  most  of  them  "  old 
decayed  serving-men  and  tapsters  and  such  kind  of  fellows," 
while  the  King's  troops  were  "gentlemen's  sons,  younger 
sons,  and  persons  of  quality."  "  Do  you  think,"  added 
the  concise  and  practical  reasoner  who  made  the  above 
remark,  "that  the  spirits  of  such  base  and  mean  fellows 
will  be  ever  able  to  encounter  gentlemen  that  have  honour 
and  courage  and  resolution  in  them  ?  "  At  the  battle  of 

1  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  pp.  298,  299.  Bohn's 
edition.  London,  1854. 

8  Oliver  Cromwell's  speech  in  the  second  conference  with  the  Committee  in 
regard  to  the  title  of  King,  I3th  April  1657. 


Oliver  Cromwell.  5 

Newbury,  however,  the  behaviour  of  the  London  trained 
bands  showed  conclusively  that  the  armies  of  the  Parlia- 
ment had  begun  even  by  that  time  to  be  composed,  in 
some  part,  at  least,  of  materials  very  superior  to  old  de- 
cayed serving-men  and  tapsters  and  such  kind  of  fellows. 
Something  more,  however,  was  still  needed  to  assure 
final  victory  in  a  struggle  so  arduous  as  that  in  which  the 
Parliament  of  England  was  now  engaged.  I  will  now 
endeavour  to  show  by  what  means  that  difficult  end  was 
attained.  And  as  those  means  involve  most  momentous 
consequences,  it  will  be  necessary  to  treat  the  subject  in 
some  detail. 

Oliver  Cromwell  was  the  son  of  Robert  Cromwell,  second 
son  of  Sir  Henry  Cromwell,  Knight,  of  Hinchinbrook,  in 
the  county  of  Huntingdon.  The  wife  of  Robert,  and  the 
mother  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  was  Elizabeth,  daughter  of 
William  Steward  of  the  city  of  Ely,  a  descendant  of  the 
Lord  High  Steward  of  Scotland,  from  whom  the  royal 
family  of  the  Stuarts  descended.  William  Hampden,  the 
father  of  John  Hampden,  had  married  Elizabeth  Cromwell, 
a  daughter  of  Sir  Henry  Cromwell,  and  sister  of  Robert,  the 
father  of  Oliver  Cromwell.  Consequently,  John  Hampden 
and  Oliver  Cromwell  were  first  cousins.  The  provision 
which  Robert  Cromwell  as  a  younger  son  inherited  from 
his  father  being  small  and  insufficient  for  the  maintenance 
of  his  family,  consisting  of  one  son,  Oliver,  and  six  daughters, 
he  purchased  a  brewery  at  Huntingdon  and  engaged  in  the 
business  of  a  brewer.1  This  business  was  chiefly  managed 

1  Mr.  Sanford  says  (Studies  and  Illustrations  of  the  Great  Rebellion,  p.  183) 
that  the  statement  of  a  brewery  having  been  carried  on  by  Cromwell  or  his 
father  or  mother  may  be  rejected  as  resting  on  no  good  evidence,  and  being 
irreconcilable  with  the  habits  and  prejudices  of  the  age.  At  the  same  time 
Mr.  Sanford  admits  "  that  the  brook  of  Hinchin,  running  through  Robert 
Cromwell's  premises,  offered  clear  conveniences  for  malting  or  brewing ;  that 


6         Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

by  his  wife,  Oliver  Cromwell's  mother,  a  woman  of  energy 
and  talent  for  business,  from  whom  the  future  statesman- 
soldier  inherited — an  inheritance  which  so  many  great  men 
have  owed  to  their  mothers — both  his  intellectual  power 
and  his  force  of  character. 

Oliver  Cromwell  was  born  at  Huntingdon,  in  the  large 
Gothic  house  to  which  his  father's  brewery  was  attached,  on 
the  2 $th  of  April  1599.  He  was  therefore  two  or  three  years 
turned  of  forty  when  he  took  up  the  business  of  a  soldier. 
At  the  age  of  seventeen  he  was  sent  from  the  grammar 
school  of  Huntingdon  as  a  fellow-commoner  to  Sydney 
Sussex  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  is  said  to  have  dis- 

the  house  was  occupied  before  it  came  into  his  possession  by  a  Mr.  Philip 
Clamp  as  a  brewery ;  that  the  convenience  of  the  brook  and  of  the  brewing 
apparatus  may  have  induced  him  to  brew  for  some  of  his  neighbours  while 
brewing  for  himself;  and  that  hence  may  have  arisen  the  stories  among  the 
loyalists  of  his  having  been  a  brewer  by  trade,  a  thing  essentially  different." 
But  if,  as  is  here  admitted,  he  brewed  for  some  of  his  neighbours,  we  may 
assume,  as  he  was  far  from  rich,  that  he  did  not  make  them  a  present  of  the 
beer  he  brewed  for  them.  Consequently  he  brewed  beer  for  sale.  Whether 
that  made  him  a  brewer  by  trade  in  the  sense  of  his  depending  on  that  trade 
solely  for  his  subsistence,  it  made  him  a  brewer  by  trade  inasmuch  as  it  must, 
unless  he  brewed  gratuitously  for  his  neighbours,  have  made  some  addition  to 
his  income.  The  matter  is  of  no  great  moment,  but  I  could  produce  abundant 
evidence  that,  however  irreconcilable  trade  may  have  been  with  the  habits 
and  prejudices  of  that  age,  the  younger  sons  of  the  gentry  and  of  the  nobility 
went  into  occupations  which  they  would  have  rejected  with  disdain,  when  in 
the  eighteenth  century  the  Church  and  the  Army,  the  Colonies  and  India  opened 
a  new  field  for  them.  To  give  an  example,  Dudley  North,  a  younger  son  of 
the  fourth  Lord  North,  went  into  an  occupation  as  little  congenial  to  aristo- 
cratic prejudices  as  that  of  a  brewer.  I  remember  the  time  when  the  organs 
of  the  opposite  party  called  Lord  Durham  "  the  small  coal  man,"  because  he 
was  an  owner  of  coal-mines.  But  the  trick  of  using  the  name  of  a  trade  or 
occupation  as  a  term  of  reproach  is  not  confined  to  monarchical  England. 
And  yet  "we  may  affirm,"  says  Mr.  Grote,  "with  full  assurance,  that  none 
of  the  much-decried  demagogues  of  Athens — not  one  of  those  sellers  of  leather, 
lamps,  sheep,  ropes,  pollard,  and  other  commodities,  upon  whom  Aristophanes 
heaps  so  many  excellent  jokes — ever  surpassed,  if  they  ever  equalled,  the 
impudence  of  this  descendent  of  ./Eakus  and  Zeus  [Alkibiades]  in  his  manner 
of  over-reaching  and  disgracing  the  Lacedaemonian  envoys." — Grote's  History 
of  Greece,  vii.  65. 


Oliver  Cromwell.  7 

tinguished  himself  more  at  football  and  cudgels  than  at 
the  exercises  of  the  schools.  He  left  the  university  without 
taking  a  degree.  No  inference  can  be  drawn  from  this 
circumstance  with  regard  to  Cromwell's  literary  acquire- 
ments, since  almost  all  the  young  men  of  his  class  in 
that  age — Eliot,  Wentworth,  Hampden,  Pyrn,  Ireton — left 
the  university  without  taking  a  degree,  and  proceeded  to 
one  of  the  Inns  of  Court. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  it  was  not  -unusual  for  young 
men,  the  eldest  sons  of  country  gentlemen,  to  reside  in  the 
Inns  of  Court  without  entering  their  names  on  the  books. 
It  is  certain  that  Cromwell,  after  leaving  the  university 
of  Cambridge,  passed  some  time  in  London,  it  is  said  at 
Lincoln's  Inn.  His  name  does  not  appear  on  the  books 
of  that  society.  Nevertheless,  he  probably  occupied  cham- 
bers in  Lincoln's  Inn,  since  all  the  contemporary  accounts, 
including  the  official  inscription  over  the  bed  of  state  after 
his  death,  describe  him  as  "of  Lincoln's  Inn." 

In  1620,  soon  after  he  had  completed  his  twenty-first  year, 
Oliver  Cromwell  married  EUzabeth  Bourchier,  daughter 
of  Sir  James  Bourchier,  of  Felsted  in  Essex.  His  private 
fortune  being  insufficient  for  his  support,  he  took  an  active 
part  in  the  business  of  the  brewery  which  his  father  had 
carried  on  at  Huntingdon,  and  which  his  mother  had 
continued  after  his  father's  death,  which  took  place  in 
1617.  This  trade  of  brewer  furnished  a  fertile  topic  for 
the  scurrility  of  those  who  sought  to  make  up  with  their 
pens  for  what  their  swords  had  failed  to  do  for  them. 
But  Cromwell  attended  to  other  business  besides  brewing. 
He  devoted  himself  to  all  the  concerns,  temporal  and 
spiritual,  of  the  small  borough  of  Huntingdon  in  which 
he  lived.  His  house  became  the  refuge  of  Nonconformist 
ministers  oppressed  by  the  tyranny  of  Laud.  Down  to 


8         Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

a  recent  date  a  building  was  shown  behind  Cromwell's 
house  in  Huntingdon,  which  was  said  to  have  been  built 
by  him  as  a  chapel  for  the  disaffected,  and  in  which  he 
himself  sometimes  preached  to  them.  .In  1625,  a  portion 
of  the  electors  of  Huntingdon  were  of  opinion  that  their 
fellow-townsman,  Mr.  Oliver  Cromwell,  who  was  "  a  com- 
mon spokesman  for  sectaries,  and  maintained  their  part 
with  stubbornness,"1  though  not  gifted  with  a  very  sweet 
or  fluent  tongue,  was  capable  of  serving  them  in  Parlia- 
ment, for  an  unsucessful  attempt  was  then  made  to  get 
him  returned.  But  in  1628  Cromwell  was  returned  to 
Parliament  for  Huntingdon. 

In  1631  Cromwell  removed  from  Huntingdon  with  his 
wife  and  children  to  St.  Ives,  where  he  stocked  a  grazing 
farm  with  £1800  realised  by  the  sale2  of  certain  lands  and 
tithes  out  of  which  his  small  patrimony  was  at  that  time 
derived.  Those  who  know  how  much  skill  and  experience 
and  what  unremitted  vigilance  and  attention  are  necessary 
for  the  attainment  of  any  degree  of  success  in  farming 
operations  will  be  able  to  account  for  Oliver  Cromwell's 

1  This  was  the  description  of  Cromwell  given  by  Williams  to  Charles  I.  in 
1644.  See  Philips's  Life  of  Archbishop  Williams,  p.  290.  Also  Racket's 
Scrinia  Reserata,  or  Life  of  Archbishop  Williams,  pt.  ii.  p.  212,  folio.  Lon- 
don, 1693. 

9  Mr.  Noble  says :  "The  reason  of  Sir  Oliver  and  Mrs.  Robert  Cromwell, 
Cromwell's  uncle  and  mother,  joining  in  the  deed  is  that  the  latter  had  a 
small  jointure  out  of  it,  and  that,  with  reference  to  the  former,  Sir  Henry 
Cromwell  had  merely  given  or  devised  these  premises  to  his  son  Robert, 
Oliver  Cromwell's  father,  for  a  long  term  of  years."  From  the  abstract  of  the 
deed  of  conveyance  furnished  by  Noble,  which  gives  the  parcels  as  they  stand 
in  the  deed,  omitting  the  general  words,  it  would  appear  that  the  property  was 
part  of  the  plunder  of  the  Church,  bestowed  by  Henry  VIII.  on  Cromwell's 
ancestor.  So  that,  after  all  that  has  been  said,  the  most  really  honourable  por- 
tion of  Oliver's  subsistence,  because  derived  from  honest  industry,  and  not 
from  the  plunder  of  national  property,  was  that  which  was  earned  by  the 
honest  and  useful,  though,  at  that  time,  despised^occupation  of  a  brewer  and 
a  farmer. 


Oliver  Cromwell.  9 

not  being  a  very  prosperous  farmer,  without  having  re- 
course to  the  scurril  version  of  the  matter  "adopted  or 
invented  by  Heath  and  followed  by  Hume.  And  even 
though  a  grazing  farm,  which  Noble  informs  us,  Crom- 
well's was,  may  be  more  easily  managed  than  an  arable 
one,  still  the  difficulties  would  be  such  as  to  render  success 
at  least  doubtful  in  the  case  of  any  man  who  had  not  been 
bred  to  the  business.  But  the  peculiarity  above  alluded 
to  enables  us  to  apply  a  test  to  the  accuracy  of  the 
Royalist  writers  on  Cromwell.  Noble  expressly  says  that 
Cromwell's  farm  at  St.  Ives  was  "a  grazing  farm."  But 
Hume,  following  Heath,  though  he  does  not  quote  him 
or  refer  to  him  at  the  bottom  of  his  page,  says  :  "  Though 
he  had  acquired  a  tolerable  fortune  by  a  maternal  uncle, 
he  found  his  affairs  so  injured  by  his  expenses,  that  he 
was  obliged  to  take  a  farm  at  St.  Ives,  and  apply  himself 
for  some  years  to  agriculture  as  a  profession.  But  this 
expedient  seemed  rather  to  involve  him  in  further  debt 
and  difficulties.  The  long  prayers,  which  he  said  to  his 
family  in  the  morning,  and  again  in  the  afternoon,  con- 
sumed his  own  time  and  that  of  his  ploughmen ;  and  he 
reserved  no  leisure  for  the  care  of  his  temporal  affairs."1 
This  passage  contains  more  misstatements  than  sentences. 
He  did  not  acquire  the  "  tolerable  fortune  by  a  maternal 
uncle  "  till  1635-36,  when  he  left  St.  Ives  to  take  possession 
of  the  property  in  and  near  Ely  which  then  fell  to  him  by 
the  will  of  his  maternal  uncle,  Sir  Thomas  Steward.  If 
Noble  is  correct,  which  he  is  far  more  likely  to  be  than 
Heath,  though  Cromwell  would,  of  course,  require  labourers 
on  his  grazing-farm,  he  would  not  require  "ploughmen." 
And  for  the  statement  of  Cromwell's  consuming  all  his 
labourers'  time  in  long  prayers  there  is  no  evidence  what- 

1  Hist,  of  England,  ch.  Ixi. 


io        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

ever.  Nor  is  it  probable  that  a  man  who  took  such  good 
care  that  his  soldiers  should  not  be  praying  when  they 
ought  to  be  fighting  would  have  allowed  his  labourers 
to  be  such  unprofitable  servants  as  Heath  and  Hume 
represent  them  to  have  been.  There  are  enough  of 
intelligible  reasons  for  his  farm  not  prospering  without 
supposing  Cromwell  a  blockhead  as  well  as  a  fanatic. 
And  those  who  hate  him  most  may  call  him  a  fanatic, 
and  even  a  villain,  but  will  hardly  venture  to  call  him 
a  fool. 

But  whether  or  not  Cromwell  consumed  much  of  his 
labourers'  time  in  long  prayers,  there  is  reason  to  think 
that  he  consumed  a  part  of  it  in  the  broad-sword  exercise. 
The  reason  is  this  :  Mr.  Carlyle's  correspondent,  who  for- 
warded to  him  the  thirty-five  unpublished  letters  of  Oliver 
Cromwell,  subjoins  to  one  of  them  the  following  note 
gathered  from  his  recollections  of  a  journal  of  Mr.  Samuel 
Squire,  cornet,  and  auditor  in  Cromwell's  regiment : — 
"  Huntingdon  regiment  of  horse.  Each  armed  and  horsed 
himself,  except  Mr.  Oliver  Cromwell's  troop  of  Slepe1 
Dragoons,  of  some  thirty  to  forty  men,  mostly  poor  men 
or  very  small  freeholders.  These  the  journal  mentioned 
often ;  I  mean  the  Slepe  Troop  of  hard-handed  fellows, 
who  did  as  he  told  them,  and  asked  no  questions."  Now 
these  "  Slepe  Dragoons "  would  seem  to  have  been  the 

1  The  Saxon  name  of  St.  Ives  was  "  Slepe,"  by  which  name  it  is  also 
distinguished  in  Domesday  Book.  St.  Ives  comprises  the  two  manors  of 
Slepe  and  Bustellers.  When  Oliver  Cromwell  rented  the  farm  called  the 
Wood  Farm,  at  St.  Ives,  he  lived  in  a  house  on  the  outskirts  of  the  town, 
which  does  not  now  remain.  Whether  or  not  the  house  occupied  by  Oliver 
Cromwell  was  known  by  that  name,  the  house  which  now  stands  on  the  site 
of  Cromwell's  residence  was  called  by  its  owner  "Slepe  Hall;"  the  estate 
being  the  site  of  the  ancient  manor  of  Slepe. — Brayley's  "  Beauties  of  England 
and  Wales,"  art.  "  St.  Ives  ;  "  Lewis's  "  Topographical  Dictionary,"  art.  "  St. 
Ives."  la  Walker's  county  map,  "  Slepe  Hall"  is  inserted  near  St.  Ives. 


Oliver  Cromwell's  Troop  of  Slepe  Dragoons.      1 1 

labourers  of  Cromwell's  farm  at  St.  Ives,  with  perhaps  a 
few  "very  small  freeholders  "  joined  to  them. 

Mr.  Sanford  shows  that  the  name  "Ironsides"  was 
given  to  Cromwell1  himself,  and  not  to  his  troops.  He 
says,  "  The  troops  thus  raised  have  been  known  in  modern 
times  as  '  the  Ironsides/  but  as  far  as  I  can  ascertain,  this 
seems  to  have  been  a  name  given  at  first  to  Oliver  himself. 
Thus  in  a  newspaper  of  the  time  we  read,  '  This  brave 
commander,  by  reason  of  his  resolution  and  gallantry  in 
his  charges,  is  called  by  the  King's  soldiers  Ironsides/ 
So  Winstanley  in  his  '  Worthies '  says,  *  One  thing  that 
made  his  brigade  so  invincible  was  his  arming  them  so  well, 
as  whilst  they  assured  themselves  they  could  not  be  over- 
come, it  assured  them  to  overcome  their  enemies.  He 
himself,  as  they  called  him  Ironside,  needed  not  to  be 
ashamed  of  a  nickname  that  so  often  saved  his  life. 
Heath  also  calls  him  by  that  name,  and  not  his 
troops." 2 

The  account  given  in  the  note  to  Cornet  Squire's  journal 
of  Cromwell's  Slepe  Troop  of  Dragoons  agrees  exactly 
with  the  distinction  existing  at  that  time  between  horse 
and  dragoons  ;  and  it  is  necessary  here  to  guard  the 
reader  against  the  supposition  that  the  term  "  dragoons " 
had  at  that  time  the  meaning  which  it  has  at  present. 
When  the  musket  or  portable  firearm  was  first  introduced 
in  war,  an  exaggerated  notion  was  entertained  of  its 
powers,  and  great  effects  were  expected  from  mounting 
musketeers  on  horseback  for  the  purpose  of  being  speedily 
conveyed  to  any  point  where  their  services  might  be  re- 
quired, and  where  they  might  then  act  either  on  horse- 

1  The  name  "  Stonewall "  Jackson  is  a  parallel  case. 

2  Studies  and  Illustrations  of  the  Great  Rebellion,  p.  538.     London,  J.  W. 
Parker  &  Son,  1858. 


1 2       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. ' 

back  or  on  foot.1  Thus  in  these  wars  a  party  of  dragoons 
were  always,  or  almost  always,  considered  a  necessary 
adjunct  to  what  was  called  the  "horse."  The  old  dis- 
tinction between  "horse"  and  "dragoons"  is  kept  up,  at 
least  upon  paper,  to  this  day  in  the  expression  in  the 
Mutiny  Acts,  "horse,  foot,  and  dragoons,"  as  implying 
three  distinct  classes  of  troops.  As  it  was  not  essential 
to  the  original  service  of  the  dragoons  that  they  should 
be  mounted  on  the  best 2  or  strongest  horses,  their  horses 
were  of  an  inferior  description  to  those  of  the  "  horse  "  or 
cavalry.  One  of  their  uses  at  that  time  was  to  perform 
the  duty  of  outposts  and  detachments,  and  do  the  "  rough 
and  ready "  work  of  the  attack  on  a  difficult  pass,  a 
bridge,  or  any  post  that  was  not  strong  enough  to  require 
a  regular  and  protracted  siege  with  the  use  of  heavy 


1  This  rough  and  ready  character  agrees  well  with  the  above  description  of 
the  "  Slepe  Troop  of  hard-handed  fellows." 

2  It  is  remarkable  that  those  counties,  in  regard  to  which  the  law  of  Henry 
VIII.  for  promoting  the  breed  of  large  horses  was  altered  by  the  statute  8 
Eliz.  c.  8,  as  being  counties  which,  as  the  pveamble  recites,  "on  account  of 
their  rottenness,   unfirmness,  moisture,  and  waterishness,  were  not  able  to 
breed  or  bear  horses  of  such  a  size,"  should,  under  Oliver  Cromwell's  manage- 
ment, have  produced  such  cavalry  ;  for,  though  horses  of  an  inferior  descrip- 
tion might  suit  his  troop  of  "  Slepe  Dragoons,"  such  horses  would  not  suit  his 
Huntingdon  regiment  of  horse.      Some  of  the  regulations  of  the  statute  of 
Henry  VIII.  above  referred  to  (33  Henry  VIII.  c.   5)  ai'e  curious.     Every 
archbishop  and  duke  is  obliged,  under  penalties,  to  have  seven  stoned  trotting 
horses  for  the  saddle,  each  of  which  is  to  be  fourteen  hands  high  at  the  age  of 
three  years.     There  are  many  minute  directions  with  regard  to  the  number  of 
the  same  kind  of  horses  to  be  kept  by  other  ranks.     The  lowest  class  men- 
tioned is  that  of  a  spiritual  person  having  benefices  to  the  amount  of  .£100 
per  annum,  or  a  layman  whose  wife  shall  wear  any  French  hood  or  bonnet 
of  velvet ;  such  are  obliged  (under  the  penalty  of  £20}  to  have  one  trotting 
stone-horse  for  the  saddle.     This  statute  continued  in  force  till  the  21  of 
James  I.,  when  it  was  repealed  by  the  statute  of  that  date,  which  is  charac- 
terised by  Barrington  (Observations  on  the  Statutes,  p.  499,  note,  5th  edition, 
1796)  as  "the  most  comprehensive  act  of  repeal   in  the  statute-book."     It 
had,  indeed,  previously  been  altered  as  to  the  Isle  of  Ely,  Cambridgeshire, 
and  other  counties,  by  the  statute  8  Eliz.  c.  8,  referred  to  above. 


Distinction  between  " Horse "  and  "  Dragoons"    13 

artillery.  Another  of  their  uses  was,  in  battles  and  skir- 
mishes, to  dismount  and  line  the  hedges  or  thickets. 
Thus  in  the  plan  of  the  battle  of  Naseby,  given  in 
Spring's  "  Anglia  Rediviva,"  the  dragoons  are  seen  lining 
the  hedges,  with  their  horses  picketed  near  them.  The 
dragoons  at  that  time,  though  very  useful  in  the  way 
mentioned,  were  not  considered  on  an  equal  footing  with 
either  the  horse  or  pikemen.  The  dragoons  were  em- 
ployed in  much  smaller  numbers  than  the  horse,  the  pro- 
portion being  about  fifty  dragoons  to  five  hundred  horse. 
They  were  also  formed  from  a  different  class  of  men  from 
that  out  of  which  the  "horse"  were  formed,  as  is  inti- 
mated by  the  fact  stated  above  of  the  formation  of  Crom- 
well's troop  of  Slepe  Dragoons  from  the  labourers  on  his 
farm  at  St.  Ives,  while  the  horse  were  formed,  in  part,  at 
least,  of  freeholders  and  freeholders'  and  gentlemen's  sons, 
and  in  the  King's  army  of  the  gentry  themselves.  I  am 
indebted  to  an  English  general  officer  for  some  valuable 
observations  on  this  subject,  from  which  I  extract  the  fol- 
lowing explanation  of  the  cause  of  the  term  dragoons  rather 
than  horse  being  now  the  term  in  use  in  the  English  army : 
— "  It  is  a  curious  thing  that,  after  all,  the  dragoons  should 
have  carried  the  day  against  the  horse ;  which  can  only  be 
accounted  for  on  the  supposition  that,  in  one  way  or  other, 
they  made  themselves  the  most  useful.  The  present  regi- 
ments of  heavy  cavalry  were  all  of  them,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  what  are  called  the  '  Horse  Guards  Blue'  and  the 
'  Life  Guards/  styled  dragoon-guards  and  dragoons.  It 
is  very  likely  that  the  refusal  of  the  '  horse  '  to  act  on  foot 
had  something  to  do  with  the  preference  given  to  the 
dragoons." 

It  will  be  of  use  to  add  here  what  I  may  have  to  state 
more  in  detail  hereafter,  that  the  foot  regiments  at  that 


14       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

time  were  composed  partly  of  musketeers  and  partly  of 
pikemen ;  and  that,  though  the  pikemen  formed  only 
about  two-fifths x  of  every  regiment,  the  work  which  fell  to 
the  infantry  had,  from  the  inefficiency  of  the  musket  and 
the  want  of  the  bayonet,  to  be  done  chiefly  by  the  pike- 
men,  who  were  generally  the  tallest  and  strongest  men. 
The  pikes  being  from  15  to  18  feet  in  length,  and  of  con- 
siderable weight,  required  men  of  strength  as  well  as  height 
rather  above  the  average  to  handle  them  efficiently.  The 
efficiency  of  the  musketeers  was  still  further  diminished  by 
the  facts  that  a  large 'proportion  of  their  muskets  were 
matchlocks,  not  flintlocks,  and  that  the  ball  was  put  loose 
into  the  barrel,  and,  not  fitting  tight,  was  apt  to  fall  out  if 
the  barrel  was  lowered  below  the  horizontal  line.2 

Oliver  Cromwell  in  after  years  lost  the  confidence  and 
esteem  of  many  brave  and  honourable  men.  In  the 
times  of  which  we  now  write,  one  thing  is  certain,  that 
while  Cromwell's  wrath  was  dangerous  to  many,  his  wis- 
dom and  courage  afforded  shelter  and  safety  to  many  also. 
It  is  also  shown  by  abundant  evidence  that,  whatever  he 
may  have  been  in  his  later  years,  never  man  had  a  larger 
portion  of  hatred  and  defiance  for  the  oppressor,  of  helpful 
compassion  for  the  oppressed,  and  dauntless  resolution  to 
redress  their  wrongs  and  punish  their  oppressors,  than 
Oliver  Cromwell  in  his  earlier  days. 

The  first  time  that  Hyde  condescended  to  become 
aware  of  the  existence  of  the  Member  for  Cambridge 
was  when,  as  he  relates  in  a  passage  of  his  Life,  often 

1  It  appears  from  two  minutes  in  the  Order  Book  of  the  Council  of  State, 
that  in  a  regiment  of  foot  1000  strong,  there  were  600  musketeers  and  400 
pikemen. — I3lh  March  164?,  M.S.,  State  Paper  Office. 

2  Memoires  de  Montecuculi,  i.  2,  16.     Grose's  Military  Antiquities,  i.  132, 
133.      The  authorities  for  the  statements  in  the  text  will  be  given  more  in 
detail  in  subsequent  pages. 


Cromwell  and  Hyde.  1 5 

quoted,  he  sat  as  chairman  of  a  committee  of  which  Crom- 
well was  a  member,  "  upon  an  enclosure  which  had  been 
made  of  great  wastes,  belonging  to  the  Queen's  manors, 
without  the  consent  of  the  tenants,  against  which,  as 
well  the  inhabitants  of  other  manors  who  claimed  com- 
mon in  those  wastes,  as  the  Queen's  tenants  of  the 
same,  made  loud  complaints,  as  a  great  oppression, 
carried  upon  them  with  a  very  high  hand,  and  sup- 
ported by  power."1  Hyde  then  goes  on  to  relate  that 
Oliver  Cromwell  (who  had  never  before  been  heard  to 
speak  in  the  House  of  Commons2),  being  one  of  the  com- 
mittee, "appeared  much  concerned  to  countenance  the 
petitioners,  who  were  numerous,  together  with  their  wit- 
nesses," that  "  Cromwell,  in  great  fury,  reproached  the 
chairman  for  being  partial,"  and  that  "in  the  end  his 
whole  carriage  was  so  tempestuous,  and  his  behaviour  so 
insolent,  that  the  chairman  found  himself  obliged  to  repre- 
hend him — which  he  never  forgave/'  This  looks  as  if  it 
were  a  good  likeness  of  a  man  of  fiery  temper  and  strong 
character,  resisting  what  he  considered  oppression.  In  the 
words,  "which  he  never  forgave,"  Hyde  would  have  it 
appear  that  on  that  occasion  he  made  Cromwell  his  enemy, 
but  he  might  have  said  as  truly,  "  which  Mr.  Hyde  never 
forgave,"  for  Cromwell  certainly  on  this  occasion  made 
himself  an  enemy,  but  not  an  enemy  powerful  enough  to 
oppose,  much  less  to  crush  him,  while  he  lived,  though  able 
to  do  something,  when  he  ceased  to  live,  to  blacken  his 
memory — but  for  that  Cromwell  probably  cared  but  little. 

1  Clarendon's  Life,  i.  88.     Oxford,  1827. 

3  Even  in  the  Parliamentary  History  a  short  speech  of  "Mr.  Oliver  Crom- 
well" is  given  as  far  back  as  1628;  and  Mr.  Sanford  has  published  abundant 
evidence  from  D'Ewes'  MS.  Journal  of  the  Long  Parliament  and  other  MS. 
sources  that  this  statement  of  Clarendon  is  quite  untrue. — See  Sanford's 
Studies  and  Illustrations  of  the  Great  Rebellion,  pp.  319,  320,  also  p.  309, 
and  the  long  note  beginning  at  the  foot  of  p.  369. 


T  6        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

This  feature  of  his  character,  his  "  tenderness  towards 
sufferers,"  to  borrow  the  words  of  one T  who  knew  him,  is 
also  shown  in  the  stubbornness  with  which  he  defended 
sectaries  before  Archbishop  (then  Bishop)  Williams,  and 
still  more  signally  in  the  prompt  and  energetic  measures 
he  adopted,  in  conjunction  with  Colonel  Hutchinson, 
to  punish  the  younger  Hotham  for  his  oppression  and 
plunder  of  the  people  of  Nottingham  and  the  surrounding 
country.  Another  remarkable  exercise  of  the  same  quality 
occurred  in  the  matter  of  the  Bedford  Level.  The  Earl  of 
Bedford  and  other  noblemen  had  proposed  a  scheme  for 
draining  the  extensive  fens  which  at  that  time  covered 
some  millions  of  acres  in  the  counties  of  Cambridge, 
Huntingdon,  Northampton,  and  Lincoln.  That  part  com- 
monly called  the  Bedford  Level,  and  containing  nearly 
400,000  acres,  had  been  completed,  when  a  proposition 
was  made  to  the  Crown,  offering  a  fair  proportion  of  the 
land  for  its  assistance  and  authority  in  the  completion  of 
the  whole.  This  was  far  too  tempting  an  opportunity  for 
grasping  both  at  power  and  revenue  to  be  neglected  by 
Charles  and  his  ministers,  who  were  then  attempting  to 
govern  England  without  Parliaments.  A  body  of  Crown- 
appointed  commissioners  forthwith  arrived  in  the  districts, 
held  courts  for  the  adjudication  of  claims  connected  in 
any  way,  however  remote,  with  the  property  in  question, 
decided,  of  course,  all  the  questions  in  the  King's  favour, 
and,  it  is  said,  proposed  to  dispute  with  the  Earl  of  Bedford 
and  the  other  movers  of  the  undertaking  their  retention  of 
95,000  acres  of  the  land  already  recovered  in  compensation 
of  the  risk  they  had  incurred.2 

1  Letter  in  the  Appendix  to  the  first  volume  of  Thurloe's  State  Papers,  p. 
766. 

2  Life  and  Times  of  Cromwell,  by  Thomas  (vromwell,  p.  68.     Cited  in  Mr. 
Forster's  Life  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  i.  59. 


Oppression  of  Small  Landed  Proprietors.       1 7 

Whether  before  the  interference  of  the  Crown  commis- 
sioners the  peasants  had  complained  of  the  proposed 
measure  as  depriving  them  of  their  rights  of  common  in 
those  extensive  wastes,  does  not  appear ;  but  the  accounts 
agree  that  at  this  stage  of  the  business  the  common  people 
began  to  complain  loudly,  and  to  clamour  for  justice. 
Meetings  were  held,  in  the  proceedings  of  which  Oliver 
Cromwell  took  an  active  part ;  and  the  project  of  enriching 
the  Crown  and  the  noblemen-projectors,  for  that  time  at 
least,  fell  to  the  ground."  x  • 

But  it  was  not  often  that  the  poor  could  hope  for  so 
powerful  an  advocate  as  Oliver  Cromwell  at  this  time 
was.  That  confiscation,  not  only  of  their  ancient  rights  of 
common,  but  also  of  their  separate  lands,  had  commenced, 
and  went  on  with  increasing  rapidity,  which  by  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century  had  vastly  reduced  the  number  of 
yeomanry  or  small  landed  proprietors,  regarded  by  con- 
temporary chroniclers  as  the  main  strength  of  the  country, 
both  in  war  and  in  peace.  Throughout  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  small  proprietors  were  either  op- 
pressed with  actual  force,  or  circumvented  by  fraud,  or 
wearied  out  of  their  possessions  by  injuries.  We  have  the 
authority  of  Sir  Thomas  More 2  and  others  for  these  things 
in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  the  authority  of  several  cases 
in  Rushworth  that  they  continued  to  be  done  in  the  seven- 
teenth century.  The  large  proprietors,  if  they  designed, 
for  instance,  to  enclose  a  common,  threatened  to  make  the 
small  proprietors  "  run  the  country"  if  they  would  not  sell 
their  lands  and  yield  up  their  houses.  And  with  that  view 
they  broke  their  fences,  and  then  put  them  to  grievous  law 
expenses  for  the  trespass  committed  by  their  cattle.  In 

1  Forster's  Life  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  i.  59,  60. 

2  Mor.  Utop.,  lib.  i. 

VOL.  II.  B 


1 8        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

one  case  given  in  Rushworth1  the  rich  man  caused  his 
servants  to  pull  down  the  house  of  one  of  the  poor  man's 
witnesses,  "none  being  therein  but  a  child,  who  ran  out 
naked,  and  his  wife  and  children  lay  in  the  streets  a 
night  or  two,  none  daring  to  receive  them,  and  being 
afterwards,  by  a  justice's  direction,  received  into  a  house, 
the  rich  man  so  threatened  the  owner  that  he  turned  them 
out  of  doors,  and  all  the  winter  they  lay  in  an  outhouse 
without  fire,  so  that  he,  his  wife,  and  one  child  died.  And 
the  rich  man  beat  another  of  the  witnesses  so  as  she  could 
not  put  on  her  clothes  for  a  month  after ;  another  of  the 
witnesses  he  threatened  to  fire  his  house  or  pull  it  down." 2 
When  Oliver  Cromwell  received  a  commission  to  raise  a 
troop 3  of  horse  for  the  Parliament,  he  entered  upon  this 

1  Rushworth,  abrid.,  ii.  191. 

P  a  It  thus  appears  that.Massinger's  Sir  Giles  Overreach  is,  in  fact,  no  ex- 
aggeration, and  Sir  Giles's  scheme  for  compelling  his  neighbour,  Mr.  Frugal, 
to  sell  his  manor  against  his  will,  was  followed  to  the  letter  by  many  men 
whose  deeds  would  fill  an  authentic  volume  : — 

"  I'll  therefore  buy  some  cottage  near  his  manor ; 
Which  done,  I'll  make  my  men  break  ope'  his  fences  ; 
Ride  o'er  his  standing  corn,  and  in  the  night 
Set  fire  to  his  barns,  or  break  his  cattle's  legs  ; 
These  trespasses  draw  on  suits,  and  suits  expenses, 
Which  I  can  spare,  but  will  soon  beggar  him. 
When  I  have  harried  'him  thus  two  or  three  year, 
Though  he  sue  in  forma  pauperis,  in  spite 
Of  all  his  thrift  and  care,  he'll  grow  behind-hand. 
Then  with  the  favour  of  my  man  of  law, 
I  will  pretend  some  title. :  want  will  force  him 
To  put  it  to  arbitrement ;  then,  if  he  sell 
For  half  the  value,  he  shall  have  ready  money, 
And  I  possess  his  land." 

8  Mr.  Forster  observes  (Life  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  i.  94)  that  though  Crom- 
well styles  himself  a  captain  of  a  troop  of  horse,  he  cannot  discover  that  he 
ever  held  such  a  commission  under  Essex.  The  following  passage,  however, 
given  in  "Cromwelliana,"  p.  2,  from  the  "Perfect  Diurnal  "  of  September  13, 
1642,  shows  that  at  that  time  Cromwell  held  a  captain's  commission  : — "  The 
committee  appointed  to  settle  the  affairs  of  the  kingdom  appointed  that  Captains 
Cromwell,  Austin,  and  Draper,  should  forthwith  muster  their  troops  of  horse, 


Cromwell's  Military  Materials.  19 

new  business,  which  was  henceforth  to  be  the  principal 
business  of  his.  life,  when  he  was  turned  of  forty.  But 
being  a  man  of  original  as  well  as  powerful  mind,  in  other 
words,  a  man  of  genius,  he  soon  saw,  what  the  common 
herd  of  men,  of  whatever  rank  or  whatever  military  educa- 
tion or  experience,  it  seemed,  did  not  see,  that  an  army  is 
a  machine,  and  resembles  other  machines  in  this, — that  the 
strength  and  efficiency  of  it  depends  on  the  strength  and 
efficiency  of  the  smallest  parts  of  which  it  is  composed. 
Cromwell,  to  use  his  own  words,  "in  a  way  of  foolish 
simplicity  (as  it  was  judged  by  very  great  and  wise  men, 
and  good  men  too),  desired  to  make  his  instruments  to  help 
him  in  this  work."  To  which  end,  he  declined  to  enlist 
under  his  colours  "old  decayed  serving-men,  and  tapsters, 
and  such  kind  of  fellows,"  but  "raised  such  men  as  had 
the  fear  of  God  before  them;  and  made  some  conscience 
of  what  they  did."  Cromwell  was  soon  promoted  to  the 
rank  of  colonel,  and  his  troop  he  augmented  to  a  regi- 
ment ;  still  employing  the  utmost  care  to  obtain  the  same 
kind  of  materials,  which  he  spared  no  pains  to  improve, 
making  use  of  old  foreign  soldiers  to  drill  them,  and  intro- 
ducing the  strictest  discipline,  himself  setting  them  the 
example  of  incessant  activity,  unflinching  courage,  and 
unremitting  attention  to  duty. 

From  an  expression  of  Whitelocke,  "he  had  a  brave 
regiment  of  horse,  most  of  them  freeholders  and  free- 
holders' sons,"  it  seems  to  have  been  inferred  that  the 

and  make  themselves  ready  to  go  to  his  Excellence  the  Earl  of  Essex."  In 
the  same  Journal,  in  the  beginning  of  the  following  March,  he  is  designated, 
"Colonel  Cromwell."  May  also  expressly  says  that  Cromwell,  "by  a  com- 
mission from  the  Parliament  and  Lord-General  Essex  had  raised  a  troop  of 
horse." — Hist,  of  the  Parl.,  bk.  iii.  ch.  iv.  p.  206,  ed.  Maseres.  London,  1812. 
And  Richard  Baxter  distinctly  mentions  him  as  "  at  his  first  entrance  into  the 
wars  being  but  a  captain  of  horse." — The  Life  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Richard  Baxter, 
part  i.,  p.  98,  folio.  London,  1696. 


2O        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

bulk  of  Cromwell's  soldiers  were  rather  of  the  agricul- 
tural than  commercial  class.  However,  the  expression  of 
Denzil  Holies,1  and  the  known  facts,  show  a  result  of  no 
small  importance.  For  they  prove — in  direct  opposition  to 
the  opinion,  by  whomsoever  held,  bearing1  some  affinity 
to  the  contempt  of  Rob  Roy's  wife  for  Baillie  Nicol 
Jarvie  and  Glasgow  weavers — that  men  engaged  in  the 
occupation  of  tradesmen  would  make  but  indifferent 
soldiers  compared  with  wild  Highlanders,  and  "persons 
of  quality," — that  an  army  composed  in  part  and  officered 
in  great  part  by  tradesmen,  might  utterly  defeat  and  break 
in  pieces  armies  composed  of  warlike  Highlanders,  and  of 
high-spirited  gentlemen  used  to  the  sword-exercise  and  to 
ride  to  hounds. 

Denzil  Holies,  as  he  was  not  ashamed  to  sit  as  a  judge 
on  a  trial  of  life  or  death  of  the  men  with  whom  he  had 
once  acted,  was  also  not  ashamed  to  denominate  the  army 
of  the  Parliament  of  England  "  a  notable  dunghill."  I 
cannot  resist  the  temptation  to  contrast  with  the  words 
applied  to  that  army  by  Denzil  Lord  Holies,  the  words 
applied  to  it  by  Thomas  Babington  Lord  Macaulay : — 
"  From  the  time  when  the  army  was  remodelled  to  the 
time  when  it  was  disbanded,  it  never  found,  either  in  the 

1  Though  part  of  Holles's  statement  has  been  already  given,  it  will  be  con- 
venient to  give  the  whole  of  it  here: — "Most  of  the  colonels  and  officers 
mean  tradesmen,  brewers,  tailors,  goldsmiths,  shoemakers,  and  the  like ;  a 
notable  dunghill,  if  one  would  rake  into  it,  to  find  out  their  several  pedigrees." 
— Memoirs  of  Denzil  Lord  Holies,  p.  149.  London,  1699.  Pepys  says  in 
his  Diary  (November  9,  1663),  "Of  all  the  old  army  now  you  cannot  see  a 
man  begging  about  the  streets  ;  but  what  ? — you  shall  have  this  captain  turned 
a  shoemaker,  the  lieutenant  a  baker;  this  a  brewer,  that  a  haberdasher;  this 
common  soldier  a  porter;  and  every  man  in  his  apron  and  frock,  &c.,  as  if 
they  never  had  done  anything  else  ;  whereas  the  other  [the  King's  army] 
go  with  their  belts  and  swords,  swearing,  and  cursing,  and  stealing."  In 
many  other  places  of  his  Diary,  Pepys  speaks  of  those  Parliamentary  soldiers 
as  the  men  that  "must  do  the  King's  business"  when  any  hard  fighting  was 
in  question,  and  not  the  "gay  men"  who  composed  his  guards,  &c. 


The  Puritan  Warriors.  2 1 

British  Islands  or  on  the  Continent,  an  enemy  who  could 
stand  its  onset.  In  England,  Scotland,  Ireland,  Flan- 
ders, the  Puritan  warriors,  often  surrounded  by  difficulties, 
sometimes  contending  against  threefold  odds,  not  only 
never  failed  to  conquer,  but  never  failed  to  destroy  and 
break  in  pieces  whatever  force  was  .opposed  to  them. 
They  at  length  came  to  regard  the  day  of  battle  as  the 
day  of  certain  triumph,  and  marched  against  the  most 
renowned  battalions  of  Europe  with  disdainful  confidence. 
Turenne  was  startled  by  the  shout  of  stern  exultation  with 
which  his  English  allies  advanced  to  the  combat,  and  ex- 
pressed the  delight  of  a  true  soldier  when  he  learned  that 
it  was  ever  the  fashion  of  Cromwell's  pikemen  to  rejoice 
greatly  when  they  beheld  the  enemy;  and  the  banished 
cavaliers  felt  an  emotion  of  national  pride  when  they  saw 
a  brigade  of  their  countrymen,  outnumbered  by  foes  and 
abandoned  by  friends,  drive  before  it  in  headlong  rout 
the  finest  infantry  of  Spain,  and  force  a  passage  into  a 
counterscarp  which  had  just  been  pronounced  impregnable 
•by  the  ablest  of  the  Marshals  of  France."  J 

Before  I  leave  this  part  of  the  subject  I  will  make  an- 
other short  extract  from  Denzil  Holles's  Memoirs.  We 
have  seen  in  what  terms  Lord  Macaulay  describes  the 
military  qualities  of  these  soldiers  of  the  Parliament  and 
of  Cromwell.  On  the  other  side,  Denzil  Holies,  after 
calling  them  "a  notable  dunghill,"  proceeds  to  say,  that  it 
was  a  monstrous  thing  for  "these  to  rebel  against  their 
masters,  put  conditions  upon  them,  upon  the  King,  and 
whole  kingdom,  make  their  will  a  rule,  that  all  the  interests 
of  the  King,  Parliament,  and  kingdom  must  be  squared  by." 

1  Macaulay's  History  of  England,  i.  58,  59.  London,  1864.  This  exquisite 
passage  proves  that  Macaulay  possessed  his  full  share  of— to  borrow  his  own 
words  (Trevelyan's  Life,  &c.,  ii.  409)— "those  higher  graces  of  style  which 
delight  us  in  Plato,  in  Demosthenes,  and  in  Pascal." 


22        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Now  let  us  see  what  were  these  interests  which  Denzil  Holies 
calls  "the  interests  of  the  King  and  kingdom."1  These 
interests  were  the  interests  of  foreigners,  of  the  King,  who 
was  not  an  Englishman,  and  of  the  Queen,  who  was  half 
French  and  half  Italian.  There  were  indeed  times  when 
England  had  been  .ruled  by  foreigners.  It  had  been  ruled 
by  William  I.,  by  Henry  II. ,  and  by  Simon  de  Montfort. 
But  those  were  all  foreigners  of  a  high  type,  whereas  now 
it  was  proposed  by  such  statesmen  as  Denzil  Holies, 
Hyde,  and  others  of  similar  principles,  that  England 
should  be  ruled  by  foreigners  of  a  low  type — a  result 
which,  if  such  an  army  of  native  Englishmen  as  has  been 
described,  and  their  leader,  remained  true  to  themselves, 
could  never  be  accomplished.  How  it  was  accomplished 
long  after,  it  were  sad  to  tell ;  but  the  hour  of  its  accom- 
plishment was  at  the  time  of  which  I  now  write  far  distant. 
What  Sir  Henry  Vane  said  of  himself  on  the  scaffold, 
that  he  was  in  his  youthful  days  inclined  as  well  as  others 
to  the  vanities  of  this  world,  and  to  that  which  they  call 
good  fellowship,  probably  comprehends  nearly  all  that  is 
quite  true  in  those  strange  stories  that  have  been  told 
of  the  wildness  and  profligacy  of  Cromwell's  early  life. 
Richard  Baxter  has  probably  come  near  to  the  true  charac- 
ter of  Cromwell  when  he  says  :  "  I  think  that  having  been 
a  prodigal  in  »his  youth,  and  afterwards  changed  to  a 
zealous  religiousness,  he  meant  honestly  in  the  main,  and 
was  pious  and  conscionable  in  the  main  course  of  his  life, 
till  prosperity  and  success  corrupted  him  :  that  at  his  first 
entrance  into  the  wars,  being  but  a  captain  of  horse,  he 
had  a  special  care  to  get  religious  men  into  his  troop." 2 

1  Memoirs  of  Denzil  Lord  Holies,  p.  149. 

*  The  Life  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Richard  Baxter,  part  i.  p.  98.     London,  folio, 
1696. 


The  King's  A  rmy.  2 3 

The  besetting  sins  of  the  King's  army  were  intemper- 
ance and  an  excess  in  all  debauchery,  vices  which  were  to 
be  expected  as  the  natural  inheritance  which  would  descend 
to  them  from  their  fathers,  who  had  had  the  great  misfor- 
tune to  learn  the  Court  fashion  of  the  infamous  Court  of 
James.1  Some  eminent  writers  have  exerted  their  abilities 
to  throw  an  attractive  air  over  those  vices  of  the  Royalists, 
keeping,  of  course,  the  darker  parts  of  them  out  of  their 
pictures.  But  while  it  may  be  true  that  debauchery 
and  intemperance  are  not  inconsistent  with  personal 
courage,  the  experience  of  all  history  teaches  us  that  an 
excess  of  sensuality  is  absolutely  incompatible  with  a 
healthy,  a  well-regulated,  and  permanent  constitution  of 
government.  When  the  Athenian  Plato,  though  not 
accustomed  to  behold  at  Athens  any  very  high  standard 
of  abstinence  from  luxury,  revisited  Sicily  and  Italy,  he 
was  disgusted 3  at  the  life  of  indulgence  and  luxury  which 
prevailed  generally  among  wealthy  Greeks  in  Sicily  and 
Italy;  and  he  came  to  the  conclusion  that  no  state,  of 
which  the  citizens  indulge  in  such  habits,  can  remain 
quiet 3  under  a  just  government  and  equal  laws,  but  must 
be  changing  incessantly  from  one  kind  of  bad  government 

1  "  The  generality  of  the  gentry  of  the  land  soon  learned  the  Court  fashion, 
and  every  great  house  in  the  country  became  a  sty  of  uncleanness.     Then 
began  murder,  incest,  adultery,  drunkenness,  swearing,  fornication,   and  all 
sort  of  ribaldry,  to  be  no  concealed  but  countenanced  vices,  because  they  held 
such  conformity  with  the  Court  example." — Mrs.   Hutchinson's  Memoirs  of 
Colonel    Hutchinson,  p.    78.     Bonn's   edition.     London,    1854.     And   again 
(ibid.,  p.  80),  "  Those  sermons  only  pleasing  that  flattered  them  in  their  vices, 
and  told  the  poor  King  that  he  was  Solomon,  and  that  his  sloth  and  cowardice, 
by  which  he  betrayed  the  cause  of  God  and  honour  of  the  nation,  was  gospel 
meekness  and  peaceableness  ;  for  which  they  raised  him  up  above  the  heavens, 
while  he  lay  wallowing  like  a  swine  in  the  mire  of  his  lust." 

2  Plato's  expression  of  dissatisfaction,  otfSa/i?}  ovda(j.Zs  ^ecre,  is  as  strong  as 
that  of  Tillieres  respecting  the  disgusting  sensuality  of  King  James,  "deplait 
horriblement. " — Tillieres  in  Raumer,  ii.  274. 

3  Plato,  Epistol.,  vii.  326. 


24       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

to  another,  whether  that  government  be  a  monarchical,  an 
oligarchical,  or  a  democratical  tyranny.  Great,  then,  as 
was  the  contrast  between  the  imbecility  of  the  Stuarts  and 
the  consummate  skill  with  which  Dionysius  the  Elder  and 
Agathokles  played  the  tyrant's  game,  Dionysius  himself 
could  not  have  begun  his  work  more  effectually  than  the 
Stuarts  did  by  the  force  of  the  example  of  the  Court  of 
James  upon  the  nobility  and  gentry  of  England. 

If,  however,  to  the  characteristic  vices  of  the  Royalists 
be  added  hypocrisy,  the  result  is  a  type  of  character  more 
thoroughly  bad  than  the  worst  among  the  Royalists,  and 
for  such  type  we  must  look  to  the  party  of  the  Parliament. 
To  say  nothing  here  of  those  arch-traitors,  the  consum- 
mation of  whose  treachery  and  baseness  belongs  to  the 
last  act  of  the  drama  of  the  Long  Parliament,  there  were 
not  a  few  smaller  if  not  meaner  villains,  whose  characters, 
recorded  by  witnesses  of  unimpeached  veracity,  prove 
that  Sir  Walter  Scott's  character  of  Trusty  Tomkins  in 
"Woodstock"  is  not  much,  if  at  all,  overdrawn.  Mrs. 
Hutchinson,  in  her  Memoirs  of  her  husband,  Colonel 
Hutchinson,  has  drawn,  with  no  feeble  hand,  the  portraits 
of  several  of  those  bad  men  who  joined  the  side  of  the 
Parliament,  not  for  public  and  honourable,  but  for  private 
and  sinister  ends.  Among  these  stood  pre-eminent  one 
Chadwick,  who,  from  a  boy  that  scraped  trenchers  in  the 
house  of  one  of  the  poorest  justices  in  the  county  of 
Nottingham,  had  procured  himself  to  be  deputy-recorder 
of  Nottingham,  cutting  his  hair,  and  "taking  up  a  form 
of  godliness,  the  better  to  deceive."  Whether  or  not,  like 
Trusty  Tomkins,  Chadwick  held  the  peculiar  doctrines 
which  were  in  those  times  entertained  by  a  sect  sometimes 
termed  the  Family  of  Love,  but  more  commonly  Ranters, 
the  latter  resembled  the  former  in  his  character  of  a 


"  Trusty  Tomkins"  25 

hypocritical  libertine,  as  well  as  of  a  treacherous  ally. 
"  In  some  of  the  corrupt  times  he  had  purchased  the 
honour  of  a  barrister,  though  he  had  neither  law  nor  learn- 
ing, but  he  had  a  voluble  tongue  and  was  crafty;  but 
although  he  got  abundance  of  money  by  a  thousand  cheats 
and  other  base  ways,  wherein  he  exercised  all  his  life, 
he  was  as  great  a  prodigal  in  spending  as  knave  in  get- 
ting." Of  this  Chadwick,  who  may  be  regarded  as  the 
type  of  a  considerable  class  at  that  time,  Mrs.  Hutchinson 
thus  sums  up  the  character:  "Never  was  a  truer  Judas 
since  Iscariot's  time  than  he,  for  he  would  kiss  the  man 
he  had  in  his  heart  to  kill,  he  naturally  delighting  in 
mischief  and  treachery  ;  and  was  so  exquisite  a  villain, 
that  he  destroyed  those  designs  he  might  have  thriven 
by,  with  overlaying  them  with  fresh  knaveries.  I  have 
been,"  adds  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  "  a  little  tedious  in  these 
descriptions,  yet  have  spoken  very  little  in  comparison  of 
what  the  truth  would  bear  ;  indeed,  such  assistants  as  these 
were  enough  to  disgrace  the  best  cause  by  their  owning  of 
it."  x  In  one  of  the  feats  related  of  this  Chadwick  by  Mrs. 
Hutchinson  he  soared  considerably  above  Trusty  Tomkins, 
and  even  approached  Sir  John  Falstaff.  Chadwick,  being 
sent  by  the  Committee  of  Nottingham  to  the  Lord  Fair- 
fax for  the  purpose  of  procuring  some  help  towards  the 
defence  of  Nottingham,  when  Newcastle  was  daily  ex- 
pected to  attack  it,  instead  of  prosecuting  this  business, 
procured  himself  a  commission  for  a  regiment.  "  In  execu- 
tion of  this  commission  he  raised  seven  men,  who  were  his 
menial  servants,  went  into  Staffordshire,  took  possession 
of  a  Papist's  fine  house,  and  set  fire  to  it  to  run  away  by 
the  light  when  the  enemy  were  thirty  miles  off  from  it." 

1  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  pp.  135,  136.    BohnVedition.    London, 
1854. 


26       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

"  He  also  cheated  the  country  of  pay,"  adds  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son,  "  for  I  know  not  how  many  hundred  men,  for  which, 
if  he  had  not  stolen  away  in  the  night,  he  had  been  stoned ; 
and  as  his  wife  passed  through  the  towns  she  was  in  danger 
of  her  life,  the  women  flinging  scalding  water  after  her/' * 

1  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  pp.  191,  192,    Bonn's  edition.    London, 
1854. 


(  27) 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

CROMWELL'S  MODE  OF  USING  HIS  MILITARY  MATERIALS — THE 
SKIRMISH  AT  GAINSBOROUGH,  ETC.  —  CROMWELL  APPOINTED 

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL    TO    THE    EARL     OF   MANCHESTER 

EMERGES   FROM    THE    EASTERN   COUNTIES,    AND    JOINS  HIS 
FORCES  TO  THE  FORCES  EMPLOYED  IN  THE  SIEGE  OF  YORK. 

FOR  that  particular  portion  of  the  war  of  which  I  now 
desire  to  give  some  account,  by  far  the  best  and  most 
valuable,  as  well  as  most  interesting,  history  would  have 
been  that  old  "Journal  by  Samuel  Squire,"  which,  as  Mr. 
Carlyle  was  informed  by  a  credible  witness,  "  went  to  200 
folio  pages  ; "  but  which  his  unknown  correspondent,  after 
copying  out  of  it,  and  sending  to  him  thirty-five  letters  of 
Oliver  Cromwell,  burnt  to  ashes.  Mr.  Carlyle  first  published 
these  thirty-five  letters  of  Oliver  Cromwell  in  Frasers 
Magazine  for  December  1847,  with  an  introduction  giving 
an  account  of  the  singular  circumstances  under  which  they 
had  come  into  his  hands.  I  read  these  letters  with  great 
interest  when  they  were  first  published,  and  I  have  often 
read  them  since ;  and  to  me  they  have  always  appeared, 
from  the  first  perusal  to  the  last,  to  bear  all  the  internal 
marks  of  genuine  authenticity.  It  would  be  extremely 
difficult  for  any  forger  of  historical  documents  to  accomplish 
even  an  approach  to  the  rough,  idiomatic,  vigorous,  and 
abrupt  business-like  brevity  which  are  stamped  upon  the 
style  of  these  letters,  as  if  the  hand  of  the  writer  were  as 
strong  and  firm  as  his  mind  was  clear  and  rapid ;  and 


28       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

as  if  his  mind,  though  then  occupied  with  but-  narrow 
and  limited  interests,  was  capable  of  commanding  armies 
and  ruling  empires.  Thus  in  one  of  these  letters,  written 
from  London  about  two  months  before  the  war  broke  out, 
to  the  Committee  of  Association  at  Cambridge,  he  says  : — 
"  V.  says  that  many  come  ill  to  the  time  fixed  for  muster: 
pray  heed  well  their  loss  of  time  ;  for  I  assure  you,  if  once 
we  let  time  pass  by,  we  shall  seek  in  vain  to  recover  it. 
The  Lord  helpeth  those  who  heed  His  commandments: 
and  those  who  are  not  punctual  in  small  matters,  of  what 
account  are  they  when  it  shall  please  Him  to  call  us  forth, 
if  we  be  not  watchful  and  ready  ?  Pray  beat  up  those 
sluggards — I  shall  be  over,  if  it  please  God,  next  Tuesday 
or  Wednesday."  In  the  letter  placed  next  to  that  just 
quoted,  and  to  which  Mr.  Carlyle  has  put  the  date  July 
1642 — as  to  the  preceding  he  put  the  date  June  1642 — 
Cromwell  writes  :  "  I  have  sent  you  300  more  carbines,  and 
600  snaplances  ; x  also  300  lances,  which,  when  complete, 
I  shall  send  down  by  the  train  with  sixteen  barrels 
powder.  We  [of  the  Parliament]  declare  ourselves  now, 
and  raise  an  army  forthwith  :  Essex  and  Bedford  are  our 
men.  Throw  off  fear,  as  I  shall  be  with  you.  I  get  a 
troop  ready  to  begin  ;  and  they  will  show  the  others? 

1  In  explanation  of  this  term  I  subjoin  an  extract  from  my  "  History  of  the 
Commonwealth,"  i.    66-68.       "The  foot  regiments  at  that  time  were   com- 
posed partly  of  musketeers,  partly  of  pikemen,  and  though  the  musketeers 
formed  a  larger  proportion  of  each  regiment  than  the  pikemen,  the  work — in 
consequence  of  the  inefficiency  of  the  muskets,  a  large  proportion  of  which 
were  matchlocks,  not  flintlocks  or  snaplances,  and  the  want  of  the  bayonets — 
was  mostly  done  by  the  pikemen.   It  appears  from  the  Order  Book  of  the  Council 
of  State,  I3th  March  164!-,  MS.  State  Paper  Office,  that  the  pikemen  in  a 
regiment  of  foot  1000  strong  were  to  the  musketeers  as  40x3  to  600,  or  as  two- 
fifths  to  three-fifths.      It  appears  from  a  despatch  of  Cromwell  from  Linlithgow 
to  the  Council  of  State,  26th  July  1651,  that  they  'have  left  in  store  2030 
muskets,  whereof  thirty  snaplances,'  or  flintlocks." 

2  I  have  underlined  these  words  as  showing  how  early  Cromwell  had  formed 
his  plan  as  to  fit  materials  for  the  army  of  the  Parliament. 


Cromwell  in  the  Eastern  Counties.  •          29 

Truly  I  feel  I  am  Siloam  of  the  Lord  ;  my  soul  is  with 
you  in  the  cause.  I  sought  the  Lord,  and  found  this 
written  in  the  first  chapter  of  Zephaniah,  the  3rd  verse : 
'  See,  I  will  consume  man  and  beast ;  I  will  consume  the 
fowls  of  heaven,  and  the  fishes  of  the  sea,  and  the  stum- 
blingblocks  of  the  wicked  ;  and  I  will  cut  off  man  from 
off  the  land,  saith  the  Lord/  Surely  it  is  a  sign  for  us. 
So  I  read  it.  For  I  seek  daily,  and  I  do  nothing  without 
first  so  seeking  the  Lord. " 

The  familiar  knowledge  shown  in  these  letters  as  pos- 
sessed by  Cromwell  of  his  neighbours  living  in  Hunting- 
don, St.  Neots,  St.  Ives,  Ely,  Biggleswade,  and  other  towns 
or  villages  of  the  counties  of  Huntingdon,  Cambridge,  Bed- 
ford, and  even  Lincoln  and  Northampton,  and  the  interest 
taken  by  him  in  their  affairs,  could  hardly  have  been  found 
in  Cromwell  if  he  had  been  merely  a  country  gentleman 
or  landowner  who  leased  his  land  to  tenant-farmers.  But 
as  a  brewer  first,  and  afterwards  as  a  gentleman-farmer — 
that  is.  as  a  man  farming  his  own  land — Cromwell  saw  far 
greater  varieties  of  human  character  than  he  would  have 
seen  as  a  country  squire;  and  he  also  had  more  need  for 
the  exercise  of  his  wits.  He  was  brought  into  closer  and 
more  frequent  dealings  with  farm-labourers  and  yeomen ; 
and  he  had  to  go  to  market  and  bargain  with  cattle-dealers 
and  corn-factors. 

Since  I  first  read  these  thirty-five  letters,  it  has  always 
appeared  to  me  that  the  genuine  features  of  the  character 
of  Cromwell — in  other  words,  those  qualities  which  made 
him  the  leading  figure  in  that  great  struggle  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  —  are  more  thoroughly  brought  out  and 
manifested  in  them  than  in  any  other  record  of  that  time. 
No  words  but  Cromwell's  own,  in  his  brief,  abrupt,  and 
hastily-written  but  clear  and  business-like  letters  or  notes 


30      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

to  Mr.  Samuel  Squire — subsequently  Cornet  and  Auditor 
Squire — can  convey  the  same  impression.  I  will  endea- 
vour to  give  at  least  some  idea  by  a  few  short  extracts. 

From  Ely,  nth  April  1642,  he  thus  writes  to  the  Com- 
mittee of  some  place,  for  the  address  is  wanting — "  Be  sure 
and  put  up  with  no  affronts.  Be  as  a  bundle  of  sticks ; 
let  the  offence  to  one  be  as  to  all.  The  Parliament  will 
back  us." 

From  Wisbeach,  nth  Nov.  1642,  he  writes  thus  to  Squire 
— "Dear  Friend,  let  the  sadler  see  to  the  horse-gear.  I 
learn,  from  one,  many  are  ill-served.  If  a  man  has  not  good 
weapons,  horse  and  harness,  he  is  as  nought."  The  follow- 
ing, dated  the  same  day  to  the  same  person,  seems  to  show 
that  Cromwell,  between  Sept.1  13  and  Nov.  1 1,  had  increased 
his  troop  of  horse  to  a  regiment — "  Take  three  troops  and 
go  to  Downham ;  I  care  not  which  they  be."  From  the 
next  to  "Mr.  Samuel  Squire,  at  his  quarters  at  Stan- 
ground,"  dated  2Qth  Nov.  1642,  I  extract  only  one  line: — 
"  Tell  W.  I  will  not  have  his  men  cut  folk's  grass  without 
compensation.  Bid  R.  horse  any  who  offend  ;  say  it  is  my 
order,  and  show  him  this."  The  next  I  give  entire  is  "  For 
Captain  Berry,  at  his  quarters,  Oundle,  Haste"  [date  gone 
by  moths— dated  by  Mr.  Carlyle  "I2th  March  164-!"] 
— "Dear  Friend,  we  have  secret  and  sure  hints  that  a 
meeting  of  the  Malignants  takes  place  at  Lowestoff  on 
Tuesday.  Now  I  want  your  aid  ;  so  come  with  all  speed 
on  getting  this,  with  your  troop;  and  tell  no  one  your 
route,  but  let  me  see  you  ere  sundown. — From  your  friend 
and  commandant,  Oliver  Cromwell."  Of  the  next  to  Cornet 
Squire,  1 5th  March  164-^,  I  give  the  first  paragraph — "Dear 
Friend,  I  have  no  great  mind  to  take  Montague's  [after- 
wards Earl  of  Sandwich]  word  about  that  farm.  I  learn, 

1  See  note  in  the  last  chapter, 


Cromwell  in  the  Eastern  Counties.  3 1 

behind  the  oven  is  the  place  they  hide  them  [the  arms] ;  so 
watch  well,  and  take  what  the  man  leaves  ;  and  hang  the 
fellow  out-a-hand,  and  I  am  your  warrant.  For  he  shot  a 
boy  at  Stilton-bee  by  the  Spinney,  the  widow's  son,  her  only 
support :  so  God  and  man  must  rejoice  at  his  punishment. 
I  want  you  to  go  over  to  Stamford  :  they  do  not  well  know 
you  ;  ride  through  and  learn  all — Wildman  is  gone  by  way 
of  Lincoln :  you  may  meet ;  but  do  not  know  him ;  he 
will  not  you."  From  the  next  to  the  same,  dated  3Oth 
March  1643 — "  Mind  and  come  on  in  strength,  as  they  are 
out  on  mischief.  Tell  Berry  to  ride  in,  also  Montague ; 
and  cut  home,  as  no  mercy  ought  to  be  shown  those  rovers, 
who  are  only  robbers,  and  not  honourable  soldiers.  Call 
at  Cosey  (?) ;  I  learn  he  has  got  a  case  of  arms  down  ;  fetch 
them  off;  also  his  harness — it  lies  in  the  wall  by  his  bed- 
head:  fetch  it  off;  but  move  not  his  old  weapons  of  his 
father's,  or  his  family  trophies.  Be  tender  of  this,  as  you 
respect  my  wishes  of  one  gentleman  to  another.  Bring  'me 
two  pair  of  boothose  from  the  Fleming's  who  lives  in  Lon- 
don Lane  [Norwich]  ;  also  a  new  cravat."  To  the  same — 
that  is,  "  Mr.  Samuel  Squire,  at  his  quarters,  Peterborough, 
in  Bridge  Street  there:  Haste"  "St.  Neot's,  3d  April 
1643. — Dear  Sir,  I  am  required  by  the  Speaker  to  send  up 
those  prisoners  we  got  in  Suffolk ;  pray  send  in  the  date 
we  got  them,  also  their  names  in  full,  and  quality.  I  ex- 
pect I  may  have  to  go  up  to  town  also.  I  send  them  up 
by  Whalley's  troop  and  the  Slepe  troop ;  my  son  goes  with 
them.  You  had  best  go  also,  to  answer  any  questions 
needed.  I  shall  require  a  new  pot  [helmet] ;  mine  is  ill 
set.  Buy  me  one  in  Tower  Street ;  a  Fleming  sells  them, 
I  think  his  name  is  Vandeleur ;  get  one  fluted,  and  good 
barrets ;  and  let  the  plume-case  be  set  on  well  behind.  I 
would  prefer  it  lined  with  good  shamoy-leather  to  any 


32       Striiggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 


other."    To  the  same  —  "  Stilton,  I2th  h.^'^.,  post  haste,  haste. 
Sir,  Pray  show  this  to  Berry,  and  advise  him  to  ride  in,  and 
join  me,  by  four  days'  time  ;  as  these  Ca'ndishers,  I  hear, 
are  over,  tearing  and  robbing  all,  poor  and  rich.  .  .  .   Many 
poor  souls  slain  and  cattle  moved  off  —  send  on  word  to 
Biggleswade,  to  hasten  those  slow  fellows.     We  are  upon 
lio  child's-play.      I  will  buy  your  Spanish  headpiece  you 
showed  me  ;    I  will  give  you  five  pieces  for  it,  and  my 
Scots  one."      To  the  same  I3th  April  1643  —  "I  find  we 
want  much  ere  we  march.      Our  smiths  are  hard  at  work 
at  shoes.      Press  me  four  more  smiths  as  you  come  on.     I 
must  have  them,  yea  or  nay  ;  say  I  will  pay  them  fee,  and 
let  go  after  shoeing  —  home,  and  no  hindrances."     To  the 
same  (date  wanting),  but  soon  after  the  last  —  "  I  fear  those 
men  from  Suffolk  are  being  tried  sorely  by  money  from 
certain  parties,  whom  I  will  hang  if  I  catch  playing  their 
tricks  in  my  quarters  ;  by  law  of  arms  I  will  serve  them. 
Order  Isham  to  keep  the  bridge  (it  is  needful),  and  shoot 
any  one  passing  who  has  not  a  pass.     Tell  Captain  Rus- 
sell my  mind  on  his  men's  drinking  the  poor  man's  ale, 
and  not  paying.     I  will  not  allow  any  plunder  ;  so  pay  the 
man,  and  stop  their  pay  to  make  it  up.     I  will  cashier 
officers  and  men  if  such  is  done  in  future."     The  second 
note,  after  the  last  quoted,  addressed  to  "  Mr.  Squire,  at 
his  quarters,  Chatteris  :  Haste,  haste?  and  dated,  "  Head- 
quarters, Monday,  daybreak,"  —  says,  "Wildman  has  seen 
one  who  says  you  have  news.       Surely  you   are   aware 
of  our  great   need.      Send  or  come  to  me  by  dinner." 
To  the  same  at  Downham  (no  date)  —  "  I  learn  that  one 
landed  at  the  quay  from  Holland,  who  was  let  go,  and 
is   now  gone   on   by  way   of  Lynn.      I  hear  he   has   a 
peaked  beard,  of  a  blue-black  colour  ;  of  some  twenty-five 
years  old  ;  I  think,  from  my  letter,  a  Spaniard.     See  to 


Cromwell's  mode  of  using  his  Materials.       33 

him.  He  will  needs  cross  the  Wash  ;  stop  him,  and  bring 
him  to  me.  I  shall  be  at  Bury,  if  not  at  Newmarket. 
Haste — ride  on  spur."  Squire  has  endorsed :  "  Got  the 
man  at  Tilney,  after  a  tussle — two  troopers  hit,  and  he 
sore  cut,  even  to  loss  of  life.  Got  all." 

When  we  turn  from  the  Cromwell  as  manifested  in  these 
brief,  clear,  business-like  notes  to  his  officers,  to  the  Crom- 
well making  long  harangues  or  theological  discourses,  we 
find  it  difficult  to  believe  that  the  latter  is  the  same  man 
as  the  former.  The  effect  of  the  utterances  of  the  former 
Cromwell  was  to  make  the  most  efficient  army  that  had 
ever  appeared  upon  earth  ;  the  effect  of  the  utterances  of 
the  latter  Cromwell  was  to  send  some  of  his  ablest  officers 
or  generals  to  sleep.  Richard  Baxter  relates  that,  a  little 
while  after  Cromwell's  usurpation  of  the  Protectorate, 
"  Cromwell  sent  to  speak  with  me,  and  when  I  came,  in 
the  presence  of  only  three  of  his  chief  men,  he  began  a 
long  and  tedious  speech  to  me  of  God's  providence  in  the 
change  of  the  government,  and  how  God  had  owned  it, 
and  what  great  things  had  been  done  at  home  and  abroad, 
in  the  peace  with  Spain  and  Holland,  &c.  When  he  had 
wearied  us  all  with  speaking  thus  slowly  about  an  hour,  I 
told  him  I  saw  that  what  he  learned  must  be  from  himself, 
being  more  disposed  to  speak  many  hours  than  to  hear 
one,  and  little  heeding  what  another  said  when  he  had 
spoken  himself." '  Lord  Broghill,  Lambert,  and  Thurloe 
were  the  individuals  present  on  this  occasion.  Lambert 
fell  asleep  during  Cromwell's  speech.2 

Though  the  portrait  of  Cromwell  painted  by  Scott,  in 
"  Woodstock,"  is  in  many  respects  very  untrue  and  unfair, 
yet  Scott's  conception  of  the  character  of  Cromwell  ap- 

1  Baxter's  Life,  part  i.  p.  205. 

3  Baxter's  Penitent  Confessions,  p.  25.     Orme's  Life  of  Baxter,  p.  145,  note.; 
VOL.  II.  C 


34       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

pears  to  me  to  be  correct  in  one  point.  Scott  describes 
Cromwell  as  engaged  in  a  long  theological  controversy 
with  the  Presbyterian  divine  Nehemiah  Holdenough,  when 
he  was  suddenly  interrupted,  and  at  the  same  instant 
transformed  from  the  long-winded  preacher  into  the 
soldier  and  man  of  action.  "  Here  an  officer  opened  the 
door  and  looked  in,  to  whom  Cromwell,  exchanging  the 
canting  drawl,  in  which  it  seemed  he  might  have  gone  on 
interminably,  for  the  short,  quick  tone  of  action,  called 
out,  '  Pearson,  is  he  come  ? ' '  The  style  in  which  Scott 
has  made  Cromwell  speak  on  this  occasion  is  admirably 
characteristic. 

We  now  approach  the  skirmish  at  Gainsborough,  which 
was,  according  to  Whitelocke,  "  the  beginning  of  Crom- 
well's great  fortunes,"  and  was  to  show  that  the  incessant 
labours  indicated  in  the  fragments  of  his  correspondence 
just  quoted  were  not  thrown  away,  but  that  Cromwell  had 
excellent  military  materials  to  work  upon  in  the  men  of 
those  Eastern  counties.  In  a  note  dated  "  Wisbeach,  this 
day" — Mr.  Carlyle  has  put  between  inverted  commas, 
"July,  1643" — and  addressed  "To  Captain  Montague  or 
Sam  Squire :  Haste,  haste,  on  spur,"  Cromwell  writes : 
"  Sir,  One  has  just  come  in  to  say  the  Ca'ndishers  have 
come  as  far  as  Thorney,  and  done  a  great  mischief,  and 
drove  off  some  threescore  fat  beasts.  Pray  call  in  and 
follow  them  ;  they  cannot  have  gone  far.  Give  no  quarter, 
as  they  shed  blood  at  Bourne,  and  slew  three  poor  men 
not  in  arms.  So  make  haste. — From  your  friend  and 
commander,  Oliver  Cromwell."  In  the  same  collection 
there  is  a  letter  dated  i8th  July  1643,  from  Henry  Crom- 
well "  To  Captain  Berry,  at  his  quarters,  Whittlesea  :  These 
in  all  haste,"  in  which  he  says,  "  Sir,  There  is  great  news 
just  come  in  by  one  of  our  men  who  has  been  home  on 


The  Skirmish  at  Gainsborough.  35 

leave.  The  Ca'ndishers  are  coming  on  hot.  Some  say 
eighty  troops,  others  fifty  troops.  Be  it  as  it  may,  we 
must'  go  on.  Vermuyden  has  sent  his  son  to  say  we  had 
better  push  on  three  troops  as  scouts  as  far  as  Stamford, 
and  hold  Peterborough  at  all  costs,  as  it  is  the  key  of  the 
Fen,  which,  if  lost,  much  ill  may  ensue.  Our  news  says, 
Ca'ndish  has  sworn  to  sweep  the  Fens  clear  of  us.  How 
he  handles  his  broom  we  will  see  when  we  meet ;  he  may 
find  else  than  dirt  to  try  his  hand  on,  I  think.  Our  men 
being  ready,  we  shall  ride  in  and  join  your  troop  at  dawn. 
Therefore  send  out  scouts  to  see.  Also  good  intelligencers 
on  foot  had  better  be  seen  after ;  they  are  best,  I  find,  on 
all  occasions.  Hold  the  town  secure  ;  none  go  in  or  out,  on 
pain  of  law  of  arms  and  war.  Sharman  is  come  in  from 
Thrapstone  :  there  was  a  troop  of  the  King's  men  driving, 
but  got  cut  down  to  a  man,  not  far  from  Kettering,  by  the 
Bedford  horse,  and  no  quarter  given,  I  hear.  Sir,  this  is  all 
the  news  I  have.  My  father  desires  me  to  say,  Pray  be 
careful.  Sir,  I  rest  your  humble  servant,  Henry  Cromwell." 

Ten  days  after  the  date  of  this  last  letter,  on  Friday, 
the  28th  of  July  1643,  t^e  forces  of  General  Cavendish 
were  completely  routed  by  Cromwell  at  Gainsborough, 
and  Cavendish  himself  slain. 

The  Royalists,  who  not  only  committed  innumerable 
cruelties  in  the  attempt  to  reduce  England,  Scotland,  and 
Ireland  to  a  state  of  slavery,  but  actually  incorporated 
with  their  own  forces  many  of  the  perpetrators  of  the 
abominable  cruelties  of  the  Irish  massacre,  charged  Crom- 
well's troops  with  cruelty  :  "  for  it  was  such  a  sort  of  men," 
says  Sir  Philip  Warwick,1 "  as  killed  brave  young  Cavendish 
and  many  others  in  cold  blood." 

1  Memoirs  of  the  Reign  of  King  Charles  I.,  p.  252.  Second  edition.  London 
1702. 


36       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Now  the  facts  are  these :  Cavendish  and  others  were, 
after  a  furious  charge  up-hill  by  Cromwell's  twelve  troops 
of  horse  and  dragoons, — though  Cavendish's  forces  were 
more  than  thrice  that  number, — driven  into  a  bog  and  there 
killed.1  If  it  be  objected  that  Cromwell's  men  ought  to 
have  made  them  prisoners  instead  of  killing  them,  it  is  to 
be  borne  in  mind  that  Cavendish  and  his  troops,  a  division 
of  Newcastle's  "Papist"  army,  had  given  great  provocation 
to  Cromwell  and  his  men  by  the  depredations,  the  out- 
rages, and  the  cruelty  of  which  they  had  been  guilty, 
slaying  men  not  in  arms,  driving  off  cattle, — in  the  words 
of  a  letter  of  Oliver  Cromwell  himself  already  quoted, 
"tearing  and  robbing  all,  poor  and  rich."  On  the  other 
hand,  Cromwell  himself  never  allowed  any  to  be  robbed, 
but  paid  for  everything  justly  to  friend  and  foe  alike.  The 
character,  as  well  as  the  superiority  in  numbers  of  their 
enemies,  may  have  excited  Cromwell's  soldiers  on  this 
occasion,  as  at  the  storm  of  Drogheda,  to  give  no  quarter. 
Cromwell,  with  twelve  troops  of  horse  and  dragoons,  having 
marched  to  the  relief  of  Gainsborough,  found  the  enemy, 
more  than  thrice  his  number,  drawn  up  near  the  town,  and 
no  way  to  attack  them  but  through  a  gate  and  up-hill. 
Notwithstanding  these  disadvantages,  he  fell  upon  them, 
and  after  some  dispute,  totally  routed  them,  killing  many 
of  their  officers,  and  amongst  them  Lieutenant-General 
Cavendish.  Gainsborough  was  thus  relieved.2 

In  the  summer  of  1643  the  Parliament  ordered  an  ad- 
ditional levy  of  2000  men  to  be  placed  under  Cromwell's 
command,  on  which  occasion  a  journal  of  the  time  thus 
describes  his  peculiar  discipline :  "  As  for  Colonel  Crom- 
well, he  hath  2000  more  brave  men,  well  disciplined.  No 

1  Perfect  Diurnal.     Forster's  Life  of  Cromwell,  i.  103. 

2  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  67,  68.     Second  edition.    London,  1721. 


The  Skirmish  near  Grantham.  37 

man  swears  but  he  pays  his  twelve  pence  ;  if  he  be  drunk, 
he  is  set  in  the  stocks,  or  worse;  if  one  calls  the  other 
Roundhead,  he  is  cashiered  :  insomuch  that  the  countries 
where  they  come  leap  for  joy  of  them,  and  come  in  and 
join  with  them.  How  happy  were  it  if  all  the  forces  were 
thus  disciplined."1  Baillie  gives  a  remarkable  confirma- 
tion of  the  discipline  of  Cromwell's  troops.  "  Cromwell," 
he  says,  "took  such  a  course  with  his  soldiers  that  they 
did  less  displeasure  at  Glasgow  nor  if  they  had  been  at 
London,  though  Mr.  Zacharie  Boyd  railled  on  them  all  to 
their  very  faces  in  the  High  Church/'2 

These  were  times,  however,  when  Cromwell's  soldiers 
were  very  little  inclined  to  mercy,  as  in  the  storm  of 
Drogheda,  and  in  the  heat  of  fight  generally.  But  then 
they  were  in  their  own  opinion  and  that  of  their  general 
"  doing  execution  upon  the  Lord's  enemies."  After  one  of 
his  early  skirmishes,  Cromwell  thus  writes  to  the  Speaker : 
"  God  hath  given  us  this  evening  a  glorious  victory  over 
our  enemies.  They  were,  as  we  are  informed,  one-and- 
twenty  colours  of  horse  troops,  and  three  or  four  of 
dragoons.  It  was  late  in  the  evening  when  we  drew  out. 
They  came  and  faced  us  within  two  miles  of  the  town. 
So  soon  as  we  had  the  alarm  we  drew  out  our  forces,  con- 
sisting of  about  twelve  troops,  whereof  some  of  them  so 
poor  and  broken,  that  you  shall  seldom  have  seen  worse. 
With  this  handful  it  pleased  God  to  cast  the  scale;  for 
after  we  had  stood  a  little  above  musket-shot,  the  one 
body  from  the  other,  and  the  dragoons  having  fired  on 
both  sides  for  the  space  of  half-an-hour  or  more,  they  not 
advancing  towards  us,  we  agreed  to  charge  them,  and, 

J  Special  Passages,  May  9-16,  1643,  in  "  Cromwell iana,"  p.  5. 
2  Memoirs  of  the  Life  of  Robert  Baillie,  p.  63.     Published  in  Mr.  Laing's 
edition  of  Baillie's  Letters  and  Journals. 


38       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

advancing  the  body,  after  many  shots  on  both  sides,  came 
with  our  troops  a  pretty  round  trot,  they  standing  firm  to 
receive  us,  and  our  men  charging  fiercely  upon  them,  they 
were  immediately  routed  and  ran  all  away,  and  we  had 
the  execution  of  them  two  or  three  miles.  I  believe  some 
of  our  soldiers  did  kill  two  or  three  men  apiece.  We 
have  also  gotten  some  of  their  officers  and  some  of  their 
colours;  but  what  the  number  of  dead  is,  or  what  the 
prisoners,  for  the  present  we  have  not  time  to  inquire 
into."  '  And  after  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor,  a  nephew 
of  Cromwell's,  who  was  mortally  wounded,  said  one  thing 
lay  upon  his  spirit.  Cromwell  having  asked  him  what  that 
was,  he  replied  that  "  it  was  that  God  had  not  suffered 
him  to  be  no  more  the  executioner  of  His  enemies."2 

The  proceeding  described  in  the  following  curious 
passage  of  Hugh  Peters's  account  to  the  Parliament  of 
the  taking  of  Basing  House  may  be  classed  somewhere 
between  the  extreme  abstinence  from  plunder  first  men- 
tioned, and  the  unrelenting  "execution  of  the  Lord's 
enemies"  last  described.  "Eight  or  nine  gentlewomen  of 
rank,  coming  out  together,  were  entertained  by  the  com- 
mon soldiers  somewhat  coarsely,  yet  not  uncivilly  ;  they 
left  them  with  some  clothes  upon  them."3 

Such  was  the  effect  of  the  small  body  of  troops  led  by 
Cromwell,  full  of  enthusiasm  for  the  cause  for  which  they 

1  Perfect  Diurnal,  25th  May  1643,  in  "Cromwelliana,"  p.  5. 

*  Letter  of  Oliver  Cromwell,  July  5,   1644.     Forster's  Life  of  Cromwell, 

i-  139. 

8  In  copying  this  passage  some  years  ago  from  one  of  the  King's  pamphlets 
in  the  British  Museum,  I  find  that  I  have  unfortunately  omitted  the  reference. 
In  Hugh  Peters's  Relation  to  the  House  of  Commons  of  the  taking  of  Basing 
House  in  Sprigge's  "Anglia  Rediviva,"  pp.  139-141,  the  passage  differs  in  a 
few  words  from  that  above  quoted — "  Eight  or  nine  gentlewomen  of  rank, 
running  forth  together,  were  entertained  by  the  common  soldiers  somewhat 
coarsely,  yet  not  uncivilly,  considering  the  action  in  hand." 


The  Skirmish  near  Horncastle.  39 

fought,  admirably  disciplined  and  admirably  officered,  that 
even  that  disastrous  campaign  of  1643  closed  with  some 
gleams  of  hope  for  the  cause  of  the  Parliament.  In  addi- 
tion to  what  he  had  already  done,  Cromwell  gained,  on  the 
1 2th  of  October,  a  decided  victory  over  a  force  more  than 
twice  as  numerous  as  his  own.  He  had  been  joined  with 
the  Earl  of  Manchester — formerly  known  as  Lord  Kim- 
bolton,  but  now  become  Earl  of  Manchester  by  his 
father's  death — in  the  command  of  the  six  associated 
counties,  Norfolk,  Suffolk,  Essex,  Cambridge,  Hunting- 
don, and  Bedford.1  Manchester,  with  upwards  of  7000 
foot,  had  marched  from  London  to  join  Cromwell  in 
Lincolnshire,  where  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax,  with  his  horse, 
had  already  joined  him.  Sir  John  Henderson,  an  old 
soldier,  sent  forward  by  the  Earl  of  Newcastle  with  a 
strong  detachment  of  horse  and  dragoons,  "  appearing 
by  their  standards  to  be  87  troops,"2  came  up  with 
Fairfax,  Cromwell,  and  their  cavalry,  "37  troops  of  horse 
and  dragoons,"3  at  Waisby  or  Winsby-field,  near  Horn- 
castle,  while  Manchester  with  the  foot  was  a  day's  march 
in  the  rear,  and  made  haste  to  charge  them  before  Man- 
chester with  the  foot  could  come  up.  The  encounter  was 
very  sharp  but  short,  for  the  fight  lasted  but  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  before  the  Earl  of  Newcastle's  forces  were 
totally  routed  and  many  killed,  amongst  them  the  Lord 
Widdrington,  Sir  Ingram  Hopton,  and  other  persons 
of  quality.4  In  the  first  shock,  Cromwell's  horse,  having 
been  struck  with  a  shot,  fell ;  and  as  Cromwell  rose  from 
the  ground  he  was  again  struck  down.  For  some  minutes 

1  Lincoln  was  afterwards  added  to  the  association,  which  addition  would 
make  seven  associated  counties. 

a  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  69.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 

3  Ludlow,  ibid.  4  Ludlow,  ibid. 


4O      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

he  lay  insensible,  but  again  recovering,  he  seized  a  "sorry 
horse "  from  one  of  his  troopers  and  joined  the  fight. 
"  There  were  slain  in  the  pursuit  (which  was  full  six  miles) 
about  600,  and  many  drowned  in  the  chase;  114  were 
found  dead  in  the  water  and  mires  the  next  day  ;  there 
were  also  about  700  or  800  taken  prisoners,  and  18  colours 
at  the  least;  there  were  brought  in  the  first  night,  also, 
their  waggons ;  many  more  colours,  it  is  like,  were  lost  in 
the  chase ;  the  horse  and  arms  that  were  taken  were  more 
than  the  men  doubled."1 

On  the  22d  January  164^  the  House  of  Commons,  on  a 
motion  by  Cromwell,  "  that  the  Earl  of  Manchester  might 
be  made  Serjeant-Major-General  of  the  county  of  Lincoln, 
as  well  as  of  the  other  associated  counties,"  voted  that  "the 
Lord-General  be  desired  to  grant  a  commission  to  the 
Earl  of  Manchester,  according  to  the  ordinance  of  both 
Houses,,  for  the  seven  associated  counties,  to  be  Major- 
General  of  the  county  of  Lincoln,  and  to  command  all  the 
forces  there,  as  well  as  the  six  associated  counties."2 
The  Earl  of  Manchester,  in  the  following  month  of  Feb- 
ruary, is  reported  in  one  of  the  contemporary  newspapers 
to  have  appointed  Colonel  Cromwell  to  be  his  lieutenant- 
general.3 

The  military  operations  continued  all  through  the  winter, 
without  regard  to  the  inclemencies  of  the  season.  This 
course  would  seem  from  the  first  to  have  been  adopted  by 
both  sides.  Thus  the  Royalist  forces  having  made  an 
attempt  on  Nottingham  on  the  I5th  of  January  164?,  Mrs. 

1  "The  Scottish  Dove,"  October  13-20,  1643,  in  "  Cromwelliana,"  p.  7. 

2  D'Ewes's  Journal,  Harl.  MSS.,  cited  in  Sanford's  "Studies  and  Illustra- 
tions of  the  Great  Rebellion,"  pp.  580,  581.     The  seven  associated  counties 
were,  therefore,  now  Norfolk,  Suffolk,  Essex,  Bedford,  Cambridge,  Hunting- 
don, Lincoln. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  581. 


Siege  of  Nantwich.  4 1 

Hutchinson  describes  the  result  of  it  in  terms  which 
convey  a  forcible  impression  of  the  hardships  the  troops 
underwent  at  that  season.  "  For  two  miles  the  enemy's 
horse  left  a  great  track  of  blood,  which  froze  as  it  fell  upon 
the  snow,  for  it  was  such  bitter  weather  that  the  foot  had 
waded  almost  to  the  middle  in  snow  as  they  came,  and 
were  so  numbed  with  cold  when  they  came  into  the  town, 
that  they  were  fain  to  be  rubbed  to  get  life  into  them,  and, 
in  that  condition,  were  more  eager  of  fires  and  warm  meat 
than  of  plunder."1 

The  King  having  concluded  a  suspension  of  arms2  with 
the  Irish  insurgents,  which  was  signed  on  the  I5th  of  Sep- 
tember 1643,  the  Earl  of  Ormond,  who  commanded  for 
Charles  in  Ireland,  immediately  prepared  to  send  some  of 
the  English  regiments  which  had  been  employed  in  Ireland 
to  the  assistance  of  the  King  m  England.  Ormond  selected 
for  this  purpose  those  regiments  of  which  he  thought  him- 
self most  secure.  On  their  arrival  in  England,  these  troops 
were  employed  in  the  siege  of  Nantwich,  under  the  com- 
mand of  Lord  Byron,  lately  Sir  John  Byron.  Sir  Thomas 
Fairfax,  marching  from  Lincolnshire  in  the  depth  of  this 
severe  winter,  surprised  Lord  Byron  by  the  extraordinary 
rapidity  of  his  march,  and  defeated  him  at  Nantwich,  on 
the  25th  of  January  164?.  Fairfax  then  marched  back  to 

1  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  pp.  206,  207.     Bonn's  edition,  1854. 

2  It  was  one  of  the  articles  of  peace  between  the  Earl  of  Ormond  and  the 
Irish,  that  the  two  Irish  Acts  of  Charles  I.,  prohibiting  the  Irish  from  plough- 
ing with  horses  by  the  tail,  and  burning  oats  in  the  straw,  should  be  immedi- 
ately repealed. — Barrington  on  the   Statutes,  p.  162,  note.      4to.      London, 
1796.     Burt,  writing  about  1725,  says,  "In  the  Western  Highlands  they  still 
retain  that  barbarous  custom  (which  I  have  not  seen  anywhere  else)  of  drawing 
the  harrow  by  the  horse's  dock,  without  any  manner  of  harness  whatever. 
And  when  the  tail  becomes  too  short  for  the  purpose,  they  lengthen  it  with 
twisted  sticks.  .  This  practice  was  formerly  forbidden  in  Ireland  by  Act  of 
Parliament."— Letters  from  the  North  of  Scotland,  ii.   125.     New  edition. 
London,  1815. 


42       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Yorkshire,  and,  joining  his  father,  Lord  Fairfax,  defeated 
at  Selby,  Colonel  Bellasis,  the  Royalist  governor  of 
York.  He  then  prepared  to  march  to  the  relief  of  the 
army  of  the  Scots,  which,  under  the  command  of  Alex- 
ander Leslie,  now  Earl  of  Leven,  was  harassed  by  the 
weather,  by  the  want  of  provisions  and  forage,  and  by 
the  Royalist  troops  under  the  Marquis  of  Newcastle.  The 
victory  which  the  united  forces  of  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax 
and  his  father,  Lord  Fairfax,  gained  at  Selby,  tended  to 
relieve  the  Scottish  general  from  his  difficult  position.  It 
created  a  panic  at  York,  which  caused  the  Marquis  of 
Newcastle  to  fall  back  on  that  city.  The  Fairfaxes  and 
Leven  joined  their  forces  at  Wetherby  on  the  2Oth  of 
April,  and  proceeded  to  invest  York,  into  which  Newcastle 
with  his  troops  had  retired.  Manchester  and  Cromwell 
joined  their  forces  to  those  of  the  besiegers.  In  the  mean- 
time Prince  Rupert  had  relieved  Newark  and  Lathom 
House,  where  the  Countess  of  Derby  had  made  a  gallant 
defence ;  had  taken  Bolton,  where  he  refused  quarter,1  and 
put  1 200  to  the  sword;  and  Liverpool,  the  inhabitants  of 
which  also  suffered  severely  from  his  licentious  troops. 

1  Rushworth,  v.  623,  et  seq.  The  Parliament  passed  an  ordinance  (Rush., 
v.  783)  against  giving  the  Irish  quarter,  since  the  Irish  pursued  the  same 
mode  of  warfare  to  which  they  had  been  accustomed  in  their  rebellion.  Hume 
says  that  Prince  Rupert,  by  making  some  reprisals,  soon  repressed  the  inhu- 
manity. But  Rupert's  refusal  of  quarter  had  occurred  some  months  previously 
to  the  Parliament's  ordinance.  Cromwell  might  have  defended  his  order  to 
give  no  quarter  at  the  storm  of  Drogheda  and  \Yexford,  by  citing  this  ordi- 
nance of  the  Parliament. 


(43  ) 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

THE  BATTLE  OF  MARSTON  MOOR. 

ON  the  I4th  of  June,  King  Charles  wrote  a  letter  to  his 
nephew,  Prince  Rupert,  commanding  him  to  march  imme- 
diately with  all  his  forces  to  the  relief  of  York.  "  But,"  the 
letter  continued,  "  if  that  be  either  lost  or  have  freed  them- 
selves from  the  besiegers,  or  that  for  want  of  powder  you 
cannot  undertake  that  work,  that  you  immediately  march, 
with  your  whole  strength,  directly  to  Worcester,  to  assist 
me  and  my  army,  without  which,  or  your  having  relieved 
York  by  beating  the  Scots,  all  the  successes  you  can 
afterwards  have,  most  infallibly  will  be  useless  unto  me."  ' 
Rupert  on  receiving  this  letter  at  once  marched  for  York, 
taking  with  him  some  newly-arrived  Irish2  regiments,  and 
being  joined  by  Newcastle's  cavalry  on  his  route. 

A  study,  continued  through  many  years,  of  all  the  trust- 
worthy authorities  I  have  been  able  to  meet  with  relating 
to  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor,  assisted  latterly  by  more 

1  Mr.  Forster  has  printed  this  letter  from  the  original  among  papers  intrusted 
to  him  by  Lord  Nugent. — Life  of  Cromwell,  i.  129,  130.     London,  1830.     Mr. 
Forster  thinks  that  this  letter  completely  vindicates  Rupert  in  the  course  he 
adopted  on  receiving  it,  though  it  does  not  excuse  his  concealing  the  fact  of 
his  having  received  such  a  letter.     This  letter,  in  a  slightly  incorrect  state,  had 
been  printed  before  in  the  Appendix  to   Evelyn's  Memoirs  from  some  copy 
taken  at  the  time  and  preserved  among  Sir  Edward  Nicholas's  manuscripts. 

2  English  regiments  which  had  been  employed  in  Ireland ;  for  though  in  the 
atrocities  committed  afterwards  under  Montrose  in  Scotland,  particularly  at 
Aberdeen,  the  native  Irish  were  the  chief  actors,  the  Royalist  troops  at  Mars- 
ton  Moor  were  all  English  except  a  few  troops  of  Irish  under  Rupert. 


44       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

authorities  brought  forward  by  the  persevering  researches 
of  Mr.  Sanford,  whose  very  valuable  volume  on  the  Great 
Rebellion  I  had  not  seen  till  recently,  has  led  me  to  form 
a  much  higher  opinion  of  Prince  Rupert's  abilities  than  I 
had  before  entertained.  Too  great  impetuosity,  unless  as 
in  the  case  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  accompanied  by  extra- 
ordinary genius,  is  a  dangerous  quality  in  a  general.  And 
Rupert  had  probably  too  great  impetuosity.  But  what- 
ever military  talent  he  may  have  displayed  on  other  occa- 
sions in  that  war,  which  on  the  whole  brought  out  but  a 
small  amount  of  military  talent  of  a  high  order,  the  only 
strategic  ability  shown  at  Marston  Moor  was  shown  by 
Rupert ;  and  even  if  Rupert  should  be  pronounced  a 
positively  bad  general,  and  Leven,  Fairfax,  and  Man- 
chester positively  good  ones,  the  result  seems  to  confirm 
the  truth  of  the  saying  attributed  to  Napoleon  that  one 
bad  general  is  better  than  two  good  ones.  The  battle,  as 
far  as  the  generalship  of  the  three  Parliamentary  generals 
was  concerned,  would  have  been  lost  by  the  Parliament 
but  for  the  genius  of  Oliver  Cromwell ;  not  strategic  genius, 
for  he  held  only  a  subordinate  command,  but  the  genius 
shown  in  the  wonderful  perfection  to  which  he  had  brought 
his  military  materials,  "his  instruments,"  as  he  himself 
called  them.  I  have  shown,  or  at  least  attempted  to  show, 
in  my  account x  of  the  battle  of  Dunbar,  for  which  I  claim 
the  same  credit  I  give  to  Mr.  Sanford  for  his  account  of 
the  battle  of  Marston  Moor,  that  Cromwell  never  "  ex- 
hibited that  higher  military  genius  which  dazzles  and 
excites,  if  it  does  not  elevate,  the  mind  of  the  reader  in 
studying  the  campaigns  of  Hannibal  and  Frederic ;  and 

1  History  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England,  from  the  death  of  Charles  I. 
to  the  expulsion  of  the  Long  Parliament  by  Cromwell,  i.  351-377-  London  : 
John  Murray,  Albemarle  Street,  1864. 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  45 

relieves  the  attention,  sick  and  weary  with  looking  at  a 
country  turned  into  a  huge  slaughter-house,  by  presenting 
to  it  not  the  mere  action  of  matter  upon  matter,  but  the 
action  of  mind  producing  combinations  so  new,  so  astonish- 
ing, and  so  powerful,  that  the  effect  is  like  that  of  some  of 
the  great  powers  of  Nature,  and  an  army  is  destroyed  as  if 
by  a  stroke  of  lightning."  z  But  Cromwell's  genius  might, 
if  not  a  strategic,  be  termed  a  creative  genius  ;  for  he  saw 
what  no  one  else  saw,  that  the  side  he  belonged  to  in  this 
war  contained  military  materials  of  the  very  highest  value. 
And  while  the  stimulants  applied  to  the  men  who  called 
themselves  Cavaliers  were  mostly  alcoholic,  and  the  dis- 
cipline loose,  Cromwell,  while  he  subjected  the  men  who 
rilled  his  ranks  to  a  discipline  "  more  rigid  than  had  ever 
before  been  known  in  England,  administered,"  to  borrow 
the  apt  words  of  Macaulay,  "  to  their  intellectual  and 
moral  nature  stimulants  of  fearful  potency." 

On  Monday,  the  1st  of  July,  intelligence  reached  the 
generals  of  the  Parliamentary  army  engaged  in  the  siege 
of  York  that  Prince  Rupert  with  a  numerous  army  was 
marching  from  Knaresborough  upon  York.  Upon  re- 
ceiving this  intelligence  the  Parliamentary  generals  drew 
off  all  their  forces  from  before  the  city  of  York,  and, 
marching  westward,  concentrated  them  on  a  level  tract  of 
unenclosed  and  uncultivated  ground,  situated  on  the  south 
side  of  the  Ouse,  stretching  from  the  river  Ouse  southwards, 
and  called  in  its  various  parts  Monkton  Moor,  Tockwith 
Moor,  Hessay  Moor,  and  Marston  Moor — the  last  taking 
its  name  from  the  village  of  Long-Marston,  which  borders 
it  on  the  south.  This  village  of  Long-Marston,  with  its 

1  History  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England,  from  the  death  of  Charles  I. 
to  the  expulsion  of  the  Long  Parliament  by  Cromwell,  i.  352.  London  : 
John  Murray,  Albemarle  Street,  1864. 


46       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

thatched  roofs  rising  to  such  a  height  above  the  walls  as 
to  seem  to  have  the  proportion  of  nearly  two  to  one  to  the 
latter,  would  seem  to  be  little  changed  since  the  battle — a 
proof  of  which  is  afforded  by  the  information  I  received  there 
in  1861  that  several  small  cannon-balls  had  been  recently 
found  embedded  in  the  thick  thatch  of  some  of  the  old  cot- 
tages. It  may  be  remarked  that  those  tracts  of  ground 
which  in  the  South  of  England  are  called  heaths  are  in  the 
North  of  England  and  in  Scotland  called  moors.  On  this 
moor,  the  soil  of  which  is  a  heavy  clay,  well  adapted  for 
the  growth  of  oak,  was  to  be  fought,  in  the  evening  of  the  2d 
day  of  July  1644,  the  greatest  battle  as  regarded  numbers, 
and  perhaps  the  most  decisive  battle  as  regarded  results, 
throughout  this  civil  war;  for  though  Naseby  was,  in 
some  respects,  more  decisive,  Marston  Moor  was  the  turn- 
ing point  of  the  war.  At  Marston  Moor  the  numbers  were 
nearly  equal  on  the  two  sides,  being  about  25,000  on  each 
side.  So  that  on  this  occasion  about  50,000  British  men 
were  led  to  mutual  slaughter. 

In  the  afternoon  of  that  same  Monday,  the  1st  of  July, 
the  army  of  the  Parliament  was  drawn  up  in  order  of 
battle,  and  "the  soldiers,"  says  Mr.  Simeon  Ashe,  chaplain 
to  the  Earl  of  Manchester,  "were  again  full  of  joy,  expect- 
ing to  have  a  battle  with  the  enemy,  being  assured  by  their 
scouts  that  the  Prince,  with  all  his  forces,  would  pass  to- 
wards York  that  way."  But  Rupert  defeated  their  plan  of 
forcing  him  to  an  engagement  before  his  junction  with 
Newcastle,  by  throwing  out  a  party  of  his  horse  to  face 
them  on  the  moor,  having  a  bridge  in  their  rear  to  secure 
their  retreat,  while  he  marched  to  Boroughbridge,  and 
crossed  the  Ouse  at  Thornton  Bridge.  Rupert  then 
marching  on  the  north  bank  of  the  Ouse,  seized  a  bridge 
of  boats,  which  Manchester  had  ordered  to  be  constructed 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  47 

at  Poppleton,  and  had  left  a  regiment  of  dragoons  to  guard, 
intending  to  pass  his  army  over  it,  in  case  the  Royalists 
should  march  towards  the  city  by  the  north  side  of  the 
river.  The  Parliamentary  generals  had  made  another 
bridge  on  the  west  side  of  the  city,  so  weak  that  they 
durst  not  venture  their  troops  upon  it,  and  were,  therefore, 
unable  to  prevent  the  junction  of  Rupert's  and  Newcastle's 
forces.  Rupert  having  quartered  his  foot  and  ordnance 
about  five  miles  from  York,  approached  the  city  himself 
with  2000  horse. 

The  night  drawing  on,  the  foot-soldiers  of  the  Parlia- 
mentary army  marched  into  the  village  of  Long-Marston, 
about  seven  miles  from  York,  "  where  very  few  had  the 
comfort  of  either  convenient  lodging  or  food.  The  soldiers 
drank  the  wells  dry,  and  then  were  obliged  to  make  use  of 
puddle-water;  most  of  the  horse  quartered  on  the  moor, 
and  the  generals  and  field-officers  met  in  earnest  debate."  x 
The  English  were  for  fighting,  the  Scots  for  retreating. 
The  latter  opinion  prevailed,  and  early  next  morning,  the 
2d  of  July,  the  march  began.  The  Scots  were  in  the  van ; 
then  came  the  English  foot  and  all  the  artillery;  Sir 
Thomas  Fairfax,  Cromwell,  and  David  Leslie  brought  up 
the  rear  with  3000  horse  and  dragoons.  A  party  of  the 
Royalists'  horse  again  faced  them,  and  then  wheeled  round 
out  of  sight.  The  Parliamentary  generals  conjectured 
that  Rupert  was  attempting  to  engage  their  attention, 
while  with  the  main  body  of  his  forces  he  marched  south- 
wards. They  therefore  resolved  to  march  five  or  six  miles 
southwards,  towards  Tadcaster.  But  they  had  again  mis- 
taken the  intentions  of  Rupert;  for  after  the  reconnaissance 

1  Sanford,  Great  Rebellion,  p.  590.  "  I  have  given,"  says  Mr.  Sanford, 
"  the  description  of  the  operations  as  much  as  possible  in  the  words  of  the 
original  authorities."—  P.  589,  note. 


48       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

made  by  the  party  of  horse,  the  Prince,  at  about  nine 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  drew  over  a  great  part  of  his  troops 
by  the  bridge  which  he  had  seized  the  night  before,  and 
by  a  ford  near  it,  and  with  about  5000  horse  and  dragoons, 
entered  on  the  moor  near  the  village  of  Long-Marston, 
and  came  close  up  to  the  rear  of  his  enemy's  carriages. 
The  Scots  were  already  within  a  mile  of  Tadcaster,  and 
the  Earl  of  Manchester's  foot  were  two  or  three  miles 
beyond  Long-Marston,  when  there  came  a  very  urgent 
message  from  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  that  they  must  hasten 
back  with  all  the  speed  they  possibly  could  make ;  for  the 
Prince's  army,  horse  and  foot,  were  upon  their  rear  ;  that 
he  hoped,  however,  by  the  advantage  of  the  ground  he  was 
on,  to  make  it  good  till  they  came  back.  The  Parliamen- 
tary foot  instantly  began  to  return,  but  before  they  could 
get  back,  Rupert's  army  had  come  up  in  such  numbers  as 
to  obtain  the  entire  possession  of  the  moor.  As  the  Parlia- 
mentary forces  came  up,  they  were  formed  in  order  of 
battle  along  the  south  side  of  the  moor,  on  the  rising 
ground  covered  with  fields  of  grain,  called  "  Marston 
Fields."  Here,  to  compensate  the  inconvenience  arising 
from  the  height  of  the  corn,  the  Parliamentary  troops  had 
the  advantage  of  the  sun  and  wind,  and  of  being  on  the 
higher  ground. 

The  right  wing  of  the  Parliamentary  army,  consisting  of 
Lord  Fairfax's  forces,  was  posted  close  to  the  village  of 
Long-Marston.  The  extremity  of  the  right  wing  was 
composed  of  about  5000  cavalry,  drawn  up  in  eighty 
troops,  and  commanded  by  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax.  The 
centre  was  composed  of  the  Earl  of  Leven's  Scotch  foot, 
and  a  brigade  of  the  Earl  of  Manchester's  English  foot. 
On  the  left  wing,  the  extremity  of  which  extended  to 
Tockwith,  a  village  to  the  north-west  of  Long-Marston, 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  49 

was  drawn  up  the  Earl  of  Manchester's  army  from  the 
associated  counties,  under  the  general  command  of  Lieu- 
tenant-General  Cromwell,  consisting  of  three  brigades  of 
foot  under  the  command  of  Laurence  Crawford,  who  was 
Manchester's  major-general,  as  Cromwell  was  his  lieu- 
tenant-general, and  who,  differing  from  Cromwell,  both  as 
to  the  relative  merits  of  Cromwell  and  himself,  and  of 
Cromwell's  religion  and  his  religion,  attempted  to  maintain 
his  ground  against  Cromwell  by  a  slanderous  charge  of 
cowardice.  To  the  left  of  these  brigades  of  foot  about 
5000  horse  were  drawn  up  in  five  bodies,  and  seventy 
troops,  under  Cromwell's  immediate  'Command,  consisting 
of  Manchester's,  or,  we  should  rather  say,  Cromwell's 
cavalry,  backed  by  three  regiments1  of  Scotch  horse,  under 
Major-General  David  Leslie.  ''Beyond  these,  on  the  ex- 
treme left,  and  close  upon  Tockwith,  were  Colonel  Frizeall 
and  the  dragoons,  with  whom  was  Colonel  Skeldon 
Crawford."2 

Of  the  Royal  army,  which  extended  along  the  moor  for 
some  two  miles,  Rupert's  forces  formed  on  the  right,  and 
Newcastle's  on  the  left.  The  right  was  under  the  com- 
mand of  Rupert3  himself,  who  was  thus  immediately 
opposed  to  Cromwell,  and  consisted  of  about  5000  picked 

1  Mr.   Sanford,    whose    accuracy    is   in    general    most    trustworthy,    says 
"  troops  "  in  his  narrative  (Great  Rebellion,  p.  597),  and  "  regiments"  in  his 
plan  of  the  battle  (facing  p.  595).     I  think  it  impossible  that  David  Leslie 
could  have  done  as  much  as  even  Cromwell's  letter  grudgingly  allows,  if  he 
had  only  had  three  troops,  and  not  three  regiments. 

2  Sanford,  Great  Rebellion,  p.  597. 

3  The  device  of  placing  Rupert  on  this  occasion  on  the  left  wing  of  his 
army,  which  is  adopted  by  Scott  and  other  writers  of  romance,  originated,  I 
believe,  with  that  false  statement,  among  others,  appearing  in  a  work  bearing 
the  respectable  name  of  Whitelocke.   I  believe  Whitelocke  left  behind  him  such 
a  work  in  MS.,  and  that  parts  of  the  work  called  Whitelocke's  Memorials  were 
written  by  him  ;  but  I  have  not  the  smallest  doubt  that  he  did  not  write  the 
account  of  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor  published  under  his  name,  and  which 

VOL.  II.  D 


50       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

horse,  drawn  up  in  twelve  divisions,  containing  100  troops  ; 
and  having  among  them  the  Newark  horse  and  Irish 
Catholics,  under  Lord  Byron,  and  Rupert's  own  brigade  of 
cavalry,  including  his  troop  of  Life  Guards,  who  formed 
the  van  in  every  charge.  Of  the  centre,  composed  of  foot, 
the  most  notable  body  was  Newcastle's  brigade  of  his  own 
tenantry,  styled  "  Whitecoats."  The  left  consisted  of  4000 
horse  (with  reserves),  commanded  by  George  Goring, 
general  of  Newcastle's  cavalry,  and  under  him,  by  his 
lieutenant-general,  Sir  Charles  Lucas,  and  Sir  John  Hurrey 
or  Urry. 

In  the  contemporary  accounts  of  the  battle,  a  ditch  is z 
mentioned  as  lying  between  the  two  armies,  and  placing 
the  side  making  the  first  attack  at  some  disadvantage.  I 
have  myself  made  a  personal  examination  of  the  ground, 
and  have  compared  my  observations  with  those  of  others, 
particularly  those  of  Mr.  Sanford  and  Mr.  Herman  Meri- 
vale;  but  I  have  arrived  at  the  conclusion,  that  in  conse- 
quence of  the  subsequent  drainage  and  enclosures,  this 
ditch  cannot  now  be  identified.  There  is,  indeed,  or  was, 
as  late  as  May  1861,  a  ditch  which  at  one  time  I  thought 
might  be  the  ditch  in  question.  But  I  have  now  no  faith 

Scott  cites  in  extenso  in  the  notes  to  "  Rokeby."  It  is  quite  impossible  that  a 
man  who,  like  Whitelocke,  knew  intimately  many  officers  who  had  been  in  the 
battle — Cromwell  himself,  among  others, — could  have  made  so  many  false 
statements. 

1  Mr.  Sanford  says:  "A  deep  ditch  and  hedge  ran  along  in  front  of  the 
King's  forces,  and  were  lined  with  four  brigades  of  their  musketeers." — Studies 
of  the  Great  Rebellion,  p.  594.  But  although  it  is  stated  that  on  one  side  of 
the  lane,  called  "Moor  Lane,"  which  will  be  described  subsequently,  there 
was  a  ditch,  and  on  the  other  side  of  that  lane  a  hedge,  a  hedge  is  not  men- 
tioned in  connection  with  the  ditch  that  ran  along  between  the  two  armies. 
The  words  in  one  of  the  contemporary  authorities  are — "  There  was  a  great 
ditch  between  the  enemy  and  us,  which  ran  along  the  front  of  the  battle ;  in 
this  ditch  the  enemy  had  placed  four  brigades  of  their  best  foot,  which,  upon 
the  advance  of  our  battle,  were  forced  to  give  ground." — Merc.  Brit.,  8th  July 
1644,  in  "  Cromvvelliana,"  p.  10. 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  5 1 

in  that  opinion.  On  a  ridge  or  rising  ground  at  a  consider- 
able distance  south-west  from  this  ditch  stands  an  old  fir- 
tree,  where,  according  to  tradition,  the  Parliament's  artillery 
was  planted.  There  is  a  gap  in  a  hedge,  in  which  gap  the 
country-people  say  quickset  will  not  grow,  and  which  tra- 
dition has  named  "  Cromwell's  gap." 

Any  one  who  has  looked  round  from  the  top  of  York 
Minster  is  struck  with  the  wide  circuit  of  level  ground, 
extending  to  a  distance  of  about  twenty  miles  on  all  sides. 
A  country  with  so  level  a  surface  would  be  peculiarly 
favourable  to  the  movements  of  cavalry.  Prince  Rupert 
had  some  ground  for  confidence  in  the  strength  and 
efficiency  of  his  cavalry,  and  also,  perhaps,  he  had  some 
ground  for  confidence  in  his  own  efficiency  as  a  cavalry 
officer.  Probably,  also,  neither  he  nor  any  one  else  was 
at  that  time  fully  aware  that  there  was  in  the  army  of  the 
Parliament  a  better  cavalry  officer  than  himself ;  and  that 
this  officer  commanded  a  body  of  troops  equal  to  his  in 
strength  and  courage,  in  arms,  offensive  and  defensive,  in 
horses  and  the  management  of  them ;  and  superior  in  dis- 
cipline. Rupert's  opinion  for  fighting  a  battle  immediately 
would  appear  .to  have  had,  at  least,  as  much  weight  as 
the  opposite  opinion  against  fighting. 

Behind  the  ditch  above  mentioned,  which  covered  a 
great  part  of  their  front  from  the  charge  of  cavalry,  the 
Parliamentary  army,  with  their  backs  to  the  village  of  Long- 
Marston,  and  their  faces  to  Wilstrop  Wood,  was  posted. 
As  Prince  Rupert's  forces  came  up,  they  formed  on  the 
other  side  of  this  ditch;  and  in  this  position  the  two 
armies  faced  each  other  with  this  broad  and  deep  ditch 
between  them.  About  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  a 
cannonade  was  commenced  on  both  sides,  with  small 
effect ;  for  battles  were  not  decided  at  that  time  by  artillery 


5  2       Stmggle  for  Parliamen  ta  ry  Govern  men  t. 

or  musketry,  but  by  cavalry  and  pikemen.  This  cannonade 
continued  for  about  two  hours,  when  the  Parliamentary 
army,  says  Slingsby,  "  fell  to  singing  psalms."  The  effect 
at  such  a  time  of  a  verse  or  two  of  such  a  psalm  as  the 
7/th  on  those  warlike  enthusiasts  would  be  far  greater 
than  the  war-songs  of  the  Greeks,  or  the  speech  of  a 
Roman  general  before  joining  battle — when  so  many  stern 
voices  united  in  giving  solemn  utterance  to  the  description 
of  how  "  God  brake  the  bow  and  arrows ;  the  shield  and 
the  sword — God,  who  is  of  greater  strength  than  the  hills 
of  the  robbers;"  or  to  the  prayer  in  the  83d  Psalm  against 
them  that  oppress  the  people  of  God — a  psalm  which  has 
been  translated  by  Milton. 

It  now  began  to  be  thought  there  would  be  no  battle 
that  night.  It  was  -drawing  near  to  seven  o'clock,  and 
within  little  more  than  an  hour  of  sunset.  The  sun's 
slanting  rays  were  gilding  in  the  far  distance  the  white 
towers  of  that  "  most  august  of  temples,  the  noble  Minster 
of  York."  They  also  brought  out  the  characteristics  of 
the  two  armies — displaying  Newcastle's  brigade  of  White- 
coats,  the  farmers  who  came  out  at  the  call  of  a  popu- 
lar landlord  in  their  Sunday  coats  of  a  drab  colour, 
brought  from  their  homes  to  die  here — for  what  ? — illumin- 
ing the  inlaid  armour,  the  glittering  helmets,  and  waving 
plumes  of  Rupert's  cavalry — illumining  also  the  unorna- 
mented  but  strong  steel  caps  and  gleaming  cuirasses  of  a 
large  and  compact  body  of  cavalry  commanded  by  Oliver 
Cromwell.  As  the  two  armies  thus  stood  looking  each  other 
in  the  face,  a  reflection  of  one  who  was  present,  and  who 
is  only  cited  by  Mr.  Sanford1  as  an  eye-witness,  his  name 
not  being  given,  may  have  occurred  to  many — "  We  looked, 
and,  no  doubt,  they  also,  upon  this  fight  as  the  losing  or 
1  Studies  and  Illustrations  of  the  Great  Rebellion,  pp.  597,  598. 


The  Battle  of  Mars  ton  Moor.  53 

gaining  the  garland.  And  now  the  sword  must  determine 
that  which  a  hundred  years'  policy  and  dispute  could  not 
do."  This  man,  whoever  he  was,  saw  as  clearly  as  Prince 
Bismarck  that  the  great  questions  of  the  age  were  not 
to  be  solved  by  Parliamentary  harangues  and  resolutions, 
but  by  blood  and  iron. 

One  of  the  main  causes  of  the  confusion  that  pervades 
almost  all  the  accounts  that  have  been  given  of  the 
battle  of  Marston  Moor  is  this  :  As  the  Royalists'  horse 
of  the  left  wing  were  victorious  over  the  right  wing  of 
the  Parliament ;  and  the  Parliament's  horse  of  the  left 
wing  were  victorious  over  the  right  wing  of  the  Royalists' 
horse ;  and  as  Prince  Rupert's  cavalry  charge  had  gene- 
rally, if  not  universally,  before  this  time  been  successful, 
it  has  been  assumed  that  Rupert  commanded  in  person  on 
this  occasion  the  successful  wing  of  the  Royalists'  cavalry. 
Tradition  from  the  first  had  selected  this  as  one  of  the 
instances  of  the  effect  of  Rupert's  "  fiery  charge."  And 
this  tradition  has  been  partly  supported  by  some  of  the 
contemporary  Royalists'  accounts ;  for  instance,  that  of 
Trevor,  printed  in  Carte's  Letters,  who,  however,  contra- 
dicts himself,  first  saying,  "  the  horse  of  Prince  Rupert 
and  Lord  Byron  were  totally  routed,"  I  and  afterwards,  in 
the  same  letter,  as  if  to  re-establish  Prince  Rupert's  in- 
vincibility, "  on  the  left2  wing  the  enemy  had  the  better 
of  us,  and  on  the  right  wing,  where  the  Prince  charged, 
we  had  infinitely  the  better  of  the  enemy."  The  Royalists' 
horse  on  the  Royalists'  left  wing,  which  would  face  the 

1  Carte's  Letters,  i.  56. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  57. — Trevor  here  takes  advantage  of  the  facility  there  is  in  shuf- 
fling between  the  opposite  meanings  of  right  and  left  according  to  the  army 

or  side  to  which  the  word  is  applied.  Rushworth's  account  of  the  battle  is 
unintelligible,  and  involved  in  inextricable  confusion  from  his  confusion  about 
who  commanded  the  right  and  left  wings  of  the  Royalists. 


54       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Parliamentary  right  wing-,  was  commanded  by  Goring 
and  Sir  John  Urry,  the  same  Urry  who  had  already 
changed  sides  once,  afterwards  changed  sides  twice  more, 
and  at  last  got  hanged  to  prevent  him  from  changing  sides 
any  more. 

Poets  and  romance-writers,  from  Defoe  in  his  "  Memoirs 
of  a  Cavalier/'  to  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  "Rokeby,"  and 
Eliot  Warburton  in  his  biography  of  Prince  Rupert, 
have  taken  up  the  tradition  and  treated  it  as  a  matter  of 
fact.  Eliot  Warburton  endeavours  to  establish  it  on  the 
authority  of  "  Whitelocke  and  Fairfax."  Whitelocke,  or  the 
person  who  drew  up  the  account  which  is  published  under 
the  name  of  Whitelocke,1  knew  so  little  about  the  matter 
that  he  says' the  battle  was  fought  on  the  3d  instead  of  the 
2d  of  July,  and  began  at  seven  in  the  morning,  instead  of 
seven  in  the  evening.  Fairfax,  in  his  modest  Memorials, 
says  nothing  about  it.  He  says  "  Lieutenant-General 
Cromwell  commanded  the  left  wing  of  the  horse ;  I  had 
the  right  wing." 2  But  he  does  not  say  one  word  as  to 
who  commanded  the  right  and  left  wing  of  the  Royalist 
horse.  Consequently,  Mr.  Eliot  Warburton's  two  authori- 
ties for  Rupert's  commanding  the  Royalists'  left  wing  are 
no  authorities  at  all  on  that  point.  The  fact  is  quite  clear 
and  well  established  that  Rupert  did  not  head  in  person 
the  successful  charge  of  the  Royalists'  horse  under  Goring 
and  Urry  on  the  left  of  the  Royal  and  right  of  the  Par- 

1  It  is  strange  that  Whitelocke,  who  was  not  a  soldier,  should  be  cited,  and 
not  Ludlow,  who  was  a  soldier  and  a  clear-headed  man,  who,  though  not  in 
the  battle  any  more  than  Whitelocke,  would,  as  a  soldier,  hear  the  facts  from 
soldiers,  and  repeat  them  more  accurately  than  those  who  rant  about  heroes, 
and  write  for  effect  without  regard  to  truth.  Ludlow  says  :  "  The  left  wing 
of  our  army,  commanded  by  Colonel  Cromwell,  engaged  the  right  wing  of  the 
enemy  commanded  by  Prince  Rupert." — Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  124,  second 
edition.  London,  1721. 

8  Fairfax's  Memorials.  Somers's  Tracts,  v.  389,  390.  Walter  Scott's 
edition. 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  55 

liamentary  army.  Watson,  Cromwell's  scoutmaster,  who 
was  in  the  battle,  distinctly  affirms  that  Rupert  rode  at 
the  head  of  his  own  Life  Guards,  on  the  west  of  the  field, 
where  Cromwell's  cavalry  were. 

From  the  first  outbreak  of  the  war  two  years  before,  to 
the  2d  of  July  1644,  a  l°ng  series  of  successful  encounters 
had  given  to  Prince  Rupert  an  amount  of  confidence  so 
great  that  he  did  not  consider  it  within  the  bounds  of 
probability  that  he  should  meet  with  any  troops  on  the 
side  of  the  Parliament  able  to  stand  his  onset.  This  con- 
fidence, amounting  to  arrogance,  is  strikingly  exemplified  in 
an  anecdote  given  by  Mr.  Sanford.  Prince  Rupert  having 
asked  a  prisoner  who  were  the  leaders  of  the  Parliamen- 
tary army,  the  man  answered,  "  General  Leven,  my  Lord 
Fairfax,  and  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax." — "Is  Cromwell  there?" 
exclaimed  Rupert,  interrupting  him, — for  the  skirmish  at 
Gainsborough  had  stamped  the  name  of  Cromwell  on 
Rupert's  memory.  Being  answered  that  he  was,  "Will 
they  fight  ? "  said  Rupert ;  "  if  they  will,  they  shall  have 
fighting  enough ! "  The  soldier  was  then  released,  and 
returning  to  his  own  army,  told  the  generals  what  had 
passed,  and  Cromwell  that  the  Prince  had  asked  for  him 
in  particular,  and  said  they  should  have  fighting  enough. 
"  And,"  exclaimed  Cromwell,  "  if  it  please  God,  so  shall 
he  ! "  It  is  also  stated  in  contemporary  accounts  of  this 
battle  that  Prince  Rupert  designed  the  most  valiant  of  his 
Popish  party  to  encounter  the  wing  commanded  by  Lieu- 
tenant-General  Cromwell;  and,  uin  particular,  Prince 
Rupert  had  designed  certain  troops  of  horse,  all  Irish  and 
all  Papists,  to  give  the  first  charge  to  that  brigade  in  which 
Cromwell  was ;  and  that  they  did  confidently  believe  that 
there  was  not  a  man  of  them  but  would  die  rather  than 

1  Sanford's  Studies  and  Illustrations  of  the  Great  Rebellion,  p.  598. 


56       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

fly ;  but  they  missed  their  expectations,  for  many  of  them 
being  slain  in  the  place,  the  rest  fled."  3 

The  word  of  the  Royalists  was  "  God  and  the  King  ;" 
that  of  the  Parliament,  "  God  with  us."  The  equivalent 
of  these  words  was  afterwards  embroidered  on  the  colours 
of  the  Parliament  and  of  Cromwell.  Captain  Burt,  an 
English  officer  of  Engineers  quartered  at  Inverness  be- 
tween 1720  and  1730,  was  informed  by  a  very  ancient  laird 
that  "  Oliver's  colours  were  so  strongly  impressed  on  his 
memory,  that  he  thought  he  saw  them  spread  out  by  the 
wind  with  the  word  Emmanuel  (God  with  us)  upon  them, 
in  very  large  golden  characters."  2 

Rupert  having  erected  a  battery  opposite  to  the  left 
wing  of  the  Parliamentary  forces,  Cromwell  ordered  two 
field-pieces  to  be  brought  forward.  Two  regiments  of  foot 
being  ordered  to  guard  these,  and,  marching  to  that  pur- 
pose, were  fired  upon  from  the  ditch3  by  the  musketeers 
of  the  Royalists'  right  wing.  This  at  once  brought  on  a 
general  engagement  at  about  half-past  seven  in  the  evening. 
The  left  of  the  Parliament's  army  moved  down  the  hill, 
"  Cromwell  with  his  horse,"  says  Slingsby,  "  coming  off 
the  coney-warren  by  Bilton-bream."  Lord  Byron's  im- 
petuosity lessened  to  his  opponents  the  difficulty  of  the 
ditch.  Dashing  over  the  ditch,  he  threw  his  men 
into  some  disorder,  and  was  immediately  driven  back. 
"  In  a  moment,"  says  Scoutmaster  Watson,  who  was  with 
Cromwell's  horse,  and  who  here  gives  the  only  intelligible 
account  of  the  commencement  of  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor 
that  I  have  ever  seen,  "we  were  passed  the  ditch  on  to 
the  Moor,  upon  equal  terms  with  the  enemy,  our  men  going 

1  Parl.  Scout,  i8tb  July  1644,  in  "  Cromwelliana." 

8  Letters  from  the  North  of  Scotland,  i.  217.    New  edition.    London,  1815. 

8  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  124.    Second  edition.     London,  1721. 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  5  7 

in'a  running  march.  Our  front  divisions  of  horse  charged 
their  front,  Cromwell's  own  division  of  300  horse,  in  which 
himself  was  in  person,  charging  the  first  division  of  Prince 
Rupert's,  in  which  himself  was  in  person,  and  in  which  were 
all  their  gallant  men,  they  being  resolved,  if  they  could  scat- 
ter Cromwell,  all  were  their  own.  The  rest  of  our  horse,"  he 
continues,  "  backed  by  Leslie's  three  troops,  charged  other 
divisions  of  theirs,  and  with  such  admirable  valour,  as  to 
astonish  all  the  old  soldiers  of  the  army.  Cromwell's  own 
division  had  a  hard  struggle,  for  they  were  charged  by 
Rupert's  men  both  in  front  and  flank."  It  is  evident  that 
some  of  Rupert's  best  troops,  including  his  Life  Guards, 
as  already  mentioned,  had  been  posted  opposite  to  Crom- 
well's brigade  of  cavalry ;  for,  according  to  the  testimony 
of  contemporary  military  men  of  experience,  the  dispute 
at  this  point  was  particularly  obstinate.  "  The  horse  on 
both  sides,"  said  General  Ludlow,  "  behaved  themselves 
with  the  utmost  bravery;  for,  having  discharged  their 
pistols,  and  flung  them  at  each  other's  heads,  they  fell  to 
it  with  their  swords."  I  Cromwell  received  a  slight  wound 
from  a  shot  grazing  his  neck,  which  caused  some  alarm  to 
his  men,  but  exclaiming,  "  A  miss  is  as  good  as  a  mile ! " 
he  pressed  onwards.  "For  a  while  they  stood  at  the 
sword's  point,  hacking  one  another;  but  at  last  Cromwell 
broke  through,  scattering  them  before  him  like  a  little 
dust."  And  the  whole  of  Prince  Rupert's  horse  on  their 
right  wing  being  broken,  "  they  fly,  says  Slingsby,  "  along 
by  Wilstrop  Wood  side  as  fast  and  as  thick  as  could 
be."  Watson  says,  "Manchester's  foot  charged  by  our 
side,  dispersing  the  enemy's  foot  almost  as  fast  as  they 
charged  them,  still  going  by  our  side ;  so  that  we 
carried  the  whole  field  before  us,  thinking  the  victory 
1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  124.  Second  edition.  London,  1721. 


58       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

ours,  and  nothing    to    be    done   but    to   kill    and    take 
prisoners."  x 

Many  causes  combined  to  render  the  conflict  between 
Cromwell's  cavalry  and  Rupert's  unusually  desperate. 
Rupert's  cavalry,  above  all  his  Life  Guards,  professed  to 
entertain  a  profound  contempt  for  all  the  Parliamentary 
troops,  particularly  for  the  Parliamentary  cavalry,  and,  in 
addition  to  their  demonstration  of  contempt,  they  hated 
them  as  rebels  to  their  King,  which  King  they,  on  the 
other  hand,  extolled  as  a  god  upon  earth.  The  feelings  of 
the  Parliamentary  troops  on  the  other  side,  particularly  of 
that  portion  of  them  which  composed  Cromwell's  especial 
cavalry  regiments,  who,  like  Rupert's  Life  Guards,  were 
picked  men  also,  men  selected,  however,  for  two  distinct 
qualities,  their  valour  and  their  religious  enthusiasm,  were 
exasperated  to  the  highest  degree  of  hatred  against  the 
cavalry  of  Rupert,  partly  on  account  of  their  cruelty 
and  profligacy,  exhibited  on  many  occasions  in  deeds 
for  which  blood  only  could  atone ;  partly  on  account  of 
the  tyranny,  civil  and  religious,  which  they  made  it  their 
boast  to  fight  for.  The  hostile  feelings  of  the  Parliamen- 
tary cavalry  on  that  wing  were  further  exasperated  by  the 
fact  that  the  wing  opposed  to  them,  besides  Rupert's  Life 
Guards  and  Byron's  Horse,  contained  a  body  of  Irish  horse, 
some  of  whom  might  probably  have  been  concerned  in  the 
massacre  of  English  Protestants  in  Ireland  some  three 
years  before.  There  was,  therefore,  little  wonder  that  the 
hate  of  those  two  bodies  of  cavalry  should  be  dire  as  that 
of  the  most  deadly  enemies  that  ever  brought  their  quarrel 

1  I  have  taken  the  passages  of  Watson's  report  from  Mr.  Sanford  (pp.  599, 
600),  who  does  not  give  his  references  at  the  foot  of  each  page,  but  gives  a  list 
of  his  chief  authorities  at  p.  615,  where  he  says  :  "The  various  letters  and 
accounts  of  eye-witnesses  in  the  newspapers  and  among  the  King's  pamphlets 
in  the  British  Museum  ;  D'Ewes's  Journal,  from  one  of  Watson's  letters." 


The  Battle  of  Mars  ton  Moor.  59 

to  the  arbitrament  of  the  sword  ;  "dire  as  the  hate  at  old 
Harlaw,  that  Scot  to  Scot  did  carry;"  and,  consequently, 
it  was  expected  that  the  encounter  between  them  would  be 
fierce  and  bloody. 

*  And  the  encounter  was  indeed  fierce  and  bloody.  The 
Royalists,  who  had  hitherto,  with  Rupert  at  their  head, 
ridden  to  victory  and  slaughter,  now  found  to  their  sur- 
prise, and  somewhat  to  their  consternation,  that  they  had 
quite  another  sort  of  enemy  to  deal  with  than  they  had 
before  encountered.  For  they  had,  indeed,  to  deal  with 
men  "  to  whom  the  dust  of  the  most  desperate  battle  was 
like  the  breath  of  life ; "  men  led  by  such  a  commander  as 
Cromwell,  and  under  such  officers  as  Berry  and  Harrison 
— Harrison,  to  whom  such  a  fight  as  this  gave  as  much 
wild  delight  as  if  it  had  been  the  great  battle  of  Armaged- 
don itself,  at  which  he  believed  he  was  destined  to  ride  as 
one  of  the  captains  of  Him  on  the  White  Horse,  conquer- 
ing and  to  cdnquer,  when  the  voice  of  the  angel  standing 
in  the  sun  shall  call  all  the  fowls  that  fly  in  the  midst  of 
heaven  to  feed  on  the  flesh  of  kings,  and  the  flesh  of  cap- 
tains, and  the  flesh  of  mighty  men. 

Even  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  Harrison  is  described 
by  Baxter,  who  knew  him  well,  as  "of  a  sanguine  com- 
plexion, naturally  of  such  a  vivacity,  hilarity,  and  alacrity 
as  another  man  hath  when  he  hath  drunken  a  cup  too 
much."  And  in  battle  his  spirits  appeared  to  rise  consi- 
derably above  this  their  usual  state  of  vivacity,  so  that  if 
ever  mortal  man  in  his  warlike  enthusiasm  might  be  said 
to  resemble  the  war-horse  in  Job,  it  was  Harrison.  "  He 
mocketh  at  fear,  and  is  not  affrighted  ;  neither  turneth  he 
back  from  the  sword.  He  saith  among  the  trumpets, 
Ha!  ha!  and  he  smelleth  the  battle  afar  off,  the  thunder 
of  the  captains,  and  the  shouting." 


6o       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Now  was  seen  the  complete  success  of  the  care  with 
which  Cromwell  had  selected  and  disciplined  his  troops. 
Rupert's  Life  Guards,  hitherto  so  successful  as  to  fancy 
themselves  invincible,  began  to  give  way,  and  soon  to  be 
driven  furiously  back.  In  a  few  minutes  more  all  the 
Royalists'  cavalry  in  that  part  of  the  field  were  in  headlong 
flight,  closely  followed  by  the  enemy  they  had  despised, 
but  whom  they  would  never  despise  more.  But  Cromwell 
and  his  officers  knew  that  their  work  was  not  yet  done. 
They,  therefore,  by  the  perfection  of  their  discipline,  drew 
off  their  men  from  the  pursuit,  formed  them  again  on  the 
moor,  and  were  ready  for  the  work  they  had  yet  to  do  ; 
for  they  knew  that  the  battle  was  not  yet  won.1  For  it 
will  be  observed  that  the  words,  quoted  above — "thinking 
the  victory  ours,"  are  Watson's,  not  Cromwell's. 

In  the  meantime  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax,  commanding  the 
cavalry  on  the  right  wing  of  the  Parliament's  army,  had 
great  difficulties  to  contend  with.  These  carTnot  be  better 
described  than  in  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax's  own  words.  After 
saying  that  "the  left  wing  first  charged  the  enemy's  right 
wing,  which  was  performed  for  a  while  with  much  resolution 
on  both  sides,  but  the  enemy  at  length  was  put  to  the  worst," 

1  Some  idea  may  be  formed  of  the  slaughter  in  this  encounter  between 
Rupert's  and  Cromwell's  cavalry,  from  the  assertion  of  Lord  Byron  in  one 
of  his  early  poems,  that  four  brothers  of  his  family  fell  on  this  occasion — 

"  On  Marston,  with  Rupert,  'gainst  traitors  contending, 
Four  brothers  enrich 'd  with  their  blood  the  bleak  field," 

which,  though  only  a  family  tradition,  may  be  true  ;  for  Mrs.  Lucy  Hutchin- 
son,  whose  husband,  Colonel  Hutchinson,  was  a  cousin-german  of  the  Byrons, 
says  :  "  Sir  John  Byron,  afterwards  Lord  Byron,  and  all  his  brothers,  bred  up 
in  arms,  and  valiant  men  in  their  own  persons,  were  ail  passionately  the 
King's." — Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  p.  117.  Bonn's  edition.  London, 
1854.  But  if  four  of  these  brothers  fell  at  Marston  Moor,  there  must  have 
been  six  brothers  at  least ;  for  Sir  John  Byron,  created  Lord  Byron  in  1643, 
lived  till  1652,  when  he  was  succeeded  by  Richard  Byron,  his  brother  and 
heir. 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  61 

he  thus  proceeds :  "  Our  right  wing  had  not  all  so  good 
success,  by  reason  of  the  furzes  and  ditches  we  were  to 
pass  over  before  we  could  get  to  the  enemy,  which  put  us 
into  great  disorder." 

I  must  here  interrupt  Fairfax's  narrative  to  attempt  to 
explain  what  he  meant  by  the  furzes  and  ditches  which  put 
his  troops  into  great  disorder.  A  plan  of  the  ground  might 
give  the  best  explanation  to  those  who  study  plans  ;  but  as 
"the  general  reader"  does  not  study  plans,  I  must  attempt 
an  explanation  without  one.1  Besides  the  ditch  before  men- 
tioned, which  lay  between  the  two  armies,  there  was  the  road 
between  the  villages  of  Long-Marston  and  Tockwith,  which 
ran  nearly  parallel  with  the  ditch,  and  between  the  ditch  and 
the  Parliamentary  army.  Cromwell's  left  wing  was  posted 
near  Tockwith,  and  had  access  to  the  ditch  without  the 
obstruction  of  furzes  and  hedges,  while  between  Fairfax's 
right  wing  and  the  Royalists  "  there  was  no  passage 
across  the  ditch,  except  at  a  narrow  lane,  where  they 
could  not  march  above  three  or  four  in  front,  and  upon 
the  one  side  of  the  lane  was  a  ditch,  and  on  the  other, 
a  hedge,  both  whereof  were  lined  with  musketeers." 2 
This  lane,  still  known  as  "  Moor  Lane,"  runs  nearly 
at  right  angles  to  the  road  between  Long-Marston  and 
Tockwith,  from  which  it  branches  off  near  Long-Marston, 
at  about  a  fourth  of  the  distance  from  Long-Marston 
to  Tockwith,  and  leads  to  the  moor.  Some  way  down 
this  lane,  near  a  place  where  four  lanes  meet,  a  dyke, 

1  A  very  clear  and  accurate  plan  of  the  ground  is  given  in  a  valuable  paper 
on   the  battle    by  Mr.   Herman   Merivale,  entitled,    "A  Visit  to   Marston 
Moor,  May  1862,"  which  appeared  in  Macmillaris  Magazine  for  July  1862. 
Mr.  Merivale  says  :  "  There  are  two  or  three  ways  turning  off  from  the  Tock- 
with road  on  the  north,  which  might  answer  the  description  of  the  lane ;  but 
Sanford  supposes,  and  I  think  with  reason,  that  it  was  'Moor  Lane.'  " 

2  Mere  Brit.,  8th  July  1644. 


62       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

called  the  "  White  Sykes,"  was  cleared  out  and  deepened 
about  fifty  years  ago,  when  many  old-fashioned  horse- 
shoes, cannon-balls,  the  blade  of  a  sword  lying  by  the  side 
of  its  hilt,  and  other  relics  of  the  battle,  were  dug  up. 
Some  time  back,  old  peasants  related  that  in  their  child- 
hood they  were  afraid  of  venturing  into  Moor  Lane  by 
night  for  fear  of  encountering  spectre  horsemen ;  in  con- 
sequence of  the  slaughter  which  had  taken  place  on  this 
spot — the  bloodiest  portion  of  a  field  which  was  the 
bloodiest  in  this  war — if  we  except  some  of  Montrose's 
battles,  which,  however,  might  be  called  massacres x  rather 
than  battles. 

I  now  resume  Fairfax's  narrative:  "Notwithstanding," 
he  continues,  "  I  drew  up  a  body  of  400  horse  ;  but  because 
their  intervals  of  horse  in  this  wing  only  were  lined  with 
musketeers,  who  did  us  much  hurt  with  their  shot,  I  was 
necessitated  to  charge  them.  We  were  a  long  time  en- 
gaged, one  within  another,3  but  at  last  we  routed  that  part 

1  Killed  by  Montrose,  from  September  I,  1644  to  August  15,  1645  : — 

1.  At  Tippermuir,  .....  2000 

2.  At  Aberdeen,      .....  2000 

3.  At  Inverlochy,    .....  1500 

4.  At  Aulderne,       .....  3000 

5.  At  Alford,  .....  2000 

6.  At  Kilsyth,          .....  6000 


16,500 

On  some  of  these  occasions  nearly  the  whole  of  the  defeated  army,  parti- 
cularly the  foot,  were  killed.  At  Kilsyth,  the  army  of  the  Covenanters  was 
6000  foot  and  1000  horse.  This  account  does  not  include  the  massacre  of 
men  not  in  arms,  women  and  children,  the  numbers  of  whom,  particularly  at 
Aberdeen,  must  have  been  very  great,  as  the  slaughter  continued  for  four  days 
— a  butchery  and  abomination  not  outdone  by  the  demons  in  human  form 
who  were  the  executioners  of  Philip  II.  and  the  Duke  of  Alva  in  the  Nether- 
.  lands. 

2  "  In  the  heat  of  the  fight  Fairfax  was  heard  calling  out  to  his  officers  and 
soldiers  to  be  merciful  to  the  common  men,  for  they  were  seduced  and  knew 
not  what  they  did ;  but  to  spare  neither  Irish  nor  buff-coats  and  feathers,  for 
they  were  the  instruments  of  their  miseries." — Sanford,  p.  601. 


The  Battle  of  Mars  ton  Moor.  63 

of  their  wing  which  we  charged,  and  pursued  them  a  good 
way  towards  York.  Myself  only  returned  presently  to 
get  to  the  men  I  left  behind  me.  But  that  part  of  the 
enemy  which  stood,  perceiving  the  disorder  they  were  in, 
had  charged  and  routed  them  before  I  could  get  to  them ; 
so  that  the  good  success  we  had  at  first  was  eclipsed  by  this 
bad  conclusion.  Our  other  wing,  and  most  of  the  foot,  went 
on  prosperously,  till  they  had  cleared  the  field.  I  must  ever 
remember,  with  thankfulness,  the  goodness  of  God  to  me 
this  day;  for  having  charged  through  the  enemy,  and  my 
men  going  after  the  pursuit,  and  returning  back  to  go  to 
my  other  troops,  I  was  got  in  among  the  enemy,  who 
stood  up  and  down  the  field  in  several  bodies  of  horse.  So 
taking  the  signal  [a  piece  of  white  ribbon  or  paper]  out  of 
my  hat,  I  passed  through,  them  for  one  of  their  own 
commanders,  and  got  to  my  Lord  of  Manchester's  horse 
in  the  other  wing,  only  with  a  cut  in  my  cheek,  which  was 
given  me  in  the  first  charge,  and  a  shot  which  my  horse 
received.  In  this  charge  many  of  my  officers  and  soldiers 
were  hurt  and  slain."  J 

The  state  of  things  on  the  field  was  now  this :   The 

*  Fairfax's  Memorials,  Somers's  'Tracts,  v.  389,  390  (Walter  Scott's 
edition).  Mr.  Sanford  (p.  602,  note)  gives  a  marginal  note  by  Sir  Thomas 
Fairfax  on  Fuller's  account  of  the  battle,  at  the  part  which  relates  the  defeat 
of  his  wing  by  Goring,  without  naming  him  (Fairfax) — "I  envy  none  that 
honour  they  deservedly  got  in  this  battle."  He  then  tells  the  story  pretty 
much  as  in  the  passage  given  above,  and  thus  concludes — "  But  to  show  that 
some  did  their  parts  (having  routed  some  of  the  enemy  and  taken  Goring's 
major-general  prisoner),  few  of  us  came  off  without  dangerous  wounds,  and 
many  mortal ;  which  shows  the  left  wing  did  not  wholly  leave  the  field,  as  the 
author  of  that  book  relates."  The  words  at  the  beginning  of  this  note,  "  I 
envy  none,"  remind  me  of  some  words  in  the  panegyric  on  Fairfax  by  his 
son-in-law,  the  Duke  of  Buckingham — 

"  He  never  knew  what  envy  was,  nor  hate  ; 

His  soul  was  filled  with  truth  and  honesty, 
And  with  another  thing  quite  out  of  date, 
Called  modesty." 


64       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

cavalry  of  the  Royalists'  left  wing  had  routed  the  main 
part  of  the  cavalry  of  the  Parliamentary  right  wing  (for 
though  Fairfax,  with  a  portion  of  that  cavalry,  had  been 
successful,  his  success  was  of  no  avail),  and  also  the  foot 
of  the  Parliamentary  centre,  and  had  gone  in  pursuit  of 
them.  The  cavalry  of  the  Parliament's  left  wing  had 
routed  the  cavalry  of  the  Royalists'  right  wing,  and  had  now 
to  fight  the  foot  of  the  Royalists'  centre.  The  hardest  part 
of  this  duty  was  with  the  Marquis  of  Newcastle's  brigade 
of  Whitecoats,  who  fought  like  hardy  Northumbrian  bor- 
derers, as  they  were.  When  "  the  thrice  noble,  illustrious, 
and  excellent  princess,  Margaret,  Duchess  of  Newcastle," 
as  she  styles  herself,  asserts  that,  having  graciously  de- 
scended from  his  coach-and-six,  "  my  lord  himself,  in  one 
encounter,  killed  three  with  his  page's  half-leaden  sword, 
for  he  had  no  other  left  him,"  it  is  much  to  be  regretted 
that  the  "illustrious  prirtcess"  did  not  deign  to  inform 
the  world  where  her  thrice-valiant  lord  was  when  his 
brigade  of  borderers  were  so  bravely  but  vainly  opposing 
their  serge  doublets  and  unwieldy  pikes  to  the  repeated 
charge  of  Cromwell's  cuirassiers ;  "  fighting  it  out,"  says  a 
contemporary  writer,  who  cites  as  his  authority  one  of 
Cromwell's  troopers,  afterwards  a  captain,  "who  was  the 
third  or  fourth  man  that  entered  amongst  them,  till  there 
was  not  thirty  of  them  living."  x 

1  The  writer  from  whom  these  words  are  quoted  can  hardly  be  called  a  wit- 
ness of  the  first  order  as  to  credibility,  being  a  professional  impostor,  William 
Lilly,  the  astrologer,  who  says  in  his  Life,  written  by  himself — "Captain 
Camby,  then  a  trooper  under  Cromwell,  and  an  actor,  who  was  the  third  or 
fourth  man  that  entered  amongst  them,  protested  he  never,  in  all  the  fights  he 
was  in,  met  with  such  resolute,  brave  fellows,  or  whom  he  pitied  so  much  ;  and 
said  he  saved  two  or  three  against  their  wills."  Sir  Henry  Slingsby,  a  better 
authority,  says  in  his  Memoirs,  p.  50 — "  After  our  horse  were  gone,  they  fell 
upon  our  foot,  and  although  a  great  while  they  maintained  the  fight,  yet  at 
last  they  were  outdone,  and  most  part  either  taken  or  killed." 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  65 

By  the  time  Cromwell's  cavalry  had  done  this  work, 
Goring's  and  Urry's  cavalry  had  returned  from  the  pursuit 
of  that  part  of  the  Parliamentary  army  which  they  had 
routed.  Both  the  victorious  wings  now,  therefore,  found 
that  another  battle  had  to  be  fought  for  that  victory  which 
each  thought  it  had  already  gained.  The  face  of  the  battle 
was  now  almost  exactly  counter-changed,  the  Royalists'  left 
wing  now  occupying  nearly  the  same  ground,  with  the  same 
front,  which  the  Parliamentary  right  wing  had  occupied ;  and 
the  Parliament's  left  wing  now  occupying  nearly  the  same 
ground,  with  the  same  front,  which  the  Royalists'  left  wing 
had  occupied  at  the  beginning  of  the  battle. 

This  last  encounter  was  short,  for  while  Cromwell's 
troopers  came  on  in  line,  Goring's  advanced  in  disorder. 
The  consequence  was  that  Goring's  cavalry  were  soon  in 
headlong  flight,  as  Rupert's  had  been  not  long  before ;  and 
the  men  who  valued  themselves  on  wearing  their  hair  and 
parts  of  their  dress  in  the  fashion  of  King  James7  -curl1- 
pated  minions  or  of  loose  women,  and  ventilating  their 
vocabulary  of  scurrility  upon  the  "round-headed  dogs," 
the  "crop-eared  curs,"  this  time  found  the  jest  rather  a 
bitter  one.  Time  has  shown  that  the  "-crop-eared  curs  " 
were  right  both  as  to  their  hair  and  their  dress. 

Cromwell's  cavalry  had  no  cause  to  feel  any  compunc^ 
tion  towards  their  routed  enemy,  who  had  so  often  refused 
quarter  to  the  Parliamentary  troops.  The  moonlight 
pursuit  was  bloody.  "We  followed  them,"  says  Crom- 
well's Scoutmaster  Watson,  "to  within  a  mile  of  York, 
cutting  them  down,  so  that  their  dead  bodies  lay  three 
miles  in  length." 

If  any  additional  evidence  were  necessary  to  prove  that 
Prince  Rupert  was  in  the  wing  of  the  Royalists  which 
was  immediately  opposed  to  Cromwell's  brigade  of  horse, 

VOL.  II.  E 


66      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

it  is  afforded  in  the  statement  of  Principal  Baillie,  then  one 
of  the  Scots  Commissioners  in  England.  Baillie  writes 
thus  to  his  correspondent  in  Scotland  :  "There  were  three 
generals  on  each  side,  Leslie  (Alexander  Leslie,  Earl  of 
Leven),  Fairfax  (Ferdinand o,  Lord  Fairfax,  the  father  of 
Sir  Thomas  Fairfax),  and  Manchester;  Rupert,  Newcastle, 
and  King  (Newcastle's  lieutenant-general,  who  did  all  his 
work  for  him).  Within  half  an  hour  and  less,  all  six  took 
them  to  their  heels."  x 

Now,  if  Rupert,  as  the  romancers  affirm,  had  commanded 
the  wing  of  the  Royalist  cavalry  which  was  victorious  in 
the  first  encounter,  he  certainly  could  not  have  been  said 
to  have  "  taken  to  his  heels  within  half  an  hour  and  less  " 
after  the  battle  began.  He  therefore  must  have  been  in 
the  other  wing,  which  was  routed  at  once  by  the  furious 
charge  of  Cromwell's  cavalry. 

Rupert  afterwards  had  to  fly  with  as  much  haste  from 
the  field  of  Naseby  as  he  now  fled  from  that  of  Marston 
Moor.  But  at  Naseby  he  contrived  to  obtain  a  temporary 
success  by  not  having  the  terrible  brewer  of  Huntingdon 
at  first  opposed  to  him.  After  Naseby  he  did  not  venture 
upon  much  more  brigandage2  and  cruelty3  on  the  soil'  of 

1  Baillie's  Letters  and  Journals,   ii.   203,  204.     3  vols.     Edinburgh,  1841. 
This  would  seem  to  be  an  error  as  regards  Manchester.    See  Rushworth,  v. 
634.     The  author  of  the  "  Memoirs  of  the  Somervilles,"  quoted  by  Scott  in 
the  notes  to  "  Rokeby,"  says  that  the  Earl  of  Leven  never  drew  bridle  until  he 
came  to  Leeds  ;   and  that  when,  near  twelve  the  next  day,  there  arrived  an 
express  sent  by  David  Leslie  to  acquaint  the  general  they  had  obtained  a  most 
glorious  victory,  and  that  the  Prince  with  his  broken  troops  were  fled  from 
York,  the  general,  upon  the  hearing  of  this,  knocked  upon  his  breast  and  said, 
"  I  would  to  God  I  had  died  on  the  place." 

2  Long  before  he  fled  from  Naseby,  Rupert  had  endeavoured  to  secure  some 
part  of  his  plunder — which,  and  the  power  to  plunder  the  English  nation  after- 
wards, was  all  he  fought  for — by  freighting  one  or  two  ships  with  it.    But  these 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Parliament. 

*  Mr.  Herman  Merivale,  in  the  paper  before  quoted,  on  the  authority  of  a 
Roundhead  pamphlet  entitled  "  A  Dogg's  Elegy,  or  Rupert's  Teares,"  says  that 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  67 

England.  But  after  he  ceased  to  be  a  merciless  robber 
by  land,  he  became  a  pirate  by  sea,  and  with  that  strange 
luck  which  often  attends  such  men,  he  contrived  to  escape 
the  vengeance  of  Blake,  as  he  had  before  escaped  the 
vengeance  of  Cromwell. 

This  battle  of  Marston  Moor  was  one  of  the  battles 
which  may  be  said  to  have  been  won  by  a  charge  of 
cavalry ;  and  in  that  and  in  some  other  respects  it  bore 
some  resemblance  to  Marengo.  As  Marston  Moor  was 
the  turning-point  of  the  war,  it  may  be  said  to  have  been 
also  the  turning-point  of  Cromwell's  fortunes.  After 
Marston  Moor  those  fortunes  advanced  with  gigantic 
strides,  even  as  Bonaparte's  did  after  Marengo.  But  there 
was  this  difference  between  the  two  cases :  The  battle  of 
Marengo  was  first  lost  by  Bonaparte,  and  then  won  by  the 

the  Roundheads  discovered  Rupert's  favourite  dog  "  Boy"  among  the  slain — 
"more  prized  by  his  master  than  creatures  of  much  more  worth."  It  would 
seem  that  the  poor  dog  had  followed  his  master  into  the  thick  of  the  fight.  It 
is  something  to  secure  the  devoted  attachment  even  of  a  dog.  But  I  have  not 
met  with  any  other  instance,  on  credible  authority,  of  Rupert's  having  been, 
as  Mr.  San  ford  says  (p.  518),  "  generous  in  his  disposition,  and  not  insensible 
to  better  feelings."  On  the  contrary,  Clarendon,  Pepys,  and  Admiral  Penn 
all  speak  unfavourably  of  Rupert.  Pepys  says  when  he  came  to  court  after 
the  Restoration,  that  he  was  "  welcome  to  nobody."  In  a  letter  to  Secretary 
Nicholas,  dated  "Paris,  27th  February  1653-4,"  Hyde  says,  "You  talk  of 
money  the  King  should  have  upon  the  prizes  at  Nantz.  Alas  !  he  hath  not  only 
not  had  one  penny  from  thence,  but  Prince  Rupert  pretends  the  King  owes  him 
more  money  than  ever  I  was  worth ;  the  man  is  a  strange  creature.  I  know 
nothing  of  his  going  into  Holland."  [There  are  then  some  asterisks  in  the 
printed  letter,  as  if  Hyde  had  said  more  against  Rupert  than  those  who  edited 
the  papers  thought  fit  to  print.] — Clarendon  State  Papers,  iii.  320-322. 
According  to  the  Rupert  MSS.  published  by  Mr.  Eliot  Warburton,  the  court 
of  the  exiled  Prince  Charles  subsisted  on  Rupert's  robberies  by  sea.  This  is 
denied  by  Clarendon,  who  is,  at  least,  as  trustworthy  a  witness  as  Rupert,  and 
says  :  "  Sure  when  it  is  known  that  Prince  Rupert,  instead  of  ever  giving  the 
King  one  penny  of  those  millions  which  he  had  taken,  demanded  a  great  debt 
from  the  King  ;  that  he  received  ^14,000  since  his  being  in  France,  and  took 
no  more  notice  of  it  to  the  King  than  if  he  were  not  concerned,  and  that  if 
he  went  away  discontented,  because  the  King  would  not  approve  of  all  he  did, 
or  desired  to  do,  it  cannot  be  wondered  that  the  King  did  not  importune  him 


68       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

arrival  of  Desaix's  division  and  by  Kellerman's  cavalry 
charge.  The  man,  therefore,  who  reaped  all  the  benefit  did 
really  not  win  the  battle.  But  the  man  whose  cavalry  charge 
won  the  battle  at  Marston  Moor  was  also  the  man  who 
reaped  the  benefit  in  the  shape  not  only  of  fame  and 
honour,  but  of  power  and  its  consequences — "  for  battles 
are  great  things — empires  lie  beyond  them." 

On  the  24th  of  August  1572,  just  seventy-two  years 
before  this  battle  of  Marston  Moor,  the  families  of  Valois, 
Medici,  and  Guise,  with  whom  the  Stuarts  were  intimately 
connected  by  blood  and  disposition,  had  successfully  per- 
formed at  Paris  the  massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  which 
produced  in  the  King  of  Spain  excessive  joy,  reconcile- 
ment with  the  Court  of  France,  and  unbounded  approval 
and  admiration  of  its  conduct.  That  massacre  was,  if 
possible,  outdone  by  the  Irish  massacre  in  1641.  This 
battle,  fought  on  the  2d  day  of  July  1644,  on  Marston 

to  stay." — Ibid.,  26th  June  1654.  Admiral  Penn,  in  his  Journal,  relates 
several  cases  that  place  Rupert's  tyranny  and  cruelty  in  a  strong  light.  He 
says,  under  date  24th  July  1651,  that  there  came  on  board  one  of  his  ships  "four 
of  Rupert's  men,  who  ventured  their  lives  in  attempting  to  escape  from  him  at 
Toulon." — Granville  Penn's  Memorials  of  Admiral  Sir  William  Penn,  ii.  353. 
And  three  months  later  there  occurs  this  entry  :  "3oth  October  1651. — About 
noon  Captain  Jordan  came  aboard,  and  informed  me  of  a  Genoese  he  stopped 
two  nights  since,  who  came  from  the  island  Terceira.  .  .  .  The  lieutenant 
of  tthe  said  ship,  with  others  of  the  ship's  company,  gave  us  intelligence  of 
Rupert's  being,  about  six  weeks  since,  at  Terceira  ;  and  how  cruelly  he  mur- 
dered the  gunner  of  this  ship,  being  an  Englishman,  and  refusing  to  serve  him. 
He  commanded  him  from  the  town  of  Terceira  aboard  the  Reformation, 
wherein  he  is  admiral ;  and,  having  him  aboard,  commanded  his  ears  to  be 
cut  off;  which  being  done,  he  caused  his  arms  to  be  bound  together,  and  flung 
him  overboard  into  the  sea,  where  the  poor  creature  perished." — Ibid.,  i.  380. 
Under  date  December  20,  1650,  there  is  the  following  passage  in  Whitelocke 
(p.  485)  :  "  Letters  that  Prince  Rupert  came  to  Malaga  and  other  ports,  and 
fired  and  sunk  divers  English  merchant  ships,  and  demanded  the  master  of  a 
London  ship,  saying  that  he  would  boil  him  in  pitch  ;  but  the  governor  of 
Malaga  refused  to  deliver  up  the  master  to  him."  This  is  a  strange  sort  of 
person  to  take  for  a  hero,  if  possible  worse  than  those  sentimental  ruffians  of 
whom,  to  borrow  the  words  of  their  creator,  "I  should  not  care  to  vaunt." 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  69 

Moor,  was  the  first  great  instalment  of  the  payment  of 
that  debt  of  blood,  of  that  terrible  and  bloody  reckoning 
which  was  to  teach  kings  a  lesson  to  be  remembered  as 
long  as  this  world  shall  last ;  and,  therefore,  this  battle  of 
Marston  Moor  has  as  good  a  title  as  most  battles  to  be 
styled  one  of  the  decisive  battles  of  the  world. 

Among  the  wounded  at  Marston  Moor  on  the  Parlia- 
ment's side  was  the  afterwards  celebrated  Algernon 
Sidney,  who  received  several  wounds,  but  none  dangerous. 
Among  those  killed  at  Marston  Moor  on  the  side  of  the 
King  was  William  Gascoygne  of  Middleton  in  Yorkshire, 
who,  "it  appears  now  to  be  generally  admitted,  was  the 
original  inventor  of  the  wire  micrometer,  of  its  application 
to  the  telescope,  and  of  the  application  of  the  telescope  to 
the  quadrant ;  but  the  invention  was  never  promulgated, 
even  in  England,  until  the  undoubtedly  independent  in- 
ventions of  Auzout  and  Picard  had  suggested  their  publica- 
tion." J  Horrocks,  a  contemporary  of  Gascoygne,  and  who, 
like  him,  died  young,  at  twenty-two  or  thereabouts,  Jan- 
uary 3,  1641  (old  style),  rendered  also  great  service  to  the 
science  of  astronomy,  being  the  first  who  remarked  that 
the  lunar  motions  might  be  represented  by  supposing  an 
elliptic  orbit,  provided  that  the  eccentricity  of  the  ellipse 
were  made  to  vary,  and  an  oscillatory  motion  given  to  the 
line  of  apsides.  Newton  afterwards  showed  that  both  sup- 
positions were  consequences  of  the.  theory  of  gravitation, 
and  attributes  to  Halley  a  part  of  what  is  really  due  to 
Horrocks.2  If  Horrocks  and  Gascoygne  had  lived  out  the 
ordinary  age  of  man,  there  was  reason  to  infer  from  what 
they  had  done  so  young,  that  they  would  have  done  some- 

1  Penny  Cyclopedia,  art.  "  Horrocks,  Jeremiah,"  often  spelled  Horrox.    This 
article  was  written,  I  believe,  by  the  late  Professor  de  Morgan. 

2  Ibid. 


70       Stmggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

thing1  very  considerable  in  science.  If  we  compare  what 
Falkland  did  for  mankind  with  what  Gascoygne  did, 
and  the  blaze  that  has  been  thrown  by  Clarendon  and 
other  panegyrists  upon  the  name  of  Falkland  with  the 
obscurity  that  rests  on  Gascoygne's  nameless  grave  at 
Marston  Moor,  where  he  fell,  we  shall  perceive  a  striking 
illustration  of  the  thorough  injustice  with  which  the  world 
so  often  distributes  its  fame  and  honours.1 

All  Rupert's  artillery,  ammunition,  and  baggage  fell  into 
the  hands  of  the  victors,  together  with  10,000  stand  of 
arms  and  about  100  colours  and  standards  ;  the  Prince's 
own  standard,  with  the  arms  of  the  Palatinate,  being  among 
them.  There  were  1500  prisoners  taken  by  the  Parlia- 
mentary forces,  including  many  officers  of  rank.  The  loss 
on  the  King's  side  was  three  times  that  on  the  side  of  the 
Parliament.  The  countrymen  who  buried  the  bodies  of 
the  slain  reported  the  number  to  be  4150.  Of  these,  it  was 
reckoned  that  nearly  3000  were  of  the  Royal  army,  and 
that  two-thirds  of  these  were  gentlemen.  I  have  quoted 
at  the  bottom  of  this  page,  in  reference  to  a  young  man  of 
scientific  promise,  William  Gascoygne,  who  fell  at  Mars- 
ton  Moor,  a  short  note  from  Aubrey,  which  says  of 
Gascoygne  or  Gasgoigne,  "  Mr.  Towneley,  of  Towneley,  in 
Lancashire,  hath  his  papers."  It  would  appear  that  a 
Mr.  Towneley,  of  Towneley  in  Lancashire,  also  fell  at 
Marston  Moor,  for  in  the  lists  of  the  officers  killed  on  the 
King's  side  is  "  Master  Towneley,  of  Towneley,  a  Lanca- 

1  Aubrey  (Lives,  ii.  355)  gives  this  short  notice  of  Gascoygne  :  " Gas- 

coigne,  Esq.  of  Middleton,  near  Leeds  in  Yorkshire,  was  killed  at  the  battle 
of  Marston  Moor,  about  the  age  of  twenty-four  or  twenty-five  at  most.  Mr. 
Towneley  of  Towneley,  in  Lancashire,  Esq.  [sic],  hath  his  papers.  From  Mr. 
Edw.  Flamstead,  who  says  he  found  out  the  way  of  improving  telescopes  be- 
fore Des  Cartes.  Mr.  Edw.  Flamstead  tells  me,  September  1682,  that  'twas  at 
York  fight  he  was  slain." 


The  Battle  of  Marston  Moor.  71 

shire  Papist."  Connected  with  this  death  a  family  tradition 
has  been  handed  down,  for  our  knowledge  of  which,  buried 
as  it  was,  we  are  indebted  to  the  indefatigable  researches 
of  Mr.  Sanford,  and  which  throws  a  momentary  gleam  of 
strange  melancholy  interest  over  that  carnage-strewed  moor. 
"Mary,  daughter  of  Sir  Francis  Trappes,  married  Charles 
Towneley,  of  Towneley,  in  Lancashire,  Esquire,  who  was 
killed  at  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor.  During  the  engage- 
ment she  was  with  her  father  at  Knaresborough,  where  she 
heard  of  her  husband's  fate,  and  came  upon  the  field  the 
next  morning  in  order  to  search  for  his  body,  while  the 
attendants  of  the  camp  were  stripping  and  burying  the 
dead.  Here  she  was  accosted  by  a  general  officer,  to 
whom  she  told  her  melancholy  story.  He  heard  her  with 
great  tenderness,  but  earnestly  desired  her  to  leave  a  place 
where,  besides  the  distress  of  witnessing  such  a  scene, 
she  might  probably  be  insulted.  She  complied,  and  he 
called  a  trooper,  who  took  her  en  croupe.  On  her  way  to 
Knaresborough  she  inquired  of  the  man  the  name  of  the 
officer  to  whose  civility  she  had  been  indebted,  and  learned 
that  it  was  Lieutenant-General  Cromwell."  x 

From  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor  may  be  dated  the  first 
blazing  up  of  the  great  quarrel  between  the  Presbyterians 
and  the  Independents — a  quarrel  which  had  already  been 
smouldering  for  some  considerable  time.  And  in  the 
share  which  each  party  received  of  the  honour  of  the 
victory  the  Presbyterians  would  appear  to  have  really  had 

1  Sanford,  Great  Rebellion,  pp.  610,  611.  Mr.  Sanford  says  in  a  note: 
"  She  survived  a  widow  till  1690,  died  at  Towneley,  and  was  interred  in  the 
family  chapel  at  Burnley,  aged  ninety-one."  He  adds,  "This  anecdote  was 
told  Dr.  Whitaker,  the  editor  of  Sir  George  Radcliffe's  correspondence,  by  the 
representative  of  the  family,  aged  78,  to  whom  it  was  related  by  his  ancestress, 
Ursula  Towneley,  who  had  it  from  the  lady  herself" — and  gives  as  his  autho- 
rity, Life  and  Correspondence  of  Sir  George  Kadcliffe,  by  Dr.  Whitaker, 
note,  p.  165,  quoted  in  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  1810. 


72       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

some  just  ground  of  complaint  that  they  had  been  by  no 
means  fairly  dealt  with.  The  measure  which  the  Inde- 
pendents meted  out  to  the  Presbyterians  is  expressed 
in  the  words  of  a  letter  of  Cromwell,  written  on  the 
third  day  after  the  battle,  and  cited  in  a  preceding 
note.  "The  left  wing  which  I  commanded,  being  our 
own  horse,  saving  a  few  Scots  in  our  rear,  beat  all  the 
Prince's  horse/'  Now  there  appears  to  be  ample  con- 
temporary evidence  th'at  this  is  a  very  unfair  statement  of 
the  facts.  Baillie  says:  "The  Independents  sent  up  one 
quickly  to  assure  that  all  the  glory  of  that  night  was 
theirs ;  that  they,  and  their  General-Major  Cromwell, 
had  done  it  all  their  alone ;  but  Captain  Stuart  afterwards 
showed  the  vanity  and  falsehood  of  their  disgraceful  rela- 
tion. .  .  .  The  beginning  of  the  victory  was  from  David 
Lesley,  who  before  was  much  suspected  of  evil  designs : 
he  with  the  Scots  and  Cromwell's  horse,  having  the  advan- 
tage of  the  ground,  did  dissipate  all  before  them." x  In  a 
letter,  dated  London,  July  i6th,  four  days  after  the  former, 
Baillie,  in  writing  to  another  correspondent,  thus  mentions 
the  same  subject :  "We  were  both  grieved  and  angry  that 
your  Independents  there  should  have  sent  up  Major  Har- 
rison to  trumpet  over  all  the  city  their  own  praises  to  our 
prejudice,  making  all  believe  that  Cromwell  alone,  with  his 
unspeakably  valorous  regiments,  had  done  all  that  service ; 
that  the  most  of  us  fled ;  and  who  stayed,  they  fought  so 
and  so,  as  it  might  be.  We  were  much  vexed  with  these 
reports,  against  which  you  were  not  pleased,  any  of  you, 
to  instruct  us  with  any  answer,  till  Lindesay's  letters  came 
at  last,  and  Captain  Stuart  with  his  colours.  Then  we  sent 
abroad  our  printed  relations,  and  could  lift  up  our  face." 2 

1  Baillie's  Letters  and  Journals,  ii.  203,  204.     3  vols.     Edinburgh,  1841. 
8  Ibid.,  pp.  208,  209. 


The  Battle  of  Mars  ton  Moor.  73 

Now  the  Parliament's  organ,1  already  cited,  after  stating 
that  "  Lieut.-Gen.  Cromwell  charged  Prince  Rupert's  horse 
with  exceeding  great  resolution,  and  maintained  his  charge 
with  no  less  valour,"  thus  proceeds :  "  Gen.-Major  Lesley 
[Lieut.-Gen.  David  Leslie]  charged  the  Earl  of  Newcastle's 
brigade  of  White  Coats,  and  cut  them  wholly  off,  forty  ex- 
cepted,  who  were  taken  prisoners ;  and  afterwards  charged 
a  brigade  of  Green  Coats,  whereof  they  cut  off  a  great 
number,  and  put  the  rest  to  the  rout;  which  service  being 
performed,  he  charged  the  enemy's  horse  (with  whom 
Lieut.-Gen.  Cromwell  was  engaged)  upon  the  flank,  and 
in  a  very  short  space  the  enemy's  whole  cavalry  was 
routed."  And  even  the  account  published  in  Rushworth 
sufficiently  establishes  the  unfairness  of  the  statement 
quoted  above  from  Cromwell's  letter.  "  But  at  last  Crom- 
well broke  through,  and  at  the  same  time  the  rest  of  the 
horse  of  that  wing,  and 2  Major-General  Lesley's  regiments 
(which  behaved  themselves  very  well)  had  wholly  broken 
that  right  wing  of  the  Prince's." 3 

The  Presbyterians  undoubtedly  injured  their  cause  by 
charges  against  Cromwell,  which,  from  their  outrageous 
absurdity,  refuted  themselves.4  On  the  other  hand,  the  re- 
sult of  a  careful  examination  of  all  the  evidence  is  an  im- 
pression on  my  mind  that  justice  was  not  done  to  David 
Leslie  and  his  troops  even  at  the  time,  and  much  less  since, 

1  Merc.  Brit.,  8th  July  1644,  in  "Cromwelliana,"  p.  10. 

2  For  this  word  "  and  "  should  be  substituted  the  words  "  consisting  of." 

3  Rushworth,  v.  634. 

4  Denzil  Holies  asserts  ("  Memoirs  from  the  Year  1640  to  1648,"  pp.  15-17) 
that  "his  friend  Cromwell,"  as  he  calls  him,  "had  neither  part  nor  lot  in 
the  business,"  and  even  goes  so  far  as  to  charge  him  with  downright  cowardice. 
Holies  professes  to  ground  his  allegation  against  Cromwell  in  regard  to  the 
battle   of  Marston  Moor  principally  on  the  authority  of  one  Major-General 
Crawford  ;  and  as  to  the  storming  of  Basing  House,  on  the  authority  of  a  cer- 
tain Colonel  Dalbier. 


74       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

from  the  disposition  so  prevalent  among  mankind  to  wor- 
ship success  on  a  large  scale,  wherever  it  is  to  be  found. 

The  Marquis  of  Newcastle,  instead  of  endeavouring  to 
lessen  to  his  master  the  King  the  misfortune  of  the  loss 
of  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor,  instantly  left  the  king- 
dom.1 It  is  said  in  his  defence  that  he  was  disgusted  with 
Rupert's  rashness  in  fighting  the  battle ;  but  it  is  a  poor 
apology  for  a  subordinate  commander's  abandoning  his 
duty,  that  he  had  differed. in  opinion  from  his  superior  in 
regard  to  an  action  which  had  proved  disastrous.  His 
estate  and  influence  in  the  northern  district  enabled  him 
to  raise  an  army.  He  was,  according  to  the  testimony  of 
Mrs.  Hutchinson,  "so  much  beloved  in  his  country,  that 
when  the  first  expedition  was  against  the  Scots,  the 
gentlemen  of  the  country  sent  him  forth  two  troops,  one 
all  of  gentlemen,  the  other  of  their  men,  who  waited  on 
him  into  the  north  at  their  own  charges.  He  had,  indeed, 
through  his  great  estate,  his  liberal  hospitality,  and  con- 
stant residence  in  his  country,  so  endeared  them  to  him, 
that  no  man  was  a  greater  prince  in  all  that  northern 
quarter,  till  a  foolish  ambition  of  glorious  slavery  carried 
him  to  Court,  where  he  ran  himself  much  into  debt  to 
purchase  neglects  of  the  King  and  Queen,  and  scorns  of 
the  proud  courtiers."5  But  though,  to  borrow  the  lan- 
guage of  Clarendon,  "he  liked  the  pomp  and  absolute 
authority  of  a  general  well,  the  substantial  part  and 
fatigue  of  a  general  he  did  not  in  any  degree  understand, 


1  Among  those  who  accompanied  Newcastle  -abroad  was  his  brother,  the 
Hon.  Sir  Charles  Cavendish  (it  is  spelt  Candish  in  the  newspapers  of  that 
time,   "  Cromwelliana,"  p.  2,  as  it  was  then  pronounced),  who  is  enumerated 
among  the  friends  of  Hobbes,  and  described  as  "  Mathematicus  summus." 
— Vitse  Hobbianse  Auctarium,  pp.  181,  182.     London,  1681. 

2  Memoirs   of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  p.    117.      Bohn's  edition.      London, 
1854. 


The  Battle  of  Mars  ton  Moor.  75 

being  utterly  unacquainted  with  war,  nor  would  submit  to 
it,  but  referred  all  matters  of  that  nature  to  the  discre- 
tion of  his  lieutenant-general,  King." '  The  elements  of 
his  character,  as  it  has  been  analysed  by  Clarendon, 
convey  a  tolerably  exact  representation  of  a  nobility 
which  shone  with  but  a  borrowed  lustre,  and  was  but  a 
dim  and  feeble  image  of  the  nobility  of  the  days  either 
of  Hotspur  or  De  Montfort.  "  He  loved  monarchy,  as  it 
was  the  foundation  and  support  of  his  own  greatness  ; 
and  the  Church,  as  it  was  well  constituted  for  the  splen- 
dour and  security  of  the  Crown ;  and  religion,  as  it 
cherished  and  maintained  that  order  and  obedience  that 
were  necessary  to  both,  without  any  other  passion  for 
the  particular  opinions  which  were  grown  up  in  it,  and 
distinguished  it  into  parties,  than  as  he  detested  what- 
soever was  like  to  disturb  the  public  peace."2  He  was 
like  others  of  his  class  in  all  times  and  countries, — at  once 
brave  and  effeminate,  frequently  at  critical  junctures, 
unless  when  a  battle  was  expected,  and  then  he  did  not 
shun  exposing  his  person,  shutting  himself  up  for  two 
days  at  a  time,  denying  access  even  to  his  lieutenant- 
general,  that  he  might  indulge  his  inordinate  taste  for 
music  "  or  his  softer  pleasures."  3  In  all  this  he  presented 
a  strong  contrast  to  Montrose,  who  was  not  only  brave, 
and  the  first,  dismounted,  to  lead  the  way  if  his  infantry 
scrupled  to  wade  a  river,  but  constantly  drank  water,  and 
fed  as  simply  and  coarsely  as  the  meanest  kern  who  fol- 
lowed his  colours.4 

I  have  placed  before  the  reader,  as  far  as  in  my  power, 
the   means  of  judging  in  what  degree  the  merit  of  the 

1  Clar.  Hist.,  iv.  518.     Oxford,  1826. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  517.  3  Ibid<f  p>  5I9. 

4  Character  of  the  Marquis   of  Montrose  by  one  of  his  followers,  in  the 
Appendix  to  Wishart's  Memoirs,  p.  519.     Edinburgh,  1819. 


76       Strziggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

victory  of  Marston  Moor  belonged  to  Cromwell,  and  in 
what  degree  to  David  Leslie.  Whatever  the  true  propor- 
tions of  that  merit  may  be,  it  is  certain  that  Cromwell 
reaped  most  of  the  credit  and  fame.  It  is  also  certain 
that  if  he  was  not  entitled  to  quite  so  much  as  he  obtained, 
he  was  entitled  to  a  great  deal.  There  were  some  persons, 
however,  among  both  the  English  and  Scottish  Presby- 
terians whose  jealousy  and  malignity  induced  them  to  at- 
tempt to  deprive  Cromwell  not  only  of  his  just  share,  but 
of  all  share  in  the  merit  of  that  victory.  At  the  opening 
of  the  Long  Parliament,  Holies  had,  both  from  his  rank 
and  his  former  persecution,  been  a  much  more  conspicuous 
person  than  Cromwell.  After  the  deaths  of  Hampden  and 
Pym,  he  aspired  to  take  the  lead,  but  he  did  not  possess 
the  requisite  abilities, — and  Vane,  Cromwell,  and  others 
soon  threw  him  into  the  background.  Holies  then  en- 
deavoured to  crush  Cromwell  by  blasting  his  character 
through  the  circulation  of  a  calumny  set  afoot  by  Craw- 
ford (Manchester's  Major-General).  Crawford,  a  Presby- 
terian Scot,  had  been  encouraged  in  opposition  to  Crom- 
well, whom  the  Independents  regarded  as  their  head. 
Cromwell  imputed  to  Crawford  many  faults,  and  the  im- 
putation seemed  to  be  supported  by  Crawford's  gross  mis- 
management of  a  mine  with  which  he  had  been  intrusted 
during  the  siege  of  York.  By  way  of  setting  himself  right, 
Crawford  alleged  that  Cromwell,  in  the  battle  of  Marston 
Moor,  having  been  slightly  wounded  in  the  neck,  had  re- 
tired from  the  field,  and  was  not  present  at  the  second 
charge.  This  allegation,  which  on  the  best  evidence  has 
been  proved  to  have  been  utterly  groundless,1  was  actually 

1  "  Mr.  Laing  supposes,"  says  Mr.  Brodie,  "  that,  as  Baillie  and  Salmonet 
agree  with  Holies  in  regard  to  Cromwell's  having  been  absent  from  the  second 
charge  in  consequence  of  his  wound,  he  must  have  retired  to  get  it  dressed  ; 
but  had  tliis  author  not  been  content  with  merely  dipping  into  authorities,  he 


The  Battle  of  Mars  ton  Moor.  77 

made  by  Holies  the  ground  of  an  imputation  of  personal 
cowardice  against  Cromwell,  an  imputation  which  he 
urged  with  a  pertinacity  and  rancour  that  furnish  a  suffi- 
cient measure  of  the  weakness  of  his  head  to  say  nothing 
of  his  heart.  But  such  calumnies,  and  the  enmity  of 
Holles's  party  and  the  Scots,  only  tended  to  raise  still 
higher  Cromwell's  reputation,  and  to  rivet  still  faster  his 
hold  on  the  whole  body  of  the  Independents. 

It  has  been  observed  that  the  Independents,  like  the 
Presbyterians,  claimed  a  monopoly  of  God,  both  sects 
declaring  that  their  enemies  were  God's  enemies.  Yet 
there  was  a  most  important  distinction  between  the  two 
sects.  For  while  the  Presbyterians  were  intolerant  of  all 
forms  of  Christianity  but  their  own,  the  principle  of  the 
Independents,  which  distinguished  them  from  all  sects  of 
their  time,  and  for  which  they  were  bitterly  reviled  by 
the  Presbyterians,  was  toleration  to  all  denominations  of 
Christians  whose  religion  they  did  not  consider  hostile  to 
the  State.  If  the  Independents  did  not  extend  the  prin- 
ciple of  toleration  to  the  Roman  Catholics,  the  exception 
was  in  great  part  founded  on  the  political  ground  that 
the  Catholics,  acknowledging  a  foreign  spiritual  dominion, 
and  holding  correspondence  not  only  with  it  but  with  an 
organised  clergy  throughout  Europe,  and  through  them 
with  the  civil  powers,  were  dangerous  to  the  peace  of  a 
Protestant  community.  It  is  evident  from  this  that  a 
mortal  quarrel  was  likely  soon  to  arise  between  the  Pres- 
byterians and  the  Independents — a  quarrel  the  crisis  of 
which  was  hastened  on  by  the  increasing  power  of  the 
Independents.  The  reputation  which  Cromwell  obtained 

would  have  found  it  acknowledged  that  the  whole  rested  upon  the  word,  ac- 
companied indeed  with  oaths,  of  Crawford,  and  that  Mr.  Baillie  seems  latterly 
to  have  been  ashamed  of  it." — Brodie's  Hist.,  iii.  5J6,  note. 


78       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

by  his  services  at  Marston  Moor  by  raising  his  own  influ- 
ence also  advanced  that  of  the  Independents.  All  men 
who  wished  to  see  an  end  put  to  the  war  now  looked  to 
Cromwell  and  Fairfax,  having  discovered  that  no  reliance 
was  to  be  placed  on  the  regularly  bred  soldiers — Essex, 
Leven,  and  Waller.  And  in  the  meantime  the  Scottish 
army  did  nothing  but  lie  as  a  burden  on  the  country  by 
their  plundering  and  licentiousness,  which  were  strangely 
at  variance  with  the  rigid  austerity  of  their  preachers' 
tenets.1 

York  surrendered  soon  after  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor. 
The  Scottish  army  then  marched  northward,  and  being 
met  by  the  Earl  of  Callender  with  an  additional  force  of 
10,000  men,  sat  down  before  Newcastle,  which  town,  how- 
ever, was  not  taken  till  October.  The  Earl  of  Manchester 
on  his  way  south  took  some  places ;  but  Cromwell  after- 
wards accused  him  of  having  neglected,  and  studiously 
shifted  off,  opportunities,  as  if  he  thought  the  King  too 
low  and  the  Parliament  too  high. 

At  Marston  Moor  the  two  armies  were  nearly  equal  as 
to  numbers,  andt  the  battle  was  therefore  decided,  as 
almost  all  the  battles  of  that  war  were  (except  Dunbar, 
where  Cromwell  attacked  the  head  of  the  Scottish  column 
and  drove  it  in  on  its  rear,  pretty  much  as  Frederick  did 
with  the  French  at  Rosbach,  and  with  the  Austrians  at 
Leuthen),  by  the  two  armies  working  away  till  the  King's 
was  totally  defeated,  chiefly  by  the  superior  discipline  of 
Cromwell's  troops. 

1  "Baillie's  Letters,"  says  Mr.  Brodie,  Hist.,  iii.  517,  note,  "are  invaluable, 
as  fully  developing  all  this." — See  Baillie,  ii.  18,  &c.,  of  the  old  edition. 


(  79  ) 


CHAPTER  XV. 

SECOND  BATTLE  OF  NEWBURY — PRESBYTERIAN  OLIGARCHY'S 
PLOT  AGAINST  CROMWELL — CROMWELL'S  REMARKABLE 
SPEECH  IN  THE  HOUSE  OF  COMMONS,  9TH  DECEMBER 

1644 — SELF-DENYING    ORDINANCE TREATY     OF     UXB  RIDGE 

EXECUTION  OF  LAUD. 

THE  battle  of  Marston  Moor  gave  to  the  Parliament  the 
command  of  the  north  of  England,  but  in  the  south  and 
west  the  King's  affairs  were  conducted  with  more  success. 
Essex  had  been  sent  out  about  the  middle  of  May  with  a 
force  of  12,000  men,  and  Waller  with  a  force  of  10,000. 
The  King  also  took  the  field,  though  with  an  army  not 
equal  in  number  to  that  of  the  Parliament.  He  therefore 
left  Oxfordshire,  as  well  to  save  Worcester  as  to  draw  the 
army  of  the  Parliament  into  a  country  where  the  advan- 
tages of  artillery,  in  which  the  King  was  inferior,  might  not 
be  so  much  felt.  Waller  followed,  but  the  King  hearing 
that  the  Earl  of  Denbigh  and  others  were  ready  to  oppose 
his  march,  whereby  he  would  have  been  in  danger  of 
being  enclosed  between  two  armies,  returned  rapidly  to- 
wards Oxford.  Waller  overtook  him  near  Banbury,  but 
as  the  Cherwell  ran  between  them,  the  two  armies  faced 
each  other  for  a  day  without  action.  Next  morning  the 
King  drew  off  his  army,  leaving  a  guard  at  Cropredy 
Bridge.  Waller  having  forced  the  body  of  the  King's 
troops  that  guarded  Cropredy  Bridge  to  retire,  dispatched 
part  of  his  cavalry  to  fall  on  the  enemy's  rear.  But  a 


8o       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

considerable  portion  of  the  Royal  troops,  having  got  be- 
tween his  cavalry  and  the  bridge,  intercepted  their  retreat. 
Waller  thus  suffered  a  great  loss,  and  returned  to  London 
to  recruit,  after  his  usual  fashion  ;  for  though  he  always 
carried  out  a  fine  army,  such  was  his  mismanagement  that 
it  soon  melted  away  by  desertion.1 

Lyme  had  been  besieged  by  Prince  Maurice,  and  de- 
fended with  great  ability  by  Blake,  who  was  afterwards  to 
distinguish  himself  as  one  of  the  greatest,  if  not  the 
greatest,  of  England's  admirals.  Essex,  having  obliged 
Prince  Maurice  to  raise  the  siege  of  Lyme,  and  having 
taken  Weymouth  and  other  places,  advanced  farther 
west.  The  King  followed  him  with  a  superior  army, 
having  received  considerable  reinforcements.  Essex  hav- 
ing relieved  Plymouth,  then  besieged  by  Sir  Richard 
Grenville,  marched  into  Cornwall,  expecting  that  Waller 
would  hang  upon  the  King's  rear.  But  Waller — for  the 
incompetence  of  these  two  Parliamentary  generals  was 
rendered  more  prominent  and  fatal  by  their  jealousy  of 
each  other — pretended  that  he  was  not  in  a  condition  to 
march,  and  only  sent  2500  horse  and  dragoons  under 
General  Middleton,  who  arrived  too  late.  Essex,  reduced 
to  the  last  extremity,  having  stayed  to  see  the  full  success 
of  an  attempt  of  Sir  William  Balfour  to  break  through 
with  his  horse,  fought  his  way  to  the  shore  near  the  mouth 
of  the  Fowey,  and  then,  with  many  of  his  officers,  on  the 
1st  of  'September,  embarked  on  board  a  ship  which  War- 
wick had  sent  round,  and  proceeded  to  Plymouth,  leaving 
his  foot  to  capitulate  on  the  best  terms  they  could.  Skip- 
pon  obtained  good  terms  for  his  men, — that  the  common 
soldiers  should  lay  down  their  arms,  but  the  officers  retain 
theirs,  as  well  as  their  horses,  and  that  the  whole  should 

1  Rush.,  v.  675,  676.    Clar.,  iv.  490-496,  et  seq.    Baillie's  Letters,  ii.  2,  et  seq. 


Second  Battle  of  Newbury.  8 1 

be  conveyed  in  safety  to  their  own  quarters,  without  any 
other  condition  than  that  they  should  not  again  bear 
arms  till  they  reached  Southampton.1  The  Parliament, 
though  they  had  sufficient  reason  to  be  dissatisfied  with 
the  generalship  of  Essex,  had  the  magnanimity  to  send 
Essex  a  letter,  assuring  him  that  their  good  affection  to 
him  and  their  opinion  of  his  fidelity  and  merit  in  the 
public  service  were  not  at  all  lessened,  and  that  they  were 
resolved  not  to  be  wanting  in  their  best  endeavours  for 
the  repairing  of  this  loss,  for  which  purpose  that  they  had 
written  to  the  Earl  of  Manchester  to  march  with  all  pos- 
sible speed  to  Dorchester,  with  all  the  horse  and  foot  he 
could  get  together;  that  they  had  also  appointed  6000 
arms  for  foot,  500  pair  of  pistols,  and  6000  suits  of 
clothes,  to  be  sent  to  Portsmouth  to  make  good  the  loss.2 
Afterwards,  in  the  debate  on  the  Self-denying  Ordinance, 
Cromwell,  in  reference  to  the  line  of  conduct  which  the 
Parliament  pursued  on  this  and  other  occasions,  if  not, 
indeed,  throughout  the  whole  course  of  the  war,  made  this 
observation,  so  characteristic  of  his  good  sense  :  "  But,  if  I 
may  speak  my  conscience,  without  reflection  upon  any,  I 
do  conceive,  if  the  army  be  not  put  into  another  method, 
and  the  war  more  vigorously  prosecuted,  the  people  can 
bear  the  war  no  longer,  and  will  enforce  you  to  a  dis- 
honourable peace.  But  this  I  would  recommend  to  your 
prudence,  not  to  insist  upon  any  complaint  or  oversight  of 
any  commander-in-chief,  upon  any  occasion  whatever,  for 
as  I  must  acknowledge  myself  guilty  of  oversights,  so  I 
know  they  can  rarely  be  avoided  in  military  affairs." 3 

The  army  of  the  Parliament,  composed  of  Essex's  troops 
armed  anew,  of  Manchester's  and  Waller's  as  well  as  Mid- 

1  Rush.,  v.  677,  et  seq.    Whitelocke,  p.  101,  et  seq.     Clar.,  iv.  511,  ct  seq. 
3  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  289,  290.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  326,  327. 

VOL.  II.  F 


82       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

dleton's,  was  soon  in  a  condition  to  give  battle  to  the 
Royalists.  Donnington  Castle  (about  two  miles  N.N.E. 
of  Newbury),  which  was  held  for  the  King  by  a  garrison 
under  Captain  John  Boys,  was  besieged  by  a  strong  de- 
tachment of  the  Parliament's  forces  ;  but  though  the  place 
was  reduced  to  a  heap  of  ruins,  the  garrison  still  held  out, 
and  the  troops  of  the  Parliament  raised  the  siege  on  the 
approach  of  the  King's  army.  The  two  armies  met  at 
Newbury  on  Sunday,  the  2/th  of  October.  Essex  was  at 
this  time  in  London,  confined  by  indisposition,  and  the 
command  fell  to  the  Earl  of  Manchester,  who  had  with 
him  Cromwell  as  general  of  his  cavalry.  There  was  some 
sharp  skirmishing  on  the  afternoon  of  the  26th  of  October, 
the  Parliament's  forces  endeavouring  to  drive  the  enemy 
from  the  town  of  Newbury.  Night  set  in  and  the  weather 
was  very  cold.  The  Parliamentary  troops  lay  in  the  field, 
the  Royalists  in  the  town.  On  the  following  day,  as  Skip- 
pon  had  to  march  the  foot  by  a  considerable  circuit  to 
avoid  the  fire  from  Donnington  Castle,  out  of  which  a 
party  sallied  upon  them,  it  was  three  in  the  afternoon  be- 
fore the  attack  commenced.  After  a  desperate  conflict  of 
three  hours,  success  so  inclined  to  the  side  of  the  Parlia- 
ment, that  night  only  prevented  a  total  defeat  of  the 
Royalists.  Four  hundred  prisoners  and  nine  pieces  of 
cannon  were  taken  by  the  Parliamentary  forces.  Among 
the  guns  taken  were  six  of  those  which  Essex's  troops  had 
been  obliged  to  give  up  in  Cornwall.  They  were  recovered 
by  the  very  men  who  had  been  reduced  to  the  humiliation 
of  surrendering  them,  and  who  charged  up  to  them  with 
great  impetuosity,  and,  embracing  them  as  old  friends,  ex- 
claimed, they  would  give  them  a  "  Cornish  hug."  Charles 
threw  his  artillery  into  Donnington  Castle,  and  retreated 
towards  Oxford.  Cromwell  proposed  following  him  with 


Second  Battle  of  Newbury.  8  3 

the  whole  of  the  cavalry,  but  this  was  opposed  by  the  Earl 
of  Manchester.  Some  days  after,  the  King  returned,  and 
the  two  armies  faced  each  other  at  Donnington  Castle. 
But  though  the  Parliamentary  army  was  much  superior  to 
the  King's  in  number,  Charles  was  allowed  to  carry  off  the 
artillery  which  he  had  left  in  the  castle.  Cromwell  after- 
wards brought  a  charge  against  Manchester  for  letting  slip 
so  favourable  an  opportunity  to  put  an  end  to  the  war. 
After  this  both  parties  retired  into  winter  quarters.1 

It  must  be  evident  to  any  one  who  looks  calmly  at  the 
course  of  events  briefly  narrated  in  the  preceding  pages, 
that  the  Parliamentary  generals  had  on  several  occasions 
failed  to  make  use  of  opportunities  which  were  in  their 
power  of  obtaining  decisive  results.  Every  one  must  then 
see  that  the  charge  brought  by  Cromwell  against  Man- 
chester, for  letting  slip  an  opportunity  after  the  second 
battle  of  Newbury  for  putting  an  end  to  the  war,  was  not 
by  any  means  groundless.  Manchester,  Essex,  Denzil 
Holies,2  and  others,  brought,  indeed,  counter-charges 
against  Cromwell,  the  weight  and  justice  of  which  may 
be  in  no  small  measure  judged  of  by  the  fact  that  those 
charges  comprehended  the  charge  of  cowardice,  and  the 
charge  that  Cromwell  had  said,  "that  it  would  never  be 
well  with  England  until  the  Earl  of  Manchester  was  made 
plain  Mr.  Montague ;  that  the  Assembly  of  Divines  was  a 
pack  of  persecutors ;  and  that,  if  the  Scots  crossed  the 

1  Rush.  v.  718,  etseq.    Whitelocke,  p.  107.    Ludlowi.,  127,  etseq.    Clar.,  iv. 
542,  et  seq. 

2  Though  this  name  seems  to  be  now  printed  Holb's,  Denzil  himself  wrote 
it  Hollas.     At  least  it  is  so  written  in  his  letters  to  his  brother-in-law  the  Earl 
of  Strafford.    (See  Stafford's  Letters  and  Despatches,  i.  40,  41).    And  the  title 
of  his  memoirs,  published  in   1699,  is   "  Memoirs  of  Denzil  Lord  Hoiks." 
Thomas  Pelham  also,  Duke  of  Newcastle,  who  assumed  the  name  of  Holies, 
his  mother  being  Grace  Holies,  sister  of  the  late  Marquis  of  Clare  (of  which 
family  was  Denzil  Holies),  also  signed  his  name  "  Holies  Newcastle,"  as  ap- 
pears from  many  autograph  letters  of  his  which  I  have  seen. 


84        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Tweed  only  to  establish  Presbyterianism,  he  would  as  soon 
draw  his  sword  against  them  as  against  the  King." 

The  fact  is,  that  as  there  had  hitherto  been  but  two 
parties,  namely,  that  of  the  King  and  that  of  the  Parlia- 
ment, there  now  begun  to  appear  three,  the  party  of  the 
Parliament  being  divided  into  two,  that  of  the  Presby- 
terians and  that  of  the  Independents. 

Those  who  associate  with  the  word  Presbyterianism  a 
plain,  unornamented,  somewhat  republican  form  of  reli- 
gious worship,  and  thence  conclude  that  the  Presbyterians 
of  that  day  were  a  republican  or  democratical  party,  will 
form  an  erroneous  conclusion.  Presbyterianism  was,  in- 
deed, then  the  national  form  of  religious  worship  in  Scot- 
land. But,  accurately  speaking,  there  was  at  that  time  no 
Scottish  nation.  The  people  of  Scotland  were -in  a  state 
of  servitude  under  a  most  tyrannical  oligarchy,  and  the 
Scottish  commissioners  who  joined  with  the  English  Pres- 
byterians in  the  attack  upon  Cromwell  and  the  English 
Independents  were  the  representatives  of  that  oligarchy. 
These  Scottish  commissioners  and  the  English  Presbyterian 
leaders  met  at  the  house  of  the  Earl  of  Essex  in  London, 
and  held  private  consultations  upon  the  question  of  pro- 
ceeding against  Cromwell  as  an  "incendiary"  between  the 
two  nations  of  England  and  Scotland.  It  will  be  recol- 
lected that  the  Scots  had  designated  Strafford  as  an  "  in- 
cendiary," and  in  his  case  the  word  had  been  found  to  be 
a  word  of  power  in  helping  the  destruction  of  that  obnoxi- 
ous minister.  A  similar  course  was  now  devised  against 
Cromwell.  But  those  who  devised  it  soon  discovered  to 
their  cost  that  in  Cromwell  they  had  to  deal  with  a  man 
very  different  from  Strafford. 

Very  late  one  evening,  Maynard  and  Whitelocke  were 
sent  for  to  Essex  House,  for  the  purpose  of  being  con- 


Presbyterian  Plot  against  Cromwell.  85 

suited,  as  two  a]ple  English  lawyers,  whether  Cromwell 
came  under  the  meaning  of  the  word  "  incendiary "  in 
English  law.  After  Essex  had  made  the  two  lawyers  a 
very  flattering  speech,  Loudon,  the  Lord  Chancellor  of 
Scotland,  one  of  the  commissioners  from  the  Scottish 
Parliament,  and  one  of  the  worst  of  that  corrupt  oligarchy, 
made  them  a  speech,  in  which  he  said :  "  You  ken  vary 
weel  that  General-Lieutenant  Cromwell  is  not  only  no 
friend  to  us,  and  to  the  government  of  our  Church,  but  he 
is  also  no  well-wilier  to  his  Excellence  [Essex],  whom  you 
and  we  all  have  cause  to  love  and  honour ;  and  if  he  be 
permitted  to  go  on  in  his  ways,  it  may,  I  fear,  endanger 
the  whole  business :  therefore  we  are  to  advise  of  some 
course  to  be  taken  for  prevention  of  that  mischief.  You 
ken  vary  weel  the  concord  'twixt  the  twa  kingdoms,  and 
the  union  by  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant,  and,  if 
any  be  an  incendiary  between  the  twa  nations,  how  is  he 
to  be  proceeded  against  ?  Now  the  matter  is,  wherein  we 
desire  your  opinions,  what  you  tak  the  meaning  of  this 
word  incendiary  to  be,  and  whether  Lieutenant-General 
Cromwell  be  not  sik  an  incendiary  as  is  meant  thereby, 
and  whilk  way  wud  be  best  to  tak  to  proceed  against  him, 
if  he  be  proved  to  be  sik  an  incendiary,  and  that  will  clip 
his  wings  from  soaring  to  the  prejudice  of  our  cause. 
Now  you  may  ken  that  by  our  law  in  Scotland  we  clepe 
him  an  incendiary  whay  kindleth  coals  of  contention,  and 
raiseth  differences  in  the  State  to  the  public  damage,  and 
he  is  tanqtiam  publicus  hostis  patrice ;  whether  your  law  be 
the  same  or  not,  you  ken  best,  who  are  meikle  learned 
therein,  and  therefore,  with  the  favour  of  his  Excellence, 
we  desire  your  judgment  in  these  points." 

To  this  question   the   lawyers   replied   that   the  word 
incendiary  meant  the  same  thing  in  English  law  that  it 


86        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

did  in  Scotch,  but  that  whether  Lyutenant-General 
Cromwell  was  such  an  incendiary  could  be  known  only 
by  proofs ;  that  it  would  ill  suit  persons  of  so  great 
honour  and  authority  to  bring  forward  any  such  public 
accusation  unless  they  could  see  beforehand  that  it  could 
be  clearly  made  out,  and  that  it  would  be  wise  to  con- 
sider Cromwell's  present  condition,  parts,  and  interest,  his 
weight  in  the  House  of  Commons,  his  interest  in  the  army, 
he  being  also  not  "  wanting  of  friends  in  the  House  of 
Peers,  nor  of  abilities  to  manage  his  own  part  or  defence 
to  the  best  advantage ; "  that  they  had  not  yet  heard  any 
particulars  stated,  or  knew  any  themselves,  which  would 
amount  to  a  proof  clear  enough  to  satisfy  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  they  advised  them  not  to  attack  Cromwell 
rashly.  Mr.  Holies,  Sir  Philip  Stapleton,  and  some  others 
"  spake  smartly  to  the  business,  and  would  willingly  have 
been  upon  the  accusation  of  him,"  but  the  Scottish  com- 
missioners were  more  cautious,  and  "  the  blow  was  given 
up  for  the  present/'  Whitelocke  and  Maynard  were  dis- 
missed with  thanks  at  about  two  hours  after  midnight. 
Whitelocke  adds  that  they  had  cause  to  believe  that,  at 
this  debate,  some  who  were  present  were  false  brethren, 
and  informed  Cromwell  of  all  that  passed.1  Cromwell 
was  not  a  man  to  neglect  such  a  hint.  He  immediately 
proceeded  to  action,  and  as  the  contest  in  which  he  was 
about  to  engage  was  one  of  vital  importance,  I  will 
attempt  to  explain  briefly  the  nature  of  it. 

According  to  the  present  very  inaccurate  phraseology, 
the  two  parties,  at  the  head  of  which  respectively  were 
Essex  and  Cromwell,  would  be  called  the  aristocratical 
and  democratical  parties,  into  which  the  Parliament  of 
England  was  then  divided.  But  more  accurately  they 

1  Whitelocke,  pp.  116,  117. 


Presbyterian  Plot  against  Cromwell.          87 

may  be  termed  the  oligarchical  and  aristocratical  parties. 
For  it  was  the  object  of  Essex's  party  that  England 
should  select  those  men  who  were  to  lead  her  councils 
and  command  her  armies,  not  for  their  fitness,  but  for 
their  wealth  and  rank  ;  while  it  was  the  object  of  Crom- 
well's party  that  fitness  alone  should  be  looked  to  in  the 
selection,  without  regard  to  either  rank  or  wealth.  There- 
fore Cromwell's  object  was  an  aristocracy  in  the  sense 
used  by  Aristotle,  as  opposed  to  oligarchy — the  nde  of  the 
best.  But  the  word  had  another  meaning — the  rule  of  the 
best-born;  and  this  was  Essex  and  Holles's  aristocracy — an 
aristocracy  of  titles,  pedigrees,  and  rents.  What  a  nation 
would  sink  to  under  such  an  aristocracy  as  that  of  Holies 
we  may  judge  by  the  state  of  the  English  army,  when 
Holles's  friends  gave  commissions  to  their  footmen  ;  when 
Ensign  Northerton  and  the  Captain  in  Hamilton's  Bawn x 
were  the  representatives  of  a  class ;  when  the  last  alter- 
native of  a  man  of  quality's  lackey  was  a  commission  in 
the  army  or  to  take  to  the  highway.  The  reader  may 
then  judge  of  the  spirit  which  animated  these  oligarchical 
Presbyterians,  when  they  sought  to  hunt  down  a  man  as  a 
public  enemy  because  he  sought  to  form  an  army  such 
that  for  efficiency  it  has  never  been  equalled  upon  earth, 
instead  of  an  army  composed  of  lackeys,  officered  by 
stupid  debauchees,  and  commanded  by  men  whose  chief 
recommendation  for  command  was  their  being  Peers  pos- 
sessed of  large  fortunes.2 

1  It  appears  from  a  passage  in  Swift's  "  Essay  on  Modern  Education  "  that 
he  drew  his  captain  in  "  Hamilton's  Bawn "  from  the  life,  and  that  if  there 
were  better  officers  at  that  time  in  the  English  army,  they  were  exceptions  to 
the  general  rule  which  then  formed  the  class. 

3  The  Duke  of  Wellington  thus  writes  on  the  1 8th  of  July  1813,  soon  after 
the  battle  of  Vittoria  :  "  It  is  an  unrivalled  army  for  fighting,  if  the  soldiers 
can  only  be  kept  in  their  ranks  during  the  battle."  His  Grace  then,  after 
mentioning  some  of  its  defects,  thus  proceeds  :  "  The  cause  of  these  defects  is 


88        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

But  while  the  English  and  Scottish  oligarchical  party, 
who,  under  the  name  of  religion,  sought  for  absolute  power 
and  unbounded  wealth,  were  thus  plotting  at  midnight  to 
destroy  Cromwell,  that  sagacious  person  was  consulting 
with  Vane  and  St.  John  how  they  might  break  the  neck  of 
the  Presbyterian  oligarchy,  and  get  the  command  of  the 
army  out  of  the  hands  of  a  set  of  men  who  had  abundantly 
proved  their  incapacity  to  finish  a  war  which  was  desolating 
and  ruining  their  country.  The  effect  of  the  deliberations 
of  Cromwell  and  his  friends  soon  appeared. 

On  the  9th"of  December,  the  House  of  Commons  having 
resolved  themselves  into  a  grand  committee  to  consider 
of  the  sad  condition  of  the  kingdom  by  the  continuance  of 
the  war,  there  was  a  general  silence  for  a  good  space  of 
time,  many  looking  upon  one  another  to  see  who  would 
break  the  ice  and  speak  first,  on  so  tender  and  sharp  a 

the  want  of  habits  of  obedience  and  attention  to  orders  by  the  inferior  officers, 
and,  indeed,  I  might  add,  by  all.  They  never  attend  to  an  order  with  an 
intention  to  obey  it,  or  sufficiently  to  understand  it,  be  it  ever  so  clear,  and 
therefore,  never  obey  it  when  obedience  becomes  troublesome  or  difficult  or 
important." — Gurwood's  Selections  from  the  Duke  of  Wellington's  Despatches, 
p.  713,  No.  799.  The  duke  has  also  thrown  further  light  on  the  means  by 
which  Cromwell's  army  became  a  machine  so  perfect  as  even  to  exceed  the 
perfection  of  that  army  of  which  his  Grace  said  :  "  I  always  thought  that  I 
could  have  gone  anywhere  and  done  anything  with  that  army." — Ibid.,  p.  929 — 
Evidence  on  Military  Punishments.  The  duke  says  :  "  Indeed,  we  carry  this 
principle  of  the  gentleman,  and  the  absence  of  intercourse  with  those  under 
his  command,  so  far  as  that,  in  my  opinion,  the  duty  of  a  subaltern  officer  as 
done  in  a  foreign  army  is  not  done  at  all  in  the  cavalry  or  the  British  in- 
fantry of  the  line.  It  is  done  in  the  guards  by  the  sergeants.  Then  our 
gentleman  officer,  however  admirable  his  conduct  in  a  field  of  battle,  however 
honourable  to  himself,  however  glorious  and  advantageous  to  his  country,  is 
but  a  poor  creature  in  disciplining  his  company  in  camp,  quarters,  or  canton- 
ments."— Ibid.,  p.  920 — Memorandum  on  Plan  for  altering  the  Discipline  of 
the  Army.  Of  the  neglect  of  the  General  Order  as  to  the  officers  command- 
ing companies  inspecting  the  ammunition  at  every  parade,  in  order  to  ascertain 
that  every  soldier  in  the  ranks  has  at  all  times  in  his  possession  sixty  rounds, 
"  the  consequence  is,  as  happened  in  a  late  instance,  that  before  the  soldiers 
are  engaged  for  five  minutes,  ammunition  is  wanting,  and  the  stores  are  neces- 
sarily exhausted,  at  a  great  distance  from  all  means  of  supply." — Ibid.,  p.  626. 


Cromwell's  Speech.  89 

point.  At  last  Cromwell  rose,  and  said,  "  It  is  now  a  time 
to  speak,  or  for  ever  to  hold  the  tongue ; x  the  important 
occasion  being  no  less  than  to  save  a  nation  out  of  a  bleed- 
ing, nay,  almost  dying,  condition,  which  the  long  continu- 
ance of  the  war  hath  already  brought  it  into ;  so  that, 
without  a  more  speedy,  vigorous,  and  effectual  prosecution 
of  the  war,  casting  off  all  lingering  proceedings,  like  soldiers 
of  fortune  beyond  sea,  to  spin  out  a  war,  we  shall  make  the 
kingdom  weary  of  us,  and  hate  the  name  of  a  Parliament. 
For  what  do  the  enemy  say  ?  Nay,  what  do  many  say 
that  were  friends  at  the  beginning  of  the  Parliament  ? 
Even  this,  that  the  members  of  both  Houses  have  got 
great  places  and  commands,  and  the  sword  into  their 
hands ;  and  what  by  interest  in  Parliament,  and  what  by 
power  in  the  army,  will  perpetually  continue  themselves 
in  grandeur,  and  not  permit  the  war  speedily  to  end,  lest 
their  own  power  should  determine  with  it.  This  I  speak 
here,  to  our  own  faces,  is  but  what  others  do  utter  abroad 
behind  our  backs.  I  am  far  from  reflecting  on  any.  .  .  ." 
He  then  went  on  to  advise  the  House  in  the  words  quoted 
a  few  pages  back,  not  to  insist  upon  any  oversight  of 
any  commander-in-chief,  acknowledging  himself  guilty 
of  oversights  which  he  said  he  knew  could  rarely  be 
avoided  in  military  affairs,  and  thus  concluded:  "There- 
fore, waiving  a  strict  inquiry  into  the  causes  of  these 
things,  let  us  apply  ourselves  to  the  remedy  which  is  most 
necessary ;  and  I  hope  we  have  such  true  English  hearts, 
and  zealous  affections  towards  the  general  weal  of  our 
mother  country,  as  no  members  of  either  House  will 
scruple  to  deny  themselves  and  their  own  private  interests, 

1  Milton  may  have  had  these  remarkable  words  in  his  mind  when  he  com- 
posed the  line — 

"  Awake,  arise,  or  be  for  ever  fallen ! " 


90       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

for  the  public  good,  nor  account  it  to  be  a  dishonour  done 
to  them,  whatever  the  Parliament  shall  resolve  upon  in 
this  weighty  matter."  J 

Another  member,  whose  name  has  not  been  preserved, 
followed  Cromwell,  and  said — "  Whatever  be  the  cause, 
two  summers  are  passed  over,  and  we  are  not  saved.  Our 
victories  (the  price  of  blood  invaluable)  so  gallantly  gotten, 
and,  which  is  more  pity,  so  graciously  bestowed,  seem  to 
have  been  put  into  a  bag  with  holes  ;  for  what  we  won  at 
one  time,  we  lost  at  another ;  the  treasure  is  exhausted, 
the  country  wasted.  A  summer's  victory  has  proved  but 
a  winter's  story;  the  game,  however  shut  up  with  autumn, 
was  to  be  new  played  again  the  next  spring ;  as  if  the 
blood  that  has  been  shed  were  only  to  manure  the  field 
of  war  for  a  more  plentiful  crop  of  contention.  Men's 
hearts  have  failed  them  with  the  observation  of  these 
things,  the  cause  whereof  the  Parliament  has  been  tender  of 
ravelling  into.  But  men  cannot  be  hindered  from  venting 
their  opinions  privately,  and  their  fears,  which  are  various, 
and  no  less  variously  expressed,  concerning  which  I  deter- 
mine nothing ;  but  this  I  would  say,  it  is  apparent  that 
the  forces  being  under  several  great  commanders,  want  of 
good  correspondency  amongst  the  chieftains  has  some- 
times hindered  the  public  service."  : 

The  result  of  this  debate  was  a  vote,  That  no  member 
of  either  House  of  Parliament  should,  during  the  war,  en- 
joy or  execute  any  office  or  command  civil  or  military,  and 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  326,  327.     Of  this  speech  of  Cromwell's,  Mr.  Brodie  truly 
remarks,  "  This  I  conceive  to  be  a  sufficient  proof  of  Cromwell's  powers  as  a 
public  speaker." — Brodie's  Hist.,  iii.  549,  note.     The  fact  is  that  Cromwell, 
like  Tiberius,  always  spoke,  as  well  as  wrote,  clearly  and  to  the  point,  when 
his  object  was  one  which  he  was  willing  to  avow.     His  speeches,  after  he  had 
turned  out  the  Long  Parliament,  and  when  he  was  Protector,  are  in  a  different 
style. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  327. 


Self-denying  Ordinance.  91 

that  an  ordinance  should  be  brought  in  accordingly.1  On 
the  i/th  of  December  this  ordinance  was  read  a  third 
time  in  the  House  of  Commons,  and  passed  ; 2  but  it  was 
rejected  by  the  Lords.3  Another  ordinance,  with  the 
same  name,  though  not  the  same  in  effect  with  the 
original  "  Self-denying  Ordinance,"  as  it  was  called,  was 
introduced  a  short  time  after,  and  passed  by  both  Houses. 
The  Lords  passed  it  on  the  3d  of  April  1645,  Essex,  Man- 
chester, and  Denbigh  having  resigned  their  commissions 
on  the  ist  of  April,4  after  the  Commons  had  passed  an 
ordinance  for  new  modelling  the  army,  and  had  voted  Sir 
Thomas  Fairfax  to  be  commander  of  it.5  But  this  ordi- 
nance only  enacted  that  every  member  of  either  House  of 
Parliament  was  thereby  "  discharged,  at  the  end  of  forty 
days  after  the  passing  of  that  ordinance,  from  every  office 
or  command,  military  or  civil,  conferred  by  both  or  either 
of  the  said  Houses,  or  by  authority  derived  therefrom, 
since  the  2Oth  of  November  i64O."6  It  will  be  observed 
that  this  ordinance,  though  it  discharged  all  members  from 
the  offices  and  commands  they  held  at  that  time,  did  not 
prohibit  them  from  being  afterwards  appointed  to  offices 
or  commands.  The  ordinance  was  not  a  prospective  com- 
mand. It  simply  ordered  something  to  be  done  "at  the 
end  of  forty  days  after  the  passing  of  this  ordinance ; " 
and  then,  as  regarded  that  point  (for  it  contained  other 
provisions),  expired.7  Consequently,  when  at  the  end  of 

1  Parl.  Hist,  iii.  327.  z  Ibid.,  p.  330.  3  Ibid.,  p.  333. 

4  Ibid.,  pp.  352-354-  5  Ibid.,  p.  340.  6  Ibid.,  p.  355. 

7  Lord  Clarendon's  account  of  this  transaction  is  altogether  a  fiction.  Hume, 
who  has  followed  Clarendon,  though  he  cites  Rushyvorth  and  Whitelocke  at  the 
bottom  of  the  page,  after  describing  the  first  ordinance,  and  saying  that  the 
Peers  "even  ventured  once  to  reject  it,"  goes  on  to  relate  that  they  finally 
passed  "the  ordinance,"  taking  especial  care  to  leave  his  readers  in  ignorance 
of  the  difference  between  the  ordinance  rejected  and  the  ordinance  passed.  The 
argument  of  the  Royalist  Tract,  printed  in  1660,  entituled,  "The  Mystery  of  the 


92        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

those  forty  days,  Cromwell,  with  the  rest,  was  discharged 
from  his  command  by  force  of  the  ordinance,  the  Parlia- 
ment were  not  restricted  by  the  ordinance  from  reappoint- 
ing  him  or  any  one  else.  It  was,  probably,  in  consequence 
of  some  doubt  as  to  the  precise  operation  of  the  ordinance 
that  the  Parliament,  at  the  special  request  of  Fairfax, 
granted  a  dispensation  to  Cromwell  to  enable  Fairfax  to 
avail  himself  of  Cromwell's  services  at  the  battle  of 
Naseby. 

In  the  meantime,  Charles's  Parliament  at  Oxford,  his 
mongrel  Parliament,  as  he  himself  called  it,  which  was  not 
acquainted  with  his  secret  designs,  only  confided  to  a  select 
few  (and  this  is  the  best  and  the  true  defence  of  many  of  the 
gallant  and  honourable  men  who  supported  him),  were  clam- 
orous for  peace.  And  as  even  his  council  insisted  upon  his 
acknowledging  the  Parliament  at  Westminster  to.  be  the 
Parliament  of  England,  he  was  obliged  to  comply,  but  he 
made  an  entry  in  the  register  that  calling  them  was  not 
acknowledging  them.1  It  having  been  settled  that  a  treaty 
should  be  held  at  Uxbridge,  commissioners  were  appointed 
by  both  sides.  The  important  points  of  discussion  were 

Good  Old  Cause,"  proceeds  on  the  same  hypothesis.  The  title,  in  full,  of  this 
tract,  which  has  been  reprinted  in  the  Appendix  to  the  3d  volume  of  the  New 
Parliamentary  History,  is  "  The  Mystery  of  the  Good  Old  Cause,  briefly  un- 
folded in  a  catalogue  of  such  members  of  the  late  Long  Parliament  that  held 
their  places,  both  civil  and  military,  contrary  to  the  Self-denying  Ordinance 
of  April  3,  1645.  Together  with  the  sums  of  money  and  lands  which  they 
divided  among  themselves  during  their  sitting  (at  least  such  as  were  disposed  of 
by  them  publicly).  London,  printed  in  the  first  year  of  England's  liberty,  after 
almost  twenty  years'  slavery,  1660."  It  is  now  pretty  well  known  what  was 
the  nature  of  the  liberty  England  enjoyed  in  this  "  first  year  of  its  liberty."  It 
is  remarkable  that  the  compilers  of  this  3d  volume  of  the  New  Parliamentary 
History  (London,  1 808)  should  take  pretty  much  the  same  view  of  the  Long 
Parliament  as  if  they  had  been  writing  under  the  happy  auspices  of  Charles 
II.,  in  1660,  while  in  the  body  of  their  work  they  print  evidence  which  con- 
futes their  own  conclusions. 

1  Charles's  Letters  in  the  King's  Cabinet  Opened. — Rush.,  v.  942,  et  seq. 


Treaty  of  Ux bridge.  93 

the  militia  and  religion,  the  conduct  of  the  Irish  war,  and 
the  pacification  Ormond  had  made  with  the  Catholics.  As 
the  King  was  firmly  resolved  not  to  concede  these,  the 
treaty  at  Uxbridge,  as  was  to  be  expected,  proved 
abortive.1  It  is  evident  that  nothing  could  have  resulted 
towards  a  firm  peace  from  such  a  treaty,  for  if  Charles's 
private  opinion  was  that  calling  the  two  Houses  a  Parlia- 
ment was  not  acknowledging  them,  he  might,  in  accordance 
with  such  opinion,  afterwards  declare  that  any  agreement 
with  them  was  altogether  void.2 

On  the  loth  of  January,  Laud,  after  having  been  a  pri- 
soner in  the  Tower  for  almost  four  years,  was  beheaded  on 
Tower  Hill.  It  is  possible  that  he  might  have  lain  for- 
gotten in  the  Tower,  and  been  suffered  to  end  his  days 
there  quietly,  had  not  the  King  sent  him  a  letter  requiring 
him,  as  often  as  any  benefice  in  his  gift  should  fall  vacant, 
to  dispose  of  it  only  to  such  as  he  (the  King)  should 
name ;  or  if  he  had  received  any  command  to  the  con- 
trary from  either,  or  both  Houses  of  Parliament,  to  let 
them  fail  into  lapse,  that  he  might  dispose  of  them  as  he 

1  Parl.    Hist.,   iii.    344.      Charles    had    determined    beforehand    that    the 
treaty  should  be  abortive.      "My  commissioners,"  he  wrote  to  the  Queen, 
"  are  so  well  chosen,  though  I  say  it,  that  they  will  neither  be  threatened  nor 
disputed  from  the  grounds  I  have  given  them,  which,  upon  my  word,  is  accord- 
ing to  the  little  note  thou  rememberest ;  and  in  this  not  only  their  obedience 
but  their  judgments  concur."     And  in  another  letter  he  mentions  his  "being 
now  freed  from  the  place  of  base  and  mutinous  motions,  that  is  to  say,  our 
mongrel  Parliament  here." — See  Brodie,  iii.  578. 

2  As  to  the  treaty  of  Uxbridge,  see  Rush.,  v.  841,  et  seq.    Clar.  State  Papers, 
ii.  1 86.     It  has  been  fully  proved  that  neither  Charles  nor  his  advisers,  with, 
perhaps,  the  exception  of  Hyde,  regarded  the  form  of  Church  Government  in 
any  other  light  than  that  of  a  State  engine.     In  addition  to  the  other  evidence 
in  support  of  this,  Mr.  Brodie  (Hist:,  iii.  574,  note)  cites  from  the  MSS.  Brit. 
Mus.,  Ayscough,  4161,  some  letters  from  Charles  to  the  Queen,  in  which  he 
justifies  himself  for  refusing  his  consent  to  the  Presbyterian  Government,  en- 
tirely on  the  principle  of  policy,  and  says  that  on  this  account  he  considered 
the  Episcopal  Government  of  more  importance  to  his  authority  than  even 
the  militia. 


94        Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

chose.     It  was  after  Laud  had  declined  to  obey  an  order 
of  the  Lords  in  a  case  of  this  sort  that  they  sent  a  mes- 
sage   to    the    Commons    to    expedite   his    trial.1      The 
argument    in    Stafford's    case    applies    to    Laud's,    but 
Sergeant   Wild,    Mr.    Samuel   Brown,   and   Mr.   Nicholas 
were  sent   by  the    Commons    to    show   the   Lords,  in    a 
conference,2  that  a    man   might  incur  the  guilt   of   high 
treason  as  much  by  offences   against  the  nation,3  as  by 
offences  against  the  King ;    and   to  contend   that  there 
were  two  kinds  of  treason — those  which  were  against  the 
King,   and   cognisable  by  the  inferior  courts — and  those 
that  were   against   the   realm,   and   subject  only  to   the 
judgment   of  Parliament.     In  accordance  with  this   line 
of  argument,    Laud   was   proceeded   against   by  Bill   of 
Attainder  as   Stafford  had  been.     Heylin  says  that  the 
3ill   of  Attainder  was  passed   in   the  Lords   "in  a  thin 
and  slender  House,  not  above  six  or  seven  in  number."4 
Yet  it  appears  from  the  journals,  as  Mr.  Hallam  has  re- 
marked,  that   there  were   twenty   Peers   present   at   the 
time  of  prayers.5     Some  of  the  bigots  who  had  brought  him 
to  the  block,  whose  intolerance  and  tyranny  were  about 
equal  to  his  own,  attempted  to  disturb  his  last  moments 

1  Laud,  in  his  History  of  his  Troubles  and  Trials,  says,  p.  203,  "  I  foresaw 
a  cloud  rising  over  me,  about  the  business  of  Chartham." 

2  Rush.  v.  830. 

3  It  might  be  a  question  whether  this  word  would  have  been  used  before 
the  battle  of  Marston  Moor.     The  Tudors  and  Stuarts  had  no  idea  of  a  nation 
except  as  a  beast  of  burden  to  pay  taxes.     How  could  high  treason  be  com- 
mitted against    such  a  thing?      But  there  was  one  man,  at   least,  in  Eng- 
land, who,  "  in  a  way  of  foolish  simplicity,"  as  he  termed  it,  was  to  find  a 
solution  of  the  question  from  which  there  was  no  appeal.     "  And  now,"  says 
an  eye-witness  of  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor  (cited,  by  Mr.  Sanford,  p.  398), 
as  Rupert  and  Cromwell  were  facing  each  other  waiting  for  the  onset,  "and 
now  the  sword  must  determine  that  which  a  hundred  years'  policy  and  dispute 
could  not  do." 

4  Heylin's  Life  of  Laud,  p.  527. 

5  Lords'  Journals,  4th  January  1644. 


Execution  of  Laud.  95 

with  some  impertinent  questions,  to  call  them  by  the 
mildest  name.  Laud  had  before  said,  as  he  pulled  off  his 
doublet,  "  No  man  can  be  more  willing  to  send  me  out  of 
the  world  than  I  am  willing  to  be  gone  ;"  and  now,  after 
answering  one  or  two  of  these  questions,  he  turned  to  the 
executioner,  and  said,  as  he  put  some  money  into  his 
hand,  "  Here,  honest  friend,  God  forgive  thee,  as  I  do, 
and  do  thy  office  upon  me  with  mercy."  Then  kneeling 
down  and  laying  his  head  upon  the  block,  he  said  aloud, 
"  Lord,  receive  my  soul" — the  signal  agreed  upon  between 
him  and  the  executioner: — who  thereupon  struck  off  his 
head  at  a  single  blow. 

Laud's  sentence  was  so  far  mitigated,  that  the  manner 
of  his  execution  was  altered  to  beheading.  He  was  also 
permitted  to  dispose  of  his  property  by  will,  and  his  body 
was  allowed  burial.  The  character  of  this  archbishop,  and 
the  opinion  I  have  formed  of  it  from  a  careful,  and,  I 
believe,  impartial  examination  of  the  evidence,  have  suffi- 
ciently appeared  in  this  history.  Yet  there  is  something 
extremely  touching  in  the  manner  in  which  he  alludes  in 
his  will  to  the  place  of  his  education,  St.  John's  College, 
Oxford,  which  might  be  truly  considered  as  the  alma 
mater  of  his  prosperous  fortunes.  Those  whose  early 
associations,  like  his,  are  agreeably  linked  with  the  college 
where  they  have  passed  some  of  the  happiest  years  of 
their  existence — those  years  bright  "  with  golden  exhala- 
tions of  the  dawn,"  so  full  of  enjoyment  for  the  present 
and  hope  for  the  future,  will  fully  sympathise  with  the 
poor,  infirm  old  man,  who  might  almost  be  said,  like  his 
predecessor  Wolsey,  to  have  "  trod  the  ways  of  glory,  and 
sounded  all  the  depths  and  shoals  of  honour."  After 
stating  that  to  St.  John's  College  he  leaves  all  his  chapel 


g6        Struggle  far  Parliamentary  Government. 

plate  and  furniture,  his  books,  and  £500,  he  adds  with 
simple  pathos,  "  Something  else  I  have  done  for  them 
already,  according  to  my  ability ;  and  God's  everlasting 
blessing  be  upon  that  place  and  that  society  for  ever."1 

1  Among  other  memorials  of  Archbishop  Laud  preserved  in  St.  John's  Col- 
lege, Oxford,  is  the  staff  with  which  he  walked  to  execution. 


(97) 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

THE  HIGHLANDERS  OF  SCOTLAND MONTROS&S  VICTORIES 

AND  CRUELTIES. 

CHARLES,  as  has  been  shown,  had  no  thought  of  peace 
when  he  made  a  show  of  it  by  engaging  in  the  Treaty  of 
Uxbridge.  The  King's  confidence  in  yet  being  able  to 
gain  more  by  the  sword  than  by  negotiation,  arose  in  a 
great  measure  from  events  which  occurred  in  a  remote 
part  of  Britain,— the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  a  district  at 
that  time  almost  totally  unknown  to  Englishmen ;  indeed, 
nearly  a  century  later  a  well-informed  writer  observes 
that  there  had  been  less  at  that  time  written  on  the  High- 
lands of  Scotland  than  on  either  of  the  Indies.1  The 
principal  agents  in  the  events  to  which  I  allude  were  the 
Earl  of  Montrose  and  the  Highlanders  of  Scotland,  the 
descendants  of  the  ancient  northern  Picts,— -for  it  has  been 
proved  by  Mr.  Skene  that  the  effects  of  the  Scottish 
conquest  did  not  extend  to  the  northern  Picts,  but  were 
exclusively  confined  to  the  southern  Picts,  or  Picts  in- 
habiting the  Lowlands  ;  that  the  northern  Picts  were  alto- 
gether for  a  considerable  time  unaffected  by  that  con- 
quest, and  remained  in  some  degree  independent  of  the 
Scottish  dynasty,  which,  from  the  time  of  that  conquest, 
rule4  over  the  other  parts  of  Scotland.2 

1  Letters  from  a  Gentleman  in  the  North  of  Scotland,  i.  5.     New  edition. 
London,  1815. 

2  Skene's  Highlanders  of  Scotland,  vol.  i.  chaps.  3,  4.     In  a  letter  dated 
August  13,  1766,  Dr.  Johnson,  among  other  arguments  against  the  opposition 
to  the  scheme  of  translating  the  Bible  into  the  Erse  or  Gaelic  language,  uses 

VOL.  II.  G 


98       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Whether  the  Highlanders  of  Scotland  went  so  far  as  the 
people  mentioned  by  ancient  writers,  who,  not  only  thought 
robbery  no  disgrace,  but  even  thought  it  disgraceful  not  to 
live  on  plunder,1  the  Scottish  Highlanders  drew  this  dis- 
tinction, that,  while  they  considered  the  driving  off  a  herd 
of  cattle  the  act  of  brave  men,  they  considered  stealing  a 
cow  a  "  dirty  thing  they  would  have  scorned  to  do."  2  And 

the  argument  that  such  a  translation  will  be  a  method  of  preserving  the  High- 
land language,  and  says,  "I  am  not  very  willing  that  any  language  should  be 
totally  extinguished.  The  similitude  and  derivation  of  languages  afford  the 
most  indubitable  proof  of  the  traduction  of  nations,  and  the  genealogy  of 
mankind.  They  add  often  physical  certainty  to  historical  evidence  ;  and  often 
supply  the  only  evidence  of  ancient  migrations,  and  of  the  revolutions  of 
ages  which  left  no  written  monuments  behind  them." — Boswell's  Life  of  John- 
son, iii.  II,  12.  London,  John  Murray,  1835.  Mr.  Skene's  valuable  work  on 
the  Highlanders  of  Scotland  forms  a  most  instructive  commentary  on  this  text. 
"  The  history  of  the  Celtic  language,"  says  Max  Miiller,  "  runs  on  to  the  pre- 
sent day.  A  language,  as  long  as  it  is  spoken  by  anybody,  lives  and  has  its 
substantive  existence.  Without  the  help  of  history  we  should  see  that  English 
is  Teutonic,  that,  like  Dutch  and  Friesian,  it  belongs  to  the  Low-German 
branch  ;  that  this  branch  together  with  the  High-German,  Gothic,  and  Scandi- 
navian branches,  constitutes  the  Teutonic  class  ;  that  this  Teutonic  class,  toge- 
ther with  the  Celtic,  Slavonic,  Hellenic,  Italic,  Iranic,  and  Indie  classes, 
constitutes  the  great  Indo-European  or  Aryan  family  of  speech." — Lectures  on 
the  Science  of  Language,  pp.  73,  74.  Fourth  edition.  London,  1864.  "The 
Celts  seem  to  have  been  the  first  of  the  Aryans  to  arrive  in  Europe ;  but  the 
presence  of  subsequent  migrations,  particularly  of  Teutonic  tribes,  has  driven 
them  towards  the  most  westerly  parts,  and  latterly  from  Ireland  across  the 
Atlantic.  At  present  the  only  remaining  dialects  are  the  Kymric  and  Goed- 
helic.  The  Kymric  comprises  the  Welsh,  the  Cornish,  lately  extinct,  and 
the  Armorican  of  Britanny.  The  Gasdhelic  comprises  the  Irish,  the  Gaelic 
of  the  west  coast  of  Scotland,  and  the  dialect  of  the  Isle  of  Man." — Ibid.,  p. 
203. 

1  Oik  ^xoirds  TTW  alff-xtvyv  TOUTOV  TOV  tpyov,  (ptpovros  5^  TI  /ecu  So&s  juaXXov. — 
Thucyd.,  I.  5.  The  picture  drawn  by  Ovid,  writing  some  400  years  after 
Thucydides,  of  the  tribes  round  Tomi — Thracians,  Getae,  Scythians,  Sar- 
matians — is  to  the  same  effect : 

"  Inumerae  gentes,  .  .  . 
Quse  sibi  non  rapto  vivere  turpe  putant." 

Trist.  v.  10. 

2  "  Sic  dirty  things  they  wad  hae  scorned  to  do, 
But  tooming  faulds,  or  scouring  o'  a  glen, 
Was  ever  deemed  the  deed  o'  pretty  men." 

Ross's  "  Fortunate  Shepherdess." 


The  Highlanders  of  Scotland.  99 

as  regards  highway-robbery,  Captain  Burt  declares  the 
Highlands  to  be  safer  than  the  highway  from  London  to 
Highgate  in  the  early  part  of  last  century ;  and  adds,  that 
he  cannot  approve  the  Lowland  saying,  "  Show  me  a 
Highlander,  and  I  will  show  you  a  thief."  3  Though  to 
live  on  rapine,  not  on  honest  industry,  is  equally  opposed 
to  civilisation  and  morality,  whether  it  is  conducted  on  a 
large  or  on  a  small  scale,  the  effect  on  the  character  of  the 
individual  is  different ;  for  in  the  one  case  the  practice  is 
consistent  with  a  high  degree  of  hardihood  and  courage, 
and  even  in  some  degree  with  generosity  and  honour,  while 
in  the  other  case  it  is  not.  The  Highlander's  moral  view 
of  the  matter  was  also  supported  by  his  belief,  which  a 
modern  writer 2  has  proved  to  be  well  founded,  that  he  only 
took  the  cattle  of  the  foreigners  who  had  robbed  him  of 
his  country,  and  had  driven  him  from  the  Lowlands  of 
Scotland  into  the  barren  mountains. 

The  difference  between  the  feudal  and  the  Highland 
law  of  succession  may  in  some  degree  account  for  the  fail- 
ure of  male  representatives  of  the  head  of  a  family  being 
much  less  frequent  according  to  the  Highland  law  of  suc- 
cession than  it  was  according  to  the  feudal.  In  the  first 
place,  by  the  Highland  law  of  succession  the  brothers  of 
the  chief  succeeded  before  the  sons  to  the  chiefship  and 
the  superiority  of  the  lands  belonging  to  the  clan.3  In  the 
second  place,  the  existence  of  legitimate  sons  to  a  chief 

1  Letters  from  the  North  of  Scotland,  ii.  218.   New  edition.    London,  1815. 

2  Skene's  Highlanders  of  Scotland.    2  vols.   London,  1837.     Mr.  Skene  has 
proved  the  tradition  of  the  Highlanders,  that  the  Lowlands  in  old  times  were 
the  possession  of  their  ancestors,  to  be  founded  on  historical  fact.      Mr.  Skene 
bears  testimony  to  the  accuracy  of  Captain  Burt.    After  quoting  Captain  Burl's 
description  of  the  peculiarities  of  the  Highland  clan  given  in  Letter  xix.,  he 
says,  "  To  this  concise  and  admirable  description  it  is  unnecessary  to  add  any- 
thing further." — Skene,  i.  158. 

3  Skene's  Highlanders  of  Scotland,  i.  159,  161. 


ioo      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

was  secured  by  a  custom  termed  handfasting,  or  a  hand- 
fast  marriage,  which  consisted  in  a  contract  between  two 
chiefs,  by  which  it  was  agreed  that  the  heir  of  the  one 
should  live  with  the  daughter  of  the  other  as  her  husband 
for  twelve  months  and  a  day.  If  in  that  time  the  lady  be- 
came a  mother,  or  proved  to  be  with  child,  the  marriage 
became  good  in  law  ;  otherwise  the  contract  was  considered 
at  an  end.  The  Highlanders  drew  a  strong  distinction  be- 
tween bastard  sons  and  the  issue  of  these  handfast  unions, 
whom  they  considered  legitimate,  and  they  rigorously  ex- 
cluded from  succession  of  any  sort  the  illegitimate  off- 
spring.1 

But  this  difference  between  the  Highland  and  the  feudal 
law  of  succession  does  not  by  any  means  support  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  Highlanders  generally  to  the  superior  anti- 
quity of  race  and  purity  of  lineage  which  they  claim  over 
the  rest  of  mankind.  The  supposition  of  whole  clans  being 
of  royal  descent  is  a  puerile  absurdity,  and  is  directly 
opposed  by  the  notorious  fact  of  the  Highland  clans  recruit- 
ing their  numbers,  when  numbers  constituted  strength,  by 
holding  out  inducements  to  any  man  to  assume  his  clan 
name.  Mr.  Skene  repeatedly  mentions  this  as  done  by 
the  Campbells.2  And  in  Aberdeenshire,  with  every  allow- 
ance for  the  operation  of  the  patriarchal  principle,  how 
many  "  boll-of-meal " 3  Gordons  are  there  for  one  Gordon 

1  Skene's  Highlanders  of  Scotland,  i.  166,  167. 

z  Mr.  Skene,  after  showing  the  total  groundlessness  of  the  derivation  of  the 
name  Campbell  from  Campo  Belio,  the  oldest  spelling  of  it  being  Cambel  or 
Kambel,  and  there  never  having  been  a  Norman  family  of  the  name  of  Campo 
Bello,  thus  concludes  his  account  of  the  Clan  Campbell  : — "  The  history  of  this 
family  consists  principally  of  the  details  of  a  policy  characterised  by  cunning 
and  perfidy,  although  deep  and  far-sighted,  and  which  obtained  its  usual  suc- 
cess in  the  acquisition  *of  great  temporal  grandeur  and  power." — The  High- 
landers of  Scotland,  ii.  284. 

3  Those  who  had  assumed  the  name  of  Gordon  for  a  boll  of  meal,  and  their 
descendants,  are  so  called. 


The  Highlanders  of  Scotland.  i  o  i 

who  can  produce  a  pedigree  that  would  bear  a  legal  inves- 
tigation— that  is,  who  can  trace  a  descent  upon  legal  evi- 
dence from  the  Gordon  family  ? 

The  notion  of  blood-relationship  to  the  chiefs,  however, 
whether  well  founded  or  not,  while  it  made  them  yield 
a  blind  and  unbounded  submission  to  the  will  of  their 
chiefs  in  all  things,  however  tyrannical,  however  cruel  that 
will  might  be,  was  thus  the  more  favourable  to  the  object 
of  Montrose — the  attempt  to  establish  on  the  throne  of 
Britain  a  king  who  required  from  his  subjects  an  obedience 
as  unreasoning  and  as  unbounded  as  the  Highlander  ren- 
dered to  his  chief.  It  may  indeed  be  said  that  a  High- 
land chief  who  was  a  humane  and  just  man — and  some, 
perhaps  many,  of  them  were  such — would  use  his  absolute, 
power  for  the  good  and  happiness  of  his  subjects,  and 
would  have  an  additional  inducement  to  do  so  in  the 
notion  that  they  were  his  children  as  well  as  subjects. 
Nevertheless,  any  well-attested  facts  that  have  come  to  us 
show  the  internal  condition  of  the  Highlanders  under  their 
chiefs  to  have  been  very  miserable,  and  prove  that  they 
suffered  often  the  extremities  of  hunger  and  cold,  and  habi- 
tually the  consequences  of  an  insufficient  quantity  of  whole- 
some food,  and  of  the  total  disregard  of  personal  cleanliness 
common  to  men  in  that  stage  of  society,  and,  moreover,  were 
subjected  to  most  cruel  and  tyrannical  treatment  by  their 
chiefs.  The  effects  of  all  this  showed  themselves  in  the 
personal  appearance  of  the  common  Highlanders,  in  their 
short  stature  and  in  their  features.  "  The  gentry,"  says 
Captain  Burt,  "may  be  said  to  be  a  handsome  people,  but 
the  commonalty  much  otherwise  ;  one  would  hardly  think 
by  their  faces  they  were  of  the  same  species,  at  least  of 
the  same  country,  which  plainly  proceeds  from  their  bad 
food,  smoke  at  home,  and  snow,  wind,  and  rain  abroad  ; 


i  o  2      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Governmen  t. 

because  the  young  children  have  as  good  features  as  any 
I  have  seen  in  other  parts  of  the  island." ' 

But  with  all  this,  the  Highlanders'  hardihood  and  power 
of  enduring  wet  and  cold,  sleeping  on  the  snow-covered 
heath  of  a  hillside  wrapped  in  their  plaids  soaked  in  some 
burn  to  keep  out  the  wind,  and  esteeming  a  snowball  for  a 
pillow  as  an  effeminate  luxury,  rendered  them  very  fit  for 
soldiers  in  one  important  particular.  Their  activity  and 
power  of  enduring  fatigue  were  equal  to  their  hardihood 
and  power  of  enduring  wet  and  cold.  They  were  also 
accustomed  to  the  use  of  arms  from  their  boyhood.  They 
were  not,  indeed,  "  fencers," 2  as  an  eminent  writer  has 
called  them,  probably  by  a  slip  of  the  pen.  But  they 
were  first-rate  marksmen,  and  first-rate  broadsword-men, 
or  sword-and-buckler  men.  They  carried  a  round  target 
of  light  wood,  covered  with  strong  leather,  and  studded 
with  brass  or  iron.  In  encountering  musketeers,  before 
the  effective  introduction  of  the  bayonet,  they  had  a  great 
advantage  ;  and  even  after  such  introduction,  they  received 
the  thrust  of  the  bayonet  in  their  bucklers,  twisted  it  aside, 
and  used  the  broadsword  against  the  encumbered  soldier. 
According  to  Captain  Grose,  so  late  as  1747,  the  privates 
of  the  42d  Regiment,  then  in  Flanders,  were  for  the 
most  part  permitted  to  carry  targets.3  But  the  Duke 

1  Letters  from  the  North  of  Scotland,  ii.  107. 

2  This  distinction  is  well  expressed  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  v/hen  he  says  in  the 
"  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  of  Fitz-James  as  trained  to  the  use  of  the  rapier,  in  con- 
tradistinction to  Rhoderick  Dhu,  who  had  been  trained  only  to  the  use  of  the 
broadsword  and  buckler — 

"  Fitz-James's  blade  was  sword  and  shield," 

meaning  that  his  rapier  served  him  both  for  offence  and  defence — that  is,  both 
for  sword  and  shield. 

3  Military  Antiquities,  i.  164.     See  the  account  of  an  encounter  between  a 
Frenchman  with  a  rapier  and  a  Highlander  with  a  broadsword  and  target, 
quoted  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  the  notes  to  the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  from  verses 
between  Swift  and  Sheridan,  in  which  the  Frenchman,  enraged  that,  while  cut 


The  Highlanders  of  Scotland.  103 

of  Cumberland  during  the  rebellion  of  1745  *  made  an 
alteration  in  the  mode  of  managing  the  bayonet  against 
the  Highlanders,  which  deprived  the  latter  in  some 
measure  of  their  advantage.  Whereas  before  each 
bayonet-man  attacked  the  swordsman  fronting  him,  he  was 
now  directed  to  attack  the  swordsman  fronting  his  right- 
hand  man.  He  was  thus  covered  by  his  adversary's 
target  where  he  was  open  on  his  left,  and  the  right 
of  the  adversary  fronting  his  right-hand  man  was 
open  to  him.  Mr.  Skene2  says,  there  is  little  doubt 
that  Montrose  could  after  his  last  victory  at  Kilsyth  have 
placed  Charles  on  the  throne,  but  for  the  habit  of  the 
Highlanders  of  returning  home  after  every  battle  to  secure 
their  spoil.  From  this  opinion  I  altogether  dissent.  Sub- 
sequent events  proved  that  the  charge  of  the  Highlanders, 
however  furious,  could  make  small  impression  on  the  firm 
array  of  Cromwell's  pikemen ;  while  no  enemy  they  ever 
encountered  proved  able  to  withstand  the  charge  of  Crom- 
well's cavalry. 

A  good  deal  has  been  said  of  late  years  respecting  the 
(alleged)  aversion  of  the  Highlanders  to  all  useful  industry, 
even  to  that  which  the  ancient  Romans,  with  all  their  love 
of  war,  looked  upon  as  a  highly  honourable  occupation, 
agriculture,  as  derogatory  to  their  dignity  and  their  man- 
hood. They  are  represented  as  leaving,  like  the  North 
American  Indians  and  other  savages;  all  work  except 
war  or  rapine  to  be  performed  by  their  women ;  and  lying 
basking  in  the  sun  while  their  pregnant  wives  were  em- 
ployed in  digging  or  carrying  heavy  burdens.  But  Captain 

and  slashed  himself,  he  could  not  touch  the  Highlander  by  reason  of  the 
target,  which  caught  all  his  thrusts,  is  represented  as  exclaiming,  "Sirrah,  you 
rascal,  &c.,  me  will  fight  you,  be  gar!  if  you'll  come  from  your  door." 

1  According  to  a  letter  published  shortly  after  in  the  "  Scots'  Magazine." 

2  Highlanders  of  Scotland,  i.  140. 


1O4      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Burt,  the  English  officer  of  Engineers  quartered  for  several 
years  at  Inverness  in  the  early  part  of  the  last  century, 
positively  asserts  from  his  own  experience  that  nothing 
could  be  more  unjust  than  the  received  notion  that  the 
ordinary  Highlanders  are  an  indolent  lazy  people.  "  I 
know  the  contrary,"  he  says,  "  by  troublesome  experience  ; 
I  say  troublesome,  because,  in  a  certain  affair  wherein  I 
had  occasion  to  employ  great  numbers  and  gave  them 
good  wages,  the  solicitations  of  others  for  employment 
were  very  earnest,  and  would  hardly  admit  of  a  denial : 
they  are  as  willing  as  other  people  to  mend  their  way  of 
living ;  and  when  they  have  gained  strength  from  substan- 
tial food,  they  work  as  well  as  others :  but  why  should  a 
people  be  branded  with  the  name  of  idles  in  a  country 
where  there  is  generally  no  profitable  business  for  them  to 
do?"1 

But  it  was  the  policy  of  the  chiefs  to  discourage  as 
much  as  possible  not  only  all  education2 — that  is,  all  know- 
ledge— but  all  profitable  employment  that  might  release 
their  clansmen  from  the  condition  of  abject  slavery  in 
which  they  lived.  Of  this  cruel  tyranny  on  the  part  of 

1  Letters  from  the  North  of  Scotland,  Letter  xix.,  ii.  101,  102.    New  edition. 
London,  1815. 

2  The  testimony  of  Burt  is  confirmed  by  a  MS.  in  the  British  Museum, 
entitled  "  The  Highlands  of  Scotland  described,  with  some  Observations  con- 
cerning the  late  Rebellion,"  that  of  1745,  from  which  Mr.  Hill  Burton  has  made 
the  following  quotation  in  his  "Life  of  Simon  Lord  Lovat,"  pp.  160,  161  : 
"  The  late  Lord  Lovat  was  a  singular  man  in  many  respects,  but  in  two  things 
he  distinguished  himself :  first,  he  not  only  discouraged  all  the  schools  that 
were  erected  in  his  country,  and  declared  himself  an  enemy  to  all  those  who 
educated  their  children  at  home,  but  also  was  at  great  pains  to  convince  the 
chiefs  and  principal  gentlemen  in  the  Highlands,  far  and  near,  how  much  their 
interest  would  suffer  by  them  ;   secondly,  he  did  more   towards  reviving  a 
clannish  spirit  (which  had  greatly  declined  since  the  Revolution)  than  any  man 
in  the  whole  country,  and  used  all  popular  arts  to  impress  upon  the  minds  of 
the  present  and  rising  generation,  how  sacred  a  character  that  of  chief  or 
chieftain  was." 


The  Highlanders  of  Scotland.  105 

the  chiefs,  and  the  abject  slavery  on  that  of  the  clans,  I 
will  give  some  well-attested  proofs.  One  of  the  chiefs 
had  occasion  for  three  or  four  of  his  clan  employed  as 
stated  above  by  the  engineer  officer,  and  on  his  offering 
them  sixpence  a  day  each — at  that  time  in  that  country 
high  wages,  even  if  they  had  not  been  his  vassals — in 
consideration  of  his  having  taken  them  from  other  em- 
ployment, they  remonstrated,  and  said  he  injured  them 
in  calling  them  from  sixteenpence  a  day  to  sixpence. 
"And  I  may  well  remember/'  adds  Captain  Burt,  "he 
then  told  me,  that  if  any  of  those  people  had  formerly 
said  as  much  to  their  chief,  they  would  have  been  carried 
to  the  next  rock  and  precipitated."  '  This  shows  the  sort 
of  tyranny  under  which  the  Highlanders  lived  ;  and  what 
follows  will  show  that  what  Lord  Lovat  meant  by  keeping 
up  "  a  clannish  spirit,"  and  "impressing  upon  the  minds 
of  the  present  and  rising  generation  how  sacred  a  character 
that  of  chief  was,"  amounted  to  the  assertion  of  the  claim 
on  the  part  of  the  chiefs  to  hang  men  up  by  the  heels  on 
trees,  or  throw  them  down  precipices,  without  any  law  but 
their  own  will  and  pleasure.  The  reader  is  probably 
acquainted  with  the  story  told  by  Sir  Walter  Scott2  of  the 
young  man  whom  his  uncle,  a  chief  of  the  Western  Isles, 
threw  into  the  pit  or  deep  dark  dungeon  of  his  castle, 
and  having  first  kept  him  without  food  till  his  appetite 
grew  voracious,  and  then  let  down  a  quantity  of  salt  beef 
which  the  unhappy  prisoner  eagerly  devoured,  left  him  to 
perish  by  the  raging  thirst  which  that  food  had  excited. 
King,  in  his  description  of  life  at  Castle  Dounie,  the. 
residence  of  Lord  Lovat,  which  he  gives  from  the  remi- 
niscences of  James  Ferguson,  the  astronomer,  who  in  the 

1  Letters,  ii.  103. 

2  History  of  Scotland,  contained  in  Tales  of  a  Grandfather,  chap,  xxxviii. 


io6      Striiggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

early  part  of  his  life  was  constrained  to  dwell  several 
months  in  that  Highland  castle  of  Mauprat,  after -say  ing 
that  the  only  provision  made  for  the  lodging  either  of  the 
domestic  servants  or  of  the  numerous  herd  of  retainers,  was 
a  quantity  of  straw  spread  overnight  on  the  floors  of  the 
four  lower  rooms  of  the  tower-like  structure,  thus  continues: 
"  Sometimes  about  400  persons,  attending  this  petty  court, 
were  kennelled  here,  and  I  have  heard  the  same  worthy 
man  [Ferguson],  from  whose  lips  the  exact  account  of 
what  is  here  related  has  been  taken,  declare  that  of  those 
wretched  dependants  he  has  seen,  in  consequence  of  the 
then  existing  right  of  heritable  jurisdiction,  three  or  four, 
and  sometimes  half-a-dozen,  hung  up  by  the  heels  for  hours 
on  the  few  trees  round  the  mansion."1  It  appears,  then,  that 
Shakespeare  fell  short  of  the  truth  when  he  made  Macbeth 
say,  "  Upon  the  next  tree  shalt  thou  hang  alive  till  famine 
cling  thee,"  since  if  the  victims  were  hung  up  by  the  heels, 
suffocation  or  apoplexy  would  settle  the  matter  before 
famine  had  time  to  step  in.  What  the  Highland  chiefs 
were  in  reality,  notwithstanding  a  thin  lacker  of  French 
polish  smeared  over  the  full-dress  side  of  their  natures,  is 
abundantly  shown  even  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  himself,  while 
he  was  striving  to  render  them  objects  of  romantic  in- 
terest. When  Waverley  saw  Fergus  Maclvor  in  one  of 
his  fits  of  passion,  with  the  veins  of  his  forehead  swelled, 
his  nostril  dilated,  his  cheek  and  eye  inflamed,  and  his 
look  that  of  a  demoniac,  Evan  Maccombich,  his  Highland 
ancient,  only  observed  with  great  composure,  "  he  usually 
lets  blood  for  these  fits,"  meaning  that  he  vented  his 
savage  anger  by  the  effusion,  not  of  his  own  blood,  but  of 
that  of  some  of  his  wretched  Highland  serfs.  Some  of  the 
Highland  chiefs  were  also  great  borrowers  from  those  who 
1  King's  Munimenta  Antiqua,  iii.  176. 


The  Highlanders  of  Scotland.  107 

were  in  their  power;    and  woe  to  the  man  who  ever  re- 

fhr 

minded  them  of  a  debt.  He  soon  disappeared,  and  was 
never  more  heard  of.  He  was  either  kidnapped,  sold,  and 
shipped  to  America,  the  West  Indies,  or  the  continent  of 
Europe  ;  or  if  the  kidnapping  proved  difficult,  there  was 
the  oubliette,  the  drowning-pot,  or  the  gallows-hill. x 

From  all  this  an  idea  may  be  formed  of  what  sort  of 
government,  and  what  sort  of  life,  the  people  of  England 
would  have  been  likely  to  enjoy,  if  by  the  ultimate  suc- 
cess of  Montrose's  enterprise,  'those  Highland  leaders,  by 
whose  assistance  that  success  had  been  attained,  should 
have  obtained  the  means  of  introducing  some  of  the 
blessings  of  their  patriarchal  government  among  the 
before  free  people  of  England.  Such  an  event  would 
have  thrown  back  English  civilisation  a  thousand  years. 

1  Burt's  Letters  from  the  North  of  Scotland,  i.  48,  49.  Edition,  London, 
1815.  Culloden  Papers,  pp.  118,  119  ;.and  Lovat  Documents,  quoted  by  Mr. 
Hill  Burton  in  his  "Life  of  Lord  Lovat,"  p.  169.  Jacobite  Correspondence 
of  the  Athol  Family,  cited  Burton's  "  Life  of  Lord  Lovat,"  pp.  151,  152.  The 
Highlands  of  Scotland  described,  MS.,  Royal  Library,  British  Museum,  cited 
ibid.,  pp.  160,  161.  And  that  the  nature  of  the  justice  "  according  to  law  " 
administered  in  the  king's  courts  in  Scotland  was  quite  in  harmony  with  that 
administered  by  the  lords  of-  regality  within  their  respective  jurisdictions,  is 
abundantly  proved  by  that  valuable  publication,  "  Pitcairn's  Criminal  Trials  in 
Scotland."  3  vols.  4to.  Edinburgh,  1833.  It  is  rather  late  now  to  repudiate 
Lurt  as  an  authority,  when  Sir  Walter  Scott,  Mr.  Skene,  and  Mr.  Hill  Bur- 
ton have  all  recognised  him  as  a  great  authority.  Sir  Walter  Scott  has  relied 
on  him  so  much  that  his  descriptions  have  evidently  formed  the  groundwork  of. 
many  of  the  scenes  in  "  Waverley."  Scott  has  indeed  shaded  the  coarser  fea- 
tures out  of  the  pictures.  But  while  in  many  places  he  has  manifestly  copied 
from  Burt  (as,  for  instance,  in  the  description  of  the  dinner  in  Fergus  Maclvor's 
caftle,  where  he,  however,  omits  what  was  necessary  to  make  the  picture  a 
true  picture)  ;  in  others  he  has  expressly  cited  him  as  an  authority,  as  in  the 
notes  to  the  "Lady  of  the  Lake,"  and  in  note  (9)  in  vol.  ix.  p.  20,  of  his  edi- 
tion of  Dryden's  Works.  The  Highlanders  of  the  present  day  need  no  more 
be  angry  with  an  Englishman  like  Burt  for  saying  that  when  he  visited  them 
150  years  ago  they  were  not  cleanly  in  their  habits,  than  the  English  of  the 
present  day  need  be  angry  with  Erasmus  because  when  he  visited  them  300 
years  ago  he  found  them  as  far  behind  the  Dutch  of  his  time  in  cleanliness  as 
the  Highlanders  were  behind  the  English  of  Burt's  time. 


io8      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

The  sttfe  of  the  Scottish  Highlands  at  that  time — and  in 
that  state  it  had  remained  for  centuries,  for  the  law  of 
progress  did  not  operate  on  that  state  of  society  which 
had  about  it  a  sort  of  Asiatic  immutability — in  some 
respects  resembled  the  state  of  Greece  in  the  Homeric 
description.  Mr.  Grote  x  says  the  Phenician  traders  were 
convenient  to  enable  a  Greek  chief  to  turn  his  captives 
to  account,  and  to  get  rid  of  slaves  or  friendless  Thetes 
(freemen)  who  were  troublesome.  When  Poseidon  and 
Apollo  ask  of  Laomedon  the  stipulated  wages  of  their 
labour,  at  the  expiration  of  their  time  of  servitude,  he 
threatens  to  cut  off  their  ears  and  send  them  off  to  some 
distant  islands.2  At  a  distance  of  3000  years  we  find 
Laomedon,  under  another  name,  playing  the  same  game 
in  -the  neighbourhood  of  Inverness  which  he  had  played 
at  the  building  of  the  walls  of  Troy  ;  and — for  he  will 
live  as  long  as  the  world  lasts — he  will  be  found  playing 
it  somewhere  else  3000  years  later. 

I  honour  the  Highlanders  for  their  hardihood,  bravery, 
and  fidelity  to  their  chiefs,  and  they  can  have  no  great 
ground  of  complaint,  if  I  do  not  honour  those  chiefs  for 
repaying  their  bravery  and  fidelity  with  savage  cruelty  at 
one  time,  with  expulsion  from  their  homes  at  another. 
How  such  men  will  fight  when  treated  like  men  and  not 
like  beasts,  the  annals  of  Great  Britain  for  the  last  century 
sufficiently  demonstrate.  How  they  fought  even  when 
treated  worse  than  beasts  are  treated  by  men  of  common 
humanity,  was  shown  in  the  rebellion  of  1745  ;  and  the 
Scottish  regiment  that  fought  best  at  the  battle  of  Dunbar 
was  a  regiment  of  Highlanders.3  I  admit  also  to  the  full 

1  History  of  Greece,  ii.  140. 

2  Iliad.,  xxi.  454,  455.     Compare  xxiv.  752.     Odyss.  xx.  383  j  xviii.  83. 

3  Gumble's  Life  of  General  Monk,  p.  38. 


The  Highlanders  of  Scotland.  109 

extent  the  greatness  of  the  military  genius  of  Montrose, 
which  in  some  respects  was  perhaps  superior  to  that  of 
Cromwell,  insomuch  that  had  Montrose  commanded  at 
Dunbar  and  Worcester,  and  not  been  overruled  by  in- 
capable men,  the  results  of  those  battles  might  possibly 
have  been  different.  At  the  same  time,  such  were  the 
untiring  energy  and  unerring  instinct  for  doing  the  right 
thing  at  the  right  time  of  Cromwell,  and  such  were  the 
discipline,  the  enthusiasm,  and  the  valour  of  his  troops, 
that  the  success  of  Montrose,  if  opposed  to  him,  though 
Montrose  had  wielded  the  whole  strength  of  the  Cava- 
liers, the  Presbyterians,  and  the  Highland  clans  united, 
would  at  best  have  been  very  doubtful ;  while  of  ultimate 
success  at  the  head  of  the  Highland  clans  alone  he  would 
have  had  no  chance  whatever.  But  the  supposition  that 
Montrose  would  not  have  been  overruled  by  incapable 
men  is  one  that  would  never  have  been  realised.  There 
is  nothing  more  difficult  than  to  convince  men  who  claim 
a  descent  from  men  .who  have  'shown  talent  for  war  that 
they  do  not  inherit  such  talent.  No  consideration,  there- 
fore, would  have  deterred  such  men  as  the  King,  as 
Argyle,  and  others  from  rendering  Montrose's  military 
genius  useless.  The  interference  of  the  like  ruinous 
incapacity  on  the  ground  of  hereditary  claims  in  the 
conduct  of  the  armies  of  the  Parliament  of  England 
was  only  put  a  stop  to  by  the  self-denying  Ordinance. 
And  there  was  no  power  to  pass  such  an  ordinance 
either  in  the  mongrel  Parliament  at  Oxford,  or  in  the 
oligarchical  convention  of  Estates  (called  a  Parliament)  at 
Edinburgh. 

Several  years   before  1644  schemes  had  been  agitated 
by   some    of    the    same   parties   who   favoured   and   as- 


no      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

sisted  Montrose  in  1644.  There  is  a  letter x  from  the 
Queen  Henrietta  Maria  to  Wentworth  in  1638,  which 
shows  that  she  was  then  in  confidential  communication 
with  Randolph  Macdonnell,  Earl  of  Antrim,  a  Papist ; 
who  appears  to  have  laid  claim,  as  representative  of  the 
Lords  of  the  Isles,  to  certain  parts  of  the  Highlands  and 
Isles  then  held  by  the  Argyle  family  ;  though  in  a  letter 
to  Wentworth,  in  the  preceding  page  of  the  same  collec- 
tion, dated  "  Inverrarey,  Qth  October  1638,"  the  Lord 
Lome  says,  "  This  people  can  hardly  be  brought  back  one 
step  to  Rome,  which,  on  so  good  grounds,  they  have  cast 
off  and  settled  by  their  laws."2  And"  King  Charles,  in  a 
letter  to  Wentworth  dated  York,  April  il,  1639,  savs> 
"  Wentworth,  to  ease  my  pains  at  this  time  (having  very 
much  business)  I  have  commanded  Henry  Vane  to  make 
you  full  answer  to  yours  of  the  1st  and  2d  of  April.  Only 
I  will  say  this,  that  if  it  be  possible,  it  is  most  fit  that 
Antrim  be  set  upon  Argyle,  and  I  shall  no  ways  despair 
of  the  success,  so  that  you*  lead  the  design,  whereof  I  find 
him  most  desirous.  Therefore  I  desire  you  not  to  shun  it, 
but  to  assist  him  all  you  can  in  it.  So  referring  you  to 
Mr.  Treasurer,  I  rest  your  assured  friend,  Charles  R."3 

Sir  Henry  Vane,  in  his  letter  to  Wentworth  referred  to 
in  the  King's  letter,  and  accompanying  it,  says  : — "  His 
Majesty  hath  commanded  me  to  let  you  know,  that  he  of 
late  having  had  instances  made  unto  him  by  Antrim,  and 
offers  to  infest  Argyle  in  his  country,  thinks  the  time  to 
be  proper  now  to  pass  his  Lordship  a  commission  under 
the  great  seal  of  Ireland  for  the  raising  of  forces,  with 
power  to  transport  them  into  Scotland,  so  as  you  will  be 

1  Strafford's  Letters  and  Despatches,  ii.  221.     The  letter  is  in  French,  and 
is  signed  "  Henriette  Marie,  R." 

2  Ibid.,  ii.  220.  3  Ibid.,  ii.  318. 


The  Highlanders  of  Scotland.  1 1 1 

pleased  to  take  into  your  care  the  managing  of  the 
design  ;  for  without  that,  his  Majesty  having  well  weighed 
your  Lordship's  despatches,  as  well  to  himself  as  Mr. 
Secretary  Windebanke,  cannot  frame  any  success  of  that 
Lord's  undertaking  unless  you  will  patronise  the  same. 
In  confidence  whereof  I  send  your  Lordship  his  Majesty's 
letter  to  Antrim  ;  in  which  he  is  graciously  pleased  to 
declare  himself  unto  him,  that  if  he  will  put  over  3000  or 
4000  men  into  Argyle's  country,  or  any  other  of  the  Cove- 
nanters, he  hath  given  your  Lordship  order  to  give  him 
powers  and  assistance,  that  is,  at  his  own  charge ;  and 
whatever  land  he  can  conquer  from  them,  he  having  pre- 
tence of  right,  he  shall  have  the  same."1 

The  nature  and  extent  of  the  claim  of  the  Earl  of 
Antrim  on  the  possessions  of  the  Argyle  family  will  be 
seen  from  these  words  in  a  letter  from  him  to  Wentworth, 
dated  "  York  House,  July  17,  1638:"— "The  Lord  of  Lome, 
who  possesses  part  of  my  predecessor's  lands  (being  the 
nearest  parts  of  Scotland  to  Ireland),  is  providing  men 
and  arms  with  all  the  power  he  has,  which  he  says* 
and  gives  out  is  to  encounter  me.  This  man  is  my 
enemy."  2  It  would  appear  that  the  King  still  considered 
Antrim's  scheme  worth  support,  notwithstanding  the  un- 
favourable view  of  it  contained  in  Wentworth's  letter  to 
Secretary  Windebank  of  2Oth  March  1638.  In  that  letter 
Wentworth  says  : — "  I  desired  to  know  what  provision  of 
victual  his  Lordship  had  thought  of,  which  for  so  great 
a  number  of  men  would  require  a  great  sum  of  money  ? 

1  Strafford's   Letters   and  Despatches,   ii.  319.     The  words  "  pretence  of 
right "  show  a  prudent  caution  as  to  any  decided  opinion  on  a  question,  the 
difficulty  of  which  maybe  seen  from  Sir  Walter  Scott's  long  note  on  "The 
Lord  of  the  Isles" — Note  vii.  of  the  notes  to  Canto  I.  of  his  poem  with 
that  title. 

2  Ibid.,  ii.  184. 


1 12      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

His  Lordship  said,  he  had  not  made  any  at  all,  in  regard 
he  conceived  they  should  find  sufficient  in  the  enemy's 
country  to  sustain  them,  only  his  Lordship  proposed  to 
transport  over  with  him  10,000  live  cows  to  furnish  them 
with  milk,  which  he  affirmed  had  been  his  grandfather's 
(Tyrone's)  play." *  That  this  scheme  of  the  10,000  cows 
was  not  so  absurd  as  it  may  have  appeared  to  Wentworth, 
appears  from  a  passage  in  "Ludlow's  Memoirs,"  where  it  is 
stated  that  the  rebels  in  Connaught  and  Ulster,  "finding 
themselves  surprised,  retreated  to  the  bogs  ;  but  were  pur- 
sued by  our  men,  who  killed  and  wounded  about  300  of 
them,  in  which  number  were  thirty  officers,  and  took  from 
them  seven  or  eight  thousand  cows,  upon  whose  milk  they 
chiefly  subsisted."  2  Wentworth  urged  many  objections  to 
the  practicability  of  Antrim's  scheme.  First,  he  said,  "  in 
case  (as  was  most  likely)  the  Earl  of  Argyle  should  draw 
all  the  cattle  and  corn  into  places  of  strength,  and  lay  the 
remainder  waste,  how  would  he  in  so  bare  a  country  feed 
either  his  men,  his  horses,  or  his  cows  ? "  That  Went- 
worth's  opinion  was  altogether  unfavourable  to  Antrim's 
scheme  is  clear  from  this  passage  towards  the  end  of  this 
long  despatch  to  Secretary  Windebank : — "  What  dishonour 
it  would  be  to  the  King's  service,  what  a  heartening  and 
encouragement  to  the  ill-affected,  if  this  action  should  mis- 
carry, or  prove  fruitless,  as  I  confidently  believe  it  will,  if 
not  put  into  other  hands  than  these  that  now  assume  it!"4 
There  is  further  light  thrown  on  the  nature  of  the  zeal  of 
the  Earl  of  Antrim,  for  the  cause  of  the  Stuart  king,  in 
another  letter  from  him  to  Wentworth,  dated  Dublin,  i6th 
May  1639,  in  which  he  says  : — "  There  are  come  over  with 

1  Strafford's  Letters  and  Despatches,  ii.  301. 

2  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  412.    2d  edition.    London,  1721. 

3  Strafford's  Letters  and  Despatches,  ii.  302.  4  Ibid.,  ii.  304. 


Montr oses  Victories  and  Cmelties.          1 1 3 

my  cousin  Sir  Donnell  Gorme,  and  out  of  Kintire  and  Ila, 
a  hundred  gentlemen  at  the  least  of  my  name,1  besides 
their  servants,  and  of  all  sorts  there  are  300  men  or  there- 
abouts ;  and  they  coming  hither  out  of  their  distaste  of  the 
Scottishmen's  proceedings  [in  taking  their  country  from 
them],  and  to  show  their  fidelity  to  his  Majesty,  I  could 
do  no  less  than  entertain  them,  till  your  Lordship's  farther 
pleasure  be  known."  The  words,  "to  show  their  fidelity 
to  his  Majesty,"  are  words  and  no  more ;  if  he  had  said, 
"  their  hatred  to  the  Campbells,"  he  would  have  used  words 
that  had  a  meaning.  I  will  give  another  sentence  from  the 
same  letter,  which  shows  that  Argyle's  Highlanders  did 
not  in  1639  wear  the  kilt : — "  I  assure  your  Lordship,  the 
Earl  of  Argyle  goes  in  person  to  the  borders,  and  all  his 
men  clad  in  red  trouse,  and  all  those  in  Kintire  and  Ila 
of  my  name,  that  could  not  escape  from  him,  are  also  to 
be  sent  thither." 2 

In  the  summer  of  1644,  Montrose,  according  to  the 
preconcerted  plan,  had  begun  his  operations  in  Scotland. 
Antrim,  who  is  stated  by  Burnet  to  have  been  a  very 
arrogant  as  well  as  a  very  weak  man,3  and  the  evidence 
given  above  can  hardly  be  said  to  disprove  that  statement, 
had  undertaken  to  send  10,000  Irish  into  that  country;  but 
the  number  which  actually  arrived  was  very  much  below 
that  amount,  being,  according  to  Wishart,  not  above  noo, 
according  to  others,  1600.  As  Montrose's  panegyrists 
have  been  supposed  to  diminish  his  numbers  to  make  his 
exploits  appear  greater,  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible, 
to  obtain  correct  statements  of  the  amount  of  his  forces. 

1  It  would  appear  from  the  way  in  which  he  writes  this  word  "Donnell,"  as 
well  as  his  own  name,  Macdonnell,  that  Donnell  and  Donald  were  the  same 
name,  except  as  to  spelling. 

2  Strafford's  Letters  and  Despatches,  ii.  339,  340. 
5  Burnet's  Hist.,  i.  72. 

VOL.  II.  H 


1 14      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Before  the  arrival  of  the  Irish,  Montrose,  having  entered 
Scotland,  had  occupied  Dumfries  with  a  few  troops.  But 
finding  himself  in  danger  of  being  overpowered  by  very 
superior  numbers,  he  returned  to  Carlisle.  He  then  pre- 
pared for  another  attempt.  In  disguise,  and  accompanied 
by  only  two  attendants,  he  again  entered  Scotland,  and 
reached  the  house  of  a  relation  in  Strathearn,  at  the  foot 
of  the  Grampians.  Having  despatched  his  attendants  in 
quest  of  intelligence,  he  stayed  there  some  days,  pass- 
ing his  time  through  the  night  in  a  little  obscure  cottage, 
and  in  the  daytime  in  the  neighbouring  mountains  alone. 
Bad  news  soon  reached  him.  The  Marquis  of  Huntly 
had  taken  arms  and  been  defeated,  while  Gordon  of 
Haddo  was  made  prisoner,  and  condemned  and  executed 
by  order  of  the  Scottish  Parliament. 

In  the  mountains  a  report  prevailed  among  the  shep- 
herds, that  a  body  of  Irish  had  landed  in  the  north  of 
Scotland  and  were  marching  through  the  Highlands. 
These  proved  to  be  some  part  of  the  Irish  auxiliaries 
whom  the  Earl  of  Antrim  had  engaged  to  send  him.  They 
were  under  the  command  of  Alexander  or  Alaster  Mac- 
donald,  by  birth  a  Scottish  Islesman,  related  to  the  Earl  of 
Antrim.  He  was  called  Coll  Kittoch  or  Colkitto,  and 
was  a  man  of  great  personal  strength  and  courage,  but 
vain  and  opinionative,  and  wholly  ignorant  of  regu- 
lar warfare.1  Montrose  sent  orders  to  him  to  march 

1  "Yet,"  says  Sir  Walter  Scott,  "such  is  the  predominance  of  outward 
personal  qualities  in  the  eyes  of  a  wild  people,  that  the  feats  of  strength  and 
courage  shown  by  this  champion  seem  to  have  made  a  stronger  impression 
upon  the  minds  of  the  Highlanders,  than  the  military  skill  and  chivalrous 
spirit  of  the  great  Marquis  of  Montrose.  Numerous  traditions  are  still  pre- 
served in  the  Highland  glens  concerning  Alister  M'Donnell,  though  the  name 
of  Montrose  is  rarely  mentioned  among  them." — Legend  of  Montrose,  chap, 
xv.  Sir  Walter  Scott  says  in  his  "  History  of  Scotland,"  contained  in  "  Tales  of  a 
Grandfather"  (i.  431),  that  he  was  called  Colkitto  from  his  being  left  handed- 


Montrose' s  Victories  and  Cruelties.  1 1 5 

with  all  expedition  into  the  district  of  Athole,  and 
despatched  messengers  to  raise  the  gentlemen  of  that 
country  in  arms,  as  they  were  generally  well  affected  to 
the  King's  cause.  He  himself  set  out  on  foot  in  a  High- 
land dress,  accompanied  only  by  his  cousin,  Patrick 
Graham  of  Inchbrakie,  as  his  guide,  and  joined  them  so 
unexpectedly  that  the  Irish  could  hardly  be  persuaded 
that  the  man  they  saw  was  the  Earl *  of  Montrose,  till  the 
respect  shown  him  by  the  Athole  men  and  others  who  re- 
cognised his  person  convinced  them  of  their  mistake.  He 
came  just  in  time  when  a  prompt  and  fertile  genius  like 
his  was  needed  to  save  them  from  destruction.  For  Argyle 
was  in  their  rear  with  a  strong  force,  and  the  vessels  that 
brought  them  over  had  been  burnt  by  him  to  prevent  their 
escape ;  the  low  country  was  all  in  arms  to  resist  their 
coming  down  into  the  plains ;  and  the  Athole  men  refused 
to  join  them,  as  they  were  strangers,  apparently  without 
any  authority  from  the  King,  and  not  commanded  by  any 
person  of  sufficient  rank  to  be  regarded  with  respect  by 
the  Highland  chiefs,  who  considered  birth  and  rank  as 
indispensable  to  a  commander  whom  they  were  to 
obey. 

Montrose  having  kbeen  joined  by  about  800  Athole 
men,  instantly  commenced  his  march  towards  Strath- 
earn  and  crossed  the  Tay.  He  was  soon  after  reinforced 
by  a  body  of  about  500  men,  commanded  by  two  of 

But  some  writers  mention  him  as  Alaster  M 'Donald  of  Coll-Kettoch,  and  Sir 
James  Turner  in  his  Memoirs  speaks  of  Alaster  Macdonald's  "old  father, 
commonly  called  Coll-Kettoch,"  or  "  Coll-Kittuch."  And  afterwards  he  calls 
him  "  the  old  man  Coll."  So  that  the  name,  if  not  a  territorial  name,  would 
at  least  appear  to  have  been  a  patronymic.  It  will  be  observed  that  Sir  Walter 
spells  the  word  "  Alister  "  in  one  place,  and  "  Alaster  "  in  another.  Which 
is  correct,  I  cannot  say. 

1  He  was  not  created  Marquis  of  Montrose  till  after  his  victory  of 
Kilsyth. 


1. 1 6      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

his  friends,  Lord  Kinpont,1  eldest  son  of  the  Earl 
of  Menteith,  of  the  family  of  Graham,  and  a  relation  of 
Montrose,  and  by  Sir  John  Drummond,  son  to  the  Earl  of 
Perth,  likewise  a  relation  .of  Montrose.  They  had  been 
summoned  by  the  Covenanters  to  assist  them  against  the 
Irish,  as  public  enemies;  but  on  learning  that  the  Irish 
were  there  under  Montrose's  command,  for  the  King's  ser- 
vice, they  immediately  joined  them.  Montrose  was  in- 
formed by  them  that  a  large  body  of  the  enemy  was  wait- 
ing at  Perth  to  attack  him  as  he  came  down  from  Athole. 
As  he  knew  that  Argyle  and  his  .army  were  following  him 
close,  to  prevent  his  being  hemmed  in  between  these  two 
armies,  he  resolved  to  march  directly  to  Perth,  and  either 
force  the  enemy  to  an  engagement  or  take  the  town. 
When  he  came  within  three  miles  of  Perth  he  found  the 
enemy,  on  the  1st  of  September  1644,  drawn  up  in  good 
order  upon  a  large  plain  called  Tipperrnuir.  They  were 
commanded  by  Lord  Elcho,  and  were  nearly  double 
Montrose's  army  in  number,  .amounting  to  6000  foot 
and  700  horse.2  They  had  cannon  also,  while  Mon- 
trose had  no  cannon  and  only  three  horses  in  his  army, 
of  which  two  were  for  his  own  saddle,  and  the  third  for  Sir 
William  Rollock,  who  was  somewhat  lame.3  It  is  said  that 
the  Highlanders  under  Montrose  were  so  deeply  imbued 
with  the  superstitious  notion  that  the  party  which  first  shed 
blood  would  be  victorious,  that  on  the  morning  of  the  battle 
of  Tipperrnuir  they  murdered  a  defenceless  herdsman, 

1  This  name  should,  it  seems,  be  "  Kinpont,"  not  Kilpont,  as  \Yishart  and 
others  spell  it.     See  Craik's  Romance  of  the  Peerage,  iii.  388. 

2  In  the  "Legend  of  Montrose"  it  is  called  "a  body  of  six  thousand  in- 
fantry  and  six  or  seven  thousand  cavalry."     This  is  surely  a  misprint  for  "six 
or  seven  hundred  cavalry."     Even  Wishart  only  says  "  six  thousand  foot  and 
seven  hundred  horse." — Wishart,  p.  76.     Edinburgh,  1819. 

s  Wishart,  p.  77. 


Montroses  Victories  and  Cruelties.          1 1 7 

whom  they  found  in  the  fields,  by  way  of  securing  this 
advantage.1 

The  advantage  which  the  Lowlanders,  from  the  superi- 
ority of  their  arms  and  discipline,  had  in  former  times 
enjoyed  over  the  Highlanders  no  longer  existed.  Formerly 
the  Scottish  infantry  formed  a  compact  body,  armed  with 
long  spears,  impenetrable  even  to  the  men-at-arms  or 
cavalry  of  the  age,  and  much  more  so  to  Highland  in- 
fantry.2 When  the  musket  was  first  introduced,  its  impor- 
tance was  very  much  overrated  ;  for  as  it  was  not  for  a 
long  time  effectively  combined  with  the  bayonet,  it  was  of 
no  use  except  as  a  firearm.  An  exaggerated  notion  was 
also  entertained  of  its  powers  as  a  firearm,  which  were  long 
very  small,  partly  from  its  weight,  and  partly  from  the  slow 
and  clumsy  machinery  for  discharging  it.3  Although  the 
use  of  cartridges  had  been  introduced  by  Gustavus  Adol- 
phus,  they  were  not  generally  adopted  for  about  a  century 
after  his  time.  The  ball  being  put  loose  into  the  gun,  it  is 
evident  that  there  was  a  risk  of  its  falling  out  before  the 
gun  was  fired,  if  the  barrel  was  held  in  a  position  below 
the  horizontal.  This  circumstance  appears  from  the  fact 
of  one  of  the  usual  articles  of  the  surrender  of  a  place  dur- 
ing this  war,  when  the  besieged  were  to  march  out  on 

1  Sir  Walter  Scott's  notes  to  the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake." 

2  Mr.  Skene  (Highlanders  of  Scotland,  i.  235  et  seq.)  has  cited  many  autho- 
rities to  show  that  the  Highlanders  were  not  the  naked  and  defenceless  soldiers 
in  the  sixteenth  century  which  they  have  been  represented  as  being,  but  that  they 
were  well  acquainted  with  the  use  of  defensive  armour,  and  that  the  steel  head- 
piece, or  bonnet,  and  the  habergeon,  or  the  shirt  of  mail,  reaching  almost  to 
their  heels,  were  in  general  use  among  them.     But  it  is  observable  that  Mr. 
Skene  adduces  no  authority  of  later  date  than  1612.     And  I  have  not  hap- 
pened to  meet  with  any  authority  that  the  Highlanders  engaged  in  the  civil 
wars  of  the  seventeenth  century  were  supplied  with  any  such  defensive  armour 
as  the  shirt  of  mail  above  mentioned. 

3  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  a  man  of  military  experience,  who  wrote  in  the 
time  of  James  I.,  asserts  that  at  that  time  good  archers  would  do  more  execu- 
tion than  infantry  armed  with  muskets. 


nS      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

terms,  being  that  the  garrison  should  march  out  with 
"  matches  lighted  at  both  ends,  and  ball  in  their  mouths."  } 
The  "ball  in  the  mouth"  points  to  the  nonuse  of  cart- 
ridges, and  to  the  balls  being  put  loose  into  the  gun,  in 
which  case  the  mouth  was  found  a  convenient  magazine. 
The  consequence  was,  that  this  exaggerated  notion  of  the 
powers  of  the  musket  without  the  use  of  cartridges  or  the 
aid  of  the  bayonet,  and  the  composing  a  regiment  of  in- 
fantry of  two-thirds  of  musketeers  and  one-third  of  pike- 
men,  led  to  great  practical  disadvantages,  for  the  pikemen 
were  really  at  that  time  by  far  the  most  efficient  part  of  a 
regiment  of  infantry.  And  even  under  Gustavus  Adolphus, 
notwithstanding  the  use  of  cartridges,  we  find  that  the 
Scotch  brigade  did  their  most  effective  work  by  the  club  or 
butt-end  of  their  muskets.  The  disadvantages  above  de- 
scribed were  increased  by  the  introduction  of  a  complicated 
and  elaborate  system  of  discipline,  combining  a  variety  of 
words  of  command  with  corresponding  operations  and 
manoeuvres,  the  neglect  of  any  one  of  which  was  sure  to 
throw  the  whole  into  confusion.  The  Scottish  Lowland 
militia  thus  laboured  under  a  double  disadvantage  when 
opposed  to  Highlanders,  having  neither  their  old  weapon 
the  spear  or  pike,  nor  the  modern  bayonet,  and  being  sub- 
jected to  a  new  and  complicated  system  of  discipline  which 
hampered  them  and  cramped  all  their  movements.  But 
this  is  not  all,  for  we  have  seen  that  the  London  militia  at 
Newbury  and  elsewhere  behaved  as  well  as  the  best  veteran 
troops.  It  may  therefore  be  inferred  that  the  Scottish 
militia  was  neither  so  well  supplied  with  pikes  nor  so  well 
trained  in  the  use  of  them  as  the  London-trained  bands 


1  See  the  articles  of  surrender  of  the  castle  and  garrison  of  Ragland  in 
Sprigge's  "  Anglia  Rediviva."  London,  1647.  The  same  fact  appears  in  the 
surrender  of  the  castle  of  Edinburgh  to  Cromwell  in  1650. 


Montr os^s  Victories  and  Cruelties.          1 1 9 

regularly  exercised  in  their  artillery  -  ground.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Highlanders'  mode  of  fighting  united 
any  advantages  to  be  derived  from  firearms  with  those  of 
their  ancient  habits  ;  for  having  discharged  their  firearms, 
they  threw  them  down,  and  drawing  their  broadswords, 
rushed  furiously  on  enemies  who  had  no  effective  defence 
against  their  attack.  But  the  Highlanders'  assault  would 
have  been  by  no  means  so  successful  against  such  a  ram- 
part of  pikes  as  that  which  at  Newbury  repelled  the  re- 
peated charges  of  Rupert  and  his  best  cavalry. 

Montrose  showed  that  he  perfectly  understood  and 
knew  how  to  avail  himself  of  all  these  circumstances.  He 
placed  the  Irish,  who  though  used  to  the  musket  were 
unarmed  with  pikes,1  and  therefore  unable  to  resist  cavalry, 
in  the  centre,  and  the  Highlanders  on  the  flanks.  After 
a  skirmish  with  the  cavalry  of  his  opponents,  who  were 
beaten  off,  he  charged  with  the  Highlanders,  under  a  heavy 
fire  from  his  Irish  musketeers.  They  burst  into  the  ranks 
of  the  enemy  with  irresistible  fury,  and  soon  put  them  to 
flight.  The  swift-footed  Highlanders  did  great  execution 
in  the  pursuit.  Baillie  informs  us  that  a  great  many 
burgesses  were  killed,  that  "  many  were  bursten  in  the 
flight,  and  died  without  stroke." 3  According  to  Wishart, 
the  number  of  the  slain  on  the  part  of  the  Covenanters 
was  computed  to  be  about  2000,  and  many  more  were 

1  Wishart,  p.  78,  says  that  the  Irish  had  neither  pikes  nor  swords. 

2  Baillie's  Letters,  ii.  92,  old  edition.      The  relative  condition  of  the  Scot- 
tish Lowlanders  at  that  time,  as  compared  with  that  of  the  Highlanders,  bore 
some  resemblance  to  that  of  the  Athenians  at  the  battle  of  Chaeroneia,  as  com- 
pared  with  that  of  the  Macedonians.     The  Athenians  of  that  time  had  relaxed 
their  ancient  military  training,  and  were  generally  averse  to  military  service, 
while  the  Macedonians  possessed  all  the  qualities  of  warlike  barbarians  im- 
proved by  a  high  state  of  military  discipline,  with  all  the  advantages  of  strategy 
which  their  able  leader  Philip  had  learned  from  Epaminondas.    "  The  Athenian 
hoplites  could  not  endure  fatigue  and  prolonged  struggle  like  the  trained 
veterans  in  the  opposite  ranks," — Crete's  History  of  Greece,  xi.  691. 


I2O      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

taken  prisoners.1  Montrose's  loss  was  very  small.  Perth 
surrendered2  to  him  the  same  day,  and  then,  as  he 
plundered  the  town,  though  Wishart  asserts  that  he  did 
not  commit  the  smallest  hostility,  he  supplied  his  troops 
with  clothing  and  additional  arms.  The  Earl  of  Airlie 
and  two  of  his  sons  now  joined  him;  and  as  Argyle, 
whose  army  had  been  augmented  by  a  considerable  body 
of  cavalry,  was  approaching,  Montrose,  both  to  avoid 
him  and  join  with  the  Gordons,  marched  suddenly  on 
Aberdeen  ;  with  an  army,  however,  considerably  reduced 
in  numbers,  for  many  of  the  Highlanders,  according  to 
their  custom,  which  no  general  at  that  time  was  able  to 
abolish,  had  returned  home  to  their  own  districts,  to 
lodge  their  booty  in  safety  and  get  in  their  harvest.  It 
appears,  nevertheless,  from  the  authority  of  Spalding,  that 
Montrose,  when  he  reached  the  Bridge  of  Dee,  near  Aber- 
deen, had  still  a  considerable  body  of  Highlanders  in  his 
army. 

Montrose  having  taken  possession  of  the  Bridge  of  Dee, 
the  principal  approach  to  Aberdeen  from  the  south,  found 
the  enemy  drawn  up  in  order  of  battle  between  the  Bridge 
of  Dee  and  the  city,  under  the  command  of  Lord  Burleigh, 
who  had  with  him  2000  foot  and  500  horse.  Montrose's 

1  Wishart,  p.  81. 

2  Some  of  the  reasons  for  the  surrender  given  in  a  letter  from  the  ministers 
of  the  town  show,  as  Sir  Walter  Scott  has  observed,  how  much  the  people  of 
the  Lowlands  had  at  that  time  degenerated  in  point  of  military  courage.     The 
second  reason  is,  that  the  citizens  had  concealed  themselves  in  cellars  and 
vaults,  where  they  lay  panting  in  vain  endeavours  to  recover  the  breath  which 
they  had  wasted  in  their  retreat,  scarcely  finding  words  enough  to  tell  the 
provost  "that  their  hearts  were  away,  and  that  they  would    fight  no  more 
though  they  should  be  killed."     The  third  reason  is,  that  if  the  citizens  had 
had  the  inclination  to  stand  out,  they  had  no  means  of  resistance,  most  of 
them  having  flung  away  their  weapons  in  their  flight.     Finally,  their  courage 
was  overpowered  by  the  sight  of  the  enemy,  drawn  up  like  so  many  wild 
hounds  before  the  gates  of  the  town,  their  hands  deeply  dyed  in  the  blood 
recently  shed,  and  demanding  with  hideous  cries  to  be  led  to  further  slaughter. 


Montr ose's  Victories  and  Cruelties.          1 2 1 

army  was  now  reduced  to  1500  foot  and  44  horse.  Find- 
ing himself  so  much  inferior  in  horse,  he  intermingled  with 
his  cavalry  some  of  his  musketeers  who  could  keep  up 
with  his  horse  in  speed.  The  enemy's  cavalry  having 
made  an  attack  on  those  of  Montrose,  his  mingled  muske- 
teers and  cavalry  repulsed  them  and  threw  them  into  con- 
fusion. Montrose  then  moved  his  small  body  of  mingled 
cavalry  and  musketeers  to  the  other  wing  of  his  army, 
and  there  also  encountered  and  defeated  the  horse  of  the 
Covenanters.  In  the  meantime  the  two  bodies  of  infantry 
cannonaded  each  other,  for  Montrose  had  with  him  the 
guns  which  he  had  taken  at  Tippermuir.  Montrose  then 
charging  the  enemy,  routed  them,  and  pursued  them  into 
the  town,  his  men,  says  Spalding,  cutting  down  all  man- 
ner of  men  they  could  overtake  within  the  town,  upon 
the  streets,  or  in  their  houses  and  round  about  the  town. 
Seeing  a  man  well  clad,  they  would  first  strip  off  his 
clothes  that  they  might  not  be  spoiled  with  blood,  and 
then  kill  the  man.1 

When  they  had  entered  the  town,  Montrose  returned  to 
the  body  of  his  army,  which  had  encamped  at  "  Two-mile 
Cross,"  leaving  these  barbarians  at  their  work  of  murdering 
men,  dishonouring  women,  and  collecting  plunder  for  four 
days — namely,  Friday,  Saturday,  Sunday,  and  Monday— 
"  and  nothing  heard  but  pitiful  howling,  crying,  weeping, 
mourning,  through  all  the  streets."3  It  is  said  that  he 
had  promised  to  his  troops  the  plundering  of  the  town  for 
their  good  service.  "  The  men  they  killed  they  would 

1  Spalding's  History,  ii.  264,  265.   Edinburgh,  1829.     Bannatyne  Club.     It 
is  important  to  remark  that  Spalding,  a  contemporary  inhabitant  of  Aberdeen, 
being  clerk  to  the  consistorial  court  of  the  diocese  of  Aberdeen,  was  most 
firmly  attached  to  Charles  and  Episcopacy,  and  a  wellvvisher  to  the  general 
success  of  Montrose. 

2  Ibid. 


122     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

not  suffer  to  be  buried,  but  left  their  naked  bodies 
lying  above  ground.  The  wife  durst  not  cry  nor  weep 
at  her  husband's  slaughter  before  her  eyes,  nor  the 
mother  for  her  son,  nor  daughter  for  her  father ;  which  if 
they  were  heard,  then  were  they  presently  slain  also."1 
There  were  other  atrocities  committed  on  the  women  and 
children.  Upon  Saturday  Montrose  came  into  the  town 
accompanied  by  the  Earl  of  Airlie,  his  son  Sir  Thomas 
Ogilvy,  Sir  John  Drummond,  son  to  the  Earl  of  Perth, 
Graham  of  Fintray,  and  others.  And  he  actually  stayed 
Saturday,  Sunday,  and  Monday  in  Aberdeen,  *'the  cruel 
Irishis2  still  killing  and  robbing  all  the  while."  Montrose 
declared  that  he  had  never  shed  blood  except  in  battle. 
But  the  facts  are  proved  by  Spalding,  a  townsman  of 
Aberdeen,  present  on  the  occasion,  who  was  strongly 
attached  to  "  Church  and  King,"  and  a  well-wisher  to 
Montrose  and  his  cause;  consequently,  in  this  case,  an 
unwilling  witness,  whose  testimony  may  therefore  be 
considered  as  conclusive.  Montrose's  chaplain,  Bishop 
Wishart,  has  passed  over  in  total  silence  those  four  days 
of  September  1644,  including  that  Sunday,  the  I5th  of 
September,  when  the  fate  of  Aberdeen  was  like  that  of 
Zutphen  on  a  Sunday  seventy-two  years  before ;  when 
there  was  neither  preaching  nor  praying  in  Aberdeen, 
and  nothing  but  the  death  groans  of  men  and  the 
shrieks  of  women,  and  when  the  king's  lieutenant  could 
not  enter  or  leave  his  quarters,  in  Skipper  Anderson's 
house,  without  treading  on  the  bloody  corpses  of  those 

1  Spalding's  History,  ii.  264,  265. 

2  Ibid.,  ii.  266.     Spalding  uses  this  word  to  comprehend  both  the  Irish  and 
the  Highlanders.      In  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland  the  language  spoken  by  the 
Highlanders  is  called  Erse,  or  Ershe,  or  Irish.     The  Highlanders  of  those 
days,  very  unlike  their  descendants  in  these,  appear  to  have  been,  if  very 
superior  to  sepoys  in  valour,  not  much  superior  in  humanity. 


Montrose  s  Victories  and  Cruelties.          123 

not  slain  in  battle,  and  over  streets  slippery  with  innocent 
blood. 

Let  us  see  if  anything  can  be  said  on  the  other  side. 
On  Friday  the  I3th  of  September  1644,  the  day  of  the 
fight  at  Aberdeen,  Montrose  sent  a  drummer  and  a  com- 
missioner to  deliver  a  letter  commanding  them  to  render 
the  town  to  His  Majesty's  lieutenant,  and  promising  that 
no  more  harm  should  be  done  to  the  town,  but  to  take 
their  entertainment  for  that  night,  otherwise,  if  they  dis- 
obeyed, that  then  he  desired  them  to  remove  all  aged  men, 
women,  and  children  out  of  the  way,  and  to  stand  to  their 
own  peril.  Their  answer  was  to  stand  out.  They  made  the 
commissioner  and  drummer  drink  largely,  and  by  the  way 
the  drummer  was  unhappily  slain ;  at  which  Montrose, 
"  finding  his  drummer,  against  the  laws  of  nations,  most 
inhumanely  slain,  grew  mad,  and  became  furious  and  im- 
patient, charging  his  men  to  kill,  and  pardon  none." ' 
Now,  if  this  provocation  could  be  any  excuse  for  Mon- 
trose's  refusing  quarter  in  the  fight,  and  even  on  first 
entering  the  town — and  it  could  not  even  be  any  excuse 
for  that  in  the  case  of  women  and  men  not  in 
arms — it  could  be  none  whatever  for  keeping  up  this 
abominable  and  inhuman  proceeding  for  four  days,  he 
himself  for  three  of  the  days,  with  his  principal  officers, 
being  present,  and  able  to  stop  it  when  he  chose.  This  is 
a  stain  that  will  stick  to  his  name  for  ever ;  and  will  link 
it  with  Aberdeen  as  the  name  of  Alva  is  linked  with 
Zutphen,  that  of  Nana  Sahib  with  Cawnpore.  On  Satur- 
day the  I4th  of  September  he  had  ordered  the  main  body 
of  his  army  to  march  forward  to  Kintore  and  Inverury ;  but 
it  was  not  till  Monday  the  1 6th  that  the  soldiers  who  had 
stayed  behind,  rifling  and  spoiling  Aberdeen,  were  charged 

•  J  Spalding's  History,  ii.  264. 


124     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

by  tuck  of  drum  to  remove  and  follow  the  camp  under 
pain  of  death.  So  that  it  is  clear  he  could  have  stopped 
the  sack  sooner  if  he  had  liked.  On  Monday,  before  he 
went  out,  he  gave  orders  for  burying  the  bodies.  But  such 
appears  to  have  been  his  negligence  in  regard  to  discipline, 
that  many  of  his  savages  stayed  behind  after  he  was  gone, 
"  rifling  and  spoiling  both  Old  and  New  Aberdeen  piti- 
fully." * 

It  may  be  affirmed  that  though  the  number  of  massacres 
of  unarmed  human  beings  perpetrated  by  those  demons 
in  the  shape  of  men,  the  Spanish  soldiery  of  Alva,  on  the 
people  of  the  Netherlands  exceeded  the  number  of  such 
massacres  perpetrated  by  the  demons  let  loose  by  King 
Charles  and  his  lieutenant  Montrose  upon  the  people  of 
Scotland,  there  was  no  massacre  perpetrated  by  Alva 
which  exceeded  in  circumstances  of  atrocity  and  wicked- 
ness this  Aberdeen  massacre.  Let  this  be  remembered 
when  there  arises  the  question  of  the  chief  criminals,  King 
Charles  and  his  lieutenant  Montrose,  and  then  we  may 
well  suppose  that  the  cry  of  innocent  blood  shed  for  the 
purpose  of  perpetuating  tyranny  would  be  heard  by  the 
avenger  of  blood,  and  that  he  might  say,  "  Place  these  two 
men  in  my  power,  and  if  they  escape,  Heaven  forgive  them 
too ! "  Charles's  trial,  though  it  proved  that  those  who 
brought  him  to  a  public  trial  were  determined  not  to 
follow  the  example  of  the  crowned  assassins  of  other 
times,  was  a  mistake.  There  was  no  law  under  which  he 
could  be  tried.  But  he  was  a  prisoner  of  war  who  de- 
served death  as  a  public  enemy,  and  as  the  employer  of 
him  who  perpetrated  the  Aberdeen  massacre. 

Spalding  describes  the  conduct  of  Montrose's  major- 
general  M'Donald,  who  came  to  Aberdeen  for  a  day  on 

1  Spalding,  ii.  265,  266. 


Mont  rose's  Victories  and  Cruelties.          125 

the  following  i6th  of  March,  as  in  strong  contrast  with 
that  of  Montrose  in  September  preceding.  He  quartered 
all  his  foot  (700)  about  the  Bridge  of  Dee  and  Two-mile 
Cross,  entered  the  town  with  only  a  body  of  horse,  and 
paid  for  all  "  extraordinaries  beyond  their  diet,  which 
indeed  they  took."  When  he  went,  "  a  number  of  the 
Irishis  rogues  lay  lurking  behind,  abusing  and  frightening 
the  towns-people,  taking  their  cloaks,  plaids,  and  purses 
from  them  on  the  high  street."  Stables  also  were  broken 
open  in  the  night  and  the  horses  taken  out.  McDonald 
hearing  of  this,  returned  and  "  called  all  these  rascals  with 
sore  skins  before  him ;  and  so  Aberdeen  was  free  both  of 
him  and  them,  by  God's  providence."  Yet  he  levied  a 
considerable  amount  in  cloth  and  other  commodities  for 
clothing  to  his  soldiers,  and  made  the  town  come  under  an 
obligation  to  pay  the  merchants,  by  laying  on  a  taxation 
to  that  effect,  which,  adds  Spalding,  they  were  glad  to  do 
to  be  quit  of  their  company.1  This  was  what  Montrose, 
if  he  had  been  a  man  of  common  humanity,  or  even  had 
had  a  due  regard  for  that  reputation,  that  fame  of  which 
he  professed  to  be  so  greedy,  and  for  that  glory  of  which 
he  pretended  to  be  such  a  worshipper,  might  and  should 
have  done. 

For  four  days,  as  I  have  said,  did  this  monstrous  cruelty 
continue,  and  it  would  probably  have  continued  till  there 
was  not  an  inhabitant  of  Aberdeen  left  alive,2  for  it  ceased 
then  only  because  the  approach  of  Argyle  obliged  Mon- 

1  Spalding,  ii.  305,  306. 

2  It  distinctly  appears  from  the  statement  of  Spalding  that  there  was  no 
slackening  in  the  work  of  butchery.     Each  of  Montrose's  followers,  he  says, 
"  had  in  his  cap  or  bonnet  ane  rip  of  ofttis  which  was  his  sign.      Our  towns- 
people began  to  wear  the  like  in  their  bonnets,  and  to  knit  to  the  knockers  of 
our  yettis  [gates  or  doors]  the  like  rip  of  oatis  ;  but  it  was  little  safeguard  to 
us,  albeit  we  used  the  same  for  a  protection." — Spalding's  Hist.,  ii.  266. 


126     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

trose  to  evacuate  the  town.  If  Cromwell  or  one  of  his  cap- 
tains had  led  the  army  advancing  against  Montrose  and 
the  brutal  savages  he  led,  the  speedy  result  would  probably 
have  been  such  as  to  gratify  in  the  reader  that  impulse  of 
indignant  revenge  which  the  mere  recital  of  such  revolting 
barbarities  naturally  excites.  But  Argyle,  though  the  head 
of  a  family  and  name  fertile  in  brave  men,  continued  fol- 
lowing Montrose  with  a  superior  army,  but  without  over- 
taking him,  and,  it  has  been  said,  with  no  very  anxious 
desire  to  overtake  him.  Montrose  retreated  northward  in 
the  hope  of  being  joined  by  the  Gordons ;  but  in  this  he 
was  disappointed,  for,  like  Strafford,  he  appears  to  have 
had  a  peculiar  knack  of  making  himself  deadly  personal 
enemies  on  all  hands,  and  when  he  was  a  zealous  promoter 
of  the  Covenant  he  had  used  great  severities  towards  the 
opposite  party,  of  which  the  Marquis  of  Huntly,  head  of 
the  Gordons,  was  one  of  the  chiefs.  Spalding  mentions 
many  particulars  which  must  have  inspired  Lord  Huntly 
with  irreconcilable  hatred  to  Montrose,  and  prevented  any 
hearty  co-operation  with  him.  But  the  jealousy  and  rivalry 
which  form  the  weakness  of  an  oligarchy,  had  also  no 
doubt  something  to  do  with  Huntly 's  conduct  towards 
Montrose. 

Montrose  finding  the  northern  bank  of  the  Spey,  the 
most  rapid  river  in  Scotland,  guarded  by  about  5000  men 
drawn  from  the  adjacent  counties,  had  no  resource  but  re- 
treat to  the  mountains.  Having  therefore  hid  his  cannon 
in  a  bog  and  parted  with  all  his  heavy  baggage,  he  led  his 
men  by  skilful  marches  over  the  mountains,  and  thence 
descended  upon  Athole.  After  several  long  and  rapid 
marches,  Montrose  recrossing  the  great  chain  of  the 
Grampians,  returned  to  Aberdeenshire,  and  then  again  to 
Athole.  He  was  now  deserted  by  many  Lowland  gentle- 


Montrose' s  Victories  and  Cruelties.  1 2  7 

men  who  had  joined  him,  and  who  alleged  that  they  were 
unable  to  undergo  the  fatigue  of  such  constant  and  long 
marches  in  the  midst  of  winter  over  wild  uninhabited 
mountains,  which  were  impassable  for  rocks  and  thickets, 
and  always  covered  with  snow.  The  same  circumstances 
which  caused  the  desertion  of  Montrose's  Lowland  fol- 
lowers rendered  it  impossible  for  Argyle  to  keep  the  field, 
and  sending  his  army  into  winter  quarters,  he  returned  to 
his  own  domains. 

About  the  middle  of  December  Argyle  was  residing  in 
his  castle  of  Inverary  in  the  most  perfect  confidence  that 
no  enemy  could  approach  him,  for  he  used  to  say 
that  he  would  not  for  100,000  crowns  that  any  one 
knew  the  passes  into  the  country  of  the  Campbells,  when 
he  was  astounded  by  the  intelligence  that  Montrose  with 
his  army,  wading  through  drifts  of  snow,  scaling  preci- 
pices, and  traversing  mountain  paths,  which  he  had  be- 
lieved inaccessible  to  anything  in  the  shape  of  an  army, 
had  broken  into  Argyleshire,  and  was  laying  it  waste  with 
fire  and  sword.  He  immediately  embarked  on  board  a 
fishing-boat,  leaving  his  friends  and  followers  to  their  fate. 
The  houses  were  burnt,  the  cattle  driven  off,  and  the  able- 
bodied  men  were  slaughtered. 

The  regions  traversed  on  this  occasion  by  Montrose  and 
his  Highland  army  were  not  only  the  most  rugged  and 
the  most  difficult  to  traverse,  from  the  almost  inaccessible 
character  of  their  physical  form — apart  from  the  storms 
and  the  snow  and  ice  of  winter — but  they  were  and  are 
also  the  most  dreary  and  dismal  of  the  Highlands  of 
Scotland.  An  attempt  has  in  recent  times  been  made  to 
prove  that  the  impressions  produced,  some  150  or  200 
years  ago,  on  Englishmen  such  as  Burt  by  such  scenery, 
arose  from  their  bad  taste  in  scenery,  or  at  least  from 


128     Struggle. for  Parliamentary  Government. 

their  standard  of  taste  being  Richmond  Hill,  and  their 
notion  of  a  poetical  mountain  being  a  hill  "  smooth  and 
easy  of  ascent,  clothed  with  a  verdant  flowery  turf,  where 
shepherds  tend  their  flocks,  sitting  under  the  shade  of  tall 
poplars."1  But  the  fact  is  that  Captain  Burt  was  by  no 
means  insensible  to  either  the  sublime  or  the  beautiful  in 
Scottish  scenery.  He  saw  in  the  Fall  of  Foyers  as  much, 
and  probably  more,  than  many  a  modern  tourist  with 
guide-book  in  hand  teaching  him  where  to  burst  forth  in 
notes  of  admiration.  He  saw  "a  wild  cataract  pouring 
over  romantic  rocks,"  and  he  describes  "  the  side  of  the 
hill  hid  from  sight  in  windy  weather  by  the  spray,  that 
looks  like  a  thick  body  of  smoke;"  and  he  adds  that 
"this  fall  of  water  has  been  compared  with  the  cataracts 
of  the  Tiber  by  those  who  have  seen  them  both."5  He 
also  appreciated  fully  the  beauty  of  that  region  of  Scot- 
land which  writers  of  acknowledged  taste,  Lady  Mary 
Wortley  Montague  and  Sir  Walter  Scott,  have  declared 
to  be  the  most  romantic  region  of  every  country,  that, 
namely,  where  the  mountains  unite  themselves  with  the 
plains  or  lowlands.  For  he  speaks  of  a  part  of  the  country 
of  Athole  as  being  "an  exception  from  the  preceding 
gloomy  descriptions,  as  may  likewise  be  some  other  places 
not  far  distant  from  the  borders  of  the  Lowlands,  which,"  he 
says,  "  I  have  not  seen."3  He  then  describes  the  strath  or 
vale  that  lies  along  the  banks  of  the  Tay  as  presenting 
the  most  romantic  and  beautiful  combination  of  mountain, 
water,  and  wood — the  strath  most  beautifully  adorned 
with  plantations  of  various  sorts  of  trees — in  one  part  the 
ride  through  pleasant  glades,  in  another  through  corn- 

1  Burl's  Letters  from  the  North  of  Scotland,  ii.  13.     New  edition.      Lon- 
don, 1815. 

2  Ibid.,  ii.  71.  3  Ibid.,  ii.  61. 


Montrose's  Victories  and  Cruelties.          129 

fields — then  the  ascent  of  a  small  height  "from  whence 
you  have  a  pleasing  variety  of  that  wild  and  spacious 
river,  woods,  fields,  and  neighbouring  mountains,  which 
altogether  give  a  greater  pleasure  than  the  most  romantic 
description  in  words,  heightened  by  a  lively  imagination, 
can  possibly  do."  The  next  sentence  affords  the  expla- 
nation of  what  has  been  erected  of  late  into  an  astounding 
paradox.  "But  the  satisfaction  seemed  beyond  expres- 
sion, by  comparing  it  in  our  minds  with  the  rugged  ways 
and  horrid  prospects  of  the  more  northern  mountains, 
when  we  passed  southward  from  them,  through  this  vale 
to  the  low  country."  * 

Now,  so  far  is  Captain  Burt's  impression  of  much  of 
this  Highland  scenery  from  being  a  startling  paradox, 
that  it  is  precisely  the  impression  produced  even  in  Scotch- 
men of  education  and  cultivated  taste  in  the  year  1861. 
In  a  paper  in  "  Macmillan's  Magazine"  for  October  1861, 
entitled  "From  London  to  Ballachulish  and  back,"  and 
evidently  written  not  by  a  native  Londoner  but  by  a 
Scotchman,  the  writer  thus  describes  his  walk  of  ten  miles 
from  Inveroran  Inn,  through  the  Marquis  of  Breadalbane's 
deer-forest  of  Blackmount,  to  King's  House  Inn  :  "Forest 
is  the  name  ;  but,  save  some  plantings  near  Loch  Tolla, 
all  consists  of  bleak,  black  hills,  among  which  the  deer 
manage  somehow.  Hill-satiated  as  we  should  have  sup- 
posed ourselves  to  be,  there  was  in  the  dreariness,  all 
along  the  road,  ever  some  new  combination  of  the  few 
simple  features  of  mountain,  glen,  cairn,  gully,  and  small 
moor-girt  lake,  to  interrupt  the  monotony  of  the  impres- 
sion, and  convince  us  how  much  more  various  and  subtle 
are  the  strokes  and  shadows  of  nature  on  our  minds,  in 
any  one  of  its  expanses,  than  are  our  resources  of  language 

1  Burt's  Letters  from  the  North  of  Scotland,  ii.  62. 
VOL.  II.  T 


130     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

in  characterising  them.  It  was  on  our  right  that  the  view 
was  dreariest ;  for  here,  as  I  have  found  from  the  guide- 
books since,  we  were,  without  knowing  it,  on  the  verge  of 
the  great  moor  of  Rannoch,  '  a  track  of  twenty-eight  miles 
by  sixteen,  with  a  mean  elevation  of  about  1000  feet  above 
the  level  of  the  sea,  chiefly  a  wild  waste,  the  largest  and 
dreariest  moor  in  Scotland.'  According  to  the  same  autho- 
rity, the  western  part  of  this  moor  '  lies  well  under  the  eye 
in  the  road  from  Loch  Tolla  to  King's  House ;  and  this 
part  contains  the  flat,  sinuous,  repulsive  Loch  Lydoch, 
seven  miles  long  and  about  a  mile  broad,  and  is,  all  else, 
a  mixture  of  bog,  heath,  and  rock,  hideous  and  dismal, 
without  life  or  feature,  environed  in  the  far  distance  by 
coarse,  dark  mountains/  I  confess  to  a  kind  of  dread, 
dull  affection  for  the  Stygian  tract,  thus  outcast  of  the 
guide-books,  which  I  saw  without  knowing  its  name, 
though  the  'repulsive  loch'  began  its  leech-like  length 
over  the  dismal  moor  at  our  feet,  and  the  'coarse,  dark 
mountains'  seemed,  as  we  walked,  to  bound  in  some 
realm  of  ugliness  and  doom.  .  .  .  Never  did  I,  and  never 
did  my  companion,  see  a  scene  so  unearthly,  so  Acherontic. 
It  was  getting  towards  evening ;  the  rain  had  been  with 
us  all  day;  the  whole  air  around  us  was  charged  with 
vapour ;  but  down  in  the  huge  hollow  before  us  the  vapour 
lay  in  one  whitish,  semi-transparent  sea  of  mist,  in  which 
all  things  tangible  seemed  to  end,  through  which  there 
seemed  to  come  disturbing  puffs  and  motions,  clearing 
darker  chasms  which  slowly  rilled  up  again,  while  the 
boundary  behind  was  a  ridge  of  opaque  and  formless 
ground,  rising  into  what  might  be  hills,  but  holding,  as  if 
half  up  the  height  of  the  hills,  a  chain  of  glimmering 
lakes.  The  ghastliness  of  the  misty  hollow,  and  especially 
of  these  glimmering  water-islets,  hung  in  the  seeming 


Montrose's  Victories  and  Cruelties.          131 

gloom  of  hills,  was  positively  appalling.  We  looked  again 
and  again ;  our  pace  slackened ;  we  were,  not  as  tourists 
descending  a  common  road  to  an  inn,  but  as  men  who 
had  been  under  a  lure  into  those  savage  parts,  and  might 
now  be  descending  into  an  Inferno." 

Milton  returning  to  England  from  Italy  by  Geneva, 
"  must,"  says  one  of  his  biographers,  "  have  been  delighted 
with  the  lake  scenery  and  Alpine  summits  of  this  magni- 
ficent country."  If  Milton  was  delighted  with  the  Alpine 
scenery,  he  did  not  say  so  either  in  prose  or  verse.  The 
only  allusion  he  has  made  to  the  Alpine  scenery  is  where 
he  uses  it  as  an  illustration  of  the  scenery  of  his  Hell.1  It 
has  now  become  the  fashion  to  be  in  raptures  of  admira- 
tion of  this  scenery  which  Milton  passed  over  without 
remarking  either  beauty  or  grandeur  in  it.  And  this 
could  hardly  be  from  the  vulgar  and  prosaic  character  of 
Milton's  mind  ;  for  the  very  man  who  brought  this  scenery 
into  fashion — Lord  Byron — has  said  of  Milton,  that  Time 
the  avenger  has  made  the  word  Miltonic  mean  sublime. 
An  instructive  chapter  might  be  written  from  this  text  on 
the  association  of  ideas ;  and  some  assistance  towards  the 
solution  of  the  problem  might  be  obtained  from  the 
account  given  by  Bishop  Berkeley,  like  Milton,  a  man  of 
cultivated  mind,  of  his  passage  of  the  Alps  some  seventy 
years  after  Milton  passed  them.  "  Savoy,"  writes  Berkeley, 
in  a  letter  dated  Turin,  January  6,  1714,  N.S.,  "  was  a  per- 
petual chain  of  rocks  and  mountains  almost  impassable 
for  ice  and  snow.  And  yet  I  rode  post  through  it,  and 
came  off  with  only  four  falls,  from  which  I  received  no 

1  "Through  many  a  dark  and  dreary  vale 

They  passed,  and  many  a  region  dolorous — 

O'er  many  a  frozen,  many  a  fiery  Alp — 

Rocks,  caves,  lakes,  fens,  bogs,  dens,  and  shades  of  death." 

Paradise  Lost,  b.  ii.  vv.  618-620. 


132     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

other  damage  than  the  breaking  my  sword,  my  watch,  and 
my  snuff-box.     On  New  Year's   Day  we  passed  Mount 
Cenis.     We  were  carried  in  open  chairs  by  men  used  to 
scale  these  rocks  and  precipices.     My  life  often  depended 
on  a  single  step."1     In  such  circumstances,  as  Gray  re- 
marks in  a  letter  quoted  by  Lord  Macaulay,2  "  the  horrors 
were  accompanied  with  too  much  danger  to  give  one  time 
to  reflect  upon  the  beauties."     It  is  therefore  hard  upon 
Burt  that  he  should  be  censured  for  preferring  the  beauties 
of  Richmond  Hill  to  the  "sublimities"  or  "horrible  pro- 
spects "  of  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  when  Milton,  the 
sublimest  of  poets,  has  left  no  further  record  of  the  effect 
produced  on  his  mind  by  the  "sublimities"  or  "horrible 
prospects  "  of  the  Alps  than  his  introduction  of  them  into 
his  description  of  Hell.     Such  was  the  sum  and  substance 
of  Milton's  "  Swiss  Journal :"  yet  Milton  does  not  say  that 
the  scenery  was  not  sublime;  but  the  beauty  which  later 
writers  have  discovered  in  addition  to  the  sublimity  Milton 
does  not  appear  to  have  seen.     And  to  those  who  may 
say  that  Milton's  standard  of  beauty  in  landscape  might 
have  been  lowered  by  the   bad  taste  of  his  age,  may  be 
quoted  the  remark  of  Walpole,  that  Milton's  Eden  is  free 
from  the  defects  of  the  Old   English   Garden ;    and   of 
Dugald  Stewart,  that  Milton  in  his  Garden  of  Eden  has 
created  a  landscape  more  perfect  probably  in  all  its  parts 
than  has  ever  been  realised  in  nature,  and  certainly  very 

1  Berkeley's  Letters,  prefixed  to  the  1st  vol.  of  his  works.     London,  1820. 
Berkeley's  wearing  a  sword,  as  appears  from  this  extract,  might  lead  to  the 
inference  that  he  was  not  then  in  holy  orders,  were  it  not  that  he  was  then 
travelling  to  Italy  "  in  quality,"  as  he  says  himself  in  a  letter  to  Pope,  dated 
Leghorn,  May  1714,  "by  the  favour  of  my  good  friend  the  Dean  of  St. 
Patrick's  [Swift],  chaplain  to  the  Earl  of  Peterborough. " 

2  Hist,  of  England,  iii.  28,  note. 


Montr os  Js  Victories  and  Cruelties.          133 

different  from  anything  that  this   country  exhibited    at 
the  time  when  he  wrote.1 

Bishop  Wishart  says  that  Argyle  first  practised  this 
cruel  method  of  waging  war  against  the  innocent  country- 
people  by  fire  and  devastation,  but  he  gives  no  proof  of 
his  assertion ;  and  he  then  gravely  tells  us  that  Montrose 
ever  afterwards  acknowledged  that  he  had  never  experi- 
enced the  singular  providence  and  goodness  of  God  in  a 
more  remarkable  manner  than  at  this  time,  thus  proving 
that  Montrose  was  a  fanatic  even  in  the  usual  meaning  of 
the  word.2  Montrose  having  continued  his  work  of  de- 
struction and  slaughter  from  about  the  middle  of  December 
1644  till  near  the  end  of  January,3  withdrew  towards  In- 
verness. When  he  had  proceeded  some  way  he  learned 
that  Argyle  had  returned  into  the  Western  Highlands  with 
some  forces  from  the  Lowlands,  had  assembled  his  numer- 
ous clan,  and  was  lying  with  a  strong  force  near  the  old 
castle  of  Inverlochy,  situated  at  the  western  extremity  of 
the  chain  of  lakes  through  which  the  Caledonian  Canal 
now  passes.  Montrose  instantly  changed  his  course,  and 
by  a  succession  of  the  most  difficult  mountain-passes 
covered  with  snow  returned  upon  Argyle,  and  on  the  1st 
of  February  Argyle's  outposts  were  slain  or  driven  in.  By 
the  time  that  Montrose's  rear  came  up  with  the  rest  of  his 
army,  night  came  on,  but  it  was  moonlight,  and  both  sides 

1  Even  those  who  dissented  altogether  from  the  school  of  metaphysics  to 
which  Stewart  belonged  have  acknowledged  his  power  as  a  lecturer.     "The 
idea  of  Professor  Dugald  Stewart  delivering  a  lecture,  recalls  the  idea  of  the 
delight  with  which  I  heard  him ;   that  the  idea  of  the  studies  in  which  it 
engaged  me  ;  that  the  trains  of  thought  which  succeeded;  and  each  epoch  of 
my  mental  history,  the  succeeding  one,  till  the  present  moment ;  in  which  I 
am  endeavouring  to  present  to  others  what  appears  to  me  valuable  among  the 
innumerable  ideas  of  which  this  lengthened  train  has   been  composed." — 
James  Mill's  Analysis  of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind,  chap.  iii.     The 
Association  of  Ideas. 

2  Wishart,  chap.  viii.  p.  108.  3  Ibid. 


134      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

all  night  stood  to  their  arms,  harassing  each  other  with 
slight  sallies  and  skirmishes,  so  that  neither  gave  the  other 
time  to  repose.  About  the  middle  of  the  night  Argyle 
took  to  a  boat,  and  rowing  off-shore,  remained  at  a  safe 
distance  on  the  lake,  choosing  rather  to  be  a  spectator  of 
the  valour  of  his  men  than  to  share  in  the  danger  himself. 
Some  writers  represent  Argyle  as  retreating  to  his  boat  on 
learning  that  Montrose  himself  was  present  with  his  troops  ; 
but  according  to  Wishart,  Argyle  took  the  step  before  he 
knew  it,  for  part  of  Montrose's  forces  being  concealed  in 
the  gorge  of  the  mountains,  the  enemy,  as  the  prisoners 
afterwards  acknowledged,  did  not  imagine  on  the  1st  of 
February  that  Montrose  himself  was  present,  but  only  one 
of  his  principal  officers,  with  a  part  of  his  forces. 

At  break  of  day  on  the  2d  of  February,  Montrose  drew 
out  his  men  in  order  of  battle,  and  the  Campbells  could 
distinguish  in  the  gorge  of  the  defile  the  war-notes  of  vari- 
ous clans  as  they  advanced  to  the  onset,  one  of  them  bear- 
ing the  ominous  words,  addressed  to  the  wolves  and  ravens, 
"  Come  to  me,  and  I  will  give  you  flesh."  At  length  about 
sunrise  Montrose's  trumpets  sounding  from  the  gorge  of 
the  pass,  in  that  note  with  which  it  was  the  ancient  Scot- 
tish fashion  to  salute  the  royal  standard,  at  once  convinced 
the  enemy  that  Montrose  commanded  in  person,  and,  as 
It  was  the  signal  of  horse,  also  led  them  to  believe  that  he 
had  some  troops  of  horse  with  him.  "  Nevertheless,"  adds 
Wishart,  "the  chiefs  of  the  Campbells  (that  is  the  sur- 
name of  Argyle's  family  and  clan),  who  were  indeed  a  set 
of  very  brave  men,  and  worthy  of  a  better  chieftain  and  a 
better  cause,  began  the  battle  with  very  great  courage."  J 
Argyle's  forces  consisted  altogether  of  about  3000  men. 
A  considerable  portion  of  these  being  composed  of  such 

1  Wishart,  chap.  viii.  p.  112.     Edition,  Edinburgh,  1819. 


Montr oses  Victories  and  Cruelties.          135 

half-trained  and  ill-armed  Lowlanders  as  I  have  before 
described,  were  divided  between  the  two  flanks.  The  rest, 
who  were  Highlanders,  and  consequently  trained  and 
armed  as  Montrose's  Highlanders  were,  formed  the  centre. 
The  number  of  Montrose's  force  cannot  be  ascertained, 
but  his  furious  assault  at  once  broke  and  scattered  the 
wings  composed  of  such  troops  ;  and  then  the  centre  being 
charged  on  all  sides  was  quickly  overthrown,  and  the  whole 
army  routed  and  pursued  for  several  miles  with  great 
slaughter.  According  to  Wishart,  there  were  1500  of 
Argyle's  forces  slain,  among  whom  were  several  gentle- 
men of  distinction  of  the  name  of  Campbell,  who  led  on 
the  clan,  and  fell,  adds  Wishart,  "  fighting  rather  too  gal- 
lantly for  the  honour  of  their  dastardly  chieftain."  J 

Montrose  now  resumed  his  purpose  of  marching  to  In- 
verness, which  he  expected  would  surrender  to  him,  as  he 
was  now  joined  by  the  Gordons  and  the  Grants,  who  had 
kept  back  till  they  saw  the  issue  of  his  last  battle.  But 
the  town,  garrisoned  by  two  veteran  regiments,  was  im- 
pregnable. Turning,  therefore,  from  it,  he  let  loose  the 
ferocity  of  his  temper  as  well  as  that  of  his  troops  upon  the 
unprotected  country.  The  towns  of  Elgin,  Cullen,  and 
Banff  were  plundered.  He  then  advanced  farther  south, 
and  burnt  to  ashes  the  town  of  Stonehaven.  "  It  is  said 
the  people  of  Stonehaven  and  Cowie  came  out,  men  and 
women,  children  at  their  feet,  and  children  in  their  arms, 
crying,  howling,  and  weeping,  praying  the  Earl  for  God's 
sake  to  save  them  from  this  fire,  how  soon  it  was  kindled. 
But  the  poor  people  got  no  answer,  nor  knew  where  to  go 
with  their  children.  Lamentable  to  see ! " 2  Such  were 
the  proceedings  that  were  held  out  by  the  ministers  of 
Montrose's  master  as  an  example  to  English  com- 

1  Wishart,  chap.  viii.  p.  113.  *  Spalding,  ii.  307 


136      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

manders ; z  and  such  were  the  tender  mercies  of  "  King 
Charles  the  Good."  But  the  people  of  Scotland  were  not 
to  be  gained  over  by  such  means ;  and  Montrose,  whatever 
he  might  be  as  a  soldier,  showed  that  he  was  no  statesman 
by  resorting  to  them,  and  with  all  his  victories,  he  never 
obtained  a  firm  footing  in  Scotland. 

The  Scottish  Parliament  now  began  to  be  seriously 
alarmed.  They  called  from  the  army  in  England  General 
Baillie,  an  officer  of  skill  and  reputation,  and  Sir  John 
Urry,  or,  as  the  English  called  him,  Hurry,  a  brave  and 
veteran  soldier  of  fortune,  who  had  changed  sides  more 
than  once  during  this  war,  and  was  to  change  sides  yet 
again  before  he  could  change  no  more,  perishing  by  the 
hands  of  the  executioner  for  joining  the  man  against 
whom  he  was  now  fighting.  These  generals,  with  a  body 
of  veteran  troops,  manoeuvred  to  exclude  Montrose  from 
the  southern  districts,  and  at  the  same  time  the  Marquis 
of  Huntly  recalled  most  of  the  Gordons,  and  Montrose's 
cavalry  was  reduced  to  150.  He  was  therefore  com- 
pelled once  more  to  retire  to  the  mountains,  but  he  re- 
solved first  to  punish  the  town  of  Dundee,  which,  says 
Wishart,  "  was  a  most  seditious  place,  and  a  faithful 
receptacle  to  the  rebels  in  those  parts,  having  contributed 
as  much  as  any  other  town  in  the  kingdom  to  carry  on 
the  rebellion,  and  was  kept  at  that  time  by  no  other 
garrison  than  the  inhabitants."2  Accordingly,  on  the  4th 
of  April  appearing  suddenly  before  it  with  a  select  body 
of  his  troops,  he  stormed  the  town  in  three  places  at  once. 
The  Highlanders  and  Irish,  wth  their  usual  fury,  forced 
an  entrance.  They  were  dispersing  in  quest  of  strong 
liquor  and  plunder,  and  the  town  would  undoubtedly,  as 
Wishart  observes,  have  been  soon  burnt  to  the  ground, 

1  Clar.  State  Papers,  ii.  89.  2  Wishart,  chap.  ix.  p.  121. 


Montrose  s  Victories  and  Cruelties.          137 

when  Montrose  received  intelligence  that  Baillie  and  Urry 
with  4000  men  were  not  above  a  mile  distant.  The  suc- 
cess which  attended  Montrose's  exertions  in  this  emer- 
gency to  bring  off  his  men,  though  already  "  a  little  heated 
with  liquor,  and  much  taken  with  the  hopes  of  the  rich 
booty  which  they  already  counted  all  their  own,"  proves 
that  Montrose  might  if  he  had  chosen  have  prevented  or 
at  least  stopped  the  barbarities  at  Aberdeen,  which  would 
no  doubt  have  been  repeated  at  Dundee  but  for  the  timely 
coming  up  of  Baillie's  and  Urry's  forces.  Before  Mon- 
trose succeeded  in  bringing  all  his  men  off,  the  enemy  were 
within  gunshot  of  the  last  of  them.  He  then  ordered  his 
retreat  in  this  manner.  He  first  sent,  off  400  foot,  and 
ordered  them  to  march  with  all  the  speed  they  could 
without  breaking  their  ranks.  He  then  appointed  200  of 
his  most  active  and  swiftest  men  to  follow  them,  and  he 
himself  with  the  horse  brought  up  the  rear ;  but  he  made 
them  march  with  their  ranks  so  wide  as  to  receive  the 
light  musketeers  if  there  should  be  need.  This  retreat 
has  been  considered  as  conducted  with  a  degree  of  skill 
which  established  Montrose's  military  character  as  much 
as  any  of  his  victories.  Such  were  the  hardihood  and 
resolution  of  his  men  that  they  are  said  to  have  marched 
about  sixty  miles,  and  to  have  passed  three  days  and  two 
nights  either  in  marching  or  fighting,  and  without  either 
food  or  sleep.1 

1  Wishart,  chap.  ix. 


(  133) 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

THE  NEW  MODEL  OF  THE  PARLIAMENTARY  ARMY — BATTLE  OF 
NASEBY — MONTROSE'S  SUCCESS  AT  AULDERNE,  ALFORD, 
AND  KILSYTH — HIS  DEFEAT  BY  DAVID  LESLIE  AT  PHILIP- 
HAUGH — SUCCESSES  OF  FAIRFAX  AND  CROMWELL  AFTER 

THE    BATTLE    OF    NASEBY — SURRENDER    OF    BRISTOL 

STORMING   OF   BASING   HOUSE — THE    KIN^S   INTRIGUES 
THROUGH  THE  EARL  OF  GLAMORGAN — END  OF  THE  FIRST 

WAR THE  KING  GOES   TO    THE  SCOTS  AT  NEWARK,  AND 

IS  BY  THEM  DELIVERED  UP  TO  THE  ENGLISH  PARLIAMENT 

EPISCOPACY    ABOLISHED  THE    COURT    OF    WARDS 

ABOLISHED. 

IN  that  military  system  called  the  New  Model,  which 
for  complete  and  effective  organisation  has  never  been 
equalled  in  the  world,  the  commissariat  was  managed  by 
military  officers,  that  distinguished  soldier  Ireton  being 
for  a  considerable  time  at  the  head  of  it,  with  the  title  of 
Commissary-General.  Ireton  was  succeeded  by  another  of 
the  best  of  the  Parliament's  officers,  Whalley,  colonel  of 
Cromwell's  most  distinguished  cavalry  regiment,  of  which 
Richard  Baxter  was  for  two  years  chaplain,  and  which 
he  designates  the  Trusted  Regiment.  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
amid  much  misrepresentation  of  Cromwell  and  the  great 
political  party  to  which  he  belonged,  has  in  "Wood- 
stock" done  justice  to  the  effect  of  that  commissariat 
on  the  food  and  general  comfort  of  the  soldiers.  Such 
soldiers  as  Cromwell's  could  never  have  been  formed  by 
commanders  who  neglected  their  commissariat,  and  by 


New  Model  of  the  Parliamentary  Army.      1 39 

consequence  those  means  which  were  essential  to  the 
efficiency  of  their  troops  in  action. 

Sir  Walter  Scott  introduces  one  of  Cromwell's  troopers 
saying  to  that  commander,  "  Thou  shalt  eat  with  joy  the 
food  of  him  that  laboureth  in  the  trenches,  seeing  that 
since  thou  wert  commander  over  the  host,  the  poor  sen- 
tinel hath  had  such  provisions  as  I  have  now  placed  for 
thine  own  refreshment."  "Truly,"  said  Cromwell,  "we 
would  wish  that  it  were  so ;  neither  is  it  our  desire  to 
sleep  soft,  nor  feed  more  highly  than  the  meanest  that 
ranks  under  our  banners." 

The  English  East  India  Company  formed  their  commis- 
sariat on  similar  principles,  with  what  result  is  well  known. 
From  the  time  when  the  genius  and  valour  of  Clive 
turned  the  tide  which  was  setting  in  strongly  against  the 
English  in  India,  when  he  held  the  post  of  commissary 
to  the  troops  with  the  rank  of  captain,  the  duties  of 
the  Indian  commissariat  were  discharged  by  regimental 
officers,  captains,  or  subalterns  from  the  Company's  regu- 
lar forces.  This  both  caused  them  to  be  more  respected, 
and  secured  a  greater  insight  into  what  was  wanted  from  a 
commissariat  officer  than  was  to  be  attained  by  putting 
the  business  into  the  hands  of  clerks.  On  a  somewhat 
similar  principle  military  officers  were  often  employed  on 
what  might  be  denominated  civil  duties  without  reference 
to  their  military  rank.  Thus  a  man  might  be  found  exe- 
cuting an  office  somewhat  analogous  to  that  of  governor 
of  a  province,  to  that  of  a  Roman  proconsul,  command- 
ing large  forces  and  determining  on  weighty  political 
measures,  who  in  military  rank  was  only  a  lieutenant  in  a 
Company's  regiment.  In  this  manner  the  Company  had 
the  pick  of  able  men  ;  and  it  could  not  afford  to  employ 
worse,  and  in  this  manner  it  furnished  almost  the  only 


1 40      Struggle  for .  Parliamentary  Governmen  t. 

examples  in  modern  times  of  really  great  men,  of  men 
able  at  once  to  manage  weighty  political  affairs  and  to 
command  armies.  It  remains  to  be  seen  whether  the 
abolition  of  the  East  India  Company's  government,  and 
the  substitution  for  it  of  a  government  of  a  very  different 
kind,  will  produce  any  more  such  officers  as  the  long  series 
of  soldier-statesmen  who  have  given  imperishable  lustre  to 
the  government  of  the  English  East  India  Company. 

On  the  day  before  that  on  which  Montrose  stormed  the 
town  of  Dundee — namely,  on  the  3d  of  April  1645 — the 
Self-denying  Ordinances  had  been  passed  by  the  English 
Parliament,  and  the  New  Model,  as  it  was  called,  was  then 
introduced  into  the  Parliamentary  army.  The  New  Model 
was,  in  fact,  nothing  else  than  the  introduction  into  the 
management  of  an  arrny  of  the  same  principles  and  modes 
or  methods  of  action  which  all  men  of  practical  common 
sense,  or  at  least  all  men  of  practical  good  sense,  employ 
in  the  conduct  of  their  ordinary  business.  The  men 
who  had  before  had  the  management  of  the  war  for 
the  Parliament  had,  or  certainly  appeared  to  have,  sought 
how  not  to  do  the  work  entrusted  to  them.  The  men  now 
employed,  on  the  other  hand,  strove  to  do  it — and  they  did 
it — and  that  both  well  and  speedily,  setting  an  example 
and  teaching  a  lesson  to  all  succeeding  ages.  The  war  had 
now  lasted  for  three  winters  and  two  summers,  and  the 
Parliament  (notwithstanding  its  one  decisive  victory  of 
Marston  Moor,  won  not  by  a  peer  or  a  soldier  of  fortune, 
but  by  a  plain  man  of  business  turned  by  the  times  from 
a  gentleman  farmer  into  a  colonel  of  horse)  was  in  a  worse 
condition  than  when  it  began.  In  England,  except  at 
Marston  Moor,  the  King  seemed  to  have  everywhere  the 
best  of  it;  and  in  Scotland,  Montrose  had  hitherto 
marched,  and  was  to  march  for  some  months  longer,  from 


New  Model  of  the  Parliamentary  A  rniy.      1 4 1 

victory  to  victory.  And  yet  such  was  the  effect  of  simply 
taking  the  management  of  the  war  out  of  the  hands  of  in- 
capable and  putting  it  into  the  hands  of  capable  men,  that 
in  less  than  a  year  from  the  time  when  the  New  Model  was 
put  in  operation,  the  King's  forces  were  everywhere  totally 
defeated  and  the  first  civil  war  was  ended. 

Sir  Thomas  Fairfax's  commission  had  been  granted  on 
the   ist  of  April,  and  on  the  3d  of  April  he  went  from 
London  to  Windsor  to  assist  personally  in  the   framing 
of  a  new  army.     This  work  occupied  him  to  the  end  of 
April,  the  forces  that  remained  of  the  old  army  being  not 
only  to  be  recruited,  but  to  be  reduced  into  new  companies 
and  regiments,  as  if  they  had  been  new  raised.1    Cromwell 
had  come  to  Windsor  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  taking 
leave  of  the  general  on  laying  down  his  command,  accord- 
ing to  the  Self-denying  Ordinance,  when  the  dispensation 
from  Parliament  arrived  with  orders  to  him  to  march  on  a 
particular  service.2     The  new-modelled  army  was  at  first 
regarded  at  once  with  distrust  by  the  professed  friends  of 
the   Parliament,  and  with  contempt  by  its  enemies,  who 
scornfully  termed  it  the  New  Nodel?  and  promised  them- 
selves an  easy  victory  over  it.     "  Never  hardly,"  says  May, 
"  did  any  army  go  forth  to  war  who  had  less  of  the  con- 
fidence of  their  own  friends,  or  were  more  the  objects  of 
the  contempt  of  their  enemies,  and  yet  who  did  more 
bravely  deceive  the  expectations  of  them  both,  and  show 
how  far  it  was  possible  for  human  conjectures  to  err.     For 
in  their  following  actions  and  successes  they  proved  such 
excellent  soldiers,  that  it  would  too  much  pose  antiquity, 
among  all  the  camps  of  their  famed  heroes,  to  find  a  par- 

1  Sprigge's  Anglia  Rediviva,  p.  9.     London,  1647. 

2  Rushworth,  vi.  23,  24 ;   Whitelock,  p.  141.     Sprigge's  Anglia  Rediviva, 
pp.  10,  ii. 

3  Sprigge's  Anglia  Rediviva,  p.  12. 


142      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

allel  to  this  army.  He  that  will  seriously  weigh  their 
achievements  in  the  following  year,  against  potent 
and  gallant  enemies,  and  consider  the  greatness  of  the 
things  they  accomplished,  the  number  of  their  victories, 
how  many  battles  were  won,  how  many  towns  and  garri- 
sons were  taken,  will  hardly  be  able  to  believe  these  to 
have  been  the  work  of  one  year,  or  fit  to  be  called  one 
war.  But  whosoever  considers  this  must  take  heed  that 
he  do  not  attribute  too  much  to  them,  but  give  it  wholly 
to  Almighty  God,  whose  Providence  over  this  army,  as  it 
did  afterwards  miraculously  appear,  so  it  might  in  some 
measure  be  hoped  for  at  the  first,  considering  the  be- 
haviour and  discipline  of  those  soldiers.  For  the  usual 
vices  of  camps  were  here  restrained  ;  the  discipline  was 
strict ;  no  theft,  no  wantonness,  no  oaths,  nor  any  profane 
words,  could  escape,  without  the  severest  castigation ;  by 
which  it  was  brought  to  pass  that  in  this  camp,  as  in  a 
well-ordered  city,  passage  was  safe,  and  commerce  free."  3 
It  will  be  evident  from  what  has  been  said  that  the  por- 
tion of  the  old  army  which  had  been  raised  and  was  com- 
manded by  Cromwell,  was  that  upon  which  the  whole  of 
the  new  army  was  modelled. 

Cromwell  having  marched  immediately  on  the  particular 
service  above  mentioned,  engaged  a  part  of  the  King's 
force  near  Islip-bridge  in  Oxfordshire,  where  he  completely 
routed  the  Queen's  regiment,  and  three  other  regiments  of 
horse,  slew  many,  took  about  500  horse,  200  prisoners,  and 
the  Queen's  standard.  Most  of  the  fugitives  took  refuge 
in  Bletchingdon  House,  which  was  speedily  surrendered  to 
Cromwell.  For  this  surrender,  Colonel  Windebank,  the 
governor,  was  tried  by  court-martial  and  shot,  notwith- 
standing the  great  interest  his  father,  Secretary  Winde- 

1  May,  Breviary. 


Battle  of  Naseby.  1 4  3 

bank,  had  at  Court  for  the  great  service  he  had  done  the 
Church  of  Rome.  Thereupon  his  brother,  a  lieutenant- 
colonel,  laid  down  his  commission.1  Not  long  after,  the 
governor  of  Gaunt  House,  which  was  difficult  of  access  by 
reason  of  the  moat,  being  summoned  by  Colonel  Rains- 
borough  to  surrender  it,  returned  a  positive  refusal,  adding 
that  he  liked  not  Windebank's  law.  Yet  he  surrendered 
it  the  next  day,  without,  however,  undergoing  the  fate  of 
the  unfortunate  Colonel  Windebank.2  However,  Bletch- 
ingdon  House  seems  to  have  been  surrendered  almost 
immediately  on  summons,  while  Gaunt  House  was 
"battered  sore  all  that  day"  (May  31),  and  surrendered 
on  the  day  following.  A  garrison  was  then  put  by  the 
Parliament  into  Gaunt  House,  "  being  a  place  that  was 
conceived  would  much  conduce  to  the  straitening  of 
Oxford."3 

At  the  opening  of  the  campaign  Fairfax  detached  7000 
men  to  the  relief  of  Taunton,  where  Blake,  who  had  before 
so  well  defended  Lyme,  was  hard  pressed  by  the  Royalists. 
Fairfax  having  deceived  the  enemy  by  his  countermarches, 
so  that  the  besiegers  of  Taunton  imagined  his  whole  force 
was  directed  against  them  and  drew  off  from  the  siege, 
proceeded  towards  Oxford.  But  Goring,  Hopton,  and 
Grenville  having  joined  all  their  forces  together,  renewed 
the  siege  of  Taunton,  cooping  up  in  the  town  the  forces 
sent  by  Fairfax  to  its  relief.  The  Scottish  army,  nomi- 
nally 21,000,  but  scarcely  16,000,  was  ordered  to  march 
south  and  join  the  forces  of  the  Parliament  in  Staffordshire, 
Derbyshire,  Yorkshire,  Nottinghamshire,  and  Lincolnshire, 
besides  2500  horse  and  dragoons,  under  Colonel  Vermuden, 
whom  Fairfax  despatched  to  join  them.  This  provision 

1  Sprigge's  Anglia  Rediviva,  pp.  n,  12. 

2  Ibid.,  22.  3  Ibid.,  27. 


144      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

was  held  sufficient  in  case  the  King  should  move  north- 
ward. On  the  other  hand,  in  case  the  King  should  have 
moved  southward  or  westward,  Fairfax,  lying  about  Ox- 
ford,1 was  in  a  position  to  fight  with  him  and  to  hinder  his 
designs.  But  the  Scottish  army,  instead  of  marching  south- 
ward, retreated  into  Westmoreland,  the  Scottish  oligarchy 
being  much  dissatisfied  with*  the  New  Model,  which  did  not 
agree  with  their  notions  of  the  management  either  of  an 
army  or  a  state.  The  King  after  relieving  Chester  had 
taken  by  storm  Leicester,  which  his  troops  plundered  and 
sacked  with  great  inhumanity,  and  the  new-modelled  army 
having  met  with  some  slight  reverses  elsewhere,  the  state 
of  the  Parliament's  affairs  appeared  to  become  critical, 
insomuch  that  the  King  in  a  letter  to  the  Queen  of  June 
8th  wrote,  "  I  may  without  being  too  much  sanguine 
affirm  that  since  this  rebellion  my  affairs  were  never  in  so 
hopeful  a  way." 2 

On  the  8th  of  June  Fairfax  called  a  council  of  war  to 
consider  of  the  best  way  to  engage  the  enemy,  and  he 
made  a  proposition  to  the  council,  which  they  unani- 
mously agreed  to,  that  a  letter  should  be  written  to  the 
Parliament  to  desire  that  they  would  dispense  for  a  time 
with  Lieutenant-General  Cromwell's  presence  in  the 
House,  and  appoint  him  to  command  the  horse,  it  being 
likely  that  there  would  bean  engagement  very  soon.  This 
desire  was  immediately  granted.  Skippon  was  desired 
to  draw  the  plan  of  a  battle,  and  Fairfax  proceeded 

1  While  Fairfax  was  blockading  Oxford  he  made  the  following  capture,  as 
recorded  in  a  contemporary  newspaper: — "  Yesterday  Sir  Thomas  took  three 
carts,  laden  with  canary-sack,  going  to  Oxford." — Perfect  Diurnal,  May 
19-26,  1645.  In  Cromwelliana,  p.  16.  The  Cavaliers  were  of  the  opinion  of 
Falstaff  as  to  the  virtues  of  sack.  But  in  this  war  water  proved  stronger  than 
sack. 

3  Sprigge's  Anglia  Rediviva,  pp.  15-26.  Rush.,  vi.  27  et  seq.  Whitelock, 
p.  141  el  seq. 


Battle  of  Naseby.  145 

with  all  speed  to  concentrate  his  forces.  On  the  I2th  of 
June,  his  army  being  quartered  near  Northampton,  Fair- 
fax took  horse  about  twelve  at  night  and  rode  about  his 
lines  till  four  in  the  morning.  Having  forgotten  the 
word,  he  was  stopped  at  the  first  guard,  and  requiring  the 
soldier  that  stood  sentinel  to  give  it  him,  the  soldier  re- 
fused to  do  it,  telling  the  general  he  was  to  demand  the 
word  from  all  that  passed  him,  but  to  give  it  to  none,  and 
so  made  the  general  stand  in  the  wet  till  he  sent  for  the 
captain  of  the  guard  to  receive  his  commission  to  give 
the  general  the  word. 

About  six  in  the  morning  of  June  I3th  a  council  of  war 
was  called.  In  the  midst  of  the  debate  came  in  Lieu- 
tenant-General Cromwell  with  600  horse  and  dragoons  out 
of  the  associated  counties,  whither  he  had  been  sent  to 
put  them  in  a  state  of  defence  against  an  attempt  which 
was  threatened  by  the  King's  forces.1  Cromwell  was  re- 
ceived with  the  greatest  joy  by  the  general  and  the  whole 
army.  Instantly  orders  were  given  for  the  drums  to  beat 
and  the  trumpets  to  sound  to  horse.  A  good  party  of 
horse  was  sent  towards  Daventry,  under  the  command 
of  Major  Harrison,  to  bring  further  intelligence  of  the 
enemy's  movements ;  another  strong  party  of  horse  was 
sent,  under  the  command  of  Colonel  Ireton,  to  fall  upon 
the  flank  of  the  enemy  if  he  saw  cause;  and  the  main 
body  of  the  army  marched  to  flank  the  enemy  on  the 
way  to  Harborough,  and  came  that  night  to  Gilling ;  "  the 
country,"  says  the  contemporary  historian  who  was  pre- 
sent, "  much  rejoicing  at  our  coming,  having  been  miser- 
ably plundered  by  the  enemy;  and  some  having  had 
their  children  taken  from  them,  and  sold  before  their  faces 
to  the  Irish  of  that  army,  whom  the  parents  were  enforced 

1  Sprigge's  Anglia  Rediviva,  p.  32.     London,  1647,  folio. 
VOL.  II.  K 


146      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

to  redeem  with  the  price  of  money."1  That  evening 
Ireton  beat  up  the  enemy's  quarters,  which  they  had  just 
taken  up  in  the  village  of  Naseby  with  a  negligence  which 
showed  their  want  of  intelligence  and  slight  esteem  of  the 
Parliamentary  army.  Ireton  took  many  prisoners,  and 
upon  this  alarm  the  King  left  his  quarters  at  eleven  at 
night,  and  for  security  went  to  Harborough,  where  Prince 
Rupert  quartered.  A  council  of  war  was  called,  and  it 
was  resolved  to  give  battle. 

On  Saturday  the  1 4th  of  June  Fairfax2  advanced  with 
his  army  by  three  in  the  morning  from  Gilling  towards 
Naseby.  By  five  his  army  was  near  Naseby,  and  soon  after 
the  army  of  the  enemy  being  plainly  seen  advancing  in 
order,  Fairfax  prepared  for  battle.  The  scene  of  action 
was  a  moor  situated  about  three-quarters  of  a  mile  to  the 
north  of  Naseby,  flanked  on  the  left  hand  with  a  hedge, 
which  Fairfax  lined  with  dragoons  to  prevent  the  enemy 
from  annoying  his  left  flank.  The  country  there  consists 
of  long  low  undulations,  and  the  field  on  which  the  battle 
was  fought  sinks  towards  the  middle,  while  the  south  and 
north  extremities  of  it  form  long  low  ridges  of  rising 
ground;  so  that  the  Parliamentary  army  occupying  the 
south  ridge  and  the  Royalist  the  north,  neither  had  any 
advantage  of  ground.  The  hollow  between  the  two 
armies  was  at  that  time  called  Broad  Moor.  The  place 
was  enclosed  about  fifty  years  ago.  The  hedge  lined 
with  dragoons  still  remains  as  in  Sprigge's  map.  The 
village  of  Naseby  would  also  seem  to  be  little  if  at  all 

1  Sprigge's  Anglia  Rediviva,  p.  32.     London,  1647. 

2  Here,  as  at  Marston  Moor  and  elsewhere,  if  the  country  people  of  the 
neighbourhood  profess  to  give  any  traditional  information,  it  is  all  absorbed 
by  the  name  of  Cromwell.    It  is,  "  Cromwell  slept  at  such  a  place  the  night 
before  the  battle  ;"  "  Cromwell's  bones  lie  in  a  grave  nine  feet  deep  in  that 
field  there,"  &c.  &c. 


Battle  of  Naseby.  1 4  7 

changed  since  the  time  of  the  .battle,  most  of  the  cot- 
tages presenting  the  same  picturesque  appearance  as  in 
Sprigge's  plan  of  the  battle.  Fairfax  had  taken  posses- 
sion of  the  rising  ground  on  the  south  side  and  nearest 
to  the  village  of  Naseby,  and  had  drawn  up  his  army  on 
it,  fronting  the  enemy  and  facing  north-north-east.  But 
considering  that  it  might  be  of  advantage  to  draw  up  his 
army  out  of  sight  of  the  enemy/  he  retreated  about  a 
hundred  paces  from  the  brow  of  the  eminence,  that  the 
enemy  might  not  perceive  in  what  form  his  battle  was 
drawn  up,  while  he  might  recover  the  advantage  of  the 
rising  ground  when  he  pleased.  The  enemy  perceiving  this 
retreat,  thought  Fairfax  was  drawing  off  to  avoid  fighting, 
and  advanced  with  so  much  haste  that  they  left  some 
part  of  their  ordnance  behind  them. 

The  centre  of  the  King's  army  was  commanded  by  the 
King  in  person  ;  the  right  wing,  consisting  of  cavalry,  was 
commanded  by  the  Princes  Rupert  and  Maurice  ;  the  left 
wing,  also  of  cavalry,  was  commanded  by  Sir  Marmaduke 
Langdale.  The  Earl  of  Lindsey,  Sir  Jacob,  now  cre- 
ated Lord  Astley,  and  Sir  George  Lisle,  commanded 
the  reserves.  The  main  body  of  the  Parliamentary 
army  was  commanded  by  Fairfax  and  Skippon ;  the 
right  wing,  consisting  of  six  regiments  of  horse,  was  led 
by  Cromwell ;  the  left  wing,  composed  of  five  regiments  of 
horse,  a  division  of  200  horse  of  the  association,  and  the 
dragoons  to  line  the  hedge  before  mentioned,  was  at 

1  When  Bonaparte  on  the  morning  of  the  battle  of  Waterloo  mounted  his 
horse  to  survey  Wellington's  position,  he  could  see  but  few  troops.  This  led 
him  to  suppose  that  Wellington  had  retreated,  leaving  only  a  rear-guard. 
General  Foy,  who  had  served  long  in  Spain,  is  said  to  have  made  this  obser- 
vation, "  Wellington  never  shows  his  troops  ;  but  if  he  is  there,  I  must  warn 
your  Majesty  that  the  English  infantry  in  close  combat  is  the  devil  (1'infan- 
terie  Anglaise  en  duel  c'est  le  diable)." 


148      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Cromwell's  request  committed  to  Colonel  Ireton,  who  for 
that  purpose  was  made  commissary-general  of  horse.  The 
reserves  were  commanded  by  Colonels  Rainsborough, 
Hammond,  and  Pride.  The  two  armies  were  about 
equal  as  to  numbers,  "there  being  in  that  not  500  odds,"1 
or,  there  not  being  the  difference  of  500  men  between 
them.  In  letters  dated  June  12  from  Fairfax's  quarters,  his 
forces  are  stated  to  be  between  16,000  and  17,000  strong.2 
And  the  Parliamentary  writers  state  the  odds,  whether  it 
was  500  or  more  or  less,  to  have  been  on  the  side  of  the 
King,  "especially  in  horse,  on  which  they  chiefly  depended."3 
And  indeed  the  Parliament  too  throughout  these  wars 
depended  chiefly  on  their  horse,  which,  for  the  reasons 
I  have  before  mentioned  in  speaking  of  Montrose's  suc- 
cesses, were  at  that  time  a  more  efficient  arm  than  the  foot, 
with  the  exception  of  such  foot  as  Montrose's  Highlanders, 
who  did  not  suffer  from  the  transition  state  between  the 
discarding  of  the  pike  and  the  invention  of  the  bayonet 
and  cartridge  as  the  other  infantry  did.  The  importance 
attached  to  the  cavalry  is  shown  by  the  fact,  that  if  Crom- 
well had  not  arrived  in  time,  it  was  said  to  be  the  intention 
of  Fairfax  to  lead  the  cavalry  in  person. 

Upon  the  enemy's  approach  the  army  of  the  Parliament 
marched  up  to  the  brow  of  the  rising  ground,  Fairfax 
having  sent  down  a  forlorn-hope  of  300  musketeers  some- 
what more  than  a  carbine-shot  in  front,  who  were  ordered 
to  retreat  when  hard  pressed.  In  the  meanwhile  the 
enemy  "  marched  up  in  good  order,  a  swift  march,  with  a 
great  deal  of  gallantry  and  resolution."4  On  the  right 

1  Sprigge,  p.  40. 

-  Merc.  Brit.,  June  9  to  1 6,  in  Cromwelliana,  p.  18. 

3  Sprigge,  p.  33.  4  Ibid.,  p.  35. 


Battle  of  Naseby. "  149 

wing  of  the  King's  army  Prince  if  upert  charged  furiously 
and  put  to  flight  the  left  wing  of  the  Parliament's  army 
opposed  to  him. 

Ireton,  seeing  one  of  the  enemy's  brigades  of  foot  on 
his  right  hand  pressing  hard  on  the  Parliamentary  foot, 
charged  that  body  of  foot  and  fell  in  among  the  muske- 
teers, where  his  horse  being  shot  under  him,  and  himself 
run  through  the  thigh  with  a  pike  and  into  the  face  with 
a  halbert,  he  was  taken  prisoner,  and  did  not  escape  till 
the  subsequent  turn  of  the  battle.  Prince  Rupert  charged 
the  Parliamentary  horse  opposed  to  him,  says  a  contem- 
porary account,  "  with  such  gallantry,  as  few  in  the  army 
ever  saw  the  like,"  x  and  pursuing  them  almost  to  the 
village  of  Naseby,  in  his  return  summoned  the  train,  where 
Colonel  Bartlet's  regiment,  and  the  firelocks  that  guarded 
the  train,  repulsed  him  and  kept  him  engaged  till  the 
Royal  forces  were  thrown  into  confusion  in  other  parts  of 
the  field. 

On  the  right  wing  of  the  Parliamentary  forces  Crom- 
well, after  a  very  gallant  resistance  by  the  horse  on  the 
left  wing  of  the  King's  army,  completely  routed  them, 
and  detaching  part  of  his  force  to  keep  them  from 
rallying,  turned  back  to  the  assistance  of  Fairfax ;  for 
in  the  centre  the  Parliamentary  foot,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  Fairfax's  own  regiment,  had  been  obliged  to  fall 
back  in  some  disorder  behind  the  reserves.  But  rallying 
again  in  a  very  short  time,  they,  with  the  aid  of  the 
reserves,  forced  the  enemy  to  a  disorderly  retreat,  with 
the  exception  of  one  tertia?  which  after  a  desperate 

1  Extract  from  a  letter  signed  Henry  Maud,  Weekly  Account,  June  1 1  to 
1 8,  in  Cromwelliana,  p.  18. 

2  Tertias,  "whilk  we  call  regiments,"  says  Captain  Dalgetty,  speaking  of 
his  service  with  "the  Spaniard."     The  term  does  not  seem  to  have  come  into 


150      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

resistance  was  at  last  broken,  being  charged  at  the 
same  time  by  horse  and  foot.  In  this  charge  Fair- 
fax with  his  own  hand  killed  the  ensign  who  carried  the 
Royal  colours.  A  soldier  having  seized  them,  and  after- 
wards boasting  that  he  had  himself  won  that  trophy, 
was  reprimanded  by  Captain  D'Oiley  of  the  general's 
life  guard,  who  had  seen  the  action.  "  Let  him  take 
that  honour,"  said  Fairfax,  "  I  have  enough  besides." 
Fairfax  had  lost  his  helmet  in  the  heat  of  the  battle,  and 
D'Oiley  offered  him  his  own,  but  the  general,  saying,  "  It  is 
well  enough,  Charles,"  declined  it.  Skippon,  who  was  now 
far  advanced  in  life,  received  a  wound  in  the  side  at  the 
beginning  of  the  engagement,  and  being  desired  by  Fair- 
fax to  go  off  the  field,  he  answered  he  would  not  stir  so  long 
as  a  man  would  stand.  About  600  of  the  King's  forces 
were  killed  and  about  5000  taken  prisoners.  There  were 
also  taken  8000  stand  of  arms,  with  all  the  artillery,  and  a 
very  rich  booty,  "  many  coaches,  with  store  of  wealth  in 

general  use,  nor  am  I  able  to  say  what  number  of  men  the  term  as  here  used 
indicated.  Mr.  Motley,  in  his  "History  of  the  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic," 
ii.  88,  89,  edition,  London,  1861,  says,  "  An  army  of  chosen  troops  was  forth- 
with collected  by  taking  the  four  legions,  or  terzios,  of  Naples,  Sicily,  Sardinia, 
and  Lombardy,  and  filling  their  places  in  Italy  by  fresh  levies.  About  10,000 
veteran  soldiers  were  thus  obtained,  of  whom  the  Duke  of  Alva  was  appointed 
general-in-chief."  A  terzio  would  thus  amount  to  about  2500  men.  But  it 
appears  to  have  sometimes  exceeded  that  number,  for  Mr.  Motley,  in  his 
"  History  of  the  United  Netherlands,"  ii.  456,  London,  John  Murray,  Albe- 
marle  Street,  1860,  says,  "The  famous  terzio  of  Naples,  under  Carlos  Pinelo, 
arrived  3500  strong — the  most  splendid  regiment  ever  known  in  the  history  of 
war.  Every  man  had  an  engraved  corslet  and  musket-barrel,  and  there  were 
many  who  wore  gilded  armour."  But  when  that  Spanish  infantry  came  into 
collision  with  the  soldiers  of  Cromwell,  the  splendour  of  their  arms  availed 
them  little.  Many  an  Englishman  will  sympathise  with  the  emotion  of 
national  pride  felt,  as  described  by  Macaulay,  by  the  banished  Cavaliers, 
when  in  Flanders  "  they  saw  a  brigade  of  their  countrymen,  outnumbered  by 
foes  and  abandoned  by  friends,  drive  before  them  in  headlong  rout  the  finest 
infantry  of  Spain,  and  force  a  passage  into  a  counterscarp  which  had  just  been 
pronounced  impregnable  by  the  ablest  of  the  marshals  of  France." — Macaulay's 
History  of  Engand,  i.  59.  London:  Longmans,  1864. 


Battle  of  Naseby.  1 5 1 

them,"  including,  besides  the  baggage  of  the  Court  and 
officers,  the  rich  plunder  of  Leicester.  Above  all,  the 
King's  coach,  with  his  private  cabinet  of  letters  and  papers, 
fell  into  the  hands  of  the  victors,  whose  loss  in  killed  was 
very  small — May  says  scarcely  IOO.1 

Although  the  newly-raised  London  Apprentices  do  not 
appear  to  have  evinced  at  Naseby  quite  the  same  degree 
of  steadiness  which  they  had  so  signally  displayed  at 
the  first  battle  of  Newbury,  there  are  some  remarks  of 
Andrew  Fletcher  of  Saltoun  respecting  them  which  are 
well  deserving  of  attention.  "The  battle  of  Naseby," 
he  says,  "  is  generally  thought  to  have  been  the  deciding 
action  of  the  late  civil  war.  The  number  of  forces  was 
equal  on  both  sides,  nor  was  there  any  advantage  in  the 
ground,  or  extraordinary  accident  that  happened  during 
the  fight,  which  could  be  of  considerable  importance  to 
either.  In  the  army  of  the  Parliament,  nine  only  of  the 
officers  had  served  abroad,  and  most  of  the  soldiers  were 
prentices  drawn  out  of  London  but  two  months  before. 
In  the  King's  army  there  were  above  1000  officers  that 
had  served  in  ^foreign  parts :  yet  was  that  army  routed 
and  broken  by  those  new-raised  prentices ;  who  were 
observed  to  be  obedient  to  command,  and  brave  in  fight ; 
not  only  in  that  action,  but  on  all  occasions  during  that 
active  campaign.  The  people  of  these  nations  are  not  a 
dastardly  crew,  like  those  born  in  misery  under  oppression 
and  slavery,  who  must  have  time  to  rub  off  that  fear, 
cowardice,  and  stupidity  which  they  bring  from  home. 
And  the  officers  seem  to  stand  in  more  need  of  experience 
than  private  soldiers ;  yet  in  that  battle  it  was  seen  that 
the  sobriety  and  principle' of  the  officers  on  the  one  side 

1  Sprigge's  Anglia  Rediviva,  pp.  33-45.  Rush.,  vi.  41  et  seq.  White- 
lo£k,  p.  150  et  seq.  Cromwelliana,  pp.  18,  19.  May,  Breviary  Hist.  Parl. 


152      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

prevailed  over  the  experience  of  those  on  the  other." ' 
Fletcher  also  brings  forward  in  support  of  his  views  the 
actions  of  Montrose,  which  he  compares  with  those  of 
Caesar,  "  as  well  for  the  military  skill  as  the  bad  tendency 
of  them,  though,"  he  adds,  "the  Marquess  had  never  served 
abroad,  nor  seen  any  action  before  the  six  victories  which, 
with  numbers  much  inferior  to  those  of  his  enemies,  he 
obtained  in  one  year;  and  the  most  considerable  of  them 
were  chiefly  gained  by  the  assistance  of  the  tenants  and 
vassals  of  the  family  of  Gordon." 2 

The  letters  found  in  the  King's  cabinet  completely 
proved  the  falsehood  of  the  assertions  of  the  King,  made 
with  the  most  solemn  appeals  to  Heaven,  in  regard  to  his 
negotiations  with  foreign  powers  for  supplies  of  troops. 
They  also  fully  established  the  insincerity  with  which  he 
had  entered  into  treaty  with  the  Parliament,  and  exposed 
some  of  his  intentions  with  regard  to  Ireland.  These 
letters  were  publicly  read  in  London  at  a  common  hall, 
before  a  great  assembly  of  citizens  and  many  members  of 
both  Houses  of  Parliament,  where  leave  was  given  to  as 
many  as  pleased  or  knew  the  King's  handwriting  to  peruse 
and  examine  them  all,  in  order  to  refute  the  report  of  those 
who  said  that  the  letters  were  counterfeit  or  forgeries. 
And  shortly  after  a  selection  from  them  was  printed 
and  published  by  command  of  Parliament.  In  a  letter 
to  Sir  Edward  Nicholas,  dated  the  4th  of  August  of  this 
year,  Charles  himself  admits  that  the  letters  are  genuine.3 

1  Discourse  of  Government  with  Relation  to  Militias,  pp.  43,  44.     Edin- 
burgh, 1698. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  42,  43. 

3  Appendix  to  Evelyn's  Memoirs,  pp.  101,  102.   Clar.  iv.  658,  Charles  says, 
"  I  will  neither  deny  that  those  things  are  mine  which  they  have  set  out  in 
my  name  (only  some  words  here  and  there  mistaken,  and  some  com'as  mis- 
placed, but  not  much  material),  nor  as  a  good  Protestant,  nor  honest  man, 
blush  for  any  of  those  papers." 


Battle  of  Nascby.  1 5  3 

May  has  thus  summed  up  the  effect  of  the  publication  of 
these  letters :  "  From  the  reading  of  these  letters  many 
discourses  of  the  people  arose.  For  in  them  appeared  his 
transactions  with  the  Irish  rebels,  and  with  the  Queen  for 
assistance  from  France  and  the  Duke  of  Lorrain.  Many 
good  men  were  sorry  that  the  King's  actions  agreed  no 
better  with  his  words;  that  he  openly  protested  before 
God,  with  horrid  imprecations,  that  he  endeavoured  nothing 
so  much  as  the  preservation  of  the  Protestant  religion,  and 
rooting  out  of  Popery ;  yet,  in  the  meantime,  underhand, 
he  promised  to  the  Irish  rebels  an  abrogation  of  the  laws 
against  them,  which  was  contrary  to  his  late  expressed 
promises  in  these  words,  I  will  never  abrogate  the  laws 
against  the  Papists.  And  again  he  said,  I  abhor  to 
think  of  bringing  foreign  soldiers  into  the  kingdom  ; 
and  yet  he  solicited  the  Duke  of  Lorrain,  the  French,  the 
Danes,  and  the  very  Irish  for  assistance.  They  were 
vexed  also  that  the  King  was  so  much  ruled  by  the  will 
of  his  wife  as  to  do  everything  by  her  prescript,  and  that 
peace,  war,  religion,  and  Parliament  should  be  at  her  dis- 
posal. It  appeared,  besides,  out  of  these  letters,  with  what 
mind  the  King  treated  with  the  Parliament  at  Uxbridge, 
and  what  could  be  hoped  for  by  that  treaty  when,  writing 
to  the  Queen,  he  affirms  that,  if  he  could  have  had  but  two 
more  consenting  to  his  vote,  he  would  not  have  given  the 
name  of  Parliament  to  them  at  Westminster :  at  last  he 
agreed  to  it  in  this  sense,  that  it  was  not  all  one  to  call 
them  a  Parliament  and  to  acknowledge  them  so  to  be, 
and  upon  that  reason  (which  might  have  displeased  his 
own  side)  he  calls  those  with  him  at  Oxford  a  mongrel 
Parliament." J  All  these  things  were  well  calculated 
to  open  the  eyes  of  many  of  Charles's  followers,  as 

1  May,  Breviary  of  the  History  of  the  Parliament. 


1 54     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

well  as  to  confirm   his   adversaries   in   their   distrust   of 
him. 

Montrose  having,  as  has  been  stated,  effected  his  retreat 
from  Dundee,  proceeded  northward.  The  Lord  Gordon, 
Huntly's  eldest  son,  who  continued  attached  to  Montrose, 
was  despatched  by  him  to  bring  back  the  gentlemen  of 
his  family,  and  his  influence  soon  assembled  a  considerable 
force.  General  Baillie  learning  this,  detached  Urry  with 
a  force  which  he  thought  sufficient  to  destroy  Lord 
Gordon,  while  he  himself  endeavoured  to  engage  the 
attention  of  Montrose.  But  Montrose  eluding  Baillie's 
attempts  to  bring  him  to  action,  traversed  with  great 
rapidity  the  mountains  of  the  north,  and  came  into  the 
heart  of  Mar,  where  Lord  Gordon  joined  him  with  1000 
foot  and  200  horse.  He  then  marched  directly  to  the 
Spey  to  find  out  Urry,  and  if  possible  to  force  him  to  an 
engagement  before  he  received  some  reinforcements  he 
was  expecting.  Montrose  had  marched  with  such  rapidity 
as  to  anticipate  all  accounts  of  his  movements,  so  that  he 
was  within  six  miles  of  Urry  when  the  latter  did  not 
imagine  he  had  yet  crossed  the  Grampian  Hills.  When 
Urry  found  him  so  near,  that  he  might  not  be  obliged  to 
fight  before  he  got  his  reinforcements,  he  crossed  the  Spey 
in  all  haste,  and  marched  towards  Inverness,  which  he  had 
appointed  as  the  place  of  rendezvous  for  all  his  forces, 
pursued  so  close  by  Montrose  that  he  had  much  ado  to 
reach  Inverness,  where  he  was  joined  by  the  Covenanters 
of  the  shire  of  Moray,  by  the  Earls  of  Seaforth  and  Suther- 
land, by  the  clan  of  the  Frasers,  and  some  veterans  that 
were  in  the  garrison  of  Inverness ;  so  that,  according  to 
Wishart,  his  army  now  amounted  to  3500  foot  and  400 
horse,  while,  according  to  the  same  authority,  that  of  Mon- 


Montrosc's  Success  at  Aulderne.  155 

trose  consisted  of  no  more  than  1500  foot  and  250  horse.1 
But  Wishart's  statement  of  Montrose's  force  is  here  mani- 
festly inaccurate,  and  made  up  so  as  to  convey  to  careless 
readers  an  exaggerated  notion  of  Urry's  superiority  of 
numbers.  Yet  Wishart,  though  he  understates  Montrose's 
force,  also  understates  Urry's.  According  to  a  better 
authority  than  Wishart,  Spalding,  at  Aulderne  Urry's 
force  was  estimated  at  about  4000  foot  and  500  horse,  and 
Montrose's  at  about  3000  foot  and  horse.2  Next  day 
Montrose  encamped  at  the  village  of  Aulderne,  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  Nairne,  and  as  he  was  reduced  to  the 
dilemma  either  immediately  to  give  Urry  battle  on  very 
unequal  terms,  or  run  the  greater  risk  of  being  hemmed  in 
between  two  armies,  Baillie  with  a  still  stronger  army  than 
Urry's  being  now  advanced  a  considerable  way  on  that 
side  the  Grampians  on  his  march  towards  him,  he  resolved 
to  choose  the  most  advantageous  ground,  and  there  await 
the  enemy. 

The  village  stood  upon  a  height,  with  a  valley  behind  it 
on  the  opposite  side  to  that  by  which  the  enemy  ap- 
proached. In  this  valley  he  drew  up  his  forces  entirely 
out  of  the  view  of  the  enemy.  In  front  of  the  village 
he  posted  a  few  chosen  foot  together  with  his  cannon, 
where  they  were  covered  by  some  dikes,  which  in  Scot- 
land are  low  walls  made  either  of  turf  or  rough  stones  put 
together  without  mortar,  the  latter  being  termed  "dry-stane 

1  Wishart's  statement  of  Montrose's  force  would  certainly  seem  to  be  here 
under  the  mark,  according  even  to  his  own  account,  for  he  says  that  Montrose 
had  just  been  joined  by  Lord  Gordon  with  1000  foot  and  200  horse  (Wishart, 
p.  131),  which  would  make  his  whole  force  before  this  junction  only  55°  in 
all,  whereas  he  had  at  Dundee,  according  to  Wishart  himself  (p.  121),  600 
foot  and  150  horse — while  he  "sent  his  weaker  troops,  and  those  who  were 
but  lightly  armed,  together  with  his  heavy  baggage,  in  by  the  foot  of  the 
hills,  and  ordered  them  to  meet  him  at  Brechin." — Wishart,  p.  121. 

2  Spalding,  ii.  319. 


156      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

dikes."  On  his  right  wing  he  stationed  Alexander  Mac- 
donald,  called  Colkitto,  with  400  foot,  in  a  place  which 
was  accidentally  fortified  with  dikes  and  ditches,  bushes 
and  stones,  and  ordered  them  on  no  account  to  leave  their 
station,  which  afforded  the  advantages  of  a  fortified  posi- 
tion. And  as  his  object  was  to  induce  the  enemy  to  send 
their  best  forces  against  that  point,  where  by  the  disadvan- 
tage of  the  ground  they  could  be  of  no  service,  he  gave 
this  right  wing  charge  of  the  Royal  standard,  which  was 
usually  carried  before  himself.  All  the  rest  of  his  men  he 
drew  up  in  the  opposite  wing,  putting  the  horse  under  the 
command  of  Lord  Gordon  and  taking  charge  of  the  foot 
himself.  By  this  disposition  of  his  forces  Montrose  had 
in  fact  no  centre ;  but  that  small  body  which  he  had 
stationed  in  front  of  the  village,  under  covert  of  the  dikes, 
made  a  show  of  one. 

Urry,  as  Montrose  had  foreseen,  deceived  by  these  dis- 
positions, attacked  the  right  wing  where  the  Royal  standard 
was  with  the  best  part  of  his  troops.  Macdonald  repulsed 
them  with  the  fire  of  the  Irish  musketeers  and  the  bows 
and  arrows  of  the  Highlanders,  who  at  that  time  still  used 
those  weapons;  but  when  the  enemy  taunted  him  with 
cowardice  for  sheltering  himself  behind  the  dikes  and 
bushes,  Macdonald,  whose  bravery  exceeded  his  discretion, 
and  who  was  indeed  daring  even  to  rashness,  sallied  forth 
from  his  defensible  position  and  faced  the  enemy,  who 
by  their  superiority  in  numbers,  and  by  their  cavalry,  soon 
threw  his  men  into  disorder,  and  had  he  not  by  great  per- 
sonal exertions  succeeded  in  drawing  them  off  to  an 
enclosure  hard  by,  they  had  all  been  lost  together  with 
the  Royal  standard.  He  himself  was  the  last  man  that 
entered  the  enclosure,  thus  covering  alone  the  retreat  of 
his  men.  Some  pikemen  pressed  him  so  hard  as  to  fix 


Montrose  s  Success  at  Aiilderne.  157 

their  pikes  in  his  target ;  and  it  has  been  recorded  as  a 
proof  of  the  power  of  the  Highland  claymore  wielded  by 
a  strong  arm,  that  he  repeatedly  freed  himself  of  his  as- 
sailants by  cutting  off  the  heads  of  the  pikes  from  the 
shafts  with   his   broadsword   by   threes   and   fours    at    a 
stroke.1     Just  as  Montrose  was  on  the  point  of  making  a 
general  assault  upon  the  enemy  with  all  the  troops  which 
he  had  upon  the  left  wing,  a  trusty  messenger  came  and 
whispered  in  his  ear  that  Macdonald  and  his  party  on  the 
right  wing  were  put  to  flight.     Montrose,  with  that  pre- 
sence of  mind  which  never   deserted   him,    immediately 
called  out  to  Lord  Gordon,  "  What  are  we  doing  ?     Mac- 
donald has  routed  the  enemy  on  the  right.     Shall  we  look 
on  and  let  him  carry  off  all  the  honour  of  the  day  ? " 
With  these  words  he  instantly  led  on  the  charge.     Urry's 
horse  soon  fled,  leaving  the  flanks   of  their  army  quite 
open  and  exposed.     The  foot,  though  even  when  deserted 
by  the  horse  they  stood  firm  for  some  time,  for  they  were 
veteran  troops,  were  at  length  also  compelled  to  fly  with 
great   loss.      Montrose    now  came   to   the   assistance   of 
Macdonald.     Here  also    Urry's   horse   immediately   fled, 
but  his  foot,  who  were  mostly  old  soldiers,  fought  despe- 
rately, and  fell  almost  every  man  in  his  rank  where  he 
stood.2     Wishart  says  that  of  Urry's  army    there  were 
slain  about  3000.     According  to  another  authority,  there 
were  reckoned  to  be  slain  of  Urry's  troops  above  2OOO.3 
However,  as  Spalding,  who  gives  this  estimate,  states  that 
"  the  Chancellor's  regiment,  called  London's  regiment,  the 
Lothian  regiment,  Lawers'  and  Buchanan's,  were  for  the 
most  part  cut  off,"  4  we  may  infer  that  the  number  of  the 
killed  on  Urry's  side  was  nearer  3000  than  2000.     Spald- 

i  Wishart,  p.  136.  2  Ibid. 

8  Spalding,  ii.  319.  4  Ibid. 


158      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

ing  adds  that  Montrose  had  "some  twenty-four  gentlemen 
hurt,  and  some  few  Irishis  killed."  The  regiment  called 
•  Lawers'  regiment  was  a  very  distinguished  and  gallant 
one,  composed  of  Highlanders  of  the  Argyle  party  or 
clan,  and  their  colonel,  the  Laird  of  Lawers,  a  Campbell, 
was,  according  to  Spalding,  killed  in  the  battle,  and  his 
brother  taken  prisoner.1  We  shall  meet  with  Lawers' 
regiment  of  Highlanders  again  at  the  battle  of  Dunbar, 
where  they  fought  with  the  same  devoted  gallantry  as 
here,  and  with  the  same  ill  success,  being  cut  off  almost 
to  a  man  by  Cromwell's  troopers  and  pikemen.  But  it 
was  the  misfortune  of  the  brave  and  hardy  Highlanders  of 
that  time  that,  except  under  Montrose,  they  never  almost 
met  with  a  leader  worthy  of  their  unflinching  endurance 
and  their  devoted  valour.  This  battle  of  Aulderne  was 
fought  on  the  4th  of  May  1645. 

Urry  was  now  compelled  to  join  his  scattered  forces 
with  those  of  Baillie.  After  some  marching  and  counter- 
marching the  two  armies  again  found  themselves  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  each  other  near  the  village  of  Alford, 
on  the  river  Don  in  Aberdeenshire.  The  Royalist  writers 
say  that  the  number  of  infantry  was  about  2000  in  each 
army,  but  that  Baillie  had  more  than  double  Montrose's 
number  of  cavalry.  On  the  other  side,  the  Parliamentary 
writers  affirm  that  Montrose  had  more  than  double  the 
number  of  foot,  and  an  equal  number  of  horse.  At  all 
events,  it  is  admitted  by  Wishart  himself  that  1000  of 

1  Spalding.  As  Campbell  of  Lawers  became  Earl  of  Loudon,  there  would 
appear  to  be  some  mistake  or  confusion  here  in  Spalding.  The  regiment 
might  have  been  led  by  a  relation  of  Loudon  the  Chancellor,  who  in  this  way 
might  receive  the  pay  of  several  regiments,  as  besides  Lawers'  regiment  and 
Loudon's  regiment,  there  was  Lawers'  horse  (Balfour,  in.  176),  sometimes 
called  the  Laird  of  Lawers'  musquetaires  (Balfour,  iv.  9) ;  where  the  word 
"  musquetaires "  is  used  in  the  sense  of  the  French  "mousquetaires,"  who 
corresponded  to  the  English  or  Scottish  regiments  of  Life  or  Horse  Guards. 


Montr ose's  Success  at  A  If  or d.  159 

Baillie's  veteran  soldiers  had  been  taken  from  him  to  be 
put  under  the  command  of  Argyle  or  Lindsay,  while  as 
many  raw  undisciplined  troops  were  given  him  in  return. 
In  fact  Baillie  was  all  along  thwarted  and  hampered  in 
all  his  movements  by  the  Committee  of  Estates,  particu- 
larly through  the  influence  of  Argyle,  who  fancied  himself 
born  a  general,  as  he  was  born  the  chief  of  a  warlike  clan. 
It  is  said  that  Baillie,  who  was  an  experienced  and  wary 
general,  was  forced  to  this  engagement  much  against  his 
inclination  by  the  rashness  of  Lord  Balcarres,  who  com- 
manded a  regiment  of  horse,  and  had  precipitated  him- 
self and  his  regiment  into  danger,  so  that  they  could  not 
be  brought  off  without  risking  the  whole  army.  The  battle 
was  fought  2d  July  1645,  and  Montrose  obtained  a  complete 
victory  with  the  loss  of  not  one  private  soldier  and  only  two 
officers.  But  his  friend  Lord  Gordon,  whose  death  was  a 
great  loss  to  him,  was  killed  near  the  close  of  the  action.1 

The  Scottish  Parliament,  "  supported  by  the  counsels 
of  Argyle,  who,"  says  Sir  Walter  Scott,  "  was  bold  in 
council  though  timid  in  battle," 2  soon  raised  new  forces, 
and  Baillie  was  appointed  to  the  command.  But  a  Com- 
mittee of  the  Estates,  consisting  of  Argyle,  Lanark,  and 
Crawford-Lindsay,  was  nominated  to  attend  his  army  and 
control  his  motions.  The  Government  of  Scotland,  like 
the  other  European  governments  of  the  Middle  Ages,  had 
consisted  originally  of  a  feudal  aristocracy  with  a  king  at 
the  head  of  it.  But  it '  is  remarkable  what  a  dearth  of 
military  talent  had  appeared  for  a  long  series  of  ages  in 
those  kings  and  that  aristocracy.  From  the  time  of 
Robert  Bruce  and  his  companion  in  arms  James  Douglas, 

1  Wishart,  chap.  xi. 

2  History  of  Scotland  in  Tales  of  a  Grandfather,  i.  444.     Robert  CadelJ, 
Edinburgh,  1846. 


160      Stritggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

from  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  to  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century — that  is,  for  a  period  of  more  than  three 
hundred  years — not  one  man  except  Montrose  had  they  pro- 
duced of  average  talents  for  war.  For  the  preceding  century, 
moreover,  the  aristocracy  had  been  degenerating  into  an 
oligarchy,  so  that  now  the  chance  of  military  talent  arising 
among  them  was  far  less  than  ever.  Notwithstanding  all 
this,  these  oligarchies,  on  whose  tyrannical  pride  and 
hereditary  folly  all  the  lessons  of  experience  were  utterly 
lost,  insisted  on  doing  what,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Roman  Senate,  oligarchies  have  done  from  the  beginning, 
and  will  do  to  the  end  of  time — on  substituting  the  counsels 
of  presumptuous  ignorance  and  rashness  for  those  of  mili- 
tary skill  and  prudence,  and  on  treating  men  who  had 
raised  themselves  to  command  by  skill  and  valour  with 
the  supercilious  insolence  which  is  as  apparent  in  their 
caste  now  as  it  was  two  hundred  years  ago.  General  Baillie 
in  his  "Vindication"  gives  a  most  instructive  picture  of 
the  conduct  of  a  war  by  an  oligarchy.  He  says  that  when 
Argyle  asked  what  was  next  to1  be  done,  he  answered, 
"The  direction  should  come  from  his  Lordship  and  those 
of  the  Committee;"  and  he  adds,  "I  told  the  Marquess  of 
Argyle  I  found  myself  slighted  in  everything  belonging  to 
a  commander-in-chief.  .  .  .  While  I  was  present  others 
did  sometimes  undertake  the  command  of  the  army."1 
The  consequence  was  what  was  to  be  expected. 

Montrose  had  descended  from  the  mountains  and  ad- 
vanced southward  at  the  head  of  a  larger  army  than  he 
had  ever  commanded  since  the  time  when  he  first  marched 
against  Aberdeen  at  the  head  of  the  Covenanters ;  and 

1  Lieutenant-General  Baillie's  "  Vindication  for  his  own  part  of  Kilsyth 
and  Preston,"  in  Principal  Baillie's  Letters  and  Journals,  ii.  420.  f  Edinburgh, 
1841. 


Montr oses  Success  at  Kilsyth.  161 

after  threatening  Perth,  where  the  Scottish  Parliament  then 
sat  in  consequence  of  the  plague  being  in  Edinburgh, 
approached  the  shores  of  the  Forth.  After  many  acts  of 
ravage,  the  principal  of  which  was  the  destruction  of 
Castle  Campbell,1  belonging  to  the  house  of  Argyle, 
situated  on  an  eminence  in  a  narrow  glen  of  the  Ochil 
chain  of  hills,  which  the  vengeance  of  the  Ogilvies  for 
the  destruction  by  Argyle  of  their  castle  bf  Airlie,  "the 
bonnie  house  of  Airlie,"  naturally  enough  doomed  to 
flames  and  ruin,  Montrose  marched  westward  along  the 
northern  bank  of  the  Forth,  and  passing  by  the  town  and 
castle  of  Stirling,  in  which  the  enemy  had  then  a  very 
strong  garrison,  crossed  the  river  that  night  at  a  ford 
four  miles  above  the  town.  Next  morning  about  day- 
break he  halted  a  little  about  six  miles  from  Stirling, 
when  he  was  informed  that  Baillie's  army  had  not  crossed 
the  Firth  that  night,  but  had  lain  about  three  miles  from 
Stirling  on  the  other  side  of  the  river.  Montrose  then  con- 
tinuing his  march,  encamped  in  the  fields  about  Kilsyth, 
and  ordered  his  men  to  refresh  themselves,  but  to  be  ready 
either  for  an  engagement  or  a  march  upon  the  first  notice. 
In  the  meantime  Baillie's  army  had  also  crossed  the  Forth 
by  the  bridge  of  Stirling,  and  encamped  in  the  evening 
within  three  miles  of  Kilsyth.  Baillie,  who  knew  by  ex- 
perience the  talents  of  Montrose,  and  considered  that  an 
army  composed  as  his  was  might  be  tired  out  by  cautious 
operations,  in  the  course  of  which  the  Highlanders  would 
be  likely  to  return  home,  would  have  avoided  a  battle. 
But  the  committee  of  oligarchs  who  controlled  and 

1  This  castle  had  formerly,  perhaps  from  the  character  of  its  situation,  been 
called  the  castle  of  Gloom,  and  it  stood  on  the  banks  of  the  brook  of  Grief  or 
Gryfe,  and  in  the  parish  of  Doulour  or  Dollar.  In  the  sixteenth  century  the 
Earl  of  Argyle  obtained  an  Act  of  Parliament  for  changing  its  name  to  Castle 
Campbell. 

VOL.  II.  L 


1 6  2      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Governmen  t. 

thwarted  the  veteran  general  insisted  on  risking  the  last 
army  which  the  Covenanters  had  in  Scotland,  and  accord- 
ingly they  advanced  against  Montrose  at  break  of  day  on 
the  I5th  of  August  1645. 

When  Montrose  saw  what  they  were  about,  he  was  as 
much  delighted  as  Cromwell  afterwards  was  when  a  coun- 
cil of  incapables,  in  part  composed  of  the  same  magnates, 
drew  down  the  Scottish  army  from  their  fastness  of  Down 
Hill  near  Dunbar.  He  said  that  it  fell  out  just  as  he  could 
have  wished,  and  that  he  would  supply  his  deficiency  of 
men  by  the  advantage  of  the  ground.  For,  according  to 
Wishart,  Montrose's  army  consisted  of  4400  foot  and  500 
horse,  that  of  the  enemy  of  6000  foot  and  1000  horse.1 
But  some  of  the  Parliamentary  writers  say  that  Mon- 
trose's army  was  upwards  of  6000.  Montrose  ordered  his 
men  to  fight  stripped  to  their  shirts.  The  first  attack  of  the 
enemy  was  upon  an  advanced  post  of  Montrose,  which 
occupied  a  strong  position  among  cottages  and  enclosures. 
The  repulse  of  this  attack  with  some  loss  to  the  Covenanters 
so  much  animated  a  body  of  1000  Highlanders  who  were 
posted  hard  by,  that  without  waiting  for  orders  they  ran 
directly  up  the  hill  to  pursue  the  fugitives  and  attack 
the  troops  who  were  advancing  to  support  them.  Two 
regiments  of  horse  became  disordered  by  the  sudden  and 
furious  assault  of  the  Highlanders.  Montrose,  seizing  the 
decisive  moment,  ordered  first  a  troop  of  horse  under  the 
command  of  the  Earl  of  Airlie,  and  then  his  whole  army, 
to  charge  the  enemy,  who  had  not  yet  got  into  line,  their 
rear  and  centre  coming  up  too  slowly  to  the  support 
of  their  van.  The  shout  and  speed  with  which  the  High- 
landers charged  struck  a  panic  into  the  enemy,  whose  horse 
soon  fled,  and  their  foot  throwing  away  their  arms  en- 

1  Wishart,  p.  168. 


Montrose"  s  Success  at  Kilsyth.  163 

deavoured  also  to  save  themselves  by  flight.  But  in  vain, 
for  the  pursuit  continued  with  great  slaughter  for  fourteen 
miles.  Scarce  100  of  the  foot  escaped  with  their  lives. 
Many  of  the  horse  were  also  killed.  All  their  arms  and 
baggage  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  conquerors.  Mon- 
trose  lost  only  six  men.  As  usual,  since  the  military 
aristocracy  had  been  changed  into  an  oligarchy  (for  they 
behaved  very  differently  at  Flodden),  the  noblemen  in  the 
Covenanters'  army  saved  themselves  by  a  timely  flight 
and  the  swiftness  of  their  horses.  Some  of  them  reached 
the  castle  of  Stirling,  while  others  fled  to  the  Firth  of 
Forth  and  went  on  board  some  ships  they  found  lying  at 
anchor  there.  Among  these  was  Argyle,  who  now  for 
the  third  time  saved  himself  by  means  of  a  boat.1 

Edinburgh  now  surrendered  to  Montrose,  and  Glasgow, 
to  which  Montrose  proceeded  as  the  plague  was  raging  in 
Edinburgh,  paid  a  heavy  contribution.  The  noblemen 
and  other  persons  of  distinction  who  had  been  impri- 
soned as  Royalists  in  Edinburgh  and  elsewhere  were  set 
at  liberty ;  and  so  many  prisoners  of  rank  now  declared 
for  Montrose,  that  he  felt  himself  in  force  sufficient  to  call  a 
parliament  at  Glasgow  in  the  King's  name.  Still  Montrose 
was  not  in  a  condition,  from  the  want  of  heavy  artillery  as 
well  as  of  a  regularly-disciplined  army,  to  reduce  the  castles 
of  Edinburgh,  Stirling,  Dumbarton,  and  other  places  of 
strength.  He  wrote  to  the  King,  urging  him  to  advance 
to  the  northern  border  and  form  a  junction  with  his  vic- 
torious army;  and  he  concluded  his  request  with  the  words 
which  the  lieutenant  of  King  David,  Joab,  a  man  who  in 
his  cruelty  and  in  his  ignominious  end,  for  "the  innocent 
blood  which  he  had  shed," 2  was  a  prototype  of  himself,  is 
recorded  to  have  used  to  the  King  of  Israel :  "  I  have 

1  Wishart,  chap.  xiii.  2  I  Kings  ii.  31. 


164      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

fought  against  Rabbah,  and  have  taken  the  city  of  waters. 
Now  therefore  gather  the  rest  of  the  people  together,  and 
encamp  against  the  city,  and  take  it ;  lest  I  take  the  city, 
and  it  be  called  after  my  name."  J 

But  although  under  the  old  system  of  the  Parliamentary 
army  of  England,  even  after  his  defeat  at  Naseby,  Charles 
might  have  been  allowed  leisure  and  opportunity  enough 
to  raise  new  forces,  and  march  with  them  to  the  borders  of 
Scotland  and  effect  a  junction  with  Montrose,  in  the  new- 
modelled  Parliamentary  army  matters  were  managed  very 
differently.  Fairfax  and  Cromwell  were  not  men  to  lose 
a  day  or  an  hour,  and  the  victory  of  Naseby  was  followed 
up  without  intermission  by  a  succession  of  fresh  victories, 
each  of  much  smaller  moment  indeed  than  Naseby,  but  all 
converging  to  one  point  and  one  purpose.  So  that  while 
Montrose  had  been  gaining  the  victories  of  Aulderne,  of 
Alford,  and  Kilsyth  for  the  King  in  Scotland,  England 
presented  a  very  different  spectacle,  where  Fairfax  and 
Cromwell  were  taking  from  the  Royalists  town  after  town 
and  fortress  after  fortress,  and  totally  defeating  every  body 
of  men  in  the  shape  of  a  Royal  army  that  made  head 
against  them. 

Charles  had  detached  Lord  Digby,  accompanied  by 
Sir  Marmaduke  Langdale,  with  1200  horse,  to  join  Mon- 
trose. This  detachment  was  augmented  by  300  gentlemen, 
and  at  Doncaster  defeated  a  regiment  of  horse  and  took 
prisoners  about  1000  foot.  But  Colonel  Copley  came  up 
with  them  at  Sherborn  in  Yorkshire  with  about  1300 
horse,  and  completely  defeated  them.  He  not  only 
recovered  the  prisoners,  but  took  300  of  Digby's  force, 
with  his  own  coach,  in  which  were  found  several  letters 
and  papers  of  great  importance  in  laying  open  the  Royal 

1  2  Samuel  xii.  27,  28. 


Montrose's  Defeat  at  Philiphaugh.          165 

designs,  in  particular  some  letters  respecting  an  applica- 
tion by  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  to  the  Pope  for  assistance.1 
As  Montrose  marched  south  with  a  view  of  forming  a 
juncture  with  Digby,  the  Gordons  deserted  him,  and  many 
of  the  Highlanders  returned  home.  David  Leslie  had  been 
detached  from  the  army  of  the  Scots  in  England  with  a 
large  body  of  horse  and  some  foot  to  prevent  a  junction 
between  Digby 's  force  and  that  of  Montrose.  On  the 
defeat  of  Digby,  Leslie  proceeded  northward  by  rapid 
marches  with  the  view  of  intercepting  at  the  Forth  the 
retreat  of  Montrose  to  the  mountains.  But  when  he 
reached  Gladsmuir,  about  three  miles  and  a  half  to  the 
west  of  Haddington,  learning  that  Montrose  was  quartered 
near  Selkirk,  he  suddenly  altered  his  march,  and  on  the 
morning  of  the  I3th  September  1645,  under  the  cover  of 
a  thick  mist,  approached  Philiphaugh,  an  elevated  ascent 
on  the  left  bank  of  the  Ettrick,  where  Montrose's  infantry 
lay  encamped,  while  his  cavalry,  with  Montrose  himself, 
were  quartered  in  the  town  of  Selkirk.  A  considerable 
stream  was  thus  interposed  between  the  two  parts  of  Mon- 
trose's army.  Leslie's  troops,  many  of  whom  were,  it  has 
been  said,  old  soldiers  of  Gustavus  Adolphus,  and  some 
no  doubt  may  have  had  relatives  slaughtered  and  outraged 
by  Montrose's  barbarians,  made  a  furious  attack  on  the 
enemy.  Notwithstanding  the  great  personal  exertions  of 
Mcntrose,  who  hastily  assembled  his  cavalry,  crossed  the 
Ettrick,  and  omitted  nothing  which  cool  courage  could  do 
(his  usual  skill  and  foresight  seem  to  have  deserted  him 
both  in  separating  the  two  parts  of  his  army  and  in  not 
securing  better  information  of  Leslie's  movements),  his 
army  was  totally  defeated.  The  prisoners  taken  were 
shot  in  the  courtyard  of  Newark  Castle  upon  Yarrow. 

1  Rush.,  vi.  128  et  seq.     Clar.,  iv.  715  et  seq. 


1 66      Stmggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Others  of  higher  rank  also  died  afterwards  by  the  hands  of 
the  executioner.  And  who  that  remembers  the  Aberdeen 
massacre,  to  say  nothing  of  a  hundred  other  outrages  and 
crimes,  will  say  that  they  did  not  deserve  their  fate  ? 

There  are  few  cases  in  which  what  has  been  called  "  the 
lying  spirit  of  romance"  has  been  more  active  in  per- 
verting historical  truth  than  the  case  of  James  Graham, 
Marquis  of  Montrose.  I  do  not  know  whether  similar 
attempts  were  ever  made  to  throw  a  halo  of  false 
splendour  round  the  blood-stained  name  of  Alva ;  but 
there  seems  to  have  been  nearly  as  much  reason  for  it  as 
there  was  in  the  case  of  Montrose.  Alva  and  Montrose 
were  both  lieutenants  appointed  for  the  purpose  of  subju- 
gating countries  to  tyrants  who  aimed  at  absolute  domi- 
nion over  the  souls  as  well  as  the  bodies  of  mankind. 
Ferdinando  Alvarez  de  Toledo,  Duke  of  Alva,  had  proved, 
as  well  as  James  Graham,  Earl  and  afterwards  Marquis  of 
Montrose,  in  his  youth  and  early  manhood,  that  he  could 
display,  when  necessary,  that  headlong  courage  which  has 
received  the  name  of  heroism.  There  was  indeed  more 
in  the  early  career  of  Alva  than  in  that  of  Montrose  to 
create  a  hero  of  romance.  There  is  no  such  romantic 
incident  in  the  life  of  Montrose  as  Alva's  ride  from 
Hungary  to  Spain  and  back  again  in  seventeen  days  for 
the  sake  of  a  brief  visit  to  his  newly-married  wife  ;  nor 
any  such  brilliant  exploit  as  Alva's  passage  of  the  Elbe 
and  the  battle  of  Muhlberg.  As  he  grew  older,  to  these 
qualities  of  his  early  days  Alva  added  that  of  being  the 
most  consummate  master  of  his  time  of  the  art  of  war. 
Now,  notwithstanding  these  brilliant  qualities,  what  sort 
of  a  name  has  Alva  left  behind  him  ?  He  has  left  the 
name  of  perhaps  the  most  inhuman  and  bloodthirsty 
tyrant  that  has  ever  appeared  upon  earth.  I  will  quote 


Montrose' s  Defeat  at  Philiphaugh.  167 

his  character  as  a  man  in  the  apt  words  of  Mr.  Motley : 
"  As  a  man,  his  character  was  simple.  He  did  not  com- 
bine a  great  variety  of  vices,  but  those  which  he  had  were 
colossal,  and  he  possessed  no  virtues.  He  was  neither 
lustful  nor  intemperate,  but  his  professed  eulogists  ad- 
mitted his  enormous  avarice,  while  the  world  has  agreed 
that  such  an  amount  of  stealth  and  ferocity,  of  patient 
vindictiveness  and  universal  bloodthirstiness,  were  never 
found  in  a  savage  beast  of  the  forest,  and  but  rarely  in  a 
human  bosom."  x 

The  words  in  this  extract  which  are  printed  in  italics 
are  very  significant ;  for  while  they  describe  such  human 
beasts  of  prey  as  Philip  II.'s  lieutenant  Alva,  and  Charles 
I.'s  lieutenant  Montrose,  they  point  to  a  very  curious 
phenomenon  in  human  nature,  of  which  I  have  attempted 
an  explanation  in  a  former  work  when  I  had  occasion  to 
speak  of  Montrose.  I  find,  on  looking  at  that  explana- 
tion (which  I  was  not  aware  of  when  I  wrote  it),  that  the 
qualities  which  I  have  given  as  explaining  Montrose's 
conduct  also  explain  Alva's — namely,  unbounded  pride 
and  strong  fanaticism,  accompanied  by  great  power  of 
dissimulation.  The  fanaticism  of  Montrose,  however,  was 
somewhat  different  from  that  of  Alva,  who  was  a  fanatic 
in  religion,  while  the  idol  which  Montrose  fanatically  wor- 
shipped was  only  ambition,  or  perhaps  what  is  called  mili- 
tary glory.  Notwithstanding  the  false  glare  which  Scott's 
genius  has  thrown  around  the  names  of  Montrose  and 
Dundee,  they  were  in  fact  but  Scotch  Alvas,  as  blood- 
thirsty themselves  as.  Alva,  and  the  instruments  of  tyrants 
as  bloodthirsty  as  Philip  II.  What  Macaulay  says  of 
Dundee  may  be  said  of  Montrose  also.  "  Brave  as  he 
undoubtedly  was,  he  seems,  like  many  other  brave  men,  to 
1  Motley's  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  ii.  92.  London,  1861. 


i68     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

have  been  less  proof  against  the  danger  of  assassination 
than  against  any  other  form  of  danger.  He  knew  what 
the  hatred  of  the  Covenanters  was  :  he  knew  how  well  he 
had  earned  their  hatred  ;  he  was  haunted  by  that  con- 
sciousness of  inexpiable  guilt,  and  by  that  dread  of  a 
terrible  retribution  which  the  ancient  polytheists  per- 
sonified under  the  awful  name  of  the  Furies.  His  old 
troopers,  the  Satans  and  Beelzebubs  who  had  shared  his 
crimes,  and  who  now  shared  his  perils,  were  ready  to  be 
the  companions  of  his  flight."  I 

It  would  be  as  tedious  as  it  is  needless  to  give  an 
account  of  all  the  military  operations  in  this  war,  but  one 
or  two  may  be  given  as  illustrations  of  the  general  nature 
of  the  war,  and  of  the  character  of  the  times. 

On  his  march  to  the  relief  of  Taunton,  Fairfax  was  met 
by  large  parties  of  clubmen,  country-men,  yeomen,  and 
peasantry,  who  had  assembled  in  considerable  numbers  to 
protect  their  homes  and  property ;  and  were  afterwards 
joined  by  some  gentlemen.  The  efforts  of  the  clubmen 
had  at  first  been  principally  directed  to  the  checking  of 
the  cruelties  and  licentiousness  of  the  Royalist  troops. 
But  they  afterwards  declared  themselves  hostile  to  the 
Parliamentary  troops  also.  Fairfax  succeeded  for  the 
time  in  conciliating  them  by  yielding  to  some  of  their 
demands.  Subsequently,  as  the  clubmen  rose  in  great 
numbers  in  Dorset,  Wilts,  and  Somerset,  Cromwell  was 
despatched  against  them.  He  succeeded  in  persuading 
most  of  them  to  return  peaceably  to  their  homes.  But  as 
a  part  of  them  fired  upon  a  detachment  of  horse  he  had 
sent  under  a  lieutenant  to  inquire  into  the  cause  of  their 
hostile  proceedings,  and  killed  some  of  his  men,  he  found 
it  necessary  to  attack  them,  and  about  200  were  wounded. 

1  Macaulay's  History  of  England,  iii.  17.     London,  1864. 


Surrender  of  Bristol.  169 

These  being  taken  prisoners,  were  after  an  examination 
regarding  their  instigators,  dismissed  on  their  promise  not 
to  engage  in  similar  proceedings.  The  original  motive  of 
the  clubmen  was  sufficiently  explained  in  the  motto  of 
one  of  their  standards — 

' '  If  you  offer  to  plunder  our  cattle, 
Be  assured  we  will  give  you  battle."1 

After  the  fall  of  Bristol — which  Rupert,  after  a  defence 
forming  a  strong  contrast  to  Blake's  defence  of  Lyme  and 
Taunton,  surrendered  to  the  army  of  the  Parliament, 
September  10,  1645 — the  King  signified  his  pleasure  to 
the  Lords  of  the  Council  that  they  should  require  Prince 
Rupert  to  deliver  his  commission  into  their  hands.  He 
likewise  wrote  a  letter  to  Rupert,  dated  "  Hereford,  I4th 
September  1645,"  in  which  he  says:  "I  must  remember 
you  of  your  letter  of  the  I2th  of  August,  whereby  you 
assured  me  that,  if  no  mutiny  happened,  you  would  keep 
Bristol  for  four  months.  Did  you  keep  it  four  days  ? 
Was  there  anything  like  a  mutiny  ?  More  questions 
might  be  asked  ;  but  now,  I  confess,  to  little  purpose  :  my 
conclusion  is,  to  desire  you  to  seek  your  subsistence,  until 
it  shall  please  God  to  determine  of  my  condition,  some- 
where beyond  the  seas — to  which  end  I  send  you  herewith 
a  pass." 2 

Cromwell,  in  his  letter  to  the  Speaker  of  I4th  October 
1645,  gives  an  account  of  the  storming  of  Basing  House, 
which  had  been  strongly  fortified  by  the  Marquis  of  Win- 
chester, and  had  hitherto  withstood  every  siege,  either 

1  Rush.,  vi.  89  et  seq.     Sprigge's  Anglia  Rediviva,  p.  55  et  seq. 

2  This  letter  is  given  in  Clarendon's  History  of  the  Rebellion,  v.  252,  253. 
Oxford,  1826.     In  Clarendon's  MS.,  at  the  place  where  the  letter  is  to  come 
in,  are  the  words,  "  Enter  the  letter."     The  editor  says,  "  See  the  Clarendon 
State  Papers  ;"  but  this  letter  is  not  to  be  found  among  them,  at  least  I  have 
not  been  able  to  find  it. 


1 70      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

beating  off  or  wearying  out  the  assailants.  The  Marquis 
had  declared  that  if  the  King  had  no  more  ground  in  Eng- 
land but  Basing  House,  he  would  hold  it  out  to  the  last  ex- 
tremity, and  that^Basing  House  was  called  Loyalty.  Hugh 
Peters,  in  his  relation  to  the  House  of  Commons,  says, 
"  The  old  house  had  stood  (as  it  is  reported)  two  or  three 
hundred  years,  a  nest  of  idolatry,  the  new  house  surpassing 
that  in  beauty  and  stateliness,  and  either  of  them  fit  to 
make  an  emperor's  court."  It  contained  "  provisions  for 
some  years  rather  than  months ;  400  quarters  of  wheat, 
bacon  divers  rooms  full  (containing  hundreds  of  flitches), 
cheese  proportionable,  with  oatmeal,  beef,  pork,  beer 
divers  cellars  full,  and  that  very  good." T  Cromwell  writes  : 
"After  our  batteries  placed  we  settled  the  several  posts 
for  the  storm.  .  .  .  We  stormed  this  morning  [October 
14,  1645]  after  six  of  the  clock;  and  our  men  fell  on  with 
great  resolution  and  cheerfulness  ;  we  took  the  two  houses 
without  any  considerable  loss  to  ourselves ;  Colonel 
Pickering  stormed  the  new  house,  passed  through  and  got 
the  gate  of  the  old  house ;  whereupon  they  summoned  a 
parley,  which  our  men  would  not  hear.  .  .  .  We  have  had 
little  loss ;  many  of  the  enemy  were  put  to  the  sword,  and 
some  officers  of  quality.  Most  of  the  rest  we  have 
prisoners,  among  which  the  Marquis.  We  have  taken 
about  ten  pieces  of  ordnance,  much  ammunition,  and  our 
soldiers  a  good  encouragement.  I  humbly  offer  to  have 
the  place  slighted  for  these  reasons :  It  will  ask  800  men 
to  man  it,  it  is  no  frontier,  the  country  is  poor  about  It,  the 
place  exceedingly  ruined  by  our  batteries  and  mortar- 
pieces,  and  a  fire  which  fell  upon  the  place  since  our 
taking  it."  2 

1  Mr.  Peters's  Relation  to  the  House  of  Commons,  in  Sprigge,  p.  139. 

2  Cromwell  to  the  Speaker,  October  14,  1645. 


Storming  of  Basing  House.  1 7 1 

Hugh  Peters  came  into  Basing  House  some  little  time 
after  it  had  been  taken  by  storm,  and  in  a  letter  to  the 
House  of  Commons  mentioned  that  this  was  now  the 
twentieth  garrison  that  had  been  taken  in  this  summer  by 
the  army.  He  says — "  In  the  several  rooms  and  about  the 
house  there  were  slain  seventy- four,  and  only  one  woman, 
the  daughter  of  Doctor  Griffith,  who  by  her  railing  pro- 
voked our  soldiers  (then  in  heat)  into  a  further  passion. 
There  lay  dead  upon  the  ground  Major  Cuffle  (a  man  of 
great  account  amongst  them,  and  a  notorious  Papist),  slain 
by  the  hands  of  Major  Harrison ;  and  Robinson  the  player, 
who  a  little  before  the  storm  was  known  to  be  mocking  and 
scorning  the  Parliament  and  our  army."  1:  Scott  in  "  Wood- 
stock "  represents  this  Robinson  as  having  been  "  mur- 
dered by  that  butcher's  dog,"  as  he  makes  Wildrake  style 
Harrison,  "after  surrender  at  the  battle  of  Naseby."  I 
suppose  Hugh  Peters's  authority  is  better  than  Scott's  as 
to  the  place  of  Robinson's  death ;  and  as  to  Harrison's 
having  murdered  him  after  surrender,  it  is  as  true  as  their 
calling  him  the  "  brand  of  a  butcher's  mastiff"  because  he 
was  the  son  of  a  grazier,  and  "  bloody  "  when  he  was  a  most 
humane  as  well  as  honourable  man.  Even  King  Charles 
having  closely  observed  Harrison,  who  commanded  the 
guard  that  accompanied  the  King  from  Hurst-Castle  to 
Windsor,  said  to  Herbert  he  looked  like  a  soldier,  and  not 
like  an  assassin,  for  by  letter  he  had  been  informed  that 
Harrison  intended  to  assassinate  him. 

About  the  time  when  FaTrfax  had  driven  Hopton  into  a 
remote  part  of  Cornwall,  a  vessel  from  Waterford  arrived 
at  Padstow.  It  was  suddenly  boarded,  and  some  letters 
were  thrown  by  the  captain  into  the  sea,  but  being  re- 

1  Mr.  Peters's  Relation  to  the  House  of  Commons,  in  Sprigge's  Anglia 
Rediviva,  pp.  139-142. 


172      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

covered,  they  laid  open  certain  dealings  of  the  King 
through  the  Earl  of  Glamorgan  with  the  Roman  Catholics 
in  Ireland.  Fairfax  assembled  the  inhabitants  of  the 
neighbourhood  and  showed  them  the  letters,  which  con- 
verted them  very  speedily  from  their  enthusiastic  devotion 
to  the  Royal  cause. 

Ormonde  had  endeavoured,  by  following  out  his  instruc- 
tions, to  procure  the  co-operation  of  the  Irish  on  terms 
which  Charles  had  solemnly  denied  that  he  would  ever 
grant.  As  negotiations  were  carried  on  with  the  Queen, 
and  Sir  Kenelm  Digby  solicited  assistance  directly  from 
the  Pope,  His  Holiness  despatched  his  nuncio  to  encourage 
the  Irish  to  insist  on  the  restoration  of  their  religion  as  the 
price  of  recovering  the  King's  absolute  power.  Ormonde 
declined  to  proceed  farther,  and  Lord  Herbert,  now  cre- 
ated Earl  of  Glamorgan,  son  of  the  Marquis  of  Worcester, 
being  a  rigid  Catholic,  was  selected  as  a  fit  instrument  for 
conducting  the  business ;  for  the  Queen,  dissatisfied  with 
Ormonde,  had  declared  that  no  Protestant  was  to  be 
trusted  in  such  an  affair.  Glamorgan  had  some  property 
in  Ireland,  which  afforded  him  an  excuse  to  visit  that 
country.  "  My  instructions  and  powers,"  says  Glamorgan 
in  a  letter  to  the  Earl  of  Clarendon  dated  the  nth  of  June 
1660,  "were  signed  by  the  King  under  his  pocket-signet, 
with  blanks  for  me  to  put  in  the  names  of  the  Pope  or 
princes,  to  the  end  that  the  King  might  have  a  starting- 
hole  to  deny  the  having  given  me  such  commissions,  if  ex- 
cepted  against  by  his  own  subjects,  leaving  me  as  it  were 
at  the  stake,  who  for  His  Majesty's  sake  was  willing  to  un- 
dergo it,  trusting  to  his  word  alone.  In  like  manner  did  I 
not  stick  upon  having  this  commission  enrolled  or  assented 
unto  by  his  Council,  nor  indeed  the  seal  to  be  put  on  it  in 
an  ordinary  manner,  but  as  Mr.  Endymion  Porter  and  I 


The  King's  Intrigues.  173 

could  perform  it  with  rollers  and  no  screw-press."     It  was 
also  resolved  that  the  King  should  have  seemed  angry  with 
him  at  his  return  out  of  Ireland,  until,  says  he,  "  I  had 
brought  him  into  a  posture  and  power  to  own  his  com- 
mands, to  make  good  his  instructions,  and  to  reward  my 
faithfulness  and  zeal  therein."     The  royal  design,  as  laid 
open  in  the  same  letter,  was  to  bring  one  army  of  10,000 
from  Ireland  through  North  Wales,  and  another  of  10,000 
through  South  Wales ;  while  a  third  of  6000  was  to  have 
been  brought  from  the  Continent,  and  supported  by  the 
Pope  and  Catholic  princes  at  the  rate  of  ;£  30,000  a  month. 
Furnished  with  these  powers  to  treat  with  the  Pope  and 
Catholic  princes  as  well  as  with  the  Irish  Catholics,  and 
also   with    powers   to    erect   a  mint  and  dispose   of  the 
revenue  and  delinquents'  estates,  Glamorgan  set  out  for 
Ireland;    but   lest  Ormonde  should    suspect   the    extent 
of  his  powers,  the  King  resorted  to  the  most  unworthy 
artifices.     Glamorgan    concluded  a  treaty  with   the   con- 
federated council  of  the  Irish  Catholics  for  the  supply  of 
troops,  upon  the  condition  of  removing   all   disqualifica- 
tions, and  allowing  their  clergy  to  retain  all  the  livings 
which  they  had  held  from  December  1641.     Glamorgan's 
commission  had  been  suspected,  but  Charles's  steady  de- 
nial of  it  had  silenced  the  rumours  respecting  it,  till  the 
seizure  of  the  papers  at  Padstow  laid  open  the  whole  busi- 
ness.    While  the  affair  was  in  this  state,  Digby  arrived  in 
Ireland,  and  in  conjunction  with  Ormonde  committed  Gla- 
morgan to  prison  on  a  charge  of  high  treason,  for  having 
counterfeited  a  commission  from  the  King   and  grossly 
abused  his  name.     Glamorgan,  confident  of  his  innocence 
of  that  charge,  and  of  his  continued  influence  over  the 
King,  bore  the  imprisonment  with  calmness ;  and  Charles, 
after  most  solemnly  disclaiming  having  ever  granted  him 


1 74      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

powers  which  were  not  to  be  exercised  under  the  guidance 
of  Ormonde,  wrote  for  his  liberation.  Glamorgan  then,  in 
pursuance  of  his  original  powers,  backed  by  fresh  letters 
from  Charles,  recommenced  his  intrigues,  which  however 
were  rendered  fruitless  by  the  ruin  of  the  Royal  cause  both 
in  England  and  Scotland.1 

Ever  since  the  battle  of  Naseby  the  army  of  the  Parlia- 
ment had  met  with  uninterrupted  success.  The  exertions 
of  the  men  and  their  leaders  had  been  great  and  unre- 
mitted  even  in  the  season  during  which  it  had  been  the 
custom  to  retire  into  winter  quarters.  But  Fairfax  and 
Cromwell,  who  had  no  wish  to  "spin  out  the  war  like 
soldiers  of  fortune  beyond  sea,"  who,  on  the  contrary, 
were  wholly  bent  on  the  finishing  of  this  destructive  war, 
disregarded  all  obstacles  and  hardships  that  stood  in  the 
way  of  such  a  work.  "The  things,"  says  May,  "which 
that  new  army  did  that  year,  taking  no  rest  all  that  sharp 
and  bitter  winter,  were  much  to  be  wondered  at ;  how 
many  strong  towns  and  forts  they  took,  how  many  field 
victories  they  obtained,  the  stories  of  every  several  mouth 
will  declare." 2  Fairfax  was  now  advancing  rapidly  with 
the  army  of  the  west  upon  Oxford,  which  was  already  in 
a  state  of  blockade.  The  Prince  of  Wales,  attended  by 

1  Birch's  Inquiry.      Clar.    State  Papers,  ii.    187,  201-203,  337,  346,  &c., 
Carte's  Let.,  i.  80-82.     Rush.,  vi.  chap.  iii.     I  may  here  add  to  my  remark  in 
a  note  a  page  or  two  back,  on  the  King's  letter  to  Rupert  not  being  to  be 
found  among  the  Clarendon  State  Papers,  though  the  editor  of  Clarendon's 
History  refers  to  those  papers  for  it,  a  remark  from  a  note  of  Mr.  Brodie  on 
Glamorgan's  commission  to  conclude  a  treaty  of  co-operation  with  the  Irish 
Catholics  :  "  As  to  the  transporting  of  Glamorgan's  commission,  and  the  eager- 
ness with  which  it  was  expected,  see  Carte's  Let,  i.  80-82  ;  Birch,  p.  58  ; 
Clar.  State  Papers,  ii.  187.     Had  the  editor  of  the  Clarendon  Papers  attended 
to  the  letters  published  by  Carte,  he  would  have  found  that  no  other  commis- 
sion could  be  alluded  to  here." — Brodie's  History  of  the  British  Empire,  iv. 
40,  note.     Edinburgh,  1822. 

2  May's  Breviary  of  the  History  of  the  Parliament. 


End  of  the  first  War.  175 

Hyde,  Culpepper,  and  other  members  of  the  Council,  had 
fled  to  Scilly  and  thence  to  Jersey.  Hopton  had  been 
obliged  to  capitulate  and  disband  his  forces;  and  Lord 
Astley,  who  had  collected  some  2000  horse  with  a  view  of 
relieving  Oxford,  was  on  the  22d  of  March  1646  inter- 
cepted at  Stowe  by  the  Parliamentary  forces,  defeated, 
and  made  prisoner  with  many  of  his  officers  and  more 
than  half  his  men.  "  You  have  done  your  work/'  said 
Astley  to  some  of  the  Parliamentary  officers,  "  and  may 
now  go  to  play,  unless  you  fall  out  among  yourselves." 

The  King  having  failed  to  attain  his  ends  by  force  of 
arms,  now  resorted  to  negotiation — a  word  which  meant 
much  the  same  with  him  that  it  meant  with  Borgia.  But 
besides  that  he  was  a  good  way  behind  Borgia  in  dex- 
terity in  the  use  of  this  weapon,  he  had  to  deal  with 
opponents  whom  Borgia  himself  might  have  found  more 
than  a  match  for  him.  His  main  game  was  to  play  the 
Presbyterians  and  Independents  against  one  another.  In 
a  letter  to  Lord  Digby  of  the  26th  March  1646,  Charles 
says,  "  I  am  endeavouring  to  get  to  London,  so  that  the 
conditions  may  be  such  as  a  gentleman  may  own,  and 
that  the  rebels  may  acknowledge  me  King,  being  not 
without  hope  that  I  shall  be  able  so  to  draw  either  the 
Presbyterians  or  Independents  to  side  with  me  for  extir- 
pating the  one  the  other,  that  I  shall  be  really  King 
again."  *  The  result  showed  that  Charles  was  altogether 
out  in  his  calculations  on  this  matter,  inasmuch  as  the 
Independents  first,  if  they  did  not  "extirpate"  the  Pres- 
byterians— for  here  Charles  would  seem  to  have  had  in 
his  mind  the  murdering  process  of  Borgia,  of  Philip  II., 
and  of  Charles  IX. — expelled  them  from  Parliament  and 
from  power,  and  then  cut  off  the  head  of  Charles  himself 

1  Carte's  Ormonde,  iii.  452. 


176      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

— an  act  of  extraordinary  audacity  in  a  pack  of  "  rascals  " 
— particularly  as  they  did  it  not  after  the  Borgian  or 
Medicean  fashion,  but  in  open  day,  in  the  "  broad  place 
at  Whitehall " x  before  his  own  palace. 

Charles  now  began  to  think  there  was  no  time  to  lose  if 
he  would  escape  a  siege  in  Oxford,  of  which  he  did  not 
see  the  prospect  of  a  very  agreeable  termination.  On  the 
27th  of  April  1646  he  left  Oxford  with  only  two  attendants, 
Ashburnham  and  Hudson,  disguised  as  the  servant  of 
Ashburnham,  who  was  a  Groom  of  the  Chamber,  while 
Hudson  was  the  King's  Chaplain.  After  travelling  towards 
London  as  far  as  Harrow-on-the-Hill,  he  turned  his  course 
northward,  and  arrived  at  the  Scottish  camp  before  New- 
ark on  the  5th  of  May.2  The  Scots  received  the  King 
with  great  outward  respect,  but  guarded  his  person  with 
vigilance.  They  immediately  broke  up  the  siege  of  New- 
ark and  marched  northward,  carrying  the  King  with  them, 
till  they  arrived  at  Newcastle,  where,  having  a  strong  gar- 
rison, they  halted  to  await  the  progress  of  negotiations. 

The  King  on  surrendering  himself  to  the  Scottish  army 

1  These  are  the  words  in  which  the  space  in  front  of  Whitehall  is  described 
in  the  minutes  of  the  Council  of  State. 

8  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  463.  Ashburnham's  Narrative.  London,  1830.  There 
are  many  perplexing  and,  it  would  seem,  irreconcilable  discrepancies  in  the 
accounts  both  of  the  King's  flight  from  Oxford  and  of  his  subsequent  flight 
from  Hampton  Court — there  being  discrepancies  in  regard  to  the  first  between 
the  narrative  of  Ashburnham  and  the  narrative  of  Clarendon,  as  well  as  be- 
tween the  statements  of  Ashburnham,  the  Groom  of  the  Chamber,  of  Hudson, 
the  King's  Chaplain,  and  of  Montreuil,  the  French  special  envoy ;  and  in 
regard  to  the  second,  between  the  statements  in  Ashburnham's  Narrative,  and 
those  in  Sir  John  Berkeley's  Memoirs,  and  in  Lord  Clarendon.  The  reader  will 
find  many  curious  particulars  as  well  as  important  observations  in  the  volumes 
published  by  the  late  Lord  Ashburnham,  entitled  "A  Narrative  by  John 
Ashburnham  of  his  Attendance  on  King  Charles  I. ;  to  which  is  prefixed  a 
Vindication  of  his  Character  and  Conduct  from  the  Misrepresentations  of  Lord 
Clarendon ;  by  his  lineal  Descendant  and  present  Representative  "  [the  late 
Earl  of  Ashburnham].  Two  vols.  8vo.  London,  1830. 


The  King  delivered  up  to  the  Parliament.       177 

had  despatched  a  message  to  the  Parliament,  informing 
them  of  what  he  had  done,  and  desiring  that  they  would 
send  him  such  articles  of  pacification  as  they  should  agree 
upon,  and  offering  to  surrender  Oxford,  Newark,  and 
whatever  other  strong  places  he  might  still  possess,  and 
order  the  troops  he  had  on  foot  to  lay  down  their  arms. 
The  places  were  surrendered  accordingly;  and  such  forces 
as  the  Royalists  still  maintained  in  various  parts  of 
England,  and  the  army  of  Montrose  in  the  Highlands 
of  Scotland,' were  disbanded.  The  garrison  of  Oxford 
consisted  of  about  7000 ;  and  though  part  of  them  were 
Irish,  not  an  insult  was  offered  to  one  of  their  number;  for 
from  the  time  of  the'  New  Model  the  Parliamentary  com- 
manders were  remarkable  for  the  most  scrupulous  fulfil- 
ment of  articles.  An  order  was  at  the  same  time  sent  by 
Charles  for  the  surrender  of  Dublin  ;  but  secret  instruc- 
tions of  a  different  kind  were  despatched  to  his  confidential 
agents.  He  sent  privately  to  Ormonde,  desiring  him  not 
to  obey  his  public  orders ;  and  during  his  residence  at 
Newcastle  he  was  concerting  the  means  of  raising  an  army 
of  20,000  men  in  Ireland  ;  and  Glamorgan  was  empowered 
by  him  to  purchase  the  assistance  of  the  Roman  Catholics 
on  any  conditions,  even  on  that  of  pawning  his  three  king- 
doms.1 

The  negotiation  between  the  King  and  the  English 
Parliament  was  soon  broken  off;  but  another  was  opened 
between  the  English  Parliament  and  the  Scottish  army 
respecting  the  disposal  of  the  King's  person.  The  result 
of  this  negotiation  was  an  agreement  on  the  part  of  the 
Scottish  Commissioners  at  Newcastle  to  surrender  the 
person  of  Charles  to  the  Commissioners  for  the  English 
Parliament  on  receiving  a  sum  of  .£200,000,  part  of 

1  Clar.  State  Papers,  ii.  237.     Carte's  Ormonde,  iii.  452.     Birch's  Inquiry. 
VOL.  II.  M 


178      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

^£400,000  agreed  to  be  paid  to  the  Scots  on  account  of 
arrears  of  pay.1  In  pursuance  of  the  Articles  of  Agreement, 
a  sum  of  ^200,000  in  hard  cash  was  sent  off  towards  New- 
castle, and  paid  at  Northallerton  to  the  Scottish  receiver, 
who  signed  a  receipt  for  it.  On  the  3<Dth  of  January  164—, 
some  days  after  the  payment  of  the  money,  the  Commis- 
sioners of  the  English  Parliament — the  Earl  of  Pembroke, 
two  other  peers  and  six  commoners,  with  a  numerous  train 
— received  from  the  Scottish  Commissioners  at  Newcastle 
the  person  of  the  King.  The  Scottish  troops  evacuated 
that  town  on  the  same  day.  In  regard  to  this  transaction, 
which  has  been  a  common  topic  of  reproach  against  the 
Scots,  whose  fault  has  in  general  rather  been  the  other 
way — serving  and  suffering  for  their  royal  family  not 
wisely  but  too  well,  instead  of  selling  or  betraying  them 
— it  has  been  remarked  that  it  was  the  work  not  of  the 
Scottish  nation,2  but  of  the  oligarchy  which  then  ruled  Scot- 
land ;  and  who  would  take  care  that  a  very  small  portion 
of  the  money  received  under  the  name  of  arrears  of  pay 
should  find  its  way  into  any  other  pockets  but  their  own. 

The  impeachment  of  the  bishops  had  been  allowed  to 
drop,  but  on  the  26th  of  October  1646  an  ordinance  was 
passed  for  abolishing  Episcopacy,  and  sequestering  the 
lands  of  the  Church  for  the  use  of  the  State.3  An  ordi- 
nance was  also  passed  on  the  24th  of  February  164-^ 
abolishing  the  Court  of  Wards  and  Liveries,  and  all  tenures 
by  knight-service,  without  any  compensation  or  equivalent 
to  the  State.4  This  ordinance,  however,  was  not  acted 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  533,  534. 

2  "The  two  parties  of  Hamilton  and  Argyle  continued  well  enough  united 
till  after  the  distribution  of  the  money  received  for  the  sale  of  the  King.  .  .   . 
The  Scottish  nation  had  generally  disliked  the  giving  up  of  His  Majesty." — 
Carte's  Ormonde,  ii.  13. 

8  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  528.  *  Ibid.,  iii.  440. 


The  Court  of  Wards  Abolished.  1 79 

upon  at  the  time;  for  the  dues  of  wardship  and  all  the 
other  feudal  dues,  with  the  exception  of  purveyance  which 
was  given  up,  continued  to  be  rigorously  exacted  till  1656, 
when  the  Parliament,  known  as  Barebone's  Parliament, 
passed  an  Act  "  for  the  further  establishing  and  confirm- 
ing" the  former  ordinance.1 

1  These  ordinances,  however,  as  far  as  abolishing  the  dues  of  military  ten- 
ures without  compensation  to  the  State  went,  were  not  acted  on  as  long  as  the 
Commonwealth  lasted,  nor  indeed  till  the  Restoration.  This  is  proved  by  the 
enactments  by  which,  as  knight-service  or  military  attendance  was  a  condition 
attached  to  the  holders  of  land,  assessments  were  imposed  by  Parliament  on 
all  real  and  personal  property  to  defray  the  expense  of  the  military  and  naval 
force.  One  of  these  enactments  for  1656  is  preserved  in  Scobell's  Collection, 
part  ii.  p.  400,  from  which  it  appears  that  the  sum  required  was  raised  "  by 
an  equal  rate,  wherein  every  twenty  pounds  in  money,  stock,  or  other  personal 
estate,  shall  bear  the  like  charge  as  shall  be  laid  on  every  twenty  shillings 
yearly  rent,  or  yearly  value  of  land."  When  the  Stuarts  returned  at  the  omi- 
nous time  styled  the  Restoration,  151  members  of  the  Convention  Parliament 
voted  against  149  that  the  excise  should  be  substituted  "in  full  recompense 
for  all  tenures  in  capite,  and  by  knight-service,  and  of  the  Court  of  Wards  and 
Liveries"  (Comm.  Journ.,  November  21,  1660),  notwithstanding  the  strong  op- 
position of  some  members  who  spoke  vehemently  against  the  excise  as  an  unjust 
impost  on  those  who  had  no  lands  to  free  those  who  had  lands  from  the  feudal 
conditions  which  constituted  the  purchase-money  of  their  lands. — Parl.  Hist., 
iv.  148,  149.  Accordingly,  the  Act  12  Car.  II.  c.  24  was  passed,  intituled 
"  An  Act  for  taking  away  the  Court  of  Wards  and  Liveries,  and  tenures  in 
capite,  and  by  knight-service,  and  purveyance,  and  for  settling  a  revenue  upon 
His  Majesty  in  lieu  thereof."  It  is  observed  by  an  eminent  lawyer  that  the 
Act  has  been  framed,  notwithstanding  the  interest  taken  in  it  by  Sir  Heneage 
Finch,  then  solicitor-general,  with  strange  inaccuracy.  "  The  title  of  the  Act," 
observes  Mr.  Hargrave,  "expresses  that  it  was  made  for  taking  away  tenure 
in  capite ;  and  the  first  enacting  clause  proceeds  on  the  same  idea.  But  had 
the  Act  been  accurately  penned,  it  would  simply  have  discharged  such  tenure 
of  its  oppressive  fruits  and  incidents  ;  which  would  have  assimilated  it  to  free 
and  common  socage,  without  the  appearance  of  attempting  to  annihilate  the 
indelible  distinction  between  holding  immediately  of  the  King,  and  holding  of 
him  through  the  medium  of  other  lords." — Hargrave  Co.  Litt,  108,  a.  n.  (5). 
The  benevolence  of  the  Convention  patriots  who  professed  such  zeal  to  relieve 
the  landed  property  of  England  from  its  oppressive  incidents  did  not  extend  to 
copyholds,  which  had  their  oppressive  incidents  also.  But  there  were  pro- 
bably no  copyholders  then  in  the  House.  In  a  case  which  occurred  soon  after 
the  Revolution  it  was  decided  that  the  statute  12  Car.  II.  c.  24  does  not  ex- 
tend to  copyholds  ;  and  the  reason  given  is  that  "  it  might  be  very  prejudicial  to 
I  ords  of  manors" — Clench  v.  Cudmore.  Lutw.  371.  3  Lev.  395.  Comb.  253. 


(  i8o) 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 

MISREPRESENTATIONS   OF   THE   ROYALISTS,    PRESBYTERIANS, 
AND   OTHERS   RESPECTING   CROMWELL    AND   IRETON. 

WE  now  come  to  a  very  difficult  and  perplexing  part  of 
our  story — to  get  at  the  exact  truth  in  which  is  like  at- 
tempting to  solve  a  problem  of  three  bodies  acting  upon 
one  another — the  three  bodies  in  this  case  being  indicated 
in  the  letter  of  King  Charles  quoted  towards  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  chapter,  in  which  the  King  uses  these  words  : 
"  Being  not  without  hope  that  I  shall  be  able  so  to  draw 
either  the  Presbyterians  or  Independents  to  side  with  me 
for  extirpating  the  one  or  the  other,  that  I  shall  be  really 
King  again." ' 

In  entering  on  this  part  of  the  subject,  it  is  first  to  be 
observed  that  the  contemporary  writers,  who  for  want  of 
better  must  serve  as  our  witnesses  in  coming  to  a  judicial 
conclusion,  are  all  Royalist  or  Presbyterian  but  two,  Lud- 
low  and  Mrs.  Hutchinson — Whitelock's  Memorials  having 
been  tampered  with,  cannot  be  relied  on  in  any  doubtful 
matter.  Consequently  the  majority  of  the  witnesses  are, 
as  might  be  expected,  witnesses  against  Cromwell.  It  is, 
however,  of  importance  to  observe,  that  of  the  two  wit- 
nesses on  the  side  of  the  Independents,  Mrs.  Hutchinson 
and  Ludlow,  Mrs.  Hutchinson  is  the  witness  to  be  relied 
on  as  regards  the  negotiations  with  the  King  carried  on  by 
Cromwell  and  Ireton,  and  she  uses  the  following  remark- 

1  Carte's  Ormonde,  iii.  452. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton.      1  8  1 

able  words:  "The  King,  by  reason  of  his  daily  converse 
with  the  officers,  had  begun  tampering  with  them,  not  only 
then  but  before,  and  had  drawn  in  some  of  them  to  engage 
to  corrupt  others  to  fall  in  with  him  ;  but  to  speak  the  truth 
of  all,  Cromwell  was  at  that  time  so  incorruptibly  faithful 
to  his  trust  and  to  the  people's  interest,  that  he  could  not 
be  drawn  in  to  practise  even  his  own  usual  and  natural 
dissimulation  on  this  occasion.  His  son-in-law  Ireton,  who 
was  as  faithful  as  he,  was  not  so  fully  of  the  opinion  (till 
he  had  tried  it  and  found  to  the  contrary)  but  that  the  King 
might  have  been  managed  to  comply  with  the  public  good 
of  his  people,  after  he  could  no  longer  uphold  his  own  vio- 
lent will;  but  upon  some  discourses  with  him,  the  King 
uttering  these  words  to  him,  '  I  shall  play  my  game  as  well 
as  I  can,'  Ireton  replied,  '  If  your  Majesty  have  a  game 
to  play,  you  must  give  us  also  the  liberty  to  play  ours.' 
Colonel  Hutchinson  privately  discoursing  with  his  cousin, 
about  the  communications  he  had  had  with  the  King, 
Ireton'  s  expressions  were  these  :  '  He  gave  us  words, 
and  we  paid  him  in  his  own  coin,  when  we  found  he 
had  no  real  intention  to  the  people's  good,  but  to  prevail 
by  our  factions,  to  regain  by  art  what  he  had  lost  in 


In  regard  to  this  negotiation  with  the  King,  Ludlow  is 
by  no  means  to  be  implicitly  relied  on.2  Ludlow,  as  he 
informs  us  himself,  had  seen  the  manuscript  of  Sir  John 
Berkeley's  Memoirs,  which  had  been  left  in  the  hands 
of  a  merchant  at  Geneva  ;  3  and  he  has  trusted  Berkeley's 
statements  so  thoroughly  that  for  many  pages  his  own 

1  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  pp.  304,  305.     Bohn's  edition.    London, 
1854. 

2  I  will  show  in  a  subsequent  part  of  this  chapter  that  he  is  not  to  be  relied 
on  in  several  other  of  his  statements  against  Cromwell.      ' 

3  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  vol.  i.  p.  195.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 


1 82      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Memoirs  are  merely  an  echo  of  Berkeley's,  and  hence  a 
Royalist  writer  has  assumed  that  "Berkeley's  Memoirs 
derive  confirmation  from  being  incorporated  for  forty 
pages  into  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  p.  195  to  236." '  On  this 
point  I  will  quote  part  of  a  valuable  note  of  a  writer  who 
evidently  devoted  much  time  and  labour  to  the  study  of 
the  history  of  those  times.  Of  the  information  Berkeley 
says  he  obtained  respecting  the  state  of  things  as  re- 
garded the  relation  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton  to  the  army 
at  this  point  of  time,  this  writer  says  :  "  There  is  every 
reason  to  believe  either  that  Berkeley  had  been  deceived, 
or  that,  as  his  Memoirs  were  drawn  up  for  a  purpose, 
he,  whose  faculty  of  invention  was  considerable,  had  em- 
bellished. .  .  .  Ludlow,  who  was  sufficiently  inflamed 
against  Cromwell,  takes  up  the  story  from  Berkeley,  with 
the  history  of  whose  Memoir  he  was  unacquainted.  But 
had  it  been  true,  Ludlow  must  have  learned  it  elsewhere  ; 
and  Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  others,  whose  accounts  con- 
tradict it,  must  have  been  aware  of  it."  In  the  same 
note  it  is  also  said,  I  think  truly :  "  The  propositions 
drawn  by  Ireton  had  accorded  with  the  Teelings  of  the 
bulk  of  the  army ;  and  it  is  evident  from  Berkeley's  own 
statement,  that  Cromwell  had  never  agreed  to  any  other. 
His  character  had  indeed  been  aspersed  with  the  charge 
of  betraying  his  trust  for  his  own  promotion  ;  and  it  was 
necessary  to  remove  that  imputation,  which  possibly 
Hugh  Peters,  as  Berkeley  affirms,  assisted  in  doing.  This 
had  arisen  from  his  treating  too  long ;  but  he  had  now 
discovered  the  intrigues  of  Charles,  and  he  would  most 
likely  assign  his  credulity  as  the  cause  of  having  so  long 
continued  the  negotiation.  Had  he  avowed  other  ends, 

1  Memoir  of  Hertry  Ireton,  p.   146,  note,  in  the  Family  Library,  No.  31, 
written,  I  think,  by  Mr.  J.  G.  Lockhart. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  I  ret  on.     183 

he  could  not  afterwards  have  been  trusted ;  and  the  fact 
would  have  been  handed  down  to  us  on  indisputable 
authority."1 

In  justice  to  Cromwell,  and  "to  speak  the  truth  of  all," 
as  Mrs.  Hutchinson  says  in   the  passage  just  quoted,  I 
consider  it  my  duty  to  say  here  that  I  am  now  inclined 
to  think  that  in  my  "  History  of  the  Commonwealth "  I 
have  given  too  much  weight  to  the  pamphlets  of  John 
Lilburne  as  regards  the  character  of  Cromwell  before  his 
expulsion  of  the  Parliament,  for  of  that  act  of  Cromwell 
and  its  consequences — the  fatal  consequences  of  a  great 
crime  committed  by  a  great  man — I  see  no  reason  to  alter 
my  opinion  in  any  degree.     There  is  a  passage  in  Mr. 
Brodie's  History  which  throws  a  very  important  light  on 
this  subject.     Unfortunately  Mr.   Brodie  has  omitted  to 
state  his  authority  for  his  statement.     But  I  have  always 
found  Mr.  Brodie  so  careful  and  conscientious  in  his  his- 
torical statements,  though  sometimes  he  seems  to  have 
forgotten  to  give  his  historical  references  with  the  degree 
of  care  and  precision  which  I  think  desirable,  that  I  am 
disposed  to  accept  his  statement  here,  convinced  that  he 
has  not  made  it  without  sufficient  authority.     The  state- 
ment of  Mr.  Brodie  is  this :  "  The  famous  John  Lilburne, 
now  (1647)  lieutenant-colonel  of  a  regiment,  having  been 
committed  to  Newgate  for  publishing  a  seditious  book, 
was  confined  in  the  same  cell  with  Sir  Lewis  Dives,  the 
brother-in-law  of  Digby,  who,  conceiving  it  to  be  for  the 
King's  advantage  to  sever  Cromwell  from  both  Parlia- 
ment and  army,  zealously  infused  into  the  mind  of  his 
fellow-prisoner    suspicions    of    Cromwell's    having    been 

1  A  History  of  the  British  Empire  from  the  Accession  of  Charles  I.  to  the 
Restoration.  By  George  Brodie,  Esq.,  Advocate.  Four  vols.  8vo.  Edin- 
burgh, 1822.  Vol.  iv.  p.  114,  note. 


184      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

bought  over,  speaking  as  if  he  had  received  his  intelli- 
gence from  his  friends  about  the  King ;  and  Lilburne  daily 
published  pamphlets  on  the  subject.  As  nothing  could 
be  more  fatal  to  the  ambitious  hopes  of  the  Presbyterians 
than  an  agreement  between  the  King  and  the  army,  they 
most  eagerly  inculcated  the  charge  ;  and  Cromwell  himself 
told  Berkeley  that  he  had  traced  a  story  to  the  Countess 
of  Carlisle,  a  Presbyterian — -that  he  had  been  promised 
the  vacant  title  of  Earl  of  Essex,  and  the  post  of 
Commander  of  the  Guard ;  and  that  her  Ladyship  had 
alleged  she  had  received  her  intelligence  from  Berkeley 
himself.  By  Berkeley  we  are  assured  of  the  groundless- 
ness of  the  story ;  but  it  answered  the  full  object  of  the 
inventors,  in  inflaming  the  public  mind  against  Cromwell, 
and  also  against  his  son-in-law,  Ireton,  who  was  likewise 
alleged  to  have  been  bribed  by  a  promise  of  the  lieu- 
tenancy of  Ireland."  * 

It  would  be  a  waste  of  time  to  deal  in  detail  with  the 
calumnies,  large  or  small,  and  the  feeble  sophistries  of  Sir 
Philip  Warwick,  Mr.  Denzil  Holies,  and  "  such  small  deer  ;" 
but  Hobbes,  though  as  a  witness  he  had  no  personal 
knowledge  of  the  matters  and  persons  he  treated  of,  had  a 
mind  of  another  order,  and  the  power  of  his  understanding, 
when  he  gave  it  fair  play,  was  such  that  many  might  be 
led,  from  a  knowledge  of  his  metaphysical  speculations,  to 
attach  to  his' political  and  historical  writings  a  weight  and 
value  which  they  do  not  possess.  When  I  say  that 
Hobbes  had  no  personal  knowledge  of  the  matters  and 
persons  he  treated  of,  I  mean  that  he  had  no  personal 
knowledge  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton,  and  of  their  negotia- 
tions with  King  Charles.  For  having  been  for  a  time 
amanuensis  to  Bacon,  and  also  for  a  time  mathematical 

1  Brodie's  History  of  the  British  Empire,  iv.  104,  105.     Edinburgh,  1822. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton.      185 

tutor  to  Charles  II.  (though  if  Wallis,1  the  Oxford  mathe- 
matical professor  with  whom  Hobbes  had  a  long  mathe- 
matical controversy,  was  right,  Charles  II.  could  not  have 
learned  much  mathematics  from  his  mathematical  tutor), 
Hobbes  must  have  had  some  personal  knowledge  of  King 
James,  the  great  model  whose  vices  Bacon  copied,  and 
of  King  James's  representative,  Charles  II.  Hobbes 
must  have  known  that  he  was  not  writing  the  truth  when 
he  wrote  that  the  cause  of  the  wars  between  King  Charles 
and  the  Parliament  was  that  "  the  people  were  corrupted 
generally,  and  disobedient  persons  esteemed  the  best 
patriots." 2  Notwithstanding  the  reaction  in  favour  of 
Hobbes,  and  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  "  Hobbes  is  a 
great  name  in  philosophy,"  in  politics  and,  when  I  consider 
his  application  above  cited  of  the  word  "corrupted,"  not  to 
those  to  whom  it  belonged,  but  to  the  people  who  rose  in 
arms  against  the  tyranny  and  vices  of  the  "  corrupted  " 
Court,  I  may  add,  in  morals  Hobbes  was  a  supple  slave 
corrupted  by  his  constitutional  timidity,  which  made  him 
abhor  the  very  idea  of  resistance,  for  resistance  implied 
war,  and  war  implied  "  no  arts,  no  letters,  no  society,  and, 
which  is  worst  of  all,  continual  fear  and  danger  of  violent 
death." 3 

It  is  remarkable  too  that  Hobbes  seems  to  have  wilfully 
shut  his  eyes  to  the  truth  of  history.  There  were  materials 
enough  accessible  even  then  for  a  knowledge  of  the 
government  of  Philip  II.,  of  Catherine  de'  Medici,  and 
her  sons,  Charles  IX.  and  Henry  III.,  of  which  govern- 
ment the  first  principle  was  "  the  science  of  reigning  is 

1  Wallis  said  of  something,  that  it  was  as  difficult  as  it  was  to  make.  Mr. 
Hobbes  understand  mathematics. 

2  Behemoth ;  or,  The  Epitome  of  the  Civil  Wars  of  England,  p.  3.   London, 
1682. 

3  Leviathan,  part  i.  c.  13. 


1 8  6      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Governmen  t. 

the  science  of  lying."  Could  Hobbes  really  be  ignorant 
what  James  I.  meant  by  kingcraft,  which  he  loved  to  talk 
of  as  a  thing  to  be  very  proud  of?  And  yet  Hobbes 
writes  as  if  he  thought  or  at  least  sought  to  make  it  be 
believed  that  in  the  dealings  between  the  King  and  the 
Parliament,  the  King  was  honourable  in  his  dealings,  while 
the  Parliament  acted  like  a  gamester  who  uses  false  dice 
and  packing  of  cards.1  There  is  much  art  in  the  way  he 
puts  it — with  a  tone  of  ingenuousness  and  scorn  of  trickery, 
of  "  knavery  and  ignoble  shifts ; "  as  if  his  hero,  King 
Charles,  were  the  very  model  of  an  honourable  man,  to 
whom  his  word  was  a  law,  and  who  above  all  things  loved 
truth  and  justice,  and  who,  such  matters  as  the  Aberdeen 
massacre  being  kept  out  of  sight,  was  so  fond  of  his  people 
and  "the  peace  and  happiness  of  the  three  kingdoms."2 
The  good  King  was  a  man  of  great  ability  also ;  and  it 
was  only  by  unfair  play,  "  by  the  advantage  of  false  dice 
and  packing  of  cards,"  that  the  "disobedient  persons" 
got  the  better  of  him.  Of  course  Hobbes  trusted  to 
the  general  ignorance  which  then  prevailed  respecting 
the  real  character  of  kings  and  queens,  and  princes  and 
princesses ;  of  whom  the  people  knew  nothing  but  that 
they  were  under  the  especial  care  of  Providence,  from 
whence  they  derived,  among  other  miraculous  gifts,  the 
power  of  curing  by  touch  "  the  King's  Evil." 

In  accordance  with  all  this,  Cromwell  in  the  pages  of 
Hobbes  would  be,  like  Gan,  "traditor  prima  che  nato." 
And  Ireton  of  course  would  fare  no  better — he  could 
hardly  fare  worse.  Hobbes  gives  no  authorities  for  his 
assertions,  but  writes  as  if  he  had  seen  everything  with  an 

1  Behemoth,  p.  62. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  3.     The  philanthropy  of  these  royal  pets  of  Hobbes  had  a  cer- 
tain resemblance  to  the  benevolence  towards  cats  of  the  individual  who  kept 
a  number  of  fine  cats  in  order  to  make  cat-pie  of  them. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton.     1 8  7 

all-seeing  and  infallible  eye.  "  Cromwell,"  he  says,  "  and 
his  son-in-law,  Commissary-General  Ireton,  as  good  at 
contriving  as  himself,  and  at  speakfng  and  writing  better, 
contrives  how  to  mutiny1  the  army  against  the  Parliament. 
To  this  end  they  spread  a  whisper  through  the  army,  that 
the  Parliament,  now  they  had  the  King,  intended  to  dis^ 
band  them,  to'  cheat  them  of  their  arrears,  and  to  send 
them  into  Ireland  to  be  destroyed  by  the  Irish."  2  This, 
it  will  be  observed,  is  told  by  Hobbes  in  a  manner  so  art- 
fully false  as  to  convey  the  impression  to  any  one  not 
knowing  the  facts,  that  the  Presbyterians  had  really  given 
no  ground  to  suppose  that  they  intended  to  disband  the 
army  and  to  cheat  them  out  of  their  pay,  and  that  the 
whole  story  was  an  invention  of  Cromwell's  and  Ireton's. 
Hobbes  thus  continues:  "The  army  being  herewith  en- 
raged, were  taught  by  Ireton  to  erect  a  council  amongst 
themselves,  of  two  soldiers  out  of  every  troop  and  every 
company,  to  consult  for  the  good  of  the  army,  and  to 
assist  at  the  council  of  war,  and  to  advise  for  the  peace  and 
safety  of  the  kingdom.  These  were  called  adjutators,  so 
that  whatever  Cromwell  would  have  to  be  done,  he  needed 
nothing  to  make  them  do  it ;  but  secretly  to  put  it  into 
the  head  of  these  adjutators.  The  effect  of  the  first  con- 
sultation was,  to  take  the  King  from  Holmeby,  and  to 
bring  him  to  the  army." 3 

1  Johnson,  who  gives  many  words  in  his  Dictionary  on  the  authority  of  such 
writers  as  Bramhall  and  Gauden,  never  cites  Hobbes,  a  somewhat  better 
authority  for  good  English  ;  and  consequently  the  word  "mutiny"  does  not 
appear  in  his   Dictionary   as   a  verb   active,   although   he  gives   the  word 
"  appetible,"  for  which  Bramhall  is  the  only  authority— Bramhall  of  whom 
Hobbes  says,  "  For  his  elocution,  the  virtue  whereof  lieth  not  in  the  flux  of 
words  but  in  perspicuity ;  it  is  the  same  language  with  that  of  the  kingdom 
of    darkness."      See    "The   Question   concerning   Liberty,    Necessity,  and 
Chance,  clearly  stated  and  debated  between  Dr.  Bramhall,  Bishop  of  Deny, 
and  Thomas  Hobbes,  of  Malmesbury."     London,  1656. 

2  Behemoth,  p.  225.  3  Ibid. 


1 88      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Hobbes  speaks  with  as  much  confidence  as  if  he  had 
been  present  among  the  adjutators.  How  otherwise  could 
he  know  that  to  bring  the  King  to  the  army  was  the  effect 
of  the  first  consultation,  and  not  of  the  second,  the  third,  or 
any  other?  It  is  strange  that  Hobbes  and  Hume,  who  as 
philosophers  knew  and  admitted  that  philosophical  truth 
was  very  difficult  to  come  at,  went  to  the  opposite  extreme 
in  regard  to  historical  truth,  and  gave  themselves  no  fur- 
ther trouble  about  it  than  to  take  hold  of  the  first  assertion 
that  suited  their  purpose. 

Hobbes  goes  on  thus :  "  This  was  the  first  trick  Crom- 
well played,  whereby  he  thought  himself  to  have  gotten  so 
great  an  advantage,  that  he  said  openly,  that  he  had  the 
Parliament  in  his  pocket,  and  the  city  too."  J  When  did 
Cromwell  say  this,  and  in  whose  hearing  ?  Hobbes  is 
silent  on  these  points.  He  goes  on  :  "  Cromwell  promised 
the  King,  in  a  serious  and  seeming  passionate  manner,  to 
restore  him  to  his  right  against  the  Parliament.  .  .  .  He  was 
resolved  to  march  up  to  the  city  and  Parliament  to  set  up 
the  King  again,  and  be  the  second  man,  unless  in  the  at- 
tempt he  found  better  hope,  than  yet  he  had,  to  make  him- 
self the  first  man  by  dispossessing  the  King."5  Hobbes 
goes  on  thus  a  page  or  two  farther  on  :  "  Cromwell's  main 
end  was  to  set  himself  in  the  King's  place.  The  restoring 
of  the  King  was  but  a  reserve  against  the  Parliament, 
which  being  in  his  pocket,  he  had  no  more  need  of  the 
King,  who  was  now  an  impediment  to  him.  To  keep  him 
in  the  army  was  a  trouble  ;  to  let  him  fall  into  the  hands 
of  the  Presbyterians  had  been  a  stop  to  his  hopes  ;  to  mur- 
der him  privately  (besides  the  horror  of  the  act)  now  whilst 
he  was  no  more  than  lieutenant-general,  would  have  made 
him  odious  without  furthering  his  design.  There  was 

1  Behemoth,  p.  226.  2  Ibid.,  p.  227. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ire  ton.     189 

nothing  better  for  his  purpose  than  to  let  him  escape  from 
Hampton  Court  (where  he  was  too  near  the  Parliament) 
whither  he  pleased  beyond  sea."  x 

All  this,  told  in  Hobbes' s  writing,  at  once  concise  and 
luminous,  seems  a  very  clear  and  simple  account  of  Crom- 
well's character  and  actions.  The  only  objection  to  it  is 
that  it  is  not  true.  It  is  strange,  I  may  say  again,  that 
Hobbes  and  Hume,  who  knew  that  Nature  has  made  her 
secrets  by  no  means  easy  to  be  discovered,  should  have 
imagined  that  the  same  Nature  made  the  human  character 
a  very  simple  and  easy,  instead  of  a  very  complicated  and 
difficult  subject.  The  kings  of  Hobbes  and  Hume  are  all, 
or  very  nearly  all,  painted  white ;  and  those  who  resisted 
the  tyranny  of  their  kings  are  all  painted  black.  Crom- 
well himself  would  have  wished  the  picture  of  his  mind 
to  be  a  likeness,  though  an  unfavourable  likeness,  even 
as  he  told  Lely  not  to  leave  out  scars  and  wrinkles 
in  the  portrait  of  his  face,  which  he  was  content  to  see 
"marked  with  all  the  blemishes  which  had  been  put 
on  it  by  time,  by  war,  by  sleepless  nights,  by  anxiety, 
perhaps  by  remorse,  but  with  valour,  policy,  autho- 
rity, and  public  care  written  in  all  its  princely  lines." ' 
As  Macaulay  has  said  of  Warren  Hastings,  "  He  must 
have  known  that  there  were  dark  spots  on  his  fame.  He 
might  also  have  felt  with  pride  that  the  splendour 
of  his  fame  would  bear  many  spots."  He  must  have 
known  that  he  who  had  created  an  army  to  destroy 
the  pretensions  of  tyrants  who  murdered,  and  claimed  a 
divine  right  to  murder,  men,  women,  and  children,  as  King 
Charles'  lieutenant  did  at  Aberdeen,  would  leave  a  name 
more  famous  and  more  honoured  than  that  of  any  king — 
save  such  a  king  as  Alfred  or  Robert  Bruce.  Did  he  then 

1  Behemoth,  p.  234.  2  Macaulay's  Essay  on  Warren  Hastings. 


igo     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

ever  desire  to  make  himself  a  king  ?  and  if  he  did,  why 
did  he  make  such  a  lamentable  mistake  ?  That  is  indeed 
the  difficulty — the  "  knot  in  the  withe  " — which  rendered 
it  possible  for  such  writers  as  Hobbes  and  Hume  to  de- 
scribe him  as  made  up  from  the  first  only  of  hypocrite  and 
rogue. 

I  believe  that  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  statement  quoted  above, 
that  "  Cromwell  was  at  that  time  incorruptibly  faithful  to 
his  trust  and  to  the  people's  interest,"1  is  perfectly  true. 
Even  Berkeley  states  that  the  story  of  the  earldom  was 
an  invention.  Cromwell  himself  told  Berkeley  that  Lady 
Carlisle2  had  propagated  a  report  that  he  was  to  be  made 
Earl  of  Essex  and  Captain  of  the  Guard  to  the  King :  and 
Holies  states  in  his  Memoirs  that  it  was  affirmed  Crom- 
well was  to  be  a  Knight  of  the  Garter ;  his  son  to  be  of  the 
Bedchamber  to  the  Prince  ;  and  Ireton  to  have  some  great 
office  in  Ireland.  All  these  rumours  were  calumnies  in- 
vented by  the  Royalists  and  Presbyterians  for  the  purpose 

1  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  p.  304. 

2  The  third  of  the  Articles,  of  Impeachment  brought  by  the  Army  against 
Holies  and  other  ten  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  is,  "  That  the  said 
Mr.  Holies  and  the  others  in  March,  April,  May,  and  June  last  past,  and  at 
other  times,  in  prosecution  of  their  evil  designs,  have  frequently  assembled  at 
the  Lady  Carlisle's  lodgings  in  Whitehall,  for  holding  correspondence  with  the 
Queen  of  England  now  in  France  ;  with  an  intent  to  put  conditions  upon  the 
Parliament,  and  to  bring  in  the  King  upon  their  own  terms  ;  and  they  assured 
the  Queen  of  ^"40,000  per  annum  if  she  would  assist  them  in  their  design; 
and  that  they  would  do  more  for  the  King  than  the  army  would  do  ;  and  that 
they  would  find  out  some  means  to  destroy  the  army  and  their  friends." — Pad. 
Hist.,  vol.  iii.  p.  666.     The  answer  to  this  article,  while  it  denies  that  "  they 
have  all  been  at  her  Ladyship's  lodgings,"  admits  enough  to  form  a  strong 
ground  for  what  Cromwell  told  Berkeley — "Only  Mr.  Holies,  Sir  Wm.  Lewis, 
and  Sir  P.  Stapylton  do  acknowledge  that  by  her  Ladyship's  favour,  they  have 
many  times  waited  upon  her,  both  at  her  own  lodgings  in  Whitehall,  and  else- 
where, yet  never  to  any  such  intent  and  purpose  as  is  in  the  article  most  falsely 
suggested  ;  but  only  to  pay  unto  her  Ladyship  that  respect  which  is  due  unto 
her  (a  person  of  so  great  honour  and  desert)  from  them,  and  in  truth  from  all 
others  who  are  wellwishers  to  the  welfare  of  this  kingdom." — Ibid.,  p.  688. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton.     191 

of  destroying  by  the  poison  of  slander  the  man  whom  they 
had  been  unable  to  destroy  by  the  sword.  But  not  only 
was  Cromwell  incorruptibly  faithful  to  his  trust  then,  but 
he  was  faithful  so  long  after  as  the  battle  of  Worcester. 

The  inference  drawn  by  Ludlow J  from  Cromwell's  call- 
ing the  victory  at  Worcester  "  a  crowning  mercy  "  is  quite 
unwarranted.     Cromwell  meant  no  more  than  to  say  that 
their  work  was  done — -finis  coronat  opus.     There  is  also 
a  statement  of  Ludlow — which  has  been  adopted  by  even 
eminent   modern   writers,    as    indicating    on   the   part   of 
Cromwell   a   treacherous    purpose    at   the  time   immedi- 
ately  following   the  battle  of  Worcester — that   the  very 
next  day  after  the  fight  at  Worcester,  Cromwell  dismissed 
and  sent  home  the  militia.     This  is  not  only  a  misstate- 
ment  of  the  fact,  but  a  confusion  of  ideas  in  the  mind 
of  Ludlow  respecting  the  very  rudiments  of  government. 
The  power  of  the  militia  was  that  which  formed  the  main 
dispute  between  King  Charles  and  the  Parliament ;  and 
for  a  very  good  reason,  because  it  was  the  principal  cha- 
racteristic of  the  Sovereign.     There  is  no  question  that  at 
that  particular  time  the  Sovereign  in  England   was  the 
Parliament,  of  which  the  Council  of  State  was  the  Exe- 
cutive, and  in  that  capacity  the  Council    on   the  8th    of 
September,  five  days  after  the  battle  of  Worcester,  ordered 
the   militia  to   be  disbanded   in   the   several  counties  of 
England,  and  their  horses  and  arms  to  be  delivered  up ; 
by  an   order  made    on    Monday  the    8th   of    September 
1651.     It  is  also  important  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  Cromwell,  the  Lord-General,  was  not  present  at  the 
Council  on  this  occasion — indeed  he  did  not  enter  Lon- 
don  till   four  days  after — and  that  the  members  of  the 
Council  of  State  present  on  this  occasion  were  eleven  in 
1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  ii.  447.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 


1 92     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

number,  two  of  whom  were  Bradshaw  the  President  and 
Sir  Henry  Vane.  The  following  is  the  order :  "  That  a 
letter  be  written  to  the  several  [Commissioners  of  the] 
Militias  of  the  Counties  in  England  who  have  sent  forces 
to  the  appointed  rendezvous  upon  the  occasion  of  the 
Scots'  army  coming  into  England,  to  return  them  thanks, 
and  also  to  the  officers  and  soldiers,  for  their  great  readi- 
ness in  the  public  service  ;  and  to  let  them  know  that  they 
are  to  disband  their  forces,  and  cause  the  horses  and  arms 
to  be  delivered  unto  them  who  set  them  out."  J  On  the 
following  day  the  Council  of  State  ordered  "  that  Major- 
General  Skippon  be  desired  to  dismiss  such  of  the  trained 
bands  of  London  as  are  upon  the  guards."  5  On  the  loth 
the  Council  of  State  ordered,  "That  it  be  referred  to  the 
Committee  of  Scottish  and  Irish  affairs,  to  consider  how 
the  orders  of  the  House,  for  the  disbanding  of  the  forces 
lately  taken  into  pay,  may  be  put  in  execution." 3 

Most 'of  the  writers  on  this  period  of  English  history 
have  assumed  that  immediately  after  the  battle  of  Wor- 
cester, Cromwell  had  made  up  his  mind  to  turn  out  the 
Parliament  and  make  himself  king,  whether  or  not  with 
the  name  of  king.  As  one  of  the  principal  evidentiary 
facts  adduced  for  this  assumption — namely,  Ludlow's  mis- 
statement  mentioned  above,  that  Cromwell  took  upon 
himself  to  dismiss  the  militia  immediately  after  the  battle 
of  Worcester — is  found  not  to  be  a  fact  at  all,  I  think  it 
can  by  no  means  be  concluded  that  Cromwell  had  at  that 
time  made  up  his  mind  to  pursue  such  a  course,  or  even 
that  the  idea  of  such  a  course  had  entered  into  his  mind 
at  all.  I  think  also  that  the  sincere  respect  which,  by 

1  Order-Book  of  the  Council  of  State,  Monday,  September  8,  1651.     MS. 
State  Paper  Office. 

2  Ibid.,  Tuesday,  September  9,  1651. 

3  Ibid.,  September  10,  1651. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton.     193 

the  concurrent  testimony  of  many  witnesses,  Cromwell 
entertained  for  Ireton's  capacity,  honesty,  and  singleness 
of  purpose,  tells  much  in  Cromwell's  favour,  and  shows 
that  there  was  a  great  deal  of  good  in  his  nature,  mixed 
up  perhaps  with  something  that  was  not  so  good. 

I  have  said  that  Hobbes  and  Hume  painted  their  kings 
all  white,  and  those  who,  like  Cromwell,  successfully 
resisted  their  kings,  all  black.  A  reaction  has  of  late 
years  taken  place,  which  has  produced  a  portrait  of  Crom- 
well without  a  blemish;  and  those  who  have  thus  flattered 
Cromwell  in  the  portrait  they  have  drawn  of  him,  have 
sneered  at  Ireton,  and  set  down  Ludlow  as  a  blockhead. 
My  own  opinion  of  Ludlow  is  that  he  was  a  brave,  an  hon- 
est, and  within  certain  limits  a  clear-headed  man ;  and  I 
find  that  this  opinion  nearly  coincides  with  Lord  Macau- 
lay's,  which,  as  it  is  short,  I  will  quote  here :  "His  courage 
was  of  the  truest  temper  ;  his  understanding  strong  but 
narrow.  What  he  saw,  he  saw  clearly ;  but  he  saw  not 
much  at  a  glance.  In  an  age  of  perfidy  and  levity,  he 
had,  amid  manifold  temptations  and  dangers,  adhered 
firmly  to  the  principles  of  his  youth.  His  enemies  could 
not  deny  that  his  life  had  been  consistent,  and  that  with 
the  same  spirit  with  which  he  had  stood  up  against  the 
Stuarts,  he  had  stood  up  against  the  Cromwells." J 

As  Ludlow  wrote  his  Memoirs  in  exile,  and  long  after 
the  time  when  he  was  one  of  the  chiefs  of  the  conquering 
army  of  the  Long  Parliament  of  England,  and  not  only 
in  exile,  but  constantly  threatened  with  assassination  by 
some  of  the  emissaries  of  the  house  of  Stuart  who  suc- 
ceeded in  assassinating  his  companion  in  exile,  Lisle,  and 
as  he,  like  many  others,  firmly  believed  that  all  these  .evils 
of  exile  and  constant  danger  of  assassination  were  a  clear 

1  Macaulay's  Hist q^'.oLEii gland,  iii.  1-26.     London,  1864. 
VOL.  II.  N 

?V  • 

•> -    - 


194      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

consequence  of  Cromwell's  destruction  of  the  Common- 
wealth of  England,  he  probably  antedated,  without  in- 
tentional misrepresentation,  the  time  when  he  first  began 
to  have  doubts  of  Cromwell's  sincerity  and  honesty  ;  for 
Ludlow,  as  well  as  Ireton,  owed  his  appointment  in  Ireland 
to  Cromwell,1  and  thus  it  appears  that  at  a  time  after  that 
at  which  Ludlow  in  his  Memoirs  expresses  suspicions 
of  Cromwell,  Cromwell  gave  all  his  weight  and  interest  to 
the  appointment  of  two  men  to  a  most  important  com- 
mand whom  he  knew  to  be  both  firmly  opposed  to  the 
domination  of  himself  or  any  one  else.  As  Ireton  has 
suffered  more  than  most  of  the  Commonwealth's  men 
from  calumny  and  misrepresentation,  I  will  endeavour  to 
give  from  the  Memoirs  of  Ludlow,  his  companion  in. arms 
in  Ireland,  some  account  of  the  true  character  of  the  man 
and  his  actions. 

Henry  Ireton  was  born  in  1610,  and  was  the  eldest  son 
of  German  Ireton  of  Attenton,  Esq.,  in  the  county  of  Not- 
tingham. His  family  was  related  to  that  of  Colonel 
Hutchinson,  and  through  them  to  the  Byrons  of  Newstead. 
Mrs.  Hutchinson  mentions  that  Cromwell,  who  would 
thence  appear  to  have  been  not  exempt  from  'the  fancy 
of  honour  being  attached  to  being  "  of  that  Ilk,"  was  de- 
sirous of  buying  a  place  called  Ireton  for  Major-General 
Ireton,  who  had  married  his  daughter.2  Ireton  went  to 
Oxford  in  1626,  and  then  removed  to  the  Middle  Temple, 
where,  as  appears  by  the  Society's  books,  he  entered  as  a 
student  on  the  24th  of  November  1629 ;  but  he  was  never 
called  to  the  bar. 

What  is  said  of  Ireton  in  the  book  bearing  the  tftle  of 
"  Whitelock's  Memorials"  may  be  taken  for  what  it  is  worth. 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  321,  322.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 

2  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  p.  324. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton.     195 

It  may  be  observed  that  the  criticism  there  given  of  Ire- 
ton's  "  Agreement  of  the  People  "  is  more  unfavourable  to 
Ireton  than  the  opinion  afterwards  given  of  Ireton  after 
his  death ;  and  the  difference  may  have  arisen  from  the 
fear  that  the  clause  in  the  Agreement  excluding  practis- 
ing lawyers  from  Parliament  might  be  carried  out  being 
removed  by  Ireton's  death.  Ireton  was  one  of  those  who 
had  enjoyed  the  advantage  of  a  legal  education — a  great 
advantage  to  all  men  who  are  engaged  in  public  business, 
whether  civil  or  military,  as  was  proved  by  such  practical 
statesmen  as  Julius  Caesar,  and  indeed  the  Romans  gener- 
ally. The  two  passages  in  Whitelock  respecting  Ireton  are 
so  different  that  one  may  well  doubt  their  having  been 
penned  by  the  same  person.  In  the  first  the  words  are : 
"The  frame  of  this  'Agreement  of  the  People'  was 
thought  to  be,  for  the  most  part,  made  by  Commissary- 
General  Ireton,  a  man  full  of  invention  and  industry,  who 
had  a  little  knowledge  of  the  law,  which  led  him  into  the 
more  errors."  x  In  the  second  the  words  are  these  :  "  This 
gentleman  was  a  person  very  active,  industrious,  and  stiff 
in  his  ways  and  purposes ;  he  was  of  good  abilities  for 
council  as  well  as  action,  made  much  use  of  his  pen,  and 
was  very  forward  to  reform  the  proceedings  in  law,  wherein 
his  having  been  bred  a  lawyer  was  a  great  help  to  him. 
He  was  stout  in  the  field,  and  wary  and  prudent  in 
councils  ;  exceedingly  forward  as  to  the  business  of  a 
Commonwealth.  Cromwell  had  a  great  opinion  of  him, 
and  no  man  could  prevail  so  much,  nor  order  him  so  far, 
as  Ireton  could." 2 

The  numerous  papers  drawn  up  by  Ireton  are  written 
in  a  clear,  terse,  and  masculine  style ;  and  display  great 
knowledge  and  sagacity,  as  well  as  a  power  of  making 
1  Whitelock's  Memorials,  p.  356.  2  Ibid.,  p.  516. 


196      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

words  a  transcript  of  thought,  of  which  Hobbes  himself 
so  great  a  master  of  that  power,  needs  not  have  been 
ashamed.  The  u  Representation  from  His  Excellency 
Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  and  the  army  under  his  command, 
humbly  tendered  to  the  Parliament,  concerning  the  just 
and  fundamental  rights  and  liberties  of  themselves  and  the 
kingdom,"1  was  chiefly  the  production  of  Ireton ;  and  shows 
that  as  early  as  June  1647  those  who  led  the  opinions  of 
the  army  desired,  on  grounds  which  are  very  clearly  stated, 
"  that  some  determinate  period  of  time  may  be  set  for  the 
continuance  of  this  and  future  Parliaments." 

The  grounds  on  which  this  is  put  are  thus  stated :  "  We 
are  so  far  from  designing  or  complying  to  have  any  abso- 
lute arbitrary  power  fixed  for  continuance  in  any  persons 
whatsoever,  as  that,  if  we  might  be  sure  to  obtain  it,  we 
cannot  wish  to  have  it  so  in  the  persons  of  any  whom  we 
might  best  confide  in,  or  who  should  appear  most  of  our 
own  opinions  or  principles,  or  whom  we  might  have  most 
personal  assurance  of,  or  interest  in."  There  is  then  a 
distinct  opinion  passed  against  the  supreme  power's  being 
"  ingrossed  for  perpetuity  into  the  hands  of  any  particular 
person  or  party  whatsoever."  This  is  meant  to  be  an  em- 
phatic protest  against  the  continuance  of  the  present 
Parliament,  as  well  as  against  any  man's  assuming  the 
supreme  power,  as  Cromwell  did  when  he  expelled  the 
Parliament  by  armed  men.  Now,  if  the  account  of  the 
authorship  of  these  papers  put  forth  by  the  army,  which 
is  given  in  "  Whitelock's  Memorials,"  and  which  says  that 
Ireton  "  therein  was  encouraged  and  assisted  by  Lieu- 
tenant-General  Cromwell,  his  father-in-law,  and  by  Colonel 

1  Printed  at  Cambridge  by  Roger  Daniel,  printer  to  the  University,  with 
the  following  fiat :  "  St.  Albans,  June  14,  1647. — By  the  appointment  of  His 
Excellency  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax,  with  the  officers  and  soldiery  under  his  com- 
mand. J.  Rushworth,  Secretary." — Farl.  Hist.,  iii,  615-625. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton.     197 

Lambert,  who  had  likewise  studied  in  the  Inns  of  Court, 
and  was  of  a  subtle  and  working  brain,"  x  is  correct,  it 
follows  that  Cromwell  was  or  professed  to  be  at  that  time 
averse  to  the  perpetuating  of  the  supreme  power  in  any 
man  ;  that  therefore  Cromwell's  seizing  upon  that  supreme 
power  by  force,  and  treating  it  so  far  as  his  own  private 
property  as  to  assume  that  he  had  a  right  to  dispose  of  it 
by  will,  was  a  direct  contradiction  of  his  opinions  in  June 
1647,  m  this  writing  deliberately  and  solemnly  expressed. 
Lambert's  subsequent  career  shows  him  to  have  been  a 
man  devoid  of  principle.  By  the  premature  death  of 
Ireton,  therefore,  Cromwell  and  Lambert  were  released 
from  the  influence  or  the  restraint  of  a  man  who — having 
been  assisted  by  them  in  those  papers,  which  so  clearly 
set  forth  the  grounds  of  constitutional  government,  and 
being  known  to  both  of  them  as  a  man  not  to  be  turned 
aside  from  what  he  deemed  the  path  of  his  duty  either  by 
interest  or  fear — formed  an  obstacle  which,  if  not  insur- 
mountable, was  at  least  formidable  to  any  attempt  on  the 
part  of  either  to  concentrate  the  supreme  power  in  his  own 
person. 

There  are  some  operations  related  by  Ludlow,  who  was 
Ireton's  second  in  command  in  Ireland,  which  show  that 
Ireton  possessed  that  fertility  of  resources  in  difficulties 
which  is  one  essential  quality  of  military  genius.  One  of 
these  operations  was  this.  On  one  occasion  the  principal 
part  of  Ireton's  forces  was  separated  from  the  other  part 
by  a  river,  and  the  difficulty  was  to  secure  a  communica- 
tion between  the  two  parts  of  his  army,  he  having  neither 
boats  nor  casks  sufficient  for  that  purpose.  In  this  emer- 
gency he  fell  upon  this  expedient.  He  ordered  great 
quantities  of  the  biggest  reeds  to  be  tied  up  in  many  little 

1  Whitelock's  Memorials,  June  16,  1.647. 


198      Strtiggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

bundles  with  small  cords,  and  then  fastened  to  two  cables 
that  were  fixed  in  the  ground  on  each  side  of  the  river, 
at  the  distance  of  about  eight  or  ten  yards  from  each  other. 
"  These,"  says  Ludlow,  "  being  covered  with  wattles,  bore 
troops  of  horse  and  companies  of  foot  as  well  as  a  bridge 
arched  with  stone."  I 

Ludlow  says  "while  the  works  were  finishing  against 
Limerick,  Ireton  went  to  visit  the  garrison  of  Killalo,  and 
to  order  a  bridge  to  be  made  over  the  river  at  that  place 
for  the  better  communication  of  the  counties  of  Tipperary 
and  Clare.  I  accompanied  him  in  this  journey,  and  having 
passed  all  places  of  danger,  he  left  his  guard  to  refresh 
themselves,  and  rode  so  hard  that  he  spoiled  many  horses 
and  hazarded  some  of  the  men ;  but  he  was  so  diligent 
in  the  public  service,  and  so  careless  of  everything  that 
belonged  to  himself,  that  he  never  regarded  what  clothes 
or  food  he  used,  what  hour  he  went  to  rest,  or  what  horse 
he  mounted."2  When  Limerick  was  taken,  Ireton  went 
to  view  the  country  in  order  to  make  a  distribution  of 
winter  quarters  and  garrisons.  After  several  days'  hard 
riding  among  bogs  and  over  rocks,  making  reconnais- 
sances and  ordering  garrisons  and  winter  quarters,  Ireton 
was  exposed  to  a  violent  storm  of  wind,  rain,  and  snow, 
by  which  he  "  took  a  very  great  cold  that  discovered  itself 
immediately  upon  his  return.  But  we  could  not,"  con- 
tinues Ludlow,  "persuade  him  to  go  to  bed  till  he  had 
determined  a  cause  that  was  before  him  and  the  court- 
martial,  touching  an  officer  of  the  army,  who  was  accused 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  325.     Second  edition.     London,  1721.     Caesar,  in 
a  difficulty  on  one  occasion  as  to  means  to  pass  a  river  in  the  face  of  an  enemy, 
"  imperat  militibus  ut  naves  faciant  cujus   generis    eum  superioribus  annis 
usus  Britannise  docuerat."     In  these  "  coracles,"  which  he  carried  in  waggons 
twenty-two  miles  from  his  camp,  he  effected  the  passage  of  his  infantry. — 
Csesar,  De  Bello  Civili,  i.  54. 

2  Ibid.,  i.  361.     Second  edition.    London,  1721. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton.      1 99 

of  some  violence  done  to  the  Irish ;  and  as  in  all  cases  he 
carried  himself  with  the  utmost  impartiality,  so  he  did  in 
this,  dismissing  the  officer,  though  otherwise  a  useful  man, 
from  his  command  for  the  same.  The  next  day  we 
marched  towards  Clare  Castle,  and  found  the  way  so 
rocky  that  we  rode  near  three  miles  together  upon  one 
of  them,  whereby  most  of  our  horses  cast  their  shoes ;  so 
that  though  every  troop  came  provided  with  horse-shoes, 
which  were  delivered  to  them  out  of  the  stores,  yet  before 
that  day's  march  was  over,  a  horse-shoe  was  sold  for  five 
shillings.  The  next  morning  the  Lady  Honoria  Obryan, 
daughter  to  the  late  Earl  of  Thomond,  being  accused  of 
protecting  the  goods  and  cattle  of  the  enemy,  under  pre- 
tence that  they  belonged  to  her,  and  thereby  abusing  the 
favour  of  the  deputy's  safeguard,  which  he  had  granted 
to  her,  came  to  him  ;  and  being  charged  by  him  with  it, 
and  told  that  he  expected  a  more  ingenuous  carnage  from 
her,  she  burst  out  into  tears,  and  assured  him,  if  he  would 
forgive  her,  that  she  would  never  do  the  like  again,  de- 
siring me,  after  the  Deputy  was  withdrawn,  to  intercede 
with  him  for  the  continuance  of  his  favour  to  her  :  which 
when  I  acquainted  him  with,  he  said,  'As  much  a  cynic 
as  I  am,  the  tears  of  this  woman  moved  me  ; '  and  there* 
fore  gave  order  that  his  protection  should  be  continued  to 
her.  From  hence  I  would  have  attended  him  to  Limerick  ; 
but  so  much  more  care  did  he  take  of  me  than  of  himself, 
that  he  would  not  suffer  it;  desiring  me  to  go  that  day, 
being*  Saturday,  and  quarter  at  Bonratto,  a  house  of  the 
Earl  of  Thomond's,  in  order  to  recover  my  health" 
(Ludlow  was  then  suffering  from  an  illness  similar  to 
Ireton's),  "and  to  come  to  him  on  Monday  morning  at 
Limerick.  Accordingly  I  came,  and  found  the  Deputy 
grown  worse,  having  been  let  blood,  and  sweating  ex- 


2oo      Struggle  fitf*  Parliamentary  Government. 

ceedingly,  with  a  burning  fever  at  the  same  time.  Yet 
for  all  this  he  ceased  not  to  apply  himself  to  the  public 
business,  settling  garrisons  and  distributing  winter  quar- 
ters, which  was  all  that  remained  to  be  done  of  the 
military  service  for  that  year.  I  endeavoured  to  persuade 
him,  as  I  had  often  done  before,  that  his  immoderate 
labours  for  his  country  would  much  impair,  if  not  utterly 
destroy  him ;  but  he  had  so  totally  neglected  himself 
during  the  siege  of  Limerick,  not  putting  off  his  clothes 
all  that  time,  except  to  change  his  linen,  that  the  malig- 
nant humours  which  he  had  contracted  wanting  room  to 
perspire,  became  confined  to  his  body,  and  rendered  him 
more  liable  to  be  infected  by  the  contagion.  I  was  un- 
willing to  leave  him  till  I  saw  the  event  of  his  distemper; 
but  he,  supposing  my  family  was  by  this  time  come  to 
Dublin,  would  not  permit  me  to  stay.  .  .  .  Soon  after 
my  arrival  at  Dublin,  the  sad  news  of  his  death  was 
brought  to  us." x 

The  following  minutes  of  the  Council  of  State  show  that 
if  the  business  of  bringing  Ireton's  body  over  to  England 
and  giving  it  a  magnificent  funeral  at  the  public  charge 
originated  with  "  some  of  General  Cromwell's  relations,  who 
were  not  ignorant  of  his  vast  designs  now  on  foot,"2  it  had 
the  sanction  of  the  Council  of  State  :  "  That  it  be  referred 
to  the  committee  for  Irish  and  Scottish  affairs  to  consider 
what  is  fit  to  be  done  in  reference  to  the  receiving  of  the 
corpse  of  the  Lord-Deputy  of  Ireland,  which  is  to  come  to 
Bristol,  and  also  what  is  fit  to  be  done  for  the  interment 
thereof." 3  "  That  a  warrant  be  issued  to  Mr.  Frost  to 
pay  unto  Mr.  Harrison,  embroiderer,  the  sum  of  £60  for 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  380-383.  2  Ibid.,  i.  384. 

3  Order-Book  of  the  Council  of  State,  Monday,  8th  December  1651.  MS. 
State  Taper  Office. 


Misrepresentations  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton.     201 

making  coats  for  the  heralds-at-arms,  who  are  to  attend 
the  solemnities  of  the  funeral  of  the  late  Lord-Deputy 
of  Ireland,  upon  accompt  out  of  the  Council's  exigent 
moneys."  J  "  That  £400  be  paid  by  Mr.  Frost  out  of  the 
Council's  contingencies  to  Doctor  Carteret  upon  accompt 
for  defraying  the  charges  of  the  solemnities  of  the  funeral 
of  the  late  Lord-Deputy  of  Ireland." 2 

Some  later  writers  have  thought  with  Ludlow  that 
these  pompous  obsequies  of  his  son-in-law  were  among 
the  indications,  more  or  less  distinct,  which  now  appeared 
of  the  aspiring  views  of  Cromwell.3  Ludlow  says,  with  a 
mournful  eloquence,  that  if  Ireton  "could  have  foreseen 
what  was  done,  he  would  certainly  have  made  it  his  desire 
that  his  body  might  have  found  a  grave  where  his  soul  left 
it ;  so  much  did  he  despise  those  pompous  and  expensive 
vanities;  having  erected  for  himself  a  more  glorious  monu- 
ment in  the  hearts  of  good  men,  by  his  affection  to  his 
country,  his  abilities  of  mind,  his  impartial  justice,  his 
diligence  in  the  public  service,  and  his  other  virtues,  which 
were  a  far  greater  honour  to  his  memory  than  a  dormitory 
amongst  the  ashes  of  kings."  4 

Even  his  enemies,  for  no  man  can  act  so  conspicuous  a 
part  as  Ireton  did  in  the  transactions  of  so  eventful  and 
stormy  a  period  of  history  without  having  many  and  deadly 
enemies,  admit  that  Ireton  was  actuated  by  other  motives 
than  those  of  personal  interest.  Up  to  the  last  moment 
of  his  life  of  toil,  peril,  and  hardship,  no  cloud  of  selfish 
ambition  had  ever  cast  its  shadows  on  his  course.  While 

1  Order-Book  of  the  Council  of  State,  Tuesday,  6th  January  165  J. 

2  Ibid.,  Friday,  Qth  January  165^. 

3  Memoir  of  Henry  Ireton,  in  the  volume  of  the  Family  Library  (No.  31) 
containing   the  trials   of  Charles   I.  and  of  some  of   the  regicides,  p.   172. 
Third  edition.     London,  1839. 

4  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  384.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 


2O2      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Cromwell  willingly  received  ^"6500  per  annum  in  land  and 
other  provisions  from  the  Parliament,  which  the  Parliament 
conferred  on  him  "to  oblige  him  by  all  means  possible 
to  the  performance  of  his  duty,  or  to  leave  him  without 
excuse  if  he  should  depart  from  it," x  and  then  turned 
round  upon  them  and  actually  assigned  their  ingratitude 
to  the  army  as  a  reason  for  destroying  them ;  Ireton 
refused  the  only  pecuniary  grant  which  was  made  to  him. 
When  the  news  was  brought  to  him  in  Ireland  that  an  Act 
was  ordered  to  be  brought  in  for  settling  ^"2000  per  annum 
on  him,  he  said,  "They  had  many  just  debts,  which  he 
desired  they  would  pay  before  they  made  any  such  pre- 
sents ;  that  he  had  no  need  of  their  land,  and  therefore 
would  not  have  it ;  and  that  he  should  be  more  contented 
to  see  them  doing  the  service  of  the  nation  than  so  liberal 
in  disposing  of  the  public  treasure." 2  It  is  just  to  Ludlow 
to  add  here  his  express  declaration  in  regard  to  himself. 
"  I  can  clearly  make  it  appear,"  he  says,  ".that  during  the 
four  years  I  served  in  Ireland,  I  expended  £4500  of  my 
own  estate  more  than  all  the  pay  that  I  received." 3 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  p.  371. 

2  Ibid.     The  word  "any"  before  "such  presents  "  shows  that  Ireton  meant 
to  express  his  disapproval  of  the  grant  to  Cromwell. 

3  Ibid.,  ii.  465. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

STRUGGLE  FOR  POWER  BETWEEN  THE  PRESBYTERIANS  AND   THE 

INDEPENDENTS THE   KING  SEIZED  BY  JOYCE THE  KING^S 

NEGOTIATIONS   AND  INTRIGUES — MUTINY  IN   THE   ARMY — 

QUELLED THE  ARMY  MARCHES  TO  LONDON  AND  RESTORES 

THE  MEMBERS  OF  BOTH  HOUSES  WHO  HAD  BEEN  DRIVEN 
AWAY  BY  TUMULTS — THE  KING'S  FLIGHT  TO  THE  ISLE  OF 
WIGHT. 

HAVING  in  the  preceding  chapter  endeavoured  to  clear 
the  characters  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton  from  misrepresen- 
tation, I  will  now  relate  what  I  find  stated  on  credible 
evidence  respecting  the  struggle  for  power  between  the 
Independents  and  the  Presbyterians. 

The  elections  which  had  been  recently  made  to  fill  up  the 
vacancies  in  the  House  of  Commons  caused  by  deaths  or 
disablement  for  joining  the  King1  had  added  to  the  power 
of  the  Presbyterians  in  the  House,  already  greater  than 
that  of  the  Independents.  Thus  in  the  western  districts, 
particularly  Cornwall,  where  a  small  number  of  persons, 
almost  all  Royalists,  controlled  the  elections,  members 
were  returned  who,  though  hostile  both  to  the  Presby- 
terians and  the  Independents,  threw  their  weight  into  the 
Presbyterian  scale  in  all  measures  against  the  army.  •  The 
Presbyterians  were  thus  much  stronger  than  the  Indepen- 
dents in  the  House  of  Commons ;  and  in  the  House  of 
Lords  many  Peers  having  been  allowed  to  compound  for 

1  See  the  list  and  analysis  of  the  House  of  Commons  in  the  "  Old  Parlia- 
mentary History,"  ix.  12  et  seq.^  and  in  the  "  New  Parliamentary  History," 
ii.  597-629. 


2O4      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

their  pardon  with  two  years'  rent,  and  having  resumed 
their  seats,  gave  the  Presbyterians  a  majority  also  in  the 
Upper  House.  But  while  the  Presbyterians  were  thus 
stronger  in  Parliament,  the  army  that  had  finished  the 
war  so  triumphantly  was  mainly  composed  of  Indepen- 
dents. And  Holies,  with  characteristic  temper  and  short- 
sightedness, while  eager  to  gratify  his  resentment  against 
the  Independents,  forgot  that  he  and  his  friends  were  not 
in  a  condition  to  pay  up  the  arrears  of  the  army,  and  that 
that  army  and  its  leaders  were  not  the  sort  of  men  against 
whom  it  was  very  safe  to  attempt  injustice. 

On  the  iQth  of  February  164?,  the  question  of  reducing 
the  army  was  debated  in  the  House  of  Commons;  and  it 
was  voted  by  158  against  148  that  the  number  of  foot 
kept  up  should  not  be  greater  than  what  would  be  sufficient 
for  the  keeping  up  of  such  garrisons  as  should  be  con- 
tinued.1 The  House  then  proceeded  to  order  the  disman- 
tling the  works  and  garrisons  of  several  cities  and  towns, 
and  many  castles  and  forts.2  On  the  8th  of  March  the 
Commons  voted  "  That  no  member  of  that  House  should 
have  any  command  in  the  garrisons  or  forces  under  Sir 
Thomas  Fairfax.  That  there  be  no  officer  above  a  colonel : 
that  they  should  all  take  the  Covenant :  that  none  who  had 
borne  arms  against  the  Parliament  should  be  in  com- 
mand :  that  they  should  all  conform  to  the  Established 
Church."3  This  last  occasioned  a  debate  and  a  divi- 
sion of  the  House,  but  was  carried  by  136  against  108, 
showing  a  Presbyterian  majority  of  28.4  These  votes 
were  manifestly  aimed  against  Cromwell.  They  would 


i  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  558.  2  Ibid. 

3  Ibid.     It  must  be  remembered  that  the  "  Established  Church  "  here  meant 
not  the  Church  of  England,  but  the  Church  of  the  Presbyterians. 

4  Ibid. 


Struggle  for  Power.  205 

also  have  excluded  Ireton,  Ludlow,  Skippon,  Blake,  Alger- 
non Sydney,  and  other  leaders  of  the  Independents.  In 
regard  to  the  vote  that  all  should  conform  to  the  Estab- 
lished Church,  which  was  then  Presbyterian,  Cromwell's 
views  have  been  happily  expressed  in  the  answer  to  the 
Presbyterian  divine  put  into  his  mouth  by  Sir  Walter  Scott 
in  a  work  J  where  in  many  points  he  has  done  great  injustice 
to  Cromwell.  "  Sir,"  said  Cromwell,  "  you  may  talk  of 
your  regular  gospel-meals,  but  a  word  spoken  in  season  by 
one  whose  heart  is  with  your  heart,  just  perhaps  when  you 
are  riding  on  to  encounter  an  enemy,  or  are  about  to 
mount  a  breach,  is  to  the  poor  spirit  like  a  rasher  on  the 
coals,  which  the  hungry  shall  find  preferable  to  a  great 
banquet,  at  such  times  when  the  full  soul  loatheth  the 
honeycomb.  Nevertheless,  although  I  speak  thus  in  my 
poor  judgment,  I  would  not  put  force  on  the  conscience  of 
any  man,  leaving  to  the  learned  to  follow  the  learned,  and 
the  wise  to  be  instructed  by  the  wise,  while  poor,  simple, 
wretched  souls  are  not  to  be  denied  a  drink  from  the  stream 
which  runneth  by  the  way." 

Although  there  was  more  than  twelve  months'  pay  in 
arrear,  it  was  proposed  to  allow  only  seven  weeks'  pay, 
and  leave  the  remainder  to  be  settled  after  the  disbanding 
of  the  army.  The  officers  and  soldiers,  who  had  good 
grounds  for  believing  that  the  object  was  to  employ  the 
money  for  the  payment  of  another  army,  looked  upon  this 
fresh  new  model  of  the  army  as  an  act  of  gross  injustice  to 
them,  inasmuch  as  it  differed  from  the  former  new  model 
in  two  essential  particulars — in  disbanding  an  army  which 
had  been  always  victorious,  and  in  disbanding  it  without 
the  pay  to  which  it  was  clearly  entitled.  Moreover,  the 
fact  that,  notwithstanding  the  great  revenue  raised  by 

1  Woodstock,  chap.  xxx. 


2o5      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

taxation  and  sequestration,  their  wages  were  unpaid,  while 
many  members  of  Parliament  who  risked  neither  life  nor 
limb  accumulated  large  fortunes,  was  calculated  to  excite 
their  indignation,  the  more  so  from  the  suspicion  that  the 
delay  in  paying  their  arrears  arose  from  a  deliberate  plan 
to  oblige  them  to  live  at  free  quarters,  and  thus  afford  a 
colourable  pretence  for  disbanding  them.  In  a  petition  to 
Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  they  desired  a  full  indemnity  against 
all  indictments  at  assizes  and  sessions  for  such  actions  as, 
though  not  warrantable  by  law  in  time  of  peace,  they  were 
enforced  unto  by  the  necessity  and  exigency  of  the  war. 
They  desired  that  auditors  might  be  speedily  appointed  to 
repair  to  headquarters  to  audit  and  state  their  accounts  ; 
and  that  before  the  disbanding  of  the  army  satisfaction 
might  be  given  to  the  petitioners  for  their  arrears,  that  so 
the  charge,  trouble,  and  loss  of  time,  which  otherwise  they 
must  necessarily  undergo  in  attendance  for  attaining  of 
them,  might  be  prevented,  they  having  had  experience  that 
many  had  been  reduced  to  miserable  extremity,  even 
almost  starved  for  want  of  relief,  by  their  tedious  attend- 
ance. They  petitioned  also  for  relief  to  such  as  had  lost 
their  limbs,  and  to  the  widows  and  children  of  such  as  had 
been  slain  in  the  service ;  that  those  who  had  voluntarily 
served  the  Parliament  in  the  late  wars  might  not  be  com- 
pelled by  press  or  otherwise  to  serve  as  soldiers  out  of 
the  kingdom ;  and  that  till  the  army  should  be  disbanded 
some  course  might  be  taken  for  the  supply  thereof  with 
money,  whereby  they  might  be  enabled  to  discharge  their 
quarters,  that  so  they  might  not  for  necessary  food  be  be- 
holden to  the  Parliament's  enemies,  burthensome  to  their 
friends,  or  oppressive  to  the  districts  where  they  were 
quartered.1 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  562-567. 


Struggle  for  Power.  207 

When  a  copy  of  this  petition  in  which  they  set  forth 
these  reasonable  desires  was  read  in  Parliament  (March 
30),  the  two  Houses  ordered  a  declaration!  to  be  printed 
and  published  of  "  their  high  dislike  of  that  petition," 
which  they  said  "  tended  to  put  the  army  into  a  distemper 
and  mutiny,  to  put  conditions  upon  the  Parliament,  and 
obstruct  the  relief  of  Ireland."  z 

The  officers  of  the  army  then  (on  the  2/th  of  April)  pre- 
sented a  petition  to  the  House  of  Commons  on  behalf  of 
themselves  and  the  soldiers  of  the  army,  in  vindication  of 
their  late  representation  of  their  desires  to  General  Fairfax. 
The  force  and  clearness  of  this  vindication  are  such  that 
of  those  who  drew  it  up  may  be  said  what  has  been  said 
of  Julius  Csesar,  that  they  wrote  with  the  same  spirit  with 
which  they  fought.  The  misrepresentations  of  them  and 
their  harmless  intentions,  they  truly  say,  they  cannot  but 
look  upon  as  an  act  of  most  sad  importance — and  such  in- 
deed it  was — an  act  the  sad  consequences  of  which  were  to 
be  felt  for  many  generations — an  act  than  which  they  say 
nothing  could  more  rejoice  their  adversaries,  nothing  more 
discourage  them,  who  should  esteem  it  the  greatest  point 
of  honour  to  stand  by  the  Parliament  till  the  consumma- 
tion of  its  work — the  removal  of  every  yoke  from  the 
people's  necks,  and  the  establishment  of  those  good  laws 
it  should  judge  necessary  for  the  Commonwealth.  The 
means  they  used  and  the  method  they  took  in  regard  to 
their  petition  were,  as  they  conceived,  most  orderly  and 
inoffensive,  proceeding  not  in  the  least  from  distemper, 
and  aiming  in  no  measure  at  mutiny,  nor  in  any  wise  to 
put  conditions  on  the  Parliament.  For  their  liberty  of 
petitioning,  they  know  not  anything  more  essential  to 
freedom,  without  which  grievances  are  remediless  and  their 

1  Pad.  Hist.,  iii.  567. 


208      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

condition  most  miserable.  They  hope  that  by  being 
soldiers  they  have  not  lost  the  capacity  of  citizens,  that 
in  winning  the  freedom  of  their  brethren  they  have  not 
lost  their  own.  They  instance  petitions  from  officers  in 
the  Earl  of  Essex's  and  Sir  William  Waller's  army,  even 
whilst  they  were  in  arms,  which  were  well  received  by  the 
House,  with  a  return  of  thanks  ;  and  therefore  they  hope 
they  shall  not  be  considered  as  men  without  the  pale  of 
the  kingdom,  excluded  from  the  fundamental  privilege  of 
subjects'.  The  petition,  they  affirm,  took  its  first  rise  from 
amongst  the  soldiers,  and  they,  the  officers,  engaged,  but 
in  the  second  place,  to  regulate  the  soldiers'  proceedings. 
For  the  desire  of  their  arrears,  necessity,  especially  of  their 
soldiers,  enforced  them  thereunto  :  that  they  had  not  been 
mercenary  or  proposed  gain  as  their  end,  the  speedy 
ending  of  a  languishing  war  testified  for  them,  whereby 
the  people  were  much  eased  of  their  taxes,  and  decayed 
trade  restored  to  a  flourishing  condition  in  all  quarters. 
They  left  their  estates,  and  many  of  them  their  trades  and 
callings,  and  forsook  the  contentments  of  a  quiet  life  for 
the  difficulties  of  war,  after  which  they  hoped  that  the 
desires  of  their  hardly-earned  wages  would  have  been  no 
unwelcome  request,  nor  distorted  into  an  intention  of 
mutiny.  With  regard  to  their  obstructing  the  relief  of 
Ireland,  they  do  not  understand  wherein,  unless  is  meant 
their  expression  of  their  desire  that  those  who  have 
served  voluntarily  should  not  be  pressed  to  go  out  of 
the  kingdom.  They,  however,  declare  their  readiness  to 
embark  for  Ireland  provided  their  arrears  are  paid.1 

When  this  petition  and  vindication  were  presented  and 
read  in  the  House,  a  great  debate  ensued  thereupon. 
Some  moved  that  the  petitioners  might  be  declared  trai- 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  568-571. 


Struggle  for  Power.  209 

tors.  Others  proposed  the  securing  of  Lieutenant-General 
Cromwell  on  the  ground  that  he  had  underhand  counte- 
nanced this  proceeding.  The  Presbyterian  party,  whose 
power  and  importance  were  checked  and  overshadowed  by 
the  military  exploits  of  Cromwell,  had  long  aimed  at  his 
destruction,  and  they  now  hoped  to  effect  it  by  sending 
him  to  the  Tower  on  a  vamped-up  charge  of  instigating 
the  troops  to  mutiny,  and  then  taking  advantage  of  his 
confinement,  to  break  the  army  which  had  beaten  the 
Royalists  and  undo  all  that  had  been  done  to  deliver 
England  from  the  tyranny  of  the  Stuarts.  But  Cromwell 
being  apprised  of  their  designs,  went  that  afternoon  to- 
wards the  army,  so  that  they  missed  their  blow  at  him. 
The  debate  continued  till  late  in  the  night,  and  when  the 
House,  wearied  with  long  sitting,  was  grown  thin,  Mr. 
Denzil  Holies,  taking  that  opportunity,  drew  up  a  resolu- 
tion upon  his  knee,  which  was  passed,  declaring  the  peti- 
tion to  be  seditious,  and  those  to  be  traitors  who  should 
endeavour  to  promote  it  after  a  certain  day,  and  promising 
pardon  to  all  concerned  therein  if  they  should  desist  by 
the  time  limited.1  Holies,  in  his  own  account  of  the  pro- 
ceeding, while  he  inveighs  in  his  usual  style  against  the 
army,  does  not  say  a  word  in  answer  to  the  argument  that 
before  Parliament  commenced  any  measures  of  rigour 
against  the  army,  it  ought,  both  in  justice  and  policy,  to 
have  paid  up  their  arrears  and  satisfied  their  other  just 
demands.2  But  Holies,  by  his  intemperate  and  weak 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,   i.    191.      Second  edition.     London,   1721.     Ludlow 
says  just  before,  "  The  Parliament  were  highly  displeased  with  the  carriage  of 
the  army,  .  .  .  and  some  menacing  expressions  falling  from  some  of  them, 
Lieutenant-General  Cromwell  took  the  occasion  to  whisper  me  in  the  ear, 
saying,  *  These  men  will  never  leave  till  the  army  pull  them  out  by  the  ears.'  " 
—Ibid.,  i.  189. 

2  Holles's  Memoirs,  pp.  84,  89. 

VOL.  II.  0 


2io      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

policy,  only  defeated  more  surely  the  design  he  had  long 
entertained  of  dissolving  this  army,  that  he  and  his  party, 
the  Presbyterians,  might  recover  the  command  of  the 
sword,  which  they  had  proved  themselves  so  incapable  of 
wielding  with  effect.  Even  Rapin,  himself  a  Presbyterian, 
pronounces  the  condemnation  of  these  Presbyterians  while 
he  is  labouring  at  their  defence,  and  sums  up  their  cha- 
racter in  a  very  few  words  when  he  says,  "  They  thought 
themselves  in  slavery  if  themselves  did  not  command."  J 

It  thus  appears  that  in  the  beginning  of  their  quarrel 
with  the  army  the  Presbyterian  majority  in  the  Parliament 
had -clearly  placed  themselves  in  the  wrong — a  result  to 
be  looked  for  when  the  Presbyterian  leaders  were  such 
men  as  Denzil  Holies,  and  the  leaders  of  the  Indepen- 
dents were  St.  John  and  Vane  in  the  House  of  Commons, 
Cromwell  and  Ireton  in  the  army. 

The  assertion  of  Hobbes,  that  the  discontent  of  the  army 
was  entirely  the  work  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton,  who,  says 
Hobbes,  "  to  this  end  spread  a  whisper  through  the  army 
that  the  Parliament,  now  they  had  the  King,  intended  to 
disband  them,  to  cheat  them  of  their  arrears,  and  to  send 
them  into  Ireland  to  be  destroyed  by  the  Irish,"  2  is  the 
assertion  of  a  man  who  knew  nothing  about  that  remark- 
able body  of  men  the  Parliamentary  army  of  England. 
No  "whisper"  was  needed.  The  votes  of  the  Parliament 
were  communicated  to  the  army  by  their  general,  Sir 
Thomas  Fairfax ;  and  the  Parliamentary  soldiers  being 
generally  men  of  intelligence  and  education,  could  see  as 
well  as  any  person  who  reads  the  two  or  three  pages  of 
this  history  preceding  this  page,  what  measure  of  justice 

1  Rapin,    ii.   624.      And  see  Mrs.    Hutchinson's   Memoirs,    pp.   293-295. 
Bohn's  edition.     London,  1854. 

2  Behemoth,  p.  225. 


Struggle  for  Power.  2 1 1 

the  Presbyterian  majority  of  Parliament  intended  to  mete 
out  to  the  army.  The  paper  presented  to  Sir  Thomas 
Fairfax  by  his  council  of  war  convened  by  him  at  Bury 
the  29th  of  May  1647,  in  relation  to  the  votes  of  Parlia- 
ment communicated  unto  them  by  His  Excellency,  and 
his  desire  of  their  advice  thereupon,1  says  in  reference  to 
these  false  statements  made  at  the  time  by  the  Royalists 
and  Presbyterians,  and  afterwards  turned  into  history  by 
such  historians  as  Clarendon,  Hobbes,  and  Hume  :  "And 
this  [a  general  rendezvous  of  the  army]  we  advise  and 
desire  the  rather,  because  of  the  scandalous  suggestions  of 
some,  importing  as  if  the  late  discontents  appearing  in  the 
army,  and  the  representation  of  grievances,  were  not  really 
in  or  from  the  body  of  the  soldiery;  but  a  mere  delusion  and 
appearance,  made  by  the  contrivance  and  artifice  of  some 
factious  officers,  or  some  other  persons  in  the  army ;  the 
truth  or  falsehood  whereof,  as  also  the  true  distemper  or 
disposition  of  the  army,  your  Excellency  and  all  others  may 
most  clearly  discover,  by  such  a  general  rendezvous,  without 
delay  or  trouble  of  going  to  every  regiment  apart  as  they 
now  lie ;  the  army  may  more  certainly  understand  what 
they  may  expect  from  the  Parliament ;  and  both  Parlia- 
ment and  kingdom  know  what  to  judge  and  to  trust  to 
concerning  the  army :  and  to  that  purpose,  at  such  a 
rendezvous,  we  shall  (we  hope  through  the  grace  of  God) 
discharge  our  duties  to  the  Parliament  and  the  kingdom, 
as  well  as  to  your  Excellency  and  the  army ;  and  demon- 
strate that  the  good  and  quiet  of  the  kingdom  is  much 
dearer  to  us  than  any  particular  concernments  of  our  own." 2 
The  falsehood  of  the  statement  or  suggestion  or  insinua- 
tion of  Hobbes  and  the  other  Royalist  and  Presbyterian 
writers  is  further  made  manifest  by  the  letter  of  General 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  585.  2  Ibid.,  iii.  586,  587. 


212      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Fairfax  to  the  Irish  Committee  concerning  disbanding  the 
army,  in  answer  to  the  last  orders  of  Parliament  sent  to 
him,  which  accompanied  the  paper  from  the  council  of 
war  above  quoted.  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  says,  "  My  lords 
and  gentlemen,  yesterday,  towards  evening,  I  received  your 
lordships'  letter,  and  votes  therein  enclosed  :  before  the 
receipt  thereof  I  had  convened  the  officers  unto  a  general 
council  of  war,  to  advise  concerning  the  better  transact- 
ing of  that  business,  and  prevention  of  all  inconveniences ; 
whereupon,  after  much  time  spent  about  it,  we  came  to 
these  resolutions,  which  declare  much  dissatisfaction  in  the 
army  at  being  disbanded  without  having  their  grievances 
fully  redressed  ;  and  the  danger  that  may  ensue  if  any  one 
regiment  should  be  drawn  out  to  disband,  before  the  whole 
army  be  equally  satisfied." ' 

The  whole  of  Hobbes's  treatment  of  this  subject  pro- 
ceeds on  the  assumption  that  the  soldiers  of  the  Parlia- 
mentary army  were  like  the  soldiers  of  other  armies,  mere 
mercenaries  who  could  be  treated  altogether  as  machines. 
But  though  as  regarded  military  discipline  the  army  of 
the  Parliament  became  under  Cromwell's  management  a 
most  perfect  machine,  on  the  subjects  both  of  religion  and 
politics  the  soldiers  of  that  army  refused  to  submit  their 
judgments  to  the  control  of  either  King  or  commander, 
priest  or  prophet.  These  soldiers  being  for  the  most  part 
freeholders,  yeomen,  farmers,  and  tradesmen,  with  fervent 
religious  feelings,  and  acute  and  by  no  means  uninformed 
minds,2  who  had  taken  up  arms  for  the  deliverance  of  their 

i  Pad.  Hist.,  iiL  584,  585. 

*  Richard  Baxter,  who  was  for  two  years  chaplain  to  Whalley's  regiment, 
which  stood  high  for  discipline  and  valour,  informs  us  that  the  minds  of  the 
soldiers  were  more  influenced  by  reading  books  and  pamphlets  than  by  hear- 
ing sermons.  This  did  not  meet  with  Baxter's  approval.  He  says  that  the 
soldiers  "being  usually  disperst  in  their  quarters" — that  is,  scattered  so 


The  Council  of  Adjutators.  2 1 3 

souls  from  such  tyrants  as  Laud,  and  of  their  bodies  and 
estates  from  such  tyrants  as  Charles  and  Strafford,  now 
felt  the  necessity  of  acting  for  themselves.  They  refused 
to  be  treated  as  mercenaries  and  machines.  They  insisted 
— and  this  fact  of  itself,  though  it  may  seem  small,  marks 
their  importance — on  being  called  "private  soldiers,  for 
they  would  no  longer  be  called  common  soldiers."  J  They 
held  consultations,  elected  deputies,  and  established  those 
"singular  councils  of  adjutators2  which  afterwards  gave 
them  such  prodigious  influence — which  controlled  their 
officers  when  they  disagreed  with  them — and  which  gave 
them  an  ardent,  energetic  support  while  their  objects 
agreed,  such  as  could  not  have  been  derived  from  men 
coldly  obeying  the  orders  of  a  despotic  commander." 3 
These  were  the  men,  the  representatives  of  the  best  por- 
tion of  the  people  of  England,  who  really  sealed  the 

that  it  was  difficult  to  get  together  a  large  congregation  of  them  at  a  time  to 
hear  a  sermon — "had  such  books  to  read  when  they  had  none  to  contra- 
dict them." — Richard  Baxter's  Autobiography,  part  i.  p.  53,  folio.  London, 
1696.  Among  other  characteristic  descriptions  of  these  Puritan  soldiers, 
Baxter  gives  a  sketch  in  outline  of  a  public  disputation  held  in  the  church 
when  they  were  quartered  at  Agmondesham  in  Buckinghamshire,  between 
some  of  the  troops  and  some  sectaries,  which  lasted  from  morning  till  almost 
night,  before  a  crowded  congregation. — Ibid.,  part  i.  p.  56. 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  192.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 

2  The  body  of  adjutators  (a  word  which  has  been  converted  or  corrupted 
into  agitators)  was  at  first  composed  of  two  soldiers  out  of  every  troop  and 
every  company.     But  this  body  being  found  too  numerous  for  a  deliberative 
council,  afterwards  acted  as  electors,  and  chose  two  or  more  representatives, 
either  soldiers  or  subalterns,  for  each  regiment.     Berry,  one  of  the  captains  of 
Cromwell's  first  regiment  of  horse,  and  afterwards  one  of  his  major-generals, 
who  had  been  a  clerk  in  an  ironwork,  and  a  friend  in  early  life  of  Richard 
Baxter,  became  President  of  the  Council  of  Adjutators.     Two  other  officers, 
Ayres  and  Desborough,  who  both  took  service  with  Cromwell  when  he  first 
engaged  in  the  war,  and  one  of  whom,  Desborough,  had  married  a  sister  of 
Cromwell's,  were  said  to  have  had  great  influence  with  the  adjutators. 

3  Memoir  of  Henry  Ireton,  p.  140,  written,  I  think,  by  J.  G.  Lockhart,  con- 
tained in  the  volume  of  the  Family  Library  entitled   "The  Trial  of  Charles 
I."     Third  edition.     London,  John  Murray,  Albemarle  Street,  1839. 


214      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

doom  of  Charles  I.  These  men  knew  from  personal  en- 
counter the  cruelties  and  butcheries  which  the  people  of 
England  had  suffered  from  the  King  and  his  instruments, 
and  they  had  heard  of  still  greater  atrocities  that  had  been 
committed  for  him  in  Ireland  and  Scotland.  They  had 
heard  of  the  wail  of  agony  that  rose  from  Aberdeen  on  that 
Sunday  when  Montrose  let  loose  his  bloodhounds  on  the 
defenceless  citizens  of  Aberdeen,  even  as  some  seventy 
years  before,  in  the  words  of  a  letter  quoted  by  Mr. 
Motley,1  "  a  wail  of  agony  was  heard  above  Zutphen  last 
Sunday,  a  sound  as  of  a  mighty  massacre,"  when  at  the 
command  of  another  crowned  tyrant  the  citizens  of  Zut- 
phen fell  a  defenceless  prey  to  the  bloodhounds  of  Alva ; 
"some  being  stabbed  in  the  streets,  some  hanged  on  the 
trees  which  decorated  the  city,  some  stripped  stark  naked 
and  turned  out  into  the  fields  to  freeze  to  death  in  the 
wintry  night — some  tied  two  and  two  back  to  back  and 
drowned  like  dogs  in  the  river  Yssel,  some  hung  upon  the 
gallows  by  the  feet — while  the  outrages  upon  women  were 
no  less  universal  than  in  every  city  captured  by  the  Spanish 
troops." a  All  this  these  soldiers  of  Cromwell  were  intelli- 
gent and  reflecting  enough  to  ponder  over  and  discuss 
among  themselves,  and  they  were  determined  that  one  of 
those  royal  murderers  by  wholesale  and  divine  right  hav- 
ing fallen  into  their  hands,  should  never  get  out  of  them 
again  alive,  but  shoufd  be  made  a  terrible  and  memorable 
example  to  his  successors  for  ever. 

The  matter  stood  thus.     One  set  of  Presbyterians,  the 

1  Motley's   Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  ii.  356.     London,  1861.     A  like 
sound  was  heard  when  Philip's  soldiers  under  Farnese  surprised  Maestricht, 
and,  as  usual  with  them,  soon  turned  a  battle  into  a  massacre,  and  "a  cry  of 
agony  arose  which  was  distinctly  heard  at  the  distance  of  a  league."— Ibid., 
iii.  324. 

2  Ibid.,  ii.  355. 


The  Council  of  A djutators.  215 

Scots,  to  whom  the  King  had  gone  and  given  himself  up, 
had  sold  him  to  another  set  of  Presbyterians,  the  English 
Presbyterians,  who  formed  a  majority  of  the  English  Parlia- 
ment, and  who  wished  to  get  rid  of  the  army,  and  also  of 
the  debt  they  owed  the  army  in  the  shape  of  arrears  of  pay. 
The  army,  even  if  much  less  intelligent  than  it  was,  was 
not  likely  to  submit  to  this.  The  adjutators  or  agitators 
of  the  army  knew  well  enough  that  the  King's  being  in  the 
power  of  either  of  these  bodies  of  Presbyterians  was  the 
doing  of  themselves,  of  the  army  who  had  beaten  all  the 
armies  this  King  had  brought  against  them.  They  there- 
fore came  very  naturally  to  the  conclusion  that  he  was  a 
prisoner  of  war — the  captive  of  their  bow  and  of  their  spear 
— that  he  as  such  prisoner  of  war  belonged  to  them  to  deal 
with  him  according  to  the  justice  that  belonged  to  the  case. 
To  put  to  death  prisoners  of  war  who  have  carried  on  war 
in  a  manner  not  inconsistent  with  the  usages,  of  nations 
that  had  attained  the  very  moderate  measure  of  humanity 
and  civilisation  which  was  attainable  in  that  seventeenth 
century  was  reckoned  contrary  to  the  law  of  nations  as 
then  understood.  But  it  is  quite  manifest  to  the  most  care- 
less reader  or  observer  of  the  course  of  events  at  that  time 
that  this  King  had  not  carried  on  war  with  even  the  very 
moderate  measure  of  humanity  that  was  considered  requi- 
site at  that  time.  The  treatment  of  Aberdeen  is  alone  suf- 
ficient to  prove  this.  If  it  be  said  that  Aberdeen  was  not 
within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  English  Parliament,  it  may 
be  answered  that  the  war  against  Aberdeen  was  but  a 
branch  of  the  war  which  had  for  years  been  desolating 
Britain  in  order  that  this  man  who  said  he  had  a  commis- 
sion from  Heaven,  and  that  his  person  was  sacred,  might 
oppress  and  plunder  at  his  pleasure  the  people  of  Britain. 
These  military  Puritans,  who  abhorred  the  vices  of  this 


2i6     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

King's  predecessor  as  much  as  they  abhorred  this  King's 
tyranny,  cruelty,  and  falsehood,  now  consulted  how  to 
obtain  possession  of  his  person,  and  thus  take  him  out  of 
the  hands  of  the  Presbyterians.  The  result  of  their  con- 
sultation soon  appeared. 

On  the  3d  of  June  1647,  about  one  o'clock  in  the  morn- 
ing, a  party  of  horse  (some  accounts  say  they  were  700, 
others  1000  strong),  commanded  by  Joyce,1  "cornet  to  the 
General's  life-guard,"2  surrounded  Holdenby  House.3  "  It 
passing  two  of  the  o'clock,"  say  the  Commissioners  in  their 
letter  to  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Lords,  "  about  break 
of  the  day  we  discovered  a  party  of  horse  drawn  up  before 
the  great  gates  ;  whereupon  we  dismissed  the  officers  of 
our  guards  to  their  charges,  and  immediately,  at  our  back- 
yard, where  our  horse  and  dragoons  stood,  their  horse, 

1  The  statement  of  the  Parliamentary  Commissioners  is  that  at  first  it  was 
answered  to  their  demand  to  speak  with  their  chief  officer,  "  that  there  was 
none  that  commanded  them  ;  but  soon  after,  Mr.  Joyce,  cornet  to  the 
General's  life-guard,  came  unto  us." — Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  590.  According  to 
Clarendon  (v.  47),  Joyce  would  appear  to  have  been  one  of  those  "  mean 
tradesmen"  whose  pedigree  so  much  excited  the  scorn  and  indignation  of 
Lord  Holies,  having  been,  it  is  said,  a  tailor.  His  employment  on  this 
occasion  on  such  an  important  service,  whether  emanating  from  his  superior 
officers  or  the  election  of  his  fellow-adjutators  in  the  army,  shows  what  sort  of 
a  soldier  may  be  made  in  a  couple  of  years  out  of  a  tailor  ;  for  according  to 
Clarendon,  his  military  education  could  not  have  been  much  longer,  since  he 
was  bred  a  tailor,  and  had  two  or  three  years  before  served  in  a  very  inferior 
employment  in  Mr.  Holles's  house.  This  fact,  though  mentioned  by  Clarendon, 
and  by  Hume  after  him,  for  the  purpose  of  showing  what  a  "  notable  dung- 
hill"— to  borrow  the  words  of  Lord  Holies — the  pedigree  of  the  Parliamentary 
army  was,  has  a  far  deeper  meaning  to  tho;e  who  seek  to  penetrate  the  mys- 
tery of  this  great  political  convulsion. 

8  Letter  to  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Lords,  dated  Holdenby,  June  3, 
1647,  from  the  Commissioners  attending  the  King.  Printed  in  Parl.  Hist.,  iii. 

589,  590. 

3  Holdenby  House  in  Northamptonshire,  built  by  Sir  Christopher  Hatton, 
and  at  that  time  a  royal  mansion,  was  with  other  royal  mansions  at  Rich- 
mond, Oatlands,  Theobalds,  &c.,  pulled  down  to  raise  money  to  pay  the 
arrears  of  some  regiments  of  the  Parliamentary  army. — Memoir  of  Henry 
Ireton,  in  the  Family  Library,  p.  136,  note. 


The  King  seized  by  Joyce.  2 1 7 

with  many  of  ours  amongst  them,  entered  without  any 
resistance  at  all,  being  quietly  let  in  and  embraced  by  the 
soldiers.  We  presently  sent  to  speak  with  their  chief 
officer.  It  was  answered,  That  there  was  none  that  com- 
manded them  ;  but  soon  after,  Mr.  Joyce,  cornet  to  the 
General's  life-guard,  came  unto  us;  and  being  demanded 
the  cause  of  their  coming  in  this  manner,  he  answered, 
They  came  with  an  authority  from  the  soldiery  to  seize 
Colonel  Greaves,  that  he  might  be  tried  by  a  council  of 
war,  for  having  scandalised  the  army;  whereby  a  plot  to 
take  away  the  King  (to  the  end  that  he  might  side  with 
that  army  intended  to  be  raised),  and  so  a  second  war 
would  be  prevented."1  In  a  letter  dated  the  following 
day,  June  4,  the  Commissioners  thus  continue  their  narra- 
tive :  "  We  should  make  you  a  Narrative  of  Cornet  Joyce's 
admission  to  speak  with  the  King,  after  he  was  in  bed  last 
night,  when  he  propounded  his  going  to  the  army  ;  and 
also  of  His  Majesty's  answer  given  them  in  public  this 
morning :  the  effect  was,  the  King  declared  he  came 
hither  with  his  own  consent,  though  not  so  willingly  as  he 
might  have  done,  to  the  end  he  might  send  messages  to 
his  two  Houses  of  Parliament,  the  greatest  power  next 
himself  in  England,  and  to  receive  answers  from  them : 
that  he  had  sent  them  several  messages,  and  was  in  short 
obliged  to  stay  for  their  answers  ;  yet,  being  no  way  able 
to  oppose  so  many,  he  should  go  more  or  less  willingly 
with  them  according  to  the  answers  they  should  give 
him  ;  but  withal,  required  to  know  by  what  authority  they 
came  unto  him.  They  replied,  Their  authority  was  from 
the  army  :2  that  they  did  this  of  necessity  in  order  to  the 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  590. 

8  Lord  Clarendon  writes,  "That  there  was  no  part  of  the  army  known  to 
be  within  twenty  miles  of  Holdenby  at  that  time  ;  and  that  which  admini- 
stered most  cause  of  apprehension  was,  that  those  officers  who  were  of  the 


2i8      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

peace  of  the  kingdom  and  maintenance  of  the  laws,  which 
were  in  great  danger  of  being  overthrown  by  a  plot, 
divers  years  since  contrived  amongst  persons  that  had  a 
hand  in  the  present  government :  and  as  to  the  King's 
demands,  which  were,  that  he  might  be  treated  with 
honour  and  respect  ;  that  he  might  not  be  forced  to  any- 
thing against  his  conscience ;  that  his  servants  against 
whom  they  had  no  just  exception  might  have  liberty  to 
attend  him ;  all  this  they  consented  to  with  acclama- 
tion." x 

On  the  following  morning,  June  4,2  at  six  o'clock,  the  sol- 
diers being  mounted  and  drawn  up  in  the  first  court  before 
the  house,  the  King  came  down,  and  standing  upon  the 
top  of  the  steps,  directed  his  speech  to  Cornet  Joyce,  who, 
representing  the  commander  of  the  party,  stood  before 
the  horse  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs.  The  King  said,  "  That 
Cornet  Joyce  having,  though  at  an  unseasonable  hour  of 
the  night,  acquainted  him  that  he  was  come  to  convey 
His  Majesty  to  the  army,  His  Majesty  according  to  his 
promise  was  there  to  give  his  answer  in  presence  of  them 
all  ;  but  first  he  desired  to  know  by  whom  he  was  autho- 
rised to  propound  this  to  His  Majesty."  Mr.  Joyce  an- 
swered, "That  he  was  sent  by  authority  from  the  army." 
The  King  replied,  "That  he  knew  no  lawful  authority  in 
England  but  his  own,  and,  next  under  him,  the  Parlia- 
ment ; "  but  withal  asked,  "  Whether  he  had  any  authority 
from  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax;  and  whether  in  writing?"  It 

guard  declared  'That  the  squadron,  which  was  commanded  by  Joyce,  con- 
sisted not  of  soldiers  of  any  one  regiment,  but  were  men  of  several  troops 
and  several  regiments,  drawn  together  under  him,  who  was  not  the  proper 
officer  ; '  so  that  the  King  did  in  truth  believe  that  their  purpose  was  to  carry 
him  to  some  place  where  they  might  more  conveniently  murder  him  " 
(v.  48). 
1  Parl.  Hist,  iii.  591,  592.  2  Ibid.,  iii.  599. 


The  King  seized  by  Joyce.  2 1 9 

being  replied,  "That  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  was  a  member 
of  the  army,"  the  King  insisted  that  he  was  not  answered  ; 
Sir  Thomas  Fairfax,  being  their  general,  was  not  properly 
a  member,  but  head  of  the  army.  Joyce  said,  "  That  at 
least  he  was  included  in  the  army ;  and  that  the  soldiers 
present  were  his  commission,  being  a  commanded  party 
out  of  every  regiment."  The  King  replied,  "That  they 
might  be  good  witnesses,  but  he  had  not  seen  such  a  com- 
mission before  ;  and  if  they  were  his  commission,  it  was 
an  authority  very  well  written,  all  handsome  young  men." 
The  King  then  repeated  what  he  had  before  said  to  Joyce, 
and  in  reference  to  Joyce's  statement  concerning  a  plot 
to  overthrow  the  laws  of  the  kingdom,  and  a  design  to 
convey  his  person  to  an  army  newly  to  be  raised  for  that 
purpose,  the  King  said,  "  That  he  knew  not  a  syllable  of 
any  such  design  or  intended  army :  and  that  to  seek  an 
answer  with  so  many  gallant  men  at  his  back,  were  to 
extort  it,  which  were  very  unhandsome  ;  besides  that, 
their  proposal  looked  like  an  opposition  to  the  Parliament, 
which  he  desired  not,  nor  would  ever  infringe  the  just 
privileges  of  the  laws  of  the  land  :  that  these  reasons  in- 
duced him  not  to  go  willingly;  and  therefore  he  desired  to 
know  what  they  intended  if  he  would  not  go  with  them." 
It  was  answered,  "  That  they  hoped  His  Majesty  would 
not  put  them  to  use  those  means,  which  otherwise  they 
should  be  necessitated  to,  if  he  refused.  For  the  Com- 
missioners, or  any  else  that  refused,  they  knew  well  what 
course  to  take  with  them."  The  King  protested,  that 
unless  they  gave  him  satisfaction  to  the  reasonable  and 
just  demands  he  should  make,  he  would  not  go  with  them, 
unless  they  carried  him  by  absolute  force ;  and  he  thought 
they  would  well  think  upon  it  before  they  would  lay 
violent  hands  upon  their  King :  that  the  Commissioners 


220      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

had  never  put  any  constraint  upon  him  ;  they  were  more 
civil.  Then  he  propounded,  "  That  he  might  be  used  with 
honour  and  respect;  that  they  would  not  force  him  in 
anything  contrary  to  his  conscience,  or  his  honour  ;  though 
he  hoped  he  had  long  ago  so  fixed  his  resolutions,  that  no 
force  could  cause  him  to  do  a  base  thing  :  though  they 
were  masters  of  his  body,  yet  his  mind  was  above  their 
reach."  ]  To  all  those  propositions  the  soldiers  consented 
with  a  general  acclamation;  Mr.  Joyce  adding,  "That 
their  principles  were  not  to  force  any  man's  conscience, 
much  less  the  King's."  Then  His  Majesty  desired  that 
those  who  attended  him,  and  some  other  of  his  servants, 
against  whom  they  had  no  just  exceptions,  might  be  per- 
mitted to  wait  upon  him.  This  being  agreed,  the  King 
asked  whither  they  would  have  him  go.  Oxford  was  first 
named,  then  Cambridge.  The  King  named  Newmarket, 
which  was  agreed  to.  The  King  having  prepared  for  his 
journey,  Joyce  and  his  troops  conducted  him  that  day  as 
far  as  Hinchinbrook,  and  thence  on  the  morrow  to  Chil- 
dersley,  near  Newmarket.2 

All  the  evidence,  even  that  of  the  Royalist  writers 
Warwick,  Herbert,  and  Hobbes,  goes  to  show  that  the 
King  was  at  first  treated  better  by  the  army  than  he  had 
been  by  the  Parliament's  Commissioners.  "  The  King," 
says  Herbert,  "was  the  merriest  of  the  company,  having, 

1  It  is  a  pity  he  did  not  accord  the  like  privilege  to  other  men's  consciences 
when  he  and  his  ministers  Laud  and  Strafford  were  imprisoning  and  mutilating 
and  ruining  men  for  acting  according  to  their  consciences. 

2  The  Narration  of  what  passed  betwixt  His  Majesty  and  Cornet  Joyce,  &c., 
enclosed  in  the  Letter  of  the  Parliamentary  Commissioners  to  the  Speaker  of 
the  House  of  Peers,  dated  Childersley,  June  8,  1647.     Printed  in  Parl.  Hist., 
iii.  599-601.     This  narrative,  which  we  may  consider  as  authentic  and  authori- 
tative, agrees  in  the  main  with  the  "True  and  impartial  Narration  concerning 
the  Army's  Preservation  of  the  King,"  drawn  up  by  Joyce  himself,  and  also 
with  the  account  of  Sir  Thomas  Herbert  in  his  "  Memoirs  of  the  Two  last 
Years  of  the  Reign  of  King  Charles  I."     London,  1815. 


The  Kings  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      221 

as  it  seems,  a  confidence  in  the  army,  especially  from  some 
of  the  greatest  there,  as  was  imagined."  "The  deep  and 
bloody-hearted  Independents,"  says  Warwick,  "all  this 
while  used  the  King  very  civilly,  admit  several  of  his  ser- 
vants, and  some  of  his  chaplains  to  attend  him,  and  to 
officiate  by  the  service-book.  They  brought  him  first  to 
the  army  to  Royston  or  thereabout;  then  they  remove 
him  to  Hatfield,  the  Earl  of  Salisbury's  house  ;  then  to 
Latimer,  and  Woborn,  and  Caversham,  the  Earl  of 
Craven's  house,  near  Reading."1  "The  King  in  the 
meantime,"  says  Hobbes,  "  till  his  residence  was  settled 
at  Hampton  Court,  was  carried  from  place  to  place,  not 
without  some  ostentation ;  but  with  much  more  liberty,  and 
with  more  respect  shown  him  by  far,  than  when  he  was  in 
the  hands  of  the  Parliament's  Commissioners;  for  his  own 
chaplains  were  allowed  him,  and  his  children,  and  some 
friends  permitted  to  see  him." 2 

On  the  5th  of  June  votes  were  passed  by  the  Parliament 
for  satisfying  the  army,  and  expunging  the  late  declaration 
against  them ;  and  a  letter,  to  be  signed  by  the  Speakers  of 
both  Houses,  was  ordered  to  be  sent  to  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax, 
in  which  they  desire  the  General  to  appoint  a  general  ren- 
dezvous on  Wednesday  next  upon  Newmarket  Heath  ; 
"  desiring  and  expecting  that  you  and  your  officers  will 
in  the  meantime  so  order  it,  that  the  army  shall  neither 
remove,  nor  act  anything  to  the  disturbance  of  the  public 
peace."  3  On  the  6th  of  June,  however — that  is,  the  next 
day — the  Lords  made  an  order,  to  which  the  Commons 
gave  their  concurrence,  that  the  Committee  for  Irish 
Affairs,  sitting  at  Derby  House,  should  immediately 
consider  of  the  best  ways  and  means  for  the  ordering 

1  Warwick's  Memoirs,  p.  301.  2  Behemoth,  p.  227. 

3  Pad.  Hist.,  iii.  592,  593. 


222      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

and  directing  the  forces  within  the  city  of  London 
and  lines  of  communication,  Middlesex,  Surrey,  Hertford- 
shire, and  Kent ;  which  showed  that  they  were  under 
great  apprehensions  of  the  army's  \  marching  up  to 
London."  * 

On  the  same  5th  of  June,  while  the  Parliament  were 
employed  as  mentioned  above,  a  paper  was  read,  agreed 
to,  and  subscribed  by  all  the  officers  and  soldiers  of  the 
several  regiments  at  the  general  rendezvous  near  New- 
market. On  the  title-page  of  the  original  edition  of  this 
paper  is  this  indorsement :  "  It  is  my  desire  that  the 
humble  representation  of  the  dissatisfactions  of  the  army, 
together  with  their  engagement,  be  forthwith  printed  and 
published.  Given  under  my  hand  the  8th  day  of  June 
1647. — T.  Fairfax."3  In  this  paper  an  authorised  ac- 
count, since  it  is  indorsed  by  the  general  commanding, 
is  given  of  the  rise  of  the  organised  body  of  army 
agitators  (so  the  word  is  spelt  in  this  paper)  in  these 
words :  "  And  whereas  by  the  aforesaid  proceedings " 
(on  the  army's  petition  against  being  disbanded  without 
having  received  their  arrears  of  pay),  "and  the  effects 
thereof,  the  soldiers  of  this  army,  finding  themselves  so 
stopped  in  their  due  and  regular  way  of  making  known 
tjieir  just  grievances  and  desires  to  and  by  their  officers, 
were  enforced  to  an  unusual,  but  in  that  case  necessary, 
way  of  correspondence  and  agreement  amongst  them- 
selves ;  to  choose  out  of  the  several  troops  and  companies 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  594. 

2  The  title  of  the  paper  is,  "A  Solemn  Engagement  of  the  Army,  under 
the  Command  of  His  Excellency  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax,  with  a  Declaration  of 
their  Resolutions  as  to  Disbanding,  &c.,  read,  assented  to,  and  subscribed  by 
all  the  officers  and  soldiers  of  the  several  regiments  at  the  general  rendezvous 
near  Newmarket,  June  5,  1647.     Printed  by  Roger  Daniel,  printer  to   the 
University  of  Cambridge." — Ibid.,  iii.  604-608. 


Declaration  of  the  Army  as  to  Disbanding.     223 

several  men,  and  those  out  of  their  whole  number  to 
choose  two  or  more  for  each  regiment,  to  act  in  the  name 
and  behalf  of  the  whole  soldiery  of  the  respective  regi- 
ments, troops,  and  companies,  in  the  prosecution  of  their 
rights  and  desires  in  the  said  petition ;  as  also  of  their 
just  vindication  and  righting  in  reference  to  the  aforesaid 
proceedings  upon  and  against  the  same,  who  have  accord- 
ingly acted  and  done  many  things  to  those  ends ;  all  which 
the  soldiery  do  own  and  approve  as  their  own  acts.  .  .  . 
And  whereas  the  Parliament  hath  since  proceeded  to  cer- 
tain resolutions  of  sudden  disbanding  the  army  by  pieces ; 
which  resolutions  being  taken,  and  to  be  executed  before 
full  and  equal  satisfaction  be  given  to  the  whole  army  in 
any  of  the  grievances  ;  before  effectual  performance  of 
that  satisfaction  in  part  which  the  preceding  votes  seemed 
to  promise,  as  to  some  of  the  grievances  ;  and  before  any 
consideration  at  all  of  some  others  most  material  (as  by 
the  results  of  a  general  council  of  war  on  Saturday,  May 
29,  was  in  general  declared,  and  is  now  more  fully  remon- 
strated in  particulars,  by  a  representation  thereof  agreed 
upon  by  us  all,  [soldiers  as  well  as  officers]);  we  cannot 
but  look  upon  the  said  resolutions  of  disbanding  us  in  such 
manner,  as  proceeding  from  the  same  malicious  and  mis- 
chievous principles  and  intentions,  and  from  the  like 
indirect  practices  of  the  same  persons,  abusing  the  Parlia- 
ment and  us,  as  the  former  proceedings  against  us  before 
mentioned  did;  and  not  without  cruel  and  bloody  pur- 
poses (as  some  of  them  have  not  stuck  to  declare  or 
intimate),  after  the  body  of  the  army  should  be  disbanded, 
or  the  soldiers  divided  from  their  officers ;  then  to  question, 
proceed  against,  and  execute  their  malicious  intentions 
upon  all  such  particular  officers  and  soldiers  in  the  army, 
as  had  appeared  to  act  in  the  premises  in  behalf  of  the 


224      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

army."1  The  following  passage  further  shows  the  mode 
of  action  of  the  agitators,  and  shows  that  it  was  a  recog- 
nised and  regular,  not,  as  has  been  commonly  imagined, 
an  unrecognised  and  irregular  mode  of  action:  "And 
whereas,  upon  a  late  petition  to  the  General  from  the 
Agitators  in  behalf  of  the  soldiery,  grounded  upon  the 
preceding  considerations,  relating  to  the  said  Resolutions 
of  disbanding,  the  said  general  council  of  war  (to  prevent 
the  danger  and  inconveniences  of  these  disturbances,  or 
tumultuous  actings  or  confluences,  which  the  dissatisfac- 
tions and  jealousies,  thereupon  also  grounded,  were  like 
suddenly  to  have  produced  in  the  army)  did  advise  the 
General  first  to  contract  the  quarters  of  the  army,  and  then 
to  draw  the  same  to  an  orderly  rendezvous  for  satisfaction 
of  all." 2  They  then  state  their  willingness  to  disband  on 
certain  terms  thus  expressed :  "  We  shall  disband  when 
thereunto  required  by  the  Parliament,  having  first  such 
satisfaction  and  securities  in  relation  to  our  grievances  and 
desires  heretofore  presented,  and  such  security  that  we 
when  disbanded  shall  not  remain  subject  to  the  like 
oppression,  injury,  or  abuse  as  hath  been  attempted  and 
put  upon  us  while  an  army  by  the  same  men's  continu- 
ance in  the  same  credit  and  power,  as  shall  be  agreed 
upon  by  a  council,  to  consist  of  those  general  officers  of  the 
army,  who  have  concurred  with  the  army  in  the  premises, 
with  two  commission  officers  and  two  soldiers  to  be  chosen 
for  each  regiment,  who  have  concurred,  or  shall  concur 
with  us  in  the  premises  and  in  this  agreement ;  or  by  the 
major  part  of  such  of  them  who  shall  meet  in  council  for 
that  purpose,  when  they  shall  be  thereunto  called  by 
the  General.  Secondly,  That  without  such  satisfaction 
and  security  as  aforesaid,  we  shall  not  willingly  dis- 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  605,  606.  z  Ibid.,  iii.  606. 


The  King's  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      225 

band  or  divide,  or  suffer  ourselves  to  be  disbanded  or 
divided."1 

The  words  "and  two  soldiers  to  be  chosen  for  each 
regiment,"  further  show  the  singular  nature  and  organisa- 
tion of  this  army,  which  had  been  created  and  disciplined 
by  the  genius  of  Oliver  Cromwell ;  and  which  Mr.  Denzil 
Holies  sought  to  disband  and  destroy. 

As  has  been  seen,  on  the  5th  of  June  the  army  was 
rendezvoused  near  Newmarket.  Notwithstanding  the  at- 
tempt of  the  Parliament  to  prevent  the  army  from  coming 
within  forty  miles  of  London,  on  the  I2th  of  June  the 
army  had  marched  to  St.  Albans.  In  a  letter  to  the 
Speaker  of  the  House  of  Peers,  the  Earl  of  Manchester, 
Sir  T.  Fairfax  says :  "  My  Lord,  the  letter  from  both 
Houses,  concerning  the  disposing  of  quarters  of  the  army, 
so  as  no  part  may  be  within  forty  miles  of  London,  I 
received  but  this  morning  between  nine  and  ten  o'clock : 
the  orders  for  removing  to  new  quarters  about  St.  Albans 
were  given  out  yesterday,  without  any  appointment  of 
rendezvous  for  this  day,  so  as  the  several  regiments  are 
already  upon  their  march,  in  several  ways,  from  their  last 
quarters  to  their  new,  and  it  is  not  now  possible  to  stop 
them.  The  quarters  now  assigned,  the  nearest  to  London, 
are  twenty  miles  distant.  ...  I  shall,  for  the  better  ordering 
of  the  army,  be  this  night  at  St.  Albans,  appointed  before 
for  the  headquarters ;  where  I  shall  wait  your  further  re- 
solutions on  Monday"3  (June  14).  On  the  I3th  of  June, 
being  Sunday,  both  Houses  sat  again  to  do  business,  when 
another  letter  from  Sir  T.  Fairfax,  dated  St.  Albans,  June 
12,  1647,  and  addressed  to  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of 
Peers,  was  read,  with  two  petitions  enclosed — one  from 
Norfolk  and  Suffolk,  another  from  Essex — which  prayed 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  607.  z  Ibid.,  iii.  613. 

VOL.  II.  P 


226      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  not  to  disband  the  army  till  the 
general  grievances  should  be  redressed.1  There  were 
petitions  from  other  counties  to  the  same  effect. 

It  is  not  improbable  that  those  who  managed  the  affairs 
of  the  army,  seeing  themselves  thus  supported  by  a  certain 
proportion  of  the  people  of  England,  may  have  been  en- 
couraged thereby  to  extend  their  demands  beyond  pay- 
ment of  their  arrears  to  a  general  reform  of  the  constitu- 
tion, government,  and  laws.2  They  complained,  moreover, 
that  the  Parliament,  while  they  were  using  means  to 
deprive  the  army  of  their  arrears  of  pay,  had,  notwith- 
standing the  self-denying  ordinance,  shared  all  lucra- 
tive offices  among  their  own  body,  and  appropriated  to 
themselves  the  public  money  which  ought  to  have  been 
applied  to  the  discharge  of  the  arrears  of  the  soldiers' 
pay  ;3  and  they  brought  a  charge  or  impeachment  against 
eleven  members  of  the  House  of  Commons,  of  an  attempt 
to  overthrow  the  rights  and  liberties  of  the  people,  and  for 
that  purpose  unjustly  to  break  the  present  army  and  to 
raise  a  new  force  to  advance  and  carry  on  desperate  de- 
signs of  their  own  to  the  prejudice  of  the  Parliament  and 
public.4  The  impeached  members  were  Holies,  Stapylton, 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  614. 

2  See  "The  Heads  of  the  Proposals  agreed  upon  by  His  Excellency  Sir 
Thomas   Fairfax  and  his   Council    of   War,    August  I,    1647." — Ibid.,    iii. 

738-745- 

3  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  625,  626,  and  664-678. 

4  See  particularly  in  the  Charge  or  Impeachment  presented  to  the  Commons 
in  the  name  of  Sir  T.  Fairfax  and  the  army  under  his  command  against  Den- 
zil  Holies,  Esq.,  and  ten  other  members  of  the  House  of  Commons,  the  charge 
"that  the  said  Mr.  Long"  (one  of  the  impeached  members)  "did  procure  a 
command  of  a  troop  of  horse  under  the  late  Earl  of  Essex  ;  but  whenever  his 
said  troop  came  upon  any  service,  he,  out  of  fear  or  treachery,  absented  him- 
self, and  never  was  seen  or  known  to  charge  the  enemy  in  person,  though  his 
troop  often  engaged ;  and  when  his  troop  was  sent  into  the  west,  he  took  no 
other  notice  of  it  but  to  receive  his  pay  ;  and  in  the  meanwhile  he  repaired 
into  the  county  of  Essex,  and  procured  a  commission  to  be  a  colonel  of  horse, 


The  King^s  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      227 

Lewis,  Clotworthy,  Waller  (Sir  William),  Maynard,  Massey, 
Glynn,  Long1,  Harley,  and  Nicholl. 

There  were  great  debates  in  the  House  of  Commons  for 
several  days  together  on  the  subject  of  the  army's  charge 
against  the  eleven  members.  The  Presbyterian  majority 
refused  to  suspend  them  ;  but  upon  the  army's  advance 
nearer  to  London  (June  26)  (from  Berkhampstead  to  Ux- 
bridge,  some  regiments  pushing  on  to  Harrow  and  Brent- 
ford), which  they  gave  out  was  not  to  overawe  the 
Parliament  or  the  city,  but  only  to  see  that  the  mem- 
bers charged  by  them  should  be  suspended  the  House, 
and  that  then  they  would  give  in  a  more  particular  charge 
with  the  proofs  to  make  it  good  against  them,  the  Com- 
mons became  alarmed,  and  the  eleven  members  left  the 
House.  On  the  very  day  the  eleven  members  withdrew,  a 

and  instead  of  fighting  against  the  Parliament's  enemies,  he  betook  himself  to 
plunder  and  oppress  the  Parliament's  friends  there.  That  the  said  Mr.  Long 
afterwards,  upon  pretence  of  some  losses  sustained  by  the  enemy,  and  some 
great  service  he  had  done  for  the  State,  did  procure  of  the  House  a  great  office 
in  the  Chancery  ;  namely,  to  be  the  chief  Register  [sic]  of  that  court,  wherein 
his  skill  was  little,  and  whereof  he  was,  and  still-  is,  altogether  incapable  ;  and 
although  for  a  time,  upon  the  self-denying  ordinance,  he  was  displaced,  yet, 
upon  the  motion,  or  by  the  power  and  means,  of  the  said  Mr.  Holies,  he  hath 
obtained  the  said  office  again  ;  to  the  great  prejudice  of  skilful  clerks  that  have 
been  bred  up  in  the  said  court,  to  the  disservice  of  the  Commonwealth  and  the 
dishonour  of  the  House." — Pad.  Hist.,  iii.  676,  677.  Mr.  Long  in  his  answer 
denies  the  charge  of  cowardice  or  neglecting  his  military  duties,  but  admits  the 
charge  respecting  the  "  great  office  in  the  Chancery." — Ibid.,  iii.  708-710.  It 
is  possible  that  the  charge  of  cowardice  against  Mr.  Long  may  be  as  false 
as  the  charge  of  Clarendon,  that  Ireton  having  refused  to  fight  a  duel  with 
Holies,  Holies  pulled  Ireton  by  the  nose — a  story  not  considered  true  even 
by  Royalist  writers  of  moderate  candour.  But  then  Ireton  being  better  known 
had  an  advantage  over  Mr.  Long,  against  whom  a  false  charge  could  not  so 
easily  be  refuted.  Yet  Clarendon,  though  Ireton  had  proved  his  courage  on 
many  fields  of  battle,  insinuates  more  than  once  that  he  was  wanting  in  courage. 
Of  all  the  base  qualities  displayed  by  Hyde  there  is  none  more  discreditable 
than  his  disposition  to  make  charges  of  cowardice,  which  come  particularly 
ill  from  a  man  who  in  all  this  war  never  once  risked  his  own  person.  His 
charge  against  Ireton  on  this  occasion  is  completely  disproved  in  the  Memoir 
of  Henry  Ireton,  before  referred  to,  p.  175. 


228      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

question  for  proceeding  immediately  upon  the  desires  of 
the  army  was  carried  by  a  majority  of  53  against  27  ;  and 
the  next  day  another  question  in  favour  of  the  army  passed 
by  121  against  85."  On  July  20  the  Commons  gave  leave 
to  the  eleven  impeached  members  to  be  absent  for  six 
months.2  During  his  suspension  from  Parliament  Mr. 
Holies  went  to  France,  and  it  was  said,  and  "  by  the  con- 
sequence appeared  true,  that  there  meeting  with  the 
Queen,  he  pieced  up  an  ungodly  accommodation  with 
her ;  although  he  was  the  man  that  at  the  beginning, 
when  some  of  the  more  sober  men,  who  foresaw  the  sad 
issues  of  war  and  victory  to  either  side,  were  labouring  for 
an  accommodation,  said  openly  in  the  House,  that  'he 
abhorred  that  word  accommodation/  "  3  Once  again  Den- 
zil  Holies  makes  his  appearance  in  the  pages  of  Mrs.  Hut- 
chinson, when  the  aged  matron  relates  with  a  mournful 
severity  the  scene  in  the  court  which  sat  upon  the  men 
who  had  delivered  England  from  the  tyranny  of  the 
Stuarts — when  she  describes  the  shock  to  Colonel  Hut- 
chinson  at  the  sight  of  the  prisoners,  "  with  whom  he  be- 
lieved himself  to  stand  at  the  bar ;  and  the  sight  of  their 
judges,  among  whom  was  that  vile  traitor*  [Monk]  who 
had  sold  the  men  that  trusted  him ;  and  he  [Holies]  that 
openly  said  he  abhorred  the  word  accommodation,  when 
moderate  men  would  have  prevented  the  war ;  and  the 
colonel's  own  dear  friend  [Ashley  Cooper],  who  had  wished 
damnation  to  his  soul  if  he  ever  suffered  penny  of  any 
man's  estate,  or  hair  of  any  man's  head  to  be  touched." 5 
Truly  might  Sir  Henry  Vane  say,  as  he  said,  in  his  prayer 
with  his  family  and  friends  in  his  prison  on  the  morning  of 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  653,  654.  2  Ibid.,  iii.  712. 

3  M  emoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  p.  328.          4  The  italics  are  in  the  original. 

6  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  p.  417. 


The  Kings  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      229 

his  execution,  "  Oh!  what  abjuring  of  light,  what  treachery* 
what  meanness  of  spirit  has  appeared  in  this  day ! " 

Genius,  though  it  can  do  things  which  talent  cannot  do, 
is  more  liable  to  certain  errors  than  talent — such  errors  as 
belong  to  that  impulsive  temperament  which  is  often  the 
accompaniment  of  genius.  Bonaparte  may  have  had  more 
genius  than  Washington,  but  Bonaparte  committed  errors 
which  Washington  would  not  have  committed ;  and  the 
ardent,  sanguine  temperament  of  Cromwell  might  some- 
times lead  him  into  errors,  from  which  the  equally  firm 
but  less  impulsive  nature  of  Ireton  would  protect  him. 
Thus  in  Sir  John  Berkeley's  Memoirs  there  is  a  passage 
(with  many  pages  more  of  Berkeley's  Memoirs  incorpo- 
rated into  Ludlow's  Memoirs l)  which,  though  Cromwell's 
emotions  and  tears  on  this  occasion  were  or  might  be 
perfectly  sincere  and  genuine,  is  one  of  those  cases  which 
may  have  led  to  the  general  charge  of  hypocrisy  and 
insincerity  against  Cromwell.  Sir  John  Berkeley  says  that 
"  Cromwell  told  him  that  he  had  lately  seen  the  tenderest 
sight  that  ever  his  eyes  beheld,  which  was  the  interview 
between  the  King  and  his  children ;  that  he  wept  plenti- 
fully at  the  remembrance  thereof,  saying,  that  never  man 
was  so  abused  as  he  in  his  sinister  opinion  of  the  King, 
who,  he  thought,  was  the  most  upright  and  conscientious 
of  his  kingdom  :  that  they  of  the  Independent  party  had 
infinite  obligations  to  him,  for  not  consenting  to  the  pro- 
positions sent  to  him  at  Newcastle,  which  would  have  totally 
ruined  them,  and  which  His  Majesty's  interest  seemed  to 
invite  him  to  ;  concluding  with  this  wish,  that  God  would 
be  pleased  to  look  upon  him  according  to  the  sincerity  of 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  195-236.  Second  edition.  London,  1721.  Lud- 
low  says,  "  Many  particulars  relating  to  this  business  I  have  seen  in  a  manu- 
script written  by  Sir  John  Berkeley  himself,  and  left  in  the  hands  of  a  mer- 
chant at  Geneva." — Ibid.,  i.  195. 


230      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

his  heart  towards  the  King."  It  is  not  surprising  that 
when  Berkeley  related  this  scene  to  the  King,  "  with  this 
relation  the  King  was  no  more  moved  than  with  the  rest, 
firmly  believing  such  expressions  to  proceed  from  a  neces- 
sity that  Cromwell  and  the  army  had  of  him,  without 
whom,  he  said,  they  could  do  nothing."  3 

The  distinction  which  I  have  indicated  between  Crom- 
well and  Ireton,  as  in  some  degree  coincident  with  the 
distinction  between  the  rapid  impulsive  action  of  genius 
and  the  more  deliberate  working  of  talent,  is  shown  in 
this  statement  of  Ludlow,  borrowed  from  Berkeley : 
"  Cromwell  appeared  in  all  his  conferences  with  Sir  John 
Berkeley  most  zealous  for  a  speedy  agreement  with  the 
King,  insomuch  that  he  sometimes  complained  of  his  son 
Ireton's  slowness  in  perfecting  the  proposals,  and  his  un- 
willingness to  come  up  to  His  Majesty's  sense."  !  More- 
over, Ireton  would  appear  to  have  had  less  aptitude  for 
becoming,  even  in  the  smallest  degree,  a  courtier  than 
Cromwell ;  and  he  often  spoke  with  a  frankness  and 
honesty  not  found  profitable,  and  therefore  not  used  by 
courtiers. 

If  the  many  constitutional  papers  penned  by  Ireton 
on  behalf  of  the  army  were  collected,  they  would  form  a 
large  volume.  His  pen  was  now  employed  in  drawing  up 
the  celebrated  Heads  of  Proposals  of  the  army  for  the 
future  government  of  England.  Among  many  other  pro- 
posals were  these :  That  a  certain  period  should  be  set 
for  the  ending  of  this  Parliament,  such  period  to  be  within 
a  year  at  most ;  that  Parliaments  should  be  called  bien- 
nially, each  biennial  Parliament  to  sit  120  days  certain, 
unless  adjourned  or  dissolved  by  their  own  consent;  that 
neither  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  nor  the  Covenant  be 

„  *  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  199.  "  Ibid.,  i.  201. 


The  King's  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      231 

enforced  upon  any ;  that  the  excise  be  taken  off  from  such 
commodities  whereon  the  poor  people  of  the  land  do 
ordinarily  live,  and  a  certain  time  be  limited  for  taking  off 
the  whole ;  that  all  monopolies,  old  or  new,  and  restraints 
to  the  freedom  of  trade  be  taken  off;1  that  the  great  officers 
of  State  be  for  ten  years,  nominated  by  the  Parliament, 
and  after  ten  years  the  Parliament  should  nominate  three, 
and  out  of  that  number  the  King  should  appoint  one  upon 
any  vacancy ;  that  the  making  of  war  or  peace  with  any 
other  kingdom  or  state  shall  not  be  without  advice  and 
consent  of  Parliament ;  that  the  King  be  restored  accord- 
ing to  the  conditions  here  expressed.  There  were  also 
provisions  as  to  the  matter  of  compositions.  The  number 
of  persons  excepted  from  pardon  was  reduced  to  "  five 2 
for  the  English,"  not  named. 

These  propositions  were  more  advantageous  to  the 
King  than  those  which  had  been  offered  him  before  the 
commencement  of  the  war,  when  Denzil  Holies,  who  now 
denounced  the  party  who  offered  these  terms  as  levellers, 
and  subverters  of  all  constitutional  government,  declared 
that  he  abhorred  the  very  word  accommodation.  But 
Charles  had  not  the  least  intention  of  accepting  these 
terms ;  though  Sir  John  Berkeley,  when  he  brought  them 
to  him  at  Woburn  to  peruse  before  they  were  offered  to  him 
in  public,  and  the  King  expressed  himself  much  displeased 
with  them,  answered  that  a  crown  so  near  lost  was  never 
recovered  so  easily  as  this  would  be,  if  things  were  ad- 

1  See  "The  Heads  of  the  Proposals  agreed  upon  by  His  Excellency  Sir 
Thomas  Fairfax  and  his  Council  of  War,  August  I,  1647."     Parl.  Hist.,  iii. 
738-745. 

2  This  is  the  word  in  the  copy  of  the  Proposals  given  in  the  "Parliamentary 
History,"  iii.  742.     In  the  histories  and  memoirs  the  word  is  "seven,"  which 
was  probably  an  original  error  of  Berkeley  copied  by  Ludlow,  and  then  by 
the  whole  host  of  writers  who  do  not  look  at  the  original  papers. 


232      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

justed  upon  these  terms.  But  Charles  had  no  thought  of 
"  accommodation  "  any  more  than  Denzil  Holies  formerly 
had,  but,  on  the  contrary,  was  meditating  a  fresh  war  upon 
his  people.  He  would  not  have  hesitated  to  storm  and 
sack  London  as  his  Lieutenant  Montrose  had  stormed 
and  sacked  Aberdeen,  to  attain  the  power  of  plundering 
and  oppressing  the  people  of  England  which  had  been 
attained  by  his  royal  brother-in-law  of  plundering  and 
oppressing  the  people  of  France.  And  he  was  not 
without  encouragement  in  these  royal  meditations,  not- 
withstanding the  terrible  lessons  which  the  Independents 
had  already  given  him  on  many  fields  of  battle.  Parties 
the  most  opposite  courted  him — the  Presbyterians  on  one 
side  and  the  Catholics  on  the  other  secretly  promised  him 
great  assistance ;  and  he  flattered  himself  to  the  last  that 
he  might  with  the  assistance  of  one  subdue  the  rest  and  rise 
on  the  wreck  of  all,  while  he  should  run  no  risk  either  in  his 
person  or  regal  dignity.  But  in  all  this  he  was  lamentably 
mistaken ;  for  when,  the  Proposals  being  sent  to  him  and 
his  concurrence  humbly  desired,  he,  "to  the  great  astonish- 
ment not  only  of  Ireton  and  the  officers  of  the  army  who 
were  present,  but  even  of  his  own  party,  entertained  them 
with  very  sharp  and  bitter  language," x  his  doom  was 
sealed  ;  "  for  Colonel  Rainsborough,  who  of  all  the  army 
seemed  the  least  to  desire  an  agreement,  went  out  from 
the  conference,  and  hastened  to  the  army,  informing  them 
what  entertainment  their  commissioners  and  proposals 
had  found  with  the  King."3  And  when  Berkeley  after- 
wards asked  Ireton  and  the  rest  of  the  officers  what  they 
would  do  if  the  King  accepted  the  Proposals,  he  was  told 
plainly  that  if  the  King  accepted  the  Proposals,  they 
would  offer  them  to  the  Parliament ;  if  he  rejected  them, 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  204.  2  Ibid.,  i.  205. 


The  King  s  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      233 

they  would  not  say  what  they  would  do.  The  Proposals 
were  never  again  offered  to  the  King. 

While  the  King  was  "entertaining  the  commissioners  of 
the  army  with  the  very  sharp  and  bitter  language  "  above 
mentioned,  Sir  John  Berkeley  taking  notice  of  it,  looked 
with  much  wonder  upon  the  King,  and  stepping  up  to  him 
said  in  his  ear,  "  Sir,  you  speak  as  if  you  had  some  secret 
strength  and  power  which  I  do  not  know  of ;  and  since  you 
have  concealed  it  from  me,  I  wish  you  had  concealed  it 
from  these  men  also."  T  In  fact  the  King  imagined  he  had 
some  secret  strength  and  power ;  for  while  he  was  nego- 
tiating with  the  army,  he  was  also  negotiating  with  the 
enemies  of  the  army — that  is,  with  the  Presbyterian  party 
(English  and  Scotch)  and  the  city  of  London,  who  had  by 
some  strange  process  of  reasoning  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  they  possessed  a  power  of  opposing  the  army — the 
Lord  Lauderdale  and  others  of  the  Presbyterian  party,  and 
divers  of  the  city  of  London,  pretending  to  despise  the 
army,  and  assuring  the  King  that  they  would  oppose  the 
army  to  the  death,  when  they  would  not  have  stood  the 
onset  of  a  single  regiment.2 

The  account  given  above  on  the  authority  of  Sir  John 
Berkeley,  who  was  present  at  the  conference,  is  quite  suf- 
ficient to  explain  the  breaking  off  of  the  army's  negotiation 
with  the  King  without  the  assistance  of  the  story  of  the 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  205. 

2  To  show  how  Ludlow  has  followed  Berkeley  in  this  part  of  his  Memoirs, 
Berkeley's  words  are,  "What  with  the  pleasure  of  having  so  concurring  a 
second  as  Mr.  Ashburnham,  and  what  with  the  encouraging  messages  which 
His  Majesty  had  (by  my  Lord  Lauderdale  and  others)  from  the  Presbyterian 
party  and  the  city  of  London,  who  pretended  to  despise  the  army,  and  to 
oppose  them  to  death"— and  Ludlow's  are,    "With  these  encouragements 
and  others  from  the  Presbyterian  party,  the  Lord  Lauderdale  and  divers  of  the 
city  of  London  assuring  the  King  that  fhey  would  oppose  the  army  to  the 
death." — Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  204. 


234      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

letter  from  Charles  to  the  Queen,  said  to  have  been  inter- 
cepted by  Cromwell  and  Ireton  at  the  Blue  Boar  Inn  in 
Holborn.  Carte,  who  had  seen  the  story  of  this  letter  in 
MS.,  and  who  published  a  version  of  it  in  his  "  Life  of  the 
Duke  of  Ormonde,"  says  of  it,  "  Mr.  Morrice,  chaplain  to 
Roger  Earl  of  Orrery,  in  some  MS.  memoirs  that  he  col- 
lected of  passages  which  he  had  heard  from  the  mouth  of 
that  nobleman,  relates  the  manner  of  that  discovery  with 
such  particular  circumstances  that  (however  his  memory 
might  fail  him  in  other  cases,  wherein  I  find  many  mis- 
takes as  to  facts  and  circumstances  of  time,  place,  and 
persons)  what  he  relates  of  this  matter  seems  to  deserve 
credit."  x 

The  story  referred  to  is  related  in  the  Memoir  prefixed 
to  the  "  State  Letters  of  Roger  Boyle,  first  Earl  of  Orrery," 
better  known  by  the  name  of  Lord  Broghill,  and  is  in 
some  degree  confirmed  by  the  testimony  of  Ashburnham, 
who  says  in  his  Narrative :  "  Being  commanded  by  His 
Majesty  to  desire  from  Cromwell  and  Ireton  that  he  might 
go  from  Stoke  to  one  of  his  own  houses,  they  told  me,  with 
very  severe  countenances,  he  should  go  if  he  pleased  to 
Oatlands;  but  that  they  had  met  with  sufficient  proof  that 
the  King  had  not  only  abetted  and  fomented  the  differ- 
ences between  them  and  their  enemies,  by  commanding  all 
h;s  party  to  take  conditions  under  the  (then)  Parliament 
and  city,  but  that  likewise  he  had  (at  that  instant)  a  treaty 
with  the  Scots,  when  he  made  greatest  profession  to  close 

1  Carte's  Ormonde,  ii.  12.  Carte's  Life  of  the  Duke  of  Ormonde  was  pub- 
lished in  1736.  (London.)  Morrice's  Memoir  of  Roger  first  Earl  of  Orrery 
(prefixed  to  Orrery's  State  Letters)  was  published  in  1743.  (Dublin.)  It 
appears  from  what  is  said  in  Carte's  Ormonde,  in  the  same  page  (ii.  12),  that 
the  King's  reasons  for  preferring  the  Scots  were  that  he  should  get  more  from 
the  Scots  than  from  the  English  army,  but  he  overlooked  the  fact  that  the 
Scots  were  unable  to  contend  with  the  army  of  the  English  Independents  led 
by  Fairfax  and  Cromwell. 


The  King's  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      235 

with  them:  for  the  justification  of  which,  they  affirmed 
that  they  had  both  his  and  the  Queen's  letters  to  make  it 
good,  which  were  great  allays  to  their  thoughts  of  serving 
him,  and  did  very  much  justify  the  general  misfortune  he 
lived  under  of  having  the  reputation  of  little  faith  in  his 
dealings."  J 

The  story2  is  this.  In  1649,  after  the  taking  of  Water- 
ford,  Dungannon,  and  other  places,  "  Cromwell  made 
Youghall  the  headquarters;  from  whence  they  marched 
out  several  times  to  several  places  ;  and  one  time  particu- 
larly," says  the  writer,  described  in  the  title-page  of  the 
"  Collection  of  the  State  Letters  of  Roger  Boyle,  first  Earl 
of  Orrery,"  as  "  the  Rev.  Mr.  Thomas  Morrice,  his  Lord- 
ship's chaplain,"  "  when  Lord  Broghill  was  riding  with 
Cromwell  on  one  side  of  him  and  Ireton  on  the  ether, 
at  the  head  of  their  army,  they  fell  into  discourse  about 
the  late  King's  death.  Cromwell  declared^  that  if  the 
King  had  followed  his  own  mind,  and  had  had  trusty 
servants  about  him,  he  had  fooled  them  all.  And  further 
said,  that  once  they  had  a  mind  to  have  closed  with  him  ; 
but  upon  something  that  happened,  they  fell  off  from  their 
design  again.  My  Lord,  finding  Cromwell  and  Ireton  in  a 
good  humour,  and  no  other  person  being  within  hearing, 
asked  them  if  he  might  be  so  bold  as  to  desire  an  account, 
1st,  Why  they  once  would  have  closed  with  the  King  ?  and 
2dly,  Why  they  did  not  ?  Cromwell  very  freely  told  him 
he  would  satisfy  him  in  both  his  queries.  The  reason,  says 
he,  why  we  would  once  have  closed  with  the  King,  was 

1  Ashburnham's  Narrative,  being  the  second  volume  of  the  work,  in  two 
volumes  8vo,  London,  1830,  of  which  the  first  volume  is    "  A  Vindication  of 
John  Ashburnham,  by  his  lineal  descendant  and  present  representative"  (the 
late  Earl  of  Ashburnham). 

2  The  same  story  is  told  on  the  same  authority  in  Carte's  Ormonde,  ii.  12, 
already  referred  to,  with  only  a  few  slight  verbal  differences. 


236      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

this :  we  found  that  the  Scots  and  the  Presbyterians  began 
to  be  more  powerful  than  we ;  and  if  they  made  up 
matters  with  the  King,  we  should  have  been  left  in  the 
lurch :  therefore  we  thought  it  best  to  prevent  them,  by 
offering  first  to  come  in  upon  any  reasonable  conditions. 
But  while  we  were  busied  in  these  thoughts,  there  came  a 
letter  from  one  of  our  spies,  who  was  of  the  King's  bed- 
chamber, which  acquainted  us  that  on  that  day  our  final 
doom  was  decreed ;  that  he  could  not  possibly  tell  what 
it  was,  but  we  might  find  it  out,  if  we  could  intercept  a 
letter  sent  from  the  King  to  the  Queen,  wherein  he  de- 
clared what  he  would  do.  The  letter,  he  said,  was  sewed 
up  in  the  skirt  of  a  saddle,  and  the  bearer  of  it  would  come 
with  the  saddle  upon  his  head  about  ten  o'clock  that  night 
to  the  Blue  Boar  Inn  in  Holborn,  for  there  he  was  to  take 
horse  and  go  to  Dover  with  it.  This  messenger  knew 
nothing  of  the  letter  in  the  saddle,  but  some  persons  in 
Dover  did.  We  were  at  Windsor  when  we  received  this 
letter ;  and  immediately  upon  the  receipt  of  it,  Ireton  and 
1  resolved  to  take  one  trusty  fellow  with  us,  and  with 
troopers'  habits  to  go  to  the  inn  in  Holborn  ;  which 
accordingly  we  did,  and  set  our  man  at  the  gate  of  the 
inn,  where  the  wicket  only  was  open,  to  let  people  in  and 
out.  Our  man  was  to  give  us  notice  when  any  person 
came  there  with  a  saddle,  whilst  we,  in  the  disguise  of 
common  troopers,  called  for  cans  of  beer,  and  continued 
drinking  till  about  ten  o'clock  :  the  sentinel  at  the  gate 
then  gave  notice  that  the  man  with  the  saddle  was  come 
in.  Upon  this  we  immediately  rose,  and,  as  the  man  was 
leading  out  his  horse  saddled,  came  up  to  him  with  drawn 
swords,  and  told  him  we  were  to  search  all  that  went  in 
and  out  there ;  but  as  he  looked  like  an  honest  man,  we 
would  only  search  his  saddle,  and  so  dismiss  him.  Upon 


The  King's  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      237 

that  we  tmgirt  the  saddle,  and  carried  it  into  the  stall 
where  we  had  been  drinking,  and  left  the  horseman  with 
our  sentinel ;  then,  ripping  up  one  of  the  skirts  of  the 
saddle,  we  there  found  the  letter  of  which  we  had  been 
informed;  and  having  got  it  into  our  own  hands,  we 
delivered  the  saddle  again  to  the  man,  telling  him  he  was 
an  honest  man,  and  bidding  him  go  about  his  business. 
The  man  not  knowing  what  had  been  done,  went  away  to 
Dover.  As  soon  as  we  had  the  letter  we  opened  it ;  in 
which  we  found  the  King  had  acquainted  the  Queen  that 
he  was  now  courted  by  both  factions,  the  Scotch  Presby- 
terians and  the  army,  and  which  bid  fairest  for  him  should 
have  him ;  but  he  thought  he  should  close  with  the  Scots 
sooner  than  the  other.  Upon  this,  added  Cromwell,  we 
took  horse,  and  went  to  Windsor;  and  finding  we  were, 
not  likely  to  have  any  tolerable  terms  from  the  King,  we 
immediately,  from  that  time  forward,  resolved  his  ruin."  z 

1  Memoir  of  Roger  Boyle,  the  first  Earl  of  Orrery,  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Thomas 
Morrice,  his  Lordship's  chaplain,  pp.  26-29,  prefixed  to  vol.  i.  of  Orrery's 
State  Letters,  two  volumes  8vo,  Dublin,  1743.  The  writer  of  the  "Memoir 
of  Henry  Ireton,"  already  referred  to,  says  (p.  154):  "That  a  letter  from 
Charles  to  Henrietta  Maria  was  intercepted  by  Cromwell  and  Ireton  at  the 
inn  is  not  improbable  ;  and  that  its  contents  were  something  to  the  effect 
which  is  stated  by  Lord  Broghill  seems  very  credible.  The  probability 
appears  to  be  that  the  account  of  Lord  Orrery's  chaplain  is  erroneous  in 
making  Cromwell  assign  this  letter  as  the  sole  cattse  of  their  giving  up  the 
King."  The  words  I  have  printed  in  italics  convey,  I  think,  a  correct 
view  of  the  matter.  The  chaplain's  or  Lord  Orrery's  memory  might  have 
deceived  them  as  to  some  points.  Another  version  of  this  letter  is  given 
in  the  following  passage  of  a  book  called  "  Richardsoniana,"  a  posthu- 
mous publication  of  Richardson  the  painter  (1776):  "Lord  Bolingbroke 
told  us — Mr.  Pope,  Lord  Marchmont,  and  myself  (June  I2th,  1742) — 
that  Lord  Oxford  had  often  told  him  that  he  had  seen,  and  had  in  his 
hands,  an  original  letter  that  King  Charles  I.  wrote  to  the  Queen,  in  answer 
to  one  of  hers  that  had  been  intercepted  and  then  forwarded  to  him,  wherein 
she  had  reproached  him  for  having  made  those  villains  too  great  concessions 
(viz.,  that  Cromwell  should  be  Lieutenant  of  Ireland  for  life  without  account; 
that  that  kingdom  should  be  in  the  hands  of  the  party,  with  an  army  there 
kept  which  should  know  no  head  but  the  Lieutenant ;  that  Cromwell  should 


238      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

The  King  having  thus  broken  with  the  army,  as  a  first 
step  towards  a  new  war  used  all  his  influence  to  strengthen 
the  enemies  of  the  army  in  the  Parliament.1  To  this 
end  a  paper  entitled  "A  Solemn  Engagement"  was  circu- 
lated for  signature,  which  after  reciting  that  the  subscribers 

have  a  garter,  £c.)  That  in  this  letter  of  the  King's  it  was  said  that  she 
should  leave  him  to  manage,  who  was  better  informed  of  all  circumstances 
than  she  could  be  ;  but  she  might  be  entirely  easy  as  to  whatever  concessions 
he  should  make  them ;  for  that  he  should  know  in  due  time  how  to  deal  with 
the  rogues,  who,  instead  of  a  silken  garter,  should  be  fitted  with  a  hempen 
cord.  So  the  letter  ended :  which  answer,  as  they  waited  for,  so  they  inter- 
cepted accordingly — and  it  determined  his  fate.  This  letter,  Lord  Oxford  said, 
he  had  offered  ^"500  for."  This  version  of  the  letter  contains  several  things 
which  Cromwell  might  have  been  disposed  to  omit  in  telling  the  story  to 
Lord  Broghill,  and  may  be  considered  as  corroborative  rather  than  infirm- 
ative  evidence  of  there  having  been  an  important  letter  intercepted. 

Among  the  innumerable  proofs  which  Time  has  brought  to  light  of  Charles's 
insincerity,  we  may  mention  one  in  particular  which  shows  the  length  he  was 
willing  to  go  to  establish  despotic  power  in  England,  and  also,  that  if  he  has 
any  claim  to  the  title  of  "  martyr,"  it  must  be  a  martyr  neither  for  the  laws 
nor  the  liberties,  nor  even  for  the  Church  of  England.  The  document  alluded 
to  is  a  letter  from  Charles  to  the  Pope,  which  Mr.  Massingberd  found  in  the 
Vatican  Library,  requesting  aid  from  His  "  Holiness,"  and,  as  the  fair  inference 
from  the  terms  employed  appears  to  be,  expressing  a  hope  that  the  people  of 
England  would  be  brought  over  to  the  Roman  Catholic  faith. 

"  '  MOST  HOLY  FATHER,— -So  many  and  so  great  proofs  of  the  fidelity  and 
affection  of  our  cousin  the  Earl  of  Glamorgan  we  have  received,  and  such 
confidence  do  we  deservedly  repose  in  him,  that  your  Holiness  may  justly  give 
faith  and  credence  to  him  in  any  matter  whereupon  he  is  to  treat,  in  our 
name,  with  your  Holiness,  either  by  himself  in  person,  or  by  any  other. 

"  '  Moreover,  whatever  shall  have  been  positively  settled  and  determined  by 
him,  the  same  we  promise  to  sanction  and  perform.  In  testimony  whereof  we 
have  written  this  very  brief  letter,  confirmed  by  our  own  hand  and  seal ;  and 
we  have  in  our  wishes  and  prayers  nothing  before  this,  that  by  yr.  favour 
we  may  be  restored  into  that  state  in  which  we  may  openly  avow  ourself. — 
Your  very  humble  and  obedient  servant,  CHARLES  R. 

"  'At  our  Court  at  Oxford,  October  20,'  [1645]. 

"  Note. — The  original  is  in  the  Vatican  Library.  Charles  after  his  reverses  in 
this  year  gave  the  Earl  of  Glamorgan  an  unlimited  commission  to  concert  mea- 
sures with  His  Holiness  for  the  retrieving  of  his  affairs,  and  the  restoring  of  his 
estate.  The  letter  is  here  translated  from  the  Latin,  and  a  similar  communica- 
tion was  made  by  Charles  to  the  Cardinal  Spada." — From  Halliwell's  Letters 
of  the  Kings  of  England,  ii.  398. 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  205-207. 


The  King's  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      239 

had  entered  into  a  solemn  league  and  covenant  for  refor- 
mation and  defence  of  religion,  the  honour  and  happiness 
of  the  King,  and  the  peace  and  safety  of  the  three  king- 
doms of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  engaged  the 
subscribers  of  all  degrees — citizens,  commanders,  officers, 
and  soldiers  of  the  trained  bands  and  auxiliaries;  the 
young  men  and  apprentices  of  the  cities  of  London  and 
Westminster ;  seamen  and  watermen,  together  with  divers 
other  commanders,  officers,  and  soldiers  within  the  lines 
of  communication — to  bring  the  King  to  his  two  Houses 
of  Parliament  with  honour,  safety,  and  freedom,  and  that 
without  the  nearer  approach  of  the  army ;  there  to  confirm 
such  things  as  he  had  granted  in  his  message  of  the  I2th 
of  May  last ;  and  that  by  a  personal  treaty  such  things  as 
are  yet  in  difference  may  be  speedily  settled,  and  a  firm 
and  lasting  peace  established.1  This  paper  was  annexed 
to  a  petition  of  the  trained  bands,  apprentices,  manners, 
and  soldiers  for  the  King's  coming  to  London.  This 
petition  was  delivered  to  the  Commons  on  the  24th  of 
July,  and  a  declaration  of  the  Commons,  agreed  to  by  the 
Lords,  was  sent  to  the  Lord  Mayor  and  Sheriffs  with  an 
order  to  be  forthwith  read  and  published  by  beat  of  drum 
and  sound  of  trumpet  in  the  cities  of  London  and  West- 
minster, that  all  persons  joining  in  the  said  Engagement 
shall  be  deemed  guilty  of  high  treason. 

Two  days  after,  on  the  26th  of  July,  great  numbers  of 
apprentices  assembled  about  the  House  of  Commons  in  a 
riotous  manner.  Many  of  these  came  into  the  House  of 
Commons  with  their  hats  on,  kept  the  door  open,  and 
called  out  as  they  stood,  "Vote,"  "  vote ;"  and  stood  in  this 
insolent  manner  till  the  votes  had  passed  for  repealing 
the  ordinance  for  changing  the  militia,  and  the  declara- 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  713,  714. 


240      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

tion  of  both  Houses  on  the  24th.1  Ludlow,  who  was  pre- 
sent in  the  House  at  the  time,  describes  a  scene  to  which 
there  is  probably  no  parallel  in  the  history  of  the  English 
Parliament2  The  next  morning  Ludlow  advised  with  Sir 
Arthur  Haselrig  and  others,  and  they  concluded  that 
under  the  present  circumstances  they  would  not  sit  in 
Parliament,  it  being  manifestly  the  design  of  the  other 
party  either  to  drive  them  away  or  to  destroy  them. 
They  therefore  resolved  to  go  to  the  army  for  protection, 
Haselrig  undertaking  to  persuade  the  Speaker  to  go,  who 
having  caused  .£1000  to  be  thrown  into  his  coach,  went 
down  to  the  army,  which  then  lay  at  Windsor  and  the 
adjacent  places.3  As  might  be  supposed,  it  was  not  a 
matter  of  any  difficulty  for  the  arrny  of  Fairfax  and  Crom- 
well, which  had  beaten  all  the  armies  which  the  Royalists 
had  brought  against  it,  to  beat  the  London  apprentices 
and  the  City  militia.  On  the  6th  of  August  Fairfax  came 
to  Westminster  with  the  Speakers  of  both  Houses,  and 
the  members  whom  he  restored  to  their  seats — nineteen  of 
the  Upper  and  a  hundred  of  the  Lower.4  "  Having  resumed 
our  places  in  the  House,"  says  Ludlow,  "  as  many  of  the 
eleven  members  as  had  returned  to  act,  immediately  with- 


1  Whitelock's  Memorials,  p.  263. 

2  "  Whilst  the  two  Houses  were  in  debate  what  answer  to  give  to  this  in- 
solent multitude,  some  of  them  getting  to  the  windows  of  the  House  of  Lords, 
threw  stones  in  upon  them,  and  threatened  them  with  worse  usage  unless  they 
gave  them  an  answer  to  their  liking  ;  others  knocked  at  the  door  of  the  House 
of  Commons,  requiring  to  be  admitted  ;   but  some  of  us  with  our  swords 
forced  them  to  retire  for  the  present ;  and  the  House  resolved  to  rise  without 
giving  any  answer,  judging  it  below  them   to  do  anything  by  compulsion. 
Whereupon  the  Speaker  went  out  of  the  House,  but  being  in  the  lobby  was 
forced  back  into  the  chair  by  the  violence  of  the  insolent  rabble ;  whereof 
above  a  thousand  attended  without  doors,  and  about  forty  or  fifty  were  got 
into  the  House.     So  that  it  was  thought  convenient  to  give  way  to  their  rage. " 
— Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  206. 

3  Ibid.,  i.  207.  4  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  745  et  seq. 


The  King's  Negotiations  and  Intrigues.      241 

drew.  ...  A  day  or  two  after  the  restitution  of  the  Par- 
liament, the  army  marched  through  the  city  without 
offering  the  least  violence,  promising  to  show  themselves 
faithful  to  the  public  interest." x 

We  have  now  arrived  at  the  most  perplexing  part  of 
our  subject — perplexing,  for  the  evidence  besides  being 
scanty  is  very  conflicting,  the  two  principal  witnesses, 
Berkeley  and  Ashburnham,  frequently  disagreeing  with 
one  another  ;  and  the  words  reported  by  Lord  Broghill 
as  used  by  Cromwell,  "we  from  that  time  resolved  his 
ruin,"  being  inconsistent  with  Cromwell's  alleged  attempt 
to  bring  about  the  King's  escape  from  the  power  of  the 
adjutators  of  the  army,  who,  though  they  had  been  in- 
duced to  assent  to  a  negotiation  with  the  King,  now  upon 
the  failure  of  it  had  become  more  determined  in  their 
hostility  to  him  than  ever.  "The  adjutators,"  says  Lud- 
low,  who,  as  a  member  both  of  the  Parliament  and  of  the 
army,  may  be  regarded  as  a  credible  witness  on  this  point, 
"  began  to  complain  openly  in  Council  both  of  the  King 
and  the  malignants  about  him,  saying  that  since  the  King 
had  rejected  their  Proposals,  they  were  not  engaged  any 
further  to  him,  and  that  they  were  now  to  consult  their 
own  safety  and  the  public  good ;  that  having  the  power 
devolved  upon  them  by  the  decision  of  the  sword,  to 
which  both  parties  had  appealed,  and  being  convinced 
that  monarchy  was  inconsistent  with  the  prosperity  of  the 
nation,  they  resolved  to  use  their  endeavours  to  reduce 
the  government  of  England  to  the  form  of  a  common- 
wealth."5 So  far  Ludlow  may  be  correct,  but  when  he 
then  goes  on  to  say  that  these  proceedings  "  struck  great 
terror  into  Cromwell  and  Ireton,"  he  shows  himself  to  be 
misled  by  his  too  great  confidence  in  Berkeley's  state- 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  210,  211.  2  Ibid.,  i.  213. 

VOL.  II.  Q 


242      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

ments.  For  Ludlowhas,  as  has  been  shown  in  the  preced- 
ing chapter,  given  so  high  a  character  of  Ireton  for  honesty 
and  singleness  of  purpose  that  he  could  not,  without  con- 
tradicting himself,  mean  here  terror  in  Cromwell  and 
Ireton  for  their  own  safety,  in  consequence  of  their  deal- 
ings with  the  King  having  not  been  strictly  honest  to- 
wards the  army ;  for  the  declaration  of  the  adjutators 
against  a  monarchy  and  for  a  commonwealth  could  have 
struck  no  terror  into  Ireton,  who  held  the  same  opinions. 
Ludlow  might  indeed  mean  by  the  words  "struck  great 
terror,"  that  Cromwell  and  Ireton,  in  taking  upon  them 
so  active  a  part  as  they  had  taken  in  drawing  up  the 
Proposals  for  restoring  the  King  on  certain  conditions, 
and  in  carrying  on  the  negotiations  they  had  carried  on 
both  with  the  King  personally  and  with  his  confidential 
agents  Berkeley  and  Ashburnham,  ran  very  considerable 
personal  risk  from  the  jealousy  of  the  adjutators,  who 
had  taken  up  a  dislike,  rising  almost  to  detestation,  of 
monarchy  in  general,  and  of  the  dynasty  of  the  Stuarts 
in  particular;  and  whose  suspicions  of  Cromwell,  as, 
according  to  Berkeley,  Cromwell  told  him  and  Ashburn- 
ham, were  grown  to  that  height  that  he  was  afraid  to  lie 
in  his  own  quarters.  This  must  mean  that  he  thought 
some  of  the  most  violent,  such  as  John  Lilburne  and  Wild- 
man,  as  is  intimated  by  Holies  and  Berkeley,  had  formed 
a  plot  to  assassinate  him  as  a  renegade  to  the  cause  of 
liberty. 

This  indeed  was  the  most  hopeful  scheme  that  the 
Royalists  and  Presbyterians  had  devised  for  effecting  their 
objects.  If  they  could  but  have  got  rid  in  any  way  of  the 
man  who  had  created  that  army  for  the  Parliament,  and 
under  whose  management  it  was  a  machine  so  perfect  that 
it  never  failed  to  do  the  work  given  it  to  do,  they  might 


Mutiny  in  the  Army.  243 

hope  that  the  machine  would  not  work  without  its  creator's 
superintendence,  that  the  army  would  fall  to  pieces,  or  by 
mismanagement  would  encounter  defeat,  which  it  had  never 
encountered  under  Cromwell.  John  Lilburne  had,  as  has 
been  mentioned  in  the  last  chapter,  been  committed  to 
Newgate  for  publishing  a  seditious  book,  and  had  been 
confined  in  the  same  cell  with  Sir  Lewis  Dives,  a  brother- 
in-law  of  Digby ;  and  Dives  seeing  how  much  it  would  be 
for  the  King's  advantage  to  sever  Cromwell  from  both  the 
Parliament  and  the  army,  had  zealously  infused  into  the 
mind  of  Lilburne  suspicions  of  Cromwell's  having  been 
bought  over ;  pretending  to  have  received  his  intelligence 
from  his  friends  about  the  King ;  and  Lilburne  daily  pub- 
lished pamphlets  in  his  violent  inflammatory  style  against 
Cromwell.  The  Presbyterians  most  eagerly  took  up  the 
charge ;  and  Cromwell  himself  told  Berkeley  that  he  had 
traced  the  story  about  his  having  been  promised  the  title 
of  Earl  of  Essex  and  the  post  of  Commander  of  the  Guard 
to  the  Countess  of  Carlisle,  a  woman,  to  borrow  Hyde's 
lofty  phrase,  "  of  a  very  noble  extraction,"  being  a  daughter 
of  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  who  had  been  married 
when  young  to  one  of  King  James's  favourites,  and  now, 
no  longer  a  youthful  or  even  a  middle-aged  beauty,  had 
turned  a  Presbyterian. 

Now,  as  the  soldiers  of  the  Parliamentary  army  were 
great  readers  of  "such  pamphlets  as  R.  Overton's  'Martin 
Mar-Priest,'  and  more  of  his,  and  some  of  J.  Lilburne's,"  x 
they  eagerly  read  and  believed  these  Royalist  and  Presby- 
terian calumnies  about  Cromwell  and  Ireton  put  forth  by 
John  Lilburne,  whose  style  had  at  least  that  quality  of 
popularity  which  consists  in  making  assertions  with  perfect 
confidence,  and  as  if  it  were  impossible  there  could  be  the 

1  Baxter's  Autobiography,  part  i.  p.  53. 


244      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

least  doubt  about  the  matter  asserted  ;  for  John  Lilburne 
had  one  quality  which  has  been  attributed  to  a  really  great 
writer — he  had  never  any  doubt  about  anything.  I  will 
give  an  example  of  this  presently.  The  consequence  was, 
that  a  spirit  of  distrust  spread  rapidly  through  the  army. 
But  the  mutiny  said  to  have  broken  out  appears  to  have 
assumed  a  serious  aspect  in  only  two  regiments,  Harrison's 
horse  and  Lilburne's  foot. 

Fairfax  and  his  council  of  officers  ordered  a  rendez- 
vous of  a  division  of  the  army  between  Hertford  and 
Ware ;  and  in  his  letter  to  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  dated  Hertford,  November  15,  1647,  says:  "I 
rendezvoused  this  day  three  regiments  of  foot  and  four 
of  horse,  viz.,  of  horse  my  own  regiment,  Colonel  Rich's, 
Colonel  Fleetwood's,  and  Colonel  Twisleton's  ;  and  of  foot, 
my  own  regiment,  Colonel  Pride's,  and  Colonel  Ham- 
mond's. When  they  appeared  all  at  the  place  of  rendez- 
vous, I  tendered  to  them,  and  had  read  at  the  head  of 
every  regiment  this  enclosed  paper  [a  petition  to  the 
General  from  many  officers  and  soldiers],  which  was  very 
acceptable  to  them,  and  to  which  they  have  given  very  full 
and  ready  concurrence,  professing  readiness  to  serve  you 
and  the  kingdom.  They  profess  likewise  an  absolute  sub- 
mission and  conformity  to  the  antient  discipline  of  the 
army,  by  which  I  hope  to  order  it  to  your  satisfaction. 
There  came  thither  also  two  regiments  without  orders, 
viz.,  Colonel  Harrison's,  of  horse  ;  and  Colonel  Lilburne's,  of 
foot.  These  two  had  been  very  much  abused  and  deluded 
by  the  agents  who  had  their  intercourses  at  London,  and 
were  so  far  prevailed  withal  that,  when  they  came  into  the 
field,  they  brought  with  them  in  their  'hats  a  paper  com- 
monly called  '  The  Agreement  of  the  People/  being  very 
much  inflamed  towards  mutiny  and  disobedience ;  but  truly 


The  Mutiny  Quelled.  245 

I  perceived  the  men  were  merely  cozened  and  abused  with 
fair  pretences  of  those  men  which  acted  in  the  London 
councils  ;  for  Colonel  Harrison's  regiment  was  no  sooner 
informed  of  their  error,  but,  with  a  great  deal  of  readiness 
and  cheerfulness,  they  submitted  to  me,  expressing  the 
same  affection  and  resolution  of  obedience  with  other  regi- 
ments ;  and  I  believe  you  will  have  a  very  good  account  of 
them  for  time  to  come.  As  for  Colonel  Lilburne's,  they 
were  put  into  those  extremities  of  discontent,  that  they 
had  driven  away  almost  all  their  officers ;  and  came  in 
marching  up  near  to  the  rendezvous,  contrary  to  the  orders, 
the  chiefest  officer  with  them  being  a  captain-lieutenant 
whom  I  have  secured  on  purpose  to  try  him  at  a  council 
of  war  ;  and,  for  example  sake,  drew  out  divers  of  the  muti- 
neers, three  whereof  were  presently  tried  and  condemned 
to  death ;  and,  by  lot,  one  of  them  was  shot  to  death  at 
the  head  of  the  regiment,  and  there  are  more  in  hold  to  be 
tried.  I  do  find  the  same  regiment  likewise  very  sensible  of 
their  error,  and  testifying  much  seeming  conformity  to  com- 
mands ;  so  that  I  doubt  not  but  I  shall  be  able  to  give 
you  a  good  account  of  that  regiment  also.  And  indeed  I 
do  see  that  the  London  agents  have  been  the  great  authors 
of  these  irregularities,  and  wish  some  of  better  quality  have 
not  been  their  abettors."  ' 

This  letter  is  signed  "  T.  Fairfax,"  a  man  whose  credi- 
bility as  a  witness  is  at  least  equal  to  that  of  John  Lil- 
burne.  Now  in  his  "  Legal  Fundamental  Liberties  of 
England,"  p.  I,  Lilburne  says,  "  I  positively  accuse  Mr. 
Oliver  Cromwell  for  a  wilful  murderer  for  murdering  Mr. 
Richard  Arnold  near  Ware."  To  which  the  Attorney- 
General's  answer  was,  "Which  man,  my  Lord,  was  con- 
demned for  a  mutineer  by  a  council  of  war,  when  the 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  791,  792. 


246      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Lord-Lieutenant  of  Ireland  [Cromwell]  was  but  one  mem- 
ber, and  the  Parliament  gave  him  and  the  rest  of  the  coun- 
cil thanks  for  shooting  that  mutinous  soldier  to  death." 
In  answer  to  the  Attorney-General,  Lilburne  talked  of  the 
Petition  of  Right,  and  cited  the  case  of  the  Earl  of  Straf- 
ford,  which  is  not  a  parallel  case.1  John  Lilburne's  own 
conscience  might  have  whispered  to  him  that  he — Lilburne 
— was  really  the  murderer  of  the  poor  man,  whom  his  in- 
flammatory nonsense  had  misled  and  ruined. 

Charles  had  been  desirous  to  wait  the  result  of  this 
rendezvous  of  the  army,  hoping  that  in  the  general  confu- 
sion something  might  turn  up  advantageous  to  himself; 
but  when  he  found  his  intrigues  all  detected,  and  addi- 
tional guards  put  upon  himself,  he  determined  to  effect  his 
escape.  Hobbes 2  and  the  other  Royalist  writers  assert 
without  evidence  that  Charles's  escape  from  Hampton 
Court  was  caused  by  the  machinations  of  Cromwell,  who, 
they  say,  directed  those  that  had  him  in  custody  to  tell 
him  that  the  adjutators  meant  to  murder  him.  These 
writers  make  the  mistake  of  confounding  the  different 
stages  of  a  man's  existence — of  confounding  the  Crom- 
well of  1647  with  the  Cromwell  of  1653.  But  this  part  of 
the  subject  is  involved  in  such  darkness  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  say  that  Cromwell  at  that  time  might  not  have 
been  willing  that  Charles  should  escape  from  Hampton 
Court,  most  probably  with  the  idea  that  he  would  go 
beyond  sea.  By  the  mismanagement  of  Charles  and  his 
agents  this  plan  altogether  failed,  and  instead  of  escaping 
beyond  sea,  Charles  put  himself  into  the  hands  of  Colonel 
Robert  Hammond,  governor  for  the  Parliament  of  the 
Isle  of  Wight,  who  kept  him  a  close  prisoner  in  Caris- 
brook  Castle.  Now,  notwithstanding  the  letter  published 

1  State  Trials,  iv.,  1367,  1368.  2  Behemoth,  p.  234. 


The  King's  Flight  to  the  Isle  of  Wight.       247 

by  Lord  Ashburnham  from  Cromwell  to  Colonel  Robert 
Hammond,  some  passages  of  which  may  seem  to  convey 
a  contrary  view,  his  Lordship  still  thinks  Hobbes's  view 
of  Cromwell's  policy  the  most  correct — namely,  that  he 
had  much  to  hope  and  nothing  to  fear  from  letting  the 
King  escape  whither  he  would,  provided  that  it  was 
beyond  sea.1  Baron  Maseres  takes  a  more  favourable 
view  of  Cromwell's  designs  than  the  one  stated  above. 
After  mentioning  the  resolution  of  the  Commonwealth  or 
Republican  party  to  decline  any  further  treating  with  the 
King  for  his  restoration  to  the  exercise  of  the  royal  autho- 
rity, upon  any  terms  whatever,  thinking  it  safer  and  better, 
for  the  permanent  peace  and  welfare  of  the  nation,  to 
settle  the  State  without  him,  he  adds  :  "  And  in  this  reso- 
lution Cromwell,  since  his  late  reconciliation  with  the 
Commonwealth  party,  seems  to  have  concurred ;  but,  till 
that  event,  I  conceive  him  to  have  continued  sincere  in  his 
professions  of  attachment  to  the  King,  and  his  desire  of 
being  the  chief  instrument  of  his  restoration  to  the  royal 
authority  upon  the  moderate  proposals  drawn  up  by 
Commissary-General  Ireton,  or  such  others  as  might  be 
thought  sufficient  to  protect  the  liberties  and  privileges  of 
the  people  against  any  future  attempts  of  arbitrary  power 
in  the  Crown."  2 

The  business  now  began  to  assume  a  very  dark  aspect 
for  Charles.  He  had  sent  Sir  John  Berkeley  from  the 
Isle  of  Wight  with  letters  to  Fairfax,  Cromwell,  and  Ireton 
at  Windsor.  When  Berkeley  was  half-way  between  Bag- 
shot  and  Windsor,  he  was  overtaken  by  Cornet  Joyce,  who 
had  taken  the  King  from  Holdenby.  "  Upon  my  discourses 

1  Vindication  of  John  Ashburnham  (Ashburnham's  Narrative),  i.  316. 

2  Baron  Maseres's  preface  to  Select  Tracts  relating  to  the  Civil  Wars  in 
England. 


248      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

with  him,"  says  Berkeley,  "  I  found  that  it  had  been  dis- 
coursed among  the  adjutators,  whether  for  their  justifica- 
tion the  King  ought  not  to  be  brought  to  a  trial ;  which 
he  held  in  the  affirmative :  not,  he  said,  that  he  would 
have  one  hair  of  his  head  to  suffer,  but  that  they  might  not 
bear  the  blame  of  the  war." '  Berkeley  on  reaching 
Windsor  went  to  Fairfax's  quarters,  and  found  the  officers 
met  there  in  a  general  council.  He  delivered  his  letters 
to  the  General,  from  whom,  however,  he  met  with  a  very 
cold  reception,  as  well  as  from  Cromwell  and  Ireton  and 
the  rest  of  his  acquaintance  among  the  officers.  The  next 
morning  having  contrived  to  let  Cromwell  know  that  he 
had  secret  letters  of  instruction  to  him  from  the  King, 
Cromwell  sent  him  word  that  he  durst  not  see  him,  bade 
him  be  assured  that  he  would  serve  His  Majesty  as  long 
as  he  could  do  it  without  his  own  ruin,  but  desired  him 
not  to  expect  that  he  should  perish  for  the  King's  sake. 
Berkeley  then  proceeded  to  London,  and  opened  a  nego- 
tiation on  behalf  of  the  King  with  the  Lords  Lauderdale 
and  Lanark.  Application  was  at  the  same  time  made  to 
the  Queen  for  a  ship  of  war  to  carry  off  Charles  from  the 
Isle  of  Wight. 

In  the  meantime,  while  the  Parliament  was  again  deli- 
berating about  fresh  propositions  to  be  sent  to  the  King, 
Charles  addressed  a  letter  to  the  Speaker  of  the  House  of 
Lords,  to  be  communicated  to  the  House  of  Commons,  in 
which  he  repeated  what  he  had  said  as  to  his  scruples  of 
conscience  concerning  the  abolition  of  Episcopacy,  but 
added  that  he  hoped  he  should  satisfy  the  Parliament  with 
his  reasons,  if  he  might  treat  with  them  personally.  The 
Commissioners  of  Scotland  urged  vehemently  that  this 

1  Sir  John  Berkeley's  Memoirs,  published  in  the  same  volume  with  Ashburn- 
ham's  Narrative. 


The  King's  Flight  to  the  Isle  of  Wight.       249 

desire  of  the  King  for  a  personal  treaty  might  be  granted 
The  Parliament  adopted  a  middle  course,  and  on  the  I4th 
of  December  they  passed  four  propositions,  drawn  up  in  the 
form  of  bills,  to  which  when  the  King  had  given  his  assent 
he  was  to  be  admitted  to  a  personal  treaty  at  London. 
These  propositions  were — I.  That  His  Majesty  should 
concur  in  a  bill  for  the  raising,  settling,  and  maintaining 
forces  by  sea  and  land.  2.  That  all  oaths,  declarations, 
proclamations,  and  other  proceedings  against  the  Parlia- 
ment, and  those  who  had  adhered  to  them,  should  be 
declared  void.  3.  That  all  the  Peers  who  were  made  after 
the  Great  Seal  was  carried  away  should  be  rendered  incap- 
able of  sitting  in  the  House  of  Peers.  4.  That  power  should 
be  given  to  the  two  Houses  of  Parliament  to  adjourn  as 
they  should  think  fit.1  The  Commissioners  of  Scotland, 
who  had  received  several  communications  from  Charles 
himself,  and  had  been  influenced  by  Lauderdale,  Lanark, 
and  Berkeley,  protested  against  the  sending  of  these  four 
bills  to  the  King  before  he  should  be  treated  with  at 
London.  On  the  24th  of  December  the  bills  were  pre- 
sented at  Carisbrook  Castle  to  Charles,  who  absolutely 
refused  his  assent.  He  had  now  made  up  his  mind  to  a 
secret  treaty  with  the  Scots,  in  which  he  engaged  to 
renounce  Episcopacy  and  accept  the  Covenant  (with,  it 
may  be  safely  inferred,  the  same  mental  reservation  as  in 
his  negotiations  with  Cromwell  and  Ireton) ;  the  Scots  on 
their  part  engaging  to  restore  him  by  force  of  arms.  On 
the  28th  of  December  he  privately  signed  this  treaty. 

By  this  treaty,  known  by  the  name  of  the  Engagement, 
Charles  agreed  to  confirm  the  Covenant ;  to  concur  with 
the  Presbyterians  in  extirpating  the  sectaries,  and  conse- 
quently the  Independents  and  their  army  ;  and  to  give  to 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  823,  824. 


250      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Scotland  the  commercial  advantages  of  England.  These 
terms  were  meant  to  reconcile  the  Scots  that  an  army 
might  be  raised ;  but  there  was  no  intention  on  the  King's 
part  to  keep  them.  The  understanding  was  that  Ormonde 
should  join  them  with  all  the  forces  he  could  raise,  that 
Monro  should  return  with  the  Scottish  army  from  Ireland, 
and  the  Royalists  be  enlisted  from  all  quarters.1  While 
the  two  sets  of  Commissioners — namely,  the  Scots  Com- 
missioners, and  the  Commissioners  from  the  English  Parlia- 
ment— were  one  day  attending  the  King  as  he  walked  about 
the  castle,  they  observed  him  to  throw  a  bone  before  two 
spaniels  that  followed  him,  and  to  take  great  delight  in 
seeing  them  contesting  for  it ;  "  which  some  of  them,"  says 
Ludlow,  "thought  to  be  intended  by  him  to  represent 
that  bone  of  contention  he  had  cast  between  the  two 
parties."2 

In  regard  to  Charles's  chance  of  escape  by  the  assistance 
of  those  who  might  have  been  supposed  to  exert  themselves 
most  to  that  end,  Lord  Clarendon,  speaking  of  the  time 
of  the  King's  imprisonment  in  Carisbrook  Castle,  says : 
"  It  was  believed  that  His  Majesty  might  have  made  his 
escape  ;  which  most  men  who  wished  him  well  thought 
in  all  respects  ought  to  have  been  attempted ;  and  before 
the  treaty,  he  himself  was  inclined  to  it,  thinking  any 
liberty  preferable  to  the  restraint  he  had  endured.  But 
he  did  receive  some  discouragement  from  pursuing  that 
purpose,  which  both  diverted  him  from  it,  and  gave  him 
trouble  of  mind.  It  cannot  be  imagined  how  wonderfully 
fearful  some  persons  in  France  were  that  he  should  have  made 
his  escapet  and  the  dread  they  had  of  his  coming  thither ; 
which  without  doubt  was  not  from  want  of  tenderness  of 

1  Burnet's  Memoirs  of  the  Hamiltons,  p.  324,  et  seq.      Clar.,  v.  88,  et  seq. 

2  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  232. 


The  King's  Flight  to  the  Isle  of  Wight.       2  5 1 

his  safety,  but  from  the  apprehension  they  had,  that  the 
little  respect  they  would  have  shown  him  there,  would 
have  been  a  greater  mortification  to  him  than  all  he  could 
suffer  from  the  closest  imprisonment." * 

On  this  passage  Lord  Ashburnham,  who  has  examined 
the  point  very  minutely,  has  made  the  following  comment : 
"  Of  the  many  whose  curiosity  has  been  satiated  by  the 
reading  of  Lord  Clarendon's  History  alone,  it  is  probable 
that  few  have  surmised,  that  by  some  persons,  who  were 
wonderfully  fearful  that  the  King  should  make  his  escape, 
and  dreaded  his  coming  to  France,  is  meant  the  Queen"  2 

The  reasons  which  acted  on  the  Queen  may  be  seen  from 
the  following  note  of  Lord  Ashburnham  : 3  "  He  (Jermyn) 
first  gained  the  title  of  Baron  Jermyn;  then  of  Earl  of 
St.  Albans :  was  made  Knight  of  the  Garter,  and  Lord 
Chamberlain  to  the  King.  The  three  last  dignities  were 
obtained  from  Charles  II.  What  was  his  'relation  of  ser- 
vice '  either  to  the  Queen-Consort  or  to  the  Queen-Mother, 
the  noble  historian  [Clarendon],  with  his  usual  tender- 
ness for  royal  frailties,  and  invariable  fondness  for  myste- 
rious enigmas,  has  so  slightly  insinuated,  that  were  it  not 
for  other  authorities,  among  whom  may  be  enumerated 
Bishop  Burnet,  and  Bishop  Kennet,  and  Bishop  Warbur- 
ton,  he  would  be  wholly  unintelligible.  These  are  all 
unanimous  in  affirming  that  for  some  time  previous  to  the 
King's  death  he  (Jermyn)  was  Her  Majesty's  paramour; 
and  subsequently  (as  Ariosto  says  of  two  more  youthful 
lovers) — 

'  Per  onestar  la  cosa ' — 

Her  Majesty's  husband." 

1  Clar.  Hist.,  vi.  191. 

2  Lord  Ashburnham's  Vindication  of  John  Ashburnham,  i.  393,  394. 

3  Ibid.,  ii.  12,  13,  note. 


252      Striigglefor  Parliamentary  Government. 

About  the  beginning  of  June  1648  several  of  the  chief  ships 
in  the  fleet  of  the  Parliament  revolted,  put  their  vice-admiral, 
Rainsborough,  ashore,  affirming  they  were  for  the  King 
and  would  serve  Prince  Charles,  and  sailed  away  to  Hol- 
land, where  the  Prince  and  his  brother  the  Duke  of  York 
then  were.  In  the  month  of  July  the  Prince  of  Wales 
appeared  in  the  Downs  with  a  fleet,  consisting  of  the  Eng- 
lish ships  which  had  deserted  to  him  and  some  foreign 
ships  which  he  had  procured.  But  though  he  remained 
for  some  weeks  master  of  the  sea,  he  made  no  attempt  for 
the  liberation  of  his  father  from  Carisbrook  Castle.  Though 
the  failure  of  the  Royalist  insurrection  which  had  broken  out 
some  time  before  rendered  the  presence  of  the  fleet  useless 
to  the  Royal  cause  for  any  other  purpose,  still  (it  has 
been  said)  if  it  had  sailed  to  the  Isle  of  Wight  it  might  have 
saved  the  King.  The  unfortunate  prisoner  even  expressly 
urged  this  course  by  a  message.  But  in  vain ;  he  had  to 
deal  with  those  who,  under  a  polished  exterior,  had  hearts 
as  hard,  as  selfish,  and  as  inhuman  as  ever  beat  in  a  human 
form.  Truly  King  Charles  I.  had  as  little  cause  as 
Prince  Azo  to  "  glory  in  a  wife  and  son."  But  he  was  not 
placed  in  a  situation  to  be  able  to  express  his  sense  of 
the  obligations  he  lay  under  to  those  near  relatives  in 
the  manner  adopted  by  "  the  chief  of  Este's  ancient 
sway." 

On  the  3d  of  January  164 1-  the  Commons  took  into 
consideration  the  King's  refusal  of  their  four  propositions. 
"  The  dispute,"  says  May,  "  was  sharp,  vehement,  and  high 
about  the  state  and  government  of  the  Commonwealth  ;  and 
many  plain  speeches  were  made  of  the  King's  obstinate 
averseness  and  the  people's  too  long  patience."  "  It  was  there 
affirmed  that  the  King  by  this  denial  had  denied  his  pro- 
tection to  the  people  of  England,  for  which  only  subjection 


The  King's  Flight  to  the  Isle  of  Wight.       253 

is  due  from  them  ;  that,  one  being  taken  away,  the  other 
falls  to  the  ground  ;  that  it  is  very  unjust  and  absurd  that 
the  Parliament,  having  so  often  tried  the  King's  affections, 
should  now  betray  to  an  implacable  enemy  both  them- 
selves and  all  those  friends  who,  in  a  most  just  cause,  had 
valiantly  adventured  their  lives  and  fortunes  ;  that  nothing 
was  now  left  for  them  to  do,  but  to  take  care  for  the  safety 
of  themselves  and  their  friends,  and  settle  the  Common- 
wealth (since  otherwise  it  could  not  be)  without  the 
King."1  Sir  Thomas  Wroth  said  "that  Bedlam  was 
appointed  for  madmen,  and  Tophet  for  kings  :  that  our 
kings  of  late  had  carried  themselves  as  if  they  were  fit  for 
no  place  but  Bedlam  :  that  his  humble  motion  should  con- 
sist of  three  parts :  I.  To  secure  the  King  and  keep  him 
close  in  some  inland  castle  with  sure  guards.  2.  To  draw 
up  articles  of  impeachment  against  him.  3.  To  lay  him 
by  and  settle  the  kingdom  without  him.  He  cared  not 
what  form  of  government  they  set  up,  so  it  were  not  by 
kings  and  devils.  Ireton  declared  that  the  King  had  de- 
nied that  protection  to  the  people  which  was  the  condition 
of  their  obedience  to  him  ;  that  they  ought  not  to  desert 
the  brave  mennvho  had  fought  for  them  beyond  all  possi- 
bility of  retreat  or  forgiveness,  and  who  would  never  for- 
sake the  Parliament,  unless  the  Parliament  first  forsook 
them.  Last  of  all,  Cromwell  told  them,  it  was  now  ex- 
pected that  the  Parliament  should  govern  and  defend  the 
kingdom,  and  not  any  longer  let  the  people  expect  their 
safety  from  a  man  whose  heart  God  had  hardened ;  nor 
let  those  that  had  so  well  defended  the  Parliament  be  left 
hereafter  to  the  rage  of  an  irreconcilable  enemy,  lest  they 
seek  their  safety  some  other  way.  The  report  adds,  that 
in  saying"  this  he  laid  his  hand  upon  his  sword  and  told 

1  May's  Breviary. 


254      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

them  he  trembled  to  think  of  what  might  follow."1  Finally 
they  passed  a  vote,  in  which  the  Lords  concurred,  that  no 
further  addresses  or  applications  should  be  made  to  the 
King,  or  any  message  received  from  him,  without  the 
consent  of  both  Houses,  under  the  penalties  of  high 
treason. 

A  paper  intituled  "  A  Declaration  from  His  Excellency 
Sir  Thomas  Fairfax  and  the  General  Council  of  the  Army, 
of  their  resolution  to  adhere  to  the  Parliament  in  their 
proceedings  concerning  the  King,"  and  dated  "  Windsor, 
January  9,  1647"  (1648),  was  presented  to  the  House 
of  Commons  by  Sir  Hardress  Waller,  with  the  following 
introduction  (which  shows  that  at  that  time  the  army  had 
not  put  either  force  or  disrespect  on  the  House) :  "  That 
the  General  had  commanded  seven  colonels  of  them,  with 
other  officers  of  rank  and  quality,  in  the  name  of  the  whole 
army,  to  make  their  humble  addresses,  and  represent  their 
intentions  in  writing  under  the  title  of  a  declaration  ;  with 
this  reference  that  it  should  either  have  name  or  life  or  be 
exposed  to  view,  according  as  it  should  receive  approba- 
tion and  direction  from  the  House  of  Commons."3  In  the 
remonstrance  demanding  justice  upon  the  -JCing  from  the 
Lord-General  Fairfax  and  the  general  council  of  officers 
held  at  St.  Albans,  November  16,  1648,  they  say  with  refer- 
ence to  the  above  vote  of  the  House  and  declaration  of  the 
army,  "Whatever  evil  men  may  slanderously  suggest  in  re- 
lation to  other  matters,  yet  in  this  surely  none  can  say  you 

1  These  speeches  rest,  however,  only  on  the  report  of  one  Presbyterian 
writer,  Clement  Walker,  author  of  the  "  History  of  Independency  "  and  member 
for  Wells,  who  though  a  member  of  the  House  of  Commons  at  the  time,  is 
by  no  means  an  unquestionable  authority,  by  reason  of  his  violent  prejudices. 
See  Parl.  Hist,  iii.  832,  833.    Hobbes,  as  might  be  expected,  follows  Walker, 
Behemoth,  pp.  238,  239. 

2  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  835. 


The  Kings  Flight  to  the  Isle  of  Wight.      255 

were  acted  [sic]  beyond  your  own  free  judgment ;  we  are 
sure  not  by  any  impulsion  from  the  army ;  since  nothing  that 
ever  past  from  us  to  you  before  did  look  with  any  aspect 
that  way,  but  rather  to  the  contrary." J  The  Declaration 
concluded  with  these  words:  "  Understanding  that  the 
honourable  House  of  Commons,  by  several  votes  upon 
the  3d  inst.,  have  resolved  to  make  no  further  address  or 
application  to  the  King,  nor  receive  any  from  him,  nor  to 
suffer  either  in  others ;  we  do  freely  and  unanimously 
declare,  for  ourselves  and  the  army,  That  we  are  resolved, 
through  the  grace  of  God,  firmly  to  adhere  to,  join  with, 
and  stand  by,  the  Parliament  in  the  things  voted  on  Mon- 
day last,  concerning  the  King,  and  in  what  shall  be  further 
necessary  for  prosecution  thereof;  and  for  the  settling  and 
securing  of  the  Parliament  and  kingdom  without  the  King, 
and  against  him,  or  any  other  that  shall  hereafter  partake 
with  him." 2 

This  declaration  being  read  a  second  time,  the  Com- 
mons voted  their  approbation  thereof;  ordered  their 
thanks  to  be  returned  to  the  General  and  the  army  for 
it;  and  that  the  same  be  forthwith  printed  and  published. 

A  declaration  was  also  presented  to  the  House  of  Lords 
by  the  same  officers  that  had  presented  the  foregoing  to 
the  Commons,  in  which  "the  General  and  his  Council 
of  War,  taking  notice  of  some  unworthy  endeavours  to 
asperse  the  integrity  of  their  proceedings,  as  aiming  at 
the  overthrowing  of  peerage,  and  undermining  of  the 
rights  and  privileges  of  the  House  of  Peers,  do  unani- 
mously declare,  That  they  hold  themselves  obliged,  in 
justice  and  honour,  to  endeavour  to  preserve  the  peerage 
of  this  kingdom,  with  the  just  rights  belonging  to  the 

\Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1081.  8  Ibid.  iii.  836. 


256      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

House  of  Peers  ;  and  will  really,  in  their  places  and  calling, 
perform  the  same." x 

If  we  might  be  permitted  to  hazard  a  conjecture  as  to 
this  last  declaration,  we  might  suppose  that  as  Fairfax 
had  yielded  to  the  opinions  of  others  in  several  of  the 
papers  drawn  up  on  the  part  of  the  army,  in  this  paper 
expressing  such  attachment  to  the  privileges  of  the  peer- 
age, the  opinion  of  Fairfax  had  governed  the  opinions  of 
some  others. 

1  Parl.  Hist,  iii.  836,  837. 


257 


CHAPTER  XX. 

THE  SECOND  CIVIL   WAR — THE  TREATY  OF  NEWPORT. 

THE  Scottish  Commissioners  having1  completed  to  their 
satisfaction  their  secret  treaty  with  the  King-,  now  hastened 
down  to  Scotland  to  prepare  for  war.  Since  the  beginning 
of  the  year  1644  the  Scots  had  had  a  share  in  the  execu- 
tive power,  which  was  vested  in  a  committee  styled  the 
Committee  of  both  Kingdoms.  The  original  MS.  Journal 
of  the  Resolutions  and  Proceedings  of  the  Committee  of 
both  Kingdoms  is  still  preserved  in  the  State  Paper  Office, 
or  Record  Office,  as  it  is  now  termed.  The  following  is  an 
extract  from  it :  "  Orders  for  the  manner  of  proceeding. — 
I.  A  chairman  to  be  chosen  to  continue  a  fortnight.  2. 
The  Earl  of  Northumberland  the  first  fortnight.  3.  That 
the  chairman  be  instructed  to  provide  some  minister  of  the 
Assembly  to  pray  daily  at  the  meeting  and  rising  of  the 
Committee."  The  Committee  met  first  at  Essex  House  : 
then,  February  19,  164^,  at  Yorke  House  ;  February  20, 
at  Warwick  House;  February  21,  at  Arundell  House; 
February  22,  at  Worcester  House  ;  February  23,  at  Derby 
House ;  and  there  they  continued  to  meet.1 

In  this  "  Committee  of  both  Kingdoms  "  sat  as  represen- 
tatives of  England  seven  Peers — the  Earls  of  Northumber- 
land, Kent,  Warwick,  and  Manchester  ;  the  Lords  Say, 
Wharton,  and  Roberts — with  thirteen  members  of  the 

1  Journal  of  the  Resolutions  and  Proceedings  of  the  Committee  of  both 
Kingdoms,  commencing  February  1642.  MS.  State  Paper  Office. 

VOL.  II.  R 


258      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

House  of  Commons — Mr.  Pierrepoint,  Mr.  Fiennes,  Sir 
Henry  Vane,  senior,  Sir  Henry  Vane,  junior,  Sir  William 
Armyn,  Sir  Arthur  Haselrig,  Sir  Gilbert  Gerrard,  Sir  John 
Evelyn,  Lieutenant-General  Cromwell,  Mr.  St.  John,  Mr. 
Wallop,  Mr.  Crew,  and  Mr.  Browne ;  and  as  representa- 
tives of  Scotland,  the  Earl  of  Loudon,  the  Lord  Mait- 
land,  the  Lord  Wariston,  Sir  Charles  Erskine,  Mr.  Robert 
Barclay,  and  Mr.  Kennedy.  In  the  earlier  days  of  the 
struggle  between  King  Charles  and  the  Parliament,  the 
English  and  Scottish  Parliaments  had  a  common  object, 
that  of  securing  themselves  against  the  King's  attempts 
to  make  himself  absolute.  In  this  earlier  period  the 
Presbyterians  were  the  dominant  party  in  the  English 
Parliament,  and  though  they  still  were  the  majority  in 
number,  their  power  was  by  no  means  very  firmly  fixed, 
as  the  army  was  composed  of  Independents ;  and  its 
ablest  officers,  as  well  as  the  ablest  members  of  the  Par- 
liament, such  as  Vane  and  St.  John  and  others,  were  to 
be  reckoned  on  the  side  of  the  Independents.  As  the 
spirit  of  intolerance  was  very  strong — vehement,  even 
unto  slaying — among  the  Presbyterians,  it  was  to  be  ex- 
pected that  they  and  the  Independents  would  soon  come 
to  open  war.  There  is  a  remark,  too,  made  by  Carte, 
which  may  have  some  foundation  of  truth.  He  says : 
"  The  English  Parliament "  (the  Independents  he  must 
mean,  who  could  scarcely  be  held  to  represent  the  English 
Parliament  at  that  time)  "ever  since  they  had  got  the 
King  into  their  hands  treated  the  Scots  with  great  con- 
tempt. .  .  .  The  Scots  hated  the  Independents  mortally, 
and  considered  their  power  in  England  as  the  sure  means 
of  the  ruin  of  their  religion  and  (what  they  had  more  at 
heart)  their  fortunes.  They  thought  there  was  no  way  to 
prevent  these  calamities  but  to  keep  up  the  divisions  in 


The  Second  Civil  War.  259 

England  ;  and  for  fear  the  Presbyterian  party  should  be 
crushed  by  the  other,  they  offered  to  send  an  army  into 
England  to  their  assistance." ' 

A  contemporary  writer,  whose  affections  were  with  the 
Independents,  gives  a  picture  of  the  state  of  affairs  at  the 
beginning  of  the  year  1648  so  dark  that  it  might  almost 
seem  as  if  Fairfax  and  Cromwell  had  undergone  all  their 
labours  and  perils,  and  their  officers  and  soldiers  had 
shed  their  blood,  in  vain.  "  The  Parliament,"  says  May, 
"  though  victorious,  though  guarded  with  a  gallant  army, 
no  forces  visibly  appearing  against  it,  was  never  in  more 
danger.  All  men  began  in  the  spring  to  prophesy  that 
the  summer  would  be  a  hot  one,  in  respect  of  wars,  seeing 
how  the  countries  were  divided  in  factions,  the  Scots  full 
of  threats,  the  city  of  London  as  full  of  unquietness.  And 
more  sad  things  were  feared,  where  least  seen ;  rumours 
every  day  frightening  the  people  of  secret  plots  and  trea- 
sonable meetings.  .  .  .  The  King's  party  began  to  swell 
with  great  hopes,  and  look  upon  themselves  not  as  van- 
quished, but  as  conquerors  ;  nor  could  they  forbear  vaunt- 
ing everywhere,  and  talking  of  the  King's  rising,  and  the 
ruin  of  the  Parliament.  The  same  thing  seemed  to  be  the 
wish  of  those  whom  they  called  Presbyterians,  who  were 
ready  to  sacrifice  themselves  and  their  cause  to  their  hatred 
against  the  Independents,  wished  that  quite  undone  which 
themselves  could  not  do,  and  desired  that  liberty  might  be 
taken  away  by  the  King,  rather  than  vindicated  by  the 
Independents." 

Before  I  quote  the  remainder  of  this  passage  of  May,  I 
must  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  divinity  of  kingship 
was  at  that  time  really  a  part  of  the  popular  creed.  The 
greatest  names,  too,  in  literature  and  philosophy — Shake- 

1  Carte's  Ormonde,  ii.  13,  14. 


260      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

speare  and  Jonson,  Bacon  and  Hobbes — lent  their  authority 
to  the  dogma  that  kings  or  queens  (at  least  in  England) 
were  gods  on  earth ;  and  from  Edward  the  Confessor  to 
Queen  Anne  they  all  claimed  the  power  of  working  miracles. 
There  is  a  tradition,  which  has  been  traced  up  to  the  actor 
Betterton,  that  Shakespeare  received  a  present  of  money 
from  King  James  for  complimenting  him  on  curing  the 
king's  evil,  in  the  lines  in  Macbeth  applied  to  Edward 
the  Confessor.  A  royal  proclamation,  dated  January  9, 
1683,  commences  thus:  " Whereas,  by  the  grace  of  God, 
the  kings  and  queens  of  this  realm,  by  many  ages  past, 
have  had  the  happiness  by  their  sacred  touch,  and  invoca- 
tion of  the  name  of  God,  to  cure  those  who  are  afflicted 
with  the  disease  called  the  king's  evil.  And  His  Majesty, 
in  no  less  measure  than  any  of  his  royal  predecessors, 
having  had  good  success  therein,  and  in  his  disposi- 
tion being  as  ready  and  willing,"  &c.  It  might  have 
occurred  to  the  popular  mind  as  somewhat  strange 
that  "the  grace  of  God,"  which  in  this  royal  proclama- 
tion is  described  as  conferring  on  kings  of  England 
the  power  of  curing  the  kings  evil,  did  not  confer 
the  power  of  defeating  the  Parliamentary  armies.  The 
piece  of  gold  which  was  given  to  those  who  were  touched 
accounts  for  the  miraculous  cures,  great  numbers  of  poor 
people  going  to  be  touched  for  the  piece  of  gold  who  never 
had  a  complaint  that  deserved  to  be  considered  as  the 
evil.1  Thus  a  confused  association  of  ideas  arose  in  their 

1  These  were  the  words  used  by  an  old  man  to  the  Hon,  Daines  Barrington, 
who  mentions  the  case  in  one  of  the  curious  and  valuable  notes  to  his  "Ob- 
servations on  the  more  Ancient  Statutes."  As  this  note  is  particularly  valu- 
able as  well  as  curious,  I  will  quote  part  of  it  here  ;  Barrington's  opinion  of 
Carte  being  worth  attention,  as  well  as  his  testimony  on  the  king's  evil.  "  In 
this  early  part  of  the  English  history"  (6  Edw.  I.,  1278),  he  says,  "I 
should  always  prefer  the  authority  of  Carte  to  that  of  any  other  historian  :  he 
was  indefatigable  himself  in  his  researches,  having  dedicated  his  whole  life  to 


Tke  Second  Civil  War.  261 

minds  between  royalty  and  the  power  to  work  miracles, 
which  is  a  sentiment  distinct  from  the  vulgar  spirit  of 
servility  which  May  seems  to  mean  in  the  following 
passage: — 

"  The  King  himself  (though  set  aside,  and  confined 
within  the  Isle  of  Wight)  was  more  formidable  this  sum- 
mer than  in  any  other,  when  he  was  followed  by  his 
strongest  armies.  The  name  of  King  had  now  a  further 
operation,  and  the  pity  of  the  vulgar  gave  a  greater 
majesty  to  his  person.  Prince  Charles  also,  by  his 
absence,  and  the  name  of  banishment,  was  more  an  object 
of  affection  and  regard  to  those  vulgar  people  than  he 
had  ever  been  before  ;  and,  by  his  commissions  (which  his 
father  privately  sent  him)  seeming  to  be  armed  with  law- 
ful power,  did  easily  command  those  that  were  willing  to 
obey  him ;  and,  by  commands  under  his  name,  was  able 
to  raise  not  only  tumults,  but  wars."  ' 

them,  and  was  assisted,  in  what  relates  to  Wales,  by  the  labours  of  Mr.  Lewis 
Morris  of  Penbryn  in  Cardiganshire  :  as  for  his  political  prejudices,  they  can- 
not be  supposed  to  have  had  any  bias  in  what  relates  to  a  transaction  500 
years  ago,  and  which  hath  nothing  to  do  with  the  royal  touch  for  the  cure  of 
the  king's  evil.  I  should  here  make  an  apology  for  introducing  what  hath  no 
relation  to  the  present  statute  (Statutum  Gloucestriae,  6  Edw.  I.,  A.D.  1278); 
but  I  cannot  help  mentioning  what  I  once  heard  from  an  old  man,  who  was 
witness  in  a  cause,  with  regard  to  this  supposed  miraculous  power  of  healing. 
He  had,  by  his  evidence,  fixed  the  time  of  a  fact  by  Queen  Anne's  having  been 
at  Oxford,  and  touched  him,  whilst  a  child,  for  the  evil :  when  he  had 
finished  his  evidence,  I  had  an  opportunity  of  asking  him  whether  he  was 
really  cured  ?  Upon  which  he  answered  with  a  significant  smile,  that  he 
believed  himself  to  have  never  had  a  complaint  that  deserved  to  be  considered 
as  the  evil ;  but  that  his  parents  were  poor,  and  had  no  objection  to  the  bit  oj 
gold  [the  italics  are  in  the  original].  It  seems  to  me  that  this  piece  of  gold, 
which  was  given  to  those  who  were  touched,  accounts  for  the  great  resort, 
and  the  supposed  afterwards  miraculous  cures.  Fabian  Philips,  in  his  treatise 
on  Purveyance,  asserts,  p.  257,  that  the  angels  issued  by  the  kings  of  England 
upon  these  occasions  amounted  to  a  charge  of  three  thousand  pounds  per 
annum." — Barrington  on  the  Statutes,  p.  107,  note  [e],  4to.  Fifth  edition. 
London,  1796. 
1  May's  Breviary. 


262      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Ludlow  seems  to  have  been  of  opinion  that  the  insur- 
rections that  now  broke  out  in  various  parts  of  the  country 
were  in  part  caused  by  the  people's  growing  weary  of  the 
heavy  load  of  taxation  and  other  grievances  to  which  the 
long  civil  war  had  subjected  them.  "  Much  time  being 
spent,"  he  says,  "  since  the  Parliament  had  voted  no  more 
addresses  to  be  made  to  the  King,  nor  any  messages  re- 
ceived from  him,  and  yet  nothing  done  towards  bringing 
the  King  to  a  trial,  or  the  settling  of  affairs  without  him  ; 
many  of  the  people  who  had  waited  patiently  hitherto, 
rinding  themselves  as  far  from  a  settlement  as  ever,  con- 
cluded that  they  should  never  have  it,  nor  any  ease  from 
their  burdens  and  taxes,  without  an  accommodation  with 
the  King  ;  and  therefore  entered  into  a  combination  to 
restore  him  to  his  authority."  T 

The  first  insurrectionary  movement  of  any  importance, 
which  did  not  however  rise  above  a  tumult,  broke  out 
in  London  on  Sunday  the  gth  of  April,  when  a  mob  of 
apprentices  stoned  a  captain  of  the  trained  bands  in 
Moorfields,  took  away  his  colours,  and  marched  in  a  dis- 
orderly manner  to  Westminster,  shouting  as  they  went, 
"King  Charles!  King  Charles!"  They  were  quickly 
scattered  by  a  troop  of  horse  that  sallied  out  of  the  King's 
Mews ;  but  returning  to  the  city,  they  broke  open  houses 
to  procure  arms,  and  so  alarmed  the  Lord  Mayor  that  he 
fled  from  his  house  and  took  refuge  in  the  Tower.  On 
the  following  morning  Fairfax  put  down  the  tumult,  but 
not  without  bloodshed.  Shortly  after,  a  body  of  about 
300  men  came  out  of  Surrey  to  Westminster,  demanding 
that  the  King  should  presently  be  restored.  As  they  in- 
sulted the  soldiers  on  guard,  a  collision  ensued,  in  which 
several  lives  were  lost.  At  the  same  time  the  men  of 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  240. 


The  Second  Civil  War.  263 

Kent  assembled  in  considerable  numbers,  and  in  Essex 
there  was  a  great  rising  for  the  King.  In  the  north  of 
England  also,  in  Wales,  and  in  Scotland,  there  were 
risings  of  the  Royalists  and  Presbyterians.  The  most 
formidable  of  these  insurrections  was  that  headed  by  Lord 
Goring,  created  Earl  of  Norwich,  and  that  headed  by  the 
Hamiltons,  who  raised  an  army  in  Scotland  and  marched 
with  it  into  England. 

The  men  of  Kent,  after  threatening  the  Parliament  for 
some  time  at  a  distance,  marched  upon  London.  Fairfax 
encountered  them  in  the  end  of  May  at  Blackheath  with 
seven  regiments,  and  drove  them  back  to  Rochester. 
Lord  Goring  with  several  officers  of  the  late  army  of  the 
King  made  head  again  and  got  into  Gravesend,  while 
other  bodies  of  the  Kentish  men  took  possession  of  Can- 
terbury and  tried  to  take  Dover.  But  Ireton  and  Rich 
secured  the  latter;  and  Goring  crossed  the  Thames  and 
raised  his  standard  in  Essex.  He  was  defeated  and  shut 
up  in  Colchester,  whither  Fairfax  was  despatched  against 
him.  Fairfax  was  at  the  time  so  ill  of  the  gout  as  to 
require  one  of  his  feet  to  be  bandaged ;  but  this  did  not 
deter  him  from  bearing  all  the  fatigues  of  a  campaign,  and 
exposing  himself  in  the  hottest  of  the  fight.  Wherever  he 
went  he  was  victorious,  and  he  now  sent  a  trumpet  to 
Colchester  to  summon  Lord  Goring,  or  the  Earl  of  Nor- 
wich, and  his  associates  to  surrender ;  but  Goring  and  his 
chief  officers  replied  by  a  trumpet  that  they  would  cure 
him  of  the  gout,  and  all  his  other  diseases — an  insult 
which  enraged  the  soldiers  as  well  as  the  General,  and  for 
which  those  who  offered  it  paid  dear.1  Colchester,  after 
an  obstinate  defence,  surrendered  on  the  27th  of  August. 
Quarter  was  given  to  the  privates  and  officers  under  the 
1  Rush.,  vii.  976,  1128,  ct  seq.  Whitelock,  p.  308,  et  seq. 


264      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

rank  of  captain ;  but  the  rest  surrendered  at  the  mercy 
of  the  General.  Three  of  them — Sir  Charles  Lucas,  Sir 
George  Lisle,  and  Sir  Bernard  Gascoyne — were  tried  almost 
immediately  by  court-martial  and  condemned  to  be  shot; 
but  the  sentence  was  only  executed  on  the  two  first ;  Gas- 
coyne being  a  foreigner,  was  pardoned.  The  Lord  Goring 
and  the  Lord  Capel  were  sent  prisoners  to  London,  and 
committed  to  the  Tower  by  an  order  of  the  Parliament.1 
Lucas  urged  that  the  execution  of  the  sentence  on  him 
was  without  precedent,  "  but  a  Parliament  soldier  stand- 
ing by  told  him  he  had  put  to  death  with  his  own 
hand  some  of  the  Parliament  soldiers  in  cold  blood." 
Moreover,  when  he  engaged  in  this  insurrection  he  was  a 
prisoner  on  parole ;  and  Fairfax  had  told  him  in  the 
beginning  of  the  siege,  when  he  proposed  an  exchange  of 
prisoners,  "  that  he  had  forfeited  his  parole,  his  honour, 
and  faith,  being  his  prisoner  upon  parole,  and  therefore  not 
capable  of  command  or  trust  in  martial  affairs."  White- 
lock  says  that  the  severity  of  the  proceedings  against 
these  prisoners  was  in  no  small  degree  imputed  to  the 
message  about  curing  the  General  of  the  gout,  and  all  his 
other  diseases.2 

Several  other  insurrections  were  crushed  without  diffi- 
culty. The  Earl  of  Holland,  who  had  raised  a  force 
against  the  Parliament,  was  defeated  by  Colonel  Scrope, 
and  obliged  to  surrender  on  the  condition  of  being  safe 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  264. 

z  Whitelock,  p.  312.  The  severity  of  the  proceedings  against  Lucas  and 
Lisle  was,  according  to  Clarendon,  "generally  imputed  to  Ireton,  who 
swayed  the  General,  and  was  upon  all  occasions  of  an  unmerciful  and  bloody 
nature." — Clar.,  v.  176,  et  seq.  The  falsehood  of  this  imputation  is  proved  by 
the  fact  that  Fairfax  not  only  justified  the  proceeding  in  a  letter  to  the  Par- 
liament, but  in  his  own  Memoirs.  Old  Parl.  Hist.,  xvii.  430,  et  seq.  Rush., 
vii.  1152,  et  seq.  Whitelock,  p.  312,  et  seq. 


The  Second  Civil  War.  265 

from  military  execution.1  In  Lancashire,  Colonel  Robert 
Lilburne,  the  brother  of  John  Lilburne,  with  600  horse, 
engaged  1000,  headed  by  Sir  Richard  Tempest,  and  either 
took  or  destroyed  them  without  the  loss  of  a  man.2  An- 
other party  was  defeated  by  Colonel  Rossiter  near  Ponte- 
fract,  and  1000  horse,  nearly  their  whole  body,  with  all 
their  baggage  taken.3  Lambert  was  sent  to  meet  Hamil- 
ton, as  well  as  to  suppress  Langdale. 

It  is  necessary  here  to  notice  one  of  the  many  intrigues 
of  the  Royalist  and  Presbyterian  parties  to  get  rid  of 
Cromwell,  whom  they  both  dreaded  as  their  most  formid- 
able enemy.  One  Major  Huntington,  of  Cromwell's  own 
regiment,  whom  of  all  the  officers  with  whom  he  had 
come  into  communication  Charles  reposed  most  confid- 
ence in,  because  he  accepted  of  his  favours,  laid  down  his 
commission,  assigning  as  his  reason  that  Cromwell  had 
offered  to  the  King  to  destroy  the  Parliament  and  join 
with  any  party  to  support  him  ;  and  that  he  had  then 
changed  his  policy  for  the  same  purpose  of  advantage  to 
himself. 

Major  Huntington's  charge  of  high  treason  against 
Lieutenant-General  Cromwell  is  entered  in  the  Lords' 
Journals,  and  a  copy  of  it  is  printed  in  the  "  Parliamentary 
History."  4  The  result  of  a  careful  perusal  of  Major  Hunt- 
ington's Narrative,  on  which  he  grounds  his  charge  of  high 
treason  against  Cromwell,  is  an  impression  that  this  charge 
of  Huntington  is  pretty  much  of  a  mare's  nest.  What,  it 
may  be  asked,  does  Huntington  chiefly  ground  his  charge 
upon  ?  This  seems  his  chief  vantage-ground  for  his  charge 
— that  Cromwell  "  in  his  chamber  at  Kingston  said  what 
sway  Stapylton  and  Holies  had  heretofore  in  the  king- 

1  Rush.,  vii.  1187.     Whitelock,  p.  317.         2  Ibid. 

3  Rush.,  vii.  1182.     Whitelock,  p.  318.         4  Parl.  Hist,  iii.  965-974. 


266      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

dom,  and  he  knew  nothing  to  the  contrary  but  that  he 
was  as  able  to  govern  the  kingdom  as  either  of  them." 
From  these  words  Major  Huntington  by  a  strange  logical 
process  draws  this  inference,  "  So  that  in  all  his  discourse 
nothing  more  appeareth  than  his  seeking  after  the  govern- 
ment of  King,  Parliament,  city,  and  kingdom." x  What 
Cromwell,  according  to  Huntington's  report,  said  only 
amounted  to  saying  that  he  considered  himself  as  able  a 
man  as  Holies  or  Stapylton,  which  when  we  consider 
what  Cromwell  had  done,  and  what  Holies  and  Stapylton 
had  done,  appears  a  remarkably  modest  estimate  by 
Cromwell  of  his  own  abilities — an  estimate  which  probably 
no  one  then  living  would  have  dreamt  of  questioning,  ex- 
cept perhaps  Holies  himself.  Holies  accordingly,  whose 
envy  and  hatred  of  Cromwell  were  boundless,  eagerly 
seized  upon  this  new  chance  of  ruining  him.  But  though 
this  charge  was  taken  up  and  maintained  most  zealously 
by  Holies  and  his  party  after  their  return  to  the  Lower 
House,  it  was  so  vigorously  opposed  by  the  Independents, 
including  some — Ludlow  for  one — who  even  then  enter- 
tained no  favourable  opinion  of  Cromwell,  that  it  was  not 
admitted  by  the  Commons,  though  the  Lords  had  received 
it  favourably.2 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  973. 

2  Ibid.,   iii.   965.     Ludlow  says  it  was  "manifest  that  the  preferring  this 
accusation  at  that  time  was  principally  designed  to  take  him  off  from  his 
command,  and  thereby  to  weaken  the  army,  that  their  enemies  might  be  the 
better  enabled  to  prevail  against  them." — Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  254.     Crom- 
well at  a  conference  a  short  time  before  this  "  would  not  declare  his  judgment 
either  fora  monarchical,  aristocratical,  or  democratical government;  maintain- 
ing that  any  of  them  might  be  good  in  themselves  or  for  us.     The  Common- 
wealth's men  declared  that  monarchy  was  neither  good  in  itself  nor  for  us. 
That  it  was  not  desirable  in  itself,  they  urged  from  the  8th  chapter  and  8th 
verse  of  the  First  Book  of  Samuel,  where  the  rejecting  of  the  judges  and  the 
choice  of  a  king  was  charged  upon  the  Israelites  by  God  himself  as  a  rejection 
of  him ;  with  divers  more  texts  of  Scripture  to  the  same  effect.     And  that  it 


The  Second  Civil  War.  267 

The  Royalists  and  Presbyterians  having  thus  failed  in 
their  intrigues  against  the  man  whose  genius  they  equally 
dreaded,  Cromwell  proceeded  in  his  work  in  South  Wales, 
where  a  considerable  army  which  had  been  raised  to 
oppose  the  Parliament  was  defeated  by  Colonel  Horton. 
Cromwell's  first  movements  were  directed  against  Poyer 
and  Langhorn.  Poyer  had  been  in  the  service  of  the 
Parliament,  and  had  been  entrusted  by  them  with  the 
custody  of  Pembroke  Castle,  which  he,  being  a  man  of 
intemperate  habits,  and  it  would  seem  a  Royalist  when 
under  the  influence  of  intoxication,  now  declared  his  re- 
solution to  hold  for  the  King.  It  is  stated — what  I  should 
think  hardly  credible  if  I  had  not  heard  a  similar  story,  on 
good  authority,  of  an  officer  quartered  with  his  regiment 
in  an  unhealthy  climate,  who  made  his  will  every  morning 
when  sober  and  burnt  it  every  night  when  drunk — that 
when  sober  in  the  morning  he  expressed  the  utmost  peni- 
tence towards  the  Parliament;  but  when  drunk  in  the 
evening  was  full  of  plots  in  favour  of  the  opposite  party. 

was  no  way  conducing  to  the  interest  of  this  nation  was  endeavoured  to  be 
proved  by  the  infinite  mischiefs  and  oppressions  we  had  suffered  under  it  and 
by  it ;  that  the  king  having  broken  his  coronation  oath  which  bound  him  to 
govern  according  to  the  law,  and  appealed  to  the  sword,  and  thereby  caused 
the  effusion  of  a  deluge  of  the  people's  blood,  it  seemed  to  be  a  duty  incumbent 
upon  the  representatives  of  the  people  to  call  him  to  an  account  for  the  same, 
and  then  to  proceed  to  the  establishment  of  a  Commonwealth  founded  upon 
the  consent  of  the  people.  Notwithstanding  what  was  said,  Lieutenant- 
General  Cromwell  professed  himself  unresolved,  and  having  learned  what  he 
could  of  the  principles  and  inclinations  of  those  present  at  the  conference, 
took  up  a  cushion  and  flung  it  at  my  head,  and  then  ran  down  the  stairs  ;  but 
I  overtook  him  with  another  which  made  him  hasten  down  faster  than  he 
desired.  The  next  day  passing  by  me  in  the  House,  he  told  me  he  was  con- 
vinced of  the  desirableness  of  what  was  proposed,  but  not  of  the  feasibleness 
of  it." — Ibid.,  i.  238-240.  It  appears  from  this  that  those  whom  Ludlow  calls 
"  the  grandees  of  the  House  and  army"  had  not  determined  to  bring  the 
King  to  trial ;  consequently  the  statement  of  Clarendon,  that  at  a  council  held 
at  Windsor  a  few  days  after  the  King's  flight  from  the  army  it  was  determined 
to  bring  the  King  to  trial,  would  appear  to  be  unfounded. 


268      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Some  of  Langhorn's  regiment  had  joined  Foyer,  and 
Langhorn  shortly  after  his  defeat  by  Horton  followed 
himself.  But  they  were  speedily  shut  up  in  Pembroke 
Castle  by  Cromwell,  who  determined  to  reduce  the  place. 
Having  accomplished  this,  he  despatched  some  of  his 
troops  to  join  Lambert  and  prepared  to  follow  himself,1 
to  oppose  the  invasion  of  the  Scots  under  Hamilton,  of 
whose  proceedings  some  account  must  now  be  given. 

There  were  at  this  time  three  parties  in  Scotland — the 
rigid  Presbyterians,  the  moderate  Presbyterians,  and  the 
Royalists.  The  first,  headed  by  Argyle,  was  made  up  of 
a  few  of  the  nobility — Eglinton,  Cassilis,  Lothianr  and 
others — of  the  greater  part  of  the  clergy,  and  of  the  people 
of  the  middle  and  lower  ranks,  chiefly  in  the  western 
counties.  But  though  many  persons  of  the  middle  and 
lower  classes  might  be  said  to  belong  to  this  party,  the 
influence  of  such  persons  on  its  counsels  was  extremely 
small.  The  aristocratical  portion  of  the  party,  which 
though  small  in  number  far  outweighed  the  rest  in  in- 
fluence, was  in  favour  of  a  republic,  so  far  as  a  republic 
might  transfer  the  power  of  the  King  to  themselves,  while 
they  held  fast  to  the  appearance  or  shadow  of  monarchy 
as  favourable  to  the  preservation  of  their  exclusive  privi- 
leges. This  party  was  determined  not  to  restore  mon- 
archy except  on  certain  conditions,  which  should  limit  the 
power  of  the  King  and  extend  their  own. 

The  second  party  was  chiefly  composed  of  the  nobility 
and  gentry,  and  the  representatives  of  the  larger  towns, 
and  was  headed  by  the  Hamiltons,  Lauderdale,  Dunferm- 
line,  and  others.  This  party,  like  the  first-mentioned, 
professed  to  adhere  to  the  Covenant ;  and  perhaps  the 
principal  distinction  between  these  two  parties,  the  rigid 
1  Rush.,  vii.  2017,  et  seq.,  mo  et  seq.  Whitelock,  p.  293,  et  seq. 


The  Second  Civil  War.  269 

and  the  moderate  Presbyterians,  may  be  stated  to  be, 
that  the  leaders  of  the  moderate  Presbyterians  more 
manifestly  made  use  of  the  Covenant  as  an  instrument 
for  their  own  worldly  aggrandisement.  If  Lauderdale  may 
in  any  degree  be  taken  as  a  type  or  even  as  a  specimen  of 
this  party,  such  a  specimen  certainly  would  not  be  calculated 
to  produce  a  very  favourable  opinion  of  a  moderate  Presby- 
terian. A  portrait  of  this  man  has  been  drawn  by  two 
writers,  each  of  them  perhaps  the  greatest  master  of  his 
style  of  writing  in  modern  times.  Sir  Walter  Scott  has 
placed  him  before  us  in  the  Edinburgh  Chamber  of  Council 
and  torture,  "  lolling  out  a  tongue  which  was  at  all  times 
too  big  for  his  mouth,  and  accommodating  his  coarse 
features  to  a  sneer  to  which  they  seemed  to  be  familiar,"  and 
giving  the  impression  by  his  loud  and  coarse  jocularity  that 
he  derived  actual  enjoyment  from  the  sight  of  the  agonies 
of  those  who  had  adhered  to  that  Covenant  which  he  had 
renounced  for  worldly  gain.  And  Lord  Macaulay  has 
described  him  as  being  perhaps,  under  the  outward  show 
of  boisterous  frankness,  the  most  dishonest  man  in  the 
whole  Cabal ;  of  being  accused  of  having  been  chiefly 
concerned  in  the  sale  of  Charles  I. ;  and,  notwithstanding 
that,  becoming  the  chief  instrument  employed  by  the  son 
of  Charles  I.  in  the  work  of  attempting  to  enslave  the 
consciences  of  his  former  friends  by  cruelties  hardly 
outdone  by  those  of  the  Duke  of  Alva.  And  thus  far  he 
was  a  worse  man  than  Alva,  who  had  not  apostatised  from 
the  religion  of  those  he  persecuted  ;  even  as  Charles  II.  and 
James  II.  were  worse  men  than  Philip  II.,  inasmuch  as  they 
repaid  the  Presbyterians  for  bringing  them  back  upon  Britain 
on  that  occasion  which  Algernon  Sydney  tersely  describes 
as  "  making  the  best  of  our  nation  a  prey  to  the  worst,"  com- 
monly called  the  Restoration,  by  treating  them  as  Philip  II. 


270      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

treated  the  Hollanders  and  the  Flemings,  who  had  no  claim 
to  gratitude  for  restoring  him  to  any  kingdom  he  had  lost, 
or  pretended  to  have  lost. 

The  third  party  were  the  Royalists,  who  avowed  their 
purpose  to  be  to  restore  Charles  to  despotism  pure  and 
unconditioned;  and  consisted  of  Montrose,  Huntly,  Lord 
Ogilvy,  a  few  other  noblemen  and  gentlemen,  and  some 
Highland  chiefs.1 

In  the  Scottish  Parliament,  which  first  met  on  the  nth 
of  March  164^,  the  Hamilton  interest  obtained  a  prepon- 
derance, and  the  Hamiltons  and  moderate  Presbyterians 
were  therefore  able  to  attempt  to  carry  out  the  Engage- 
ment they  had  entered  into  to  restore  the  King  by  force 
of  arms.  But  though  some  of  them,  such  as  Lauderdale 
and  Loudon,  were  men  gifted  with  an  abundance  of  craft 
and  cunning,  the  Engagers  appear  to  have  fallen  into  some 
great  errors  in  their  calculations.  One  of  these  errors  was 
their  regarding  with  contempt,  as  if  it  were  an  obstacle  to 
be  easily  swept  out  of  the  way,  the  army  of  the  Parliament, 
which  had  marched  under  Fairfax  and  Cromwell  to  so 
many  victories.  Thus  as  it  had  been  agreed  that  neither 
country  was  to  make  war  against  the  other  without  due 
warning,  Hamilton  and  his  party  made  three  requisitions 
to  the  English  Parliament — That  the  sectaries  should  be 
suppressed,  the  King  recalled,  and  the  army  disbanded. 
To  these  requisitions  they  could  hardly  expect  any  answer 
but  a  negative;  and  fifteen  days  only  were  allowed  for 
explanation,  after  which  time  the  Scottish  Parliament 
declared  that  they  meant  to  restore  the  King  according  to 
the  Covenant.  They  then  adjourned.  In  their  declaration 
to  the  English  Parliament  the  great  crime  charged  by 

1  Baillie's  Letters  and  Journals,  iii.  35,  d  seq.  •  Edinburgh,  1842.     Burnet's 
Memorials  of  the  Hamiltons,  p.  336.     Thurloe's  State  Papers,  i.  73,  74. 


The  Second  Civil  War.  271 

these  moderate  Presbyterians  against  the  English  Inde- 
pendents, or  Sectaries,  as  they  contemptuously  styled  them, 
is  "  toleration  countenanced,  and,  by  the  new  propositions, 
endeavoured  to  be  settled ; " T  and  these  men,  who  when 
they  had  their  King,  whom  they  now  pretend  •  to  be  so 
fond  of  (being  so  fond  of  him,  why  did  they  not  keep  him 
when  they  had  him  ?),  sold  him  to  the  English  Parliament, 
and  having  pocketed  the  price  of  him,  now  seek  to  get 
him  back  without  repaying  the  money  they  got  for  him, 
so  that  they  may  have  the  value  of  him  twice  over,2  thus 
express  themselves:  "  Instead  of  security  to  religion  accord- 
ing to  the  Covenant ;  instead  of  freeing  His  Majesty  from 
his  base  imprisonment ;  instead  of  disbanding  the  army  of 
sectaries  by  whose  power  and  tyranny  all  these  evils  were 
come  upon  us,  and  further  threaten  us,  the  English  Parlia- 
ment has  only  sent  them  some  very  unsatisfactory  pro- 
positions." 3  If  they  could  but  have  got  rid  of  that  army 
of  sectaries,  they  might  have  done  more  mischief,  though 
some  of  them — Lauderdale,  for  instance — contrived  to  do 
a  good  deal  before  they  ceased  from  troubling. 

In  the  words  quoted  above  from  their  declaration  they 
also  pretend  to  be  as  fond  of  "  religion  according  to  the 
Covenant"  as  of  their  King.  They  declared,  when  ques- 
tioned as  to  the  terms  of  the  Engagement,  that  the  King 
had  given  satisfaction ;  but  they  refused  to  disclose  the 
terms,  alleging  that  they  had  come  under  an  oath  of 
secrecy.  But  though  this  succeeded  with  a  Parliament 
selected  to  carry  out  their  purposes,  the  clergy  and  the 
bulk  of  the  people  at  once  perceived  how  treacherously 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  946. 

2  They  may  have  been  of  the  way  of  thinking  of  the  individual  who  being 
charged  with  selling  his  country,  replied  by  thanking  God  that  he  had  a 
country  to  sell. 

3  Purl.  Hist.,  iii.  947. 


272      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

they  had  acted.  Argyle's  party,  the  rigid  Presbyterians, 
concluded  that  the  terms  could  only  be  concealed  because 
they  were  hostile  to  the  Covenant,  or  were  never  intended 
to  be  observed.  The  clergy  therefore,  in  their  Assembly, 
opposed  the  Engagement ;  and  the  pulpits  fulminated 
eternal  damnation  against  its  authors  and  abettors.  On 
the  other  side,  the  Parliament  passed  sanguinary  laws 
against  those  who  should  oppose  their  invasion  of  England, 
and  provided  for  the  impressment  of  men  to  serve  as 
soldiers.  So  that  on  one  side  the  people  were  threatened 
with  terrible  temporal  punishment  if  they  disobeyed  the 
Parliament ;  on  the  other  with  all  the  terrors  of  Calvin's 
hell,  if  to  escape  the  Parliamentary  penalties  they  violated 
the  Covenant.  Some  of  the  effects  of  this  state  of  things 
are  seen  in  such  contemporary  statements  as  that  Hamil- 
ton pressed  every  fourth  man  in  certain  districts  for  his 
expedition  into  England ; x  and  that  many  yeomen  in 
Clydesdale,  "  upon  fear  to  be  levied  by  force,"  fled  from 
their  houses  to  Loudoun  Hill.2  Cromwell  himself  could 
hardly  have  been  successful  with  an  army  levied  in  this 
manner.  What  chance  of  success  Hamilton  had  then 
may  be  easily  foreseen ;  particularly  against  troops  raised, 
disciplined,  and  commanded  as  Cromwell's  troops  were. 
The  moderate  Presbyterians,  when  they  indulged  in  in- 
solence towards  the  English  Independents,  seemed  to  be 
ignorant  of  the  fact  which  the  whole  history  of  the  world 
had  proved,  that  battles  are  won  by  the  strongest  bat- 
talions led  by  capable  men,  and  that  battles  are  great 
things,  for  liberty  or  empire  lies  beyond  them ;  according 
to  the  use  made  of  the  results  of  victory.  It  is  seldom 
indeed  that  liberty  is  the  fruit ;  and  assuredly  if  Hamilton 

1  Captain  Hodgson's  Memoirs,  p.  124. 

2  Baillie's  Letters  and  Journals,  iii.  48.     Edinburgh.  1842. 


The  Second  Civil  War.  273 

had  on  this  occasion  been  successful,  the  bulk  of  the 
population  of  Scotland  would  have  reaped  no  fruit  from 
success,  but  would  have  remained  as  the  English  found 
them  three  years  after  when  they  came  to  fight  the  battle 
of  Dunbar,  "  much  enslaved  to  their  lords."1 

The  vote  which  Hamilton  had  carried  in  the  Scottish 
Parliament  was  for  30,000  foot  and  6000  horse ;  but  he 
could  not  raise  more  than  10,000  foot  and  400  horse ;  and 
there  had  been  so  much  delay  in  doing  this  that  the 
English  insurrection  was  almost  quelled  before  the  Scottish 
army  of  Hamilton  was  ready  to  take  the  field.  Monro, 
who  had  been  recalled  from  Ireland  with  3000  men,  fol- 
lowed Hamilton's  army  at  a  distance,  that  he  might  not 
be  under  the  command  of  the  Earl  of  Callender;  and 
Hamilton  himself  did  not  form  a  junction  with  Langdale 
and  the  English  Royalists,  either  through  jealousy  of  him, 
or  fear  that  his  own  men  might  be  disgusted  at  the 
thought  of  being  joined  with  Prelatists  or  Papists,  or 
men  that  had  fought  against  the  Covenant.  An  army 
thus  disjointed  could  derive  little  or  no  advantage  from 
its  numerical  superiority,  and  might  be  expected  to  be 
routed,  as  it  was,  by  such  forces  as  Cromwell's,  scarcely  a 
third  of  its  number. 

The  forces  of  the  Parliament  in  the  north  of  England 
being  too  weak  to  risk  a  battle,  retreated  before  Langdale 
and  Hamilton.  They  had  not  retreated  far,  however,  when 
Cromwell,  who  had  finished  his  work  in  Wales,  and  who 
knew  well  the  value  of  time  in  war,  came  up,  and  join- 
ing Lambert  and  Robert  Lilburne,  surprised  Langdale 
near  Preston  in  Lancashire,  drove  him  back  upon  the 
main  body  of  the  Scots,  and  then,  on  the  same  day,  com- 
pletely routed  Hamilton,  whom  he  pursued  to  Warrington. 

1  Whitelock,  p.  468. 
VOL.  II.  S 


274      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Lieutenant-General  Baillie  was  taken\prisoner,  with  a  great 
part  of  the  Scotch  army,  who  had  only  quarter  for  their 
lives ;  and  such  of  them  as  "  appeared  not  to  have  been 
forced  men  "  were  by  resolution  of  the  English  Parliament 
transported  to  the  English  plantations  and  Venice,  whence 
the  condition  of  the  population  of  Scotland  at  that  time 
may  be  seen,  that  they  had  the  choice  of  being  "  much  en- 
slaved to  their  lords  "  in  Scotland,  or  sold  as  slaves  to  the 
English  plantations  or  Venice.1  Hamilton  himself  was 
captured  within  a  few  days  at  Uttoxeter,2  and  not  long 
after  Langdale  was  taken  at  a  little  alehouse  upon  Colonel 
Hutchinson's  land  in  Nottinghamshire,  and  sent  to  Not- 
'tingham  Castle,  from  which  he  escaped  some  months 
after.3  Monro,  who  had  been  left  behind  and  kept  his 
force  together,  hastened  back  to  Scotland,  news  having 
arrived  that  Argyle  with  Leslie  had  raised  an  army  of 
more  than  6000  men  in  support  of  the  Covenant. 

Cromwell  marched  towards  Scotland,  and  having-  crossed 
the  Border,  joined  with  Argyle  in  renewing  the  Covenant 
and  getting  the  Engagement  rescinded.  And  now  a  strange 
spectacle  presented  itself — that  Cromwell,  for  vanquishing 
a  Scottish  army  which  had  invaded  England,  should  be 

1  "  September  4,  1648. — The  number  of  Scots  prisoners  taken  at  the  defeat 
of  the  Duke    of  Hamilton,   in  Lancashire,   being   more   than    the   country 
could  possibly  maintain,  a  committee  of  the  House  of  Commons  had  been 
appointed  to  consider  of  some  method  to  dispose  of  the  common  soldiers 
of  that  army  ;  and  it  was  proposed  to  engage  with  merchants  for  ti'ansporting 
abroad  such  of  them  as  appeared  not  to  have  been  forced  men,  which  ihe 
House  agreed  to  ;  and  this  day  it  was  resolved,  •  That  the  committee  do  take 
care,  in  the  first  place,  to  supply  the  English  plantations,  and  then  dispose  of 
the  rest  to  Venice ;  taking  special  security  that  none  of  them  be  transported 
to  other  places,  or  return  to  the  prejudice  of  this  kingdom;  and  that 'the  con- 
tractors within  fourteen  days  after  such  contract  made   do  disburden  the  king- 
dom from  any  charge  of  maintaining  those  prisoners.'"— Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1004. 

2  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  260.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 

8  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  pp.  324,  325.     Bohn's  edition.     Lon- 
don, 1854. 


The  Second  Civil  War.  275 

acknowledged  in  Scotland  to  have  been  the  preserver  of 
Scotland,  and  yet  in  England  should  not  be  allowed  to 
have  been  the  preserver  of  England !  and  that  the  same 
victory  of  his  against  the  Scots  should  please  the  Presby- 
terian Scots  for  religion's  sake,  and  yet,  for  religion's  sake, 
should  displease  the  Presbyterians  of  England  !  "  CEdipus 
himself,"  observes  May,  "  cannot  unriddle  this  ;  especially 
if  he  judge  according  to  reason,  and  not  according  to  what 
envy,  hatred,  and  embittered  faction  can  produce."  ]  And 
Ludlow  says,  "  The  pulpits  who  before  had  proclaimed  this 
war  now  accompanied  the  army  with  their  curses :  for 
though  they  could  have  been  contented  that  the  sectarian 
party,  as  they  called  it,  should  be  ruined,  provided  they 
could  find  strength  enough  to  bring  in  the  King  them- 
selves ;  yet  they  feared  their  old  enemy  more  than  their 
new  one,  because  the  latter  would  only  restrain  them  from 
lording  it  over  them  and  others,  affording  them  equal 
liberty  with  themselves."  This  element  of  the  character 
of  the  Independents  as  a  religious  body,  or  sect,  as 
these  Presbyterians  opprobriously  styled  them,  consti- 
tuted the  grand  and  honourable  distinction  between  the 
Independents  and  the  bigots  and  tyrants  of  their  time. 
"  Whereas,"  continues  Ludlow,  "  the  former  was  so  far  from 
that  as  hardly  to  suffer  them  to  be  hewers  of  wood  and 
drawers  of  water ; "  2  that  is,  those  who  styled  themselves 
moderate  Presbyterians  were  the  feudal  tyrants  of  the 
dark  ages,  merely  using  religion  as  a  help  to  rivet  upon  the 
necks  of  their  countrymen  the  fetters  of  feudal  servitude. 
What  cared  they  for  religion  ?  except  so  far  as  it  consisted 
in  what  a  gallant  old  soldier  of  Cromwell's  who  had  the  hard 
fate  to  survive  the  ruin  of  his  cause,  and  to  perish  in  a  vain 
attempt  to  expel  the  Stuart  tyrants  and  their  abettors  after 
1  May's  Breviary.  z  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  253. 


276      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

they  had  been  brought  back,  said,  he  would  never  believe 
that  Providence  had  sent  a  few  men  into  the  world  ready- 
booted  and  spurred  to  ride,  and  millions  ready-saddled  and 
bridled  to  be  ridden.  This  was  the  creed  of  the  moderate 
Presbyterians — as  of  all  the  Stuarts  and  all  the  Tudors 
and  all  their  abettors,  and  was  all  the  religion  they  really 
cared  for.  Well  might  the  poor  countrymen  flee  from  their 
houses  to  the  wilderness  to  avoid  being  levied  by  force. 
They  had  a  sad  foreboding  what  would  be  their  fate  if 
levied.  They  knew  that  those  who  undertook  to  lead 
them  now,  if  some  of  them  inherited  the  names  or  titles, 
did  not  inherit  the  military  genius  of  those  who  three  hun- 
dred years  before  had  led  their  forefathers  to  victory.  But 
now  these  moderate  Presbyterians,  in  order  to  rivet  once 
more  on  their  countrymen  the  tyranny  of  the  King  and 
their  own,  dragged  those  poor  men  from  their  homes  to  be 
slaughtered  in  fight  or  condemned  to  slavery  in  the  Eng- 
lish plantations,  or  to  be  galley-slaves  to  the  so-called 
republic  of  Venice.  The  English  Parliament,  if  they  may 
be  thought  to  have  dealt  harshly  with  the  poor  soldiers, 
showed  that  they  were  no  respecters  of  persons ;  for  they 
struck  off  the  head  of  the  Duke  of  Hamilton,  as  well  as 
that  of  his  master  King  Charles,  who  had  caused  so  much 
misery  and  shed  so  much  blood. 

It  is  rather  surprising,  in  the  resolution  of  the  English 
Parliament  of  September  4,  1648,  to  find  immediately 
following  the  words  "  the  English  plantations  "  the  words 
"  and  then  dispose  of  the  rest  to  Venice."  The  Venetians 
were  then  engaged  in  the  war  of  Candia  with  the  Turks ; 
and  it  may  be  inferred  that  for  that  reason  they  were 
in  want  of  troops.  At  all  events  it  must  have  been  a 
hard  fate  for  the  poor  Scotch  Presbyterians  to  be  dragged 
by  Duke  Hamilton,  or  any  other  duke,  marquis,  earl, 


The  Second  Civil  War.  277 

lord,  or  laird,  from  their  country  and  homes  to  serve  the 
Venetians,  whether  as  galley-slaves  or  as  common  soldiers. 
I  have  in  my  "  History  of  the  Commtemweath  "  touched  on 
the  subject  of  the  treatment  of  prisoners  of  war.1  It  is 
difficult  to  ascertain  what  proportion  of  the  Scots  prisoners 
was  shipped  to  the  English  plantations.  It  is  certain  they 
were  not  all  so  disposed  of,  either  after  the  battle  of  Dunbar 
or  after  the  battle  of  Worcester.  There  are  in  the  MS. 
Order-Book  of  the  Council  of  State  of  the  Commonwealth 
minutes  respecting  the  employment  of  some  of  the  prisoners 
taken  at  Dunbar  in  the  coal  mines  about  Newcastle,  and 
of  others  in  agriculture  in  England.  With  regard  to  the 
prisoners  taken  at  Worcester,  the  Council  of  State,  on 
the  ist  of  October  1651,  made  an  order,  "That  1000  of 
the  Scottish  prisoners  be  delivered  to  the  use  of  the  under- 
takers for  the  draining  of  the  Fens,  upon  condition  that,  if 
ten  men  of  each  hundred  do  escape  from  them,  they  do 
then  forfeit,  for  every  man  escaping  above  the  aforesaid 
number,  the  sum  of  ^lo."2  And  again,  on  the  9th  of 
October,  there  is  this  order :  "  That  so  many  of  the 
Scottish  prisoners,  private  soldiers,  as  are  in  Tothill 
Fields  and  also  at  York,  and  are  sound  and  fit  for  labour, 
be  delivered  over  for  the  draining  of  the  Fens."3  But 
the  following  minute  of  the  2ist  of  October  shows  that 
some  of  the  Scots  prisoners  were  transported  to  the 
plantations :  "  That  the  Committee  of  prisoners  do,  upon 
usual  security,  give  license  for  the  transporting  of  some 
Scots  prisoners  to  the  Bermudas."  4  The  following  order, 
made  on  the  I7th  of  December  1651,  respecting  the  Scots 
prisoners  taken  at  the  battle  of  Worcester,  furnishes  evidence 

1  History  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England,  i.  378-384;  ii.  203-214. 

2  Order-Book  of  the  Council  of  State,  October  I,  1651.     MS.     State  Paper 
Office. 

3  Ibid.,  October  9,  1651.  4  Ibid.,  October  21,  1651. 


278      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

in  favour  of  the  humane  treatment  of  their  prisoners  by 
the  English  Parliament  and  Council  of  State  :  "  That  it  be 
referred  to  the  Committee  for  prisoners  to  take  into  con- 
sideration the  discharging  of  the  Scots  prisoners  remaining 
now  in  Tothill  Fields  and  about  London,  which  were  taken 
at  the  battle  of  Worcester ;  and  also  what  allowance  is  fit 
to  be  made  of  clothing  and  money,  for  the  enabling  of 
them  to  return  into  their  own  country,  the  sum  of  which  is 
to  be  paid  by  Mr.  Frost  out  of  the  exigent  moneys  of  the 
Council,  and  also  what  time  is  fit  to  be  given  for  their 
performing  of  the  journey." '  Similar  orders  were  made 
respecting  the  Scots  prisoners  at  Shrewsbury,2  and  those 
at  Durham  and  Gloucester.3  And  on  the  3Oth  of  July 
1652  the  Council  of  State  ordered  "  that  the  sum  of 
£39,  3s.,  laid  out  for  the  clothing  of  some  Scots  prisoners 
before  they  went  home,  be  paid  out  of  the  contingent 
moneys  of  the  Council."  4  There  is  also  an  order  that  a 
warrant  be  issued  to  the  Master  and  Wardens  of  the  Com- 
pany of  Chirurgeons  to  appoint  some  skilful  chirurgeons 
to  dress  constantly  such  of  the  Scots  prisoners  as  were 
wounded  at  Worcester.5  There  are  also  orders  on  the 
same  day  for  112  bags  of  biscuits  for  the  Scots  prisoners 
at  i6s.  per  cwt,  and  for  payment  of  the  "bakers  and 
cheesemongers,  which  have  furnished  provisions  to  the 
Scots  prisoners  at  £56,  5s.  per  diem  and  upwards." 

The  Scottish  clergy  now  enjoyed  their  ^triumph  at  the 
defeat  of  Hamilton  and  his  party,  and  the  Engagers,  high 
and  low,  were  condemned  to  the  stool  of  repentance. 
Loudon  the  Chancellor,  whose  wife  had  in  her  own  right 
the  estate  of  Loudon,  and  threatened  to  divorce  him  for 

1  Order-Book  of  the  Council  of  State,  December  17,  1651. 

2  Ibid.,  February  3,  165^.  3  Ibid.,  July  I,  1652. 

*  Ibid.,  July  30,  1652.  8fl>id.,  September  16,  1651. 


The  Treaty  of  Newport.  279 

his  manifold  adulteries  unless  he  submitted  to  the  penance 
enjoined  by  the  clergy,  sat  on  the  stool  of  repentance 
in  his  own  parish  church  and  received  a  rebuke  in  the  face 
of  the  whole  congregation.  The  scene  as  described  was 
very  characteristic  of  the  time.  The  Chancellor  with  many 
tears  deplored  his  temporary  departure  from  the  Covenant 
when  he  joined  the  party  of  the  Engagement — that  is,  the 
party  which  engaged  to  restore  the  King  by  force  of  arms — 
and  solicited  in  his  behalf  the  prayers  of  the  congregation, 
who  at  such  a  spectacle  were  dissolved  in  tears  of  joy.  Mr. 
Brodie  says  that  in  a  MS.  of  Wodrow's  which  he  had  seen 
it  is  stated  that  Archbishop  Sharpe  was  at  first  for  the 
Engagement;  but  finding  that  it  was  not  a  politic  game,  he 
brought  to  the  stool  of  repentance  all  his  parishioners  who 
had  in  the  least  inclined  that  way.1 

In  the  meantime  the  absence  of  many  members  of  the 
Independent  party  from  the  House  of  Commons,  by  reason 
of  their  employment  in  the  army  against  the  enemy,  so 
weakened  their  party  in  Parliament  that  their  adversaries 
took  advantage  of  it  to  attempt  a  recovery  of  their  power.2 
The  impeachments  against  the  Peers  and  the  members 
of  the  Commons  were  dropt ;  and  the  secluded  members 
were  restored  to  their  seats  in  the  House ;  those  who 
had  been  committed  on  account  of  the  force  which  was 
put  upon  the  House  by  the  late  tumults  being  dis- 
charged from  prison.  The  object  of  the  Presbyterian 
party  in  the  Parliament  now  was  to  conclude  a  hasty 
treaty  with  the  King,  in  the  hope  that,  with  the  name 
of  Parliament  joined  to  that  of  King,  they  might  crush 
the  Independents  and  their  army.  But  the  hope  was 

1  Brodie's  History  of  the  British  Empire,  iv.  137,  note.     Whitelock  says, 
"  Letters  from  Scotland  that  they  bring  all  to  the  stool  of  repentance  that 
were  in  the  last  invasion  of  England." — Whitelock's  Memorials,  Feb.  5,  164^ 

2  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  251. 


2  So      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

a  vain  one.  Having  a  majority  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, they  rescinded  the  resolution  against  making  more 
addresses  to  the  King;  and  but  for  the  decisive  victories 
of  Fairfax  and  Cromwell,  they  would  have  carried  a  pro- 
position that,  without  binding  him  to  anything,  they 
should  bring  the  King  to  London  with  honour,  freedom, 
and  safety,  and  then  treat  with  him  personally.  As  a 
sort  of  compromise  between  the  two  parties,  it  was  voted 
that  fifteen  commissioners — the  Earls  of  Northumberland, 
Pembroke,  Salisbury,  Middlesex,  and  Lord  Say  of  the 
Upper  House,  and  Thomas  Lord  Wenman,  Sir  Henry  Vane, 
junior,  Sir  Harbottle  Grimstone,  Sir  John  Potts,  Holies, 
Pierpoint,  Browne,  Crewe,  Glynne,  and  Bulkley  of  the  Com- 
mons— should  conduct  a  treaty  personally  with  Charles, 
not  in  London,  but  at  Newport  in  the  Isle  of  Wight1 
41  The  King,"  says  May,  "  during  this  treaty  "  (known  as 
the  Treaty  of  Newport,  and  entered  upon  on  the  iSth  of 
September)  "  found  not  only  great  reverence  and  observ- 
ance from  the  Commissioners  of  Parliament,  but  was  at- 
tended with  a  prince-like  retinue,  and  was  allowed  what 
servants  he  should  choose  to  make  up  the  splendour  of 
a  court.  The  Duke  of  Richmond,  the  Marquis  of  Hert- 
ford, the  Earls  of  Southampton  and  Lindsey,  with  other 
gentlemen  of  note,  and  a  competent  number  of  them, 
waited  in  his  train ;  his  own  chaplains  and  divers  of  his 
lawyers,  to  advise  him  in  the  treaty,  were  allowed  there. 
But  whilst  this  treaty  proceeded,  and  some  months  were 
spent  in  debates,  concessions,  and  denials,  behold,  another 
strange  alteration  happened,  which  threw  the  King  from  the 
height  of  honour  into  the  lowest  condition.  So  strangely 
did  one  contrary  provoke  another.  Whilst  some  laboured 
to  advance  the  King  into  his  throne  again  upon  slender 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1004. 


The  Treaty  of  Newport.  281 

conditions,  or  none  at  all,  others,  weighing  what  the  King 
had  done,  what  the  Commonwealth,  and,  especially,  what 
the  Parliament's  friends  might  suffer,  if  he  should  come  to 
reign  again  with  unchanged  affections,  desired  to  take  him 
quite  away.  From  hence  divers  and  frequent  petitions 
were  presented  to  the  Parliament,  and  some  to  the  General 
Fairfax,  that  whosoever  had  offended  against  the  Common- 
wealth, no  persons  excepted,  might  come  to  judgment."1 

Some  of  the  petitions  presented  to  the  General  Fairfax 
during  the  month  of  October  from  various  regiments  for 
justice  upon  the  King  called  the  negotiations  at  Newport  a 
trap.  They  were  so  ;2  but  they  did  not  succeed  in  entrap- 
ping the  party  of  the  Independents.  It  would  be  a  mere 
waste  of  time  and  words  to  enter  into  the  details  of  those 
negotiations.  The  object  of  the  King  was  to  spin  out  the 
time  first,  in  the  hope  that  the  Scottish  army,  joined  to  the 
Royalists,  would  be  successful :  when  that  hope  was  de- 
stroyed by  the  defeat  of  the  Scots,  his  prospects  were  not  at 
an  end,  as  he  had  formed  the  scheme  of  escaping  to  Ireland, 
and  putting  himself  at  the  head  of  the  Irish  insurgents.  His 
object  therefore  was  not  to  conclude  a  treaty  on  such  conces- 
sions as  he  affected  an  inclination  to  make,  but  to  spin  out  the 

1  May's  Breviary. 

2  On  the  loth  of  October  (1648)  the  King  writes  to  Ormonde  :  "I  must 
command  you  two  things  ;  first,  to  obey  all  my  wife's  commands,  then,  not  to 
obey  any  public  command  of  mine,  until  I  send  you  word  that  I  am  free  from 
restraint.     Lastly,  be  not  startled  at  my  great  concessions  concerning  Ireland, 
for  they  will  come  to  nothing."     And  on  the  28th  of  that  month  he  again 
writes  to  the  same  effect  :  "  Though  you  will  hear  that  this  treaty  is  near  or 
at  least  most  likely  to  be  concluded,  yet  believe  it  not,  but  pursue  the  way 
you  are  in  with  all  possible  vigour.     Deliver  also  that  my  command  to  all 
my  friends,  but  not  in  a  public  way,  because  it  may  be  inconvenient  to  me." 
— Append,  to  Carte's  Ormonde,  ii.  17.     In  one  of  his  letters  to  Sir  William 
Hopkins  also,  who  resided  opposite  to  Newport,  and  with  whom  Charles 
carried  on  a  correspondence  regarding  a  ship  for  his  escape,  he  says.   "  To 
deal  freely  with  you,  the  great  concession  I  made  to-day  was  ^erely  in  order 
to  my  escape."— Letters  subjoined  to  Wagstaff's  Vindication. 


282      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

time,  and  so  to  overreach  those  with  whom  he  treated ;  while 
he  should  be  ready  to  seize  the  first  favourable  opportunity 
of  making  his  escape.  He  also  made  such  apparent  con- 
cessions the  more  readily  that  he  reserved  a  pretence  of 
breaking  off  the  treaty  on  the  religious  grounds ;  which 
pretence  would  favour  the  idea  that  he  was  deterred  from 
accommodation  by  religious  and  conscientious  motives,  and 
not  by  a  desire  of  power. 


28 


CHAPTER  XXI. 

REMONSTRANCE  FROM  THE  ARMY  FOR  JUSTICE  ON  THE  KING 
— PRIDE'S  PURGE— CONDUCT  OF  VANE  AND  FAIRFAX  ON 
THIS  OCCASION. 

WE  now  enter  upon  the  last  stage  of  the  career  of  the  last 
King  of  England  who  attempted  to  enslave  the  people  of 
England  by  open  force.  Others  have  since  *  sought  to 
attain  the  same  end  by  other  means ;  but  this  was  the  last 
who  sought  to  attain  that  end,  not  merely  by  royal  edicts 
and  Parliamentary  harangues  and  resolutions,  but  by 
blood  and  iron.  But  happily  for  the  people  of  England, 
they  found  Englishmen  who  showed  by  their  deeds  that 
they  could  do  something  in  this  matter;  and  by  their  deeds 
proved  that  if  their  kings  claimed,  by  right  of  conquest,  a 
commission  from  God  to  oppress  the  people  of  England, 
God  had  given  the  people  of  England  the. same  claim  by 
the  same  right  against  their  kings.  And  the  men  who 
had  received  this  mark  of  divine  favour  were  determined 
to  make  it  as  far  as  they  could  a  warning  to  after-ages 
against  what  they  termed  "  the  blasphemous  arrogance  of 
tyrants,"  which  instigated  them  "  to  do  wrong  and  make 
war,  even  upon  their  own  people,  as  their  corrupt  wills  or 
lusts  should  prompt  them."  l 

If  there  were  any  doubts  about  the  matter  before  the 
second  war  against  his  people  raised  by  King  Charles, 
which  war  began  and  ended  in  the  course  of  the  spring, 

1  Remonstrance  from  the  Army.     Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  4. 


284      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

summer,  and  autumn  of  1648,  there  were  none  now,  and 
the  fate  of  Charles  Stuart,  King  of  England,  was  sealed. 
In  the  course  of  the  debate  which  ended  in  the  vote 
against  more  addresses  to  the  King,  one  member  of  the 
Commons  had  proposed  setting  the  King  aside  and  con- 
fining him  for  life  in  some  inland  fortress.  But  what  had 
taken  place  since  had  convinced  men  who  were  as  "quick 
to  learn  and  wise  to  know,"  what  was  fittest  to  be  done  in 
cases  the  difficulty  of  which  would  have  been  insurmount- 
able to  men  of  inferior  genius  for  government;  as  they 
were  "  stern  to  resolve  and  stubborn  to  endure ; "  that  as 
regarded  not  only  their  repose,  but  their  safety  and  their 
very  existence,  the  only  safe  place  of  custody  for  King 
Charles  was  the  grave. 

On  the  2Oth  of  November  a  remonstrance  was  presented 
to  the  House  of  Commons  from  Lord  Fairfax  and  the 
General  Council  of  the  army,  demanding  justice  upon  the 
King,  or  in  their  own  words,  "  That  the  capital  and  grand 
author  of  our  troubles,  the  person  of  the  King,  by  whose 
commissions,  commands,  or  procurement,  and  in  whose 
behalf,  and  for  whose  interest  only,  of  will  and  power,  all 
our  wars  and  troubles  have  been,  with  all  the  miseries 
attending  them,  may  be  speedily  brought  to  justice  for  the 
treason,  blood,  and  mischief  he  is  therein  guilty  of."  '  The 
entry  of  this  business  stands  thus  recorded  in  their  jour- 
nals :  "  The  House  being  informed  that  some  officers  of 
the  army,  from  the  General,  were  at  the  door  with  a 
remonstrance,  they  were  called  in ;  and  Colonel  Ewer 
informed  them,  that  the  Lord-General,  and  General  Coun- 
cil of  the  Officers  of  the  Army,  had  commanded  him,  and 
those  gentlemen  with  him,  to  present  this  remonstrance  to 
that  honourable  House ;  and  desired  them  to  take  it  into 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1 121. 


Remonstrance  from  the  Army.  285 

speedy  and  serious  consideration."  The  account  given  of 
this  proceeding  in  the  "  Parliamentary  History,"  which  may 
have  more  or  less  of  truth  in  it,  is  "  that  Cromwell  in  his 
triumphant  march  out  of  Scotland  had  endeavoured  to 
engage  the  gentry  in  the  north  of  England  to  oppose  the 
going  forward  of  the  treaty  with  the  King;  and  that 
several  petitions  to  that  end  were  presented  to  the  Com- 
mons, of  which  the  House  took  no  notice;  that  Cromwell 
then  formed  a  scheme  for  the  several  regiments  to  petition 
the  Lord  Fairfax,  one  after  another,  demanding  justice 
upon  the  King ;  which  was  begun  by  Ireton,  his  son-in- 
law's,  regiment,  and  then  followed  by  Ingoldsby's,  Fleet- 
wood's,  Whalley's,  Barkstead's,  Overton's,  and  others ; 
that  the  consequence  of  this  was  the  calling  a  General 
Council  of  Officers,  and  agreeing  upon  this  Remonstrance, 
of  which  Ireton  was  the  principal  penman."  I 

This  Remonstrance  is  exceedingly  long,  filling  forty- 
nine  columns  of  the  new  "Parliamentary  History."2  The 
sum  and  substance  of  the  argument  may  be  stated  shortly 
thus  :  "  The  only  security  against  the  commission  of  crimes 
is  the  certainty  of  punishment  overtaking  the  criminals. 
The  only  security  of  the  governed  against  misgovern- 
ment  is  the  power  of  punishing  the  governors.  In  all  cases 
of  like  rebellions  or  civil  wars,  the  prudence  of  most  nations 
and  ages,  as  well  as  the  justice  of  the  thing,  has  led  to  fix 
the  exemplary  punishment,  first  upon  the  capital  leader, 
and  others  as  nearest  to  him,  and  not  to  punish  the  in- 
feriors and  exempt  the  chief.  In  this  case  it  is  most  clear 
that  to  fix  your  justice  first  upon  the  head,  and  thereby  let 
his  successors  see  what  themselves  may  expect,  if  they 
attempt  the  like,  may  discourage  them  from  heading  any 
more  what  instruments  they  may  find  in  the  like  quarrel  ; 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1077.  8  Ibid.,  iii.  1078-1127. 


286      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Governmen  t. 

and  so  is  like  to  be  a  real  security  when  such  instruments 
cannot  find  a  head ;  but  to  punish  only  instruments,  and 
let  the  head,  by  whose  power,  and  in  whose  interest,  all  has 
been  done,  not  only  go  free,  but  stand  in  perpetual  privi- 
lege and  impunity  to  head  such  instruments  again,  as  oft 
as  he  can  find  opportunity,  and  get  any  to  serve  him,  is  a 
way  so  far  from  security,  as  that  it  leads  indeed  to  endless 
trouble  and  hazard,  or  the  total  loss  of  all.  Suppose  the 
best  constitutions  and  laws  imaginable  in  any  state,  yet 
their  insufficiency  without  a  power  to  punish  those  that 
violate  them  —  without  the  exemption  of  any  person 
whatsoever  from  such  punishment — is  obvious.  One  ex- 
ample made  of  a  king  who  had  levied  war  against  his 
people  would  be  of  more  terror  and  avail  than  the  execu- 
tion of  his  whole  party.  On  the  other  hand,  the  ex- 
emption of  the  King  from  punishment  would  proclaim 
the  like  perpetual  exemption  to  him  and  his  posterity, 
whatever  they  shall  do;  and  would  therein  give  the 
most  authentic  testimony  to  all  these  destructive  Court 
maxims  concerning  the  absolute  impunity  of  kings,  their 
accountableness  to  none  on  earth,  and  that  they  cannot  do 
wrong ;  which  principles,  as  they  were  begot  by  the  blas- 
phemous arrogance  of  tyrants  upon  servile  parasites,  and 
remain  in  our  law-books  as  heirlooms  only  of  the  Conquest ; 
so  they  serve  for  nothing  but  to  establish  that  which  begot 
them,  tyranny ;  and  to  give  kings  the  highest  encourage- 
ment to  do  wrong  and  make  war  even  upon  their  own 
people.  If  therefore  our  kings  claim  by  right  of  conquest, 
God  hath  given  you  the  same  against  them,  and  there  is  an 
end  to  their  pretensions  as  if  the  whole  people  were  made 
only  for  them,  and  to  serve  their  lusts.  We  proceed  in 
*  order  to  the  dispensing  of  justice  in  relation  to  the  late 
wars  to  propound  as  followeth :  i.  That  the  capital  and 


Remonstrance  from  the  Army.  287 

grand  author  of  our  troubles,  the  person  of  the  King,  by 
whose  commissions,  commands,  or  procurement,  and  in 
whose  behalf,  and  for  whose  interest  only,  all  our  wars  and 
troubles  have  been,  with  all  the  miseries  attending  them, 
may  be  speedily  brought  to  justice  for  the  blood  and  mis- 
chief he  is  therein  guilty  of.  2.  That  a  day  may  be  set 
for  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  the  Duke  of  York  to  come  in 
and  render  themselves : — but,  whether  or  not  they  render 
themselves,  that  the  estate  and  revenue  of  the  Crown  may 
be  sequestered,  and  all  the  matter  of  costly  pomp  or  state 
suspended  for  a  good  number  of  years,  while  the  desola- 
tions and  spoils  of  the  poor  people  made,  by  and  in  behalf 
of  that  family,  and  for  that  vain  interest,  the  state  and 
greatness  thereof,  may  be  in  good  measure  repaired  or 
recovered.  3.  That,  for  further  satisfaction  to  public  jus- 
tice, capital  punishment  may  be  speedily  executed  upon  a 
competent  number  of  his  chief  instruments  also,  both  in 
the  former  and  latter  war.  4.  That  exemplary  justice 
being  done  in  capital  punishment  upon  the  principal 
author  and  some  prime  instruments  of  our  late  wars,  the 
rest  of  the  delinquents  may,  upon  their  submission  and 
rendering  themselves  to  justice,  have  mercy  extended  to 
them  for  their  lives.  5.  That  the  satisfaction  of  arrears  to 
the  soldiery,  with  other  public  debts,  and  the  competent 
reparation  of  public  damages,  may  be  put  into  some 
orderly  way ;  wherein  care  may  be  taken  for  some  prece- 
dency of  satisfaction  to  such  whose  loans  or  losses  appear 
to  have  been  great,  and  livelihoods  small,  so  as  they  can 
worst  bear  the  want  or  delay.  After  public  justice  we 
proceed  to  the  settling  of  the  kingdom — i,  that  there 
may  be  a  reasonable  and  certain  period  set  to  the  present 
Parliament;  and  2,  a  certain  succession  of  future  Par- 
liaments, with  some  provision  for  the  certainty  of  their 


288      Striiggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

meeting  sitting  and  ending — for  the  equal  distribution  of 
elections  to  render  the  House  of  Commons  as  near  as  may 
be  an  equal  representative  of  the  whole  people — and  for 
full  freedom  in  elections.  That  such  representatives  shall 
have  the  supreme  power  as  to  the  making  of  laws,  as  to  the 
making  of  war  or  peace ;  and  as  to  the  highest  and  final 
judgment  in  all  civil1  things  without  further  appeal  to 
any  created  standing  power." 

When  the  Remonstrance  of  the  army  was  presented  to 
the  House  of  Commons  on  the  2oth  of  November,  the 
consideration  of  it  was  appointed  for  the  2/th.  But  on 
that  day  it  was  again  ordered  to  be  put  off  to  the  1st  of 
December.  These  repeated  delays  gave  great  disgust  to 
the  army.  The  immediate  consequence  was  "  The  Decla- 
ration of  His  Excellency  the  Lord-General  Fairfax  and 
his  General  Council  of  Officers,  showing  the  grounds  of  the 
army's  advance  towards  the  city  of  London,  November 
29,  1648;"  by  way  of  appeal  from  the  House  of  Com- 
mons to  the  people.  In  this  declaration  they  say  :  "  Being 
full  of  sad  apprehensions  concerning  the  danger  and  evil 
of  the  treaty  with  the  King,  and  of  any  accommodation 
with  him,  or  restitution  of  him  thereupon,  we  did,  by  our 
late  remonstrance,  upon  the  reason  and  grounds  therein 
expressed,  make  our  application  thereby  unto  the  present 
House  of  Commons,  that  the  dangerous  evil  of  that  way 
might  be  avoided,  and  the  peace  of  the  kingdom  settled 
upon  more  righteous,  safe,  and  hopeful  grounds — viz.,  a 
more  equal  dispensing  of  justice  and  mercy,  in  relation  to 
things  done  or  suffered  in  the  late  wars,  and  the  establish- 
ment of  the  future  government  of  this  kingdom  upon  a 
safe  succession  and  equal  constitution  of  Parliaments ; 
and  that  for  the  ending  of  present,  and  avoiding  of  future 

1  "Civil"  is  here  used  in  contradistinction  to  "religious." 


Remonstrance  from  the  Army.  289 

differences,  to  be  ratified  by  an  agreement  and  subscrip- 
tion of  the  people  thereunto.  This  course  we  took  out  of 
our  tender  care  and  earnest  desire  that  all  ways  of  ex- 
tremity might  be  avoided,  and  that  those  matters  of 
highest  concernment  to  the  public  interest  of  the  nation 
might  be  pursued  and  provided  for  if  possible  by  those 
whose  proper  work  and  trust  it  was.  .  .  .  But  to  our 
grief  we  find,  instead  of  any  satisfaction  or  reasonable 
answer  thereto,  they  are  wholly  rejected  without  any  con- 
sideration of  them."  After  stating,  among  other  things, 
that  the  conduct  of  the  majority  of  that  House  of  Com- 
mons can  be  attributed  to  "  nothing  less  than  a  treacher- 
ous or  corrupt  neglect  of,  or  apostasy  from,  the  public 
trust  reposed  in  them,"  they  thus  conclude:  "  For  all  these 
ends  we  are  now  drawing  up  with  the  army  to  London, 
there  to  follow  Providence  as  God  shall  clear  our  way. — 
By  the  appointment  of  His  Excellency  the  Lord-General 
and  Council  of  Officers.  J.  RUSHWORTH."1 

On  November  30,  the  day  following  the  date  of  this 
declaration,  Fairfax  wrote  a  letter  to  the  Lord  Mayor, 
Aldermen,  and  Common  Council  of  the  city  of  London. 
The  letter  is  dated  "Windsor,  November  30,  1648,"  and 
runs  thus :  "  My  Lord  and  Gentlemen, — Being  upon  an 
immediate  advance  with  the  army  towards  London,  we 
thought  good  hereby  to  give  you  notice  thereof.  For  the 
ground  and  necessity  leading  us  hereunto,  we  refer  you 
to  our  late  remonstrance,  and  to  our  later  declaration, 
concerning  the  same.  We  have  only  this  further  to  add, 
that  as  we  are  far  from  the  least  thoughts  of  plunder,  or 
other  wrong,  to  your  city,  or  any  other  places  adjoining, 
which  we  hope  your  former  experience  of  us  will  give  you 
cause  enough  to  credit  us  in  ;  so,  for  the  better  prevention 

1  ParL  Hist.,  iii.  1.137-1141. 
VOL.  II.  T 


290      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

of  any  disorder  in  the  soldiery,  or  of  any  abuse  or  incon- 
venience to  the  inhabitants  in  quartering  of  the  soldiery  at 
private  houses,  we  earnestly  desire  that  you  would  take  a 
present  course  for  the  supply  of  money  to  pay  those  forces 
while  we  shall  be  necessitated  to  stay  there,  upon  which, 
we  assure  you,  we  shall  so  dispose  of  them  into  great  and 
void  houses  about  the  city,  as  much  as  may  be  possible, 
as  that  few  or  none  of  the  inhabitants  shall  be  troubled 
with  quartering  of  any  soldiers  at  all ;  and  for  this  pur- 
pose we  desire  that  ^"40,000  may  be  forthwith  provided 
upon  the  security  of  our  arrears,  to  be  ready  to  be  paid 
out  to  the  forces  to-morrow  night,  if  possible ;  and  we 
shall  be  ready  to  receive  from  you  any  intimation  for  the 
further  prevention  of  hurt  or  inconvenience  to  the  city  in 
this  business. — I  remain  yours,  &c.,  FAIRFAX." ' 

The  city  authorities  having  communicated  with  the 
Parliament  in  respect  to  this  letter,  in  consequence  of  the 
answers  they  received  from  both  Houses,  ordered  a  com- 
mittee from  the  common  council  to  wait  upon  the  Lord- 
General  with  a  letter  promising  payment  of  the  sum 
demanded,  or  the  most  part  of  it,  the  next  day ;  and 
desiring  that  in  the  meantime  no  violence  or  injury  might 
be  done  to  the  citizens.  The  House  of  Commons  also 
ordered  a  letter  to  be  written  to  the  General  on  this  occa- 
sion, which  is  not  entered  in  the  journals.  The  purport 
of  it  appears  from  the  contemporary  writers  to  have  been 
to  forbid  the  army's  nearer  approach  towards  London. 
But  while  the  committee  were  preparing  this  letter,  the 
House  was  informed  that  the  army  were  advanced  within 
a  mile  of  Westminster ;  that  they  had  planted  guards  at 
Hyde  Park  Corner,  cut  down  trees,  levelled  the  enclo- 
sure, and  laid  it  in  common.  Hereupon  a  motion  was 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1144. 


Remonstrance  from  the  Army.  291 

made  for  adding  a  clause  to  the  letter,  "  That  the  army's 
approach  was  derogatory  to  the  freedom  of  Parliament ;  ' 
but  it  passed  in  the  negative  by  forty -four  against  thirty- 
three.1 

On  the  2d  of  December  the  Lord-General  Fairfax  took 
up  his  lodgings  at  Whitehall,  attended  by  six  regiments 
of  horse  and  four  of  foot,  which  were  quartered  at  St. 
James's,  the  Mews,  York  House,  and  other  great  vacant 
houses  in  the  skirts  of  the  city,  and  in  the  adjacent 
villages.  On  December  4  the  Commons  received  intelli- 
gence of  the  King's  having  been  removed  from  Newport 
to  Hurst  Castle  by  an  order  from  the  Council  of  War.2 
When  Charles  was  removed  from  the  Isle  of  Wight  to 
Hurst  Castle,  situated  on  a  low  bank  of  sand  and  shingle 
which  projects  from  the  coast  of  Hampshire  over  against  the 
Isle  of  Wight,  dark  suspicions  of  secret  assassination  again 
arose  in  his  mind.  But  the  leaders  of  the  Independents 
and  the  Independents  themselves  were  men  who  abhorred 
the  course  of  assassination,  pursued  to  such  an  extent  by 
their  Royalist  enemies ;  they  were  men  who  had  courage 
equal  to  the  bold  and  open  course  which  they  deemed 
essential,  and  which  was  essential,  to  the  success  of  their 
cause.  The  lesson  which  it  was  their  special  object  to 
convey  to  after-ages  could  not  have  been  of  any  avail, 
much  less  of  the  great  avail  it  has  been  of,  if  what  they 
did  had  been  done  in  a  corner ;  as  if  it  were  a  deed  they 
were  ashamed  or  afraid  to  do  in  the  full  light  of  day,  and 
in  the  face  of  heaven  and  earth. 

On  the  4th  of  December  the  Commons  by  136  against 
1 02  voted  that  the  removal  of  the  King  to  Hurst  Castle 
was  without  their  knowledge  or  consent;  and  then  renewed 
the  debates  upon  the  commissioners'  report  of  the  treaty. 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1145.  2  Ibid.,  iii.  1147. 


292      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

In  this  debate,  which  continued  all  night  and  till  nine 
next  morning,  Prynne  made  a  speech  of  enormous1 
length.  Prynne  asserts  in  the  appendix  to  his  speech  of 
December  4  that  many  members  were  converted  to  his 
opinion  by  his  speech -,  and  "the  majority  of  the  House 
declared  both  by  their  cheerful  countenances  and  their 
words  (the  Speaker  going  into  the  withdrawing-room  to 
refresh  himself  so  soon  as  the  foregoing  speech  was  ended) 
that  they  were  abundantly  satisfied  by  what  had  been  thus 
spoken."2  The  result,  whether  or  not  in  any  degree  due, 
as  Prynne  affirms,  to  his  eloquence,  was  a  vote  by  140 
against  104  "  that  the  answers  of  the  King  to  the  proposi- 
tions of  both  Houses  are  a  ground  for  the  House  to  proceed 
upon  for  the  settlement  of  the  peace  of  the  kingdom." 
They  also  nominated  a  committee  to  confer  with  the 
General  for  keeping  a  good  correspondence  between  the 
Parliament  and  the  army.  On  December  5  the  Lords 
passed  a  vote  to  the  same  effect,  and  then  adjourned  to 
the  1 2th.3  This  at  once  brought  matters  to  a  crisis;  and 
the  leaders  of  the  party  of  the  Independents  on  the  fol- 
lowing day,  December  6,  put  in  execution  what  they 
had  for  some  time  deemed  to  be  necessary,  if  they  and 
their  country  were  not  to  give  up  all  they  had  fought 
for. 

The  measure  of  turning  out  the  Presbyterians  by  force 
was  so  far  from  being,  as  some  have  affirmed,  a  part  of  a 
scheme  of  a  military  despotism,  that  it  would  seem  to  have 
been  mainly  devised  by  two  of  the  most  determined  and 
most  honest  republicans  of  the  whole  body  of  the  Inde- 
pendents, Ludlow  and  Ireton.  It  also  appears,  according 

1  Prynne's  speech  on  this  occasion  fills  eighty-seren  of  the'closely-printed 
columns  of  the  "  Parliamentary  History." 

z  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1239.  3  Ibid.,  iii.  1240. 


Remonstrance  from  the  Army.  293 

to  Ludlow  and  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  that  Ireton,  some  months 
before,  was  averse  to  violent  proceedings  by  the  army 
against  the  Parliament,  when  Ludlow  and  others  thought 
them  expedient.1  In  their  narratives  of  these  proceedings 
Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  Ludlow,  though  the  former  does  not 
mention  Ludlow,  and  the  latter  does  not  mention  Colonel 
Hutchinson,  show  that  there  was  a  great  difference  of 
opinion  between  Colonel  Hutchinson  and  Ludlow  respect- 
ing the  interference  of  the  army.2  Ludlow  says  :  "  The 

1  Mrs.  Hutchinson  mentions  Cromwell  as  also  of  that  opinion,,  but  Ludlow, 
whose  account,  as  will  be  shown  presently,  seems  more  to  be  relied  on,  makes 
no  mention  of  Cromwell  on  this  occasion. 

2  In  this  difference  of  opinion  respecting  the  interference  of  the  army,  the 
editor  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson  says,  "  we  may 
see  the  source  of  the  dissensio-n  which  more  openly  took  place  afterwards 
between  Colonel  Hutchinson  and  Ludlow,  and  caused  the  latter  to  calumniate 
Colonel  Hutchinson  as  he  did." — P.  332-,  note.     Bonn's  edition.     But  Lud- 
low was  not  the  only  one  who  expressed  an  opinion  of  Colonel  Hutchinson's 
conduct  at  the  Restoration,  which  is  here  termed  "calumny;"  for  Algernon 
Sydney,  in  a  letter  to  his  father  the  Earl  of  Leicester,   dated  Hamburgh, 
August  30,  1660,  first  published  from  Mr.  Lambard's  collection  by  Mr.  Blen- 
cowe,  says :  "  If  I  could  write  and  talk  like  Colonel  Hutchinson  or  Sir  Gilbert 
Pickering,  I  believe  I  might  be  quiet;  contempt  might  procure  my  safety; 
but  I  had  rather  be  a  vagabond  all  my  life,  than  buy  my  being  in  my  own 
country  at  so  dear  a  rate  ;  and  if  I  could  have  bowed  myself  according  to  my 
interest,  perhaps  I  was  not  so  stupid  as  not  to  know  the  ways  of  settling  my 
affairs  at  home,  or  making  a  good  provision  for  staying  abroad,  as  well  as 
others.  ...    It  will  be  thought  a  strange  extravagance  for  one,  that  esteemed 
it  no  dishonour  to  make   himself  equal  unto  a  great  many  mean  people,  and 
below  some  of  them,  to  make  war  upon  the  King ;  and  is  ashamed  to  submit 
unto  the  King,  now  he  is  encompassed  with  all  the  nobles  of  the  land,  and  in 
the  height  of  his  glory,  so  that  none  are  so  happy  as  those  that  can  first  cast 
themselves  at  his  feet.     I  have  enough  to  answer  all  this  in  my  own  mind ;  I 
cannot  help  it  if  I  judge  amiss  ;  I  did  not  make  myself,  nor  can  I  correct  the 
defects  of  my  own  creation.     I  walk  in  the  light  God  hath  given  me  ;  if  it  be 
dim  or  uncertain,  I  must  bear  the  penalty  of  my  errors.     I  hope  to  do  it  with 
patience,  and  that  no  burden  shall  be  very  grievous  to  me,  except  sin  and 
shame.     God  keep  me  from  those  evils,  and  in  all  things  else,  dispose  of  me 
according  to  His  pleasure.     I  have  troubled  your  Lordship  very  long,  but  it  is 
that  I  might  ease  you  of  cares  that  would  be  more  tedious,  and  as  unfruit- 
ful."— Blencowe's  Sydney  Papers,  pp.   196-198.      London  :   John  Murray, 
Albemarle  Street,  1825. 


294      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

treaty  with  the  King  being  pressed  with  more  heat  than 
ever,  and  a  design  visibly  appearing  to  render  all  our 
victories  useless  thereby ;  by  the  advice  of  some  friends  I 
went  down  to  the  army,  which  lay  at  that  time  before  Col- 
chester;  where  attending  upon  the  General  Sir  Thomas 
Fairfax,  to  acquaint  him  with  the  state  of  affairs  at  Lon- 
don, I  told  him  that  a  design  was  driving  on  to  betray  the 
cause  in  which  so  much  of  the  people's  blood  had  been 
shed;  that  the  King  being  under  a  restraint  would  not 
account  himself  obliged  by  anything  he  should  promise 
under  such  circumstances ;  assuring  him  that  most  of  those 
who  pushed  on  the  treaty  with  the  greatest  vehemency, 
intended  not  that  he  should  be  bound  to  the  performance 
of  it,  but  designed  principally  to  use  his  authority  and 
favour  in  order  to  destroy  the  army;  who,  as  they  had 
assumed  the  power,  ought  to  make  the  best  use  of  it,  and 
to  prevent  the  ruin  of  themselves  and  the  nation.  He 
acknowledged  what  I  said  to  be  true,  and  declared  him- 
self resolved  to  use  the  power  he  had,  to  maintain  the 
cause  of  the  public,  upon  a  clear  and  evident  call,  looking 
upon  himself  to  be  obliged  to  pursue  the  work  which  he 
was  about.  Perceiving  by  such  a  general  answer  that  he 
was  irresolute,  I  went  to  Commissary-General  Ireton,  who 
had  a  great  influence  upon  him,  and  having  found  him, 
we  discoursed  together  upon  the  same  subject,  wherein 
we  both  agreed  that  it  was  necessary  for  the  army  to  inter- 
pose in  this  matter,  but  differed  about  the  time ;  he  being 
of  opinion,  that  it  was  to  permit  the  King  and  the  Parlia- 
ment to  make  an  agreement,  and  to  wait  till  they  made  a 
full  discovery  of  their  intentions,  whereby  the  people  be- 
coming sensible  of  their  own  danger,  would  willingly  join 
to  oppose  them.  My  opinion  was  that  it  would  be  much 


Remonstrance  from  the  Army.  295 

easier  for  the  army  to  keep  them  from  a  conjunction/than 
to  oppose  them  when  united."  x 

It  will  be  observed  that  Ludlow  makes  no  mention  what- 
ever of  Cromwell,  who  was  indeed  not  at  the  siege  of  Col- 
chester but  employed  in  South  Wales  before  he  went 
northward  against  Hamilton's  forces.  But  Mrs.  Hut- 
chinson,  while  she  as  usual  makes  Colonel  Hutchinson  the 
principal  figure  upon  the  stage,  also  introduces  Cromwell 
as  if  he  were  present — which  is  strange,  and  quite  irrecon- 
cilable with  Ludlow's  statement.  She  says :  "  When  Col- 
onel Hutchinson  came,  going  first  to  Commissary  Ireton's 
quarters,  he  found  him  and  some  of  the  more  sober  officers 
of  the  army  in  great  discontent,  for  the  Lieutenant-General 
[Cromwell]  had  given  order  for  a  sudden  advance  of  the 
army  to  London,  upon  the  intelligence  they  had  had  of 
the  violent  proceedings  of  the  other  party,  whereupon 
Cromwell  was  then  in  the  mind  to  have  come  and  broken 
them  up,  but  Colonel  Hutchinson,  with  others,  at  that 
time  persuaded  him  that,  notwithstanding  the  prevalency 
of  the  Presbyterian  faction,  there  were  yet  many  who  had 
upright  and  honest  hearts  to  the  public  interest,  who  had 
not  deserved  to  be  so  used  by  them,  and  who  could  not 
join  with  them  in  any  such  irregular  ways,  though  in  all 
just  and  equitable  things  they  would  be  their  protectors. 
Whereupon  at  that  time  he  was  stayed." 2 

The  only  point  in  which  this  statement  agrees  with  Lud- 
low's is,  that  at  the  time  of  the  siege  of  Colchester  Ireton 
was  against  the  interference  of  the  army,  because  he  did 
not  think  the  time  for  such  interference  had  arrived.  On 
the  other  hand,  Colonel  Hutchinson  was  against  interfer- 
ence altogether,  because,  like  Whitelock,  he  was  against 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  262-264. 

2  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  p.  332.    Bonn's  edition.    London,  1854. 


296      Striiggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

"  any  such  irregular  ways."  Precisely  the  same  argument 
applies  to  the  war  from  the  very  first  against  Charles  I.  If 
that  war  was  to  be  justified,  the  turning  out  the  Presby- 
terians, who  were  bent  on  rendering  all  that  had  been  done 
in  that  war  nugatory,  was  to  be  justified  ;  and  to  talk 
about  "just  and  equitable  things"  at  such  a  time  as  Mrs. 
Hutchinson  here  does,  is  like  preaching  a  sermon  to  a  man 
who  is  picking  your  pocket,  instead  of  knocking  him  down. 
I  am  puzzled  to  account  for  this  passage  of  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son's  Memoir,  which  in  general  bears  all  the  internal  evi- 
dence of  being  written  with  accurate  knowledge.  The 
only  explanation  that  occurs  to  me  here  is  that  her 
memory  may  have  deceived  her,  writing  at  a  time  dis- 
tant from  the  events  she  relates,  and  may  have  only  re- 
tained accurately  the  facts  of  Ireton's  having  been  against 
the  interference  of  the  army  at  that  particular  point  of 
time. 

It  appears  from  Ludlow's  narrative  that  on  the  5th  of 
December  some  of  the  principal  officers  of  the  army  held 
a  consultation  with  some  members  of  Parliament  and 
others ;  and  it  was  concluded  after  a  full  and  free  debate 
that  the  measures  taken  by  the  Parliament  were  contrary 
to  the  trust  reposed  in  them :  that  it  was  therefore  the 
duty  of  the  army  to  endeavour  to  put  a  stop  to  such 
proceedings ;  having  engaged  in  the  war,  not  simply  as 
mercenaries,  but  out  of  judgment  and  conscience,  being 
convinced  that  the  cause  in  which  they  were  engaged  was 
just,  and  that  the  good  of  the  people  was  involved  in  it. 
This  resolution  having  been  come  to,  three  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  House  and  three  of  the  officers  of  the  army — 
though  Ludlow  does  not  name  these  six,  Ludlow  himself 
was  evidently  one,  and  it  may  be  inferred  that  Ireton  was 
another;  Cromwell  did  not  reach  London  from  Scotland 


Prides  Purge.  297 

till  the  evening  of  the  following  day — withdrew  into  a 
private  room  to  consider  of  the  best  means  to  attain  the 
ends  of  their  resolution.  It  was  there  agreed  that  the 
army  should  be  drawn  up  the  next  morning,  and  guards 
placed  at  Westminster  Hall,  the  Court  of  Requests,  and 
the  Lobby;  that  none  might  be  permitted  to  pass  into 
the  House  but  such  as  had,  according  to  the  opinion  of  the 
Independents,  "  continued  faithful  to  the  public  interest." 
"  To  this  end,"  says  Ludlow,  "  we  went  over  the  names 
of  all  the  members  one  by  one,  giving  the  truest  character 
we  could  of  their  inclinations,  wherein  I  presume  we  were 
not  mistaken  in  many ;  for  the  Parliament  was  fallen  into 
such  factions  and  divisions,  that  any  one  who  usually 
attended  and  observed  the  business  of  the  House,  could, 
after  a  debate  upon  any  question,  easily  number  the  votes 
that  would  be  on  each  side,  before  the  question  was  put. 
Commissary-General  Ireton  went  to  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax/ 
and  acquainted  him  with  the  necessity  of  this  extra- 
ordinary way  of  proceeding,  having  taken  care  to  have 
the  army  drawn  up  the  next  morning  by  seven  of  the 
clock.  Colonel  Pride  commanded  the  guard  that  attended 
at  the  Parliament  doors,  having  a  list  of  those  members 
that  were  to  be  excluded,  preventing  them  from  entering 
the  House,  and  securing  some  of  the  most  suspected 
under  a  guard  provided  for  that  end ;  in  which  he  was 
assisted  by  the  Lord  Grey  of  Groby  and  others,  who 
knew  the  members." 2 

On  the  following  day  what  had  been  thus  resolved 
upon  was  carried  out  in  all  points.  On  the  "  night  after 
the  interruption  of  the  House "  Cromwell  arrived  at 

1  He  had  then  become  Lord  Fairfax  by  the  deatli  of  his  father  the  preced . 
ing  summer. 

3  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  269-271.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 


298      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Whitehall  from  Scotland,  and  "  declared  that  he  had  not 
been  acquainted  with  this  design ;  yet  since  it  was  done, 
he  was  glad  of  it,  and  would  endeavour  to  maintain  it." x 

No  great  party  has  ever  suffered  more  from  misrepre- 
sentation than  the  Independents.  Lord  Macaulay  even, 
who  is  more  inclined  to  do  them  justice  than  many 
other  writers,  says  in  reference  to  Horace  Walpole's  hang- 
ing up  in  his  villa  an  engraving  of  the  death-warrant  of 
Charles,  with  the  inscription  "Major  Charta:"  "Yet  the 
most  superficial  knowledge  of  history  might  have  taught 
him  that  the  Restoration,  and  the  crimes  and  follies  of  the 
twenty-eight  years  which  followed  the  Restoration,  were 
the  effects  of  the  greater  Charter.  Nor  was  there  much 
in  the  means  by  which  that  instrument  was  obtained  that 
could  gratify  a  judicious  lover  of  liberty.  A  man  must 
hate  kings  very  bitterly,  before  he  can  think  it  desirable 
that  the  representatives  of  the  people  should  be  turned  out 
of  doors  by  dragoons  in  order  to  get  at  a  king's  head." 2 
The  paper  in  which  these  words  occur  appeared  in  the 
"Edinburgh  Review"  in  October  1833.  By  October  1838 
— that  is,  five  years  after — a  little  more  light  had  broken 
in  upon  Lord  Macaulay  on  this  subject.  Of  Charles  II. 
he  then  says,  "  The  restored  Prince,  admonished  by  the 
fate  of  his  father,  never  ventured  to  attack  his  Parliaments 
with  open  and  arbitrary  violence." 3  And  the  brother  and 
successor  of  Charles  II.,  who  went  a  step  or  two  further 
than  Charles  II.  in  the  matter  of  open  and  arbitrary  vio- 
lence, also  admonished  by  the  fate  of  his  father,  fled  from 
England  and  ended  his  days  in  exile. 

Now  this  was  something  ;  and  if,  as  may  be  probably 
concluded,  it  was  the  effect  of  the  great  execution,  the 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  272,  273.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 

2  Essay  on  Horace  "\Yalpole.  3  Essay  on  Sir  William  Temple. 


Pride  s  Pitrge.  299 

great  execution  had  precisely  answered  the  purpose 
which  Ireton  fully  and  clearly  expressed  in  the  army's 
Remonstrance  for  justice  upon  the  King — the  purpose, 
namely,  of  breaking  once  and  for  ever  the  spell  of  inviola- 
bility and  consequent  impunity  for  any  crimes  whatsoever 
that  had  "  by  the  blasphemous  arrogance  of  tyrants  "  been 
woven  round  kings. 

In  the  first  extract  I  have  given  from  Lord  Macaulay  he 
has  stated  the  question  without,  however,  solving  it,  as  his 
manner  of  stating  might  have  led  him  to  think  he  had  done. 
For  there  is  a  way  of  stating  a  question  which  does  not 
really  state  the  facts  of  the  question,  but  the  view  taken 
of  those  facts  by  the  person  making  the  statement.  But 
between  1833  and  1838  his  opinion  would  seem  to  have 
undergone  some  change.  Lord  Macaulay  in  that  first 
extract  makes  two  assumptions — that  the  Restoration  was 
the  consequence  of  the  King's  execution,  and  that  the 
representatives  of  the  people  were  turned  out  of  doors 
by  the  army.  I  have  seen  it  somewhere  stated,  though 
I  cannot  at  this  moment  recover  the  place,  that  the  more 
respectable  portion  of  the  Parliament  was  turned  out  of 
doors. 

Now  let  it  be  supposed  that  the  Presbyterian  party  suc- 
ceeded in  their  object  of  breaking  the  army  and  bringing 
back  the  King,  as  they  phrased  it,  "  with  freedom,  honour, 
and  safety,"  what  would  have  been  the  probable  con- 
sequences ?  Lord  Macaulay  has  expressed  them  thus : 
"  Under  any  circumstances  we  should  have  preferred 
Cromwell  to  Charles.  But  there  could  have  been  no 
comparison  between  Cromwell  and  Charles  victorious, 
Charles  restored,  Charles  enabled  to  feed  fat  all  the 
hungry  grudges  of  his  smiling  rancour  and  his  cringing 
pride.  The  next  visit  of  His  Majesty  to  his  faithful 


300      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Commons  would  have  been  more  serious  than  that  with 
which  he  last  honoured  them ;  more  serious  than  that 
which  their  own  General  paid  them  some  years  after. 
The  King  would  scarce  have  been  content  with  praying 
that  the  Lord  would  deliver  him  from  Vane,  or  with 
pulling  Marten  by  the  cloak.  If  by  fatal  mismanage- 
ment nothing  was  left  to  England  but  a  choice  of  tyrants, 
the  last  tyrant  whom  she  should  have  chosen  was  Charles."  ' 

This  alternative  there  was  no  way  of  avoiding  but  by 
turning  out  the  Presbyterians  who  were  bent  on  bringing 
it  about.  Then  as  to-  cutting  off  the  King's  head  ;  that 
undoubtedly  was  a  measure  which,  though  it  produced 
most  salutary  effects  as  regarded  after-ages,  was  attended 
with  disadvantageous  consequences  to  the  political  party 
that  carried  it  out.  It  gave  one  of  the  falsest  and  cruellest 
men  that  ever  lived  an  opportunity  of  appearing  on  a 
public  stage  in  circumstances  peculiarly  calculated  to 
draw  towards  him  popular  sympathy.  So  that  the  Gun- 
powder Plot  and  the  Execution  of  Charles  I.  threw  a  sort 
of  delusive  halo,  or  rather  haze,  of  light  around  two  of  the 
worst  of  a  line  of  bad  kings.  But  if  this  was  an  error  on 
the  part  of  the  Independents,  it  was  an  error  which  was 
unavoidable.  The  army  were  determined  on  this  point, 
and  those  who  led  the  army  were  obliged  to  follow  here. 

And  how  have  the  Presbyterian  and  Royalist  writers 
treated  the  Independents,  who  did  the  work  the  Presby- 
terians could  not  do ;  who  defeated  and  utterly  broke  in 
pieces  the  King's  armies — as  the  Remonstrance  of  the 
army  says — four  armies  altogether  ?  They  have  all,  from 
Denzil  Holies  to  David  Hume,  treated  the  Independents 
in  their  writings  as  if  they  were  the  lowest  and  vilest  of 
mankind.  Denzil  Holies,  the  son  of  one  of  James  I.'s 

1  Essay  on  Hallam's  Constitutional  History. 


Pride  s  Purge.  301 

peers,  which  is  a  brand  of  disgrace  far  more  than  a  mark 
of  honour,  thus  writes  :  "  A  mercenary  army  raised  by  the 
Parliament,  all  of  them,  from  the  General  (except  what 
he  may  have  in  expectation  after  his  father's  death)  to  the 
meanest  sentinel,  not  able  to  make  a  thousand  pounds  a 
year  lands,  most  of  the  colonels  and  officers  mean  trades- 
men, brewers,  tailors,  goldsmiths,  shoemakers,  and  the 
like ;  a  notable  dunghill,  if  one  would  rake  into  it,  to  find 
out  their  several  pedigrees :  these  to  rebel  against  their 
masters,"  &C.1  And  David  Hume,  who  informs  us  in  his 
Life,  written  by  himself,  that  his  father's  family  was  a 
branch  of  the  Earl  of  Home's  or  Hume's,  thereby  connect- 
ing himself  with  the  peerage  as  well  as  Holies,  thus 
describes  the  high  court  of  justice  for  the  trial  of  the 
King  :  "  Cromwell,  Ireton,  Harrison,  and  the  chief  officers 
of  the  army,  most  of  them  of  mean  birth,  were  members, 
together  with  some  of  the  Lower  House  and  some  citizens 
of  London." 2  It  would  be  merely  a  sign  of  an  upheaving 
of  the  lower  strata  of  society  if  Holies  and  Hume's  state- 
ments were  correct;  and  undoubtedly  some  men  rose  to 
eminence  and  influence  from  humble  stations.  But  all  the 
men  who  rose  to  the  highest  power  and  leadership  were 
men  of  education,  and  of  what  is  styled  good  birth. 
Cromwell,  Ireton,  Blake,  Vane,  and  Scot  had  all  received 
a  university  education.  And  some  of  the  most  deter- 
mined republicans — such  as  Adrian  Scrope,  Henry  Nevill, 
William  Say,  Miles  Corbet,  John  Lisle,  Lord  Grey  of 
Groby,  and  others — were  men  belonging  to  the  families 
of  the  old  Plantagenet  nobility — a  nobility  who  were 
warriors  and  not  court-lackeys,  like  the  Tudor  and  Stuart 

1  Memoirs  of  Denzil  Lord  Holies,  from  1641  to  1648,  p.  149.     London, 
1699. 

8  Hume's  History  of  England,  chap.  lix. 


302      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

nobility,  and  would  not  have  submitted  to  the  murder  of 
any  of  their  number,  as  the  Scotch  nobility  did  to  the 
murder  of  the  Earl  of  Gowrie  and  his  brother  under  the 
most  infamous  and  disgraceful  circumstances  by  James 
VI.  The  Royalists,  on  the  other  hand,  were  mostly  new 
men,  who  had  been  raised  to  the  peerage  or  baronetage  by 
the  Tudors  and  Stuarts.  It  is  a  well-observed  and  fami- 
liar fact  that  men  who  have  had  ancestors  of  such  a  kind 
that  they  had  not  derived  their  descent  literally  through 
scoundrels  from  the  Flood,  would  be  less  likely  to  fawn 
and  cringe  on  the  Tudors  or  Stuarts  than  those  who 
having  no  illustrious  ancestry  seek  distinction  from  con- 
nection with  a  king — whatever  he  be. 

There  were  two  men  who  acted  a  conspicuous  part  on 
the  side  of  the  Independents,  and  yet  refused  to  cooperate 
with  them  in  the  trial  and  execution  of  the  King.  These 
two  men  were  Vane  and  Fairfax — men  of  very  dissimilar 
character,  but  like  in  one  thing,  that  both  were,  though 
men  of  free,  not  servile  condition,  in  a  state  of  slavery — the 
former  being  the  slave  of  fear,  the  latter  the  slave  of  his 
wife. 

Both  Clarendon  and  Burnet  affirm  that  Vane  went  to 
the  treaty  of  Newport  on  purpose  to  delay  matters  till  the 
army  could  be  brought  up  to  London  ;  on  the  ground  that 
if  the  King  did  not  grant  quickly  as  much  as  would  con- 
tent the  Parliament,  the  army  would  proceed  their  own 
way — that  is,  they  would  depose  the  King  and  settle  a 
republic.1  If  such  was  Vane's  purpose,  he  succeeded  in 
accomplishing  it.  But  such  a  scheme  does  not  appear 
very  consistent  with  his  professions  of  not  consenting  to 
the  King's  execution.  For  Vane  was  too  much  in  the 
counsels  of  Cromwell  and  was  too  clear-sighted  a  man  not 

1  Clar.  Hist,  v.  203.    Burnet's  Hist,  of  his  Own  Times,  i.  44.' 


Conduct  of  Vane  and  Fairfax.  303 

to  see  well  that  the  two  transactions  bore  to  each  other  the 
relation  of  antecedent  and  almost  inevitable  consequent. 
If  Vane  disapproved  of  the  execution,  he  could  not  as  a 
man  of  strict  honour  ever  again  act  with  the  men  who 
brought  it  about.  This  was  certainly  a  grave  error  of 
conduct,  to  say  the  least,  in  Vane.  But  it  may  perhaps  be 
considered  as  having  been  redeemed  by  the  truth  and 
constancy  of  the  last  period  of  his  life,  and  by  a  death 
which  may  be  almost  called  heroic. 

But  what  shall  be  said  of  Fairfax,  who  lent  the  great 
weight  of  his  name  to  all  the  proceedings  which  were 
hurrying  Charles  to  the  block,  and  only  withdrew  it  at 
the  very  last,  as  if  he  whose  courage  as  a  soldier  had 
been  proved  on  so  many  fields  of  battle  wanted  courage 
now  to  look  his  own  deeds  in  the  face,  or  rather  to  face 
the  ultimate  consequences  of  them  ?  Some  writers *  have 
surmised  that  as  he  was  now  by  the  death  of  his  father, 
which  had  taken  place  the  preceding  summer,  though  not 
an  English,  a  Scotch  peer,  and  as  there  had  been  a  pro- 
spect of  an  earldom  being  conferred  on  him  for  his  services 
by  the  Parliament,  the  design  of  abolishing  the  House  of 
Lords  was  distasteful  to  him.  Clarendon  indeed  under- 
takes to  explain  Fairfax's  inconsistent  conduct  by  the 
influence  of  Lady  Fairfax,  who  "was,"  he  says,  "of  a 
very  noble  extraction,  one  of  the  daughters  and  heirs  of 
Horace  Lord  Vere  of  Tilbury,  who  having  been  bred  in 
Holland  had  not  that  reverence  for  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land she  ought  to  have  had,  and  so  had  unhappily  con- 
curred in  her  husband's  entering  into  rebellion,  never 
imagining  what  misery  it  would  bring  upon  the  kingdom, 
and  now  abhorred  the  work  in  hand  as  much  as  anybody 
could  do;  and  did  all  she  could  to  hinder  her  husband 

1  Brodie,  iv.  189. 


304      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

from  acting  any  part  in  it."  I  Clarendon  has  here  touched 
on  one  of  the  most  powerful  principles  of  resistance  to  the 
government  sought  to  be  established  by  the  Independents. 
A  writer  of  that  time,  the  clearness  and  compactness  of 
whose  style  forms  a  strong  contrast  to  the  obscurity  and 
diffuseness  of  Hyde's,  has  given  the  explanation  of  this  in 
one  short  sentence:  "  Ostentation  of  ancestors  is  a  sign  of 
pusillanimity,  because  all  men  are  more  inclined  to  make 
show  of  their  own  power  when  they  have  it,  than  of 
another's."  2  Now,  so  few  have  anything  of  their  own  to 
make  show-off,  that  they  are  glad  to  fall  back  upon  ances- 
tors, real  or  imaginary  ;  for  very  few  indeed  ever  had  any 
real  ancestors  worth  mentioning,  much  less  worth  boasting 
of.  Even  in  the  long  line  of  these  De  Veres,  Earls  of 
Oxford — Lady  Fairfax's  father  was  descended  from  a 
brother  of  the  sixteenth  Earl  of  Oxford — almost  the  only 
line  running  on  without  interruption  through  male  heirs, 
there  is  but  one  man,  Robert  de  Vere,  third  Earl  of  Oxford, 
one  of  the  twenty-five  barons  appointed  to  enforce  the  ob- 
servance of  Magna  Charta,  who  could  be  brought  forward 
as  having  done  anything  worth  talking  about  or  even  men- 
tioning, though  poets  have  ranted  about  "  Oxford's  famed 
De  Vere,"  as  they  call  it,  without  reason,  for  it  had  never 
done  anything  but  produce  male  heirs.  And  what  had 
this  Robert  de  Vere  done  compared  to  the  great  actions 
of  Fairfax,  the  husband  of  this  high-born  Presbyterian 
daughter  of  the  De  Veres  ?  She  probably  did  not  at  all 
relish  the  idea  of  a  new  aristocracy  made  out  of  the  vic- 
torious army  3  of  the  Parliament  superseding  the  aristoc- 

1  Clar.  Hist.,  book  xi.  p.  196. 

2  Hobbes's  Human  Nature,  p.  61.     Third  edition.     London,  1684. 

3  When  Baxter,  after  the  battle  of  Naseby,  paid  a  visit  to  the  army  of  the 
Parliament,  he  found  that  Cromwell's  chief  favourites  among  the  officers  held 
some  opinions  which,  he  says,  greatly  shocked  him.     "What,"  they  said, 


Cond^lct  of  Vane  and  Fairfax.  305 

racy,  then  old  if  not  effete,  that  had  been  made  some  six 
hundred  years  before,  out  of  the  victorious  army  of 
William,  the  bastard  son  of  Robert  le  Diable,  Duke  of 
Normandy.  Nevertheless  the  arguments  in  the  Remon- 
strance of  the  army  for  justice  on  the  King  are  strong 
and  solid,  if  not  irrefragable  ;  and  Fairfax  himself  indorsed 
them,  since  he  wrote  the  letter  to  the  Speaker  which 
accompanied  and  enforced  the  Remonstrance.  The  letter 
is  dated  St.  Albans,  November  16,  1648,  and  is  signed 
"Fairfax,"  his  father  Lord  Fairfax  having  died  the 
preceding  summer.  There  is  indeed  a  passage  in  his 
Memoirs  in  which  he  says,  "  They  set  my  name  in  way 
of  course,  to  all  the  papers,  whether  I  consented  or 
not."  Is  this  passage  an  interpolation  ?  It  would  seem 
so  ;  for  Fairfax,  though  his  Presbyterian  wife  —  he  was 
not  a  Presbyterian  himself  —  seems  to  have  exerted  an 
evil  and  most  pernicious  influence  on  him,  had  the 
candour  to  say,  at  the  Restoration,  when  the  restored 
man  was  beginning  his  butcheries,  "  that  if  any  person 
must  be  excepted,  he  knew  no  man  that  deserved  it  more 
than  himself,  who  being  general  of  the  army  at  that  time, 
and  having  power  sufficient  to  prevent  the  proceedings 
against  the  King,  had  not  thought  fit  to  make  use  of  it  to 
that  end."  x 

Mrs.  Hutchinson  gives  her  testimony  as  to  the  sincerity 
of  Cromwell  in  urging  Fairfax  not  to  lay  down  his  com- 
mission when  the  army  was  about  to  enter  on  the  cam- 

"  were  the  lords  of  England  but  William  the  Conqueror's  colonels  ?  or  the 
barons  but  his  majors?  or  the  knights  but  his  captains?"  —  Baxter's  Autobio. 
graphy,  p.  51.  Folio.  London,  1696. 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  iii.  10.  "  The  Earl  of  Northumberland  was  heard  to 
say,  that  though  he  had  no  part  in  the  death  of  the  King,  he  was  against 
questioning  those  who  had  been  concerned  in  that  affair  ;  that  the  example 
might  become  useful  to  posterity,  and  profitable  to  future  kings  by  deterring 
them  from  the  like  exorbitances."—  Ibid.  k  A»»  iv  - 

VOL.  II.  -n'V 


o 


06       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 


paign  in  Scotland  which  led  to  the  battle  of  Dunbar.  "To 
speak  the  truth  of  Cromwell,"  she  says,  "whereas  many 
said  he  undermined  Fairfax,  it  was  false ;  for  in  Colonel 
Hutchinson's  presence,  he  most  urgently  importuned  him 
to  keep  his  commission,  lest  it  should  discourage  the  army 
and  the  people  at  that  juncture  of  time,  but  could  by  no 
means  prevail,  although  he  laboured  for  it  almost  all  the 
night  with  most  earnest  endeavours.  But  this  great  man 
was  then  as  immovable  by  his  friends  as  pertinacious  in 
obeying  his  wife ;  whereby  he  then  died  to  all  his  former 
glory,  and  became  the  monument  of  his  own  name,  which 
every  day  wore  out."  J  The  consequences  of  the  influence 
of  Fairfax's  wife  were  far  more,  momentous  than  if  they 
had  only  concerned  Fairfax  himself,  for  they  involved  as 
immediate  consequences  twenty-eight  years  of  oppression 
and  disgrace,  and  the  revival  of  all  the  evils  Fairfax  had 
fought  so  well  to  put  down — "  the  liberty,"  to  borrow  the 
words  of  Algernon  Sydney,  "  which  we  hoped  to  establish, 
oppressed ;  luxury  and  lewdness  set  up  in  its  height,  in- 
stead of  the  piety,  virtue,  sobriety,  and  modesty,  which 
we  hoped  God  by  our  hands  would  have  introduced ;  tfe 
best  of  our  nation  made  a  prey  to  the  worst;  the  Parlia- 
ment, Court,  and  army  corrupted,  the  people  enslaved."  ! 
If  Fairfax  had  remained  true  to  his  first  principles,  and 
Ireton  had  lived,  Cromwell  would  never  have  outraged  the 
Parliament,  and  would  never  have  been  Protector. 

1  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  pp.  344,  345. 

2  Blencowe's  Sydney  Papers,  p.  200.     London  :  John  Murray,  Albemarle 
Street.     1825. 


f  307 ) 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

THE  KING'S    TRIAL   AND  EXECUTION. 

ON  the  23d  of  December  1648  there  was  a  debate  in 
the  House  of  Commons  on  that  part  of  the  Remon- 
strance from  the  army  which  related  to  bringing  de- 
linquents to  justice.  The  result  was  a  resolution  to 
bring  the  King  to  trial ;  and  a  committee  of  thirty- 
eight  was  nominated  to  examine  witnesses  and  prepare 
a  charge  against  him.  The  Commons,  after  having  been 
several  days  employed  in  fixing  upon  the  manner  of 
proceeding  against  the  King,,  on  the  2d  of  January 
sent  up  a  message  to  the  Lords  with;  a .  vote  which . 
had  passed  their  House  without  a  division,  declaring 
"that  by  the  fundamental  laws  of  this-  kingdom,  it  is 
treason  in  the  King  of  England,  for  the  time  being,  to 
levy  war  against  the  Parliament  and  kingdom  of  Eng- 
land ; "  and  at  the  same  time  they  sent  up  to  the  Lords 
an  ordinance  for  erecting  a  high  court  of  justice  for  the 
trying  and  judging  Charles  Stuart,  King  of  England;  to 
both  which  they  desired  their  Lordships'  concurrence.1 

Upon  this  occasion  a  great  debate  arose  in  the  House 
of  Lords  upon  the  question,  "  Whether  it  be  treason  by  the 
fundamental  laws  of  England  for  the  King  of  England  to 
levy  war  against  the  Parliament  of  England  ? "  The  Earl 
of  Manchester  showed  "  that,  by  the  fundamental  laws  of 
England,  the  Parliament  consists  of  three  estates,  of  which 

1  ParL  Hist.,  iii.  1252-1254. 


308      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

the  King  is  the  first :  that  he,  only,  hath  power  to  call  and 
dissolve  them,  and  to  confirm  all  their  acts,  and  that 
•without  him  there  can  be  no  Parliament;  and  therefore 
it  was  absurd  to  say,  the  King  can  be  a  traitor  against  the 
Parliament."  The  Earl  of  Manchester  was  seconded  by 
the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  who  said  "that  the  greatest 
part,  even  twenty  to  one,  of  the  people  of  England,  were 
not  yet  satisfied  whether  the  King  did  levy  war  against 
the  Houses  first,  or  the  Houses  first  against  him.  And 
besides,  if  the  King  did  levy  war  first,  they  had  no  law 
extant,  or  that  could  be  produced,  to  make  it  treason  in 
him  so  to  do."  And  the  question  being  put,  whether  the 
said  ordinance  should  be  cast  out  ?  it  was  resolved  in  the 
affirmative,  nem.  con.;  and  then  the  Lords  adjourned  for  a 
week.1 

The  statement  of  the  Earl  of  Northumberland,  that 
there  was  no  law  extant,  or  that  could  be  produced,  to 
make  it  treason  in  the  King  to  levy  war  first  against  the 
Parliament,  was  so  far  a  correct  statement  of  the  law  of 
the  case ;  since  all  the  laws  of  high  treason  in  England 
down  to  that  time  had  been  made  to  protect  the  King  and 
not  the  subject ;  and  to  what  extent  those  laws  had  been 
carried  under  the  Tudors  and  the  two  first  Stuarts,  and 
how  their  cruelty  and  oppression  had  been  increased  and 
assisted  by  torture,  though  torture  was  declared  by  all 
English  lawyers  to  be  contrary  to  the  law  of  England,  has 
been  fully  shown  in  the  first  chapter  of  this  history.  It 
was  therefore  not  to  be  expected  that  the  English  law  of 
treason  should  contain  any  power  to  punish  an  aggressor 
who  had  striven,  as  Stafford  and  his  master  King  Charles 
unquestionably  had  done,  to  make  the  English  King  abso- 
lute and  Englishmen  slaves. 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1255,  1256. 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  309 

But  the  Commons  were  determined  to  adhere  to  their 
notion  of  a  high  court  of  justice,  as  if  the  crimes  which 
under  the  name  of  treason  they  imputed  to  the  King  had 
been  distinctly  defined  and  marked  out  by  the  fundamental 
laws  of  England.  Having  appointed  a  committee  to  in- 
spect the  Lords'  Journals,  and  discovering  that  there  were 
votes  recorded  against  their  ordinances,  they,  following  out 
an  intimation  which  they  had  sent  up  before  the  civil  wars 
by  Denzil  H*olles  himself,  determined  to  act  without  the 
Lords.  Accordingly  on  the  4th  of  January  164!  they 
passed  the  following  resolutions :  "  That  the  people  are 
under  God  the  original  of  all  just  power;  that  the  Com- 
mons of  England,  in  Parliament  assembled,  being  chosen 
by,  and  representing  the  people,  have  the  supreme  power 
in  this  nation ;  that  whatsoever  is  enacted,  or  declared  for 
law,  by  the  Commons  in  Parliament  assembled,  hath  the 
force  of  a  law,  and  all  the  people  of  this  nation  are  con- 
cluded thereby,  although  the  consent  and  concurrence  of 
King,  or  House  of  Peers,  be  not  had  thereunto."  '  On  the 
6th  of  January  the  Commons  passed  an  Act  for  the  trial  of 
the  King  by  a  high  court  of  justice  specially  constituted. 
The  Commons  thenceforth  styled  themselves  the  Parlia- 
ment. On  the  Qth  of  January  a  new  Great  Seal  was  ordered, 
on  which  was  to  be  engraven  on  one  side  a  map  of  England 
and  Ireland,  with  the  words,  "  The  Great  Seal  of  England, 
1648;"  on  the  other  side  a  sculpture  of  the  House  of 
Commons  sitting,  with  the  words,  "  In  the  first  year  of 
freedom  by  God's  blessing  restored,  1648."  Whitelock 
says  that  the  device  and  more  particularly  the  inscriptions 
on  the  seal  were  the  fancy  of  Henry  Marten.  The  sum  of 
was  ordered  to  be  charged  on  the  revenue  towards 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  iii.  1257. 


310       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

the  expense  of  this  seal,  which  was  afterwards  increased 
to  ^200.* 

There  were  in  all  about  a  hundred  and  fifty  commis- 
sioners nominated  by  the  Parliament  for  the  trial  of  the 
King ;  of  whom  any  twenty  were  empowered  to  act  as  a 
high  court  of  justice.2  But  there  do  not  appear  to  have 
acted  more  than  eighty-one  of  those  nominated ;  and 
never  more  than  seventy-one  at  one  time.  Lord  Fairfax 
sat  once  as  a  commissioner  and  assented  to  what  was 
done.  But  after  that  he  sat  no  more,  and  consequently 
has  been  reckoned  among  the  chief  of  those  who  would 
take  no  part  in  the  proceedings,  though  he  did  not  scruple 
to  continue  in  his  office  of  General,  and  acknowledge  the 
new  Parliament.  He  had,  however,  the  candour  to  acknow- 
ledge at  the  Restoration,  as  has  been  noticed  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter,  that  if  any  man  ought  to  suffer  for  the 
death  of  Charles,  it  should  be  himself,  since  he  might 
have  prevented  it  had  he  thought  fit.3  I  have  before 
touched  on  the  subject  of  the  mischievous  effects  of  Fair- 
fax's conduct ;  and  I  will  add  here  some  remarks  of  the 
editor  of  Colonel  Hutchinson's  Memoirs  which  appear  to 
me  to  place  the  matter  in  a  true  light.  The  note  is  with 
reference  to  the  passage  where  Mrs.  Hutchinson  says  that 
Fairfax — when  the  English  army  was  just  about  to  march 
into  Scotland  before  the  battle  of  Dunbar — "persuaded 
by  his  wife  and  her  chaplains,  threw  up  his  commission  at 
such  a  time  when  it  could  not  have  been  done  more  spite- 
fully and  ruinously  to  the  whole  Parliament  interest."4 
On  this  the  editor,  the  Rev.  Julius  Hutchinson,  says : 
"  For  it  was  only  with  the  co-operation  of  a  man,  who  to 

1  Parl.  Hist.,  Hi.  1257, 1258.  Rush.,  vii.  1396,  et seq.  Whitelock,  pp.  365,  366. 

2  Ibid.,  iii.  1254,  1255. 

3  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  iii.  10.     Second  edition.     London,  1720. 

4  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchirson,  p.  344.    Bonn's  edition.    London,  1854. 


The  Kings  Tmal  and  Execution.  3 1 1 

his  military  talents  added  that  moderation  and  integrity, 
which  will  distinguish  Fairfax  to  the  end  of  time,  that  the 
great  politicians  of  those  days  could  have  planned  and 
have  finished  such  schemes  of  representation,  legislation, 
and  administration  as  would  have  rendered  the  nation 
great  and  happy,  either  as  a  commonwealth  or  mixed 
government.  They  had  in  some  respects  such  oppor- 
tunities as  never  can  again  arise ;  and  if  the  Presbyterians 
have  nothing  else  to  answer  for,  the  perverting  the  judg- 
ment of  this  excellent  man  was  a  fault  never  to  be  for- 
given ;  if  the  ruin  of  their  own  cause  could  expiate  it, 
they  were  not  long  before  they  made  atonement." ' 

The  Royalists,  among  the  innumerable  falsehoods  which 
they  propagated  against  their  opponents,  said  that  those 
who  acted  as  commissioners  in  the  high  court  of  justice 
were  almost  entirely  men  of  mean  extraction.  But  it  is 
only  necessary  to  examine  the  list  to  be  satisfied  that  the 
reverse  was  the  fact.  In  all  the  cases  which  had  before 
occurred  in  the  English  annals  where  a  king  had  been 
dethroned,  he  had  perished  by  secret  assassination.  This 
is  the  only  occasion  on  which  those  who  had  dethroned 
the  King  for  his  alleged  misgovernment  and  breach  of 
trust  had  the  manliness  and  courage  to  regard  with  con- 
tempt or  abhorrence  the  course  of  assassination,  and  to  do 
what  they  believed  to  be  a  great  act  of  justice  with  all  the 
publicity  and  solemnity  which  befitted  such  an  act.  Yet 
these  men  have  been  assailed  with  a  scurrility  which  those 
who  had  assassinated  such  kings  as  Edward  II.  and 
Richard  II.  have  escaped ;  and  while  Charles  I.  is  a 
martyr,  we  hear  nothing  of  the  martyrdom  of  Edward  II. 
or  Richard  II.  The  cause  is  no  doubt  to  be  looked  for  in 
the  great  accession  of  power  which  the  kings  had  obtained 

1  Memoirs  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  p.  345,  note. 


312       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

all  through  Europe  between  the  time  of  Richard  II.  and 
that  of  Charles  I.,  and  which  had  invested  kingship  with 
a  species  of  sanctity  partaking  of  the  nature  of  divinity. 
This  was  also  the  first  time  in  modern  history  that  a  king 
had  been  deposed  and  killed  by  any  but  princes  and  great 
nobles ;  and  the  worshippers  of  kings  thought  it  a  strange 
height  of  arrogance  and  presumption  that  a  body  of  men 
which,  though  it  might  include  the  names  of  a  few  peers, 
was  known  to  consist  substantially  of  those  whom  not 
many  years  before  the  very  doorkeepers  of  the  House  of 
Lords  ventured  to  treat  with  insolence,1  should  venture  to 
do  such  an  act,  and  to  do  it  too  so  openly  and  fear- 
lessly. 

The  commissioners  for  the  trial  of  the  King  appointed 
John  Bradshaw,  serjeant-at-law,  their  president — "  a  stout 
man,"  says  Whitelock,  "  and  learned  in  his  profession  :  no 
friend  to  monarchy."2  At  the  same  time  Steel  was  ap- 
pointed attorney  to  the  court,  Cook  solicitor,  and  Doris- 
laus,  a  native  of  Holland,  and  Aske  were  appointed  their 
assistants.  Steel  being  prevented  from  attending  the 
court  by  real  or  pretended  sickness,  his  duty  devolved  upon 

1  One  day  in  March  i6o|,  Sir  Herbert  Croft,  and  some  other  members  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  offering  to  enter  the  House  of  Lords,  one  of  the 
doorkeepers  repulsed  them,  and  shut  the  door  in  their  faces  with  these  words, 
"  Goodman  burgess,  you  come  not  here." — Com.  Jour.  Lunse,  Martii  19,  160^. 

2  Bradshaw  has  been  said  to  have   been  of  a  Cheshire  family.     But   at 
Chapel-in-the-Frith  in  Derbyshire  is  pointed  out  Bradshaw  Hall — now  a  farm- 
house—as formerly  belonging  to  "  Bradshaw  the  Regicide,"  whose  name  and 
coat-of-arms,  with  the  date  1620,  are  still  plainly  visible  on  an  arched  gate- 
way at  the  back  of  the  house.     There  is  an  oak  staircase  in  the  house  with 
quaint  Puritanical  mottoes  at   the   top   of  the   landing-place.      Noble  and 
Chalmers  state  that  the  place  of  his  education  is  not  recorded  ;  but  his  will 
establishes  this,  for  he  makes  bequests  to  certain  schools  which  he  names,  and 
at  which  he  says  he  received  his  education.     His  will  was  proved  December 
16,  1659.     By  a  codicil  dated  September  10,  1655,  he  gives  ^10  to  John 
Milton.     See  Ormerod's  Cheshire,  iii.  409.     Only  a  few  days  before  his  death, 
when  at  one  of  the  meetings  of  the  Council  of  State  Colonel  Sydenham 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  3 T  3 

Cook.  The  calumnies  fabricated  by  the  Royalists  against 
Cook,  it  having  been  asserted  that  he  was  illiterate  and 
not  even  a  member  of  the  bar,  may  be  refuted  by  a  single 
short  extract  from  a  work  of  his  on  the  subject  of  a 
very  important  legal  reform  made  when  Ireton  was  Lord- 
Deputy  of  Ireland,  and  he,  John  Cook,  Chief  Justice  of 
Munster.  "  My  Lord-Deputy,"  says  Cook,  "hath  altered 
the  provincial  courts  into  county  courts  ;  and  whereas  the 
people  travelled  forty  or  fifty  miles,  now  their  differences  are 
ended  at  home.  ...  It  is  a  mixed  court,  and  the  bill  may 
contain  both  law  and  equity,  whereby  half  the  suits  in  the 
province  are  ended  or  prevented.  The  cause  is  ended  as 
soon  as  it  is  ripe  for  hearing.  .  .  .  Precipitancy  indeed  is 
the  step-mother  of  justice,  and  must  be  carefully  avoided 
as  falling  from  a  rock ;  but  that  is  to  hear  and  to  deter- 
mine before  both  parties  are  ready,  or  have  had  time  to  be 
so.  Otherwise  when  the  cause  is  ripe  why  should  not  the 
court  put  in  the  sickle  ?  A  speedy  trial  is  the  plaintiff's 
joy,  and  just  judgment  delayed  may  prove  worse  than  an 
unrighteous  sentence  speedily  pronounced."1  Upon  the 
Restoration  these  courts  ceased  to  sit.  They  were  re- 
endeavoured  to  justify  the  proceedings  of  the  army  by  saying  they  were  neces- 
sitated to  use  such  violence  "by  a  particular  call  of  the  divine  Providence," 
"the  Lord  President  Bradshaw,"  says  Ludlow,  "who  was  then  present, 
though  by  long  sickness  very  weak  and  much  extenuated,  yet  animated  by  his 
ardent  zeal  and  constant  affection  to  the  common  cause,  upon  hearing  those 
words,  stood  up  and  interrupted  him,  declaring  his  abhorrence  of  that  detest- 
able action,  and  telling  the  Council,  that  being  now  going  to  his  God,  he  had 
not  patience  to  sit  there  to  hear  His  great  name  so  openly  blasphemed ;  and 
thereupon  departed  to  his  lodgings,  and  withdrew  himself  from  public  em- 
ployment."— Ludlow's  Memoirs,  ii.  726,  727.  He  survived  this  but  a  few 
days,  dying  November  22,  1659,  happily  before  the  commencement  of  the 
Restoration  butcheries.  He  was  buried  with  great  pomp  in  Westminster 
Abbey,  whence  his  body  was  dragged  at  the  Restoration,  to  be  exposed  upon 
a  gibbet,  with  those  of  Cromwell  and  Ireton. 

1  Monarchy  no  Creature  of  God's  Making.    By  John  Cook,  Chief  Justice  of 
Munster.     Waterford,  1652. 


314      Striiggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

established  in  the  reigns  of  William  and  Anne,1  and  have 
proved  very  useful. 

On  the  20th  of  January  164!  the  commissioners  ap- 
pointed by  the  Parliament  to  form  a  high  court  of  justice 
for  the  trial  of  the  King  proceeded  from  the  Painted 
Chamber,  where  they  had  assembled,  to  Westminster  Hall 
to  open  the  court.  The  place  appointed  for  the  trial  was 
the  site  of  the  old^Courts  of  King's  Bench  and  Chancery,  at 
the  upper  or  south  end  of  Westminster  Hall,  the  partition 
between  them  being  taken  down.  A  rail,  extending  from 
the  court  down  the  length  of  the  hall  to  the  western  side  of 
the  great  door,  separated  the  soldiers  from  the  spectators;  the 
former  being  stationed  in  great  force,  armed  with  partisans 
or  halberts,  within  the  rail  on  its  western  side,  by  the  old 
Courts  of  Common  Pleas  and  Exchequer  Chamber;  while 
the  latter  thronging  in  at  the  great  door  formed  a  dense 
crowd  in  the  large  space  left  open  on  the  eastern  or  Thames 
side  of  the  rail.  Strong  guards  were  stationed  upon  the 
leads,  and  at  the  windows  looking  on  the  hall.  All  the 
narrow  avenues  to  the  hall  were  either  stopped  up  with 
masonry  or  strongly  guarded.  When  all  the  commis- 
sioners present,  in  number  sixty-seven,  had  answered  to  their 
names,  the  court  commanded  the  serjeant-at-arms  to  send 
for  the  prisoner,  who  had  been  brought  up  from  Windsor 
to  St.  James's  on  the  preceding  day.  In  a  quarter  of  an 
hour  Colonel  Tomlinson,  who  had  the  King  in  charge,  con- 
ducted him  into  court.  The  serjeant-at-arms,  with  his 
mace,  received  the  King  in  the  hall,  and  conducted  him 
to  the  bar,  where  a  crimson-velvet  chair  was  placed  for 
him  facing  the  court.  The  King  looked  sternly  upon  the 
court  and  the  audience,  and  sat  down  without  moving  his 

1  By  Irish  Acts,  9  W.  III.  c.  15  (A.D.  1697) ;  2  Anne,  c.  18  (A.U.  1703) ; 
6  Anne,  c.  5>  &c. 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  3 1 5 

hat.  The  judges  kept  on  their  hats  also.  Presently  the 
King  rose  up  and  turned  about,  looking  down  the  vast 
hall,  first  on  the  guards  which  were  ranged  on  its  left  or 
western  side,  and  then  on  the  multitude  of  spectators 
which  filled  the  space  on  the  right. 

The  King  being  again  seated,  Bradshaw,  as  president, 
having  commanded  silence  to  be  proclaimed,  addressed 
him  and  said,  "  Charles  Stuart,  King  of  England,  the 
Commons  of  England  assembled  in  Parliament  being 
deeply  sensible  of  the  calamities  that  have  been  brought 
upon  the  nation,  whereof  you  are  accused  as  the  principal 
author,  have  resolved  to  make  inquisition  for  blood ;  and, 
according  to  that  debt  and  duty  they  owe  to  justice,  to 
God,  the  kingdom,  and  themselves,  they  have  resolved  to 
bring  you  to  trial  and  judgment,  and  for  that  purpose  have 
constituted  this  high  court  of  justice  before  which  you  are 
brought."  Then  Cook,  as  solicitor  for  the  people  of 
England,  stood  up  to  read  the  charge,  when  the  King, 
gently  touching  him  on  the  shoulder  with  his  staff,  com- 
manded him  to  forbear.  While  he  was  in  the  act  of 
touching  Cook's  shoulder,  the  head  of  his  staff  fell  off,  and 
one  of  his  attendants  having  stooped  to  lift  it  up,  it  rolled 
to  the  opposite  side,  and  the  King  was  obliged  to  stoop 
for  it  himself.1  It  has  been  said  that  this  trivial  incident  first 
opened  the  King's  eyes  to  the  critical  position  in  which  he 
stood ;  for  that  even  when  he  first  entered  Westminster 
Hall  that  day  he  was  firmly  persuaded  that  the  court 
durst  not  proceed  to  judgment. 

The  President,  notwithstanding  the  King's  command, 
ordered  the  counsel  to  proceed.  Cook  then,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  order  of  the  commissioners  delivered  to 
the  counsel  before  the  trial,  exhibited  on  behalf  of  the 

1  Herbert,  p.  115.    Warwick,  pp.  339,  340. 


316       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

people  of  England  a  charge  of  high  treason  and  other 
crimes,  which  may  be  summed  up  in  these  words  of  the 
charge  :  "  The  said  John  Cook  did  impeach  the  said  Charles 
Stuart  as  a  tyrant,  traitor,  murderer,  and  a  public  and 
implacable  enemy  to  the  commonwealth  of  England." 
Cook  then  delivered  in  the  charge  in  writing  to  the  court, 
and  Bradshaw  ordered  the  clerk  to  read  it  This  charge 
seems  to  have  been  framed  so  as  to  bear  some  resemblance 
to  the  judicial  procedure  in  England.  But  as  in  England 
all  such  indictments  had  been  for  the  offence  of  treason  in 
"  levying  war "  against  the  King,  it  is  evident  that  the 
attempt  to  give  this  trial  the  form  of  the  judicial  pro- 
cedure established  in  England  must  have  been  futile. 

I  have  often  wondered  that  men  of  so  much  practical 
ability  as  Cromwell  and  Ireton  should  not  have  seen  what 
advantages  they  gave  the  King,  and  under  what  disad- 
vantages they  placed  themselves  and  their  party,  by  the 
course  which  they  adopted  of  bringing  the  King  to  judg- 
ment. I  have  gone  along  with  them  hitherto  from  the 
time  when  Cromwell,  as  he  said  himself,  "in  a  way  of 
foolish  simplicity,"  showed  the  Parliament  how  he  could 
create  an  army  which  under  him  and  his  officers  was  in- 
vincible, to  the  Remonstrance  of  that  army  for  justice  upon 
the  King.  But  when  they  determined  to  bring  the  King 
to  trial  by  a  high  court  of  justice  specially  constituted 
for  that  purpose,  they  do  not  appear  to  have  estimated 
correctly  the  difficulties  of  that  mode  of  proceeding.  It 
seems  to  me  impossible  to  read  the  proceedings  on  the 
King's  trial  without  feeling  that  the  Independents  in  that 
matter  had  put  themselves  in  the  wrong.  For  instance, 
the  King  says :  "  Let  me  know  by  what  lawful  authority  I 
am  seated  here,  and  I  shall  not  be  unwilling  to  answer. 
In  the  meantime  I  have  a  trust  committed  to  me  by  God, 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  3 1 7 

by  old  and  lawful  descent.  I  will  not  betray  it  to  answer 
to  a  new  unlawful  authority :  therefore  resolve  me  that, 
and  you  shall  hear  more  of  me."  And  Bradshaw,  the 
President  of  their  high  court  of  justice,  replies:  "If  you 
had  been  pleased  to  have  observed  what  was  hinted  to  you 
by  the  court,  at  your  first  coming  hither,  you  would  have 
known  by  what  authority ;  which  authority  requires  you, 
in  the  name  of  the  people  of  England,  of  which  you  are 
elected  King,  to  answer."  The  King's  answer  to  this  is 
nearer  the  truth  than  the  President's  assertion,  which  is 
surely  a  false  position  to  be  held  by  a  high  court  of  jus- 
tice. "  England,"  the  King  said,  "  was  never  an  elective 
kingdom,  but  an  hereditary  kingdom  for  near  these 
thousand  years." 

Bradshaw  afterwards  cites  Bracton  to  the  effect  that  the 
King  has  a  master — God  and  the  law.1  He  might  have 
cited  Fleta  to  the  same  effect2  He  might  also  have  cited 
Bracton  to  prove  that  the  English,  monarchy  was  elective ; 
for  Bracton  says,  "  For  this  has  he  been  made  and  elected, 
that  he  may  do  justice  to  all."3  But  it  is  useless  to  talk 
of  a  kingdom  being  elective  which  not  only  descended  by 
a  certain  line  of  devolution,  but  which  Henry  VIII.  con- 
sidered so  much  his  private  property  as  to  dispose  of  it  by 
will,  and  which  his  daughter  Elizabeth  on  her  deathbed 
made  over  to  James  VI.  of  Scotland.  Bradshaw  did  not 
seem  to  be  aware  of  the  great  change  that  had  taken  place 
in  the  kingly  power  in  England  between  the  time  of  Henry 
III.  and  the  time  of  the  sitting  of  the  court  to  try  Charles 
I.  The  change  that  had  taken  place  during  the  four  hun- 
dred years  that  had  elapsed  between  the  time  of  Bracton 
and  the  time  of  Bacon — that  is,  between  the  reign  of 

1  Bracton  de  Legibus,  lib.  II.  c.  16,  §  3 ;  and  lib.  I.  c.  8,  §  5. 

2  Fleta,  lib.  I.  c.  5,  §  4.  3  Bracton,  lib.  III.  c.  9,  §  3. 


3 1 8       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

Henry  III.  and  the  reign  of  James  I. — is  strikingly  shown 
in  the  difference  between  the  words  of  Bracton  and  those 
of  Bacon  ;  Bracton's  words  being,  "  Rex  habet  superiorem, 
Deum  et  legem  ; "  and  Bacon's  being,  "  A  king  is  a  mortal 
god  on  earth."  In  fact,  if  Bracton  and  Fleta  had  lived  and 
written,  as  they  wrote,  in  the  times  of  the  Tudors  and  the 
Stuarts,  they  would  have  had  a  good  chance  of  sharing  the 
fate  of  Peacham — of  being  questioned  respecting  their  trea- 
sonable books  "  before  torture,  in  torture,  between  torture, 
and  after  torture."  In  truth,  the  power  of  the  warlike 
nobility  which  kept  the  kings  in  check  at  the  time  when 
Bracton  and  Fleta  wrote,  had  by  the  time  Bacon  wrote  com- 
pletely disappeared,  and  no  other  power  had  risen  in  its  place 
until  the  year  1644,  when  Cromwell's  cuirassiers  scattered 
in  flight  the  Royalist  cavalry,  before  always  victorious.  It 
was  therefore  to  be  expected  that  a  Tudor  or  Stuart  king 
should  be  somewhat  slow  to  take  the  view  of  his  kingly 
office  taken  by  Bracton,  and  when  he  found  himself  a 
prisoner  on  his  trial  by  his  subjects — at  least  a  part  of 
them,  to  give  occasion  to  Bradshaw  to  say — "  You  look 
upon  us  as  a  sort  of  people  met  together  ;  and  we  know  what 
language we  receive  from  your party ;"  but  swords  are  sharper 
than  words,  as  the  courtiers  found.  It  was  also  to  be  ex- 
pected that  he  should  give  occasion  to  his  judge,  whose 
legal  education  made  him  acquainted  with  the  old  English 
lawyers,  to  say,  as  Bradshaw  said :  "  Truly,  sir,  you  have 
held  yourself,  and  let  fall  such  language,  as  if  you  had  been 
no  way  subject  to  the  law,  or  that  the  law  had  not  been 
your  superior.  Sir,  the  court  is  very  sensible  of  it,  and  I 
hope  so  are  all  the  understanding  people  of  England,  that 
the  law  is  your  superior ;  that  you  ought  to  have  ruled 
according  to  the  law.  Sir,  I  know  very  well  your  pretence 
that  you  have  done  so ;  but,  sir,  the  difference  hath  been 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  319 

who  shall  be  the  expositors  of  this  law."  Bradshaw  then 
goes  on  as  if  the  law  were  sure  of  being  expounded  in 
courts  of  justice  in  the  sense  he,  Bradshaw,  would  expound 
it,  and  not  as  in  the  passages  cited  in  the  first  chapter  of 
this  history  from  the  trials  of  the  Duke  of  Norfolk  and  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  deprive  the  prisoner 
of  any  chance  of  a  fair  trial  when  he  had  the  Crown  for  his 
adversary. 

All  this  sufficiently  shows  that  the  kings  of  England 
had,  at  least  from  the  time  of  Edward  IV.,  been  exercising 
a  tyranny,  particularly  in  regard  to  torture  and  the  con- 
duct of  State  trials,  which  was  not  sanctioned  by  the  laws 
of  England ;  yet  the  advantage  the  King  derived  from 
the  false  assumptions  of  the  court,  such  as  that  England 
was  an  elective  kingdom,  enabled  him  to  make  his  case 
appear  much  better  than  it  really  was ;  even  though  he 
said  much  that  was  manifestly  untrue,  as  when  he  said, 
"  For  the  charge,  I  value  it  not  a  rush ;  it  is  the  liberty  of 
the  people  of  England  that  I  stand  for."  This  is  certainly 
a  bold  assertion  for  a  man  to  make  who  had  done  every- 
thing in  his  power  to  destroy  all  liberty  in  England — 
except  the  liberty  of  the  King ;  that  is,  the  power  or  free- 
dom of  the  King  to  do  what  he  willed,  as  expressed  in 
the  title  of  King  James's  work,  "  The  True  Law  of  Free 
Monarchies."  A  free  monarchy  means  a  pure  despotism 
— an  absolute  monarchy — a  monarchy  free  and  absolved 
from  any  law  but  the  will  of  the  monarch. 

This  mode  of  proceeding  also  gave  occasion  to  incidents 
calculated  to  move  compassion.  The  entreaty  of  the  King 
to  be  heard  in  the  Painted  Chamber,  supposed  to  relate  to 
a  proposal  for  abdicating  in  favour  of  his  eldest  son,  which 
was  urged  with  great  earnestness,  so  moved  one  member 
of  the  court,  John  Downes,  that  he  desired  the  court  might 


320      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

adjourn  to  hear  his  reason  against  the  sentence  being  pro- 
nounced without  hearing  what  the  King  wished  to  say. 
The  members  of  the  court  accordingly  adjourned,  and 
after  some  debate  resolved  to  proceed  without  granting  the 
King's  request.  On  this  occasion  Cromwell,  according  to 
Downes's  own  account,  said,  "  Sure  the  gentleman  did  not 
know  that  they  had  to  do  with  the  hardest-hearted  man 
upon  earth ;  and  that  it  was  not  fit  the  court  should  be 
hindered  from  their  duty  by  one  peevish  man." 

Cromwell  was  right  in  calling  King  Charles  "the  hardest- 
hearted  man  upon  earth;"  so  that  in  him,  as  in  his  lieu- 
tenant Montrose,  the  errors  of  the  head  had  no  chance  of 
being  corrected  by  the  instincts  of  the  heart,  often  a  safe- 
guard against  the  errors  of  the  head.  I  have  often  had 
occasion  to  note  instances  of  selfish  disregard  of  the  suffer- 
ings of  others  in  this  king.  I  will  here  add  a  remarkable 
instance,  given  by  Mr.  Jardine  from  manuscripts  in  the 
State  Paper  Office.  In  April  1627,  Lord  Falkland,  then 
Lord-Deputy  of  Ireland,  wrote  to  Secretary  Conway, 
stating  that  he  had  arrested  two  priests,  whom  he  sus- 
pected of  traitorous  designs  ;  that  in  order  to  draw  the 
full  truth  from  them,  he  was  desirous  of  putting  them  to 
the  rack  ;  but  as  his  doing  so  to  priests  would  cause  great 
scandal,  he  wished  for  some  warrant  from  the  Council. 
The  Secretary  in  his  answer,  dated  the  3Oth  May  1627, 
commends  the  Lord-Deputy's  diligence,  and  says,  that  "  as 
to  the  racking  of  the  priests,  he  has  mentioned  his  scruples 
to  the  King,  who  is  of  opinion  that  he  may  rack  them,  or 
kill  them,  if  he  thinks  proper."  ' 

In  regard  to  the  witnesses  examined  against  the  King, 
whose  evidence  was  directed  to  the  single  point  of  those 
military  operations  which  were  personally  directed  and 

1  Jardine's  Criminal  Trials,  i.  19.     London,  1847. 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  321 

carried  on  by  the  King  against  the  Parliamentary  forces, 
some  of  the  Royalist  writers  say,  "Various  witnesses 
were  then  examined  privately  in  the  Painted  Chamber 
against  the  King ; "  and  they  print  the  words  "  privately 
in  the  Painted  Chamber"  in  italics,  in  order  that  their 
readers  may  infer  that  this  private  examination  of  wit- 
nesses was  a  violation  of  law  and  a  breach  of  the  estab- 
lished practice ;  the  fact  being  that  at  that  time  in  State 
trials  witnesses  against  a  prisoner  were  never  brought  face 
to  face  with  that  prisoner. 

I  have  shown  in  the  first  chapter  of  this  history,  from 
the  most  authentic  records,  what  was  the  government  of 
the  Tudor  and  Stuart  kings  and  queens.  I  have  shown  that 
they  had  taken  upon  them,  by  a  pretended  right  which  they 
called  prerogative,  to  subject  the  people  of  England  to  tor- 
ture, which  was  strictly  prohibited  by  the  laws  of  England 
— which  laws  had  not  been  repealed  by  a  new  conquest.  I 
have  also  shown  that  those  tyrants  had  deprived  the  people 
of  England  of  all  chance  of  a  fair  trial  wherever  the  Crown 
was  concerned,  and  in  place  of  the  old  laws  of  England 
had  introduced  an  elaborate  system  of  cruelty  and  oppres- 
sion very  similar  to  that  of  the  Roman  emperors  when 
the  Roman  imperial  tyranny  was  at  its  height. 

What,  then,  are  we  to  think  of  the  assertion  of  King 
Charles,  made  in  answer  to  some  of  Bradshaw's  obser- 
vations, many  of  which  were  in  truth  somewhat  by  the 
mark,  that  it  was  for  "  the  liberty  and  laws  of  the  subject 
that  he  took  up  arms  "  ? — a  strange  assertion  certainly  to 
come  from  a  man  who,  besides  having  himself  tortured 
one  poor  man  named  Archer,  was  the  representative  of 
the  line  of  princes  who  had  introduced  torture  into  Eng- 
land against  the  law  of  England  which  they  did  not 
pretend  to  have  been  repealed,  and  who  habitually  broke 

VOL.  II..  X 


322       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

the  law  of  England  which  commanded  that  a  prisoner  and 
his  accuser  should  be  brought  face  to  face. 

King  Charles  also  said,  "  If  it  were  only  my  own  par- 
ticular case,  I  would  have  satisfied  myself  with  the  protes- 
tation I  made  the  last  time  I  was  here  against  the  legality 
of  this  court,  and  that  a  king  cannot  be  tried  by  any 
jurisdiction  on  earth ;  but  it  is  not  my  case  alone,  it  is  the 
freedom  and  the  liberty  of  the  people  of  England ;  and 
do  you  pretend  what  you  will,  I  stand  more  for  their 
liberties." 

This  is  a  strange  assertion,  and  yet  so  little  was  gene- 
rally known  of  the  course  of  government  in  that  age,  it 
obtained  some  degree  of  credence.  Where  a  free  press 
did  not  exist,  though  every  district  in  England  no  doubt 
had  had  some  experience  of  the  oppressive  government 
of  Charles,  that  particular  district  might  fancy  itself  an 
exception,  and  being  kept  ignorant  of  what  was  done  in 
other  districts,  might  believe  it  possible  that  somewhere 
in  England  King  Charles  might  be  the  protector  of  the 
laws  and  liberties  of  Englishmen.  It  is  commonly  sup- 
posed that  men  will  speak  truth  on  the  near  approach  of 
death.  Yet  the  Earl  of  Strafford  on  the  scaffold  declared 
what  his  whole  life  had  given  the  lie  to — that  he  had  always 
been  a  friend  to  Parliaments — unless  he  meant  to  equivo- 
cate, and  to  say  he  was  a  friend  to  such  Parliaments  as  he 
had  called  together  when  Lord-Deputy  of  Ireland  merely 
for  the  purpose  of  carrying  out  the  despotic  views  of  him- 
self and  his  master  Charles  under  Parliamentary  forms. 

But  the  words  of  King  Charles  quoted  above  that  con- 
tain the  whole  question  as  to  the   mode   of  proceeding, 
adopted  by  the  Independents  are  these  :  "  The  protestation 
I  made  the  last  time  I  was  here  against  the  legality  of  this 
court,  and  that  a  king  cannof  be  tried  by  any  jurisdiction 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  323 

on  earth."  Now  this  position,  "  that  a  king  cannot  be  tried 
by  any  jurisdiction  on  earth,"  may  or  may  not  have  been 
taken  up  from  King  James's  "  True  Law  of  Free  Mon- 
archies;" but  whether  it  was  or  was  not  based  upon  that, 
or  upon  any  other  perversion  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures,  it 
was  altogether  an  untenable  position  as  soon  as  any  nation 
or  tribe  of  men  to  whom  some  tyrant  propounded  it 
should  have  emancipated  themselves  from  the  slavery 
under  which  the  English  had  lived  under  the  Tudors  and 
the  two  Stuarts,  James  and  Charles.  Battles  make  kings.1 
Battles  made  William  I.  and  Henry  VII.  kings  of  England. 
I  have  said  before  that  the  Tudors  in  changing  the  law  of 
England  as  to  torture  and  witnesses  did  not  pretend  a  new 
conquest — and  yet  the  battle  of  Bosworth  made  the  Tudors 
kings,  but  it  was  chiefly  won  by  English  against  English. 
So  were  the  battles  of  Marston  Moor  and  Naseby;  and 
the  Independents  who  won  them  had  as  much  right  to 
set  up  a  new  government  as  the  Tudors  had  after  the 
battle  of  Bosworth.  The  Independents  had  defeated  the 
King  and  his  adherents  in  many  decisive  battles.  They 
were  therefore  an  independent  state  set  up  by  the  God  of 
battles ;  and  they  should  have  tried  King  Charles  as  a 
prisoner  of  war  who  had  carried  on  war  in  a  manner  that 
worked  a  forfeiture  of  his  life  ;  besides  being  the  represen- 
tative and  imitator  of  a  line  of  tyrants  who  having 
oppressed  the  people  of  England  by  cruel  trials  and 
tortures  which  were  against  the  law  of  England,  was  fit  to 
be  made  a  public  example  and  warning  to  all  such  tyrants 
in  time  to  come. 

Ludlow  in  his  Memoirs  gives  a  report  of  the  King's 

1  That  many  of  the  officers  of  the  Parliamentary  army  were  quite  aware  of 
this  appears  from  the  statement  of  Richard  Baxter  given  in  a  note  near  the 
end  of  the  last  chapter. 


324       Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

trial/which  though  short  is  clear  and  more  coherent  and 
intelligible  than  the  longer  reports.  Ludlow's  report  also 
contains  Bradshaw's  answer,  which  is  not  recorded  in  any 
other  report  of  the  trial  which  I  have  met  with,  to  the 
King's  repeated  assertions  that  he  was  not  accountable 
to  man  for  anything  he  did.  "  The  King,"  says  Ludlow, 
"demurred  to  the  jurisdiction  of  the  court,  affirming  that 
no  man,  nor  body  of  men,  had  power  to  call  him  to  an 
account,  being  not  entrusted  by  man,  and  therefore  ac- 
countable only  to  God  for  his  actions;  entering  into  a 
large  discourse  of  his  being  in  treaty  with  the  Parliament's 
commissioners  at  the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  his  being  taken 
from  thence  he  knew  not  how,  when  he  thought  he  was 
come  to  a  conclusion  with  them.  This  discourse  seeming 
not  to  the  purpose,  the  President  told  him,  that  as  to  his 
plea  of  not  being  accountable  to  man,  seeing  God  by  his 
Providence  had  overruled  it,  the  court  had  resolved  to  do 
so  also ;  and  that  if  he  would  give  no  other  answer,  that 
which  he  had  given  should  be  registered,  and  they  would 
proceed  as  if  he  had  confessed  the  charge:  in  order  to 
which  the  President  commanded  his  answer  to  be  entered, 
directing  Serjeant  Dendy,  who  attended  the  court,  to 
withdraw  the  prisoner ;  which  as  he  was  doing,  many 
persons  cried  out  in  the  hall,  Justice,  Justice'' ' 

Of  the  depositions  of  the  witnesses  called  to  prove  that 
Charles  had  been  in  arms  against  the  people  of  England, 
the  most  important  is  that  of  Henry  Gooche,  which,  con- 
firmed as  it  has  been  by  the  private  letters  of  Charles, 
completely  contradicts  his  statement  made  in  court  of  his 
thinking  he  had  come  to  a  conclusion  in  his  treaty  with 
the  Parliament's  commissioners  in  the  Isle  of  Wight. 
Henry  Gooche  said  that  "  on  the  3Oth  of  September  last 

1  Ludlow's  Memoirs,  i.  277,  2/8.     Second  edition.     London,  1721. 


The  King's  Trial  and  Execution.  325 

he  was  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  that  having  access  to  and 
discourse  with  the  King,  the  King  said  that  he  would 
have  all  his  old  friends  know  that  though  for  the  present 
he  was  contented  to  give  the  Parliament  leave  to  call  their 
own  war  what  they  pleased,  yet  that  he  neither  did  at  that 
time,  nor  ever  should,  decline  the  justice  of  his  own  cause. 
And  when  the  deponent  said  that  the  business  was  much 
retarded  through  want  of  commissions,  the  King  answered 
that  he  being  upon  a  treaty  would  not  dishonour  himself; 
but  that  if  the  deponent  would  go  over  to  the  Prince  his 
son  (who  had  full  authority  from  him),  he  or  any  from 
him  should  receive  whatsoever  commissions  should  be 
desired."  x 

When  Oliver  St.  John,  as  Solicitor-General,  carried  up 
to  the  Lords  the  bill  of  attainder  against  the  Earl  of 
Stratford,  he  in  his  speech  on  that  occasion  made  use  of  a 
form  of  expression  which  has  been  often  quoted  and  much 
criticised.  "  My  Lords,"  he  said,  "  he  that  would  not  have 
had  others  to  have  a  law,  why  should  he  have  any  himself? 
Why  should  not  that  be  done  to  him  that  himself  would 
have  done  to-  others  ?  It  is  true  we  give  law  to  hares  and 
deer,  because  they  be  beasts  of  chase:  it  was  never  ac- 
counted either  cruelty  or  foul  play  to  knock  foxes  and 
wolves  oa  the  head  as  they  can  be  found,  because  these 
be  beasts  of  prey.  The  warrener  sets  traps  for  polecats 
and  other  vermin,  for  preservation  of  the  warren."2  St. 
John  here  argues  the  case  as  a  statesman,  while  Pym 
argued  it  neither  as  a  statesman  nor  as  a  lawyer,  but 
merely  as  an  orator.  For  as  all  the  laws  against  treason 
in  England  had  been  made  to  protect  the  King  and  not 
the  subject,  it  was  not  to  be  expected  that  the  English 

1  Howell's  State  Trials,  iv.  994,  d  stq,t  and  for  Goodie's  evidence,  p.  1090. 

2  Rushvvorth,  viii.  703. 


326      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

law  of  treason  should  contain  any  power  to  punish  an 
aggressor  who  strove,  as  Stratford  unquestionably  had 
done,  to  make  the  English  king  absolute  and  Englishmen 
slaves.  Consequently  when  Pym  says  that  "  nothing  can 
be  more  equal  than  that  he  should  perish  by  the  justice  of 
that  law,  which  he  would  have  subverted;"  "that  there 
are  marks  enough  to  trace  this  law  to  the  very  original  of 
this  kingdom  ; "  and  that  "  if  it  hath  not  been  put  in 
execution  for  240  years,  it  was  not  for  want  of  law,"  x  he 
speaks  rhetorically,  and  assumes  the  existence  of  a  law 
which  did  not  exist.  St.  John,  on  the  other  hand,  put 
the  case  upon  its  true  basis — that  he  whose  proved  pur- 
pose had  been  to  reduce  Englishmen  to  the  condition  of 
slaves  having  no  law  but  the  will  of  an  absolute  king, 
should  be  destroyed  as  a  public  enemy,  or  a  dangerous 
and  noxious  beast  of  prey. 

This  argument  applies  also  to  King  Charles.  If  Charles's 
minister  the  Earl  of  Stratford  was  to  be  destroyed  as  a 
noxious  beast  of  prey,  Charles  himself,  by  whose  com- 
mand and  on  whose  behalf  Stratford  acted,  might  consider 
himself  not  human  but  divine  if  he  escaped.  For  as  to 
the  maxim  that  "the  King  can  do  no  wrong,"  it  may  be 
considered  as  disposed  of  in  the  passage  quoted  in  the 
preceding  chapter  from  the  Remonstrance  of  .the  army 
demanding  justice  upon  the  King,  as  one  of  those  court 
maxims  concerning  the  absolute  impunity  of  kings 
"  begotten  by  the  blasphemous  arrogance  of  tyrants 
upon  servile  parasites."  Some  of  the  Jacobite  writers 
on  this  subject  have  complained  that  "the  maxim  that 
the  King  can  do  no  wrong,  which  is  now  rationally  under- 
stood as  only  implying  the  settled  doctrine  of  ministerial 
responsibility,  is  absolutely  denied  by  the  republican 

1  Rushworth,  viii.  669,  670. 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  327 

lawyer"  (Cook,  the  Solicitor-General  for  the  trial  of  the 
King).  It  is  not  surprising  that  what  the  writer  calls 
"  the  settled  doctrine  of  ministerial  responsibility  "  should 
not  be  recognised  by  Cook  in  164!,  when  it  only  became 
the  "  settled  "  doctrine  after  the  Revolution  of  1688.  There 
was  no  such  settled  doctrine  at  that  time  (164!),  anc^  even 
now  if  a  king's  minister  or  lieutenant  were  to  treat  any 
Englishman,  Scotchman,  or  Irishman,  as  Montrose,  acting 
as  King  Charles's  lieutenant,  treated  the  people  of  Aber- 
deen, a  question  might  arise  as  to  the  limits  of  ministerial 
responsibility — a  question  which  might  assume  a  very 
grave  aspect. 

As  the  Scots  had  taken  a  totally  different  view  of 
matters  both  spiritual  and  temporal  from  the  settled 
opinions  of  the  Independents,  and  as  the  difference  of 
opinion  had  even  broken  out  into  open  war,  the  Inde- 
pendents, who  were  now  the  ruling  power  in  England, 
might  have  found  some  difficulty  in  procuring  witnesses 
to  prove  the  atrocities  committed  by  King  Charles's 
lieutenant  at  Aberdeen.  But  even  if  they  should  have 
been  unable  to  bring  up  the  witnesses  themselves,  if 
they  could  have  procured  the  depositions  of  some  of 
the  citizens  of  Aberdeen  who  had  survived  the  massacre, 
those  depositions  being  read  in  open  court  must  have 
produced  an  effect  not  only  throughout  Britain,  but  over 
the  whole  world  wherever  there  were  human  beings  who 
could  read  a  translation  of  the  atrocities  of  this  King,  who 
was  so  fond  of  his  people,  according  to  the  language  of  his 
parasites.  They  should  have  distinctly  stated  that  they 
had  renounced  allegiance  to  him  as  a  king  when  they  met 
him  only  on  fields  of  battle,  that  they  now  treated  him  as  a 
prisoner  of  war,  and  passed  sentence  on  him  as  a  prisoner 
of  war  who  had  carried  on  war  in  a  manner  which  worked 


328      Struggle  for  Parliamen  ta ry  Governmen  t. 

a  forfeiture  of  his  own  life.  I  do  not  know  that  it  is 
necessary;  but  as  so  much  pains  have  been  taken  by  the 
Royalist  and  Jacobite  writers  to  excite  compassion  for  this 
King  in  their  "stories"  of  his  trial  and  execution,  I  will 
shortly  repeat  what  I  have  said  elsewhere  of  the  Aberdeen 
massacre  perpetrated  by  Montrose's  Highland  and  Irish 
barbarians  on  the  citizens  of  Aberdeen,  their  wives  and 
children. 

To  show  that  I  do  not  give  the  evidence  of  doubtful 
witnesses  as  to  the  Aberdeen  massacre,  I  will  quote  the 
words  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  himself:  "  Many  were  killed  in 
the  streets ;  and  the  cruelty  of  the  Irish  in  particular  was 
so  great,  that  they  compelled  the  wretched  citizens  to  strip 
themselves  of  their  clothes  before  they  killed  them,  to 
prevent  their  being  soiled  with  blood.  The  women  durst 
not  lament  their  husbands  or  their  fathers  slaughtered  in 
their  presence,  nor  inter  the  dead  which  remained  un- 
buried  in  the  streets  until  the  Irish  departed."  J  There 
were  other  frightful  outrages  committed  on  the  women 
and  children  which  Sir  Walter  Scott  does  not  mention. 
Of  the  man  who  let  loose  those  barbarians  on  the  people 
of  Scotland,  and  the  man  who  directed  their  movements 
when  let  loose,  I  will  quote  here  what  I  have  said  else- 
where :  "  It  is  not  easy  to  analyse  the  heart  of  that  man 
who  in  his  dying  hour  could  look  without  remorse  or  even 
regret  on  those  four  days  of  September  1644,  including 
that  Sunday,  the  I5th  of  September,  when  there  was 
neither  preaching  nor  praying  in  Aberdeen,  and  nothing 
but  the  death-groans  of  men  and  the  shrieks  and  wail  of 
women  through  all  the  streets,  and  when  the  King's 
lieutenant,  who  had  in  the  name  of  '  King  Charles  the 

1  History  of  Scotland,  contained  in  "  Tales  of  a  Grandfather,"  vol.  i.  chap, 
xlii.  p.  437.'     Edition,  Edinburgh,  1846. 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  329 

Good '  caused  all  these  things,  could  not  enter  or  leave 
his  quarters  in  Skipper  Anderson's J  house  without  walk- 
ing upon  or  over  the  bloody  corpses  of  those  not  slain 
in  battle,  and  over  streets  slippery  with  innocent  blood. 
Montrose's  chaplain  and  panegyrical  biographer,  Bishop 
Wishart,'  has  prudently  thought  fit  to  pass  over  the  pro- 
ceedings of  his  hero  in  Aberdeen  altogether  in  silence. 
Montrose  himself  declared  that  he  had  never  shed  blood 
except  in  battle.  But  the  facts  are  proved  by  Spalding,  a 
townsman  of  Aberdeen,  present  on  the  occasion,  who  was 
firmly  attached  to  Episcopacy  and  the  King's  cause,  and  a 
wellwisher  to  the  general  success  of  Montrose.  Spalding 
must  consequently  in  this  case  have  been  an  unwilling 
witness,  and  his  testimony  may  therefore  be  considered  as 
conclusive.  We  therefore  have  before  us  the  strange  phe- 
nomenon of  a  man,  who  cannot  be  considered  as  a  pure 
barbarian  by  blood,  birth,  and  education,  performing  deeds 
that  place  him  on  a  moral  level  with  Nana  Sahib,  and  for 
what  ?  to  enable  King  Charles  I.  to  do  with  impunity 
whatever  had  been  done  by  King  James,  who  had  mur- 
dered by  divine  right  two  of  Montrose's  uncles,  the  Earl 
of  Cowrie  and  Alexander  Ruthven.  .  .  .  Let  any  one 
place  himself  in  the  situation,  not  of  a  man  who  had  lost 
his  male  relatives  in  battle  against  Montrose — that  would 
have  been  a  thing  in  the  ordinary  course  of  events — but  of 
a  man  whose  fields  had  been  laid  waste,  whose  house  had 
been  burned,  whose  father,  mother,  wife,  daughters,  sisters 
had  been  butchered  by  Montrose,  and  then  let  him  say 
whether  he  would  have  considered  Montrose  entitled  to 
the  treatment  of  a  generous  and  honourable  enemy  ?  Nay 
more — if  there  was  a  man  wearing  a  crown  who  commis- 
sioned this  Montrose,  and  who  avowed  and  sought  to 

1  Spalding,  ii.  266. 


33O      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

profit  by  his  atrocities — will  any  man  say  there  was  no 
good  done  by  making  such  a  man,  though  wearing  a 
crown  and  called  a  king,  know  that  he  had  a  joint  in  his 
neck  ? " ' 

These  facts  are  a  conclusive  answer  to  those  writers  who 
say  that  the  Independents  should  have  proceeded  "  by  a 
direct  and  manful  charge  against  the  King  of  those  viola- 
tions of  the  constitution  and  stretches  of  the  prerogative 
which  were  complained  of,  instead  of  jesuitically  and  in- 
humanly putting  him  on  his  trial  for  treason  and  murder 
on  account  of  bloodshed  in  open  and  equal  warfare." 
"  Bloodshed  in  open  and  equal  warfare ! "  when  Montrose's 
cut-throats  compelled  the  wretched  citizens  of  Aberdeen  to 
strip  themselves  before  they  killed  them,  to  prevent  their 
clothes  being  soiled  with  blood.  Was  this  bloodshed  in, 
open  and  equal  warfare  ?  If  a  king  is  to  commission  men 
or  fiends  to  do  such  things  and  is  to  go  unpunished,  earth 
is  at  once  turned  into  hell.  There  is  nothing  recorded  of 
Alva  worse  than  this.  And  if  Alva's  master  had  fallen 
into  the  gripe  of  the  Netherlanders  or  Hollanders,  as  Mon- 
trose's master  had  fallen  into  the  gripe  of  the  Independents, 
it  would  matter  little  whether  or  not  the  Netherlanders  or 
Hollanders  could  have  proved  that  he  had  committed  trea- 
son against  them,  but  they  certainly  would,  have  had  a 
strong  case  against  him  as  a  tyrant,  murderer,  and  public 
enemy.  Such  was  Charles  I.,  and  as  such  the  Independents 
were  resolved  that  he  should  die. 

On  the  26th  of  January,  the  sixth  day  of  the  trial,  the 
commissioners  were  engaged  in  preparing  the  sentence, 
having  then  determined  that  it  should  be  death.  A  ques- 
tion was  raised  as  to  his  deposition  previously  to  his  exe- 

1  History  of  the  Commonwealth  of  England,  i.    293-297.     London  :  John 
Murray,  Albemarle  Street,  1864. 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  33  r 

cution,  but  it  was  postponed,  and  the  sentence,  with  a  blank 
for  the  manner  of  death,  was  drawn  up  by  Ireton,  Harrison, 
Henry  Marten,  Scot,  Say,  Lisle,  and  Love,  and  ordered  to 
be  engrossed. 

On  the  following  day,  the  2/th  of  January,  the  seventh 
day  of  the  trial,  the  high  court  of  justice  met  for  the  last 
time  in  Westminster  Hall.  The  President,  who  had 
hitherto  worn  plain  black,  was  robed  in  scarlet,  and  most 
of  the  commissioners,  the  number  of  whom  present  on  that 
day  was  sixty-seven,  seventy-one  being  the  largest  number 
ever  present  on  any  former  day  of  the  trial,  were  "in  their 
best  habits."  As  the  King  passed  up  the  hall,  a  loud  cry 
was  heard  of  "Justice  !  Justice  !  Execution  !  Execution  !  " 
The  soldiers,  as  had  happened  before,  had  begun  to  dis- 
trust their  leaders,  and  to  suspect  that  as  six  days  had 
been  allowed  to  pass  without  judgment,  the  King  would 
be  allowed  to  escape ;  and  this  circumstance  corroborates 
the  opinion  of  those  who  think  that  the  scheme  of  inflict- 
ing capital  punishment  on  the  King  spread  from  the  ranks 
upwards,  and  not  from  the  leaders  downwards.1  One  of 
the  soldiers  upon  guard  said,  "  God  bless  you,  sir ! " 
The  King  thanked  him,  but  his  officer  struck  the  man 
with  his  cane.  "  Methinks,"  said  the  King,  "  the  punish- 
ment exceeds  the  offence."  With  this  exception  of 
the  cry  for  justice,  that  soldiery  maintained  through- 
out the  whole  of  that  trying  scene — for  it  was  trying 
to  them  as  well  as  to  the  prisoner  and  his  judges — 
the  character  for  discipline,  for  self-control,  for  good 
conduct,  which  more  even  than  their  valour  has  rendered 
them  unequalled  upon  earth.  Even  according  to  the 
testimony  of  Herbert,  the  captive  King  was  treated  with 
all  the  respect  and  consideration  compatible  with  the 
1  See  ante,  chap.  xix. 


33  2     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

duty  which  the  court  had  to  perform ;  and  the  King's 
judges  might  truly  say  that  throughout  the  whole  of 
that  momentous  struggle  not  one  assassination  was  ever 
committed  by  them  or  any  of  their  party ;  that  they  acted 
neither  with  a  mean  nor  a  timid  spirit,  and  that  what  they 
did  was  not  done  in  a  corner,  but  openly  and  fearlessly  in 
the  eyes  of  all  mankind.  Sentence  of  death,  by  severing 
the  head  from  the  body,  was  now  pronounced.  Before 
the  sentence  was  read,  Bradshaw  made  a  long  speech  on 
the  King's  misgovernment,  in  the  course  of  which  he  men- 
tioned the  cases  of  many  kings  who  had  been  deposed  by 
their  subjects,  none  of  which  were  precisely  parallel  cases. 
So  that  there  might  be  some  truth  in  the  remark  of  the 
writers  who  say  that  there  was  more  pedantry  than  discre- 
tion in  all  Bradshaw's  references  to  history  for  precedents  ; 
since  the  present  case  was  unprecedented,  and  was  to  form 
a  precedent  to  after-ages,  fraught  with  the  momentous 
truth  that  kings  as  well  as  other  men  had  a  joint  in  their 
necks,  and  that  they  must  abandon  the  imagination  that 
they  could  commit  rapine  and  murder  with  perfect 
impunity. 

The  warrant  for  execution  "  upon  the  morrow,  being 
the  thirtieth  day  of  this  instant  month  of  January,"  was 
signed  on  Monday  in  the  Painted  Chamber ;  and  the 
place  assigned  was  the  open  street  before  the  banqueting- 
house  at  Whitehall,  now  Whitehall  Chapel,  one  of  the 
windows  of  which  was  opened  that  the  King  might  walk 
out  to  a  scaffold  erected  before  it.  Having  slept  for  more 
than  four  hours,  the  King  awoke  before  daybreak  on 
Tuesday  the  3<Dth  of  January,  and  called  Herbert,  who  lay 
on  a  pallet  by  his  side.  The  King  had  always  a  large 
cake  of  wax  which,  set  in  a  silver  basin,  burned  during 
the  whole  night,  and  as  by  it  he  perceived  that  Herbert 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  333 

was  disturbed  in  his  sleep,  he  desired  to  know  his  dream. 
Herbert  repeated  it,  and  the  King  said  it  was  very  re- 
markable, being  about  his  seeing  Archbishop  Laud  enter 
that  room  and  confer  with  the  King.  Charles  then  saying, 
"  Herbert,  this  is  my  second  marriage-day  ;  I  would  be  as 
trim  to-day  as  may  be,  for  before  night  I  hope  to  be 
espoused  to  my  blessed  Jesus,"  appointed  the  clothes  he 
would  wear,  and  added,  4<  Let  me  have  a  shirt  on  more 
than  ordinary,  by  reason  the  season  is  so  sharp  as  probably 
may  make  me  shake,  which  some  observers  will  imagine 
proceeds  from  fear.  I  would  have  no  such  imputation. 
I  fear  not  death.  Death  is  not  terrible  to  me.  I  bless 
my  God  I  am  prepared."  The  King  had  desired  the 
attendance  of  Juxon,  formerly  Bishop  of  London,  and  his 
request  had  been  granted.  Juxon  joined  them  at  an 
appointed  hour  and  assisted  Charles  in  his  devotion ; 
after  which  the  King  delivered  to  Herbert  some  presents 
for  his  children,  accompanied  by  advice  for  their  future 
conduct."1 

Towards  ten  o'clock  Colonel  Hacker,  who  was  commis- 
sioned to  conduct  the  King  to  the  scaffold,  knocked  gently 
at  the  door  of  the  chamber.  Charles  having  said,  "  Let 
him  come  in,  the  Colonel  in  a  trembling  manner  came 
near  and  told  His  Majesty  it  was  time  to  go  to  Whitehall, 
where  he  might  have  some  further  time  to  rest." !  About 
ten  o'clock  the  King  went  out  with  firmness.  Several 
companies  of  foot  were  drawn  up  in  the  park  on  either 
side  as  he  passed.  Charles  walked  erect  and  very  fast.  A 
body  of  halberdiers  went  before  and  another  behind  him. 
On  his  right  hand  was  Bishop  Juxon  ;  and  on  his  left  was 
Colonel  Tomlinson,  with  whom  he  conversed  on  the 
way.  He  was  followed  by  some  of  his  own  gentlemen 

1  Herbert,  p.  124,  et  seq.  *  Ibid.,  p.  132. 


334     Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

and  servants,  who  walked  bareheaded.  The  drums  beat 
all  the  time.  His  Majesty,  says  Herbert,  heard  many  of 
the  crowd  pray  for  him,  "  the  soldiers  not  rebuking  any 
of  them  ;  by  their  silence  and  dejected  faces  seeming 
afflicted  rather  than  insulting."  x 

When  he  reached  Whitehall,  passing  through  the  long 
gallery  he  went  into  his  old  cabinet-chamber.  There,  the 
scaffold  not  being  quite  ready,  he  passed  the  time  in 
prayer  with  the  Bishop.  About  twelve  o'clock  he  drank 
a  glass  of  claret  wine  and  ate  a  piece  of  bread ;  and  then 
he  went  with  Juxon,  Tomlinson,  Hacker,  and  the  guards 
through  the  banqueting-house  to  the  scaffold,  which  was 
hung  with  black,  the  floor  being  also  covered  with  black 
and  tke  axe  and  block  laid  in  the  middle  of  it.  Bodies  of 
horse  and  foot  were  drawn  up  on  all  sides  of  the  scaffold, 
and  there  was  a  vast  concourse  of  people  ;  but  as  the  latter 
could  not  approach  near  enough  to  hear  him,  he  addressed 
a  speech  to  the  gentlemen  upon  the  scaffold.  Like  his 
two  ministers  Strafford  and  Laud,  who  had  gone  before 
him,  he  made  solemn  protestations  of  his  regard  for  the 
laws  of  England  and  for  the  ancient  rights  and  liberties 
of  the  English  people.  But  deeds  are  stronger  than  words, 
and  in  his  case,  as  in  the  cases  of  Laud  and  Strafford,  the 
actions  of  his  life,  confirmed  by  his  own  letters,  belied  the 
words  uttered  on  the  scaffold. 

The  King  said  that  he  would  have  held  his  tongue  were 
it  not  that  as  some  might  impute  his  silence  to  an 
acknowledgment  of  guilt,  he  deemed  it  a  duty  to  God,  his 
country,  and  himself,  to  vindicate  his  character  as  an 
honest  man,  a  good  king,  and  a  good  Christian.  He  im- 
puted the  war  to  the  Parliament  in  their  proceeding  about 
the  militia.  He  said  that  with  regard  to  the  blood  which 

1  Herbert,  p.  134. 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  335 

had  been  spilt  he  could  not  charge  himself  with  it,  though 
he  reckoned  his  fate  a  just  retribution  for  the  death  of 
Strafford :  that  as  to  his  being  a  good  Christian  he 
appealed  to  Juxon  whether  he  had  not  heartily  forgiven 
his  enemies ;  and  that  his  charity  went  farther,  as  he 
wished  them  to  repent  of  the  great  sin  they  had  committed, 
and  bring  back  matters  to  their  legitimate  channel.  What 
he  meant  by  this  he  then  sufficiently  showed,  and  showed 
at  the  same  time  in  what  sense  he  died  a  martyr,  not  of  or 
for  the  people,  as  he  expressed  it,  but  a  martyr  to  those 
principles  of  despotism  which  it  had  been  the  one  object  of 
his  life  to  put  in  practice.  He  said  that  things  would  never 
be  well  till  God  had  his  due,  the  King  his,  and  the  people 
theirs.  What  the  people's  due  was,  in  his  opinion,  he  ex- 
plained sufficiently  by  assuring  them  that  the  people  ought 
never  to  have  a  share  in  the  government,  that  being  a  thing 
"  nothing  pertaining  to  them,  and  that  he  died  the  martyr 
of  the  people."  Whether  he  died  the  martyr  of  the  people 
or  the  martyr  of  monarchical  tyranny  let  the  people  judge. 
He  concluded  with  these  words :  "  In  truth  I  would  have 
desired  some  time  longer,  because  that  I  would  have  put 
this  that  I  have  said  in  a  little  more  order  and  a  little 
better  digested  than  I  have  done ;  and  therefore  I  hope 
you  will  excuse  me.  I  have  delivered  my  conscience.  I 
pray  God  that  you  may  take  those  courses  that  are  best 
for  the  good  of  the  kingdom  and  your  own  salvation." 

At  the  desire  of  Juxon  he  declared  that  he  died  a 
Protestant  according  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  of 
England.  While  he  was  speaking  one  of  the  gentlemen 
on  the  scaffold  touched  the  edge  of  the  axe,  and  Charles 
evinced  his  presence  of  mind  by  desiring  him  to  take  heed 
of  the  axe.  Two  men  in  visors  stood  by  the  block.  To 
one  of  them  the  King  said,  "  I  shall  say  but  very  short 


336      Striiggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

prayers,  and  then  thrust  out  my  hands  for  the  signal."  His 
hair  he  put  under  a  satin  nightcap  with  the  assistance  of 
Juxon  and  the  executioner ;  and  then,  turning  to  the 
Bishop,  he  said,  "  I  have  a  good  cause  and  a  gracious  God 
on  my  side."  "You  have  now,"  said  Juxon,  "but  one 
stage  more :  the  stage  is  turbulent  and  troublesome,  but  it 
is  a  short  one  :  it  will  carry  you  a  very  great  way :  it  will 
carry  you  from  earth  to  heaven."  "  I  go,"  said  Charles, 
"  from  a  corruptible  to  an  incorruptible  crown,  where  no 
disturbance  can  be."  "You  are  exchanged  from  a  tem- 
poral to  an  eternal  crown,  a  good  exchange/'  was  the 
reply  of  the  Bishop.  The  King  then  took  off  his  cloak, 
and,  giving  his  George  to  Juxon  with  the  single  word 
"  Remember,"  laid  his  head  upon  the  block  and  stretched 
out  his  hands.  The  executioner  severed  the  neck  at  one 
blow,  and  the  other  man  in  the  mask  held  tip  the  head 
and  cried  out,  "  This  is  the  head  of  a  traitor."  Among 
the  spectators  many  wept,  and  some  strove  to  dip  their 
handkerchiefs  in  his  blood,  as  in  the  blood  of  a  martyr.1 

In  regard  to  the  numerous  statements  that  have  been 
put  forth  respecting  the  King's  trial  and  execution,  it  is 
in  the  first  place  to  be  observed  that  Herbert,  who  was  in 
constant  attendance  upon  the  King,  is  an  authority  beyond 
all  question.  Clarendon  and  Warwick  were  not  even  in 
England  at  the  time,  and  yet  they  have  taken  upon  them 
to  impute  to  the  soldiers  of  the  Parliament  of  England 
acts  of  brutality  and  insolence  towards  the  fallen  and 
captive  King  which  were  not  only  totally  alien  to  all  that 
is  known  of  the  character  and  habits  of  those  soldiers,  even 
from  the  admission  of  hostile  witnesses,  of  such  writers  as 
Clarendon  himself  and  Pepys,  but  are  positively  disproved 
by  Herbert's  statement  of  the  facts,  whereof  he  was  a 

1  Herbert,  p.  134.     Rush.,  vii.  1429,  1430.     Whitelock,  pp.  374,  375. 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  337 

witness.  Charles  on  his  return  to  St.  James's  having 
asked  Herbert  whether  he  heard  the  cry  for  justice,  Herbert 
answered  that  he  did  and  "  marvelled  thereat."  Where- 
upon Charles  said,  "  So  did  not  I,  for  I  am  well  assured 
that  the  soldiers  bear  no  malice  to  me.  The  cry  was  no 
doubt  given  by  their  officers,  for  whom  the  soldiers  would 
do  the  like  were  there  occasion."  Herbert's  statement  is 
confirmed  by  Whitelock.  The  King  was  in  all  probability 
mistaken  as  to  the  cry's  having  been  given  by  their  officers. 
But  at  any  rate  this  is  conclusive  evidence  that  the  cry  for 
justice — the  expression  of  the  soldiers'  impatience  and  of 
their  doubts  that  the  court  would  not  after  all  proceed  to 
execution — was  the  only  act  in  the  shape  of  insult  which 
occurred  on  that  memorable  occasion.  Hume  has  re- 
corded all  the  grossest  fabrications  of  the  Royalist  writers, 
even  while — as  appeared  from  his  pencil-marks  in  the 
books  he  used  (but  some  of  which  he  took  care  not  to 
cite)  in  the  Advocates'  Library,  of  which  he  was  librarian 
when  he  wrote  his  history — he  knew  them  to  be  false.1 

Hume,  whose  narrative  was  for  a  series  of  years  accepted 
as  the  popular  interpretation  of  this  period  of  English 
history,  has  even  gone  beyond  some  of  the  most  un- 
scrupulous of  the  Royalist  martyrologists — Hume  who 
wrote  the  celebrated  essay  on  miracles ;  and  who  in  the 
contrasts  presented  in  himself  between  the  philosopher 
searching  for  truth  and  the  advocate  seeking  to  support  a 
case  has  in  his  own  person  favoured  the  world  with  some- 
thing of  the  miraculous- — with  something  at  least  exceed- 
ing the  ordinary  course  of  nature.  Some  writers,  relying 
on  the  evidence  given  on  the  trial  of  Hacker — where,  as  on 

1  His  pencil-marks  in  the  copy  of  Herbert  and  in  the  copy  of  Perinchief 
belonging  to  the  Advocates'  Library  prove  that  Hume  knew  the  true  and  the 
false  statements,  and  for  the  purpose  of  effect  deliberately  adopted  the  false. 
VOL.  II.  Y 


338      Str&ggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

the  trials  of  the  other  regicides,  the  witnesses  perjured 
themselves,  as  is  evident  from  a  comparison  of  their  testi- 
mony with  the  statements  of  Herbert,  Berkeley,  and  others, 
who  as  thorough  Royalists  cannot  be  supposed  to  have 
suppressed  or  disguised  the  truth  in  favour  of  the  King's 
enemies — say  that  the  King  lay  at  Whitehall  on  Saturday 
night  and  was  carried  to  St.  James's  on  Sunday  morning. 
But  Herbert  distinctly  states  that  he  was  at  St.  James's 
from  first  to  last,  and  walked  thence  through  the  park  to 
Whitehall  on  the  morning  of  his  execution.  Even  Clement 
Walker,  whom  Hume  cites  at  the  bottom  of  the  page  as 
his  authority  for  the  assertion  that  "  every  night  during 
the  interval" — from  the  sentence  to  the  execution,  that 
is,  from  Saturday  to  Tuesday — "the  King  slept  sound  as 
usual,  though  the  noise  of  the  workmen,  employed  in 
framing  the  scaffold,  and  other  preparations  for  his  "exe- 
cution, continually  resounded  in  his  ears,"  does  not  bear 
Hume  out  in  this  deliberate  falsehood,  and  refutes  himself. 
For  after  asserting  that  "the  King  lay  at  Whitehall 
Saturday  (the  day  of  his  sentence)  and  Sunday  night," 
Clement  Walker  proceeds  thus  :  "  Tuesday,  3Oth  January 
1648  [164®-],  was  the  day  appointed  for  the  King's  death  : 
he  came  on  foot  from  St.  James's  to  Whitehall  that 
morning." x  Clement  Walker's  character  as  a  scurrilous 
and  mendacious  writer  is  well  known  to  all  who  have 
studied  the  original  authorities  for  the  history  of  that  time  ; 
but  it  is  not  always  that  such  a  habitually-mendacious 
writer  furnishes  matter  to  refute  himself  as  Walker  has 
here  done. 

But  this  is  not  all,  for  Hume  takes  from  Perinchief,  the 
writer  of  a  life  of  Charles  prefixed  to  that  King's  alleged 
works,  though  Perinchief  was  an  authority  Hume  did  not 

2  History  of  Independency,  second  part,  p.  no. 


The  King's  Trial  and  Execution*          339 

think  fit  to  refer  to,  some  of  the  wildest  inventions  of  the 
Royalist  party  as  to  the  effects  of  this  execution — as  that 
"  some  unmindful  of  themselves,  as.  they  could  not  or  would 
not  survive  tJteir  beloved  prince,  it  is  reported,  suddenly  fell 
down  dead."  There  is  one  part  of  the  story,  however,  which 
the  writer  of  the  essay  on  miracles  has  omitted  to  mention 
— the  account  of  the  miracles  which  were  worked  by  hand- 
kerchiefs dipped  in  the  royal  martyr's  blood.  Hume  also 
stops  short  of  Perinchief  in  the  application  of  the  falsehoods 
respecting  the  conduct  of  the  soldiers,  for  Perinchief  makes 
use  of  them  in  order  that  he  may  compare  the  treatment 
of  Charles  by  the  Independents  to  the  treatment  of  Christ 
by  the  Jews.  Hume  is  also  silent  on  the  subject  of  the 
"  Eikon,"  of  which  Perinchief  thus  expresses  himself:  "  A 
sober  reader  cannot  tell  what  to  admire  most,  his  incredible 
prudence,  his  ardent  piety,  or  his  majestic  and  truly  royal 
style.  Those  parts  of  it  which  consisted  of  addresses  to 
God  corresponded  so  nearly  in  the  occasions,  and  were  so 
full  of  the  piety  and  elegance  of  David's  psalms,  that  they 
seemed  to  be  dictated  by  the  same  spirit. " ' 

The  writer  of  this  passage,  who  was  a  doctor  of  divinity, 
in  the  same  page  in  which  he  so  characterises  Dr.  John 
Gauden's  forgery,  thus  describes  Milton :  "  They  hired 
certain  mercenary  souls  to  despoil  the  King  of  the  credit 
of  being  the  author  of  it  [the  '  Eikon']:  especially  one  base 
scribe  naturally  fitted  to  compose  satires  and  invent  re- 

1  Life  of  Charles  I.,  by  Perinchief,  prefixed  to  King  Charles's  [alleged]  Works, 
p.  94.  Mr.  Forster  has  observed  (Life  of  Henry  Marten,  p.  309,  note) :  ".In 
Kushworth,  vii.  1425,  we  find  the  words  put  into  Charles's  mouth  on  the  cry 
of  the  soldiers,  '  Poor  souls !  for  a  piece  of  money  they  would  do  as  much  for 
their  commanders.'  P>ut  it  is  not  denied  that  several  of  the  latter  parts  of 
Rushworth's  Collections  were  tampered  with  after  his  death,  and  before  their 
publication.  The  words  in  question  are  in  fact  copied  from  Sanderson,  p.  1 132. 
Milton  (Defensio  Secunda)  has  given  himself  the  trouble  to  contradict  the  tale 
that  one  of  the  soldiers  was  destroyed  for  saying  God  bless  you,  sir." 


34-O      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

preaches,  who  made  himself  notorious  by  some  licentious 
and  infamous  pamphlets,  and  so  approved  himself  as  fit 
for  their  service.  This  man  they  encouraged  (by  translat- 
ing him  from  a  needy  pedagogue  to  the  office  of  a  secre- 
tary) to  write  that  scandalous  work,  EiKovoK\do-T^  (an 
invective  against  the  King's  meditations),  and  to  answer 
the  learned  Salmasius  his  defence  of  Charles  the  First." 
This  was  published  under  royal  sanction  in  1662.  We  see, 
then,  that  it  was  not  altogether  without  cause  that,  "  fallen 
on  evil  days  and  evil  tongues,  Milton  appealed  to  the 
avenger  Time."  And  Time  has  redressed  the  balance 
between  him  and  his  enemies. 

The  history  of  this  work,  which  perhaps  may  more 
correctly  be  termed  a  religious  than  a  literary  forgery,  is 
curious  and  instructive.  So  late  as  the  years  1824  and 
1828  no  less  a  person  than  the  Master  of  Trinity  College, 
Cambridge,  the  Rev.  Christopher  Wordsworth,  D.D.,  pro- 
duced two  elaborate  volumes  on  the  authorship  of  "  Icon 
Basilike,"  which  he  unhesitatingly  ascribed  to  Charles  I. 
The  first  volume  is  entitled  "Who  wrote  EIKWV  BaaiXiicrj, 
considered  and  answered."  The  second  volume  is  entitled 
"King  Charles  the  First  the  Author  of  'Icon  Basilike' 
further  proved,  in  a  Letter  to  his  Grace  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  in  Reply  to  the  Objections  of  Dr.  Lingard, 
Mr.  Todd,  Mr.  Broughton,  the  '  Edinburgh  Review,'  and 
Mr.  Hallam." 

More  than  twenty  years  after  the  publication  of  Dr. 
Christopher  Wordsworth's  volumes,  a  celebrated  writer, 
who  had  been  a  Fellow  of  the  same  distinguished  college 
of  which  Dr.  Christopher  Wordsworth  was  master,  and 
had  also  been  a  Fellow,  ascribed  the  authorship  of  "  Icon 
Basilike"  as  unhesitatingly  to  Dr.  John  Gauden  as  Dr. 
Wordsworth  had  ascribed  it  to  King  Charles  I.  "  In  the 


The  Kings  Trial  and  Execution.  34 1 

year  1692,"  says  Lord  Macaulay,  "  an  honest  old  clergyman 
named  Walker,  who  had,  in  the  time  of  the  civil  war, 
been  intimately  acquainted  with  Dr.  John  Gauden,  wrote 
a  book  which  convinced  all  sensible  and  dispassionate  read- 
ers that  Gauden,  and  not  Charles  L,  was  the  author  of  the 
4  Icon  Basilike.'  This  book  Fraser — the  licenser — suffered 
to  be  printed.  If  he  had  authorised  the  publication  of  a 
work  in  which  the  Gospel  of  Saint  John  or  the  Epistle  to 
the  Romans  had  been  represented  as  spurious,  the  indig- 
nation of  the  High  Church  party  could  hardly  have  been 
greater.  The  question  was  not  literary  but  religious. 
Doubt  was  impiety.  The  Blessed  Martyr  was  an  inspired 
penman,  his  '  Icon'  a  supplementary  revelation.  One  grave 
divine  indeed  had  gone  so  far  as  to  propose  that  lessons 
taken  out  of  the  inestimable  little  volume  should  be  read 
in  the  churches."  x 

I  have  not  seen  the  book  which,  according  to  Lord 
Macaulay,  "  convinced  all  sensible  and  dispassionate  read- 
ers ; "  and  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  Lord  Macaulay  has 
not  strengthened  his  position  by  the  expression  of  his 
opinion,  that  all  who  should  not  be  convinced  by  Walker's 
book  exactly  as  he  was  convinced  were  hot-headed  fools  ; 
though  it  is  very  possible  that  many  of  such  persons  might 
be  neither  sensible  nor  dispassionate.  But  probably, 
everything  considered,  Dr.  John  Gauden  himself  is  even  a 
more  important  witness  than  this  old  clergyman  named 
Walker ;  and  Gauden  states  in  a  letter  to  Clarendon, 
printed  among  the  "  Clarendon  Papers,"  that  he  wrote  the 
EIKWV,  and  further,  that  Charles  II.  was  satisfied  that  he 
wrote  it.2 

It  is  said  that  James  L,  soon  after  his  arrival  in  Eng- 

1  Macaulay's  History  of  England,  iii.  399.     London,  1864. 

2  Clarendon  Papers,  vol.  iii.  Supplt.  p.  29. 


342      Struggle  for  Parliamentary  Government. 

land,  in  conversing  with  some  of  his  English  counsellors 
about  his  prerogative,  exclaimed  joyously,  "  Do  I  make 
the  judges  ?  Do  I  make  the  bishops  ?  Then,  God's 
wounds !  I  make  what  likes  me  law  and  gospel ! " 
The  case  of  Dr.  John  Gauden  and  "  Icon  Basilike "  is 
a  remarkable  example  of  the  truth  of  this  exclama- 
tion. Gauden  was  desirous  of  being  made  a  bishop, 
as  appears  from  several  letters  of  his  in  the  supplement 
to  the  third  volume  of  the  "  Clarendon  Papers."  With 
the  view  of  finding  favour  in  the  sight  of  those  who  had 
the  power  of  making  bishops,  he  wrote  a  book-  pur- 
porting to  be  meditations  of  Charles  I.,  of  which  Perin- 
chief  says,  "It  was  imagined  that  the  admiration  of 
following  ages  might  bring  it  into  the  canon  of  holy 
writings,  because  it  corresponded  so  nearly  with  the 
occasions,  and  was  so  full  of  the  piety  and  elegance  of 
David's  Psalms,  that  it  seemed  to  be  dictated  by  the 
same  spirit."  It  was,  in  fact,  dictated  by  the  love  of 
a  bishopric,  as  Gauden's  urgent  applications  sufficiently 
show.  And  as  Gauden  under  this  stimulus  wrote  a  book 
which  is  said  to  have  gone  through  fifty  editions  in  the 
first  year,  and  passed  for  gospel  with  Samuel  Johnson  x 
and  many  other  Jacobites,  whatever  its  merits  as  a  literary 
composition  may  be,  King  James's  saying  came  true,  that 
as  he  made  the  bishops  he  made  what  liked  him  gospel. 
On  the  3d  of  November  1660,  John  Gauden,  Master  of 
the  Temple,  was  elected  Bishop  of  Exeter,  and  translated 
to  Worcester  23d  May  1662 ;  ob.  loth  September  fol- 
lowing, aet.  57.2 

1  In  Johnson's  Dictionary  Gauden  is  always  quoted  under  the  title  of  "  King 
Charles." 

2  Succession  of  Archbishops  and  Bishops  from  the   Conquest  to  the  Pre- 
sent Time,   at  the  end  of  Sir  Harris  Nicolas's  Synopsis  of  the  Peerage  of 
England. 


The  King's  Trial  and  Execution.  343 

It  may  be  truly  said  that  the  death  of  King  Charles  I. 
delivered  Parliamentary  government  from  an  implacable 
enemy,  whose  power  to  work  mischief  has  abundantly  been 
manifested  in  the  preceding  pages  ;  but  whose  death  was 
to  break  the  spell  of  inviolability  and  consequent  impunity 
for  crimes  that  had  by  the  divine-right  fictions  of  the 
preceding  two  centuries  been  woven  round  kings. 


INDEX. 


ABERDEEN,  four  days'  massacre  at,  by  Charles  I.'s  lieutenant,  Mon- 
trose,  ii.  121-125. 

Administration,  the,  of  Laud  and  Strafford,  i.  71-116. 

Agmondesham,  a  public  theological  disputation  held  in  the  church 
of,  between  some  of  the  soldiers  of  the  Parliamentary  army  and 
some  sectaries,  which  lasted  from  morning  till  night  before  a 
crowded  congregation,  ii.  213,  note. 

Airlie,  the  Earl  of,  and  two  of  his  sons  join  Montrose,  ii.  120. 

Antrim,  Randolph  Macdonnell,  Earl  of,  a  commission  granted  to,  by 
Charles  I.,  to  raise  an  army  of  native  Irish  to  be  employed 
against  Scotland,  i.  226,  227.  Scheme  concerted  with  the 
Queen  that  Antrim  should  with  a  large  body  of  Irish  invade 
Scotland,  and  act  in  concert  with  Montrose,  i.  288-290.  Laid 
claim,  as  representative  of  the  Lords  of  the  Isles,  to  certain 
parts  of  the  Highlands  and  Isles  then  held  by  the  Argyle 
family,  ii.  1 10.  His  scheme  of  invading  Argyle's  country,  with 
the  sanction  of  King  Charles,  to  have  "  whatever  land  he  can 
conquer  from  them,"  ii.  in,  112.  His  scheme  objected  to  by 
Wentworth  as  impracticable,  ii.  112.  Burnet's  opinion  of 
Antrim,  ii.  1 1 3.  Irish  auxiliaries  sent  to  join  Montrose  under 
the  command  of  Alexander  Macdonnell,  called  Colkitto,  a 
Scottish  Islesman,  related  to  Antrim,  ii.  114. 

Archer,  John,  his  case  the  last  case  of  torture  in  England,  i.  166. 

Argyle,  Archibald  Campbell,  Marquis  of,  burns  the  vessels  that 
brought  over  Montrose' s  Irish  auxiliaries,  and  follows  Montrose 
with  a  strong  force,  but  does  not  overtake  him,  ii.  117,  126. 
Embarks  on  board  a  fishing-boat  when  Montrose  breaks  into 
Argyleshire,  ii.  127.  Is  defeated  by  Montrose  at  Inverlochy, 
n-  I33-I3S-  Interferes  with  General  Baillie  in  the  command 
of  the  armies  of  the  Covenanters,  which  consequently  were 
defeated  and  ruined,  ii.  160.  Is  defeated  by  Montrose  at 
Kilsyth,  ii.  161-163. 

Army,  the  King's,  composition  of,  i.  266,  267. 

Army,  Parliamentary,  composition  of,  i.  266;  remodelled,  ii.  138; 
composition  of,  ii.  212  and  note. 

Army  adjutators,  councils  of,  ii.  213  and  note,  214,  215.  Resolve 
on  obtaining  possession  of  the  King's  person,  having  come  to 


346  Index. 

the  conclusion  that  he  was  a  prisoner  of  war,  captured  by  their 
success  in  defeating  his  armies,  and  that  as  such  prisoner  of 
war  his  fate  depended  on  the  manner  in  which  he  had  carried 
on  war,  ii.  215,  216. 

BAILLIE,  Lieutenant-General,  found  himself  at  Kilsyth  and  Preston 
"  slighted  in  everything  belonging  to  a  commander-in-chief,"  ii. 
1 60.  Taken  prisoner  with  a  great  part  of  the  Scotch  army, 
when  Hamilton  was  defeated  by  Cromwell  in  Lancashire, 
ii.  274. 

Basing  House,  the  storming  of,  ii.  169-171. 

Basset,  with  Godolphin,  led  one  of  the  divisions  of  the  Royalists  at 
the  battle  of  Stratton,  i.  298. 

Basset,  Philip,  the  last  Chief  Justiciary  of  England,  i.  299,  note. 

Basset,  Ralph,  of  Drayton,  slain  at  Evesham  with  Simon  de  Mont- 
fort,  i.  299,  300. 

Basset,  Richard,  of  Weldon,  Chief  Justiciary  of  England  under 
Richard  I.,  Sir  Simonds  D'Ewes's  account  of  a  seal  of,  i. 
299,  note. 

Bastwick,  persecution  of,  by  Laud,  i.  96,  101. 

Berkeley,  Sir  John,  with  Sir  Bevill  Grenville,  led  one  of  the  divisions 
of  the  Royalists  at  the  battle  of  Stratton,  i.  298.  His  Memoirs 
partly  incorporated  into  Ludlovv's  Memoirs,  ii.  229.  His 
conferences  on  behalf  of  the  King  with  Cromwell  and  Ireton, 
ii.  229,  230.  His  account  of  the  King's  ungracious  reception 
of  the  Proposals  of  the  army,  ii.  233  Sent  by  the  King  from 
the  Isle  of  Wight  with  letters  to  Fairfax,  Cromwell,  and  Ireton, 
ii.  247.  His  cold  reception,  ii.  248. 

Black,  David,  a  Scotch  Presbyterian  minister,  claims  spiritual 
power  equal  to  that  claimed  by  the  Church  of  Rome,  i.  143, 

144- 

Blake,  Robert,  colonel,  afterwards  the  great  admiral  of  the  Common- 
wealth, defends  Lyme  with  great  ability,  ii.  80.  Contrast 
between  his  defence  of  Lyme  and  Taunton  and  Rupert's  defence 
of  Bristol,  ii.  169. 

Blake,  Samuel,  brother  of  the  preceding,  killed  in  a  quarrel  with  a 
Royalist  captain  of  array,  and  one  of  his  followers,  i.  251,  252. 

Bradshaw.  John,  appointed  their  president  by  the  commissioners  for 
the  trial  of  the  King,  ii.  312  and  note. 

Brentford,  the  King's  attack  on,  i.  282. 

Broghill,  Lord,  afterwards  Earl  of  Orrery,  the  story  told  to,  by 
Cromwell  of  the  letter  from  King  Charles  to  the  Queen,  said  to 
have  been  intercepted  by  Cromwell  and  Ireton  at  the  Blue  Boar 
Inn  in  Holborn,  ii.  234-237  and  note. 

Brooke,  Lord,  killed  while  engaged  in  the  siege  of  Litchfield  Close, 
i.  295,  296. 

Brownist,  a  term  of  reproach  used  by  the  Court  party  for  those  who 


Index.  347 

were  also  called  Puritans,  another  term  of  reproach,  derived 
from  Robert  Brown,  a  clergyman  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  who 
is  said  to  have  been  the  first  person  in  England  who  publicly 
avowed  the  principles  of  English  Independency,  i.  272,  273. 

Bruis,  Robert  de,  the  first  who  held  the  office  of  Chief-Justice  of  the 
King's  Bench,  appointed  52  Hen.  III.,  when  the  office  of  Chief 
Justiciary  of  England  was  discontinuepl,  i.  299,  note. 

Buckingham,  George  Villiers,  Duke  of,  minion  of  James  I.  and 
minister  of  Charles  I.,  who  in  making  such  an  appointment 
inflicted  an  insult  upon  Englishmen,  than  which  no  greater  had 
been  offered  to  a  nation  since  the  time  when  Caligula  destined 
his  horse  for  the  consulship,  i.  45.  His  impeachment  by  the 
House  of  Commons,  i.  51-53.  His  assassination  by  John 
Felton,  i.  70. 

Burton,  persecution  of,  by  Laud,  i.  96,  101. 

Byron,  Sir  John,  afterwards  Lord  Byron,  licentiousness  and  want  of 
discipline  of  the  troops  under  his  command,  i.  280. 

Byron,  Lord,  defeated  at  Nantwich  by  Sir  Thomas  Fairfax,  ii.  41. 
His  impetuosity,  by  dashing  over  the  ditch  that  separated  the 
armies  at  Marston  Moor,  threw  his  men  into  some  disorder, 
and  gave  Cromwell  some  advantages,  ii.  56.  Four  of  his 
brothers  slain  in  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor,  ii.  60,' note. 

CARLISLE,  Lucy  Percy,  Countess  of,  one  of  the  most  celebrated  women 
whose  portraits  have  been  painted  by  Vandyke,  i.  191.  Is  said 
to  have  given  Py'm  private  information  of  the  King's  design  to 
take  away  by  force  the  five  accused  members  of  the  House  of 
Commons — a  warning  which  was  thought  to  have  prevented 
bloodshed,  i.  245.  Cromwell  told  Berkeley  that  he  had  traced 
to  her  a  story  that  he  had  been  promised  the  vacant  title  of 
Earl  of  Essex,  and  the  post  of  Commander  of  the  Guard  ;  and 
that  she  alleged  she  had  received  her  intelligence  from  Berkeley 
himself,  ii.  184.  Meetings  of  Royalists  and  Presbyterians  at 
her  lodgings  in  Whitehall  for  holding  correspondence  with  the 
Queen  of  England,  then  in  France,  with  an  intent  to  put  condi- 
tions upon  the  Parliament,  and  to  bring  in  the  King  upon  their 
own  terms,  ii.  190,  note.  A  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Northum- 
berland, she  had  been  married  when  young  to  one  of  King 
James's  favourites,  and  now,  no  longer  a  youthful  beauty,  had 
turned  a  Presbyterian,  and  exerted  her  abilities  for  intrigue  to 
destroy  Cromwell,  ii.  243. 

Charles  I.,  accession  and  character  of,  i.  38-41.  In  the  beginning 
of  his  reign  governed  by  Buckingham,  i.  39.  The  French 
ambassadors  opinion  of,  i.  43.  First  Parliament  of,  i.  43,  44. 
Second  Parliament  of,  i.  48.  Third  Parliament  of,  i.  59.  (See 
Parliament.)  Gives  his  assent  to  the  Petition  of  Right,  i.  66. 
Reigns  for  eleven  years  without  Parliaments,  and  violates  the 


348  Index. 

Petition  of  Right,  by  the  illegal  imprisonment  of  Sir  John 
Eliot  and  others,  i.  70  ;  by  the  illegal  imposition  of  taxes,  such 
as  ship-money,  i.  117,  118;  by  the  mutilation  of  Prynne  and 
others,  i.  88  ;  by  the  extension  of  the  royal  forests,  and  building 
the  walls  before  people  consented  to  part  with  their  land,  i.  108  ; 
by  removing  some  judges  from  their  places  for  refusing  to  act 
against  their  oaths  and  consciences,  and  threatening  others  so 
that  they  durst  not  do  their  duties,  i.  86  and  note,  and  118. 
His  attempt  to  coerce  the  Scottish  Presbyterians,  i.  141,  153  ; 
defeated  by  a  tumult  at  Edinburgh  and  resisted  throughout 
Scotland,  i.  156-158.  Calls  his  fourth  Parliament  after  an 
interval  of  eleven  years,  i.  163.  Dissolves  it,  i.  164.  Calls 
his  fifth  Parliament — the  Long  Parliament,  i.  167.  His  con- 
duct in  regard  to  the  Irish  insurrection  and  massacre  of  English 
Protestants,  i.  225-227  and  notes.  Impeaches  and  attempts  to 
seize  the  five  members,  i.  242,  243.  Leaves  London,  to  which 
he  never  returned  till  brought  thither  a  prisoner,  i.  248.  Pre- 
pares for  war  against  the  Parliament,  i.  250-263.  Raises  his 
standard  at  Nottingham,  i.  262,  263.  Composition  of  his 
army  as  compared  with  that  of  the  Parliament  at  the  beginning 
of  the  war,  i.  266,  267.  Tells  his  army  they  would  meet  no 
enemies  but  traitors,  most  of  them  Brownists,  Anabaptists,  and 
Atheists,  who  would  destroy  both  Church  and  Commonwealth, 
i.  272.  His  letter  to  the  Earl  of  Newcastle  to  raise  an  army 
of  Roman  Catholics,  though  with  the  most  solemn  oaths  he 
denied  the  fact,  and  said  there  were  more  Papists  in  the  Parlia- 
ment's army  than  in  his,  i.  271,  272.  His  conduct  as  to  the 
Treaty  of  Uxbridge — makes  a  reservation  that  calling  the  two 
Houses  a  Parliament  was  not  acknowledging  them,  ii.  92,  93. 
Extract  from  one  of  his  letters  to  the  Queen  showing  how  much 
he  was  under  her  government,  ii.  93,  note.  Effect  produced  by 
the  reading  publicly  of  his  letters  taken  at  the  battle  of  Naseby, 
showing  how  little  his  actions  agreed  with  his  words,  and  how 
much  he  was  ruled  by  the  will  of  his  wife,  so  that  peace,  war, 
religion,  and  Parliament  should  beat  her  disposal,  ii.  153.  His 
intrigues  through  the  Earl  of  Glamorgan  with  the  Roman 
Catholics  in  Ireland,  ii.  172-174.  Letter  in  which  he  says  "  he 
hopes  to  be  able  to  draw  either  the  Presbyterians  or  Inde- 
pendents to  side  with  him  for  extirpating  the  one  the  other,"  ii. 
175.  Surrenders  himself  to  the  Scots,  who  deliver  him  to 
the  English  Parliament  for  ^200,000,  ii.  176,  177.  Sends 
privately  to  Ormonde,  desiring  him  not  to  obey  his  public 
orders,  and  empowers  Glamorgan  to  purchase  the  assistance  of 
the  Roman  Catholics  on  any  conditions,  ii.  177.  Seized  by 
Joyce,  ii.  216-220.  His  negotiations  and  intrigues  with  the 
army — "  He  gave  us  words,"  said  Ireton,  "  and  we  paid  him  in 
his  own  coin,"  ii.  181,  229-233.  Story  of  his  letter  to  the 


Index.  349 

Queen  said  to  have  been  intercepted  by  Cromwell  and  Ireton 
at  the  Blue  Boar  Inn  in  rfolborn,  ii.  235-237.  His  negotia- 
tions and  intrigues  with  the  Presbyterians,  whom  he  draws  on 
to  their  ruin  and  his  own,  ii.  238-241.  His  flight  to  the  Isle 
of  Wight,  ii.  246.  Privately  signs  the  treaty  with  the  Scots 
Commissioners  known  by  the  name  of  the  Engagement,  by 
which  he  agrees  to  confirm  the  Covenant,  and  to  concur  with 
the  Presbyterians  in  extirpating  the  sectaries,  particularly  the 
Independents  and  their  army,  ii.  249,  250.  Deprived  of  his 
chance  of  escape  from  the  Isle  of  Wight  by  means  of  a  fleet 
which,  under  the  Prince  of  Wales,  was  for  some  weeks  master 
of  the  sea,  because,  according  to  Clarendon,  "  some  persons  in 
France  were  wonderfully  fearful  that  he  should  have  made  his 
escape,"  ii.  250-252.  "Whereas  the  kings  and  queens  of  Eng- 
land for  many  ages  past  have,  by  their  sacred  touch  and  invoca-' 
tion  of  the  name  of  God,  cured  those  afflicted  with  the  disease 
called  the  King's  evil"  &c.,  the  confused  association  of  ideas 
between  royalty  and  the  power  to  work  miracles  had  much 
influence  in  raising  the  second  civil  war,  ii.  259-261.  Letters 
to  Ormonde  "  to  obey  all  my  wife's  commands,  and  not  to  obey 
any  public  command  of  mine/'  ii.  281,  note.  Remonstrance  from 
Lord  Fairfax  and  the  General  Council  of  the  army  to  the  House 
of  Commons,  demanding  justice  upon  the  King,  ii.  284-288. 
The  King's  trial  and  execution,  ii.  307-336.  Cromwell's 
remark,  "that  they  had  to  do  with  the  hardest-hearted  man 
upon  earth,"  borne  out  by  facts,  such  as  his  approval  of 
Montrose's  atrocities,  and  his  opinion  about  the  use  of  the  rack, 
when  Lord  Falkland,  Lord-Deputy  of  Ireland,  applied  for  some 
warrant  from  the  Council  as  to  putting  two  priests  to  the  rack, 
about  which  he  had  scruples  ;  Secretary  Conway,  in  his  answer, 
saying  he  has  mentioned  his  scruples  to  the  King,  "  who  is 
of  opinion  he  may  rack  them,  or  kill  them,  if  he  thinks  proper," 
ii.  320. 

Chief  Justiciary  of  England,  meaning  of  the  term,  and  difference 
between  Chief  or  Grand  Justiciary  of  England  and  Chief-Justice 
of  the  King's  or  Queen's  Bench,  i.  299,  300,  note. 

Clarendon,  Edward  Hyde,  Earl  of,  his  birth  and  education,  i.  168, 
169.  His  early  associates,  i.  169,  171.  In  looking  back  on 
some  of  these,  compares  himself  to  the  man  who  viewed  in  the 
morning  Rochester  bridge,  which  he  had  galloped  over  in  the 
night,  and  saw  that  it  was  broken,  i.  172.  Acquires  the  patron- 
age of  the  most  powerful  persons  about  the  Court,  which  made 
him  be  looked  upon  by  the  judges  in  Westminster  Hall  with 
much  "condescension,"  i.  169,  170.  In  his  History  has  dis- 
played great  ability  as  an  advocate,  i.  171,  173.  Comparison 
between  Clarendon  and  Thucydides,  i.  174,  175.  At  the  be- 
ginning of  the  Long  Parliament  speaks  and  acts  on  the  same 


35°  Index. 

side  with  Pym  and  Hampden,  i.  168.  After  the  execution  of 
Strafford  goes  over  to  the  Court,  the  obstacle  to  place  and 
power  at  Court  being  thus  removed,  i.  231.  Opposes  the 
Grand  Remonstrance,  i.  235-240.  Draws  the  papers  in  which 
King  Charles  calls  the  Almighty  to  witness  his  sincerity  in 
declaring  that  he  would  never  treat  with  the  Irish  rebels,  while 
he  was  treating  with  them  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  in  an 
army  of  them  to  enslave  England  and  Scotland,  i.  289  and 
note.  This  fact,  and  the  direct  opposition  between  the  state- 
ments in  his  History,  and  those  in  his  Life  and  in  the  Claren- 
don State  Papers,  afford  a  view  of  his  character,  i.  284  and 
note.  Says  that  "  Cromwell,  in  great  fury,  reproached  him 
[Hyde],  as  chairman  of  a  committee,  for  being  partial,"  ii.  15. 
Insinuates  more  than  once  that  Ireton,  whose  courage  had  been 
proved  on  many  fields  of  battle,  was  wanting  in  courage,  ii. 
227,  note.  In  his  account  of  the  battle  of  Dunbar  he  charges 
the  whole  Scottish  nation  with  cowardice,  and  in  that  of  the 
battle  of  Worcester  he  undertakes  to  prove  that  Charles  II.  was 
a  brave  man  and  his  army  an  army  of  cowards — charges  and 
statements  that  come  particularly  ill  from  a  man  who  in  all  this 
war  never  once  risked  his  own  person.  His  description  of  the 
Parliamentary  army  in  his  speech  to  the  Houses  as  Lord 
Chancellor,  September  13,  1660,  i.  38. 

Coke,  Sir  Edward,  when  Attorney-General,  insults  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  who  was  brought  to  the  bar  to  fight  for  his  life,  as  the 
Uuke  of  Norfolk  said  in  similar  circumstances,  without  a  wea- 
pon, i.  1 8,  19.  His  exertions  afterwards  in  preparing  and 
carrying  through  Parliament  the  PETITION  OF  RIGHT,  i.  59-66. 
His  character  in  his  later  years,  i.  67,  68. 

Cook,  John,  appointed  solicitor  to  the  commissioners  for  the  trial 
of  the  King  ;  afterwards  Chief-Justice  of  Munster,  when  Ireton 
was  Lord- Deputy  of  Ireland,  and  by  Cook's  assistance  estab- 
lished county  courts,  which  were  found  so  useful,  that  though  put 
down  at  the  Restoration,  they  were  re-established  in  the  reigns 
of  William  and  Anne,  ii.  313,  314. 

Cotton,  Sir  Robert,  furnishes  to  Sir  John  Eliot  two  precedents  from 
his  collection  of  ancient  records,  which  gave  such  offence  to  King 
Charles  that  the  speech  of  Eliot  in  which  he  cited  them  was 
afterwards  referred  to  as  the  speech  of  the  two  precedents,  i. 
49.  His  library  threatened  to  be,  and  afterwards  taken  away 
from  him  because  he  imparted  ancient  precedents  to  the  Lower 
House,  i.  51,  note — which  he  requested  Sir  Henry  Spelman  to 
signify  to  the  Council  had  been  the  cause  of  his  mortal 
malady. 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  complains  in  the  House  of  Commons  of  one  who 
"  preached  flat  Popery,"  i.  68.  Speaks  in  the  House  of  Commons 
vehemently  against  the  tyranny  of  Charles  I.  and  Archbishop 


Index.  351 

Laud,  i.  99.  His  personal  appearance  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Long  Parliament,  i.  177.  His  alleged  remark  that  if  the  Re- 
monstrance had  been  rejected  he  would  have  sold  all  he  had 
and  never  seen  England  more,  i.  238.  Captain  of  a  troop  of 
horse  at  the  battle  of  Edgehill,  i.  274.  His  description  of  the 
troops  of  the  Parliament  and  of  the  King's  troops  at  the  com- 
mencement of  the  war  between  the  King  and  Parliament,  ii.  4. 
His  birth  and  early  life,  ii.  5-10.  His  troop  of  Slepe  dragoons, 
ii.  10,  ii.  "A  common  spokesman  for  sectaries,"  ii,  8.  His 
"tenderness  towards  sufferers"  exemplified  in  Hyde's  account 
of  his  ''tempestuous  carriage"  on  a  committee,  of  which  Crom- 
well was  a  member  and  Hyde  chairman,  ii.  1 5  ;  and  in  the  case 
of  the  younger  Hotham,  i.  321  ;  and  that  of  the  Bedford 
Level,  ii.  1 6,  17.  Raises  a  regiment  of  horse,  ii.  1 9.  Composi- 
tion of  his  horse,  ii.  19,  20  ;  of  his  dragoons,  ii.  10-13. 
Richard  Baxter's  character  of  Cromwell,  ii.  22.  Cromwell's 
mode  of  using  his  military  materials  shown  in  the  short  letters 
to  his  officers  from  Samuel  Squire's  Journal,  ii.  27-33.  The 
effect  of  his  labours  in  selecting  and  disciplining  his  troops 
shown  in  the  skirmish  at  Gainsborough,  ii.  36  ;  and  other 
skirmishes,  ii.  37,  39 ;  and  most  remarkably  at  the  battle 
of  Marston  Moor.  ii.  56-58;  and  of  Naseby.  ii.  149,  150. 
Presbyterian  plot  against  Cromwell,  the  English  Presbyterians 
headed  by  Essex,  and  the  Scotch  by  London,  the  Lord  Chan- 
cellor of  Scotland,  ii.  84-88.  His  remarkable  speech  in  the 
House  of  Commons  on  the  9th  December  1644,  which  led  to 
the  self-denying  Ordinance  and  the  remodelling  of  the  Parlia- 
mentary army,  ii.  89.  His  successes  after  the  battle  of  Naseby, 
ii.  168-171.  Misrepresentations  of  the  Royalists  and  Presby- 
terians respecting  him,  ii.  180-193.  The  Presbyterian  party  in 
the  House  of  Commons  seek  to  destroy  him,  but  fail,  ii.  209. 
Hobbes's  false  assertions  respecting  him,  ii.  210-212.  .  Distinc- 
tion between  Cromwell  and  Ireton  somewhat  similar  to  the  impul- 
sive action  of  genius  and  the  more  deliberate  working  of  talent, 
shown  in  their  negotiations  with  the  King,  ii.  229,  230.  Lord 
Broghill's  account  of  the  story  told  him  by  Cromwell  respecting 
the  letter  said  to  have  been  intercepted  by  Cromwell  and  Ireton 
at  the  Blue  Boar  Inn  in  Holborn,  ii.  234-237  and  note.  Told 
Berkeley  that  he  had  traced  the  story,  fabricated  by  the  Royalists 
and  Presbyterians,  about  his  having  been  promised  the  title  of 
Earl  of  Essex  and  the  post  of  Commander  of  the  Guard,  to  the 
Countess  of  Carlisle,  ii.  184,  243.  Sends  word  to  Berkeley 
that  he  durst  not  see  him  ;  that  he  would  serve  His  Majesty  as 
long  as  he  could,  but  desires  him  not  to  expect  that  he  should 
perish  for  the  King's  sake,  ii.  248.  Another  attempt  of  the 
Royalists  and  Presbyterians  to  destroy  Cromwell  at  the  breaking 
out  of  the  second  civil  war,  ii.  265  ;  defeated,  266.  Proceeds 


352  Index. 

against  the  Royalists  in  South  Wales,  ii.  267  ;  defeats  them, 
268.  Proceeds  to  the  north  of  England  against  Langdale  and 
Hamilton,  ii.  273  ;  defeats  them,  ibid.  Proceeds  to  Scotland 
and  joins  with  Argyle  in  renewing  the  Covenant  and  getting  the 
Engagement  rescinded,  ii.  274.  Arrives  at  Whitehall  on  the 
night  after  the  Presbyterian  members  of  the  House  of  Commons 
had  been  expelled  by  the  army,  and  declared  "  that  he  had  not 
been  acquainted  with  the  design  ;  yet  since  it  was  done,  he  was 
glad  of  it,  and  would  endeavour  to  maintain  it,"  ii.  297,  298. 
Mrs.  Hutchinson's  testimony  as  to  the  sincerity  of  Cromwell  in 
urging  Fairfax  not  to  lay  down  his  commission,  ii.  305.  Lud- 
low  probably  antedated,  without  intentional  misrepresentation, 
the  time  when  he  first  began  to  have  doubts  of  Cromwell's  sin- 
cerity and  honesty,  ii.  193,  194.  His  opinion  of  King  Charles 
that  he  was  "  the  hardest-hearted  man  upon  earth/'  ii.  320. 
Evidence  that  Ludlow  was  in  error  in  saying  that  Cromwell 
immediately  after  the  battle  of  Worcester  entertained  designs 
against  the  Parliament,  as  shown  by  his  dismissing  and  sending 
home  the  militia,  ii.  191,  192.  The  sincere  respect  also  which, 
by  the  concurrent  testimony  of  many  witnesses,  Cromwell  enter- 
tained for  Ireton's  capacity,  honesty,  and  singleness  of  purpose, 
tells  in  Cromwell's  favour,  and  shows  that  if  Ireton  .had  lived 
and  Fairfax  remained  true  to  his  first  principles,  Cromwell's 
course  might  have  been  different  from  what  it  was,  ii.  192,  193, 
306.  Cromwell  must  have  known  that  if  he  was  not  what  he 
has  been  painted  by  Hyde,  and  Hobbes,  and  Hume,  neither  was 
he  without  blemish,  as  some  have  painted  him  ;  and  he  had 
magnanimity  enough  to  bear  that  the  picture  of  his  mind 
should  be  a  likeness,  though  an  unfavourable  likeness,  even  as 
he  told  Lely  not  to  leave  out  scars  and  wrinkles  in  the  portrait 
of  his  face,  ii.  1 89. 

DENBIGH,  Earl  of,  a  member  of  the  Council  of  State  of  the  Common- 
wealth, whose  peerage  was  created  by  James  I.,  i.  232. 

Dives,  Sir  Lewis,  infuses  suspicions  of  Cromwell's  having  been 
bought  over  by  the  Court  into  the  mind  of  John  Lilburne,  ii. 

183,  184. 
Dorset,  Sir   Edward  Sackville,   Earl  of,   Clarendon's  account  of,  a 

strange,  dark  picture  of  that  time,  i.  171,  172. 
Dragoons,  difference  between  "Horse"  and  "Dragoons,"  ii.  11-13. 

EDGEHILL,  battle  of,  i.  275-280. 

Eliot,  Sir  John,  his  speeches  against  Buckingham,  like  Cicero's 
against  Antony,  cost  him  his  life,  and  show  that  the  cause  he 
advocated  was  beyond  the  reach  of  Parliamentary  harangues,  i. 

Si,  52,  70. 
"  Engagement,"  the,   treaty  between  King    Charles    and   the  Scots 


Index.  353 

Commissioners,  by  which  Charles  agreed  to  confirm  the  Cove- 
nant, and  to  join  with  the  Presbyterians  in  extirpating  the  Inde- 
pendents, ii.  249,  250. 

Esmond,  Robert,  brutal  treatment  of,  by  Strafford,  which  was  said 
to  have  caused  his  death,  i.  105,  106.  Finch's  mode  of  dealing 
with  the  evidence  in  Esmond's  case,  i.  106,  107. 

Essex,  Robert  Devereux,  Earl  of;  words  used  by,  omitted  by  Bacon 
in  his  published  report  of  the  trial  on  the  Tudor  Government 
principle  of  blackening  the  memory  of  its  victims,  i.  n.  Also 
in  the  State  Paper  Office,  a  paper  entitled  "  Directions  to  the 
Preachers,"  for  the  purpose  of  employing  the  pulpits  in  the  busi- 
ness of  blackening  Essex's  memory,  i.  1 2. 

Essex,  Robert  Devereux,  Earl  of,  son  of  the  preceding,  appointed  to 
the  command  of  the  army  of  the  Parliament,  i.  255,  268.  His 
qualifications  for  that  appointment,  i.  268,  274,  278,  279,  284, 
302,  303. 

FAIRFAX,  Sir  Thomas,  afterwards  Lord  Fairfax  ;  his  character,  ii. 
3,  4.  His  account  of  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor,  ii.  61,  62, 
63,  and  note.  Appointed  to  the  command  of  the  Parliamentary 
army,  ii.  91.  Obtains  a  dispensation  from  Parliament  that 
Cromwell  should  command  the  horse,  ii.  144.  His  personal 
exertions  in  the  battle  of  Naseby,  ii.  1 50.  His  vigour  and  ability 
in  putting  an  end  to  the  first  civil  war,  ii.  174,  175  ;  and  to  the 
second,  262,  264.  His  inconsistent  conduct  afterwards,  ii.  303- 
306.  Sat  once  as  a  commissioner  for  the  trial  of  the  King;  ii. 
310.  Mischievous  effects  of  his  conduct,  ii.  306,  310.  311. 

Falkland,  Henry  Cary,  created  by  James  I.  Viscount  Falkland  in 
1620,  and  appointed  Lord-Deputy  of  Ireland  in  1622,  i.  232. 
His  character,  i.  233. 

Falkland,  Lucius  Cary,  Viscount,  son  of  the  preceding,  after  Straf- 
ford's  death,  when  the  bill  to  take  away  the  bishops'  votes  in  the 
House  of  Lords  was  reproduced,  said  he  had  changed  his  opinion 
on  that  as  well  as  on  many  other  subjects,  and  declared  his  deter- 
mination to  vote  against  it,  i.  231.  His  character,  i.  233-235. 
He  and  Hyde  oppose  Pym  and  Hampden  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, i.  236;  became  Secretary  of  State  to  Charles  I.  Killed 
at  the  first  battle  of  Newbury,  i.  310. 

Finch,  S.ir  John,  afterwards  Lord  Finch  ;  his  character,  i.  95-97. 
An  example  of  his  mode  of  dealing  with  evidence,  i.  106,  107. 
Impeached  by  the  Long  Parliament,  but  escapes  to  Holland,  i. 
184,  185. 

Fletcher,  Andrew,  of  Saltoun,  his  remarks  on  the  battle  of  Naseby,  ii. 
151,  152. 

GAINSBOROUGH,  skirmish  at,  ii.  35,  36. 

Gauden,  John,  the  author  of  "Icon  Basilike,"  as  he  states  himself  in  a 

VOL.  II.  Z 


354  Index. 

letter  to  Clarendon,  printed  among  the  "  Clarendon  Papers  ;  " 
stating,  moreover,  that  Charles  II.  was  satisfied  that  he  (Gau- 
den)  wrote  it,  ii.  341.  For  which  service  he  urgently  applied 
for  a  bishopric,  and  was  made  first  Bishop  of  Exeter,  and  then 
Bishop  of  Worcester,  ii.  342. 

Godolphin,  Sidney,  death  of,  a  friend  of  Sir  Bevill  Grenville,  of  Falk- 
land, and  of  Hobbes,  i.  300.  Character  of,  i.  300,  301,  and 
note. 

Grenville,  Sir  Bevill,  with  Sir  John  Berkeley,  led  one  of  the  divisions 
of  the  Royalists  at  the  battle  of  Stratton,  i.  298.  Killed  at  the 
battle  of  Lansdown,  ibid. 

Grey,  Thomas,  Lord,  of  Groby,  one  of  the  commissioners  for  the  trial 
of  the  King,  ii.  301. 

HAMILTON,  James  Hamilton,  Marquis  and  afterwards  Duke  of,  King 
Charles's  Commissioner  in  Scotland,  appointed  to  command  the 
fleet  sent  by  King  Charles  for  the  invasion  of  Scotland,  i.  161. 
Objects  to  a  scheme  proposed  by  Montrose  to  King  Charles  and 
Queen  Henrietta  Maria  on  account  of  its  impracticability,  i. 
288-290.  Raises  an  army  in  Scotland  and  marches  into  Eng- 
land against  the  English  Parliament  in  the  second  civil  war, 
ii.  272,  273.  Defeated  by  Cromwell,  273. 

Hampden,  John,  assessed  for  his  manor  of  Stoke  Mandeville  in 
Bucks  twenty  shillings  for  ship-money,  i.  125,  126  ;  and  resists 
the  payment  as  illegal,  but  judgment  was  given  for  the  Crown, 
i.  136.  One  of  the  five  members  of  the  House  of  Commons 
whom  King  Charles  impeached  and  came  to  the  House  to  seize, 
i.  242,  243.  Effect  of  a  short  speech  of  his  in  the  debate  on 
the  Grand  Remonstrance,  i.  237.  Raises  a  regiment  for  the 
Parliament,  i.  270.  Killed  at  Chalgrove  Field,  i.  305. 

Harrison,  Thomas,  Major- General.  His  wild  religious  enthusiasm, 
and  his  daring  as  a  soldier,  ii,  59.  Royalist  calumny  and  scur- 
rility respecting,  ii.  171. 

Haselrig,  Sir  Arthur,  one  of  the  five  members  whom  King  Charles 
came  to  the  House  of  Commons  to  seize,  i.  242.  His  remark 
thereon  sixteen  years  after  in  one  of  Cromwell's  Parliaments, 

i.  245- 

Hawkins,  his  case  the  first  instance  of  torture  in  England,  i.  7,  8. 

Henrietta  Maria,  Queen  of  Charles  I.  Her  character,  i.  287;  ii. 
250-252.  Her  name,  whether  justly  or  not,  connected  with 
the  Irish  massacre,  which  was  supposed  to  be  part  of  a  vast 
work  of  darkness  planned  at  Whitehall,  i.  226,  227,  and  notes. 
Goes  to  Holland  to  pledge  the  crown  jewels  for  money,  ammu- 
nition, and  arms  ;  and  to  procure,  by  the  intervention  of  the 
Pope's  nuncio,  4000  soldiers  from  France,  and  4000  from 
Spain,  i.  252,  253.  Scheme  of,  concerted  with  Montrose,  for 
having  a  massacre  of  the  Protestants  in  England,  after  the 


Index.  355 

fashion  of  Charles  IX.  and  Catharine  de  Medici's  punishment 
of  Paris,  of  punishing  London,  the  "  rebellious  city,"  i.  287-289. 
Impeached  by  the  House  of  Commons  of  high  treason — which 
impeachment  afterwards  passed  the  House  of  Lords  also — on 
the  grounds  that  she  had  pawned  the  crown  jewels  in  Holland, 
that  she  had  raised  the  rebellion  in  Ireland,  &c.,  i.  295. 

Highlanders  of  Scotland,  ii.  97-113. 

Holies,  Denzil,  one  of  the  five  members  of  the  House  of  Commons 
whom  King  Charles  impeached  and  came  to  the  House  to  seize, 
i.  242,  243.  Raises  a  regiment  for  the  Parliament,  i.  270. 
Son  of  the  first  Earl  of  Clare,  one  of  the  new  nobility  of  James 
I.,  ibid.  His  description  of  the  Parliamentary  army,  ii.  20  and 
note,  21.  Charges  Cromwell  with  cowardice,  ii.  73.  Attempts 
to  destroy  Cromwell,  ii.  86,  190,  note,  209.  Character  of,  by 
Mrs.  Hutchinson,  ii.  228. 

Hopton,  Sir  Ralph,  commanded  a  division,  with  Lord  Mohun,  at  the 
battle  of  Stratton,  for  which  he  was  created  Lord  Hopton  of 
Stratton,  i.  298. 

Horse,  difference  between  "  Horse  "  and  "  Dragoons,"  ii.  11-13. 

Hutton,  Mr.  Justice,  his  argument  against  ship-money,  i.  137  and 
note. 

Hyde,  Edward,  Earl  of  Clarendon,  see  Clarendon. 

"  ICON  BASILIKE,"  authorship  of,  ii.  341. 

Independents  —the  party  or  sect — which  became  from  the  abilities 
of  its  leaders  the  most  powerful  in  the  war  between  Charles  I. 
and  his  Parliament.  A  most  important  distinction  between  the 
Independents  and  Presbyterians  was,  that  while  the  Presby- 
terians were  intolerant  of  all  forms  of  Christianity  but  their  own, 
the  principles  of  the  Independents  were  toleration  to  all  deno- 
minations of  Christians  whose  religion  they  did  not  consider 
hostile  to  the  State,  ii.  77.  The  distinction  between  the  Pres- 
byterians and  Independents  in  the  English  Parliament — the 
former  being  represented  by  Essex,  Holies,  and  Stapleton,  the 
latter  by  Cromwell,  Vane,  and  St.  John — may  be  further  seen  in 
this,  that  it  was  the  object  of  Essex's  party  that  England  should 
select  the  men  who  were  to  lead  her  councils  and  command  her 
armies,  not  for  their  fitness,  but  for  their  wealth  and  rank;  while 
it  was  the  object  of  Cromwell's  party  that  fitness  alone  should 
be  looked  to  in  the  selection,  ii.  87.  Struggle  for  power  between 
the  Presbyterians  and  the  Independents,  ii.  203-210;  which 
ended  in  the  expulsion  of  the  Presbyterians  from  Parliament  by 
Pride's  Purge,  ii.  296-298.  The  Presbyterian  majority  had 
passed  a  vote  that  all  should  conform  to  the  Established 
Church,  which  was  then  Presbyterian,  which  was  aimed  at  the 
exclusion  from  Parliament  of  Cromwell,  Ireton,  Ludlow,  Blake, 
Algernon  Sydney,  and  other  leaders  of  the  Independents, 


356  Index. 

whereas  Cromwell's  principle,  as  an  Independent,  was  not  to 
put  force  on  the  conscience  of  any  man,  "  leaving  to  the  learned 
to  follow  the  learned,  and  the  wise  to  be  instructed  by  the  wise, 
while  poor,  simple,  wretched  souls  are  not  to  be  denied  a  drink 
from  the  stream  which  runneth  by  the  way  ; "  or  "  a  word  spoken 
in  season,  just  perhaps  when  you  are  riding  on  to  encounter 
an  enemy,  or  are  about  to  mount  a  breach,"  ii.  204,  205.  As  a 
Presbyterian,  and  liable  to  be  controlled  by  oligarchs  and 
preachers,  Cromwell  could  not  have  done  his  work  which  he 
did  so  perfectly  as  an  Independent  with  an  army  of  Inde- 
pendents, the  soldiers  of  which,  though  as  regarded  military 
discipline  they  formed  a  machine  that  worked  in  the  highest 
perfection,  in  religion  and  politics  refused  to  submit  their  judg- 
ments to  the  control  of  any  man  or  body  of  men,  ii.  212,  213, 
and  notes. 

Ireland,  Stafford's  government  of,  i.  109-116.  The  massacre  of 
English  Protestants  in  1641  in  Ireland,  usually  called  the 
Irish  massacre,  and  supposed  to  be  part  of  a  vast  work  of  dark- 
ness planned  at  Whitehall  (see  Henrietta  Maria,  Queen  of 
Charles  I.),  i.  223-227  and  note. 

Ireton,  Henry,  misrepresentations  of  the  Royalists  and  Presbyterians 
respecting,  ii.  180,  181,  187.  His  birth,  family,  and  education, 
ii.  194.  "Agreement  of  the  People"  and  other  papers  drawn 
up  by  him  with  the  assistance  of  Cromwell  and  Lambert,  ii. 
I95-I97-  His  military  qualifications,  ii.  197,  198.  His 
sacrifice  of  his  life  by  his  labours  as  Deputy  of  Ireland,  ii.  198- 
200.  His  refusal  of  the  Parliament's  grant  to  him  of  ^2000  a 
year,  ii.  202.  The  Remonstrance  of  the  army  to  the  House  of 
Commons  demanding  justice  on  the  King  chiefly  drawn  up  by 
him,  ii.  285. 

JAMES  I.,  character  of,  by  no  means  so  easy  to  decipher  as  those 
have  supposed  who  assume  that  he  was  simply  a  fool  and 
pedant ;  for  besides  being  really  a  wit,  in  the  quality  of  mind 
which  enables  a  man  to  accomplish  his  ends  he  was  a  match 
for  the  ablest  men  of  his  time,  and  in  the  success  with  which  he 
involved  some  parts  of  his  character  and  some  actions  of  his 
life  in  darkness  he  was  not  much  inferior  to  Tiberius,  i.  27- 
30.  The  saying  attributed  to  him,  that  as  he  made  the 
judges  and  the  bishops,  he  made  what  "liked  him  law  and 
gospel,"  came  true  as  to  the  bishops  in  the  case  of  Gauden  and 
"  Icon  Basilike,"  ii.  341,  342  ;  and  as  regards  the  judges,  see 
Bacon's  proceedings  in  the  case  of  Peacham,  i.  15;  and 
Popham's  in  the  case  of  Raleigh,  i.  13,  14. 

KIMBOLTON,  Lord,  eldest  son  T>f  the  Earl  of  Manchester,  called  to 
the  House  of  Lords  in  his  father's  lifetime,  impeached  at  the 


Index.  357 

same  time  with  the  five  members  of  the  House  of  Commons,  i. 
242. 

Kings  of  England,  Plantagenets,  Tudors,  and  Stuarts,  arts  employed 
by,  to  render  Parliamentary  representation  a  delusion,  i.  4—6  ; 
transformed  by  the  destruction  of  the  great  barons  in  the  civil 
war  of  the  fifteenth  century  into  Asiatic  sultans — torture  in- 
troduced by,  into  England,  i.  6-20. 

King's  evil,  the  piece  of  gold  given  to  those  who  were  touched  for 
the  disease  called  the  Kings  evil  accounts  for  the  miraculous 
cures,  great  numbers  of  poor  people  going  to  be  touched  for  the 
piece  of  gold  who  never  had  any  such  disease  as  that  called 
the  King's  evil,  ii.  260  and  note. 

LAUD,  Archbishop,  his  character,  i.  72,  73.  His  administration,  i. 
72—104.  Struggle  between  Laud  and  Williams  for  Court 
favour,  i.  80-87.  Laud's  persecution  of  Leighton,  i.  89,  90  ; 
of  Prynne,  i.  90,  91,  92,  94;  of  Prynne,  Bastwick,  and  Bur- 
ton, i.  96-102  ;  of  John  Workman,  103,  104.  His  struggle 
with  the  Scotch  Presbyterians,  i.  140,  141,  153-160.  His  im- 
peachment, i.  184.  His  trial  and  execution,  ii.  93-96. 

Leighton,  persecution  of,  by  Laud,  i,  89,  90. 

Lilburne,  John,  Lieutenant-Colonel,  having  been  committed  to  New- 
gate for  publishing  a  seditious  book,  confined  in  the  same  cell 
with  Sir  Lewis  Dives,  brother-in-law  of  Digby,  and  assured  by 
Dives,  as  if  he  had  received  his  intelligence  from  his  friends 
about  the  King,  that  Cromwell  had  been  bought  over,  pub- 
lishes pamphlets  on  the  subject,  and  raises  a  mutiny  in  one  or 
two  regiments,  ii.  183,  184,  243.  244.  Lilburne's  assertions  are 
completely  refuted  by  a  letter  of  Fairfax  to  the  Speaker  of  the 
House  of  Commons,  ii.  244,  245  ;  and  his  accusation  of  Crom- 
well of  being  the  murderer  of  the  mutineer  shot  by  order  of  a 
court-martial  called  by  Fairfax,  was  equally  refuted  by  the 
Attorney- General  at  Lilburne's  trial,  ii.  245,  246. 

Lilburne,  Robert,  Colonel,  brother  of  John  Lilburne,  with  600  horse 
defeats  1000  under  Sir  Richard  Tempest,  in  Lancashire, 
ii.  265. 

Ludlow,  Edmund,  served  in  the  life-guard  of  the  Earl  of  Essex  at  the 
battle  of  Edgehill,  i.  277,  note.  His  character,  ii.  193.  Was 
Lieutenant-General  of  the  Horse  in  Ireland,  and,  after  Ireton's 
death,  Commander-in-Chief  in  Ireland  till  the  appointment  of 
Fleetwood.  During  the  four  years  he  served  in  Ireland  he 
expended  ^4500  of  his  own  estate  more  than  all  the  pay  he 
received,  ii.  202.  Falls  into  some  errors  respecting  Cromwell's 
negotiations  with  the  King,  by  trusting  too  much  to  Sir  John 
Berkeley's  Memoirs,  which  he  had  seen  in  manuscript  at  Geneva, 
ii.  1 8 1,  182,  229,  and  note.  The  measure  of  turning  the 
Presbyterians  out  of  the  House  of  Commons  by  force  devised 


358  Index. 

principally  by  Ireton  and  Ludlow,  ii.  292—298.  Ludlow's 
account  of  a  conference  at  which  Cromwell  "  would  not  declare 
his  judgment  either  for  a  monarchical,  aristocratical,  or  de- 
mocratical  government,  and  having  learned  what  he  could  of 
the  inclinations  of  those  present  at  the  conference,  took  up  a 
cushion  and  flung  it  at  my  head,  and  then  ran  down  the  stairs," 
ii.  266,  note. 

MAESTRICHT,  massacre  at,  by  Philip's  soldiers  under  Farnese,  when 
"  a  cry  of  agony  arose  which  was  distinctly  heard  at  the  dis- 
tance of  a  league,"  ii.  2 1 4,  note. 

Manchester,  Edward  Montagu,  Earl  of — formerly  known  as  Lord  Kim- 
bolton,  but  become  Earl  of  Manchester  by  his  father's  death — 
joined  with  Oliver  Cromwell  in  the  command  of  the  associated 
eastern  counties,  ii.  39.  Charge  brought  against  him  by  Crom- 
well of  letting  slip  an  opportunity  to  put  an  end  to  the  war 
after  the  second  battle  of  Newbury,  ii.  83.  Counter-charges 
brought  against  Cromwell  by  Manchester,  Essex,  and  Holies — 
among  which  was  the  charge  that  Cromwell  had  said  "  it  would 
never  be  well  with  England  till  the  Earl  of  Manchester  was 
made  plain  Mr.  Montagu  ;  that  the  Assembly  of  Divines  was 
a  pack  of  persecutors  ;  and  that  if  the  Scots  crossed  the  Tweed 
only  to  establish  Presbyterianism,  he  would  as  soon  draw  his 
sword  against  them  as  against  the  King,"  ii.  83,  84. 

Marston  Moor,  battle  of,  ii.  43-78. 

Mohun,  Lord,  with  Sir  Ralph  Hopton,  leads  a  division  of  the 
Royalists  at  the  battle  of  Stratton,  i.  298. 

Montfort,  Simon  de,  writs  issued  by,  for  the  return  of  citizens  and 
burgesses  to  Parliament,  i.  2,  3. 

Montgomery,  Philip  Herbert,  created  Earl  of,  by  King  James,  a 
member  of  the  Rump,  and  of  the  first  Council  of  State  of  the 
Commonwealth,  i.  232. 

Montrose,  James  Graham,  Earl  and  afterwards  Marquis  of,  scheme 
concerted  by,  with  the  Queen,  and  approved  of  by  the  King,  of 
destroying  the  English  and  Scotch  Protestants  by  armies  com- 
posed of  Irish,  of  Islesmen,  and  of  Scotch  Highlanders,  i.  288, 
289.  His  victories  and  cruelties  in  Scotland,  ii.  113-127, 
138.  His  massacre  of  the  unarmed  citizens  of  Aberdeen,  ii. 
121-125.  His  defeat  at  Philiphaugh  by  David  Leslie,  ii.  165. 
His  character,  ii.  167. 

Musket,  exaggerated  notion  of  its  powers  when  first  introduced  ;  its 
inefficiency  from  the  clumsy  machinery  for  discharging  it,  and 
the  want  of  the  bayonet,  as  well  as  from  the  ball  being  put 
loose  into  the  gun,  ii.  117,  1 18. 

Musketeers,  proportion  of,  to  pikemen,  in  a  regiment,  ii.  14. 

NASEBY,  battle  of,  ii.  146-151. 


Index.  359 

Newbury,  first  battle  of,  i.  308-310  •  second  battle  of,  ii.  82,  83. 

Newcastle,  Earl,  afterwards  Marquis  of,  the  King's  letter  to,  com- 
manding him  to  levy  Roman  Catholics,  i.  272,  note.  After  the 
loss  of  the  battle  of  Marston  Moor,  instantly  left  England,  ii. 
74.  His  character,  ii.  74,  75. 

Norfolk,  Duke  of,  not  allowed  a  fair  trial,  but,  as  he  said  on  his 
trial,  "brought  to  fight  without  a  weapon,"  i.  15.  The  Duke 
also  says,  "  I  pray  you  let  the  witnesses  be  brought  face  to  face 
to  me ;  I  have  often  required  it,  and  the  law,  I  trust,  is  so." 
To  which  the  answer  given  is,  "  The  law  was  so  for  a  time,  in 
some  cases  of  treason  ;  but  since,  the  law  hath  been  found  too 
hard  and  dangerous  for  the  Prince,  and  it  hath  been  repealed." 
It  had  not  been  "  repealed,"  for  even  then  the  Crown  had  not 
the  power  either  to  make  or  repeal  a  law,  i.  1 3. 

PARLIAMENT  had  existed  in  England  for  400  years  when  Charles  I. 
came  to  the  throne,  but  Parliamentary  government  had  not  been 
established  ;  Parliament  being  used  by  the  kings  merely  as  an 
instrument  for  obtaining  money  more  easily,  i.  23. 

Parliament,  the,  summoned  after  the  battle  of  Lewes,  by  Simon  de 
Montfort,  who  issued  writs  dated  I2th  December  1264,  requir- 
ing the  sheriffs  to  return,  besides  two  knights  for  each  shire, 
two  citizens  for  each  city,  and  two  burgesses  for  each  borough, 
i.  2-4. 

Parliament,  the  first,  of  Charles  I.,  i.  43,  44.  The  second,  of  Charles 
I.,  in  which  the  Lord  Keeper  told  the  Commons  that  if  they  did 
not  vote  a  sufficient  and  unconditional  supply,  they  must  expect 
to  be  dissolved ;  and  the  King  said,  "  Remember  that  Parlia- 
ments are  altogether  in  my  power  ;  and  as  I  find  the  fruits  of 
them  good  or  evil, -they  are  to  continue  or  not  to  be,"  i.  48-50. 
The  principal  business  of  the  Commons  in  this  Parliament  was 
the  impeachment  of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  i.  51-55. 

Parliament,  the  third,  of  Charles  I.,  i.  59.  Memorable  for  having 
passed  the  Petition  of  Right,  grounded  on  Magna  Charta,  and 
the  numerous  statutes  confirming  it,  and  on  other  ancient 
statutes,  i.  60-66;  which  Petition  of  Right  was  to  be  a  dead 
letter  for  more  than  ten  years,  i.  70. 

Parliament,  the  fourth,  of  Charles  I.  met  I3th  April  1640,  i.  163; 
dissolved  three  weeks  after  it  had  assembled,  i.  164. 

Parliament,  the  fifth,  of  Charles  I.,  known  as  the  Long  Parliament, 
met  3d  November  1640,  i.  167.  Agreement  of  parties  in,  at 
first,  i.  1 68.  Proceeds  to  the  redress  of  grievances,  i.  178. 
Impeachment  of  the  Earl  of  Strafford,  i.  179-183  ;  of  Laud,  of 
Windebank,  of  Finch,  i.  184,  185.  Punishment  of  the  judges 
who  had  upheld  ship-money,  i.  185,  186.  Act  for  triennial 
Parliaments,  i.  186.  Act  declaring  ship-money  illegal,  i.  187. 
Act  abolishing  the  Star  Chamber,  ibid.  Act  abolishing  the 


360  Index. 

Court  of  High  Commission,  i.  188.  Acts  abolishing  the  pre- 
rogative of  purveyance,  abolishing  that  of  compulsory  knight- 
hood, and  determining  the  boundaries  of  royal  forests,  i.  189. 
Seems  suddenly  to  have  divided  itself  into  two  great  parties  im- 
mediately after  the  execution  of  Strafford,  i.  228,  231.  The 
Grand  Remonstrance,  i.  228,  236-241.  The  King's  attempt 
to  seize  five  members  of  the  House  of  Commons,  i.  242-245. 
Prepares  for  war  against  the  King,  i.  250-263.  Commence- 
ment of  the  war,  i.  264.  Passes  the  self-denying  Ordinance,  ii. 
91. 

Parliament,  Irish,  Strafford's  treatment  of,  i.  110-112. 

Parliament,  Scottish,  by  means  of  the  contrivance  called  "  Lords  of 
the  Articles,"  completely  in  the  power  of  the  Crown,  i.  149,  150. 

Peacham,  examined  upon  interrogatories  "  before  torture,  in  torture, 
between  torture,  and  after  torture,"  i.  15. 

Pembroke,  Philip  Herbert,  Earl  of  Montgomery,  succeeds  his  brother 
as  Earl  of,  in  1630,  was  a  member  of  the  Rump  and  also  of  the 
first  Council  of  State  of  the  Commonwealth,  i.  232. 

Pikemen,  proportion  of,  to  musketeers  in  a  regiment,  ii.  14. 

Pikes,  being  from  fifteen  to  eighteen  feet  long,  and  of  considerable 
weight,  required  men  of  some  strength  and  height  to  handle  them 
efficiently,  ii.  14. 

Popham,  Chief-Justice,  i.  13. 

Presbyterians,  Scottish,  Laud's  struggle  with,  i.  153-160. 

Presbyterian  ministers'  influence  on  Lady  Fairfax,  and  through  her 
on  Lord  Fairfax,  and  the  consequences  of  it,  ii.  3,  4,  310,  31 1. 

Presbyterian,  the  Established  Church  in  England,  for  a  certain  time 
during  the  Long  Parliament,  ii.  204,  note. 

Prynne,  William,  a  barrister  of  Lincoln's-Inn,  of  great  legal  learning. 
His  persecution  by  Archbishop  Laud,  i.  90-100.  His  legal 
argument  that  neither  by  the  common  nor  statute  law  of  Eng- 
land could  any  man  lose  his  ears,  or  any  member  but  his  hand, 
and  that  in  the  case  of  striking  in  the  King's  palace  or  courts  of 
justice,  i.  88,  89. 

Puritan,  a  term  of  reproach,  given  in  derision  to  those  who  did  not 
follow  the  Court  fashions  in  morals  and  religion,  i.  39.  Those 
called  Puritans  were  also  called  Brownists  by  the  Court  party 
and  the  Court  poets,  who  made  those  persons  the  subjects  of 
such  jokes  as  seemed  likely  to  be  acceptable  to  their  patrons, 
as  "  I  had  as  lief  be  a  Brownist  as  a  politician,"  "  If  I  thought 
he  was  a  Puritan,  I'd  beat  him  like  a  dog,"  i.  272,  273.  King 
Charles  I.  told  his  army  they  would  meet  no  enemies  but  traitors, 
most  of  them  Brownists,  Anabaptists,  and  Atheists,  who  would 
destroy  both  Church  and  Commonwealth,  i.  272.  Whether  or 
not  the  Presbyterians  are  to  be  classed  under  the  denomination 
of  Puritans,  it  is  certain  that  the  Puritans  of  the  Long  Parlia- 
ment, who  were  the  leaders  in  Parliament  as  well  as  in  fields 


Index.  36 1 

of  battle,  were  not  Presbyterians,  but  Independents,  and  might 
derive  their  denomination  from  Robert  Brown  rather  than  from 
John  Calvin,  i.  140,  272,  273. 

Pym,  John,  his  speech  against  the  Earl  of  Strafford  at  the  opening 
of  the  Long  Parliament,  i.  179-181.  His  impeachment  of 
Strafford,  182.  His  speech  at  Stafford's  trial  before  the  Lord 
High  Steward  and  the  Peers  as  chief  manager  of  the  impeach- 
ment for  the  Commons,  i.  193,  194.  His  reply  to  Stafford's 
defence,  i.  204-206.  Informs  the  House  of  the  army  plot,  i.  209. 
One  of  the  five  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  impeached 
by  the  King,  i.  242.  Said  by  contemporary  writers  to  have  re- 
ceived private  information  from  the  Countess  of  Carlisle  of  the 
King's  design  to  take  by  force  the  five  accused  members,  i.  245. 
His  death  and  public  funeral,  i.  315.  The  House  undertook 
to  pay  his  debts,  not  exceeding  ;£  10,000,  i.  317.  Contrast  be- 
tween Pym's  public  and  Hampden's  obscure  funeral,  i.  318,  319. 

RALEIGH,  Sir  Walter,  not  allowed  a  fair  trial;  inhuman  treatment 
of,  by  James  I.,  i.  16-18.  "I  beseech  you,  my  lords,"  said 
Raleigh,  "  let  Cobham  be  sent  for — Good,,  my  lords,  let  my 
accuser  come  face  to  face.  Were  the  case  but  a  small  copy- 
hold, you  would  have  witnesses  or  good  proof  to  lead  the  jury 
to  a  verdict,  and  I  am  here  for  my  life,"  i.  1 3.  Raleigh's  sen- 
tence at  his  trial  at  Winchester,  due  to  the  jury  having  been 
packed — the  jury  first  nominated  being  changed  over-night,  and 
others  who  were  to  be  depended  on  substituted  for  them,  i.  1 8. 
Sir  Thomas  Wilson,  who  was  employed  by  James  I.  to  draw 
confession  from  Raleigh  under  the  show  of  sympathy,  repre- 
sents the  complaints  of  Raleigh,  who  then  in  his  67th  year  was 
suffering  from  an  intermittent  fever  and  ague,  and  a  complica- 
tion of  other  painful  disorders,  as  being  either  wholly  counter- 
feited or  greatly  exaggerated  ;  and  the  proof  he  alleges  is,  that 
Raleigh,  with  whom  he  pretended  to  sympathise,  sometimes 
forgot  his  sufferings,  when  his  powerful  mind  was  led  to  look 
back  on  the  actions  of  his  adventurous  life,  i.  17,  18. 

Rupert,  Prince,  his  merits  as  a  cavalry  officer,  i.  266,  267.  Showed 
considerable  strategic  ability  at  Marston  Moor,  ii.  44,  46,  47. 
His  rapacity  and  cruelty  made  him  odious  even  to  the  Royalists, 
and  merited  the  description  given  of  him  by  the  Council  of 
State  of  the  Commonwealth  in  their  instructions  to  Admiral 
Blake  when  sent  in  pursuit  of  him,  of  "  Hostis  humani  generis," 
ii.  66.  67,  and  note.  Cases  reported  by  Admiral  Penn  of  his 
tyranny  and  cruelty,  ii.  68,  note. 

SALISBURY,  William  Cecil,  Earl  of,  though  his  father  had  been 
minister  of  James  I.,  to  whom  he  owed  his  peerage,  was  a 
member  of  the  government  called  the  Commonwealth,  i.  232. 

VOL.   II.  2  A 


362  Index. 

Say,  Lord,  refuses  to  pay  ship-money,  and  puts  in  a  demurrer  to  the 
Constable's  plea,  that  by  virtue  of  the  king's  writ  he  did  distrain 
the  Lord  Say's  cattle  for  not  paying  the  ship-money,  i.  135, 
136. 

Scotland,  the  people  of,  "much  enslaved  to  their  lords,"  ii.  272, 
273.  As  to  the  "pit  and  gallows,"  see  i.  147,  148,  and 
notes. 

Ship-money,  i.  117.  Payment  of,  resisted  by  several  persons — 
by  Sir  John  Stanhope,  i.  134;  by  Lord  Say,  i.  135  ;  by  John 
Hampden,  who  engaged  Oliver  St.  John  and  Robert  Holborne 
as  his  counsel ;  and  after  twelve  days'  argument  in  the  Ex- 
chequer Chamber  before  the  twelve  judges,  judgment  was  given 
for  the  Crown,  i.  136,  137. 

Spencer,  Lord,  letters  of,  to  his  wife  showing  the  peculiar  position  of 
some  of  the  Royalists,  i.  258.  Fell  at  the  battle  of  Newbury, 
i.  310. 

Star  Chamber;  Crompton,  in  his  "Jurisdiction  of  Courts"  (title, 
Star  Chamber},  produces  no  precedents  of  such  punishments 
as  Laud  inflicted,  i.  89.  In  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  the  audience 
assembled  to  .secure  places  in  the  Star  Chamber  at  3  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  i.  74,  note. 

Strafford,  Thomas  Wentworth,  Earl  of,  his  character,  i.  71,  72,  74, 
75.  His  policy  is  expressed  in  the  word  Thorough,  used  in 
the  correspondence  between  him  and  Laud ;  which  word  meant 
that  the  aim  and  object  of  him  and  Laud  were  to  destroy  utterly 
all  remnants  of  the  freedom  of  the  ancient  English  constitution 
that  had  survived  the  tyranny  backed  by  the  rack  of  the  last 
two  centuries ;  and  that  the  means  to  that  end  was  the  esta- 
blishment of  a  standing  army  in  England,  i.  118,  119.  His 
brutal  treatment  of  Robert  Ermond,  i.  105,  106.  His  govern- 
ment of  Ireland,  i.  109-116.  Impeachment  of,  i.  182,  183. 
Trial  and  execution  of,  i.  190-221. 

TORTURE,  never  legal  in  England,  i.  7-10.  But  the  English 
Government  was  for  two  hundred  years  a  government  of  the 
rack,  i.  7-20.  First  case  of,  in  England,  i.  7.  In  England, 
torture  was  not  subject  to  those  rules  and  restrictions  under 
which  it  was  applied  in  those  countries  which  had  adopted  the 
Roman  law,  i.  8.  The  habitual  use  of  the  rack  and  other  kinds 
of  torture,  and  the  abolition  of  the  ancient  rule  of  evidence,  that 
the  accuser  and  accused  should  be  brought  face  to  face,  lead  to 
the  conclusion  that  it  was  the  purpose  of  the  latter  Plantagenets, 
and  of  the  Tudors  and  Stuarts,  to  destroy  the  English  constitu- 
tion, and  to  substitute  what  was  styled  prerogative  for  the 
ancient  laws  of  England,  i.  10,  n,  13,  33.  First  case  of 
torture  in  England,  i.  7,  8.  Last  case  of,  in  England,  i.  166. 

Turenne,  his  opinion  of  Cromwell's  soldiers  in  his  army,  ii.  21. 


Index.  363 

VOLTAIRE — had  so  many  of  those  marks  of  a  lordship  or  manor 
indicated  throughout  Europe  by  the  furca  or  gallows,  on  an 
estate  he  had  lately  purchased  in  Burgundy,  that  he  declared 
he  could  accommodate  half  the  Kings  in  Europe,  but  thought 
them  hardly  high  enough  for  the  purpose,  i.  148,  note. 

WALLER'S  Plot,  i.  292-295. 

WTaller,  Sir  William,  commands  under  Essex  a  detachment  of  the 
army  of  the  Parliament,  i.  297. 

Warwick,  the  Earl  of,  appointed  by  the  Parliament  to  the  command 
of  the  fleet,  i.  255.. 

Williams,  Lord-Keeper  and  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  struggle  between,  and 
Laud  for  Court  favour,  i.  80-87. 

Wilson,  Sir  Thomas,  employed  by  James  I.  to  entrap  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh  into  words  that  might  inculpate  him  ;  being,  in  accord- 
ance with  a  practice  introduced  when  the  Roman  imperial 
tyranny  was  at  its  height,  shut  up  in  the  Tower  with  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh  for  upwards  of  a  month  for  the  purpose  of 
drawing  from  him,  under  the  show  of  sympathy,  materials  for 
a  criminal  accusation.  Directed  to  draw  from  Raleigh  such 
information  as  might  promote  the  objects  of  the  King ;  his 
destruction.  Raleigh's  servant  dismissed,  and  a  man  appointed 
by  Wilson  in  his  place ;  Lady  Raleigh  excluded  from  the 
Tower,  but  permitted  to  correspond  with  her  husband,  and 
the  notes  she  sent,  and  Raleigh's  answers,  intercepted  by 
Wilson's  man  and  sent  to  the  King,  i.  16,  17. 

Workman,  John,  lecturer  of  St.  Stephen's  Church,  Gloucester, 
Archbishop  Laud's  unrelenting  persecution  of,  i.  103. 

Wren,  Bishop  of  Norwich,  reported  to  have  required  the  church- 
wardens in  every  parish  of  his  diocese  to  inquire  whether  any 
persons  presumed  to  talk  of  religion  at  their  tables  and  in 
their  families,  i.  104. 

ZUTPHEN,  massacre  at,  by  the  Spanish  soldiers  of  Alva,  when,  in 
the  words  of  a  letter  quoted  by  Mr.  Motley,  "a  wail  of  agony 
was  heard  above  Zutphen  last  Sunday,  a  sound  as  of  a  mighty 
massacre,"  ii.  214. 


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Bis set,  Andrew 

The  history  of  the  struggle] 
for  parliamentary  government 
in  England