LVII. CHARLES I
{1644.} The king had hitherto, during the course of the war, obtained many advantages over the parliament, and had raised himself from that low condition into which he had at first fallen, to be nearly upon an equal footing with his adversaries. Yorkshire, and all the northern counties, were reduced by the marquis of Newcastle; and, excepting Hull, the parliament was master of no garrison in these quarters. In the west, Plymouth alone, having been in vain besieged by Prince Maurice, resisted the king's authority; and had it not been for the disappointment in the enterprise of Gloucester, the royal garrisons had reached, without interruption, from one end of the kingdom to the other, and had occupied a greater extent of ground than those of the parliament. Many of the royalists flattered themselves, that the same vigorous spirit which had elevated them to the present height of power would still favor their progress, and obtain them a final victory over their enemies: but those who judged more soundly, observed, that, besides the accession of the whole Scottish nation to the side of the parliament, the very principle on which the royal successes had been founded, was every day acquired more and more by the opposite party. The king's troops, full of gentry and nobility, had exerted a valor superior to their enemies, and had hitherto been successful in almost every rencounter; but in proportion as the whole nation became warlike by the continuance of civil discords, this advantage was more equally shared; and superior numbers, it was expected, must at length obtain the victory..The king's troops, also, ill paid, and destitute of every necessary, could not possibly be retained in equal discipline with the parliamentary forces, to whom all supplies were furnished from unexhausted stores and treasures.[*]
* Rush, vol vi. p, 560.
The severity of manners, so much affected by these zealous religionists, assisted their military institutions and the rigid inflexibility of character by which the austere reformers of church and state were distinguished, enabled the parliamentary chiefs to restrain their soldiers within stricter rules and more exact order. And while the king's officers indulged themselves even in greater licenses than those to which during times of peace they had been accustomed, they were apt both to neglect their military duty, and to set a pernicious example of disorder to the soldiers under their command.
At the commencement of the civil war, all Englishmen who served abroad were invited over, and treated with extraordinary respect; and most of them, being descended of good families, and by reason of their absence unacquainted with the new principles which depressed the dignity of the crown, had enlisted under the royal standard. But it is observable, that though the military profession requires great genius and long experience in the principal commanders, all its subordinate duties may be discharged by ordinary talents and from superficial practice. Citizens and country gentlemen soon became excellent officers; and the generals of greatest fame and capacity happened, all of them, to spring up on the side of the parliament. The courtiers and great nobility, in the other party, checked the growth of any extraordinary genius among the subordinate officers; and every man there, as in a regular established government, was confined to the station in which his birth had placed him.
The king, that he might make preparations during winter for the ensuing campaign, summoned to Oxford all the members of either house who adhered to his interests; and endeavored to avail himself of the name of parliament, so passionately cherished by the English nation.[*] The house of peers was pretty full; and, beside the nobility employed in different parts of the kingdom, it contained twice as many members as commonly voted at Westminster. The house of commons consisted of about one hundred and forty; which amounted not to above half of the other house of commons.[**]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 559.
** Rush. vol. vi. p. 566, 574, 575.
So extremely light had government hitherto lain upon the people that the very name of excise was unknown to them; and among the other evils arising from these domestic wars was the introduction of that impost into England. The parliament at Westminster having voted an excise on beer, wine, and other commodities, those at Oxford imitated the example, and conferred that revenue on the king. And, in order to enable him the better to recruit his army, they granted him the sum of one hundred thousand pounds, to be levied by way of loan upon the subject. The king circulated privy seals, countersigned by the speakers of both houses, requiring the loan of particular sums from such persons as lived within his quarters.[*] Neither party had as yet got above the pedantry of reproaching their antagonists with these illegal measures.
The Westminster parliament passed a whimsical ordinance, commanding all the inhabitants of London and the neighborhood to retrench a meal a week, and to pay the value of it for the support of the public cause.[**] It is easily imagined that, provided the money were paid, they troubled themselves but little about the execution of their ordinance.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 590.
** Dugdale, p. 119. Rush. vol. vi. p. 748.
Such was the king's situation, that, in order to restore peace to the nation, he had no occasion to demand any other terms than the restoring of the laws and constitution; the replacing him in the same rights which had ever been enjoyed by his predecessors; and the reëstablishing on its ancient basis the whole frame of government, civil as well as ecclesiastical. And that he might facilitate an end seemingly so desirable, he offered to employ means equally popular, a universal act of oblivion, and a toleration or indulgence to tender consciences. Nothing therefore could contribute more to his interests than every discourse of peace, and every discussion of the conditions upon which that blessing could be obtained. For this reason, he solicited a treaty on all occasions, and desired a conference and mutual examination of pretensions, even when he entertained no hopes that any conclusion could possibly result from it.
For like reasons, the parliament prudently avoided, as much as possible, all advances towards negotiation, and were cautious not to expose too easily to censure those high terms which their apprehensions or their ambition made them previously demand of the king. Though their partisans were blinded with the thickest veil of religious prejudices, they dreaded to bring their pretensions to the test, or lay them open before the whole nation. In opposition to the sacred authority of the laws, to the venerable precedents of many ages, the popular leaders were ashamed to plead nothing but fears and jealousies, which were not avowed by the constitution, and for which neither the personal character of Charles, so full of virtue, nor his situation, so deprived of all independent authority, seemed to afford any reasonable foundation. Grievances which had been fully redressed; powers, either legal or illegal, which had been entirely renounced; it seemed unpopular, and invidious, and ungrateful, any further to insist on.
The king, that he might abate the universal veneration paid to the name of parliament, had issued a declaration, in which he set forth all the tumults by which himself and his partisans in both houses had been driven from London; and he thence inferred, that the assembly at Westminster was no longer a free parliament, and, till its liberty were restored, was entitled to no authority. As this declaration was an obstacle to all treaty, some contrivance seemed requisite in order to elude it.
A letter was written in the foregoing spring to the earl of Essex, and subscribed by the prince, the duke of York, and forty-three noblemen.[*] They there exhort him to be an instrument of restoring peace, and to promote that happy end with those by whom he was employed. Essex, though much disgusted with the parliament, though apprehensive of the extremities to which they were driving, though desirous of any reasonable accommodation, yet was still more resolute to preserve an honorable fidelity to the trust reposed in him. He replied, that as the paper sent him neither contained any address to the two houses of parliament, nor any acknowledgment of their authority, he could not communicate it to them. Like proposals had been reiterated by the king during the ensuing campaign, and still met with a like answer from Essex.[**]
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 442. Rush, vol vi. p. 566. Whitlocke, p. 77.
** Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 444. Rush. vol. vi. p. 569, 570. Whitlocke, p. 94.
In order to make a new trial for a treaty, the king this spring sent another letter, directed to the lords and commons of parliament assembled at Westminster: but as he also mentioned in the letter the lords and commons of parliament assembled at Oxford, and declared, that his scope and intention was to make provision that all the members of both houses might securely meet in a full and free assembly, the parliament, perceiving the conclusion implied, refused all treaty upon such terms.[*] And the king, who knew what small hopes there were of accommodation, would not abandon the pretensions which he had assumed; nor acknowledge the two houses, more expressly, for a free parliament.
This winter the famous Pym died; a man as much hated by one party as respected by the other. At London, he was considered as the victim to national liberty, who had abridged his life by incessant labors for the interests of his country:[**] at Oxford, he was believed to have been struck with an uncommon disease, and to have been consumed with vermin, as a mark of divine vengeance, for his multiplied crimes and treasons. He had been so little studious of improving his private fortune in those civil wars, of which he had been one principal author, that the parliament thought themselves obliged from gratitude to pay the debts which he had contracted.[***] We now return to the military operations, which, during the winter, were carried on with vigor in several places, notwithstanding the severity of the season.
The forces brought from Ireland were landed at Mostyne, in North Wales; and being put under the command of Lord Biron, they besieged and took the Castles of Hawarden, Beeston, Acton, and Deddington House.[****] No place in Cheshire or the neighborhood now adhered to the parliament, except Nantwich; and to this town Biron laid siege during the depth of winter. Sir Thomas Fairfax, alarmed at so considerable a progress of the royalists, assembled an army of four thousand men in Yorkshire, and having joined Sir William Brereton, was approaching to the camp of the enemy. Biron and his soldiers, elated with successes obtained in Ireland, had entertained the most profound contempt for the parliamentary forces; a disposition which, if confined to the army, may be regarded as a good presage of victory; but if it extend to the general, is the most probable forerunner of a defeat. Fairfax suddenly attacked the camp of the royalists. The swelling of the river by a thaw divided one part of the army from the other. That part exposed to Fairfax, being beaten from their post, retired into the church of Acton, and were all taken prisoners; the other retreated with precipitation.[v]
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 449. Whitlocke, p. 79.
** Whitlocke, p. 66.
*** Journ. 13th of February, 1645.
**** Rush. vol. vi. p. 299.
v Rush. vol. vi. p. 301.
And thus was dissipated or rendered useless that body of forces which had been drawn from Ireland; and the parliamentary party revived in those north-west counties of England.
The invasion from Scotland was attended with consequences of much greater importance. The Scots, having summoned in vain the town of Newcastle, which was fortified by the vigilance of Sir Thomas Glenham, passed the Tyne, and faced the marquis of Newcastle, who lay at Durham with an army of fourteen thousand men.[*] After some military operations, in which that nobleman reduced the enemy to difficulties for forage and provisions, he received intelligence of a great disaster which had befallen his forces in Yorkshire. Colonel Bellasis, whom he had left with a considerable body of troops, was totally routed at Selby by Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had returned from Cheshire with his victorious forces.[**] Afraid of being enclosed between two armies, Newcastle retreated; and Leven having joined Lord Fairfax, they sat down before York, to which the army of the royalists had retired. But as the parliamentary and Scottish forces were not numerous enough to invest so large a town, divided by a river, they contented themselves with incommoding it by a loose blockade; and affairs remained for some time in suspense between these opposite armies.[***]
During this winter and spring, other parts of the kingdom had also been infested with war. Hopton, having assembled an army of fourteen thousand men, endeavored to break into Sussex, Kent, and the southern association, which seemed well disposed to receive him. Waller fell upon him at Cherington, and gave him a defeat of considerable importance. In another quarter, siege being laid to Newark by the parliamentary forces, Prince Rupert prepared himself for relieving a town of such consequence, which alone preserved the communication open between the king's southern and northern quarters.[****] With a small force, but that animated by his active courage, he broke through the enemy, relieved the town, and totally dissipated that army of the parliament.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 615.
** Rush. vol. vi. p. 618.
*** Rush. vol. vi. p. 620.
*** Rush. vol. vi. p. 806.
But though fortune seemed to have divided her favors between the parties, the king found himself, in the main, a considerable loser by this winter campaign; and he prognosticated a still worse event from the ensuing summer. The preparations of the parliament were great, and much exceeded the slender resources of which he was possessed. In the eastern association they levied fourteen thousand men, under the earl of Manchester, seconded by Cromwell.[*] An army of ten thousand men, under Essex; another of nearly the same force, under Waller, were assembled in the neighborhood of London. The former was destined to oppose the king: the latter was appointed to march into the west, where Prince Maurice, with a small army which went continually to decay, was spending his time in vain before Lyme, an inconsiderable town upon the sea-coast. The utmost efforts of the king could not raise above ten thousand men at Oxford; and on their sword chiefly, during the campaign, were these to depend for subsistence.
The queen, terrified with the dangers which every way environed her, and afraid of being enclosed in Oxford, in the middle of the kingdom, fled to Exeter, where she hoped to be delivered unmolested of the child with which she was now pregnant, and whence she had the means of an easy escape into France, if pressed by the forces of the enemy. She knew the implacable hatred which the parliament, on account of her religion and her credit with the king, had all along borne her. Last summer, the commons had sent up to the peers an impeachment of high treason against her; because, in his utmost distresses, she had assisted her husband with arms and ammunition which she had bought in Holland.[**] And had she fallen into their hands, neither her sex, she knew, nor high station, could protect her against insults at least, if not danger, from those haughty republicans, who so little affected to conduct themselves by the maxims of gallantry and politeness.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 621.
** Rush. vol. vi. p. 321.
From the beginning of these dissensions, the parliament, it is remarkable, had in all things assumed an extreme ascendant over their sovereign, and had displayed a violence, and arrogated an authority, which, on his side, would not have been compatible either with his temper or his situation. While he spoke perpetually of pardoning all rebels, they talked of nothing but the punishment of delinquents and malignants: while he offered a toleration and indulgence to tender consciences, they threatened the utter extirpation of prelacy: to his professions of lenity they opposed declarations of rigor; and the more the ancient tenor of the laws inculcated a respectful subordination to the crown, the more careful were they, by their lofty pretensions, to cover that defect under which they labored.
Their great advantages in the north seemed to second their ambition, and finally to promise them success in their unwarrantable enterprises. Manchester, having taken Lincoln, had united his army to that of Leven and Fairfax; and York was now closely besieged by their combined forces. That town, though vigorously defended by Newcastle, was reduced to extremity; and the parliamentary generals, after enduring great losses and fatigues, flattered themselves that all their labors would at last be crowned by this important conquest. On a sudden, they were alarmed by the approach of Prince Rupert. This gallant commander, having vigorously exerted himself in Lancashire and Cheshire, had collected a considerable army; and joining Sir Charles Lucas, who commanded Newcastle's horse, hastened to the relief of York with an army of twenty thousand men. The Scottish and parliamentary generals raised the siege, and drawing up on Marston Moor, purposed to give battle to the royalists. Prince Rupert approached the town by another quarter, and, interposing the River Ouse between him and the enemy, safely joined his forces to those of Newcastle. The marquis endeavored to persuade him, that, having so successfully effected his purpose, he ought to be content with the present advantages, and leave the enemy, now much diminished by their losses, and discouraged by their ill success, to dissolve by those mutual dissensions which had begun to take place among them.[*] The prince, whose martial disposition was not sufficiently tempered with prudence, nor softened by complaisance, pretending positive orders from the king, without deigning to consult with Newcastle, whose merits and services deserved better treatment, immediately issued orders for battle, and led out the army to Marston Moor.[**] This action was obstinately disputed between the most numerous armies that were engaged during the course of these wars; nor were the forces on each side much different in number. Fifty thousand British troops were led to mutual slaughter; and the victory seemed long undecided between them. Prince Rupert, who commanded the right wing of the royalists, was opposed to Cromwell,[***] who conducted the choice troops of the parliament, inured to danger under that determined leader, animated by zeal, and confirmed by the most rigid discipline.
* Life of the Duke of Newcastle, p. 40.
** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 506.
*** Rush, part iii. vol. ii. p. 633.
After a short combat, the cavalry of the royalists gave way; and such of the infantry as stood next them were likewise borne down and put to flight. Newcastle's regiment alone, resolute to conquer or to perish, obstinately kept their ground, and maintained, by their dead bodies, the same order in which they had at first been ranged. In the other wing, Sir Thomas Fairfax and Colonel Lambert, with some troops, broke through the royalists; and, transported by the ardor of pursuit, soon reached their victorious friends, engaged also in pursuit of the enemy. But after that tempest was past, Lucas, who commanded the royalists in this wing, restoring order to his broken forces, made a furious attack on the parliamentary cavalry, threw them into disorder, pushed them upon their own infantry, and put that whole wing to rout. When ready to seize on their carriages and baggage, he perceived Cromwell, who was now returned from pursuit of the other wing. Both sides were not a little surprised to find that they must again renew the combat for that victory which each of them thought they had already obtained. The front of the battle was now exactly counterchanged; and each army occupied the ground which had been possessed by the enemy at the beginning of the day. This second battle was equally furious and desperate with the first: but after the utmost efforts of courage by both parties, victory wholly turned to the side of the parliament. The prince's train of artillery was taken; and his whole army pushed off the field of battle.[*]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 632. Whitlocke, p. 89.
This event was in itself a mighty blow to the king; but proved more fatal in its consequences. The marquis of Newcastle was entirely lost to the royal cause. That nobleman the ornament of the court and of his order, had been engaged, contrary to the natural bent of his disposition, into these military operations merely by a high sense of honor and a personal regard to his master. The dangers of war were disregarded by his valor; but its fatigues were oppressive to his natural indolence. Munificent and generous in his expense; polite and elegant in his taste; courteous and humane in his behavior; he brought a great accession of friends and of credit to the party which he embraced. But amidst all the hurry of action, his inclinations were secretly drawn to the soft arts of peace, in which he took delight; and the charms of poetry music, and conversation often stole him from his rougher occupations. He chose Sir William Devenant, an ingenious poet, for his lieutenant-general: the other persons in whom he placed confidence were more the instruments of his refined pleasures, than qualified for the business which they undertook; and the severity and application requisite to the support of discipline, were qualities in which he was entirely wanting.[*]
When Prince Rupert, contrary to his advice, resolved on this battle, and issued all orders without communicating his intentions to him, he took the field, but, he said, merely as a volunteer; and, except by his personal courage, which shone out with lustre, he had no share in the action. Enraged to find that all his successful labors were rendered abortive by one act of fatal temerity, terrified with the prospect of renewing his pains and fatigue, he resolved no longer to maintain the few resources which remained to a desperate cause, and thought, that the same regard to honor which had at first called him to arms, now required him to abandon a party where he met with such unworthy treatment. Next morning early, he sent word to the prince, that he was instantly to leave the kingdom; and without delay, he went to Scarborough, where he found a vessel, which carried him beyond sea. During the ensuing years, till the restoration, he lived abroad in great necessity, and saw with indifference his opulent fortune sequestered by those who assumed the government of England. He disdained, by submission or composition, to show obeisance to their usurped authority; and the least favorable censors of his merit allowed, that the fidelity and services of a whole life had sufficiently atoned for one rash action, into which his passion had betrayed him.[**]
Prince Rupert, with equal precipitation, drew off the remains of his army, and retired into Lancashire. Glenham, in a few days, was obliged to surrender York; and he marched out his garrison with all the honors of war.[***] Lord Fairfax, remaining in the city, established his government in that whole county, and sent a thousand horse into Lancashire, to join with the parliamentary forces in that quarter, and attend the motions of the Scottish army marched northwards, in order to join the earl of Calender, who was advancing with ten thousand additional forces;[****] and to reduce the town of Newcastle, which they took by storm: the earl of Manchester, with Cromwell, to whom the fame of this great victory was chiefly ascribed, and who was wounded in the action, returned to the eastern association, in order to recruit his army.[v]
* Clarendon, vol. v. p. 507, 508. See Warwick.
** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 511.
*** Rush. vol. vi. p. 638. Prince Rupert:
**** Whitlocke, p. 88
v Rush. vol. vi. p. 641.
While these events passed in the north, the king's affairs in the south were conducted with more success and greater abilities. Ruthven, a Scotchman, who had been created earl of Brentford, acted under the king as general.
The parliament soon completed their two armies commanded by Essex and Waller. The great zeal of the city facilitated this undertaking. Many speeches were made to the citizens by the parliamentary leaders, in order to excite their ardor. Hollis, in particular, exhorted them not to spare, on this important occasion, either their purses, their persons, or their prayers;[*] and, in general, it must be confessed, they were sufficiently liberal in all these contributions.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 662.
The two generals had orders to march with their combined armies towards Oxford; and, if the king retired into that city, to lay siege to it, and by one enterprise put a period to the war. The king, leaving a numerous garrison in Oxford, passed with dexterity between the two armies, which had taken Abingdon, and had enclosed him on both sides. He marched towards Worcester; and Waller received orders from Essex to follow him and watch his motions, while he himself marched into the west, in quest of Prince Maurice. Waller had approached within two miles of the royal camp, and was only separated from it by the Severn, when he received intelligence that the king was advanced to Bewdly, and had directed his course towards Shrewsbury. In order to prevent him, Waller presently dislodged, and hastened by quick marches to that town while the king, suddenly returning upon his own footsteps reached Oxford; and having reënforced his army from that garrison, now in his turn marched out in quest of Waller. The two armies faced each other at Cropredy Bridge, near Banbury; but the Charwell ran between them. Next day, the king decamped, and marched towards Daventry. Waller ordered a considerable detachment to pass the bridge, with an intention of falling on the rear of the royalists. He was repulsed, routed, and pursued with considerable loss.[*] Stunned and disheartened with this blow, his army decayed and melted away by desertion; and the king thought he might safely leave it, and march westward against Essex. That general, having obliged Prince Maurice to raise the siege of Lyme, having taken Weymouth and Taunton, advanced still in his conquests, and met with no equal opposition. The king followed him, and having reënforced his army from all quarters, appeared in the field with an army superior to the enemy. Essex, retreating into Cornwall, informed the parliament of his danger, and desired them to send an army which might fall on the king's rear. General Middleton received a commission to execute that service; but came too late. Essex's army, cooped up in a narrow corner at Lestithiel, deprived of all forage and provisions, and seeing no prospect of succor, was reduced to the last extremity. The king pressed them on one side; Prince Maurice on another; Sir Richard Granville on a third. Essex, Robarts, and some of the principal officers escaped in a boat to Plymouth; Balfour with his horse passed the king's outposts in a thick mist, and got safely to the garrisons of his own party. The foot under Skippon were obliged to surrender their arms, artillery, baggage, and ammunition; and being conducted to the parliament's quarters, were dismissed. By this advantage, which was much boasted of, the king, besides the honor of the enterprise, obtained what he stood extremely in need of: the parliament, having preserved the men, lost what they could easily repair.[**]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 676. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 497. Sir Ed. Walker, p. 31.
** Rush. vol. vi. p. 699, etc. Whitloeke, p. 98. Clarendon, vol. v p. 524, 525. Sir Edward Walker, p. 69, 70, etc.
No sooner did this intelligence reach London, than the committee of the two kingdoms voted thanks to Essex for his fidelity, courage, and conduct; and this method of proceeding, no less politic than magnanimous, was preserved by the parliament throughout the whole course of the war. Equally indulgent to their friends and rigorous to their enemies, they employed with success these two powerful engines of reward and punishment, in confirmation of their authority.
That the king might have less reason to exult in the advantages which he had obtained in the west, the parliament opposed to him very numerous forces. Having armed anew Essex's subdued but not disheartened troops, they ordered Manchester and Cromwell to march with their recruited forces from the eastern association; and, joining their armies to those of Waller and Middleton, as well as of Essex, offer battle to the king. Charles chose his post at Newbury, where the parliamentary armies, under the earl of Manchester, attacked him with great vigor; and that town was a second time the scene of the bloody animosities of the English. Essex's soldiers, exhorting one another to repair their broken honor, and revenge the disgrace of Lestithiel, made an impetuous assault on the royalists; and having recovered some of their cannon lost in Cornwall, could not forbear embracing them with tears of joy. Though the king's troops defended themselves with valor, they were overpowered by numbers; and the night came very seasonably to their relief, and prevented a total overthrow. Charles, leaving his baggage and cannon in Dennington Castle, near Newbury, forthwith retreated to Wallingford, and thence to Oxford. There Prince Rupert and the earl of Northampton joined him, with considerable bodies of cavalry. Strengthened by this reënforcement, he ventured to advance towards the enemy, now employed before Dennington Castle.[*] Essex, detained by sickness, had not joined the army since his misfortune in Cornwall. Manchester, who commanded, though his forces were much superior to those of the king, declined an engagement, and rejected Cromwell's advice, who earnestly pressed him not to neglect so favorable an opportunity of finishing the war. The king's army, by bringing off their cannon from Dennington Castle in the face of the enemy, seemed to have sufficiently repaired the honor which they had lost at Newbury; and Charles, having the satisfaction to excite between Manchester and Cromwell equal animosities with those which formerly took place between Essex and Waller,[*] distributed his army into winter quarters.
* Rush. vol. vi. p, 721, etc.
** Rush. vol. vii. p. 1.
Those contests among the parliamentary generals, which had disturbed their military operations, were renewed in London during the winter season; and each being supported by his own faction, their mutual reproaches and accusations agitated the whole city and parliament. There had long prevailed in that party a secret distinction, which, though the dread of the king's power had hitherto suppressed it, yet, in proportion as the hopes of success became nearer and more immediate, began to discover itself with high contest and animosity. The Independents, who had at first taken shelter and concealed themselves under the wings of the Presbyterians, now evidently appeared a distinct party, and betrayed very different views and pretensions. We must here endeavor to explain the genius of this party, and of its leaders, who henceforth occupy the scene of action.
During those times, when the enthusiastic spirit met with such honor and encouragement, and was the immediate means of distinction and preferment, it was impossible to set bounds to these holy fervors, or confine within any natural limits what was directed towards an infinite and a supernatural object. Every man, as prompted by the warmth of his temper, excited by emulation, or supported by his habits of hypocrisy, endeavored to distinguish himself beyond his fellows, and to arrive at a higher pitch of saintship and perfection. In proportion to its degree of fanaticism, each sect became dangerous and destructive; and as the Independents went a note higher than the Presbyterians, they could less be restrained within any bounds of temper and moderation. From this distinction, as from a first principle, were derived, by a necessary consequence, all the other differences of these two sects.
The Independents rejected all ecclesiastical establishments, and would admit of no spiritual courts, no government among pastors, no interposition of the magistrate in religious concerns, no fixed encouragement annexed to any system of doctrines or opinions. According to their principles, each congregation, united voluntarily and by spiritual ties, composed within itself a separate church, and exercised a jurisdiction, but one destitute of temporal sanctions, over its own pastor and its own members. The election alone of the congregation was sufficient to bestow the sacerdotal character; and as all essential distinction was denied between the laity and the clergy, no ceremony, no institution, no vocation, no imposition of hands was, as in all other churches, supposed requisite to convey a right to holy orders. The enthusiasm of the Presbyterians led them to reject the authority of prelates, to throw off the restraint of liturgies, to retrench ceremonies, to limit the riches and authority of the priestly office: the fanaticism of the Independents, exalted to a higher pitch, abolished ecclesiastical government, disdained creeds and systems, neglected every ceremony, and confounded all ranks and orders. The soldier, the merchant, the mechanic, indulging the fervors of zeal, and guided by the illapses of the spirit, resigned himself to an inward and superior direction, and was consecrated, in a manner, by an immediate intercourse and communication with heaven.
The Catholics, pretending to an infallible guide, had justified upon that principle their doctrine and practice of persecution; the Presbyterians, imagining that such clear and certain tenets as they themselves adopted could be rejected only from a criminal and pertinacious obstinacy, had hitherto gratified to the full their bigoted zeal, in a like doctrine and practice: the Independents, from the extremity of the same zeal, were led into the milder principles of toleration. Their mind, set afloat in the wide sea of inspiration, could confine itself within no certain limits; and the same variations in which an enthusiast indulged himself, he was apt, by a natural train of thinking, to permit in others. Of all Christian sects, this was the first which, during its prosperity as well as its adversity, always adopted the principle of toleration; and it is remarkable that so reasonable a doctrine owed its origin, not to reasoning, but to the height of extravagance and fanaticism.
Popery and prelacy alone, whose genius seemed to tend towards superstition, were treated by the Independents with rigor. The doctrines too of fate or destiny were deemed by them essential to all religion. In these rigid opinions the whole sectaries, amidst all their other differences, unanimously concurred.
The political system of the Independents kept pace with their religious. Not content with confining to very narrow limits the power of the crown, and reducing the king to the rank of first magistrate, which was the project of the Presbyterians, this sect, more ardent in the pursuit of liberty, aspired to a total abolition of the monarchy, and even of the aristocracy, and projected an entire equality of rank and order, in a republic, quite free and independent. In consequence of this scheme, they were declared enemies to all proposals of peace, except on such terms as they knew it was impossible to obtain; and they adhered to that maxim, which is in the main prudent and political, that whoever draws the sword against his sovereign, should throw away the scabbard. By terrifying others with the fear of vengeance from the offended prince, they had engaged greater numbers into the opposition against peace, than had adopted their other principles with regard to government and religion. And the great success which had already attended the arms of the parliament, and the greater which was soon expected, confirmed them still further in this obstinacy.
Sir Henry Vane, Oliver Cromwell, Nathaniel Fiennes, and Oliver St. John, the solicitor-general, were regarded as the leaders of the Independents. The earl of Essex, disgusted with a war of which he began to foresee the pernicious consequences, adhered to the Presbyterians, and promoted every reasonable plan of accommodation. The earl of Northumberland, fond of his rank and dignity, regarded with horror a scheme which, if it took place, would confound him and his family with the lowest in the kingdom. The earls of Warwick and Denbigh, Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir William Waller, Hollis, Massey, Whitlocke, Maynard, Glyn, had embraced the same sentiments. In the parliament, a considerable majority, and a much greater in the nation, were attached to the Presbyterian party; and it was only by cunning and deceit at first, and afterwards by military violence, that the Independents could entertain any hopes of success.
The earl of Manchester, provoked at the impeachment which the king had lodged against him, had long forwarded the war with alacrity; but being a man of humanity and good principles, the view of public calamities, and the prospect of a total subversion of government, began to moderate his ardor, and inclined him to promote peace on any safe or honorable terms. He was even suspected in the field not to have pushed to the utmost against the king the advantages obtained by the arms of the parliament; and Cromwell in the public debates revived the accusation, that this nobleman had wilfully neglected at Dennington Castle a favorable opportunity of finishing the war by a total defeat of the royalists. "I showed him evidently," said Cromwell, "how this success might be obtained; and only desired leave, with my own brigade of horse to charge the king's army in their retreat; leaving it in the earl's choice, if he thought proper, to remain neuter with the rest of his forces: but, notwithstanding my importunity, he positively refused his consent; and gave no other reason but that, if we met with a defeat, there was an end of our pretensions we should all be rebels and traitors, and be executed and forfeited by law."[*]
* Clarendon, vol. v. p. 561.
Manchester, by way of recrimination, informed the parliament, that, at another time, Cromwell having proposed some scheme to which it seemed improbable the parliament would agree, he insisted, and said, "My lord, if you will stick firm to honest men, you shall find yourself at the head of an army which shall give law both to king and parliament." "This discourse," continued Manchester, "made the greater impression on me, because I knew the lieutenant-general to be a man of very deep designs; and he has even ventured to tell me, that it never would be well with England till I were Mr. Montague, and there were ne'er a lord or peer in the kingdom."[*] So full was Cromwell of these republican projects, that, notwithstanding his habits of profound dissimulation, he could not so carefully guard his expressions, but that sometimes his favorite notions would escape him.
These violent dissensions brought matters to extremity, and pushed the Independents to the execution of their designs. The present generals, they thought, were more desirous of protracting than finishing the war; and having entertained a scheme for preserving still some balance in the constitution, they were afraid of entirely subduing the king, and reducing him to a condition where he should not be entitled to ask any concessions. A new model alone of the army could bring complete victory to the parliament, and free the nation from those calamities under which it labored. But how to effect this project was the difficulty. The authority, as well as merits, of Essex was very great with the parliament. Not only he had served them all along with the most exact and scrupulous honor: it was in some measure owing to his popularity that they had ever been enabled to levy an army, or make head against the royal cause. Manchester, Warwick, and the other commanders, had likewise great credit with the public; nor were there any hopes of prevailing over them, but by laying the plan of an oblique and artificial attack, which would conceal the real purposes of their antagonists. The Scots and the Scottish commissioners, jealous of the progress of the Independents, were a new obstacle, which, without the utmost art and subtlety, it would be difficult to surmount.[**]
* Clarendon, vol. v. p. 562.
** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 562.
The methods by which this intrigue was conducted are so singular, and show so fully the genius of the age, that we shall give a detail of them as they are delivered by Lord Clarendon.[*]
A fast, on the last Wednesday of every month, had been ordered by the parliament at the beginning of these commotions; and their preachers on that day were careful to keep alive, by their vehement declamations, the popular prejudices entertained against the king, against prelacy, and against Popery. The king, that he might combat the parliament with their own weapons, appointed likewise a monthly fast, when the people should be instructed in the duties of loyalty, and of submission to the higher powers; and he chose the second Friday of every month for the devotion of the royalists.[**] It was now proposed and carried in parliament, by the Independents, that a new and more solemn fast should be voted; when they should implore the divine assistance for extricating them from those perplexities in which they were at present involved. On that day, the preachers, after many political prayers, took care to treat of the reigning divisions in the parliament, and ascribed them entirely to the selfish ends pursued by the members. In the hands of those members, they said, are lodged all the considerable commands of the army, all the lucrative offices in the civil administration: and while the nation is falling every day into poverty, and groans under an insupportable load of taxes, these men multiply possession on possession, and will in a little time be masters of all the wealth of the kingdom. That such persons, who fatten on the calamities of their country, will ever embrace any effectual measure for bringing them to a period, or insuring final success to the war, cannot reasonably be expected. Lingering expedients alone will be pursued; and operations in the field concurring in the same pernicious end with deliberations in the cabinet, civil commotions will forever be perpetuated in the nation. After exaggerating these disorders, the ministers returned to their prayers; and besought the Lord that he would take his own work into his own hand; and if the instruments whom he had hitherto employed were not worthy to bring to a conclusion so glorious a design, that he would inspire others more fit, who might perfect what was begun, and, by establishing true religion, put a speedy period to the public miseries.
* Clarendon, vol. v. p. 565
** Rush. vol. vi. p. 364
On the day subsequent to these devout animadversions when the parliament met, a new spirit appeared in the looks of many. Sir Henry Vane told the commons, that if ever God appeared to them, it was in the ordinances of yesterday; that, as he was credibly informed by many who had been present in different congregations, the same lamentations and discourses which the godly preachers had made before them, had been heard in other churches: that so remarkable a concurrence could proceed only from the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit: that he therefore entreated them, in vindication of their own honor, in consideration of their duty to God and their country, to lay aside all private ends, and renounce every office attended with profit or advantage: that the absence of so many members, occupied in different employments, had rendered the house extremely thin, and diminished the authority of their determinations: and that he could not forbear, for his own part, accusing himself as one who enjoyed a gainful office, that of treasurer of the navy; and though he was possessed of it before the civil commotions, and owed it not to the favor of the parliament, yet was he ready to resign it, and to sacrifice, to the welfare of his country, every consideration of private interest and advantage.
Cromwell next acted his part, and commended the preachers for having dealt with them plainly and impartially, and told them of their errors, of which they were so unwilling to be informed. Though they dwelt on many things, he said, on which he had never before reflected, yet, upon revolving them, he could not but confess that, till there were a perfect reformation in these particulars, nothing which they undertook could possibly prosper. The parliament, no doubt, continued he, had done wisely on the commencement of the war, in engaging several of its members in the most dangerous parts of it, and thereby satisfying the nation that they intended to share all hazards with the meanest of the people. But affairs are now changed. During the progress of military operations, there have arisen in the parliamentary armies many excellent officers, who are qualified for higher commands than they are now possessed of. And though it becomes not men engaged in such a cause "to put trust in the arm of flesh," yet he could assure them, that their troops contained generals fit to command in any enterprise in Christendom. The army, indeed, he was sorry to say it, did not correspond by its discipline to the merit of the officers; nor were there any hopes, till the present vices and disorders which prevail among the soldiers were repressed by a new model that their forces would ever be attended with signal success in any undertaking.
In opposition to this reasoning of the Independents, many of the Presbyterians showed the inconvenience and danger of the projected alteration. Whitlocke, in particular, a man of honor, who loved his country, though in every change of government he always adhered to the ruling power, said, that besides the ingratitude of discarding, and that by fraud and artifice, so many noble persons, to whom the parliament had hitherto owed its chief support, they would find it extremely difficult to supply the place of men now formed by experience to command and authority: that the rank alone possessed by such as were members of either house, prevented envy, retained the army in obedience, and gave weight to military orders: that greater confidence might safely be reposed in men of family and fortune, than in mere adventurers, who would be apt to entertain separate views from those which were embraced by the persons who employed them: that no maxim of policy was more undisputed, than the necessity of preserving an inseparable connection between the civil and military powers, and of retaining the latter in strict subordination to the former: that the Greeks and Romans, the wisest and most passionate lovers of liberty, had ever intrusted to their senators the command of armies, and had maintained an unconquerable jealousy of all mercenary forces: and that such men alone, whose interests were involved in those of the public, and who possessed a vote in the civil deliberations, would sufficiently respect the authority of parliament, and never could be tempted to turn the sword against those by whom it was committed to them.[*]
* Whitlocke, p. 114, 115. Rush. vol. vii. p. 6.
Notwithstanding these reasonings, a committee was chosen to frame what was called the "self-denying ordinance," by which the members of both houses were excluded from all civil and military employments, except a few offices which were specified. This ordinance was the subject of great debate, and for a long time rent the parliament and city into factions. But at last, by the prevalence of envy with some; with others, of false modesty; with a great many, of the republican and Independent views; it passed the house of commons, and was sent to the upper house. The peers, though the scheme was in part levelled against their order; though all of them were at bottom extremely averse to it; though they even ventured once to reject it; yet possessed so little authority, that they durst not persevere in opposing the resolution of the commons; and they thought it better policy, by an unlimited compliance, to ward off that ruin which they saw approaching.[*] The ordinance, therefore, having passed both houses, Essex, Warwick, Manchester, Denbigh, Waller, Brereton, and many others, resigned their commands, and received the thanks of parliament for their good services. A pension of ten thousand pounds a year was settled on Essex.
{1645.} It was agreed to recruit the army to twenty-two thousand men; and Sir Thomas Fairfax was appointed general.[**] It is remarkable that his commission did not run, like that of Essex, in the name of the king and parliament, but in that of the parliament alone; and the article concerning the safety of the king's person was omitted: so much had animosities increased between the parties.[***] Cromwell, being a member of the lower house, should have been discarded with the others; but this impartiality would have disappointed all the views of those who had introduced the self-denying ordinance. He was saved by a subtlety, and by that political craft in which he was so eminent. At the time when the other officers resigned their commissions, care was taken that he should be sent with a body of horse to relieve Taunton besieged by the royalists. His absence being remarked orders were despatched for his immediate attendance in parliament; and the new general was directed to employ some other officer in that service. A ready compliance was feigned; and the very day was named on which, it was averred, he would take his place in the house. But Fairfax, having appointed a rendezvous of the army, wrote to the parliament, and desired leave to retain for some days Lieutenant General Cromwell, whose advice, he said, would be useful in supplying the place of those officers who had resigned. Shortly after, he begged, with much earnestness, that they would allow Cromwell to serve that campaign.[****] And thus the Independents, though the minority, prevailed by art and cunning over the Presbyterians, and bestowed the whole military authority in appearance, upon Fairfax; in reality, upon Cromwell.
* Rush. vol. vii. p. 8, 15.
** Whitlocke, p. 118. Rush. vol. vii. p. 7.
*** Whitlocke, p. 133.
**** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 629, 630. Whitlocke, p. 141.
Fairfax was a person equally eminent for courage and for humanity; and though strongly infected with prejudices, or principles derived from religious and party zeal, he seems never, in the course of his public conduct, to have been diverted by private interest or ambition from adhering strictly to these principles. Sincere in his professions, disinterested in his views, open in his conduct, he had formed one of the most shining characters of the age, had not the extreme narrowness of his genius in every thing but in war, and his embarrassed and confused elocution on every occasion but when he gave orders, diminished the lustre of his merit, and rendered the part which he acted, even when vested with the supreme command, but secondary and subordinate.
Cromwell, by whose sagacity and insinuation Fairfax was entirely governed, is one of the most eminent and most singular personages that occurs in history: the strokes of his character are as open and strongly marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during the time, dark and impenetrable. His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most enlarged projects: his enterprising genius was not dismayed with the boldest and most dangerous. Carried by his natural temper to magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy, he yet knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation, the most oblique and refined artifice, the semblance of the greatest moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, though his public conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, though he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; he was engaged in crimes from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation which is in general irresistible to human nature. And by using well that authority which he had attained by fraud and violence, he has lessened, if not overpowered, our detestation of his enormities, by our admiration of his success and of his genius.
During this important transaction of the self-denying ordinance, the negotiations for peace were likewise carried on, though with small hopes of success. The king having sent two messages, one from Evesham,[*] another from Tavistoke,[**] desiring a treaty, the parliament despatched commissioners to Oxford with proposals, as high as if they had obtained a complete victory.[***]
* 4th of July, 1644.
** 8th of Sept 1644.
*** Dugdale, p. 737. Rush. vol. vi. p 850.
The advantages gained during the campaign and the great distresses of the royalists, had much elevated their hopes; and they were resolved to repose no trust in men inflamed with the highest animosity against them, and who, were they possessed of power, were fully authorized by law to punish all their opponents as rebels and traitors.
The king, when he considered the proposals, and the disposition of the parliament, could not expect any accommodation, and had no prospect but of war, or of total submission and subjection: yet, in order to satisfy his own party, who were impatient for peace, he agreed to send the duke of Richmond and earl of Southampton with an answer to the proposals of the parliament, and at the same time to desire a treaty upon their mutual demands and pretensions.[*] It now became necessary for him to retract his former declaration, that the two houses at Westminster were not a free parliament; and accordingly he was induced, though with great reluctance, to give them, in his answer, the appellation of the parliament of England.[**] But it appeared afterwards, by a letter which he wrote to the queen, and of which a copy was taken at Naseby, that he secretly entered an explanatory protest in his council book; and he pretended, that though he had called them the parliament, he had not thereby acknowledged them for such.[***] This subtlety, which has been frequently objected to Charles, is the most noted of those very few instances from which the enemies of this prince have endeavored to load him with the imputation of insincerity; and have inferred that the parliament could repose no confidence in his professions and declarations, not even in his laws and statutes. There is, however, it must be confessed, a difference universally avowed between simply giving to men the appellation which they assume, and the formal acknowledgment of their title to it; nor is any thing more common and familiar in all public transactions.
* Whitlocke, p. 110.
** Whitlocke, p. 111 Dugdale, p. 748.
*** His words are, "As for my calling those at London a parliament, I shall refer thee to Digby for particular satisfaction. This in general: if there had been but two besides myself of my opinion, I had not done it; and the argument that prevailed with me was, that the calling did no ways acknowledge them to be a parliament; upon which condition and construction I did it, and no otherwise; and accordingly it is registered in the council books, with the council's unanimous approbation." The King's Cabinet opened. Rush. vol. i. p. 943.
The time and place of treaty being settled, sixteen commissioners from the king met at Uxbridge with twelve authorized by the parliament, attended by the Scottish commissioners. It was agreed, that the Scottish and parliamentary commissioners should give in their demands with regard to three important articles, religion, the militia, and Ireland; and that these should be successively discussed in conference with the king's commissioners.[*] It was soon found impracticable to come to any agreement with regard to any of these articles.
In the summer of 1643, while the negotiations were carried on with Scotland, the parliament had summoned an assembly at Westminster, consisting of one hundred and twenty-one divines and thirty laymen, celebrated in their party for piety and learning. By their advice, alterations were made in the thirty-nine articles, or in the metaphysical doctrines of the church; and what was of greater importance, the liturgy was entirely abolished, and in its stead a new directory for worship was established; by which, suitably to the spirit of the Puritans, the utmost liberty both in praying and preaching was indulged to the public teachers. By the solemn league and covenant, episcopacy was abjured, as destructive of all true piety; and a national engagement, attended with every circumstance that could render a promise sacred and obligatory, was entered into with the Scots, never to suffer its readmission. All these measures showed little spirit of accommodation in the parliament; and the king's commissioners were not surprised to find the establishment of presbytery and the directory positively demanded, together with the subscription of the covenant, both by the king and kingdom.[**]
* Whitlocke, p. 121. Dugdale, p. 758.
** Such love of contradiction prevailed in the parliament, that they had converted Christmas, which with the churchmen was a great festival, into a solemn fast and humiliation; "in order," as they said, "that it might call to remembrance our sins and the sins of our forefathers, who, pretending to celebrate the memory of Christ, have turned this feast into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights." Rush. vol. vi. p. 817. It is remarkable, that as the parliament abolished all holydays, and severely prohibited all amusement on the Sabbath; and even burned, by the hands of the hangman, the king's Book of Sports; the nation found that there was no time left for relaxation or diversion. Upon application, therefore, of the servants and apprentices, the parliament appointed the second Tuesday of every month for play and recreation. Rush. vol. vii. p. 460. Whitlocke, p. 247. But these institutions they found great difficulty to execute: and the people were resolved to be merry when they themselves pleased, not when the parliament should prescribe it to them. The keeping of Christmas holydays was long a great mark of malignancy, and very severely censured by the commons. Whitlocke, p. 286. Even minced pies, which custom had made a Christmas dish among the churchmen, was regarded, during that season, as a profane and superstitious viand by the sectaries; though at other times it agreed very well with their stomachs. In the parliamentary ordinance, too, for the observance of the Sabbath, they inserted a clause for the taking down of maypoles, which they called a heathenish vanity. Since we are upon this subject, it may not be amiss to mention that, besides setting apart Sunday for the ordinances, as they called them, the godly had regular meetings on the Thursdays, for resolving cases of conscience, and conferring about their progress in grace. What they were chiefly anxious about, was the fixing the precise moment of their conversion or new birth; and whoever could not ascertain so difficult a point of calculation, could not pretend to any title to saintship. The profane scholars at Oxford, after the parliament became masters of that town, gave to the house in which the zealots assembled the denomination of Sernple Shop: the zealots, in their turn, insulted the scholars and professors; and, intruding into the place of lectures, declaimed against human learning, and challenged the most knowing of them to prove that their calling was from Christ. See Wood's Fasti Oxonienses, p. 740.
Had Charles been of a disposition to neglect all theological controversy, he yet had been obliged, in good policy, to adhere to episcopal jurisdiction; not only because it was favorable to monarchy, but because all its adherents were passionately devoted to it; and to abandon them, in what they regarded as so important an article, was forever to relinquish their friendship and assistance. But Charles had never attained such enlarged principles. He deemed bishops essential to the very being of a Christian church; and he thought himself bound, by more sacred ties than those of policy, or even of honor, to the support of that order. His concessions, therefore, on this head, he judged sufficient, when he agreed that an indulgence should be given to tender consciences with regard to ceremonies; that the bishops should exercise no act of jurisdiction or ordination without the consent and counsel of such presbyters as should be chosen by the clergy of each diocese; that they should reside constantly in their diocese, and be bound to preach every Sunday; that pluralities be abolished; that abuses in ecclesiastical courts be redressed; and that a hundred thousand pounds be levied on the bishops' estates and the chapter lands, for payment of debts contracted by the parliament.[*]
* Dugdale, p. 779, 780.
These concessions, though considerable gave no satisfaction to the parliamentary commissioners; and, without abating any thing of their rigor on this head, they proceeded to their demands with regard to the militia.
The king's partisans had all along maintained, that the fears and jealousies of the parliament, after the securities so early and easily given to public liberty, were either feigned or groundless; and that no human institution could be better poised and adjusted than was now the government of England. By the abolition of the star chamber and court of high commission, the prerogative, they said, has lost all that coercive power by which it had formerly suppressed or endangered liberty: by the establishment of triennial parliaments, it can have no leisure to acquire new powers, or guard itself, during any time, from the inspection of that vigilant assembly: by the slender revenue of the crown, no king can ever attain such influence as to procure a repeal of these salutary statutes; and while the prince commands no military force, he will in vain by violence attempt an infringement of laws so clearly defined by means of late disputes, and so passionately cherished by all his subjects. In this situation, surely the nation, governed by so virtuous a monarch, may for the present remain in tranquillity, and try whether it be not possible, by peaceful arts, to elude that danger with which it is pretended its liberties are still threatened.
But though the royalists insisted on these plausible topics before the commencement of war, they were obliged to own, that the progress of civil commotions had somewhat abated the force and evidence of this reasoning. If the power of the militia, said the opposite party, be intrusted to the king, it would not now be difficult for him to abuse that authority. By the rage of intestine discord, his partisans are inflamed into an extreme hatred against their antagonists; and have contracted, no doubt, some prejudices against popular privileges, which, in their apprehension, have been the source of so much disorder. Were the arms of the state, therefore, put entirely into such hands, what public security, it may be demanded, can be given to liberty, or what private security to those who, in opposition to the letter of the law, have so generously ventured their lives in its defence? In compliance with this apprehension, Charles offered that the arms of the state should be intrusted, during three years, to twenty commissioners, who should be named either by common agreement between him and the parliament, or one half by him, the other by the parliament. And after the expiration of that term, he insisted that his constitutional authority over the militia should again return to him.[*]
The parliamentary commissioners at first demanded, that the power of the sword should forever be intrusted to such persons as the parliament alone should appoint:[**] but afterwards they relaxed so far as to require that authority only for seven years; after which it was not to return to the king but to be settled by bill, or by common agreement between him and his parliament.[*] The king's commissioners asked, whether jealousies and fears were all on one side; and whether the prince, from such violent attempts and pretensions as he had experienced, had not at least as great reason to entertain apprehensions for his authority, as they for their liberty? Whether there were any equity in securing only one party, and leaving the other, during the space of seven years, entirely at the mercy of their enemies? Whether, if unlimited power were intrusted to the parliament during so long a period, it would not be easy for them to frame the subsequent bill in the manner most agreeable to themselves, and keep forever possession of the sword, as well as of every article of civil power and jurisdiction.[****]
The truth is, after the commencement of war, it was very difficult, if not impossible, to find security for both parties, especially for that of the parliament. Amidst such violent animosities, power alone could insure safety; and the power of one side was necessarily attended with danger to the other. Few or no instances occur in history of an equal, peaceful, and durable accommodation that has been concluded between two factions which had been inflamed into civil war.
With regard to Ireland, there were no greater hopes of agreement between the parties. The parliament demanded, that the truce with the rebels should be declared null; that the management of the war should be given over entirely to the parliament; and that, after the conquest of Ireland, the nomination of the lord lieutenant and of the judges, or in other words the sovereignty of that kingdom, should likewise remain in their hands.[v]
* Dugdale, p. 798.
** Dugdale, p. 791.
*** Dugdale, p. 820.
**** Dugdale, p. 877.
v Dugdale, p. 826, 827
What rendered an accommodation more desperate was, that the demands on these three heads, however exorbitant, were acknowledged, by the parliamentary commissioners, to be nothing but preliminaries. After all these were granted, it would be necessary to proceed to the discussion of those other demands, still more exorbitant, which a little before had been transmitted to the king at Oxford. Such ignominious terms were there insisted on, that worse could scarcely be demanded, were Charles totally vanquished, a prisoner, and in chains. The king was required to attaint and except from a general pardon forty of the most considerable of his English subjects, and nineteen of his Scottish, together with all Popish recusants in both kingdoms who had borne arms for him. It was insisted that forty-eight more, with all the members who had sitten in either house at Oxford, all lawyers and divines who had embraced the king's party, should be rendered incapable of any office, be forbidden the exercise of their profession, be prohibited from coming within the verge of the court, and forfeit the third of their estates to the parliament. It was required that whoever had borne arms for the king, should forfeit the tenth of their estates; or, if that did not suffice, the sixth, for the payment of public debts. As if royal authority were not sufficiently annihilated by such terms, it was demanded that the court of wards should be abolished; that all the considerable officers of the crown, and all the judges, should be appointed by parliament; and that the right of peace and war should not be exercised without the consent of that assembly.[*]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 850. Dugdale, p. 737.
The Presbyterians, it must be confessed, after insisting on such conditions, differed only in words from the Independents, who required the establishment of a pure republic. When the debates had been carried on to no purpose during twenty days among the commissioners, they separated, and returned; those of the king to Oxford, those of the parliament to London.
A little before the commencement of this fruitless treaty, a deed was executed by the parliament, which proved their determined resolution to yield nothing, but to proceed in the same violent and imperious manner with which they had at first entered on these dangerous enterprises. Archbishop Laud, the most favored minister of the king, was brought to the scaffold; and in this instance the public might see, that popular assemblies, as, by their very number, they are in a great measure exempt from the restraint of shame, so when they also overleap the bounds of law, naturally break out into acts of the greatest tyranny and injustice.
From the time that Laud had been committed, the house of commons, engaged in enterprises of greater moment, had found no leisure to finish his impeachment, and he had patiently endured so long an imprisonment, without being brought to any trial. After the union with Scotland, the bigoted prejudices of that nation revived the like spirit in England; and the sectaries resolved to gratify their vengeance in the punishment of this prelate, who had so long, by his authority, and by the execution of penal laws, kept their zealous spirit under confinement. He was accused of high treason, in endeavoring to subvert the fundamental laws, and of other high crimes and misdemeanors. The same illegality of an accumulative crime and a constructive evidence which appeared in the case of Strafford, the same violence and iniquity in conducting the trial, are conspicuous throughout the whole course of this prosecution. The groundless charge of Popery, though belied by his whole life and conduct, was continually urged against the prisoner; and every error rendered unpardonable by this imputation, which was supposed to imply the height of all enormities. "This man, my lords," said Serjeant Wilde, concluding his long speech against him, "is like Naaman the Syrian; a great man, but a leper."[*]
We shall not enter into a detail of this matter, which at present seems to admit of little controversy. It suffices to say, that after a long trial, and the examination of above a hundred and fifty witnesses, the commons found so little likelihood of obtaining a judicial sentence against Laud, that they were obliged to have recourse to their legislative authority, and to pass an ordinance for taking away the life of this aged prelate. Notwithstanding the low condition into which the house of peers was fallen, there appeared some intention of rejecting this ordinance; and the popular leaders were again obliged to apply to the multitude, and to extinguish, by threats of new tumults, the small remains of liberty possessed by the upper house. Seven peers alone voted in this important question. The rest, either from shame or fear, took care to absent themselves.[*]
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 830.
** Warwick, p. 169.
Laud, who had behaved during his trial with spirit and vigor of genius, sunk not under the horrors of his execution but though he had usually professed himself apprehensive of a violent death, he found all his fears to be dissipated before that superior courage by which he was animated. "No one," said he, "can be more willing to send me out of life, than I am desirous to go," Even upon the scaffold, and during the intervals of his prayers, he was harassed and molested by Sir John Clotworthy, a zealot of the reigning sect, and a great leader in the lower house: this was the time he chose for examining the principles of the dying primate, and trepanning him into a confession, that he trusted for his salvation to the merits of good works, not to the death of the Redeemer.[*] Having extricated himself from these theological toils, the archbishop laid his head on the block, and it was severed from the body at one blow.[**] Those religious opinions for which he suffered, contributed, no doubt, to the courage and constancy of his end. Sincere he undoubtedly was, and, however misguided, actuated by pious motives in all his pursuits; and it is to be regretted that a man of such spirit, who conducted his enterprises with so much warmth and industry, had not entertained more enlarged views, and embraced principles more favorable to the general happiness of society.
* Rush. vol. vi. p, 838, 839.
** 12th of July, 1644.
The great and important advantage which the party gained by Strafford's death, may in some degree palliate the iniquity of the sentence pronounced against him: but the execution of this old, infirm prelate, who had so long remained an inoffensive prisoner, can be ascribed to nothing but vengeance and bigotry in those severe religionists by whom the parliament was entirely governed. That he deserved a better fate was not questioned by any reasonable man: the degree of his merit in other respects was disputed. Some accused him of recommending slavish doctrines, of promoting persecution, and of encouraging superstition; while others thought that his conduct in these three particulars would admit of apology and extenuation.
That the letter of the law, as much as the most flaming court sermon, inculcates passive obedience, is apparent; and though the spirit of a limited government seems to require, in extraordinary cases, some mitigation of so rigorous a doctrine, it must be confessed, that the presiding genius of the English constitution had rendered a mistake in this particular very natural and excusable. To inflict death, at least, on those who depart from the exact line of truth in these nice questions, so far from being favorable to national liberty, savors strongly of the spirit of tyranny and proscription.
Toleration had hitherto been so little the principle of any Christian sect, that even the Catholics, the remnant of the religion professed by their forefathers, could not obtain from the English the least indulgence. This very house of commons, in their famous remonstrance, took care to justify themselves, as from the highest imputation, from any intention to relax the golden reins of discipline, as they called them, or to grant any toleration;[*] and the enemies of the church were so fair from the beginning, as not to lay claim to liberty of conscience, which they called a toleration for soul-murder. They openly challenged the superiority, and even menaced the established church with that persecution which they afterwards exercised against her with such severity. And if the question be considered in the view of policy, though a sect, already formed and advanced, may, with good reason, demand a toleration, what title had the Puritans to this indulgence, who were just on the point of separation from the church, and whom, it might be hoped, some wholesome and legal severities would still retain in obedience?[**] [15]
* Nalson, vol. ii. p. 705.
** See note O, at the end of the volume.
Whatever ridicule, to a philosophical mind, may be thrown on pious ceremonies, it must be confessed that, during a very religious age, no institutions can be more advantageous to the rude multitude, and tend more to mollify that fierce and gloomy spirit of devotion to which they are subject. Even the English church, though it had retained a share of Popish ceremonies, may justly be thought too naked and unadorned, and still to approach too near the abstract and spiritual religion of the Puritans. Laud and his associates, by reviving a few primitive institutions of this nature, corrected the error of the first reformers, and presented to the affrightened and astonished mind some sensible, exterior observances, which might occupy it during its religious exercises, and abate the violence of its disappointed efforts. The thought, no longer bent on that divine and mysterious essence, so superior to the narrow capacities of mankind, was able, by means of the new model of devotion, to relax itself in the contemplation of pictures, postures, vestments, buildings; and all the fine arts which minister to religion, thereby received additional encouragement. The primate, it is true, conducted this scheme, not with the enlarged sentiments and cool reflection of a legislator, but with the intemperate zeal of a sectary; and by over looking the circumstances of the times, served rather to inflame that religious fury which he meant to repress. But this blemish is more to be regarded as a general imputation on the whole age, than any particular failing of Laud's; and it is sufficient for his vindication to observe, that his errors were the most excusable of all those which prevailed during that zealous period.
LVIII. CHARLES I
{1645.} While the king's affairs declined in England, some events happened in Scotland which seemed to promise him a more prosperous issue of the quarrel.
Before the commencement of these civil disorders, the earl of Montrose, a young nobleman of a distinguished family, returning from his travels, had been introduced to the king, and had made an offer of his services; but by the insinuations of the marquis, afterwards duke of Hamilton, who possessed much of Charles's confidence, he had not been received with that distinction to which he thought himself justly entitled.[*]
* Nalson, Intr p. 63.
Disgusted with this treatment, he had forwarded all the violence of the Covenanters; and, agreeably to the natural ardor of his genius, he had employed himself, during the first Scottish insurrection, with great zeal, as well as success, in levying and conducting their armies. Being commissioned by the "Tables," to wait upon the king while the royal army lay at Berwick, he was so gained by the civilities and caresses of that monarch, that he thenceforth devoted himself entirely, though secretly, to his service, and entered into a close correspondence with him. In the second insurrection, a great military command was intrusted to him by the Covenanters; and he was the first that passed the Tweed, at the head of their troops, in the invasion of England. He found means, however, soon after to convey a letter to the king; and by the infidelity of some about that prince,--Hamilton as was suspected,--a copy of this letter was sent to Leven, the Scottish general. Being accused of treachery, and a correspondence with the enemy, Montrose openly avowed the letter, and asked the generals if they dared to call their sovereign an enemy; and by this bold and magnanimous behavior he escaped the danger of an immediate prosecution. As he was now fully known to be of the royal party, he no longer concealed his principles; and he endeavored to draw those who had entertained like sentiments into a bond of association for his master's service. Though thrown into prison for this enterprise,[*] and detained some time, he was not discouraged; but still continued, by his countenance and protection, to infuse spirit into the distressed royalists. Among other persons of distinction who united themselves to him was Lord Napier of Merchiston, son of the famous inventor of the logarithms, the person to whom the title of a "great man" is more justly due, than to any other whom his country ever produced. There was in Scotland another party, who, professing equal attachment to the king's service, pretended only to differ with Montrose about the means of attaining the same end; and of that party Duke Hamilton was the leader. This nobleman had cause to be extremely devoted to the king, not only by reason of the connection of blood which united him to the royal family, but on account of the great confidence and favor with which he had ever been honored by his master. Being accused by Lord Rae, not without some appearance of probability, of a conspiracy against the king, Charles was so far from harboring suspicion against him, that, the very first time Hamilton came to court, he received him into his bed-chamber, and passed alone the night with him.[**] But such was the duke's unhappy fate or conduct, that he escaped not the imputation of treachery to his friend and sovereign; and though he at last sacrificed his life in the king's service, his integrity and sincerity have not been thought by historians entirely free from blemish. Perhaps (and this is the more probable opinion) the subtleties and refinements of his conduct, and his temporizing maxims, though accompanied with good intentions, have been the chief cause of a suspicion which has never yet been either fully proved or refuted.
* It is not improper to take notice of a mistake committed by Clarendon, much to the disadvantage of this gallant nobleman; that he offered the king, when his majesty was in Scotland, to assassinate Argyle. All the time the king was in Scotland, Montrose was confined in prison. Rush. vol. vi. p. 980.
** Nalson, vol ii. p. 683.
As much as the bold and vivid spirit of Montrose prompted him to enterprising measures, as much was the cautious temper of Hamilton inclined to such as were moderate and dilatory. While the former foretold that the Scottish Covenanters were secretly forming a union with the English parliament, and inculcated the necessity of preventing them by some vigorous undertaking, the latter still insisted, that every such attempt would precipitate them into measures to which otherwise they were not perhaps inclined. After the Scottish convention was summoned without the king's authority, the former exclaimed, that their intentions were now visible, and that if some unexpected blow were not struck to dissipate them, they would arm the whole nation against the king; the latter maintained the possibility of outvoting the disaffected party, and securing by peaceful means the allegiance of the kingdom.[*] Unhappily for the royal cause, Hamilton's representations met with more credit from the king and queen than those of Montrose; and the Covenanters were allowed, without interruption, to proceed in all their hostile measures. Montrose then hastened to Oxford where his invectives against Hamilton's treachery, concurring with the general prepossession, and supported by the unfortunate event of his counsels, were entertained with universal probation. Influenced by the clamor of his party, more than his own suspicions, Charles, as soon as Hamilton appeared, sent him prisoner to Pendennis Castle, in Cornwall. His brother Laneric, who was also put under confinement found means to make his escape, and to fly into Scotland.
The king's ears were now open to Montrose's counsels, who proposed none but the boldest and most daring, agreeably to the desperate state of the royal cause in Scotland. Though the whole nation was subjected by the Covenanters, though great armies were kept on foot by them, and every place guarded by a vigilant administration, he undertook, by his own credit, and that of the few friends who remained to the king, to raise such commotions as would soon oblige the malecontents to recall those forces which had so sensibly thrown the balance in favor of the parliament.[**] Not discouraged with the defeat at Marston Moor, which rendered it impossible for him to draw any succor from England, he was content to stipulate with the earl of Antrim, a nobleman of Ireland, for some supply of men from that country. And he himself changing his disguises, and passing through many dangers, arrived in Scotland; where he lay concealed in the borders of the Highlands, and secretly prepared the minds of his partisans for attempting some great enterprise.[***]
* Clarendon, vol. iii. p. 380, 381. Rush. vol. vi. p. 980. Wishart, cap. 2.
** Wishart, cap. 3.
*** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 618. Rush. vol. vi. p, 982. Wishart, cap. 4
No sooner were the Irish landed, though not exceeding eleven hundred foot, very ill armed, than Montrose declared himself, and entered upon that scene of action which has rendered his name so celebrated. About eight hundred of the men of Athole flocked to his standard. Five hundred men more, who had been levied by the Covenanters, were persuaded to embrace the royal cause: and with this combined force, he hastened to attack Lord Elcho, who lay at Perth with an army of six thousand men, assembled upon the first news of the Irish invasion. Montrose, inferior in number, totally unprovided with horse, ill supplied with arms and ammunition, had nothing to depend on, but the courage which he himself, by his own example, and the rapidity of his enterprises, should inspire into his raw soldiers. Having received the fire of the enemy, which was answered chiefly by a volley of stones, he rushed amidst them with his sword drawn, threw them into confusion, pushed his advantage, and obtained a complete victory, with the slaughter of two thousand of the Covenanters.[*]
This victory, though it augmented the renown of Montrose, increased not his power or numbers. The far greater part of the kingdom was extremely attached to the covenant; and such as bore an affection to the royal cause, were terrified by the established authority of the opposite party. Dreading the superior power of Argyle, who, having joined his vassals to a force levied by the public, was approaching with a considerable army, Montrose hastened northwards, in order to rouse again the marquis of Huntley and the Gordons, who, having before hastily taken arms, had been instantly suppressed by the Covenanters. He was joined on his march by the earl of Airly, with his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy: the eldest was at that time a prisoner with the enemy. He attacked at Aberdeen the Lord Burley, who commanded a force of two thousand five hundred men. After a sharp combat, by his undaunted courage, which in his situation was true policy, and was also not unaccompanied with military skill, he put the enemy to flight, and in the pursuit did great execution upon them.[**]
* 1st of September, 1644. Rush. vol. vi. p. 983. Wishart, cap. 5.
** 11th of September, 1644. Rush. vol. vi. p. 983. Wishart, cap. 7.
But by this second advantage he obtained not the end which he expected. The envious nature of Huntley, jealous of Montrose's glory, rendered him averse to join an army where he himself must be so much eclipsed by the superior merit of the general. Argyle, reënforced by the earl of Lothian, was behind him with a great army: the militia of the northern counties, Murray, Ross, Caithness, to the number of five thousand men, opposed him in front, and guarded the banks of the Spey, a deep and rapid river. In order to elude these numerous armies, he turned aside into the hills, and saved his weak but active troops in Badenoch. After some marches and countermarches, Argyle came up with him at Faivy Castle. This nobleman's character, though celebrated for political courage and conduct, was very low for military prowess, and after some skirmishes, in which he was worsted, he here allowed Montrose to escape him. By quick marches through these inaccessible mountains, that general freed himself from the superior forces of the Covenanters.
Such was the situation of Montrose, that very good or very ill fortune was equally destructive to him, and diminished his army. After every victory, his soldiers, greedy of spoil, but deeming the smallest acquisition to be unexhausted riches, deserted in great numbers, and went home to secure the treasures which they had acquired. Tired too, and spent with hasty and long marches in the depth of winter, through snowy mountains, unprovided with every necessary, they fell off, and left their general almost alone with the Irish, who, having no place to which they could retire, still adhered to him in every fortune.
With these, and some reënforcements of the Atholemen and Macdonalds whom he had recalled, Montrose fell suddenly upon Argyle's country, and let loose upon it all the rage of war; carrying off the cattle, burning the houses, and putting the inhabitants to the sword. This severity, by which Montrose sullied his victories, was the result of private animosity against the chieftain, as much as of zeal for the public cause, Argyle, collecting three thousand men, marched in quest of the enemy, who had retired with their plunder; and he lay at Innerlochy, supposing himself still at a considerable distance from them. The earl of Seaforth, at the head of the garrison of Inverness, who were veteran soldiers, joined to five thousand new levied troops of the northern counties, pressed the royalists on the other side, and threatened them with inevitable destruction. By a quick and unexpected march, Montrose hastened to Innerlochy, and presented himself in order of battle before the surprised but not affrightened Covenanters. Argyle alone, seized with a panic, deserted his army, who still maintained their ground, and gave battle to the royalists. After a vigorous resistance, they were defeated, and pursued with great slaughter.[*] And the power of the Campbells (that is Argyle's name) being thus broken, the Highlanders, who were in general well affected to the royal cause, began to join Montrose's camp in great numbers. Seaforth's army dispersed of itself, at the very terror of his name. And Lord Gordon, eldest son of Huntley, having escaped from his uncle Argyle, who had hitherto detained him, now joined Montrose, with no contemptible number of his followers, attended by his brother, the earl of Aboine.
The council at Edinburgh, alarmed at Montrose's progress, began to think of a more regular plan of defence against an enemy whose repeated victories had rendered him extremely formidable. They sent for Baillie, an officer of reputation, from England; and joining him in command with Urrey, who had again enlisted himself among the king's enemies, they sent them to the field with a considerable army against the royalists. Montrose, with a detachment of eight hundred men, had attacked Dundee, a town extremely zealous for the covenant, and having carried it by assault, had delivered it up to be plundered by his soldiers; when Baillie and Urrey, with their whole force, were unexpectedly upon him.[**] His conduct and presence of mind in this emergence appeared conspicuous. Instantly he called off his soldiers from plunder, put them in order, secured his retreat by the most skilful measures; and having marched sixty miles in the face of an enemy much superior, without stopping, or allowing his soldiers the least sleep or refreshment, he at last secured himself in the mountains.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 985. Wishart, cap. 8.
** Rush. vol. vii. p. 228. Wishart, cap. 9.
Baillie and Urrey now divided their troops, in order the better to conduct the war against an enemy who surprised them as much by the rapidity of his marches, as by the boldness of his enterprises. Urrey, at the head of four thousand men, met him at Alderne, near Inverness; and, encouraged by the superiority of number, (for the Covenanters were double the royalists,) attacked him in the post which he had chosen Montrose, having placed his right wing in strong ground, drew the best of his forces to the other, and left no main body between them; a defect which he artfully concealed, by showing a few men through the trees and bushes with which that ground was covered. That Urrey might have no leisure to perceive the stratagem, he instantly led his left wing to the charge; and, making a furious impression upon the Covenanters, drove them off the field, and gained a complete victory.[*] In this battle, the valor of young Napier, son to the lord of that name, shone out with signal lustre.
Baillie now advanced, in order to revenge Urrey's discomfiture; but at Alford he met himself with a like fate. Montrose, weak in cavalry, here lined his troops of horse with infantry; and after putting the enemy's horse to rout, fell with united force upon their foot, who were entirely cut in pieces, though with the loss of the gallant Lord Gordon on the part of the royalists.[**] And having thus prevailed in so many battles, which his vigor ever rendered as decisive as they were successful, he summoned together all his friends and partisans, and prepared himself for marching into the southern provinces, in order to put a final period to the power of the Covenanters, and dissipate the parliament, which, with great pomp and solemnity, they had summoned to meet at St. Johnstone's.
While the fire was thus kindled in the north of the island, it blazed out with no less fury in the south: the parliamentary and royal armies, as soon as the season would permit, prepared to take the field, in hopes of bringing their important quarrel to a quick decision. The passing of the self-denying ordinance had been protracted by so many debates and intrigues, that the spring was far advanced before it received the sanction of both houses; and it was thought dangerous by many to introduce, so near the time of action, such great innovations into the army. Had not the punctilious principles of Essex engaged him, amidst all the disgusts which he received, to pay implicit obedience to the parliament, this alteration had not been effected without some fatal accident: since, notwithstanding his prompt resignation of the command, a mutiny was generally apprehended.[***]
* Rush. vol. vii. p. 229. Wishart, cap. 10.
** Rush. vol. vii. p. 229. Wishart, cap. 11.
*** Rush. vol. vii. p. 126, 127.
Fairfax, or, more properly speaking, Cromwell under his name, introduced at last the new model into the army, and threw the troops into a different shape. From the same men new regiments and new companies were formed, different officers appointed, and the whole military force put into such hands as the Independents could rely on. Besides members of parliament who were excluded, many officers, unwilling to serve under the new generals, threw up their commissions, and unwarily facilitated the project of putting the army entirely into the hands of that faction.
Though the discipline of the former parliamentary army was not contemptible, a more exact plan was introduced, and rigorously executed, by these new commanders. Valor indeed was very generally diffused over the one party as well as the other, during this period: discipline also was attained by the forces of the parliament: but the perfection of the military art, in concerting the general plans of action and the operations of the field, seems still on both sides to have been in a great measure wanting. Historians at least, perhaps from their own ignorance and inexperience, have not remarked any thing but a headlong, impetuous conduct; each party hurrying to a battle, where valor and fortune chiefly determined the success. The great ornament of history, during these reigns, are the civil, not the military transactions.
Never surely was a more singular army assembled, than that which was now set on foot by the parliament. To the greater number of the regiments chaplains were not appointed, the officers assumed the spiritual duty, and united it with their military functions. During the intervals of action, they occupied themselves in sermons, prayers, exhortations; and the same emulation there attended them, which in the field is so necessary to support the honor of that profession. Rapturous ecstasies supplied the place of study and reflection; and while the zealous devotees poured out their thoughts in unpremeditated harangues, they mistook that eloquence which to their own surprise, as well as that of others, flowed in upon them, for divine illuminations, and for illapses of the Holy Spirit. Wherever they were quartered, they excluded the minister from his pulpit; and, usurping his place, conveyed their sentiments to the audience, with all the authority which followed their power, their valor, and their military exploits, united to their appearing zeal and fervor. The private soldiers, seized with the same spirit, employed their vacant hours in prayer, in perusing the Holy Scriptures, in ghostly conferences where they compared the progress of their in grace, and mutually stimulated each other to further advances in the great work of their salvation. When they were marching to battle, the whole field resounded, as well with psalms and spiritual songs adapted to the occasion, as with the instruments of military music:[*] and every man endeavored to drown the sense of present danger in the prospect of that crown of glory which was set before him. In so holy a cause, wounds were esteemed meritorious; death, martyrdom; and the hurry and dangers of action, instead of banishing their pious visions, rather served to impress their minds more strongly with them.
The royalists were desirous of throwing a ridicule on this fanaticism of the parliamentary armies, without being sensible how much reason they had to apprehend its dangerous consequences. The forces assembled by the king at Oxford, in the west, and in other places, were equal, if not superior in number to their adversaries; but actuated by a very different spirit. That license which had been introduced by want of pay, had risen to a great height among them, and rendered them more formidable to their friends than to their enemies. Prince Rupert, negligent of the people, fond of the soldiery, had indulged the troops in unwarrantable liberties: Wilmot, a man of dissolute manners, had promoted the same spirit of disorder: and the licentious Goring, Gerrard, Sir Richard Granville, now carried it to a great pitch of enormity. In the west especially, where Goring commanded, universal spoil and havoc were committed; and the whole country was laid waste by the rapine of the army. All distinction of parties being in a manner dropped, the most devoted friends of the church and monarchy wished there for such success to the parliamentary forces as might put an end to these oppressions. The country people, despoiled of their substance, flocked together in several places, armed with clubs and staves; and though they professed an enmity to the soldiers of both parties, their hatred was in most places levelled chiefly against the royalists, from whom they had met with the worst treatment. Many thousands of these tumultuary peasants were assembled in different parts of England; who destroyed all such straggling soldiers as they met with, and much infested the armies.[**]
* Dugdale, p. 7. Rush. vol. vi. p. 281.
** Rush. vol. vii. p. 52, 61, 62. Whitlocke, p. 130, 131, 133, 136, Clarendon, vol. v. p. 665.
The disposition of the forces on both sides was as follows: part of the Scottish army was employed in taking Pomfret and other towns in Yorkshire: part of it besieged Carlisle valiantly defended by Sir Thomas Glenham. Chester, where Biron commanded, had long been blockaded by Sir William Brereton; and was reduced to great difficulties. The king, being joined by the princes Rupert and Maurice, lay at Oxford with a considerable army, about fifteen thousand men. Fairfax and Cromwell were posted at Windsor, with the new-modelled army, about twenty-two thousand men. Taunton, in the county of Somerset, defended by Blake, suffered a long siege from Sir Richard Granville, who commanded an army of about eight thousand men; and though the defence had been obstinate, the garrison was now reduced to the last extremity. Goring commanded in the west an army of nearly the same number.[*]
On opening the campaign, the king formed the project of relieving Chester; Fairfax, that of relieving Taunton. The king was first in motion. When he advanced to Draiton, in Shropshire, Biron met him, and brought intelligence that his approach had raised the siege, and that the parliamentary army had withdrawn. Fairfax, having reached Salisbury in his road westward, received orders from the committee of both kingdoms appointed for the management of the war, to return and lay siege to Oxford, now exposed by the king's absence. He obeyed, after sending Colonel Weldon to the west with a detachment of four thousand men. On Weldon's approach, Granville, who imagined that Fairfax with his whole army was upon him, raised the siege, and allowed this pertinacious town, now half taken and half burned, to receive relief: but the royalists, being reënforced with three thousand horse under Goring, again advanced to Taunton, and shut up Weldon, with his small army, in that ruinous place.[**]
The king, having effected his purpose with regard to Chester returned southwards: and in his way sat down before Leicester, a garrison of the parliaments. Having made a breach in the wall, he stormed the town on all sides; and, after a furious assault, the soldiers entered sword in hand, and committed all those disorders to which their natural violence, especially when inflamed by resistance, is so much addicted.[***]
* Rush. vol. vii. p. 18, 19, etc.
** Rush, vol. vii. p. 28.
*** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 652.
A great booty was taken and distributed among them: fifteen hundred prisoners fell into the king's hands. This success, which struck a great terror into the parliamentary army, determined Fairfax to leave Oxford, which he was beginning to approach; and he marched towards the king, with an intention of offering him battle. The king was advancing towards Oxford, in order to raise the siege, which, he apprehended, was now begun; and both armies, ere they were aware, had advanced within six miles of each other. A council of war was called by the king, in order to deliberate concerning the measures which he should now pursue. On the one hand, it seemed more prudent to delay the combat; because Gerrard, who lay in Wales with three thousand men, might be enabled in a little time to join the army; and Goring, it was hoped, would soon be master of Taunton, and having put the west in full security, would then unite his forces to those of the king, and give him an incontestable superiority over the enemy. On the other hand, Prince Rupert, whose boiling ardor still pushed him on to battle, excited the impatient humor of the nobility and gentry of which the army was full; and urged the many difficulties under which the royalists labored, and from which nothing but a victory could relieve them: the resolution was taken to give battle to Fairfax; and the royal army immediately advanced upon him.
At Naseby was fought, with forces nearly equal, this decisive and well-disputed action between the king and parliament. The main body of the royalists was commanded by the king himself; the right wing by Prince Rupert; the left by Sir Marmaduke Langdale. Fairfax, seconded by Skippon, placed himself in the main body of the opposite army; Cromwell in the right wing; Ireton, Cromwell's son-in-law, in the left. The charge was begun, with his usual celerity and usual success, by Prince Rupert. Though Ireton made stout resistance, and even after he was run through the thigh with a pike, still maintained the combat till he was taken prisoner, yet was that whole wing broken, and pursued with precipitate fury by Rupert: he was even so inconsiderate as to lose time in summoning and attacking the artillery of the enemy, which had been left with a good guard of infantry. The king led on his main body, and displayed in this action all the conduct of a prudent general, and all the valor of a stout soldier.[*]
* Whitlocke, p. 146.
Fairfax and Skippon encountered him, and well supported that reputation which they had acquired. Skippon, being dangerously wounded, was desired by Fairfax to leave the field; but he declared that he would remain there as long as one man maintained his ground.[*] The infantry of the parliament was broken, and pressed upon by the king; till Fairfax, with great presence of mind, brought up the reserve, and renewed the combat. Meanwhile Cromwell, having led on his troops to the attack of Langdale, overbore the force of the royalists, and by his prudence improved that advantage which he had gained by his valor. Having pursued the enemy about a quarter of a mile, and detached some troops to prevent their rallying, he turned back upon the king's infantry, and threw them into the utmost confusion. One regiment alone preserved its order unbroken, though twice desperately assailed by Fairfax: and that general, excited by so steady a resistance, ordered Doyley, the captain of his life-guard, to give them a third charge in front, while he himself attacked them in the rear. The regiment was broken. Fairfax, with his own hands, killed an ensign, and, having seized the colors, gave them to a soldier to keep for him. The soldier, afterwards boasting that he had won this trophy, was reproved by Doyley, who had seen the action. "Let him retain that honor," said Fairfax; "I have to-day acquired enough beside."[**]
Prince Rupert, sensible too late of his error, left the fruitless attack on the enemy's artillery, and joined the king, whose infantry was now totally discomfited. Charles exhorted this body of cavalry not to despair, and cried aloud to them, "One charge more, and we recover the day."[***] But the disadvantages under which they labored were too evident; and they could by no means be induced to renew the combat. Charles was obliged to quit the field, and leave the victory to the enemy.[****]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 43. Whitlocke, p. 145.
** Whitlocke, p. 145.
*** Rush. vol. vii. p. 44.
**** Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 656, 657. Walker p. 130, 131
The slain on the side of the parliament exceeded those on the side of the king: they lost a thousand men; he not above eight hundred. But Fairfax made five hundred officers prisoners, and four thousand private men; took all the king's artillery and ammunition, and totally dissipated his infantry: so that scarce any victory could be more complete than that which he obtained.
Among the other spoils was seized the king's cabinet, with the copies of his letters to the queen, which the parliament afterwards ordered to be published.[*] They chose, no doubt, such of them as they thought would reflect dishonor on him: yet, upon the whole, the letters are written with delicacy and tenderness, and give an advantageous idea both of the king's genius and morals. A mighty fondness, it is true, and attachment, he expresses to his consort, and often professes that he never would embrace any measures which she disapproved: but such declarations of civility and confidence are not always to be taken in a full, literal sense. And so legitimate an affection, avowed by the laws of God and man, may perhaps be excusable towards a woman of beauty and spirit, even though she was a Papist.[**]
* Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 658.
** Hearne has published the following extract from a manuscript work of Sir Simon D'Ewes, who was no mean man in the parliamentary party. "On Thursday, the 30th and last day of this instant June, 1625, I went to Whitehall, purposely to see the queen, which I did fully all the time she sat at dinner. I perceived her to be a most absolute delicate lady, after I had exactly surveyed all the features of her face, much enlivened by her radiant and sparkling black eyes. Besides, her deportment among her women was so sweet and humble, and her speech and looks to her other servants so mild and gracious, as I could not abstain from divers deep- fetched sighs, to consider that she wanted the knowledge of the true religion." See Preface to the Chronicle of Dunstable, p 64.
The Athenians, having intercepted a letter written by their enemy, Philip of Macedon, to his wife Olympia, so far from being moved by a curiosity of prying into the secrets of that relation, immediately sent the letter to the queen unopened. Philip was not their sovereign; nor were they inflamed with that violent animosity against him which attends all civil commotions.
After the battle, the king retreated with that body of horse which remained entire, first to Hereford, then to Abergavenny; and remained some time in Wales, from the vain hope of raising a body of infantry in those harassed and exhausted quarters. Fairfax, having first retaken Leicester, which was surrendered upon articles, began to deliberate concerning his future enterprises. A letter was brought him, written by Goring to the king, and unfortunately intrusted to a spy of Fairfax's. Goring there informed the king, that in three weeks he hoped to be master of Taunton, after which he would join his majesty with all the forces in the west; and entreated him, in the mean while to avoid coming to any general action. This letter, which, had it been safely delivered, had probably prevented the battle of Naseby, served now to direct the operations of Fairfax.[*] After leaving a body of three thousand men to Pointz and Rossiter, with orders to attend the king's motions, he marched immediately to the west, with a view of saving Taunton, and suppressing the only considerable force which now remained to the royalists.
In the beginning of the campaign, Charles, apprehensive of the event, had sent the prince of Wales, then fifteen years of age, to the west, with the title of General, and had given orders, if he were pressed by the enemy, that he should make his escape into a foreign country, and save one part of the royal family from the violence of the parliament. Prince Rupert had thrown himself into Bristol, with an intention of defending that important city. Goring commanded the army before Taunton.
On Fairfax's approach, the siege of Taunton was raised; and the royalists retired to Lamport, an open town in the county of Somerset. Fairfax attacked them in that post, beat them from it, killed about three hundred men, and took one thousand four hundred prisoners.[**] After this advantage, he sat down before Bridgewater, a town esteemed strong, and of great consequence in that country. When he had entered the outer town by storm, Windham, the Governor, who had retired into the inner, immediately capitulated, and delivered up the place to Fairfax. The garrison, to the number of two thousand six hundred men, were made prisoners of war.
Fairfax, having next taken Bath and Sherborne, resolved to lay siege to Bristol, and made great preparations for an enterprise which, from the strength of the garrison, and the reputation of Prince Rupert, the governor, was deemed of the last importance. But, so precarious in most men is this quality of military courage, a poorer defence was not made by any town during the whole war; and the general expectations were here extremely disappointed. No sooner had the parliamentary forces entered the lines by storm, than the prince capitulated, and surrendered the city to Fairfax.[***] A few days before, he had written a letter to the king, in which he undertook to defend the place for four months, if no mutiny obliged him to surrender it.
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 49.
** Rush, vol. vii. p. 55.
*** Rush, vol. vii p. 83.
Charles, who was forming schemes and collecting forces for the relief of Bristol, was astonished at so unexpected an event, which was little less fatal to his cause than the defeat at Naseby.[*] Full of indignation, he instantly recalled all Prince Rupert's commissions, and sent him a pass to go beyond sea.[**]
The king's affairs now went fast to ruin in all quarters. The Scots, having made themselves masters of Carlisle, after an obstinate siege, marched southwards, and laid siege to Hereford; but were obliged to raise it on the king's approach: and this was the last glimpse of success which attended his arms. Having marched to the relief of Chester, which was anew besieged by the parliamentary forces under Colonel Jones, Pointz attacked his rear, and forced him to give battle. While the fight was continued with great obstinacy, and victory seemed to incline to the royalists, Jones fell upon them from the other side, and put them to rout, with the loss of six hundred slain and one thousand prisoners.[***] The king, with the remains of his broken army, fled to Newark, and thence escaped to Oxford, where he shut himself up during the winter season.
* Clarendon, vol. vi. p. 690. Walker, p. 137.
** Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 695.
*** Rush, vii. p. 117.
The news which he received from every quarter, were no less fatal than those events which passed where he himself was present. Fairfax and Cromwell, after the surrender of Bristol, having divided their forces, the former marched westwards, in order to complete the conquest of Devonshire and Cornwall; the latter attacked the king's garrisons which lay to the east of Bristol. The Devizes were surrendered to Cromwell; Berkeley Castle was taken by storm; Winchester capitulated; Basing House was entered sword in hand; and all these middle counties of England were, in a little time, reduced to obedience under the parliament.
{1646.} The same rapid and uninterrupted success attended Fairfax. The parliamentary forces, elated by past victories, governed by the most rigid discipline, met with no equal opposition from troops dismayed by repeated defeats, and corrupted by licentious manners. After beating up the quarters of the royalists at Bovey Tracy, Fairfax sat down before Dartmouth, and in a few days entered it by storm. Poudram Castle being taken by him, and Exeter blockaded on all sides, Hopton, a man of merit, who now commanded the royalists, having advanced to the relief of that town with an army of eight thousand men, met with the parliamentary army at Torrington, where he was defeated, all his foot dispersed, and he himself with his horse obliged to retire into Cornwall. Fairfax followed him, and vigorously pursued the victory. Having enclosed the royalists at Truro, he forced the whole army, consisting of five thousand men, chiefly cavalry, to surrender upon terms. The soldiers, delivering up their horses and arms, were allowed to disband, and received twenty shillings apiece, to carry them to their respective abodes. Such of the officers as desired it had passes to retire beyond sea: the others, having promised never more to bear arms, paid compositions to the parliament,[*] and procured their pardon.[**] And thus Fairfax, after taking Exeter, which completed the conquest of the west, marched with his victorious army to the centre of the kingdom, and fixed his camp at Newbury. The prince of Wales, in pursuance of the king's orders, retired to Scilly, thence to Jersey; whence he went to Paris, where he joined the queen, who had fled thither from Exeter, at the time the earl of Essex conducted the parliamentary army to the west.
In the other parts of England, Hereford was taken by surprise: Chester surrendered: Lord Digby, who had attempted with one thousand two hundred horse to break into Scotland and join Montrose, was defeated at Sherburne, in Yorkshire, by Colonel Copley; his whole force was dispersed, and he himself was obliged to fly, first to the Isle of Man, thence to Ireland. News, too, arrived that Montrose himself, after some more successes, was at last routed; and this only remaining hope of the royal party finally extinguished.
When Montrose descended into the southern counties, the Covenanters, assembling their whole force, met him with a numerous army, and gave him battle, but without success, at Kilsyth.[***] This was the most complete victory that Montrose ever obtained.
* These compositions were different, according to the demerits of the person: but by a vote of the house, they could not be under two years' rent of the delinquent's estate. Journ. 11th of August, 1648 Whitlocke, p. 160.
** Rush, vol. vii. p 108.
*** 15th August, 1645.
The royalists put to sword six thousand of their enemies, and left the Covenanters no remains of any army in Scotland. The whole kingdom was shaken with these repeated successes of Montrose; and many noblemen, who secretly favored the royal cause, now declared openly for it when they saw a force able to support them. The marquis of Douglas, the earls of Annandale and Hartfield, the lords Fleming, Seton, Maderty, Carnegy, with many others, flocked to the royal standard. Edinburgh opened its gates, and gave liberty to all the prisoners there detained by the Covenanters. Among the rest was Lord Ogilvy, son of Airly, whose family had contributed extremely to the victory gained at Kilsyth.[*]
David Lesly was detached from the army in England, and marched to the relief of his distressed party in Scotland. Montrose advanced still farther to the south, allured by vain hopes, both of rousing to arms the earls of Hume, Traquaire, and Roxborough, who had promised to join him; and of obtaining from England some supply of cavalry, in which he was deficient. By the negligence of his scouts, Lesly, at Philipbaugh in the Forest, surprised his army, much diminished in numbers, from the desertion of the Highlanders, who had retired to the hills, according to custom, in order to secure their plunder. After a sharp conflict, where Montrose exerted great valor, his forces were routed by Lesly's cavalry;[**] and he himself was obliged to fly with his broken forces into the mountains, where he again prepared himself for new battles and new enterprises.[***]
The Covenanters used the victory with rigor. Their prisoners, Sir Robert Spotiswood, secretary of state, and son to the late primate, Sir Philip Nisbet, Sir William Hollo, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Andrew Guthry, son of the bishop of Murray, William Murray, son of the earl of Tullibardine, were condemned and executed. The sole crime imputed to the secretary was his delivering to Montrose the king's commission to be captain-general of Scotland. Lord Ogilvy, who was again taken prisoner, would have undergone the same fate, had not his sister found means to procure his escape by changing clothes with him. For this instance of courage and dexterity, she met with harsh usage. The clergy solicited the parliament that more royalists might be executed; but could not obtain their request.[****]
* Rush, vol. vii p. 230, 231. Wishart, cap, 13.
** 13th Sept. 1645.
*** Rush, vol. vii. p. 231
**** Guthry's Memoirs. Rush. vol. vii. p. 232.
After all these repeated disasters, which every where befell the royal party, there remained only one body of troops on which fortune could exercise her rigor. Lord Astley, with a small army of three thousand men, chiefly cavalry, marching to Oxford in order to join the king, was met at Stowe by Colonel Morgan, and entirely defeated, himself being taken prisoner. "You have done your work," said Astley to the parliamentary officers; "and may now go to play, unless you choose to fall out among yourselves."[*]
The condition of the king during this whole winter was to the last degree disastrous and melancholy. As the dread of ills is commonly more oppressive than their real presence, perhaps in no period of his life was he more justly the object of compassion. His vigor of mind, which, though it sometimes failed him in acting, never deserted him in his sufferings, was what alone supported him; and he was determined, as he wrote to Lord Digby, if he could not live as a king, to die like a gentleman; nor should any of his friends, he said, ever have reason to blush for the prince whom they had so unfortunately served.[**] The murmurs of discontented officers, on the one hand, harassed their unhappy sovereign; while they overrated those services and sufferings which they now saw must forever go unrewarded.[***] The affectionate duty, on the other hand, of his more generous friends, who respected his misfortunes and his virtues as much as his dignity, wrung his heart with a new sorrow, when he reflected that such disinterested attachment would so soon be exposed to the rigor of his implacable enemies. Repeated attempts which he made for a peaceful and equitable accommodation with the parliament, served to no purpose but to convince them that the victory was entirely in their hands. They deigned not to make the least reply to several of his messages, in which he desired a passport for commissioners.[****]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 141. It was the same Astley who, before he charged at the battle of Edgehill, made this short prayer: "O Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget thee, do not thou forget me," And with that rose up and cried, "March on, boys!" Warwick, p. 229. There were certainly much longer prayers said in the parliamentary army; but I doubt if there were so good a one.
** Carte's Ormond, vol. iii. No. 433.
*** Walker, p. 147
**** Rush, vol. vii. p. 215, etc.
At last, after reproaching him with the blood spilt during the war, they told him that they were preparing bills for him; and his passing them would be the best pledge of his inclination towards peace: in other words, he must yield at discretion.[*] He desired a personal treaty, and offered to come to London, upon receiving a safe-conduct for himself and his attendants: they absolutely refused him admittance, and issued orders for the guarding, that is, the seizing of his person, in case he should attempt to visit them.[**]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 217, 219. Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 741.
** Rush, vol. vii. p 249. Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 741.
A new incident, which happened in Ireland, served to inflame the minds of men, and to increase those calumnies with which his enemies had so much loaded him, and which he ever regarded as the most grievous part of his misfortunes. After the cessation with the Irish rebels, the king was desirous of concluding a final peace with them, and obtaining their assistance in England: and he gave authority to Ormond, lord lieutenant, to promise them an abrogation of all the penal laws enacted against Catholics; together with the suspension of Poinings's statute, with regard to some particular bills which should be agreed on. Lord Herbert, created earl of Glamorgan, (though his patent had not yet passed the seals,) having occasion for his private affairs to go to Ireland, the king considered that this nobleman, being a Catholic, and allied to the best Irish families, might be of service: he also foresaw that further concessions with regard to religion might probably be demanded by the bigoted Irish; and that, as these concessions, however necessary, would give great scandal to the Protestant zealots in his three kingdoms, if would be requisite both to conceal them during some time, and to preserve Ormond's character by giving private orders to Glamorgan to conclude and sign these articles. But as he had a better opinion of Glamorgan's zeal and affection for his service than of his capacity, he enjoined him to communicate all his measures to Ormond; and though the final conclusion of the treaty must be executed only in Glamorgan's own name, he was required to be directed in the steps towards it by the opinion of the lord lieutenant. Glamorgan, bigoted to his religion, and passionate for the king's service, but guided in these pursuits by no manner of judgment or discretion, secretly, of himself, without any communication with Ormond, concluded a peace with the council of Kilkenny, and agreed, in the king's name, that the Irish should enjoy all the churches of which they had ever been in possession since the commencement of their insurrection, on condition that they should assist the king in England with a body of ten thousand men. This transaction was discovered by accident. The titular archbishop of Tuam being killed by a sally of the garrison of Sligo, the articles of the treaty were found among his baggage, and were immediately published every where, and copies of them sent over to the English parliament.[*] The lord lieutenant and Lord Digby, foreseeing the clamor which would be raised against the king, committed Glamorgan to prison, charged him with treason for his temerity, and maintained that he had acted altogether without any authority from his master. The English parliament, however, neglected not so favorable an opportunity of reviving the old clamor with regard to the king's favor of Popery, and accused him of delivering over, in a manner, the whole kingdom of Ireland to that hated sect. The king told them, "that the earl of Glamorgan, having made an offer to raise forces in the kingdom of Ireland, and to conduct them into England for his majesty's service, had a commission to that purpose, and to that purpose only; and that he had no commission at all to treat of any thing else, without the privity and direction of the lord lieutenant, much less to capitulate any thing concerning religion, or any property belonging either to church or laity."[**] Though this declaration seems agreeable to truth, it gave no satisfaction to the parliament; and some historians, even at present, when the ancient bigotry is somewhat abated, are desirous of representing this very innocent transaction, in which the king was engaged by the most violent necessity, as a stain on the memory of that unfortunate prince.[***] [16]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 239.
** Birch, p. 119.
*** See note P, at the end of the volume.
Having lost all hope of prevailing over the rigor of the parliament, either by arms or by treaty, the only resource which remained to the king was derived from the intestine dissensions which ran very high among his enemies. Presbyterians and Independents, even before their victory was fully completed, fell into contests about the division of the spoil; and their religious as well as civil disputes agitated the whole kingdom.
The parliament, though they had early abolished Episcopal authority, had not, during so long a time, substituted any other spiritual government in its place; and their committees of religion had hitherto assumed the whole ecclesiastical jurisdiction; but they now established, by an ordinance, the Presbyterian model in all its forms of congregational, classical, provincial, and national assemblies. All the inhabitants of each parish were ordered to meet and choose elders, on whom together with the minister, was bestowed the entire direction of all spiritual concerns within the congregation. A number of neighboring parishes, commonly between twelve and twenty, formed a classis; and the court which governed this division was composed of all the ministers, together with two, three, or four elders chosen from each parish. The provincial assembly retained an inspection over several neighboring classes, and was composed entirely of clergymen: the national assembly was constituted in the same manner; and its authority extended over the whole kingdom. It is probable, that the tyranny exercised by the Scottish clergy, had given warning not to allow laymen a place in the provincial or national assemblies; lest the nobility and more considerable gentry, soliciting a seat in these great ecclesiastical courts, should bestow a consideration upon them, and render them, in the eyes of the multitude, a rival to the parliament. In the inferior courts, the mixture of the laity might serve rather to temper the usual zeal of the clergy.[*]
But though the Presbyterians, by the establishment of parity among the ecclesiastics, were so far gratified, they were denied satisfaction in several other points on which they were extremely intent. The assembly of divines had voted Presbytery to be of divine right: the parliament refused their assent to that decision.[**] Selden, Whitlocke, and other political reasoners, assisted by the Independents, had prevailed in this important deliberation. They thought, that had the bigoted religionists been able to get their heavenly charter recognized, the presbyters would soon become more dangerous to the magistrate than had ever been the prelatical clergy. These latter, white they claimed to themselves a divine right, admitted of a like origin to civil authority: the former, challenging to their own order a celestial pedigree, derived the legislative power from a source no more dignified than the voluntary association of the people.
* Rush. vol. vii. p. 224.
** Whitlocke, p. 106. Rush. vol. vii. p. 260, 261.
Under color of keeping the sacraments from profanation, the clergy of all Christian sects had assumed what they call the power of the keys, or the right of fulminating excommunication. The example of Scotland was a sufficient lesson for the parliament to use precaution in guarding against so severe a tyranny. They determined, by a general ordinance, all the cases in which excommunication could be used. They allowed of appeals to parliament from all ecclesiastical courts. And they appointed commissioners in every province to judge of such cases as fell not within their general ordinance.[*] So much civil authority, intermixed with the ecclesiastical, gave disgust to all the zealots.
But nothing was attended with more universal scandal than the propensity of many in the parliament towards a toleration of the Protestant sectaries. The Presbyterians exclaimed, that this indulgence made the church of Christ resemble Noah's ark, and rendered it a receptacle for all unclean beasts. They insisted, that the least of Christ's truths was superior to all political considerations.[**] They maintained the eternal obligation imposed by the covenant to extirpate heresy and schism. And they menaced all their opponents with the same rigid persecution under which they themselves had groaned, when held in subjection by the hierarchy.
* Rush. vol. vii. p. 210.
** Rush, vol vii. p. 308.
So great prudence and reserve, in such material points, does great honor to the parliament; and proves that, notwithstanding the prevalency of bigotry and fanaticism, there were many members who had more enlarged views, and paid regard to the civil interests of society. These men, uniting themselves to the enthusiasts, whose genius is naturally averse to clerical usurpations, exercised so jealous an authority over the assembly of divines, that they allowed them nothing but the liberty of tendering advice, and would not intrust them even with the power of electing their own chairman or his substitute, or of supplying the vacancies of their own members.
While these disputes were canvassed by theologians, who engaged in their spiritual contests every order of the state the king, though he entertained hopes of reaping advantage from those divisions, was much at a loss which side it would be most for his interest to comply with. The Presbyterians were, by their principles, the least averse to regal authority but were rigidly bent on the extirpation of prelacy: the Independents were resolute to lay the foundation of a republican government; but as they pretended not to erect themselves into a national church, it might be hoped that, if gratified with am toleration, they would admit the reëstablishment of the hierarchy. So great attachment had the king to episcopal jurisdiction, that he was ever inclined to put it in balance even with his own power and kingly office.
But whatever advantage he might hope to reap from the divisions in the parliamentary party, he was apprehensive lest it should come too late to save him from the destruction with which he was instantly threatened. Fairfax was approaching with a powerful and victorious army, and was taking the proper measures for laying siege to Oxford, which must infallibly fall into his hands. To be taken captive, and led in triumph by his insolent enemies, was what Charles justly abhorred; and every insult, if not violence, was to be dreaded from that enthusiastic soldiery who hated his person and despised his dignity. In this desperate extremity, he embraced a measure which, in any other situation, might lie under the imputation of imprudence and indiscretion.
Montreville, the French minister, interested for the king more by the natural sentiments of humanity than any instructions from his court, which seemed rather to favor the parliament, had solicited the Scottish generals and commissioners to give protection to their distressed sovereign; and having received many general professions and promises, he had always transmitted these, perhaps with some exaggeration, to the king. From his suggestions, Charles began to entertain thoughts of leaving Oxford, and flying to the Scottish army, which at that time lay before Newark.[*] He considered, that the Scottish nation had been fully gratified in all their demands; and having already, in their own country, annihilated both episcopacy and regal authority, had no further concessions to exact from him. In all disputes which had passed about settling the terms of peace, the Scots, he heard, had still adhered to the milder side, and had endeavored to soften the rigor of the English parliament. Great disgusts also, on other accounts, had taken place between the nations; and the Scots found that, in proportion as their assistance became less necessary, less value was put upon them. The progress of the Independents gave them great alarm; and they were scandalized to hear their beloved covenant spoken of every day with less regard, and reverence. The refusal of a divine right to presbytery, and the infringing of ecclesiastical discipline from political considerations, were to them the subject of much offence; and the king hoped that, in their present disposition, the plight of their native prince, flying to them in this extremity of distress, would rouse every-spark of generosity in their bosom, and procure him their favor and protection.
* Clarendon, vol. iv. p. 750; vol. v. p. 16.
That he might the better conceal his intentions, orders were given at every gate in Oxford for allowing three persons to pass; and in the night the king, accompanied by none but Dr. Hudson and Mr. Ashburnham, went out at that gate which leads to London. He rode before a portmanteau, and called himself Ashburnham's servant. He passed through Henley, St. Albans, and came so near to London as Harrow on the Hill. He once entertained thoughts of entering into that city, and of throwing himself on the mercy of the parliament. But at last, after passing through many cross roads, he arrived at the Scottish camp before Newark.[*] The parliament, hearing of his escape from Oxford, issued rigorous orders, and threatened with instant death whoever should harbor or conceal him.[**]
The Scottish generals and commissioners affected great surprise on the appearance of the king; and though they paid him all the exterior respect due to his dignity, they instantly set a guard upon him, under color of protection, and made him in reality a prisoner. They informed the English parliament of this unexpected incident, and assured them that they had entered into no private treaty with the king. They applied to him for orders to Bellasis, governor of Newark, to surrender that town, now reduced to extremity; and the orders were instantly obeyed. And hearing that the parliament laid claim to the entire disposal of the king's person, and that the English army was making some motion towards them, they thought proper to retire northwards, and to fix their camp at Newcastle.[***]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 267.
** Whitlocke, p. 208.
*** Rush, vol. vii. p. 271. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 23.
This measure was very grateful to the king; and he began to entertain hopes of protection from the Scots. He was particularly attentive to the behavior of their preachers, on whom all depended. It was the mode of that age to make the pulpit the scene of news; and on every great event, the whole Scripture was ransacked by the clergy for passages applicable to the present occasion. The first minister who preached before the king chose these words for his text: "And behold all the men of Israel came to the king, and said unto him, Why have our brethren, the men of Judah, stolen thee away, and have brought the king and his household, and all David's men with him, over Jordan? And all the men of Judah answered the men of Israel, Because the king is near of kin to us; wherefore then be ye angry for this matter? Have we eaten at all of the king's cost? or hath he given us any gift? And the men of Israel answered the men of Judah and said, We have ten parts in the king, and we have also more right in David than ye: why then did ye despise us, that our advice should not be first had in bringing back our king? And the words of the men of Judah were fiercer than the words of the men of Israel."[*] But the king soon found, that the happiness chiefly of the allusion had tempted the preacher to employ this text, and that the covenanting zealots were nowise pacified towards him. Another preacher, after reproaching him to his face with his misgovernment, ordered this psalm to be sung:--
"Why dost thou, tyrant, boast thyself, Thy wicked deeds to praise?"
The king stood up, and called for that psalm which begins with these words,
"Have mercy, Lord, on me, I pray; For men would me devour."
The good-natured audience, in pity to fallen majesty, showed for once greater deference to the king than to the minister, and sung the psalm which the former had called for.[**]
Charles had very little reason to be pleased with his situation. He not only found himself a prisoner, very strictly guarded: all his friends were kept at a distance; and no intercourse, either by letters or conversation, was allowed him with any one on whom he could depend, or who was suspected of any attachment towards him. The Scottish generals would enter into no confidence with him; and still treated him with distant ceremony and feigned respect. And every proposal which they made him tended further to his abasement and to his ruin.[***]
* 2 Sam. chap. xix. ver. 41,42,43. See Clarendon, vol v. p. 23, 24
** Whitlocke, p. 234.
*** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 30.
They required him to issue orders to Oxford and to all his other garrisons, commanding their surrender to the parliament; and the king, sensible that their resistance was to very little purpose, willingly complied. The terms given to most of them were honorable; and Fairfax, as far as it lay in his power, was very exact in observing them. Far from allowing violence, he would not even permit insults or triumph over the unfortunate royalists; and by his generous humanity, so cruel a civil war was ended, in appearance, very calmly between the parties.
Ormond, having received like orders, delivered Dublin and other forts into the hands of the parliamentary officers. Montrose also, after having experienced still more variety of good and bad fortune, threw down his arms, and retired out of the kingdom.
The marquis of Worcester, a man past eighty-four, was the last in England that submitted to the authority of the parliament. He defended Raglan Castle to extremity; and opened not its gates till the middle of August. Four years, a few days excepted, were now elapsed since the king first erected his standard at Nottingham:[*] so long had the British nations, by civil and religious quarrels, been occupied in shedding their own blood, and laying waste their native country.
The parliament and the Scots laid their proposals before the king. They were such as a captive, entirely at mercy, could expect from the most inexorable victor. Yet were they little worse than what were insisted on before the battle of Naseby. The power of the sword, instead of ten, which the king now offered, was demanded for twenty years, together with a right to levy whatever money the parliament should think proper for the support of their armies. The other conditions were, in the main, the same with those which had formerly been offered to the king.[**]
Charles said, that proposals which introduced such important innovations in the constitution, demanded time for deliberation: the commissioners replied, that he must give his answer in ten days.[***] He desired to reason about the meaning and import of some terms: they informed him, that they had no power of debate; and peremptorily required his consent or refusal. He requested a personal treaty with the parliament. They threatened that, if he delayed compliance, the parliament would, by their own authority, settle the nation.
* Rush. vol. vi. p. 293.
** Rush. vol. vi. p. 309.
*** Rush. vol. vii. p. 319.
What the parliament was most intent upon, was not their treaty with the king, to whom they paid little regard, but that with the Scots. Two important points remained to be settled with that nation: their delivery of the king, and the estimation of their arrears.
The Scots might pretend, that, as Charles was king of Scotland as well as of England, they were entitled to an equal vote in the disposal of his person; and that, in such a case, where the titles are equal, and the subject indivisible, the preference was due to the present possessor. The English maintained, that the king, being in England, was comprehended within the jurisdiction of that kingdom, and could not be disposed of by any foreign nation: a delicate question this, and what surely could not be decided by precedent; since such a situation is not any where to be found in history.[*]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 339.
As the Scots concurred with the English in imposing such severe conditions on the king, that, notwithstanding his unfortunate situation, he still refused to accept of them, it is certain that they did not desire his freedom: nor could they ever intend to join lenity and rigor together, in so inconsistent a manner. Before the settlement of terms, the administration must be possessed entirely by the parliaments of both kingdoms; and how incompatible that scheme with the liberty of the king, is easily imagined. To carry him a prisoner into Scotland, where few forces could be supported to guard him, was a measure so full of inconvenience and danger, that, even if the English had consented to it, it must have appeared to the Scots themselves altogether uneligible: and how could such a plan be supported in opposition to England, possessed of such numerous and victorious armies, which were, at that time at least seemed to be, in entire union with the parliament? The only expedient, it is obvious, which the Scots could embrace, if they scrupled wholly to abandon the king, was immediately to return, fully and cordially, to their allegiance; and, uniting themselves with the royalists in both kingdoms, endeavor, by force of arms, to reduce the English parliament to more moderate conditions: but, besides that this measure was full of extreme hazard, what was it but instantly to combine with their old enemies against their old friends; and, in a fit of romantic generosity, overturn what, with so much expense of blood and treasure, they had, during the course of so many years, been so carefully erecting?
But though all these reflections occurred to the Scottish commissioners, they resolved to prolong the dispute, and to keep the king as a pledge for those arrears which they claimed from England, and which they were not likely, in the present disposition of that nation, to obtain by any other expedient. The sum, by their account, amounted to near two millions: for they had received little regular pay since they had entered England. And though the contributions which they had levied, as well as the price of their living at free quarters, must be deducted, yet still the sum which they insisted on was very considerable. After many discussions, it was at last agreed, that, in lieu of all demands, they should accept of four hundred thousand pounds, one half to be paid instantly, another in two subsequent payments.[*]
* Rush, vol. vii. p. 326. Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 236
Great pains were taken by the Scots (and the English complied with their pretended delicacy) to make this estimation and payment of arrears appear a quite different transaction from that for the delivery of the king's person: but common sense requires that they should be regarded as one and the same. The English, it is evident, had they not been previously assured of receiving the king, would never have parted with so considerable a sum; and, while they weakened themselves, by the same measure, have strengthened a people with whom they must afterwards have so material an interest to discuss.
Thus the Scottish nation underwent, and still undergo, (for such grievous stains are not easily wiped off,) the reproach of selling their king and betraying their prince for money. In vain did they maintain, that this money was, on account of former services, undoubtedly their due; that in their present situation, no other measure, without the utmost, indiscretion, or even their apparent ruin, could be embraced; and that, though they delivered their king into the hands of his open enemies they were themselves as much his open enemies as those to whom they surrendered him; and their common hatred against him had long united the two parties in strict alliance with each other. They were still answered, that they made use of this scandalous expedient for obtaining their wages; and that, after taking arms without any provocation against their sovereign, who had ever loved and cherished them, they had deservedly fallen into a situation from which they could not extricate themselves without either infamy or imprudence.
The infamy of this bargain had such an influence on the Scottish parliament, that they once voted that the king should be protected, and his liberty insisted on. But the general assembly interposed, and pronounced that, as he had refused to take the covenant, which was pressed on him, it became not the godly to concern themselves about his fortunes. After this declaration, it behoved the parliament to retract their vote.[*]
Intelligence concerning the final resolution of the Scottish nation to surrender him, was brought to the king; and he happened, at that very time, to be playing at chess.[**] Such command of temper did he possess, that he continued his game without interruption; and none of the bystanders could perceive that the letter which he perused had brought him news of any consequence. The English commissioners, who, some days after, came to take him under their custody, were admitted to kiss his hands; and he received them with the same grace and cheerfulness as if they had travelled on no other errand than to pay court to him. The old earl of Pembroke, in particular, who was one of them, he congratulated on his strength and vigor, that he was still able, during such a season, to perform so long a journey, in company with so many young people.
{1647.} The king, being delivered over by the Scots to the English commissioners, was conducted under a guard to Holdenby, in the county of Northampton. On his journey, the whole country flocked to behold him, moved partly by curiosity, partly by compassion and affection. If any still retained rancor against him, in his present condition, they passed in silence; while his well-wishers, more generous than prudent, accompanied his march with tears, with acclamations, and with prayers for his safety.[***] That ancient superstition, likewise, of desiring the king's touch in scrofulous distempers, seemed to acquire fresh credit among the people, from the general tenderness which began to prevail for this virtuous and unhappy monarch.
* Parl. Hist. vol. xv. p. 243, 244.
** Burnet's Memoirs of the Hamiltons.
*** Ludlow. Herbert.
The commissioners rendered his confinement at Holdenby very rigorous; dismissing his ancient servants, debarring him from visits, and cutting off all communication with his friends or family. The parliament, though earnestly applied to by the king, refused to allow his chaplains to attend him, because they had not taken the covenant. The king refused to assist at the service exercised according to the directory; because he had not as yet given his consent to that mode of worship.[*] Such religious zeal prevailed on both sides; and such was the unhappy and distracted condition to which it had reduced king and people.
During the time that the king remained in the Scottish army at Newcastle, died the earl of Essex, the discarded, but still powerful and popular general of the parliament. His death, in this conjuncture, was a public misfortune. Fully sensible of the excesses to which affairs had been carried, and of the worse consequences which were still to be apprehended, he had resolved to conciliate a peace, and to remedy, as far as possible, all those ills to which, from mistake rather than any bad intentions, he had himself so much contributed. The Presbyterian, or the moderate party among the commons, found themselves considerably weakened by his death; and the small remains of authority, which still adhered to the house of peers, were in a manner wholly extinguished.[**]
* Clarendon, voL T. p. 39. Warwick, p. 298.
** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 48.