Book III…

Book III

April 1645-August 1646.

HISTORY.--SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL, AND OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED.--BATTLE OF NASEBY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS AND CONCLUSION OF THE CIVIL WAR.--PROGRESS OF THE TOLERATION CONTROVERSY AND OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THE INDEPENDENTS--LONDON AND LANCASHIRE PRESBYTERIANIZED.

BIOGRAPHY:--RETURN OF MILTON'S WIFE: HIS REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN: FIRST EDITION OF HIS POEMS: THREE MORE SONNETS: CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS RETALIATION: TROUBLES OF THE POWELL FAMILY.

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Chapter I

COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MODEL, AND VIEW OF THE WORK LYING BEFORE IT--FIRST ACTIONS OF THE NEW MODEL--CROMWELL RETAINED IN COMMAND: BATTLE OF NASEBY: OTHER SUCCESSES OF THE NEW MODEL--POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY--EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND--FAG-END OF THE WAR IN ENGLAND, AND FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS--FALLEN AND RISEN STARS.

By the Ordinance for New-Modelling the Parliamentarian Army, passed February 15, 1644-5, and by the Self-Denying Ordinance, which followed April 3, 1645, excluding all members of either House from commands in the New Army, the prospects of the war had been completely altered. From these dates people everywhere were talking of the New Model, and what it was likely to accomplish, the only difference being that the bulk of the Parliamentarians expected great things from it, while the Royalists, and perhaps also those of the Parliamentarians who resented the removal of Essex from the chief command, and their own removal from commands under him, regarded the whole experiment rather sneeringly, and ridiculed it as the New Noddle. Which of these sets of prophets were in the right will appear presently; meanwhile it is desirable that we should know as exactly as possible what the New Model or New Noddle really was.

COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MODEL, AND VIEW OF THE WORK LYING BEFORE IT.

The following is an account of the organization of the New Model, with a list of its chief Officers when it was first organized:--

TOTAL ARMY ESTIMATED AT 22,000.

Commander-in-Chief: SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX (ætat. 33).

Second-in-Command (for the present): PHILIP SKIPPON, with the rank of Serjeant Major-General.

Chief of Ordnance: THOMAS HAMMOND. He was a brother of the Royalist Divine and King's faithful Chaplain, Dr. Henry Hammond (see Vol. II. 519 and 526, Note); and the split of the Hammond family into Royalists and Parliamentarians was much noticed.

Scout-Master-General: LEONARD WATSON, "originally a goldsmith in Lincoln."

Chaplain to the Commander-in-Chief: Mr. EDWARD BOWLES.

Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief: JOHN RUSHWORTH.

I. FOOT = 14,400.

These consisted of twelve Regiments, each of 1,200 men, and each divided into ten Companies, The officers of the Regiments, respectively, were as follows:--

1. (The Commander-in-Chief's Regiment):--Colonel SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX; Lieutenant-Colonel JACKSON; Major COOKE; and seven Captains.

2. (The Serjeant-Major-General's Regiment):--Colonel PHILLIP SKIPPON; Lieutenant-Colonel FRANCIS; Major ASHFIELD; and seven Captains.

3. Colonel HOLBORN; Lieutenant-Colonel COTTESWORTH; Major SMITH; and seven Captains.

4. Colonel CRAWFORD or CRAYFORD, succeeded soon by young Colonel ROBERT HAMMOND (ætat. 24), a nephew of the chief of the Ordnance and of the Royalist Dr. Henry Hammond; Lieutenant-Colonel ISAAC EWER (reported to have been "a serving man"); Major SAUNDERS; and seven Captains.

5. Colonel BARCLAY; Lieutenant-Colonel EWINS (INNES?); Major COWELL; and seven Captains.

6. Colonel EDWARD MONTAGUE (ætat. only 20: he was cousin of the Earl of Manchester, being son of the Earl's brother, Sir Sidney Montague, who had been M.P. for Hunts, but was now dead); Lieutenant-Colonel ELLIS GRIMES; Major KELSEY; and seven Captains.

7. Colonel ALDRIDGE; Lieutenant-Colonel WALTER LLOYD (who succeeded to the Colonelcy); Major READ; and seven Captains.

8. Colonel JOHN PICKERING (of the family of the Pickerings, of Tichmarsh, Northamptonshire, "a little man," quite young, and cousin of the boy who was to be known as the poet Dryden); Lieutenant-Colonel JOHN HEWSON (originally a shoemaker in Westminster, but who had risen from the ranks by his valour); Major JUBBS; and seven Captains, one of whom was a Captain AXTELL.

9. Colonel FORTESCUE; Lieutenant-Colonel BULSTRODE; Major RICHBELL; and seven Captains.

10. Colonel RICHARD INGOLDSBY (ætat. 23: his father was Sir Richard Ingoldsby of Lenthenborough, and his mother was a cousin of Cromwell's); Lieutenant-Colonel FARRINGTON; Major PHILIP CROMWELL (a cousin of Cromwell's: second son of his uncle Sir Philip Cromwell); and seven Captains.

11. (Artillery) Colonel THOMAS RAINSBOROUGH (once "a skipper of Lynn," who had seen service at sea); Lieutenant-Colonel OWEN; Major DOVE; and seven Captains.

12. (Artillery) Colonel RALPH WELDEN, a veteran; whose under-officers I have not ascertained, save that one of them seems to have been ROBERT LILBURNE (brother of John Lilburne), who in time succeeded to the Colonelcy.

II. HORSE AND DRAGOONS = 7,600.

The Horse (6,600) consisted of eleven Regiments, each of 600, divided into six troops; the Dragoons consisted of one Regiment (1,000), in ten troops of 100 each. They were officered thus:--

1. (The Commander-in-Chiefs Regiment):--Colonel SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX; Major JOHN DESBOROUGH (a brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell's: married to his younger sister, Jane Cromwell); and four Captains, one of them a Captain BERRY.

2. Colonel MIDDLETON; Major RICHARD NORTON; and four Captains.

3. Colonel THOMAS SHEFFIELD (a younger son of the aged Earl of Mulgrave, and uncle of Sir Thomas Fairfax); Major SHEFFIELD (the Colonel's son or brother?); and four Captains.

4. Colonel CHARLES FLEETWOOD (a young man of a good Buckinghamshire family, and well known to Milton from his childhood, as Milton himself tells us: he had served first as a private trooper in the Earl of Essex's guards, and had rapidly distinguished himself); Major THOMAS HARRISON (formerly an attorney's clerk in London); and four Captains.

5. Colonel EDWARD ROSSITER; Major TWISTLETON; and four Captains.

6. Colonel VERMUYDEN (a Dutchman, who resigned after a month or two of good service, and returned to Holland, where his father, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, was engaged in engineering works); Major HUNTINGDON (who succeeded Vermuyden in the Colonelcy); and four Captains.

7. Colonel ALGERNON SIDNEY (famous long afterwards for his death: now ætat. 23: third son of the Earl of Leicester: had served as a Captain in Manchester's army--he and his eldest brother, Philip, Lord Lisle, being more actively Parliamentarian than their father); Major ALFORD; and four Captains.

8. Colonel SIR ROBERT PYE, junior (son of the Sir Robert Pye who had been M.P. for Woodstock, as colleague with Speaker Lenthall, since the beginning of the Long Parliament, and was now a conspicuous man in the House); Major MATTHEW TOMLINSON (said to have been "a gentleman-usher to a lady"); and three Captains, one of whom was HENRY IRETON (a B.A. of Oxford, and barrister of the Middle Temple, ætat. 35, who had taken to soldiering: described as of "a melancholic, reserved, dark nature," and great ability).

9. Colonel EDWARD WHALLEY (rumoured by the Royalists to have been "a woollen-draper or petty merchant in London," who had got into debt and migrated to Scotland for a time; but certainly of a Nottinghamshire family of mark, and certainly a cousin of Cromwell's; recently also known for excellent service under Cromwell as Major in Cromwell's own regiment); Major BETHELL; and four Captains.

10. Colonel RICHARD GRAVES; Major ADRIAN SCROOP; and four Captains.

11. Colonel Sir MICHAEL LIVESEY, Bart., of Co. Kent; Major SEDASOUE; and four Captains.

Regiment of Dragoons: Colonel JOHN OKEY (originally, it is said, a "drayman," then "stoker in a brewhouse at Islington," and next a "most poor chandler in Thames Street;" said also to have been "of more bulk than brains;" but certainly of late an invincible dragoon-officer); Major WILLIAMS or GWILLIAMS; and eight Captains.

N.B. Some of the above-mentioned officers (such as Colonels Middleton, Livesey, Holborn, and Barclay) do not seem to have taken the places assigned them in the New Model. Others therefore had to be brought in by Fairfax almost at once. Among these were:--1. As Colonels of Horse: Colonel BUTLER; the Hon. JOHN FIENNES (third son of Viscount Saye and Sele); CHARLES RICH (he had been nominated in the Commons for a Colonelcy Feb. 28 and March 1, 1644-5, and rejected both times; but must have been appointed soon afterwards). 2. As Colonels of Foot: EDWARD HARLEY (whose Lieutenant-Colonel was THOMAS PRIDE, a foundling who had been a drayman); JOHN LAMBERT (who had been a Colonel under Fairfax in the North); SIR HARDRESS WALLER (ætat. 41, cousin of Sir William Waller). [Footnote: In the Lords Journals, date March 18, 1644-5, there is a list of the intended officers of the New Model as then agreed to, after a month or two of choosing, between the Lords and the Commons. This has been my chief authority; but it has been aided and checked by the Anglia Rediviva of the New Model chaplain Sprigge (pp. 8-10 et seq. of Oxford Edition of 1854) and by Rushworth (VI.13-17 et seq.). Mr. Clements Markham's account of the New Model Army in his life of Fairfax (pp. 188-202) has likewise been of use, though it does not profess to be more than general, nor to be calculated for the very commencement of the New Model. Some particulars of information respecting persons I have taken from Mr. Markham; others I have had to gather miscellaneously from the Parliamentary Journals, Wood, Carlyle's Cromwell, Walker's Hist. of Independency, Reprint of The Mystery of the Good Old Cause (a satirical tract of 1660) at end of Vol. III. of Parl. Hist., &c. I have had to rectify the spellings of some of the names in the original Lords Journals list, and to find out the Christian names where possible. It is not always so easy as one might suppose to ascertain the Christian name of a man who may have been of considerable note in his day and have left his mark.]

Such was the famous New Model. [Footnote: In the New Model the reader ought to note three things:--(1) The comparative youth of the officers. There were veterans; but the Commander-in-chief was but thirty three years of age, and most of the Colonels were still younger. (2) The blending of different ranks of society in the body of the officers. The majority were decidedly from the ranks of the aristocracy and gentry-- peers' younger sons, knights, sons of knights and country-gentlemen, &c.; but in men like Skippon, Colonel Okey, Colonel Rainsborough, Lieutenant- Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-Colonel Hewson, Lieutenant-Colonel Pride, Major Harrison, and Major Tomlinson, there was a conspicuous sprinkling of stout representatives of a lower and more popular stratum. The Royalists, and even the Presbyterians, fastened on this fact and exaggerated it. All the army, from the general to the meanest sentinel, could not muster £1,000 a year in lands among them; so it was laxly said. (3) Another fact, of which the Presbyterians and the Royalists, and other anti- Cromwellians, afterwards made the most, was the unusual number of relatives of Cromwell that there were among the officers. To those who regarded the whole invention and organization of the New Model as a deep design of Cromwell's craft, with Fairfax as his temporary tool, this fact was blackly significant. But, apart altogether from that theory, the fact is important, and ought to be borne in mind. There was not only much of the Cromwell spirit in the New Model from the first, but a large leaven of the Cromwell kin.] Where was it first to be employed? This was an anxious question; and, to understand it, we must have the map of England before us as it appeared to the Parliamentarians in the early months of 1645.

England then, in the eyes of the Parliamentarians, consisted of four regions, as follows:--(I.) The Pre-eminent and assured Parliamentarian Region. This included London and Middlesex, with the Eastern and South-Eastern counties at their back, or immediately flanking them north and south--viz.: Herts, Essex, Cambridge, Bedford, Northamptonshire, Hunts, Suffolk, Norfolk, and almost all Lincoln, together with Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. All this sweep of country was now thoroughly in the possession of the Parliament, and constituted the region whence it drew its main strength. The services of the New Model were not required in it; for it was the main feeder and support of the New Model. (II.) The Northern Counties. Here, beyond the Humber and Mersey, or perhaps even beyond the Trent, the cause of Parliament was also in the ascendant. Since Marston Moor Royalism lingered here only in a few towns and garrisons. In Cumberland, Carlisle still held out for the King, and the siege of this city, together with the preservation of the North generally, was the work now specially expected from the Scottish auxiliary army. In Yorkshire, the castles of Skipton, Pontefract, Scarborough, Sandal, and Bolton, and, in Lancashire, Latham House and Greenhaugh Castle, kept up the King's flag, but were surrounded by local Parliamentary besiegers. On the whole there was no reason for anxiety now about the North within itself; and the hope was that the Scottish Army and other stray forces in those parts might be able soon to move southwards and co-operate with the New Model. (III.) The South-West and Mid-Southern Counties. Here the King was vastly in the ascendant. Cornwall was absolutely his; Devon was wholly his, with the exception of the port of Plymouth, still held for the Parliament, but besieged by the King's forces; Somerset was wholly his, save that Taunton was holding out for Parliament in great distress; all Wilts was his, except Malmesbury Castle; in Dorset he was nearly master, though the three port-towns of Poole, Lyme, and Weymouth (Melcombe) had Parliamentary garrisons; and even in Hants, where the Parliament divided the power with him more equally, he held the two strong places of Winchester and Basing. The King's field-forces in all this southwestern and southern region were extremely numerous, apart from the garrisons, and were commanded by Lords Goring and Hopton, Sir Richard Greenville, Major-General Sir John Digby, and others. With them was the Prince of Wales, now fifteen years of age. He had been recently sent from Oxford into those parts, with a view both to his own safety and to the effects of his influence. (IV.) The English Midlands, backed by Wales. Here also the King was firmly established. Here it was that, with the Princes Rupert and Maurice as his chiefs in command, he directly faced the massed Parliamentarianism of London and the Eastern Counties. In Bucks and Berks, indeed, his forces and those of the Parliament overlapped each other. Aylesbury, the chief town in Bucks, was the Parliament's, while Boarstall House, ten or twelve miles east from it, was the King's; and, similarly, the east of Berks, with Windsor, Reading, and Abingdon, were mainly held by Parliament, while in the same county the King had some strong garrisons. Oxford, however, the county of the King's head-quarters, was wholly in his possession, with the exception of Henley on the Berks border. To the north of Oxfordshire was Warwickshire, all the King's except Warwick Castle, though bordered by Northamptonshire, which was all the Parliament's; and farther north were the shires of Leicester, Nottingham, and Stafford, in each of which, though the Parliament held the county- town, the King had countervailing strongholds. Then, at the back of this row of central counties facing the massed Parliamentarianism of the East, there were the shires of Gloucester, Worcester, Salop, and Chester, in which Parliament had scarcely any hold; that of Hereford, in which it had no hold; and the whole bulk of Wales, in which the two castles of Pembroke and Montgomery were the sole Parliamentarian specks. Leaning back upon Wales, and the English counties of the Welsh border, the King, from Oxford, with its flanking counties north and south, fronted Parliament very formidably. [Footnote: In this survey of the state of the war over all England in April 1645, I have availed myself of the introductory Tables in Sprigge (pp. xi-xvi, Edit. 1854), repeated in Rushworth, VI. pp. 18-22. The geographical information in the Tables is, however, somewhat confused, and I have recast it.]

FIRST ACTIONS OF THE NEW MODEL.

Clearly, it was against one or other of the two last-mentioned regions that the New Model must first show its prowess. Which of the two should it be?

The West had many claims. Besides the importance of relieving the besieged Parliamentary garrisons in that direction, there was the necessity of taking precaution against the possible advance from it of Goring's forces towards London. Accordingly, even before the Self-Denying Ordinance had become law, Cromwell and Sir William Waller had been ordered on a special expedition into the West (February 27), "for relief of Melcombe and the garrisons and places adjacent, and for preventing and breaking the enemy's levies and recruits." Cromwell's men were very reluctant to go on this expedition, probably because they did not like to serve with Waller. But, Cromwell having managed them, he and Waller did go into the West as far as Dorset and Somerset, and, after as much success as was possible, returned about the middle of April. The Self- Denying Ordinance was then law; and on the 22nd of April Cromwell was at Windsor, to resign his command, and take leave of Fairfax.

Suddenly, on the following morning, a message from the Committee of the two Kingdoms came to Windsor ordering Fairfax to employ Cromwell on a new enterprise of pressing moment. [Footnote: This "Committee of the two Kingdoms" originally appointed in Feb. 1643-4, after the coming in of the Scots Auxiliary Army (see list of members antè, p. 41) is found very active after the organization of the New Model--a quorum always sitting in Derby House, Canon Row, Westminster, close to Parliament (the house in which Pym had died) and sending orders, &c., to Fairfax. Manchester, Saye and Sele, Wharton, and Vane the younger, of the English members of the Committee, and Loudoun and Sir Archibald Johnstone of the Scottish members, signed most such orders and letters in May and June 1645 (see Rushworth, VI. 27-33).] He was to ride with all haste into Oxfordshire, to intercept, if possible, a convoy of 2,000 horse, which Prince Rupert was to detach from Worcester, then the head-quarters of the King's main army, for the purpose of fetching off the King and his Artillery-train from Oxford. As the forty days of grace fixed by the Self-Denying Ordinance did not expire till the 13th of May, Cromwell would have time to perform this service before the exact day on which his resignation was required! In fact, he performed it thoroughly in two days. On the 24th of April he met the enemy, consisting of the Queen's own regiment, the Earl of Northhampton's, and Lord Wilmot's, at Islip Bridge, routed them utterly, slew many, and took about 200 prisoners and 400 horses, besides the Queen's standard. Not only so; but, some of the fugitives having taken refuge in Bletchington House, then commanded by Colonel Thomas Windebank, son of the ex-Secretary, with a garrison of 200 men, Cromwell had summoned the house to surrender, and, though a defence might easily have been made, Windebank had actually surrendered that same night, giving up all his stores.

Such were the first actions of the New Model; and, as they carried joy into the Parliamentarian heart, so in the King's quarters they caused rage and vexation. Windebank was tried by court-martial for cowardice, and, notwithstanding his connexions, was shot to death in the court of Merton College, Oxford (May 3). [Footnote: For facts in the preceding three paragraphs see Commons Journals, Feb. 27 and 28, and March 4 and at 20, 1644-5; Sprigge's Angliæ Reduc. (1854) 11-13: Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857) I. 163-167; Rushworth, VI. 23-25. We had a glimpse of young Windebank at an earlier period, when he little foresaw this end. See Vol. II. p. 70.]

CROMWELL RETAINED IN COMMAND: BATTLE OF NASEBY: OTHER SUCCESSES OF THE NEW MODEL.

On the 1st of May, while Cromwell was still absent in Oxfordshire, the main body of the New Model, under Fairfax and Skippon, was on the move in another direction. It had seemed on the whole that it would be of most use in the South-West. In especial, there was great anxiety for the relief of Taunton. But, when Fairfax had got as far as into Dorset, on his way to Taunton, he was overtaken by an Ordinance of the two Houses, in conformity with a resolution of the Committee of both Kingdoms (May 6), recalling him and Skippon, with the bulk of the New Model, for service, after all, in the Mid-English Counties. For Goring had carried much of the South-Western force thither, and had joined Rupert and Maurice, so that there was a great stir of something new intended about Oxford and round the King's person. Accordingly, detaching only a brigade of some 7,000, consisting of Welden's, Lloyd's, Fortescue's, and Ingoldsby's foot-regiments, and Graves's horse-regiment, with some other district forces, all under Welden's chief command, to push on for the relief of Taunton, Fairfax wheeled his main force back north-east, and, after forced cross-country marching, found himself (May 14) at the well- known Newbury, on his way to Oxford. By this time he knew, if he had not known it before, that he was to have the help of other generalship under him than that of Skippon. If it had ever been really intended that Cromwell should retire from the Army with the others, according to the strict terms of the Self-Denying Ordinance, the successes at Islip Bridge and Bletchington House had put it into all men's minds to inquire how the Army could get on without him. The Army itself had but one opinion on the subject. For many months past he had been the darling of the entire force, so that, whenever he appeared unexpectedly on the field, there were shouts of "A Cromwell! A Cromwell!" Willingly or unwillingly, Parliament had to defer to this sentiment; and on May 10, three days before the expiry of the forty days of grace fixed by the Self-Denying Ordinance, a special ordinance of the Commons continuing Cromwell in his employment for forty days longer, i.e. till June 22, was agreed to by the Lords. There was murmuring among the Presbyterians and the friends of the late generals, Essex, Manchester, and Waller; but the thing was inevitable. Nay, when Fairfax and other officers of the New Model, not content with the vague and brief additional use of Cromwell's services thus offered, petitioned distinctly for his appointment as Lieutenant- general, with chief command of the horse, that also had to be conceded. The petition was read in the Commons and agreed to, June 10; on which day a letter was drawn up, signed by the Speaker, and despatched to Fairfax, "to desire him, if he shall so think fit, to appoint Lieutenant-general Cromwell to command the horse during so long time as the House shall dispense with his absence." [Footnote: Commons Journals of days named.]

Within four days after the formal appointment of Cromwell to the Lieutenant-generalship under Fairfax there came that great action of the year which more than justified the appointment. The circumstances were these:--While Fairfax had been on the march towards Taunton, the King, with his Artillery-train, &c., had left Oxford (May 7) and taken the field with his main army of the Midlands under Prince Rupert. Cromwell, who had remained in Oxfordshire, kept hovering after him and watching his movements. These were uncertain; but it appeared as if he were tending northwards, to relieve Chester, then besieged by a Parliamentarian force from Lancashire and Cheshire under Sir William Brereton. [Footnote: It is to be remembered that, apart from the New Model, there were still English Parliamentary garrisons, and field forces, here and there, doing necessary district work. Sir William Brereton, M.P. for Cheshire, had had in his hands much of the management of the war in those parts; and as he was still useful, Parliament had exempted him as well as Cromwell, from the same hate operation of the Self Denying Ordinance, extending his command (May 12) for forty days. The same extension, on the same day, was given to Sir Thomas Middleton, M.P. for Denbighshire, at work on the Welsh border, but with a reserve that, after the forty days his command was to be resigned to a Colonel Mitton Common Journal.] When, therefore, Fairfax had wheeled back from his South-Western expedition, and was once more in the Midlands, the question arose whether he and his New Model should besiege Oxford in the King's absence, or whether they should pursue his Majesty and fight him in the field. The siege of Oxford seemed the preferable course; and, accordingly (May 22), Fairfax, now rejoined by Cromwell, sat down before that city. Soon, however, it became questionable whether the war-committee had judged rightly. For discomfiting the King's design for the relief of Chester the Parliament had trusted to the Scottish Army, aided by the English Parliamentarians of the Northern Counties, and by a band of the New Model horse despatched north under Colonel Vermuyden. But the Scots, out of humour with the New Model altogether, had been backward or careless; the King, through Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire, had made his way into Cheshire; his approach had relieved Chester; he had then turned eastwards into Staffordshire, had crossed that county, entered Leicestershire, and (May 30) taken the town of Leicester by storm. He was thus on the very verge of the Parliament's own faithful Association of the Eastern Counties, and might be expected to break into that Association. Immediately, therefore, the plans of the Parliament were changed. On the very day on which the news of the storming of Leicester arrived, Cromwell was off from Oxford into the Eastern Counties, and on the 5th of June, Fairfax, with the rest of the New Model, raised the siege of Oxford and marched north. June 13, he was in the north-west of Northamptonshire, within sight of the King's main force, which had advanced out of Leicestershire into that county. Early on that morning, while he was holding a council of war, Cromwell came in, fresh from his work in the Association, and welcomed as the man most wanted. He at once assumed his Lieutenant-generalship; and on the next day, Saturday, June 14, 1645, there was fought the great BATTLE OF NASEBY. There had been nothing like it since Marston Moor. The King's Army, commanded by the King in person, Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, Sir Jacob Astley (now Lord Astley), Lord Barnard Stuart, Sir George Lisle, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, and Colonel Howard, was utterly defeated and ruined. The prisoners taken amounted to 5,000, and included many of the King's chief officers; all the artillery was captured, and much baggage, including the King's cabinet, with his private papers and correspondence. These papers were speedily published by Parliament under the title of The Kings Cabinet Opened; and, by the revelations they made of the King's duplicity, his absolute subjection to the Queen, and his secret dealings with the Irish and Papists, they did as much to discredit his cause as the battle itself. [Footnote: Sprigge, 21-51; Rushworth, VI. 29-48; and Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 169-l76.--Here is a note from the Stationers' Registers, July 9 (1645): "Robert Bostock entered for his copy, by special command, under the hands of Mr. Henry Parker and Mr. Thomas May, Secretaries, and Mr. Miller, Warden, a Book entitled The King's Cabinet Opened, or certain Packets of Secret Letters and Papers, written by the King's own hand, taken in his Cabinet at Naseby Field." For an account of Naseby battle and review of previous accounts, see Markham's Fairfax, 213- 230.]

Though Fairfax was voted everywhere the brave and worthy commander-in- chief at Naseby, and though Skippon had behaved like himself and kept his post after having been seriously wounded, much of the credit of the battle, as of that of Marston Moor, went to Cromwell. He had commanded the Horse on the right wing, and his success there against the enemy's left had been effectual and decisive. Moreover, in the whole marshalling of the battle, and in what had prepared for it, people saw, or thought they saw, Cromwell's influence. The horse regiments engaged were, on the right wing, Fairfax's Life-guards, Cromwell's Ironsides, Colonel Whalley's, Colonel Sir Robert Pye's, Colonel Rossiter's, Colonel Sheffield's, and Colonel Fiennes's, and, on the left wing, Colonel Butler's, Colonel Vermuyden's (now Huntingdon's), Colonel Rich's, Colonel Fleetwood's, and another; and the foot regiments engaged were Fairfax's own, Skippon's, Colonel Sir Hardress Waller's, young Colonel Pickering's, young Colonel Montague's, young Colonel Hammond's, Colonel Rainsborough's, and Lieutenant-colonel Pride's. Fairfax in person, with Skippon, commanded the foot or main body; Cromwell, as we have seen, commanded the right wing; but who commanded the left wing? It was the Colonel of that horse-regiment which we have left anonymous. And who was he? No other than that HENRY IRETON, the melancholic, reserved lawyer of the Middle Temple, who was only a Captain in Sir Robert Pye's regiment at the formation of the New Model three months before (antè, p. 327). He had been recently promoted to a Colonelcy, and on the eve of the battle Fairfax had made him Commissary-general of Horse, with command of the left wing, over the heads of the other Colonels. This was at Cromwell's request, who had reason to know Ireton, and had special confidence in him. Nor did the result belie Cromwell's judgment. Ireton's wing, indeed, had given way and fled under the shock of Rupert's charges, but not till Ireton himself had had his horse shot under him, received two wounds, and been taken prisoner in a counter-attack. Rescued by the turn of the battle, he came in for a share of the praise. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 42, 43. Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 176.--It came to be an assertion with the Presbyterians, thought I do not believe they believed it themselves, that Cromwell's military fame had been gained by systematic puffing on the part of the Independents. "The news books taught to speak no language but Cromwell and his party, and were mute on such actions as he and they could claim no share in," wrote Clement Walker a year or two after Naseby (Hist. of Indep. Part I, 30). We have see Baillie writing rather in the same way after Marston Moor.]--When the news of the victory reached London, the Parliament, amid their various rejoicings, and their voting of a day of public thanksgiving to God, a jewel worth 500_l_. to Fairfax, and the like, did not forget one practical inference from what had happened. That same day (June 16) the Commons signified to the Lords their desire that Cromwell's exceptional Lieutenant-generalship should be prolonged; and, accordingly, on June 18 it was agreed by both Houses "That Lieutenant-general Cromwell shall continue as Lieutenant-general of the Horse, according the established pay of the Army, for three months from the end of the forty days formerly granted to him." This extended his command under Fairfax only to Sept. 22; but, that we may not have to refer to the matter again, we may here state that, before that date arrived, the term of his service was stretched for other four months, with an understanding in fact that it was to be indefinitely elastic. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of days named.]

Naseby proved the beginning of the end. It was the shivering of the central mass of Royalism in England, and the subsequent events of the war may be regarded as only so much provincial addition, and tedious pursuit of the fragments. A sketch of these events will suffice.

The beaten King having fled, with the wrecks of his army, back through Leicestershire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, into Wales, and the Midlands thus being safe, Fairfax was at liberty to transfer his victorious New Model to the part of England where its presence was then most sorely needed, i.e. the West and South-West.--The brigade which he had detached, under Colonel Welden, for the relief of Taunton, when recalled himself from his former march westward, had successfully accomplished that object (May 12), but only itself to be shut up in Taunton by a second and severer siege by Goring's forces, returned into those parts. By way of a temporary arrangement for action in the West in these circumstances, Parliament had by an ordinance, May 24, entrusted a separate command in chief of whatever forces could be raised for the West to Major-general Edward Massey, an officer well acquainted with that part of the country, and distinguished by his previous services in it throughout the war. [Footnote: The Ordinance is in the Lords Journals under the date named.] But Massey was to hold the separate command only till Fairfax could assume it in person. Accordingly, when Fairfax, after seeing the King fairly chased away from Naseby, turned once more southwards, and, by rapid marches through Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, arrived in Wilts (June 27), the conduct of the war in the South-West became the regular work of the New Model, with Massey as but an auxiliary. The progress was rapid. July 3, Taunton was relieved the second time, and Goring's forces obliged to retire: July 10, Lamport Battle was fought, in which Goring was defeated with great loss; July 23, Bridgewater was taken by storm; July 30, the city of Bath surrendered. Thus in one month the King's power was broken all through Somersetshire. August sufficed for the same result in Dorsetshire, where Sherborne Castle was battered and stormed on the 15th. On the 10th of September came the splendid success of the storming of Bristol. This great city was defended by Prince Rupert, who had made his way again into the South-West for the purpose, and who had assured the King that he would hold it to the last. Nevertheless, after a siege of eighteen days, he was glad to surrender--himself and his men marching out with their personal baggage and the honours of war, but leaving all the ordnance, arms, and ammunition in the city as the spoil of the Parliament. [Footnote: Young Major Bethell was mortally wounded in the storming of Bristol; and here is a touching little incident of the same action from Mr. Markham's Life of Fairfax. "Among the slain (in one of the attacks) was a young officer named Pugsley, who was buried by Fairfax's order, with military honours in a field outside the fort. He was just married, and his wife survived him for 60 years. On her death, in 1705, she was buried, according to her expressed wishes, without a coffin, in her wedding dress, and with girls strewing flowers and fiddlers playing before her. In this way she was borne to her final resting place by the side of her husband, and the place is still known as Pugsley's Field."] It was the greatest blow the King had received since Naseby; and he was so enraged with Rupert that he revoked all his commands, and ordered him to leave England. Rupert, however, having gone to the King, a reconciliation was brought about; and, though he held no high command again during the rest of this war, he remained in the King's service. The surrender of Bristol was followed by that of Devizes Castle (Sept. 23) and that of Laycock House (Sept. 24) in Wilts, and by the storming of Berkeley Castle (Sept. 23) in Gloucestershire. [Footnote: This summary is chiefly from Sprigge; where, in addition to the text there is an excellent chronological table of actions and sieges: one or two of the facts are from Clarendon, and Carlyle's Cromwell.]

POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY.

Let us leave the West and South-West for a time, and turn to the North.-- As late as May and June 1645, Baillie, then back in London and again on duty in the Westminster Assembly, had still been hoping great things from his beloved Scottish Army in the North. Since the taking of Newcastle (Oct. 1644), indeed, the services of this army had been mainly dumb-show, so that the English had begun to despise it and to ask whether it was worth its wages. Baillie's hope, however, was that, somehow or other after all, it would be the Scottish Army, and not this New Model, the invention of the Independents and the Sectaries, that would perform the finishing action, and reap the final credit. What then were his thoughts when the news of Naseby reached him? "This accident," he writes, June 17, 1645, three days after the Battle, "is like to change much the face of affairs here. We hope the back of the Malignant [Royalist] Party is broken; [but] some fears the insolence of others, to whom alone the Lord has given the victory of that day." The news of the taking of Carlisle at last by the Scots (June 28) may have helped to revive his spirits; but that also may have been an indirect consequence of Naseby, and the subsequent small success of the Scots during those months when Fairfax, Cromwell, and the New Model were succeeding so splendidly in the South- West, again threw Baillie into despondency. The taking of Pontefract Castle (July 21) and of Scarborough (July 25) in Yorkshire, and finally that of Latham House in Lancashire, after its two years' defence by the Countess of Derby (Dec. 4), were the work of the English Parliamentarians of the Northern Counties; and all the Scots did was very disappointing. From Carlisle they did, indeed, march south, to keep a watch on the King's movements in the Midlands after Naseby, and, after hovering about in those parts, they laid siege to the town of Hereford, by the desire of Parliament (July 31). But early in September they raised the siege, Leven pleading that he had not received the promised support and was unable to remain. With such grumblings and complaints of arrears in their pay, the Scots returned northwards, through the mid-counties, to Yorkshire, the English Parliament thinking worse and worse of them, but still speaking them fair, and desiring to retain them for minor service somewhere in England while the New Model was doing the real work. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 118-127; and Baillie, II. 286-316.]

THE EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND.

It was not only the small performance and continued grumbling of the Scottish Auxiliary Army in England that had begun, by September 1645, to disgust the English Parliamentarians with their friends of the Scottish nation. In Scotland itself there had been an extraordinary outbreak of Royalism, which had not only perturbed that country throughout, but had latterly advanced to the very borders of England, threatening to connect itself with all of English Royalism that was not already beaten, and so undo the hard work and great successes of the New Model. Who that has read Scott's Legend of Montrose but must be curious as to the facts of real History on which that romance was founded? They are romantic enough in themselves, and they form a very important episode in the general history of the Civil War.

Our last sight of the young Earl of Montrose was in November 1641, when the King, during his visit to Scotland, procured his release, and that of his associates in the Merchiston House Compact, from their imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle (Vol. II. p. 307). The life of the young Earl had then been given back to him, but in what circumstances! Not only had all his expectations from the Merchiston House Compact been falsified, expectations of the overthrow of the Argyle supremacy in Scotland, and of the establishment of a new government for the King on an aristocratic basis; but, by the King's own acts, Argyle was left doubly confirmed in the supremacy, with the added honour of the Marquisate, and the Presbyterian clergy dominant around him. Such a Scotland was no country for Montrose. Away from Edinburgh, therefore, on one or other of his estates, in Perthshire, Forfarshire, Stirlingshire, or Dumbartonshire, and only occasionally in the society of his wife and his four little boys, we see him for some months, thrown back moodily upon himself, hunting now and then, corresponding with his friends Napier and Keir, but finding his chief relief in bits of Latin reading, dreams of Plutarch's heroes, and the writing of scraps of verse. Thus:--

"An Alexander I will reign, And I will reign alone; My thoughts did evermore disdain A rival on my throne: He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all."

Alas! in a Scotland abject under a squint-eyed Argyle, with Loudoun and Warriston for his lieutenants, and a thousand rigid and suspicious black- coats giving the law singly in their pulpits and parishes, and thundering it collectively from their Assemblies, what room or opening was there for any such Plutarchian life? It was little better in England, from which anyhow he was debarred. He would go abroad. Were there not great strifes in Europe, struggles other than Presbyterian, into which a young Scottish Earl might fling himself, to win a glorious name, or die sword in hand? [Footnote: Napier's Montrose (1856), 371-3, and Appendix to Vol. I. p. xxxiv.; Wishart's Memoirs of Montrose (translation of 1819 from the original Latin of 1648), Preface, p. vi.] So till August 1642, when the King raised his standard for the Civil War in England. Then there was again hope. The King remembered the fiery young Scottish Earl, and communications had passed between them. Montrose went into England; saw the Queen immediately after her landing at Burlington Bay (February 1642- 3); and pressed upon her his views as to the way in which Scotland might be roused in the King's behalf. He seemed to her Majesty but a brave young enthusiast; and, the Marquis of Hamilton having hastened from Scotland to counteract him, and to promise that he himself and his brother Lanark would keep Scotland firm to the King's interest without that open rising against the Argyle government which Montrose recommended, the cooler counsel had prevailed, Hamilton and Montrose had thus gone back into Scotland together, Hamilton with the new title of Duke (April 12, 1643) to encourage him in his difficult labour, and Montrose disappointed, watched, and in fresh danger. Again, however, as months had passed on, the chance of some such bold enterprise for Montrose as he himself had projected had become more likely. How ill Hamilton and Lanark had succeeded in their milder undertaking we already know. They had not been able to check the tide of sympathy in Scotland with the English Parliamentarians; they had not been able to prevent that sudden Convention of the Scottish Estates which Argyle thought necessary in the crisis (June 1643); they had not been able to prevent the cordial reception there of the Commissioners from the English Parliament, nor the offer of armed aid from Scotland to the cause of the Parliament on the terms of Henderson's Solemn League and Covenant (August 1643). Montrose, who had foreseen this result, and had been trying in vain to engage the Marquis of Huntley and other Scottish nobles in an independent coalition for the King, had not gone near the Convention, but, while it was yet deliberating in Edinburgh, had taken care to be again in England, on his way to the King with his budget of advices. A Scottish Covenanting army would certainly invade England in the cause of the Parliament: let their Majesties be in no doubt about that! He had himself the best reason to know the fact; for had not the Covenanting chiefs been secretly negotiating with him, and offering to forgive him all the past, if only now he would return to his allegiance to the Covenant, and accept the Lieutenant-generalship of their projected army under the Earl of Leven? If he had seemed to dally with this temptation, it had only been that he might the better fathom the purposes of the Argyle government, and report all to their Majesties! No service, however eminent, under Argyle, or with any of the crafty crew of the Covenant, was that on which his soul was bent, but a quite contrary enterprise, already explained to the Queen, by which the Argyle government should be laid in the dust, Scotland recovered for the King, and all her resources put at his disposal for the recovery of his power in England also! Hitherto their Majesties had not seen fit to confide in him, but had trusted rather the Hamiltons, with their middle courses and their policy of compromise! Were their Majesties aware what grounds might be shown for the belief that these Hamiltons, with all their plausibilities and fair seeming, were in reality little better than traitors, who had wilfully mismanaged the King's affairs in Scotland for interests and designs of their own? So, through the autumn of 1643, had Montrose been reasoning with the King and Queen, as yet to little purpose. But, when the autumn had passed into winter, and there had gathered round the King, in his head-quarters at Oxford, other refugee Scottish Royalists, driven from their country by the stress of the new League and Covenant, and bringing intelligence that Leven's invading army was actually levied and ready to march, then the tune of the Royal mind did somewhat change. The Duke of Hamilton and his brother Lanark, coming to Oxford, December 16, to clear themselves, were immediately arrested on charges suggested by Montrose and the other Scots at Court. To wait trial on these charges, the Duke was sent as a prisoner to Pendennis Castle; whence he was removed to St. Michael's Mount in the same county of Cornwall. Lanark, escaping from his arrest at Oxford, took refuge for a time in London, was cordially received there by the Scottish Commissioners and the English Parliamentarians, and returned thence to Scotland, converted by the King's treatment of him into an anti-Royalist and Covenanter to all temporary appearance, whatever he might still be at heart. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 73, 74; Wishart, 31-47; Napier, 373-384; Burnet's Hamiltons (edit. 1852), 280-349. Burnet gives the charges against the Hamiltons, with their answers, at length, and narrates events anxiously in their behalf.]

The Hamiltons being out of the way, Montrose obtained a better hearing for his plan. In the main, it was that the King should openly commission him as his Majesty's Lieutenant in Scotland, and furnish him with some small force with which to cut his way back into the heart of the country, and there rouse the elements, whether Lowland or Highland, that were ready for revolt against the Argyle supremacy. In connexion with this, however, there was the scheme of an Irish contingent. Was not the Earl of Antrim then with his Majesty at Oxford--that very Randal Macdonnell, Earl of Antrim, whom it had been proposed, as far back as 1638, to send secretly into Argyleshire with a force of Irishry, to aid the King in his first strife with the Covenanters (Vol. II. p. 23)? Six years had elapsed since then; but there was still extant in Antrim, as the head of the great Scoto-Irish clan of the Macdonnells and Macdonalds, that power for mischief in Scotland which consisted in the hereditary feud between this clan and all the family of the Campbells. Let Antrim go back to Ireland, raise a force of his Macdonnells and Macdonalds and whatever else, and make a landing with these on the West Scottish coast; and then, if the time could be so hit that Montrose should be already in Scotland as his Majesty's commissioned Lieutenant, might there not be such a junction of the two movements that the Argyle government would be thrown into the agonies of self-defence, and the recall of Leven's army from England would be a matter of immediate necessity? So much at least might be surely anticipated; but Montrose promised still larger results. Listening to his arguments, iterated and reiterated at Oxford through January 1643- 4, the King and Queen hardly knew what to think. Montrose's own countrymen round about the King were consulted. What thought Traquair, Carnwath, Annandale, and Roxburgh? They would have nothing to do with Montrose's plan, and talked of him as a would-be Hotspur. Only a few of the younger Scottish lords at Oxford, including Viscount Aboyne (the Marquis of Huntley's second son) and Lord Ogilvy (the Earl of Airlie's son and heir), adhered to him. Among the King's English counsellors, of course, there were few that could judge of his enterprise. One of these, however, whom a kindred daring of spirit drew to Montrose, helped him all he could. This was the young Lord Digby. Chiefly by his means, the King's hesitations were at length overcome. Late in January, Antrim, created a Marquis for the occasion, did go over to Ireland, vowing that, by the 1st of April 1644, he would land so many thousands of men in Scotland with himself at their head; and on the 1st of February 1643-4, or when Leven's Scottish army had been ten days in England, a commission was made out appointing Montrose Lieutenant-general of all his Majesty's forces in Scotland. It had been proposed to name him Viceroy and Commander-in- chief; but he had himself suggested that this nominal dignity should be conferred rather on the King's nephew, Prince Maurice. For his own work in Scotland the subordinate commission, with some small force of volunteer Scots and English troopers to assist him in displaying it, would in the meantime be quite enough. [Footnote: Wishart, 47-52; Baillie, II.73, 74, and 164; Clarendon, 533-537; Rushworth, V. 927; and Napier, 385-388.]

Leaving Oxford, with a slender retinue of Scots, among whom were Aboyne and Ogilvy, Montrose went to York, and thence to Durham, where he attached himself to the Marquis of Newcastle, then engaged in resisting the advance of Leven's army. From that nobleman he implored, in the King's name, some troops for his convoy into Scotland. Newcastle, himself ill-supplied, could spare him but 200 horse, with two brass field-pieces. There was an accession from the Cumberland and Northumberland militia, so that the band with which Montrose entered Scotland (April 13, 1644) was about 1,000 strong. Hardly, however, had he entered Scotland when most of the English mutinied and went back. With what force he had left he pushed on to Dumfries, surprised that town into surrender, and displayed his standard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could be done. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the West Highlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all to the north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. To try to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in the Highlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up the attempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, most reluctantly, into the North of England, pursued by the execration of all Presbyterian Scotland, and by a sentence of excommunication pronounced against him in the High Church of Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 52-55, Napier, 385-397, Rushworth, V. 927-9.]

"Montrose's foolish bravado is turned to nothing," Baillie was able to write early in May 1644. This was the general impression. True, in recognition of his bravery, a patent for his elevation to the Marquisate had been made out at Oxford. It was fitting that, if ever he did come to represent the King in Scotland, it should be a Marquis of Montrose that should contend with the Marquis of Argyle. But would there ever be such a contest? Few can have entertained the belief besides Montrose himself. For some weeks after his retreat into England we hear of him as mingling actively in the war in Northumberland and Durham, taking and pillaging Morpeth, and the like; then we hear of him hurrying southwards to join Prince Rupert in his effort to raise the siege of York, but only to meet the Prince beaten and fugitive from the field of Marston Moor (July 2). "Give me a thousand of your horse; only give me a thousand of your horse for another raid into Scotland," was the burthen of his talk with Rupert. The Prince promised, and then retracted. Though a younger man than Montrose, he had more faith in what he could himself do with a thousand horse in England than in what any Scot could do with them in Scotland. And so, though Lord Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spoke manfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, late in July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued the strangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctly southwards, as if all thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothing remained but to rejoin the King at Oxford. The band, however, had been but two days on their march when they found that their leader had given them the slip, and left the duty of taking them to Oxford to his second, Lord Ogilvy. He himself had returned to Carlisle. It was barely known that he had done so when he mysteriously disappeared (Aug. 18). No one, except Lord Aboyne, whom he had left in Carlisle with certain secret instructions, could tell what had become of him; but it was afterwards remembered, like the beginning of a novel, that on such an autumn day three persons had been seen riding from Carlisle towards the Scottish border, two gentlemen in front, one of whom had a club foot, and the third behind, as their groom, mounted on a sorry nag, and leading a spare horse. The two gentlemen were a Colonel Sibbald and a lame Major Rollo, intimate friends of Montrose, and the supposed groom was Montrose himself. [Footnote: Wishart, 56-64; Napier 396-413; Rushworth, V. 928]

There was a distinct cause for Montrose's entry into Scotland in this furtive manner. The Scottish Parliament (a regular Parliament, and not an informal Convention of Estates like that of the previous year) had met on the 4th of June, with Argyle, Loudoun, and twenty other Peers, more than forty lesser Barons, and about the same number of Commissioners from Burghs, present at the opening. On the 12th of July, when they were approaching the end of their business, there had been this occurrence: "Five several letters read in the House from divers persons of credit, showing of the arrival of fifteen ships, with 3,000 rebels in them, from Ireland, in the West Isles, with the Earl of Antrim's brother, and the sons of Coll Kittoch, and desiring the States with all expedition to send the Marquis of Argyle there by land, with some ships likewise by sea, and powder and ammunition." On subsequent days there were corrections of this intelligence, bringing it nearer to the exact fact. That fact was that Antrim's invasion of Scotland, arranged by him with the King and Montrose at Oxford six months before, had at last come to pass, not indeed in the shape of that full Irish army with Antrim himself in command which had been promised, but in the shape of a miscellany of about 2,000 Irish and Scoto-Irish who had landed at Ardnamurchan in the north of Argyleshire under the command of a redoubtable vassal of Antrim's, called (and here, for Miltonic reasons, the name must be given in full) Alastair Mac Cholla-Chiotach, Mhic-Ghiollesbuig, Mhic-Alastair, Mhic-Eoin Chathanaich, i.e. Alexander, son of Coll the Left-Handed, son of Gillespie, son of Alexander, son of John Cathanach. This long-named Celt was already pretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of his name, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespie, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, or Alexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay. His father, Alexander Macdonald the elder, was a chief of the Scottish Island of Colonsay, off the Argyleshire coast, but nearly related by blood to the Earl of Antrim, professing himself therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as the Irish Macdonnells, and sharing their ancient grudge against the whole race of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of being ambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well as with his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll the Left-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster, it was not uncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and young Colkittoch. The old gentleman had for some time been in durance in Edinburgh; but his sons had remained at large, and Alaster had been recently figuring in Antrim's train in Ulster, and acting for Antrim among the Irish rebels, with great repute for his bravery, and his huge stature and strength. Not inclined at the last moment for the command of the Scottish expedition himself, Antrim had done his best by sending this gigantic kinsman as his substitute. It was certainly but a small force, and most raggedly equipped, that he led; but, thrown as it was into the territories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glens before it, all rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, it might work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the 16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, the Marquis of Argyle received a full commission of military command against the invaders, and left Edinburgh for the region of danger. [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 215 et seq.; Napier, 416-7 and 504; Wishart, 67; Baillie, II. 217; Rushworth, V. 928. There is a curious, but confused, story of the wrongs which old Colkittoch and his family had received at the hands of Argyle in Walker's Hist. of Independency (1660), Appendix to Part I. pp. 3-6.]

This was what had caused Montrose's inexplicable restlessness about Carlisle through the latter part of July, and at length, on the 18th of August, his desperate plunge into Scotland in disguise, and with only two companions. By what route the three adventurers rode one does not know; but on the 22nd of August they turned up at the house of Tullibelton in Perthshire, near Dunkeld. It was the seat of Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie, a kinsman of Montrose. Received here by Inchbrakie himself, and by his eldest son, Patrick Graham the younger, locally known as "Black Pate," Montrose lay close for a few days, anxiously collecting news. As respected Scottish Royalism, the reports were gloomy. The Argyle power everywhere was vigilant and strong; no great house, Lowland or Highland, was in a mood to be roused. Only among the neighbouring Highlanders of Athole, or North Perthshire, known to Montrose from his childhood and knowing him well, could he hope to raise the semblance of a force. All this was discouraging, and made Montrose more eager for intelligence as to the whereabouts of Colkittoch and his Irish. He had not long to wait. Since their landing at Ardnamurchan (July 8) they had been making the most of their time in a wild way, roving hither and thither, ravaging and destroying, taking this or that stronghold, sending out the fiery cross and messages of defiance to Covenanting Committees. They had come inland at length as far as Badenoch, the wildest part of Inverness-shire, immediately north of Athole and the Grampians; and there were reasons now why they should be inquiring as anxiously after Montrose as he was inquiring after them. For their condition was becoming desperate. The great clan of the Seaforth Mackenzies, north of Argyleshire, from whom they had expected assistance, had failed to give any; other clans refused to be led by a mere Macdonald of Colonsay; the fleet of vessels in which they had landed had been seized and burnt by Argyle; that nobleman was following them; and orders were out for a general arming for the Covenant north of the Grampians. Accordingly, Colkittoch, imagining that Montrose was still in Carlisle, had written to him there. The rude postal habits of those parts being such that the letters came into the hands of Black Pate, Montrose received them sooner than the writer could have hoped. His reply, dated from Carlisle by way of precaution, was an order to Macdonald to descend at once into Athole and make his rendezvous, if possible, at Castle Blair. [Footnote: Napier, 413-419; Wishart, 64-68; Rushworth, V. 928-9. I have had the satisfaction of rectifying a portion of the tale of Montrose's romantic adventure into Scotland as it is told by his biographers. Wishart distinctly makes him first hear of the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish after he had come into Scotland and was hiding about Tullibelton; and Mr. Napier's narrative conveys the same impression. But the idea is absurd. As the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish at Ardnamurchan on the 8th of July was known in Edinburgh, and discussed in the Parliament there, on the 12th of the same month, it must have been well known about Tullibelton at that time too, or six weeks before Montrose appeared there; and the news must have reached Montrose about July 13 or 14, when he was yet in the North of England, and must have been, in fact, the cause of his resolution to make his way into the Highlands. It is possible, of course, that, after Montrose came to Tullibelton, he may have been uncertain for a time of Colkittoch's exact whereabouts; and there is a seemingly authentic anecdote to the effect that Montrose himself related that he first learnt that Colkittoch had broken into Athole by meeting in the wood of Methven a man running with a fiery cross to carry the dreadful news to Perth. A misconstruction of this anecdote, with inattention to dates, has led to the larger, and intrinsically absurd, hypothesis.]

A walk of twenty miles over the hills brought Montrose and Black Pate to the rendezvous. They found there a mixed crowd, comprising, on the one hand, the Irish, with a few Badenoch Highlanders, whom Colkittoch had brought with him, and on the other, the native Athole Highlanders, looking askance at the intruders, and, though willing enough to rise for King Charles, having no respect for an outlandish Macdonald from Colonsay. The appearance of Montrose put an end to the discord. He had put on the Highland dress, and looked "a very pretty man," fair-haired, with a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, a brow of unusual breadth, and an air of courage and command; but the Irish, noting his rather small stature, could hardly believe that he was the great Marquis. The wild joy of the Athole-men and the Badenoch-men on recognising him removed their doubts; and, amid shouts from both sides, Montrose assumed his place as Lieutenant-general for his Majesty, adopting the tall Macdonald as his Major-general. The standard was raised with all ceremony on a spot near Castle Blair, now marked by a cairn; and, when all was ready, the troops were reviewed. They consisted of about 1,200 Irish, with a following of women and children, and 1,100 Scottish Highlanders (Stuarts, Robertsons, Gordons, &c.). Artillery there was none; three old hacks, one of them for the lame Major Rollo, were the cavalry; money there was none; arms and ammunition were, for the most part, to seek, even clothing was miserably deficient. So began Montrose's little epic of 1644-5. He was then thirty- two years of age. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 928-9; Napier, 419-422.]

It was the track of Mars turned into a meteor. Marches and battles, battles and marches: this phrase is the summary of the story. Flash the phrase through the Highlands, flash it through the Lowlands, for a whole year, and you have an epitome of this epic of Montrose and his triumph. Our account of the details shall be as rapid as possible.

Breaking forth southwards from Athole, to avoid Argyle's advance from the west, Montrose crossed the Tay, and made for Perth. Having been joined by his kinsman, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Menteith, Sir John Drummond, son of the Earl of Perth, and David Drummond of Maderty, he gave battle, at Tippermuir, near Perth, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1644, to a Covenanting force of some 6,000 men, gathered from the shires of Perth and Fife, and under the command of Lord Elcho, the Earl of Tullibardine, Lord Drummond and Sir John Scot. The rout of the Covenanters, horse and foot, was complete. They were chased six miles from the field, and about 2,000 were slain. Perth then lying open for the victors, Montrose entered that town, and lie remained there three days, issuing proclamations, exacting fines and supplies, and joined by two of his sons, the elder of whom, Lord Graham, a boy of fourteen, accompanied him from that time. But movement was Montrose's policy. Recrossing the Tay, and passing north- eastwards, he came in sight of Dundee; but, finding that town too well defended, he pushed on, still north-east, joined on the way by the Earl of Airlie, and his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, and came down upon Aberdeen. That city, too familiar with him in the days of his Covenanting zeal, was now to experience the tender mercies of his Royalism. Defeating (Sept. 12) a Covenanting force of Forbeses, Erasers, and others, who opposed him at the Bridge of Dee under Lord Burleigh and Lord Lewis Gordon (third son of the Marquis of Huntley, and for the time on this side), he let his Irish and Highlanders loose for four days on the doomed Aberdonians. Then, as Argyle was approaching with a considerable army, and no reinforcement was forthcoming from Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, he withdrew west, into the country of the upper Spey. Thence again, on finding himself hopelessly confronted by a muster of Covenanters from the northern shires of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, he plunged, for safety, into the wilder Highlands of Badenoch, and so back into Athole (Oct. 4). Not, however, to remain there! Again he burst out on Angus and Aberdeenshire, which Argyle had meanwhile been traversing on behalf of the Covenant. For a week or two, having meanwhile despatched his Major-general, Macdonald, into the West Highlands to fetch what recruits he could from the clans there, he made it his strategy, with the small force he had left, to worry and fatigue Argyle and his fellow-commander the Earl of Lothian, avoiding close quarters with their bigger force, and their cannon and horse. Once at Eyvie Castle, which he had taken October 14, they did surprise him; but, with his 1,500 foot and 50 horse, he made a gallant stand, so that they, with their 2,500 foot and 1,500 horse, had no advantage. As much of this time as he could give was spent by him in the Marquis of Huntley's own domain of Strathbogie, still in hopes of rousing the Gordons. At length, winter coming on, and the distracted Gordons refusing to be roused, and Argyle's policy of private dealings with Montrose's supporters individually having begun to tell, so that even Colonel Sibbald had deserted him, and few people of consequence remained to face the winter with him except the faithful Ogilvies, Montrose, after a council of war held in Strathbogie, retired from that district (Nov. 6), again by Speyside, into savage Badenoch. But here, ere he could take any rest, important news reached him. Argyle had certainly sent his horse into winter-quarters; but he had gone with all his foot to Dunkeld, whence the more easily to ply his craft of seduction among Montrose's trustiest adherents, the men of Athole. No sooner had Montrose heard this than, clambering the Grampian barrier between Badenoch and Athole, he brought his followers, by one tremendous night-march of twenty-four miles, over rocks and snow, down into the region in peril. He was yet sixteen miles off, when Argyle, bidding his men shift for themselves, fled from Dunkeld, and took refuge with the Covenanting garrison of Perth, on his way to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 71-105; Napier, 426- 469; Rushworth, V. 929-931.]

Argyle's soldiering, it had been ascertained, was not the best part of him. He knew this himself, and, on his return to Edinburgh in the end of November, insisted on resigning his military commission. It was difficult to find another commander-in-chief; but at length it was agreed that the fit man was William Baillie, the Lieutenant-general, under Leven, of the auxiliary Scottish army in England. He had recently been in Edinburgh on private business, and was on his way back to England when he was recalled by express. Not without some misgivings, arising from his fear that Argyle would still have the supreme military direction, he accepted the commission. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 262: also at 416 et seq., where there is an interesting letter of General Baillie to his namesake and kinsman.] Then Argyle went off to his own castle of Inverary, there to spend the rest of the winter.

It was time that Argyle should be at Inverary. Montrose, left in assured possession of his favourite Athole, had been rejoined by his Major- general, Mac-Colkittoch, bringing reinforcements from the Highland clans. There was the chief of Clanranald with 500 of his men; there were Macdonalds from Glengarry, Glencoe, and Lochaber; there were Stuarts of Appin, Farquharsons of Braemar, Camerons from Lochiel, Macleans, Macphersons, Macgregors. What was winter, snow more or less upon the mountains, ice more or less upon the lakes, to those hardy Highlanders? Winter was their idlest time; they were ready for any enterprise: only what was it to be? On this point Montrose held a council of war. "Let us winter in the country of King Campbell," was what the Macdonalds and other clans muttered among themselves; and Montrose, who would have preferred a descent into the Lowlands, listened and pondered. "But how shall we get there, gentlemen? It is a far cry to Lochawe, as you know; how shall we find the passes, and where shall we find food as we go?" Then up spoke Angus MacCailen Duibh, a warrior from dark Glencoe. "I know," he said, "every farm in the land of MacCallummore; and, if tight houses, fat cattle, and clean water will suffice, you need never want." And so it was resolved, and done. From Athole, south-west, over hills and through glens, the Highland host moves, finding its way somehow--first through the braes of the hostile Menzieses, burning and ravaging; then to Loch Tay (Dec. 11); and so through the lands of the Breadalbane Campbells, and the Glenorchy Campbells, still burning and ravaging, till they break into the fastnesses of the Campbell in chief, range over Lorne, and assault Inverary. Argyle, amazed by the thunder of their coming, had escaped in a fishing-boat and made his way to his other seat of Roseneath on the Clyde; but Inverary and all Argyleshire round it lay at Montrose's mercy. And, from the middle of December 1644 to about the 18th of the January following, his motley Highland and Irish host ranged through the doomed domain in three brigades, dancing diabolic reels in their glee, and wreaking the most horrible vengeance. No one knows what they did. One sees Inverary in flames, the smoke of burning huts and villages for miles and miles, butcheries of the native men wherever they are found, drivings-in of cattle, and scattered pilgrimages of wailing women and children, with relics of the men amongst them, fugitive and starving in side glens and corries, where even now the tourist shudders at the wildness. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 930, 931; Baillie, II. 262; Wishart, 106-108; Napier, 470-473.]

The Scottish Parliament had reassembled for another Session on the 7th of January, without Argyle in it, but in constant communication with him; and about the same time General Baillie and a Committee of the Estates had gone to consult with Argyle at Roseneath. About the middle of the month they became aware that Montrose was on the move northward, out of Arglyeshire by Lorne and Lochaber in the direction of the great Albyn chain of lakes, now the track of the Caledonian Canal. They knew, moreover, that directly ahead of him in this direction there was a strong Covenanting power, under the Earl of Seaforth, and consisting of the garrison of Inverness and recruits from Moray, Ross, Sutherland and Caithness. Evidently it was Montrose's intention to meet this power and dispose of it, so as to have the country north of the Grampians wholly his own. In these circumstances the arrangements of Baillie and Argyle seemed to be the best possible. Baillie, instead of going on to Argyleshire, as he had intended, went to Perth, to hold that central part of Scotland with a sufficient force; and Argyle, with 1,100 seasoned infantry, lent him by Baillie, and with what gathering of his own broken men he could raise in addition, went after Montrose, to follow him along the chain of lakes. Of this army Argyle was to be nominally commander; but he had wisely brought over from Ireland his kinsman Sir Duncan Campbell of Auchinbreck, a brave and experienced soldier, to command under him. The expectation was that between Seaforth, coming in strength from the north end of the trough of lakes, and Argyle, advancing cautiously from the south end, Montrose would be caught and crushed, or that, if he did break eastward out of the trough between them, he would fall into the meshes of Baillie from his centre at Perth. [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 246 et seq.; Wishart, 109, 110; Napier, 475-477; and General Baillie's letter to his cousin Robert Baillie, in Baillie's Letters, II. 417t.]

Then it was that Montrose showed the world what is believed to have been his most daring feat of generalship. On the 29th and 30th of January he was at Kilchuilem on Loch Ness near what is now Fort Augustus. Thence it was his purpose to advance north to meet Seaforth, when he received news that Argyle was thirty miles behind him in Lochaber, at the old cattle of Inverlochy, at the foot of Ben Nevis, near what is now Fort William. He saw at once the device. Argyle did not mean to fight him directly, but to keep dogging him at a distance and then to come up when he should be engaged with Seaforth! Instantly, therefore, he resolved not to go on against Seaforth, but to turn back, and fall upon Argyle first by himself. Setting a guard on the beaten road along the lakes, to prevent communication with Argyle, he ventured a march, where no march had ever been before, or could have been supposed possible, up the rugged bed of the Tarf, and so, by the spurs of big Carryarick and the secrets of the infant Spey, now in bog and wet, now knee-deep in snow, over the mountains of Lochaber. It was on Friday the 31st of January that he began the march, and early in the evening of Saturday the 1st of February they were down at the foot of Ben Nevis and close on Inverlochy. It was a frosty moonlight night; skirmishing went on all through the night; and Argyle, with the gentlemen of the Committee of Estates who were with him, went on board his barge on Loch Eil. Thence, at a little distance from the shore, he beheld the battle of the next day, Sunday, Feb. 2. It was the greatest disaster that had ever befallen the House of Argyle. There were slain in all about 1,500 of Argyle's men, including brave Auchinbreck and many other important Campbells, while on Montrose's side the loss was but of a few killed, and only Sir Thomas Ogilvy, among his important followers, wounded mortally. And so, with a heavy heart, Argyle sailed away in his barge, wondering why God had not made him a warrior as well as a statesman; and Montrose sat down to write a letter to the King. "Give me leave," he said, "after I have reduced this country to your Majesty's obedience and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to your Majesty then, as David's general did to his master, 'Come thou thyself, lest this country be called by my name.'" [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 931-2; Wishart, 110-114; Napier, 477-484. Mr. Napier winds up his account of the Battle of Inverlochy by quoting entire (484-488) Montrose's supposed letter to the King on the occasion. The letter, he says, was first "obscurely printed by Dr. Welwood in the Appendix to his Memoirs, 1699;" but he adds an extract from the Analecta of the Scottish antiquary Wodrow, to the effect that Wodrow had been told, by a person who had seen the original letter, that Welwood's copy was a "vitiated" one. No other copy having been found among the Montrose Papers, Mr. Napier has had to reprint Welwood's; which he does with great ceremony, thinking it a splendid Montrose document. It certainly is a striking document; but I cannot help suspecting the genuineness of it as it now stands. There are anachronisms and other slips in it, suggesting posthumous alteration and concoction.]----The Battle of Inverlochy was much heard of throughout England, where Montrose and his exploits had been for some time the theme of public talk. The King was greatly elated; and it was supposed that the new hopes from Scotland excited in his mind by the success of Montrose had some effect in inducing him to break off the Treaty of Uxbridge then in progress. The Treaty was certainly broken off just at this time (Feb. 24, 1644-5).

On Wednesday the 12th of February, ten days after Inverlochy, the Marquis of Argyle was in Edinburgh, and presented himself in the Parliament, "having his left arm tied up in a scarf." The day before, the Parliament had unanimously found "James, Earl of Montrose" (his title of Marquis not recognised) and nineteen of his chief adherents, including the Earl of Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Alexander Macdonald MacColkittoch, and Patrick Graham younger of Inchbrakie, "guilty of high treason," and had forfaulted "their lives, honours, titles, lands and goods;" also ordering the Lyon King of Arms, Sir James Balfour, to "delete the arms of the traitors out of his registers and books of honour." The General Assembly of the Kirk was then also in session, rather out of its usual season (Jan. 22-Feb. 13), on account of important ecclesiastical business arising out of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly; and Baillie and Gillespie had come from London to be present. Of course, the rebellion of Montrose was much discussed by that reverend body; and, in a document penned by Mr. Gillespie, and put forth by the Assembly (Feb. 12), there was this passage:--"In the meantime, the hellish crew, under the conduct of the excommunicate and forfaulted Earl of Montrose, and of Alaster Macdonald, a Papist and an outlaw, doth exercise such barbarous, unnatural, horrid, and unheard-of cruelty as is beyond expression." But, though Parliament might condemn and proscribe Montrose, and the General Assembly might denounce him, the real business of bringing him to account rested now with General Baillie. To assist Baillie, however, there was coming from England another military Scot, to act as Major-general of horse. He was no other than the renegade Urry, or Hurry, who had deserted from the English Parliament to the King, and been the occasion of Hampden's death in June 1643 (Vol. II. 470-1). Though the King had made him a knight, he had again changed sides. [Footnote: Sir James Balfour's Annals, III. 270-273; Baillie's Letters II. 258-263; Acts of General Assembly of the Church of Scotland (edition of 1843), p. 126.]

After Inverlochy, Montrose had resumed his northward march along the chain of lakes to meet Seaforth. That nobleman, however, had been cured of any desire to encounter him. Feb. 19, Elgin surrendered to Montrose; and here, or at Gordon Castle, not far off, he remained some little time, issuing Royalist proclamations, and receiving new adherents, among whom were Lord Gordon and his younger brother Lord Lewis Gordon, nay Seaforth himself! Lord Gordon remained faithful; Lord Lewis Gordon was more slippery; Seaforth had yielded on compulsion, and was to break away as soon as he could. At Gordon Castle Montrose's eldest son and heir, who had been with him through so many hardships, died after a short illness. Hardly had the poor boy been buried in Bellie church near, when his father, now reinforced by the Gordons, so that he could count 2,000 foot and 200 horse, was on his "fiery progress" south through Aberdeenshire, "as if to challenge Generals Baillie and Urry." March 9, he was at Aberdeen; March 21, he was at Stonehaven and Dunnottar in Kincardineshire, burning the burgh and its shipping, and the barns of Earl Marischal's tenants under the Earl's own eyes. Baillie and Urry kept zig-zagging in watch of him; but, though he skirmished with Urry's horse and tried again and again to tempt on battle, they waited their own time. Once they nearly had him. He had pushed on farther south through Forfarshire, and then west into Perthshire, meaning to cross the Tay at Dunkeld on his way to the Forth and the Lowlands. The desertion of Lord Lewis Gordon at this point with most of the Gordon horse obliged him to desist from this southward march; but, having been informed that Baillie and Urry had crossed the Tay in advance of him to guard the Forth country, he conceived that he would have time for the capture of Dundee, and that the sack of so Covenanting a town would be a consolation to him for his forced return northwards. Starting from Dunkeld at midnight, April 3, he was at Dundee next morning, took the town by storm, and set fire to it in several places. But lo! while his Highlanders and Irish were ranging through the town, still burning and plundering, and most of them madly drunk with the liquors they had found, Baillie and Urry, who had not crossed the Tay after all, were not a mile off. How Montrose got his drunken Highlanders and Irish together out of the burning town is an inexplicable mystery; but he did accomplish it somehow, and whirled them, by one of his tremendous marches, of three days and two nights, himself in the rear and the enemy's horse close in pursuit all the while, past Arbroath, and so, by dexterous choice of roads and passes, in among the protecting Grampians. "Truly," says his biographer Wishart, "I have often heard those who were esteemed the most experienced officers, not in Britain only, but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose to his most celebrated victories." [Footnote: Wishart, 115-127; Rushworth, VI. 2.8; Napier, 490-497.]

Except Inverlochy, his most celebrated victories were yet to come. There were to be three of them. The first was the Battle of Auldearn in Nairnshire (May 9, 1645), in which Montrose's tactics and MacColl's mad bravery beat to pieces the regular soldier-craft of Urry, assisted by the Earls of Seaforth, Sutherland, and Findlater. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 229; Wishart, 128-138; Napier, 500-506.] The second was the Battle of Alford in Aberdeenshire (July 2, 1645), where Montrose defeated Baillie himself. MacColkittoch was not present in this battle, the commanders in which, under Montrose, were Lord Gordon, Nathaniel Gordon, Lord Aboyne, Sir William Rollo, Glengarry, and Drummond of Balloch, while Baillie was assisted in chief by the Earl of Balcarres. Montrose's loss was trifling in comparison with Baillie's, but it included the death of Lord Gordon [Footnote: Wishart, 133-152; Napier, 526-536]. To the Covenanting Government the defeat of Alford was most serious. The Parliament, which had adjourned at Edinburgh on the 8th of March, was convoked afresh for two short sessions, at Stirling (July 8-July 11), and at Perth (July 24- Aug. 5); and the chief business of these sessions was the consideration of ways for retrieving Baillie's defeat and prosecuting the war [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 292 307.]. Baillie, chagrined at the loss of his military reputation, wanted to resign, throwing the blame of his disaster partly on Urry for his selfish carelessness, and partly on the great Covenanting noblemen, who had disposed of troops hither and thither, exchanged prisoners, and granted passes, without regard to his interests or orders. The Parliament, having exonerated and thanked him, persuaded him at first to retain his commission, appointing a new Committee of Estates, with Argyle at their head, to accompany and advise him (July 10). Not even so was Baillie comfortable; and on the 4th of August he definitively gave in his resignation. It was then accepted, with new exoneration and thanks, but with a request that, to allow time for the arrival of his intended successor (Major-general Monro) from Ireland, he would continue in the command a little longer. Goodnaturedly he did so, but unfortunately for himself. He was in the eleventh day of his anomalous position of command and no-command, when he received from Montrose another thrashing, more fatal than the last, in the Battle of Kilsyth in Stirlingshire (Aug. 15, 1645). On both sides there had been great exertion in recruiting, so that the numbers in this battle were, according to the estimate of Montrose's biographers, 6,000 foot and 1,000 horse under Baillie against 4,400 foot and 500 horse under Montrose. Baillie would not have allowed this estimate, for he complains that the recruiting for him had been bad. Anyhow, his defeat was crushing. In various posts of command under Montrose were the aged Earl of Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Maclean of Duart, the chief of Clanranald, and MacColkittoch with his Irish. Acting under Baillie, or, as he would have us infer, above him and in spite of him, were Argyle, the Earls of Crawfurd and Tullibardine, Lords Elcho, Burleigh, and Balcarres, Major-general Holborn, and others. Before the battle, Montrose, in freak or for some deeper reason, made all his army, both foot and horse, strip themselves, above the waist, to their shirts (which, with the majority, may have implied something ghastlier); and in this style they fought. The battle was not long, the Macleans and Clanranald Highlanders being conspicuous in beginning it, and the old Earl of Airlie and his Ogilvies in deciding it. But, after the battle, there was a pursuit of the foe for fourteen miles, and the slaughter was such as to give rise to the tradition of thousands slain on Baillie's side against six men on Montrose's. Many prisoners were taken, but the chief nobles escaped by the swiftness of their horses. Argyle was one of these. Carried by his horse to Queens-ferry, he got on board a ship in the Firth of Forth (the third time, it was noted, of his saving himself in this fashion), sailed down the Firth into the open sea, and did not come ashore till he was at Newcastle. [Footnote: Wishart, 162-171; Napier, 542-541. But see General Baillie's touching and instructive vindication of himself in three documents, printed in his cousin Baillie's Letters and Correspondence (II. 4l7-424). Baillie goes over the whole of his unfortunate commandership against Montrose, from his meeting with Argyle at Roseneath after Inverlochy (Jan. 1644-5) to the Battle of Kilsyth (Aug. 15. 1645); and the pervading complaint is that he had never been allowed to be real commander-in-chief, but had been thwarted and overridden by Argyle, Committees of Estates, and conceited individual nobles.]

The Battle of Kilsyth placed all Scotland at Montrose's feet. He entered Clydesdale, took the city of Glasgow under his protection, set up his head-quarters at Bothwell, and thence issued his commands far and wide. Edinburgh sent in its submission on summons; other towns sent in their submissions; nobles and lairds that had hitherto stood aloof gathered obsequiously round the victor; and friends and supporters, who had been arrested and imprisoned on charges of complicity with him during his enterprise, found themselves released. Dearest among these to Montrose were his relatives of the Merchiston and Keir connexion--the veteran Lord Napier, Montrose's brother-in-law and his Mentor from his youth; Sir George Stirling of Keir, and his wife, Lord Napier's daughter; and several other nieces of Montrose, young ladies of the Napier house. In fact, so many persons of note from all quarters gathered round Montrose at Bothwell that his Leaguer there became a kind of Court. The great day at this Court was the 3rd of September, eighteen days after the victory of Kilsyth. On that day there was a grand review of the victorious army; a new commission from the King, brought from Hereford by Sir Robert Spotswood, was produced and read, appointing Montrose Lord Lieutenant and Captain-general of Scotland with those Viceregal powers which had till then been nominally reserved for Prince Maurice; and, after a glowing speech, in which Montrose praised his whole army, but especially his Major-general, Alaster Macdonald MacColkittoch, he made it his first act of Viceroyalty to confer on that warrior the honour of knighthood. On the following day proclamations were issued for the meeting of a Parliament at Glasgow on the 20th of October. Montrose then broke up his Leaguer, to obey certain instructions which had come from the King. These were that he should plant himself in the Border shires, co-operating there with the Earls of Traquair, Hume, and Roxburgh, and other Royalists of those parts, so as to be ready to receive his Majesty himself emerging from England, or at least such an auxiliary force of English as Lord Digby should be able to despatch. For Montrose's triumph in Scotland had been reported all through England and had altered the state and prospects of the war there. Kilsyth (Aug. 15) had come as a considerable compensation even for Naseby (June 14) and the subsequent successes of the New Model. The King's thoughts had turned to the North, and it had become his idea, and Digby's, that, if the successes of the New Model still continued, it would be best for his Majesty to transfer his own presence out of England for the time, joining himself to Montrose in Scotland. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 313-314; Rushworth, VI. 231; Wishart, 190; Napier, 552-569.]

In obedience to his Majesty's instructions Montrose did advance to the Border. For about a week he prowled about, on the outlook for the expected aid from England, negotiating at the same time with some of the Border lords, and in quest of others with whom to negotiate. On the 10th of September he was encamped at Kelso; thence he went to Jedburgh; and thence to Selkirk. [Footnote: Napier, 570-575.] While he is at this last place, let us pause a little to ask an important question.

What was Montrose's meaning? What real political intention lay under the meteor-like track of his marches and battles? What did he want to make of Scotland? This is not a needless question. For, as we know, Montrose was not, after all, a mere military madman. He was an idealist in his way, a political theorist (Vol. II. 296-298). Fortunately, to assist our guesses, there is extant a manifesto drawn up under Montrose's dictation at that very moment of his triumph at which we have now arrived. The document is in the handwriting of Lord Napier, his brother-in-law and closest adviser, and consists of some very small sheets of paper, in Napier's minutest autograph, as if it had been drawn up where writing materials were scarce. It was certainly written after Kilsyth, and in all probability at one of Montrose's halts on the Border. In short, it was that vindication of himself and declaration of his policy which Montrose meant to publish in anticipation of the meeting of a Scottish Parliament at Glasgow which he had summoned for the 20th of October.

The document is vague, and much of it is evidently a special pleading addressed to those who remembered that Montrose had formerly been an enthusiastic Covenanter Still there are interesting points in it. His defence is that it was not he that had swerved from the original Scottish Covenant of 1638. He had thoroughly approved of that Covenant, and had gone on with Argyle and the rest of the Covenanters, perhaps "giving way to more than was warrantable," till their deviation from the true purposes of the Covenant had passed all legal hounds. He had seen this to be the ease at the time of the Treaty of Ripon at the conclusion of the Second Bishops' War; and at that point he had left them, or rather they had finally parted from him (Oct. 1640). He had since then gone on in perfect consistency with his former self; and they had gone on, in their pretended Parliaments and pretended General Assemblies, from bad to worse. The State was in the grasp of a few usurpers at the centre and their committees through the shires; finings and imprisonings of the loyal were universal; and all true liberty for the subject was gone. The Church too had passed into confusion, "the Brownistical faction" overruling it, joined "in league with the Brownists and Independents in England, to the prejudice of Religion." [Footnote: Several times in the course of the document this accusation of Brownism or Independency comes in--an absurdly selected accusation at the very time when the most patent fact about the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland was its deadly antagonism to Independency and all forms of Brownism. Montrose and Napier were probably a little behind-hand in their knowledge of English Ecclesiastical History, and merely clutched "Brownism" as a convenient phrase of reproach, much sanctioned by the King in his English proclamations against Parliament.] So much for a review of his past acts; but what were his present grounds? Here one listens with curiosity. One of his "grounds" he lays down definitely enough, and indeed with extraordinary and repeated emphasis. Let his countrymen be assured that he retained his hatred of Episcopacy and would never sanction its restoration in Scotland! He would not, indeed, be for uprooting Episcopacy in England, inasmuch as the King and his loyal subjects of that country did not desire it; nor was he pledged to that by any right construction of the Scottish Covenant of 1638. That Covenant referred to Scotland only, and it was that Covenant, and not the later League and Covenant of 1643, that he had signed. But he had not forgotten that the very cause of that original Scottish Covenant was the woe wrought by Prelacy in Scotland. "It cannot be denied," says the document, "neither ever shall be by us, that this our nation was reduced to almost irreparable evil by the perverse practices of the sometime pretended Prelates; who, having abused lawful authority, did not only usurp to be lords over God's inheritance, but also intruded themselves in the prime places of civil government, and, by their Court of High Commission, did so abandon themselves, to the prejudice of the Gospel, that the very quintessence of Popery was publicly preached by Arminians, and the life of the Gospel stolen away by enforcing on the Kirk a dead Service-book, the brood of the bowels of the Whore of Babel." For the defence, therefore, of genuine old Scottish Presbyterianism, he protests "in God's sight" he would be "the first should draw a sword." But a spurious Presbyterianism had been invented, and "the outcasting of the locust" had been the "inbringing of the caterpillar." As he abjured Episcopacy, so he thought the system that had been set up instead "no less hurtful;" wherefore, he concludes, "resolving to eschew the extremities, and keep the middle way of our Reformed Religion, we, by God's grace and assistance, shall endeavour to maintain it with the hazard of our lives and fortunes, and it shall be no less dear to us than our own souls."--Allowing for the fact that Montrose, or Napier for him, must have considered it politic to conciliate the anti-Prelatic sentiment, we cannot but construe these passages into a positive statement that Montrose really was, and believed himself to be, a moderate Presbyterian. His programme for Scotland, in fact, was Moderate Presbyterianism together with a restoration of the King's prerogative. In this, of course, was implied the annihilation of every relic of the Argyle-Hamilton machinery of government and the substitution of another machinery under the permanent Viceroyalty of the Marquis of Montrose. [Footnote: The document described and extracted from in the text is printed entire by Mr. Napier, who seems first to have deciphered it (Appendix to Vol. I. of his Life of Montrose, pp. xliv.- liii.), and whose historical honesty in publishing it is the more to be commended because it must have jarred on his own predilections about his hero. Many of Montrose's admirers still accept him in ignorance as a champion and hero of high Episcopacy; and for these Mr. Napier's document must be unwelcome news.]

Ah! how Fortune turns her wheel! This manifesto of Montrose was to remain in Lord Napier's pocket, not to be deciphered till our own time, and the Parliament for which it was a preparation was never actually to meet.

In England there had been amazement and grief over the news of Montrose's triumph. The Parliament had appointed Sept. 5 to be a day of public fast and prayer in all the churches on account of the calamity that had befallen Scotland; and on that day the good Baillie, walking in London to and from church, was in the deepest despondency. Never, "since William Wallace's days," he wrote, had Scotland been in such a plight; and "What means the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted, to humble us so low?" But he adds a piece of news, "On Tuesday was eight days" (i.e. Aug. 27), in consequence of letters from Scotland, David Leslie, the Major-general of Leven's Scottish army in England, had gone in haste from Nottingham towards Carlisle and Scotland, taking with him 4,000 horse. This was the wisest thing that could have been done. David Leslie was the very best soldier the Scots had, better by far than Lieutenant-general Baillie, whom Montrose had just extinguished, and better even than Monro, whom the Scottish Estates had resolved to bring from Ireland as Baillie's successor. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 313-315.]

Actually, on the 6th of September, Leslie passed the Tweed, with his 4,000 Scottish horse from Leven's army, and some 600 foot he had added from the Scottish garrison of Newcastle. He and Montrose were, therefore, in the Border counties together, watching each other's movements, but Leslie watching Montrose's movements more keenly than Montrose watched Leslie's. Montrose does not seem to have known Leslie's full strength, and he was himself in the worst possible condition for an immediate encounter with it. It was the custom of the Highlanders in those days, when they had served for a certain time in war, to flock back to their hills for a fresh taste of home-life; and, unfortunately for Montrose, his Highlanders had chosen to think the review at Bothwell a proper period at which to take leave. They had been encouraged in this, it is believed, by Colkittoch, who, having had the honorary captaincy-general of the clans bestowed upon him by Montrose in addition to knighthood, had projected for himself, and for his old father and brothers, the private satisfaction of a war all to themselves in the country of the Campbells. Montrose had submitted with what grace he could; and the Highlanders, with some of the Irish among them, had marched off with promises of speedy return. But, at the same critical moment, Viscount Aboyne, hitherto the most faithful of the Gordons, had "taken a caprice," and gone off with his horse. He had been lured away, it was suspected, by his uncle Argyle, who had come back from his sea-voyage to Newcastle, and was busy in Berwickshire. Then Montrose's negotiations with the Border lords had come to nearly nothing, David Leslie's presence and Argyle's counter- negotiations having had considerable influence. Finally, of the King himself or the expected forces from England there was no appearance. It was, therefore, but with a shabby little army of Irish and Lowland foot and a few horse that Montrose, with his group of most resolute friends-- Lord Napier, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie, Crawfurd, and Hartfell, Lords Ogilvy, Erskine, and Fleming, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Sir John Dalziel, Drummond of Balloch, Sir Robert Spotswood, Sir William Rollo, Sir Philip Nisbet, the young master of Napier, and others--found himself encamped, on the 12th of September, at Philiphaugh near Selkirk. His intention was not to remain in the Border country any longer, but to return north and get back among his Grampian strongholds. But somehow his vigilance, when it was most needed, had deserted him. The morning of Saturday, Sept. 13, had risen dull, raw, and dark, with a thick grey fog covering the ground; and Montrose, ill-served by his scouts, was at early breakfast, when Leslie sprang upon him out of the fog, and in one brief hour finished his year of splendour. Montrose himself, the two Napiers, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie and Crawfurd, with others, cut their way out and escaped; but many were made prisoners, and the places where the wretched Irish were shot down and buried in heaps, and the tracks of the luckier fugitives for miles from Philiphaugh, are now among the doleful memories of the Braes of Yarrow. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 231-2; Wishart, 189-207; Napier, 557-580. I have seen, in the possession of the Rev. Dr. David Aitken, Edinburgh, a square-shaped bottle of thick and pretty clear glass, which was one of several of the same sort accidentally dug up some few years ago at Philiphaugh, in a place where there were also many buried gunflints. There were traces, I am told, from which it could be distinctly inferred that the bottles had contained some kind of Hock or Rhenish wine; and the belief of the neighbourhood was that they had been part of Montrose's tent-stock, on the morning when he was surprised by Leslie.]

Montrose and his fellow-fugitives found their way back to their favourite Athole, and were not even yet absolutely in despair. The venerable Napier, indeed, had come to his journey's end. Worn out by fatigue, he died in Athole, and was buried there. Montrose's wife died about the same time in the eastern Lowlands, and Montrose, at some risk, was present at her funeral. To these bereavements there was added the indignant grief caused by the vengeances taken by the restored Argyle Government upon those of his chief adherents who had fallen into their hands. Sir William Rollo (the same Major Rollo who had crossed the Border with Montrose in his disguise), Sir Philip Nisbet, young Ogilvy of Innerquharity, and others, were beheaded at Glasgow; and Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Captain Andrew Guthrie, President Sir Robert Spotswood, and William Murray, the young brother of the Earl of Tullibardine, were afterwards executed at St. Andrews--Lord Ogilvy, who had been condemned with these last, having contrived to escape. The desire of retaliation for these deaths co- operating with his determination to make his Captaincy-general in Scotland of some avail still for the King's cause, Montrose lurked on perseveringly in his Highland retirement, trying to organize another rising, and for this purpose appealing to MacColkittoch and every other likely Highland chief, but above all to the Marquis of Huntley and his fickle Gordons. In vain! To all intents and purposes Montrose's Captaincy-general in Scotland was over, and the Argyle supremacy was reestablished. All that could be said was that he was still at large in the Highlands, and that, while he was thus at large, the Argyle Government could not reckon itself safe. And so for the present we leave him, humming to himself, as one may fancy, a stanza of one of his own lyrics:--

"The misty mounts, the smoking lake, The rock's resounding echo, The whistling winds, the woods that shake, Shall all with me sing Heigho! The tossing seas, the tumbling boats, Tears dripping from each oar, Shall tune with me their turtle notes: 'I'll never love thee more!'" [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 232; Wishart, 208-258; Napier, 581-630, with Montrose's Poems in Appendix to Vol. I.]

FAG-END OF THE WAR IN ENGLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS.

Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh (Sept. 13, 1645) having relieved the English Parliament from the awkwardness of the Royalist uprising in Scotland while the New Model was crushing Royalism in England, and the storming of Bristol by the New Model (Sept. 10) having just been added as a most important incident in the process of the crushing, the war in England had reached its fag-end.

The West and the Southern Counties were still the immediate theatre of action for the New Model. Cromwell, fresh from his share with Fairfax in the recent successes in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts, was detached into Hants; and here, by his valour and skill, were accomplished the surrender of Winchester (Oct. 8), and the storming of Basing House, the magnificent mansion of the Marquis of Winchester, widower of that Marchioness on whom Milton had written his epitaph in 1631, but now again married (Oct. 14). Thus, by the middle of October, Royalism had been completely destroyed in Hants, as well as in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset, and what relics of it remained in the south-west were cooped up in the extreme shires of Devon and Cornwall, whither the Prince of Wales had retired with Lord Hopton. Here they lingered through the winter. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge.]

Meanwhile the King had been steadily losing ground in the Midlands and throughout the rest of England. Not even after Philiphaugh had he given up all hopes of a junction with Montrose in Scotland; and a northward movement, from Hereford through Wales, which he had begun before the news of that battle reached him, was still continued. He had got as far as Welbeck in Nottinghamshire (Oct. 13) when he was induced to turn back, only sending 1,500 horse under Lord Digby and Sir Marmaduke Langdale to make their way into Scotland if possible. Though defeated by the Parliamentarians in Yorkshire, Digby and Langdale did get as far as the Scottish border; but, finding farther progress hopeless, they left their men to shift for themselves, and escaped to the Isle of Man, whence Digby went to Dublin. The King himself had gone first to Newark, on the eastern border of Nottinghamshire, which was one of the places yet garrisoned for him; but, after a fortnight's stay there, he returned once more to his head-quarters at Oxford (Nov. 5). Here he remained through the winter, holding his court as well as he could, issuing proclamations, and observing the gradual closing in upon him of the Parliamentarian forces. The position of the Scottish auxiliary army in particular had then become of considerable importance to him.--We have seen (antè, p. 339) how, in September, that army had raised the siege of Hereford, and had sulkily gone northward as far as Yorkshire, as if with the intention of leaving England altogether. There was some excuse for them in the state of Scotland at the time, where all the resources of the Argyle Government had failed in the contest with Montrose; but not the less were the English Parliamentarians out of humour with them. Angry messages had been interchanged between the English Parliament and the Scottish military and political leaders; and a demand had been put forth by the Parliament that the Scots should hand over into English keeping Carlisle and other northern towns where they had garrisons. At length, Montrose having been suppressed by David Leslie's horse, and great exertions having been made by the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun to restore a good feeling between the two nations, Leven's army did come back out of Yorkshire, to undertake a duty which the English Parliament had been pressing upon it, as a substitute for its late employment at Hereford. This was the siege of Newark. About the 26th of November, 1645, or three weeks after the King had left Newark to return to Oxford, the Scottish army sat down before Newark and began the siege. The direct distance between Oxford and Newark is about a hundred miles.--Through the winter, though the New Model had not quite completed its work of victory in the South-west, the chief business of the King at Oxford consisted in looking forward to the now inevitable issue, and thinking with which party of his enemies it would be best to make his terms of final submission. Negotiations were actually opened between him and the Parliament, with offers on his part to come to London for a personal Treaty; and there was much discussion in Parliament over these offers. The King, however, being stubborn for his own terms, the negotiations came to nothing; and by the end of January 1645-6 it was the general rumour that he meant to baulk the Parliament, and take refuge with the Scottish army at Newark. Till April 1646, nevertheless, he remained irresolute, hoping against hope for some good news from the South-west.

No good news came from that quarter. Operations having been resumed there by the New Model, there came, among other continued successes of the Parliament, the raising of the siege of Plymouth (Jan. 16, 1645-6), the storming of Dartmouth (Jan. 19), and the storming of Torrington (Feb. 16). The action then came to be chiefly in Cornwall, where (March 14) Lord Hopton surrendered to Fairfax, giving up the cause as hopeless, and following the Prince of Wales, who had taken refuge meanwhile in the Scilly Isles. On the 15th of April, 1646, the picturesque St. Michael's Mount yielded, and the Duke of Hamilton, the King's prisoner there, found himself again at liberty. The surrender of Exeter (April 13) and of Barnstaple (April 20) having then cleared Devonshire, the war in the whole South-west was over, save that the King's flag still waved over far Pendennis Castle at Falmouth. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge]

The New Model having thus perfected its work in the South-west and being free for action in the Midlands, and Cromwell being back in London, and a body of Royalist troops under Lord Astley (the last body openly in the field) having been defeated in an attempt to reach Oxford from the west, and Woodstock having just set even the Oxfordshire garrisons the example of surrendering, procrastination on the King's part was no longer possible. His last trust had been in certain desperate schemes for retrieving his cause by help to be brought from beyond England. He had been intriguing in Ireland with a view to a secret agreement with the Irish Rebels and the landing at Chester or in Wales of an army of 10,000 Irish Roman Catholics to repeat in England the feat of MacColkittoch and his Irish in Scotland; he had been trying to negotiate with France for the landing of 6,000 foreign troops at Lynn; as late as March 12 he had fallen back on a former notion of his, and proposed to invoke the aid of the Pope by promising a free toleration of the Roman Catholic Religion in England on condition that his Holiness and the English Roman Catholics would "visibly and heartily engage themselves for the re-establishment" of his Crown and of the Church of England. All these schemes were now in the dust. He was in a city in the heart of England, without chance of Irish or foreign aid, and hemmed round by his English subjects, victorious at length over all his efforts, and coming closer and closer for that final siege which should place himself in their grasp. What was he to do? A refuge with the Scottish army at Newark had been for some time the plan most in his thoughts, and actually since January there had been negotiations on his part, through the French Ambassador Montreuil, both with the Scottish Commissioners in London and with the chiefs of the Scottish army, with a view to this result. Latterly, however, Montreuil had reported that the Scots refused to receive him except on conditions very different from those he desired. The most obvious alternative, though the boldest one, was that he should make his way to London somehow, and throw himself upon the generosity of Parliament and on the chances of terms in his favour that might arise from the dissensions between the Presbyterians and the Independents. But, should he resolve on an escape out of England altogether, even that was not yet hopeless. Roads, indeed, were guarded; but by precautions and careful travelling some seaport might be reached, whence there might be a passage to Scotland, to Ireland, to France, or to Denmark. [Footnote: Twenty-two Letters from Charles at Oxford to Queen Henrietta Maria in France, the first dated Jan. 4, 1645-6 and the last April 22, 1646, forming pp. 1-37 of a series of the King's Letters edited by the late Mr. John Bruce for the Camden Society (1856) under the title of "Charles I. in 1646." See also Mr. Bruce's "Introduction" to the Letters. They contain curious facts and indications of Charles's character.]

It was apparently with all these plans competing in Charles's mind, that, on Monday the 27th of April, his Majesty, with his faithful groom of the bedchamber Mr. John Ashburnham and a clergyman named Dr. Hudson for his sole companions, slipped out of Oxford, disguised as a servant and carrying a cloak-bag on his horse. He rode to Henley; then to Brentford; and then as near to London as Harrow-on-the-Hill. He was half-inclined to ride on the few more miles that would have brought him to the doors of the Parliament in Westminster. At Harrow, however, as if his mind had changed, he turned away from London, and rode northwards to St. Alban's; thence again by crossroads into Leicestershire; and so eastwards to Downham in Norfolk. Here he remained from April 30 to May 4; and it is on record that he had his hair trimmed for him here by a country barber, who found much fault with its unevenness, and told him that the man who had last cut it had done it very badly. It was now known in London that his Majesty was at large; it was thought he might even be in hiding in the city; and a Parliamentary proclamation was issued forbidding the harbouring of him under pain of death. On the 5th of May, however, he ended all uncertainty by presenting himself at the Scottish Leaguer at Newark. He had made up his mind at last that he would remain in England and that he would be safer with the Scots there than with the English Parliament.--It was a most perilous honour for the Scots. The English Parliament were sure to demand possession of the King. Indeed the Commons did vote for demanding him and confining him to Warwick Castle; and, though the vote was thrown out in the Lords, eight Peers protested against its rejection (May 8). In these circumstances the resolution of the Scots was to keep his Majesty until the course of events should be clearer. Newark, however, being too accessible, in case the Parliament should try to seize him, Leven persuaded the King to give orders to the Royalist governor of that town to surrender it to the Parliament; and, the siege being thus over, the Scottish army, with its precious charge, withdrew northward to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13). [Footnote: Iter Carolinum in Gulch's, Collectanea Curiosa(178l), Vol. II. pp. 445-448; Rushworth, VI. 267-2/1; Clar 601-2; Baillie, II. 374-5.]

On the 10th of June the King issued orders from Newcastle to all the commanders yet holding cities, towns, or fortresses, in his name, anywhere in England, to surrender their trusts. Accordingly, on the 24th of June, the city of Oxford, which the King had left two months before, was surrendered to Fairfax, with all pomp and ceremony, by Sir Thomas Glenham. The surrender of Worcester followed, July 22; that of Wallingford Castle in Berks, July 27; that of Pendennis Castle in Cornwall, Aug. 17; and that of Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire, Aug. 19. Thus the face of England was cleared of the last vestiges of the war. The defender of Raglan Castle, and almost the last man in England to sustain the King's flag, was the aged Marquis of Worcester. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 276-297; and Sprigge's Table of Battle, and Sieges.]

FALLEN AND RISEN STARS.

In August 1646, therefore, the long Civil War was at an end. The King being then at Newcastle with the Scots, where were the other chief Royalists? I. The Royal Family. The Queen had been abroad again for more than two years. In July 1644, having just then given birth at Exeter to her youngest child, the Princess Henrietta Maria, she had escaped from that city as Essex was approaching it with his army, and had taken ship for France, leaving the child at Exeter. Richelieu, who had kept her out of France in her former exile, being now dead, and Cardinal Mazarin and the Queen Regent holding power in the minority of Louis XIV., she had been well received at the French Court, and had been residing for the two past years in or near Paris, busily active in foreign intrigue on her husband's behalf, and sending over imperious letters of advice to him. It was she that was to be his agent with the Pope, and it was she that had procured the sending over of the French ambassador Montreuil to arrange between the Scots and Charles. The destination of the Prince of Wales had for some time been uncertain. From Scilly he had gone to Jersey, accompanied or followed thither by Lords Hopton, Capel, Digby, and Colepepper, Sir Edward Hyde, and others (April 1646). Digby had a project of removing him thence into Ireland, and Denmark was also talked of for a refuge; but the Queen being especially anxious to have him with her in Paris, her remonstrances prevailed. The King gave orders from Newcastle that her wishes should be obeyed, and to Paris the Prince went (July). The young Duke of York, being in Oxford at the time of the surrender, came into the hands of the Parliament; who committed the charge of him, and of his infant brother the Duke of Gloucester, with the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, to the Earl of Northumberland in London. The baby Princess Henrietta, left at Exeter, had also come into the hands of the Parliament on the surrender of that city (April 1646), but had been cleverly conveyed into France by the Countess of Morton. The King's fighting nephews, Rupert and Maurice, who had been in Oxford when it surrendered, were allowed to embark at Dover for France, after an interview with their elder brother, the Prince Elector Palatine, who had been for some time in England as an honoured guest of the Parliament; and an occasional visitor in the Westminster Assembly. II. Chief Royalist Peers and Counsellors. Some of these, including the Duke of Richmond, the Marquis of Hertford, the Marquis of Worcester, and the Earl of Southampton, remained in England, submitting moodily to the new order of things, and studying opportunities of still being useful to their sovereign. Others, and perhaps the majority, either disgusted with England, or being under the ban of Parliament for delinquency of too deep a dye, dispersed themselves abroad, to live in that condition of continental exile which had already for some time been the lot of the Marquis of Newcastle and other fugitives of the earlier stage of the war. Some, such as Digby and Colepepper, accompanied the Prince of Wales to Paris; others, among whom was Hyde, remained some time in Jersey. The Queen's conduct and temper, indeed, so much repelled the best of the Royalist refugees that, when they did go to France (as most of them were obliged to do at last), they avoided her, or circled round her at a respectful distance.

While these were the descending or vanishing stars of the English firmament, who were the stars that had risen in their places? As the question interests us now, so it interested people then; and, to assist the public judgment, printers and booksellers put forth lists of those who, either from the decisiveness and consistency of their Parliamentarianism from the first, or from its sufficiency on a total review, were entitled, at the end of the war, to be denominated The Great Champions of England. [Footnote: One such fly sheet, published July 30, 1646 by "Francis Leach at the Falcon in Shoe Lane," has been already referred to (see Vol. II, p. 480, Note, and p. 433, Note). The lists there given, though very useful to us now, contain a great many errors--misspellings of names, entries of persons as still alive who were dead some time, &c. In those days of scanty means of publicity, it was far more difficult to compile an accurate conspectus of contemporaries for any purpose than it would be now.]

There were two classes of these Champions, though not a few individuals belonged to both classes:--I. The Political Champions, or Champion Peers and Commoners. The Champion Peers were reckoned as exactly twenty-nine; and, if the reader desires to know who these twenty-nine were, let him repeat here the list already given of those who were Parliamentarian Peers at the outset (Vol. II. pp. 430-1), only deleting from that list the heroic Lord Brooke and the Earls of Bolingbroke and Middlesex as dead, and the Earls of Bedford, Clare, and Holland, as having proved themselves fickle and untrustworthy, and adding a new Earl of Middlesex (son and successor of the former), an Earl of Kent, an Earl of Nottingham, and a Lord Montague of Boughton (successors of the deceased Royalists or Non-effectives who had borne these titles), and Lord Herbert of Cherbury, once a Royalist, but now passing as a Parliamentarian. The Champion Commoners were, of course, a much larger multitude. At the beginning of the war, as we saw (Vol. II. pp. 431-4). about three-fifths of the Commons House as then constituted, or 300 of the members in all, might be regarded as declared or possible Parliamentarians. Of these, however, death or desertion to the other side in the course of four years had carried off a good few, so that, with every exertion to swell the list of the original Commoners who at the end of the war might be reckoned among the faithful, not more than about 250 could be enumerated in this category. On the other hand, it has to be remembered that, since August 1645, when the New Model was in its full career of victory, the House of Commons had been increased in numerical strength by the process called Recruiting, i.e. by the issue of writs for the election of new members in the places of those who had died, and of the much larger host who had been disabled as Royalists. Of this process of Recruiting, and its effects on the national policy, we shall have to take farther account; meanwhile it is enough to say that, between Aug. 1645, when the first new writs were issued, and Aug. 1646, when the war ended, as many as 179 Recruiters had been elected, and were intermingled in the roll of the House with the surviving original members. [Footnote: This is my calculation from the Index of new Writs in the Commons Journals between August 21, 1645, and August 1, 1646. See also Godwin's Commonwealth, II. 84-39.] Now, most of these Recruiters, from the very conditions of their election, were Parliamentarians, and some had even attained eminence in that character since their election. About 140 of them, I find, were reckoned among the "Champions;" and, if these are added to the 250 original members also reckoned as such, the total number of the Champion Commoners will be about 390. [Footnote: In Leach's fly-sheet the exact number of Champion Commoners given is 397. Among these he distinguishes the Recruiters from the original members by printing the names of the Recruiters in italics. In at least eleven cases, however, I find he has put a Recruiter among the original members. Also I am sure, from a minute examination of his list throughout, that he admitted into it, from policy or hurry, a considerable number whose claims were dubious.] It must not be supposed that they had all earned this distinction by their habitual presence in the House. Only on one extraordinary occasion since the beginning of the war had as many as 280 been in the House together; very seldom had the attendance exceeded 200; and, practically, the steady attendance throughout the war had been about 100. Employment in the Parliamentary service, in various capacities and various parts of the country, may account for the absence of many; but, on the whole, I fancy that, if England allowed as many as 390 original members and Recruiters together to pass as Champion Commoners at the end of the war, it was by winking hard at the defects of some scores of them.

II. Military Champions. Here, from the nature of the case, there was less doubt. In the first place, although the Army had been remodelled in Feb. 1644-5, and the Self-Denying Ordinance had excluded not a few of the officers of the First Parliamentary Army from commands in the New Model, yet the services of these officers, with Essex, Manchester, and Sir William Waller, at their head, were gratefully remembered. Undoubtedly, however, the favourite military heroes of the hour were the chief officers of the victorious New Model, at the head of whom were Fairfax, Cromwell, Skippon, Thomas Hammond, and Ireton. For the names of the Colonels and Majors under these, the reader is referred to our view of the New Model at the time of its formation (antè pp. 326-7). Young Colonel Pickering, there mentioned, had died in Dec. 1645, much lamented; Young Major Bethell, there mentioned, had been killed at the storming of Bristol, Sept. 1645, also much lamented; but, with allowance for the shiftings and promotions caused by these deaths, and by the retirement of several other field-officers, or their transference to garrison-commands, the New Model, after its sixteen months of hard service, remained officered much as at first. While, with this allowance, our former list of the Colonels and Majors of the New Model proper yet stands good, there have to be added, however, the names of a few of the most distinguished military coöperants with the New Model: i.e. of those surviving officers of the old Army, or persons of later appearance, who, though not on our roll of the New Model proper, had yet assisted its operations as outstanding generals of districts or commanders of garrisons. Such were Sir William Brereton, M.P. for Cheshire, and Sir Thomas Middleton, M.P. for Denbighshire, in favour of whom, as well as of Cromwell, the Self-Denying Ordinance had been relaxed, so as to allow their continued generalship in Cheshire and Wales respectively (antè, p. 334, Note); such was General Poyntz, who had been appointed to succeed Lord Ferdinando Fairfax in the chief command of Yorkshire and the North; such were Major-general Massey, who had held independent command in the West (antè, p. 337), and Major-general Browne, who had held similar command in the Midlands; and such also were Colonel Michael Jones (Cheshire), Colonel Mitton (Wales), Colonel John Hutchinson (Governor of Nottingham), Colonel Edmund Ludlow (Governor of Wardour Castle, Wilts), and Colonel Robert Blake (the future Admiral Blake, already famous for his Parliamentarian activity in his native Somersetshire, his active governorship of Taunton, and his two desperate defences of that town against sieges by Lord Goring). Several of these distinguished coöperants with the New Model, as well as several of the chief officers of the New Model itself, had already been honoured by being elected as Recruiters for the House of Commons. [Footnote: My authorities for this list of the military stars in August 1646, besides those already cited for the New Model at its formation (antè, p. 327, Note) and an imperfect list in Leach's fly-sheet (antè, p. 376, Note) are stray passages in the Lords Journals, in Whitelocke, and in more recent Histories. I think I have picked out the chief coöperants with the New Model, but cannot vouch that I have done so. When one has done one's best, one still stumbles on a Colonel this or a Lieut-colonel that, evidently of some note, perplexing one's lists and allocations.]

If one were to write out duly the names of all the Englishmen that have been described or pointed to in the last paragraph as the risen stars of the new Parliamentary world of 1646, whether for political reasons or for military reasons, there would be nearly five hundred of them. Now, as History refuses to recollect so many names in one chapter, as the eye almost refuses to see so many stars at once in one sky, it becomes interesting to know which were the super-eminent few, the stars of the highest magnitude. Fortunately, to save the trouble of such an inquiry for ourselves, we have a contemporary specification by no less an authority than the Parliament itself. In December 1645, when Parliament was looking forward, with assured certainty, to the extinction of the few last remains of Royalism, and was preparing Propositions to be submitted to the beaten King, it was anxiously considered, among other things, who were the persons whose deserts had been so paramount that supreme rewards should be conferred upon them, and the King should be asked to do his part by admitting some of them, and promoting others, among the English aristocracy. This was the result:--

THE EARL OF ESSEX:--King to be asked to make him a Duke. The Commons had already voted him a pension of £10,000 a year.

THE EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND:--To be made a Duke, and provision for him to be considered.

THE EARL OF WARWICK (Parliamentary Lord High Admiral):--To be made a Duke, with provision; but the dukedom to descend to his grandchild, passing over his eldest son, Lord Rich, who had taken the wrong side.

THE EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY:--To be made a Duke, and all his debts to the public to be cancelled.

THE EARL OF MANCHESTER:--To be made a Marquis, and provision to be considered for him.

THE EARL OF SALISBURY:--To be made a Marquis.

VISCOUNT SAYE AND SELE:--To be made an Earl,

LORD ROBERTS:--To be made an Earl.

LORD WHARTON:--To be made an Earl.

LORD WILLOUGHBY OF PARHAM:--To be made an Earl.

DENZIL HOLLES:--To be made a Viscount.

GENERAL SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX:--To be made an English Baron and an Estate of £5,000 a year in lands to be settled on him and his heirs for ever: his father LORD FERDINANDO FAIRFAX at the same time to be made an English Baron.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL:--To be made an English Baron, and an Estate of £2,500 a year to be settled on him and his heirs for ever.

SIR WILLIAM WALTER:--To be made an English Baron, with a like Estate of £2,500 a year.

SIR HENRY VANE, SEN.:--To be made an English Baron. As the peerage would descend to his son, SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER, the honour included him.

SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG:--£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever.

SIR PHILIP STAPLETON:--£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever.

SIR WILLIAM BRERETON:--£1,500 a year to him and his heirs for ever.

MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON:--£l,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Dec 1, 1645.]

Had Pym and Hampden been alive, what would have been the honours voted for them? They had been dead for two years, and the sole honour for Pym had been a vote of £10,000 to pay his debts, It mattered the less because these Dukedoms, Earldoms, Viscountcies, and Baronages were all to remain in nubibus. They were contemplated on the supposition of a direct Peace with the King; and such a peace had not been brought to pass, and had been removed farther off in prospect by the King's escape at the last moment to the Scottish Army. It remained to be seen whether Parliament could arrange any treaty whatever with him in his new circumstances, and, if so, whether it would be worth while to make the proposed new creations of peers and promotions in the peerage a feature of the treaty, or whether it would not be enough for the Commons to make good the honours that were in their own power--viz. the voted estates and pensions. For Essex, who was at the head of the list, the suspense (if he cared about the matter at all) was to be very brief. He died at his house in the Strand, September 14, 1646, without his dukedom, and having received little of his pension. Parliament decreed him a splendid funeral.

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