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