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.