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.