The Life of John Milton Volume 3 1643-1649 / Narrated in Connexion with the Political, Ecclesiastical, and Literary History of His Time

by David Masson

PROCEEDINGS OF PARLIAMENT TO FEB. 1643-4: STATE OF THE WAR: THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY.

Meanwhile, notwithstanding this ominous difference in the Assembly on the great question of Church-government, all parties in the Assembly were co- operating harmoniously with each other and with Parliament in other important items of the general "Reformation" which was in progress. The chief of these items may be grouped under headings:—

Simplification of Church Service, and Suppression of unpopular Rites and Symbols.—This process, which had been going on naturally from the beginning of the Parliament, and more violently and riotously in some places since the beginning of the war, had been accelerated by recent Parliamentary enactments. Thus, in May 1643, just when Milton was preparing to leave London on his marriage holiday, there had been a tearing down, by authority, with the sound of trumpets and amid the huzzas of the citizens, of Cheapside Cross, Charing Cross, and other such street-monuments of too Popish make. At the same time the anti- Sabbatarian "Book of Sports" had been publicly burnt. Then followed (Aug. 27) an ordinance for removing out of churches all "superstitious images, crucifixes, altars," &c.; the effect of which for the next few months was a more or less rough visitation of pickaxing, chipping, and chiselling in all the parish-churches within the Parliament's bounds that had not already been Puritanized by private effort. Then, again, on the 20th of November, the House of Commons recommended to the consideration of the Assembly a new English Version of the Psalms, which had been recently executed, and put into print, by the much-respected member for Truro, Mr. Francis Rous. Ought not Sternhold and Hopkins's Version to be disused among other lumber; and, if so, might not Rous's Version be adopted instead, for use in churches? It would be a merited compliment and also a source of private profit to the veteran Puritan—whom the Parliament, at any rate, were about to appoint to the Provostship of Eton College (worth 800_l_ a year and more), instead of the Malignant, Dr. Stewart, then with his Majesty. The Assembly did actually take up Rous's Psalter, his friends pressing it on the old gentleman's account, but others not thinking it good enough; and we find Baillie regretting, Scot-like, when the subject was first brought up, that he had not with him a copy of another version of the Psalms then in MS., by his friend and countryman, Sir William Mure of Rowallan. This version he liked best of any he had seen, and thought decidedly better than Rous's; and; if he had had a copy, he might have been able to do his friend a good turn! [Footnote: Common Journals, Nov. 20, 1643; Baillie, II. 101 (and note), and 120-121. Baillie, at the very time he was privately wishing he had his friend Rowallan's Psalms to pit against Rous's, was becoming acquainted with Rous; to whom in a month or two he dedicated a sermon of his preached before the Commons. He there calls Rous his "much honoured friend." Rowallan's Psalms remain in MS. to this day; but specimens of them have been published. See Baillie's Letters, pp. 535-6 of Appendix, Vol. III.; where there is an interesting and curious history of English Versions of the Psalms, by the editor, Mr. David Laing.] The adoption of Rous's Psalter was not immediately voted by the Assembly, but lay over along with the general business of the new Directory for Worship. In this business too they were making some private progress in Committee, though retarded by the debates on Church-government; and there was every likelihood of substantial agreement here. Independents and Erastians were pretty sure to agree with Presbyterians on the subjects of the Liturgy, Sabbath-observance, abolition of Festival-days, and the recommendation of a plain and Puritan church-service generally. There were significant proofs of this. Actually on Christmas-day 1643 (who would have thought it?) the Lords and Commons met for business as usual, thus showing the example of contempt of the great holiday—all the more to the delight of the Scottish Commissioners, and of the zealous Puritans of the Assembly and the City, because the Assembly was still weak-hearted enough as a whole to adjourn for that day. It was the Scottish Commissioners, indeed, that had contrived this rebuke to the weaker spirits. And within a week or two thereafter there was this farther Puritan triumph—also the contrivance of the Scottish Commissioners through their friends in Parliament,—that the use of the Liturgy was discontinued in the two Houses, in favour of extempore prayers by Divines appointed for the duty by the Assembly. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 120 and 130.]

Ejection of Scandalous and Malignant Ministers.—A somewhat wholesale process, described in such terms by the winning side, had been going on, everywhere within the sway of Parliament, for several months. It was part, indeed, of a more general process, for the sequestration to the use of Parliament of the estates of notorious Delinquents of all kinds, which had been the subject of various Parliamentary ordinances. [Footnote: Commons Journals from March 1612-3 onwards. For sequence of proceedings and dates, see Index to Journals, Vol III. sub cocc. "Delinquents." See also the main sequestrating ordinances (March 31 and Aug. 19, 1643) in Scobell's collection.] By these ordinances a machinery for the work of sequestration had been established, consisting of a central committee in London, and of committees in all the accessible counties. The special application of this machinery to clerical delinquents had come about gradually. From the very beginning of the Parliament (Nov. 1640) there had been a grand Committee of the Commons, of which Mr. White, member for Southwark, was chairman, for inquiring into the scandalous immoralities of the clergy, and an acting Sub- committee, of which Mr. White also was chairman, for considering how scandalous ministers might be removed, and real preaching ministers put in their places. By the action of these committees month after month— receiving and duly investigating complaints brought against clergymen, either of scandalous lives or of notoriously Laudian opinions and practices—a very large number of clergymen had been placed on the black books, and some actually ejected, before the commencement of the war. But, after the war began, sharper action became necessary. For now the Parliament had to provide for what were called "the plundered ministers" —i.e. for those Puritan ministers who, driven from their parsonages in various parts of the country by the King's soldiers, had to flock into London, with their families, for refuge and subsistence. A special Committee of the Commons had been appointed (Dec. 1642) to devise ways and means for the relief of these "godly and well-affected ministers;" and, as was natural, the proceedings of this Committee had become inter- wound with those of the Committee for the ejection of scandalous ministers—Mr. White at the head of the whole agency. And so, in the Commons, we hear ultimately of such determinations as these respecting "scandalous ministers:"—July 3,1643: "Ordinance to be prepared to enable the Committees (for sequestration) in the several counties to sequester their livings;"—July 27: "the Committee for plundered Ministers to consider of informations against them and to put them to the proof;"— Sept. 6: "Deputy Lieutenants and Committees in the counties empowered to examine witnesses against them." The result was the beginning of that "great and general purgation of the clergy in the Parliament's quarters" about which there was such an outcry among the Royalists at the time, and which, after having been a rankling memory in the High Church heart for seventy years, became the main text of Walker's famous folio of 1714 on "The Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England in the Grand Rebellion." According to that book, and to Royalist tradition, it was a ruthless persecution and spoliation of all the best, the most venerable, and the most learned of the clergy of England. Fuller, however, writing at the time, and corroborated by Baxter, represents the facts more fairly. Not a few of the clergy first ejected, he admits, were really men of scandalous private character, and were turned out expressly on that account; others, who were turned out for what was called their "false doctrine," or obstinate adherence to that Arminian theology and ceremonial of worship which the nation had condemned, might regard themselves as simply suffering in their turn what Puritan ministers had suffered abundantly enough under the rule of Laud; and, if gradually the sequestration extended itself beyond these two categories of "scandalous ministers" and "ministers of unsound faith," and swept in among "malignants" generally, or those whose only fault was that they were prominent adherents to the King, what was that but one of the harsh natural vengeances of a civil war? At the beginning of the purgation, at all events, Parliament professed carefulness and even leniency in its choice of victims. A fifth of the income of every ejected minister was reserved to his wife and family; and, in order that the public, and even the Royalists, might judge of the equity with which Parliament had proceeded in so odious a business, Mr. White, the chairman of the committees on clerical delinquency, put forth in print (Nov. 19, 1643) his "First Century of Scandalous Malignant Priests," or statement of the cases of one hundred of the sequestered clergy, chiefly in London and the adjacent counties, with the reasons of their ejection. At the time when Mr. White (thenceforward known as "Century White") put forth this pamphlet, the number of the ejected must have already considerably exceeded one hundred, or perhaps even three hundred; and, as the war went on, and sequestration became more and more co-extensive with "malignancy," the number swelled till, as is calculated, some 1,500 or 1,600 clergymen in all, or about a sixth part of the total clergy of England, were thrown out of their livings. [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates July 3, July 27, and Sept. 6, 1643; White's First Century, Fuller's Church History (ed. 1842), III. 458, 460; Neal's Puritans, III. 23-34. Sec also Hallam's Const. Hist. (10th ed.), II. 164-166.]

Filling up of Vacant Livings by the appointment of New Ministers.—For the sequestered livings there were, of course, numerous candidates. Not only were there the "plundered" Puritan ministers, most of them congregated in London, to be provided for; but there were the young Divinity scholars growing up, for whom, even in a state of war, or at least for such of them as took the side of Parliament, it was necessary to find employment. Obviously, however, some order or method had to be adopted in the exercise of the large patronage of vacant livings which had thus come suddenly into the hands of Parliament. The plundered ministers could not be thrust promiscuously, or by mere lottery, into such livings as were vacant. They had all, certainly, the qualification of being already ordained; but there were different sorts of persons among them, and some with very little to recommend them except their distress. It was essential that there should be some examination or re-examination of all such petitioners for new livings, in order that the unfit should not be appointed, and that the others might be provided for according to their degrees of fitness. Accordingly, at the request of the two Houses, the Westminster Assembly (Oct. 1643) appointed two-and-twenty of its Divines to be a committee for examining and reporting on the qualifications of all such petitioners for livings as might be referred to it by Parliament. About the same time a provisional arrangement was made for the more difficult matter of ordaining new candidates for the Ministry. The whole question of Ordination having yet to be argued and settled in the Assembly (see antè, p. 20), it was felt on all hands that some temporary arrangement was imperative. Accordingly, by the advice of the Assembly, the whole business of deciding who were fit to be ordained, and of duly ordaining such, was entrusted by Parliament to certain committees or associations of godly ministers, themselves already ordained, appointed for certain centres and districts. The chief Ordaining Committee was, of course, that for London and the country round. This committee, to which was assigned not only the ordination of new ministers for its important district, but also the ordination of all chaplains for the army and navy, consisted of twenty-three associated Presbyters (ten Divines of the Assembly and thirteen parish-ministers of London not in the Assembly), of whom seven were to be a quorum. Whosoever, not already ordained, should presume to preach publicly or otherwise exercise the ministerial office without having been ordained by this association, or one of the others, or at least without a certificate of having been approved by the Examining Committee of the Assembly, was to be reported to Parliament for censure and punishment. The London Divines were enjoined to be careful whom they admitted into their pulpits. In short, it was the object of both the Parliament and the Assembly to proclaim their determination that, while the question of Church-government was being considered, some decent rule of practical order should be carefully observed, and England should not be allowed to lapse, as the loyalists were giving out, into a mere anarchy of ranters, preaching cobblers, and every fool his own parson. [Footnote: Neal, III. 88-90, and 138-141.]

Visitation of the University of Cambridge.—While the scandalous and malignant among the parish clergy were being sequestered and ejected, it was not to be expected that Parliament would spare the Universities. Oxford, for the present, was beyond reach; but Cambridge was within reach. Was it to be endured that, while the town of Cambridge was the very centre of the Associated Eastern Counties, the most zealously Parliamentarian region in all England, the University should be a fortress of malignancy, with many of its Heads of Houses and Fellows notoriously disaffected to Parliament, and showing their disaffection by sermons, publications from the University press, continuance of the forbidden usages and symbolisms in the College chapels, and such other acts of contumacy? For a long time Parliament had been asking itself this question. As early as June 10, 1643, the subject of "some effectual means of reforming" the University of Cambridge, "purging it from all abuses, innovations, and superstitions," and dealing with conspicuous malignants in it, had been under discussion in the Commons. There had been a reluctance, however, to proceed too rapidly, or so as to incur the Royalist reproaches of "invasion of University rights" and "ruin of a great seat of learning." Hence, whatever dealings with the University had been necessary had been left very much to the discretion of the ordinary agencies representing Parliament in the Associated Counties, at the head of which, since Aug. 1643, had been the Earl of Manchester. There was even a Parliamentary ordinance (Jan. 6, 1643-4) explaining that, whatever sequestration there might be of the revenues of individual delinquents in the University, every regard was to be paid to the property of the University as such, and not an atom of it should be alienated. By this time, however, it was felt that the malignancy of the University must be dealt with more expressly. Accordingly, on the 22nd of January there was passed "an Ordinance for regulating the University of Cambridge and for removing of scandalous Ministers in the several Associate Counties." By this ordinance it was provided that, "whereas many complaints are made by the well-affected inhabitants of the associated counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, and Lincoln, that the service of the Parliament is retarded, the enemy strengthened, the people's souls starved, and their minds diverted from any care of God's cause, by their idle, ill-affected and scandalous clergy of the University of Cambridge and the Associated Counties" and whereas "many that would give evidence against such scandalous ministers are not able to travel to London," therefore the Earl of Manchester should be commissioned to take the necessary steps in the University and the Counties themselves. He was to appoint Committees who were to have "power to call before them all Provosts, Masters, and Fellows of Colleges, all students and members of the University, and all ministers in any county of the Association, and all schoolmasters;" and, after due inquiry by these Committees, he was to have power "to eject such as he shall judge unfit from their places, and to sequester their estates, means and revenues, and to place other fitting persons in their room, such as shall be approved of by the Assembly of Divines." A very important ordinance, as we shall see in due time. [Footnote: Commons Journals, June 10, 1643, and Jan. 20, 1643-4; Lords Journals, Jan. 6 and Jan. 22, 1643-4; and Neal, III. 105-107.]

The reader need hardly be reminded by what authority all these acts and changes in the system of England were decreed and carried into effect. Since the beginning of the war the government of England, except where the King's troops were in possession, had been in the two Houses of Parliament sitting at Westminster; but since July 1643 it may be said rather to have been in these two Houses of Parliament with the Assembly of Divines. What the reader requires, however, to be reminded of is the smallness numerically of this governing body. The House of Lords, in particular, though still retaining all its nominal dignity and keeping up all its stately forms, was a mere shred of its former self. About 29 or 30 persons, out of the total Peerage of England, as we reckoned (Vol. II. pp. 430-31), had avowed themselves Parliamentarians; so that, had all these been present, the House of Lords would have been but a very small gathering. But, as a certain number even of these were always absent on military duty or on other occasions, it was seldom that more than 14 or 15 Peers were present in the House around Lord Grey of Wark on the woolsack as elected Speaker. Sometimes, when the business was merely formal, the number sank to 4 or 5; and I do not think the Lords Journals register, during the whole time with which we are now concerned, a larger attendance than 22. That was the number present on the 22nd of January, 1643-4, when the ordinance for visiting Cambridge University was passed. [Footnote: As the Lords Journals give the names of the Peers present each day, very accurate information on this subject is obtainable from them.] In the Commons, of course, the attendance was much larger. When a "whip" was necessary, between 200 and 300 could be got together. Thus on the 25th of September, 1643, which was the day of inaugurating the Covenant, 220 were present; and on the above-mentioned 22nd of January, 1643-4—an important day for various reasons—as many as 280 made their appearance, while it was calculated that 100 were absent in the Parliamentary service. [Footnote: Parl. Hist. III. 199.] Usually, however, the attendance was much less numerous. On a vote taken Nov. 26, 1643, the division showed 59 against 58, or 117 present; and this appears to be rather above the mark of the attendance in general.—On the whole, one may say that the business of the nation in the interest of Parliament was carried on habitually during those important months by some 12 or 15 Parliamentarian Peers, and some 100 Commoners, keeping up the forms of the two Houses, and having for their assessors, and in part for their spurs and tutors, the 60 or 80 Puritan Divines who sat close at hand in the Jerusalem Chamber.

Was all this to last? Whether it was to last or not depended not a little on the conduct of the Parliament itself, but greatly more on the conduct of the generals and armies that held up its banners in various parts of England. And how, since our last glimpses of the state of the war in the dark month of Hampden's death and the month following that (June and July 1643), had the war been going on? Much as before. What do we see? A siege here and a siege there, a skirmish here and a skirmish there, ending sometimes for the Parliament, but as often for the King; amid all these sieges and skirmishes no battle of any magnitude, save the first Battle of Newbery (Sept. 20, 1643), where Lord Falkland, weary of his life, was slain, and also the Royalist Earls of Carnarvon and Sunderland, but otherwise the damage to the King was inconsiderable; Essex still heavy and solemn, an excellent man, but a woful commander-in-chief; little Sir William Waller still the favourite and set up against Essex, but confidence in him somewhat shaken by his recent defeats; the Fairfaxes in the north, and others in other parts, doing at best but respectably; Cromwell, it is true, a marked man and always successful wherever he appeared, but appearing yet only as Colonel Cromwell! "For the present the Parliament side is running down the brae," wrote the sagacious Baillie, Sept. 22, 1643; and again, more pithily, Dec. 7, "They may tig- tag on this way this twelvemonth." The only remedy, Baillie thought—the only thing that would change the sluggish "tig-tagging" of Essex and the English into something like what a war should be—was the expected coming-in of the Scots. For this event the English Parliamentarians also longed vehemently. "All things are expected from God and the Scots" is Baillie's description of the feeling in London in the winter of 1643-4. For, though the bringing in of a Scottish force auxiliary to the English army had been arranged for in the autumn—though it was for that end that the English Parliament had sent Commissioners to Edinburgh, had accepted Henderson's "Solemn League and Covenant," and had admitted Scottish Commissioners into the Westminster Assembly—yet the completing of the negotiations, and the getting together and equipping of the Scottish army for its southward march, had been a work of time. About Christmas 1643 it was understood that the Scots were in readiness to march; but the precise time when they might be expected to cross the border was yet in anxious conjecture. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 83, 99, 104-5, and 114-15.]

It was an unusually severe winter, cold and snowy. The Londoners, in especial, deprived of their coal from Newcastle, felt it severely. Baillie particularly mentions the comfortable hangings of the Jerusalem Chamber, and the good fire kept burning in it, as "some dainties in London" at that date, and duly appreciated by the members of the Assembly. [Footnote: Ibid. II. 106.] Among the printed broad-sheets of the time that were hawked about London, I have seen one entitled "Artificial Fire; or, Coal for Rich and Poor: this being the offer of an excellent new Invention." The invention consists of a proposal to the Londoners of a cheap substitute for coal, devised by a "Mr. Richard Gesling, Ingineer, late deceased." Mr. Gesling's idea was that, if you take brickdust, mortar, sawdust, or the like, and make up pasteballs thereof mingled with the dust of sea-coal or Scotch coal, and with stable-litter, you will have a fuel much more economical than coal itself. But, though this is the practical proposal of the fly-sheet, its main interest lies in its lamentation over the lack of the normal fuel. "Some fine-nosed city dames," it says, "used to tell their husbands, 'O husband! we shall never be well, we nor our children, whilst we live in the smell of this city's sea-coal smoke! Pray, a country-house for our health, that we may get out of this sea-coal smell!' But how many of these fine-nosed dames now cry, 'Would to God we had sea-coal! Oh! the want of fire undoes us! O the sweet sea-coal fires we used to have! how we want them now: no fire to your sea-coal!'… This for the rich: a word for the poor! The great want of fuel for fire makes many a poor creature cast about how to pass over this cold winter to come; but, finding small redress for so cruel an enemy as the cold makes, some turn thieves that never stole before—steal posts, seats, benches from doors, rails, nay, the very stocks that should punish them; and all to keep the cold winter away." [Footnote: Folio sheet dated 1644 (i.e. winter of 1643-4), in British Museum Library: Press-mark, 669, f.]—If on no other account than the prospect of a re-opening of the coal-traffic between Newcastle and London, what joy among the Londoners when the news came that, on Friday the 19th of January, 1643-4, the expected Scottish army had entered England by Berwick! They had entered it, toiling through deep snow, 21,500 strong, and were already—God be praised!—spreading themselves over the winter-white fields of the very region where the coal lay black underground. At their head who but old Field-marshall Leslie, now Earl of Leven, Scottish commander-in-chief for the third time, and tolerably well acquainted already with the North of England? Second in command to him, as Lieutenant-general of the Foot, was William Baillie, of Letham, in this post for the second time; and the Major-general, with command of the horse was David Leslie, a third Gustavus-Adolphus man, and, though a namesake of the commander-in-chief, only distantly related to him. The marquis of Argyle accompanied the invaders, nominally as Colonel of a troop of horse; and among the other colonels of foot or horse were the Earls of Cassilis, Lindsay, Loudoun, Buccleugh, Dunfermline, Lothian, Marischal, Eglinton, and Dalhousie. The expenses of the army, averaging 1,000_l._ per diem (6_d._ a day for each common foot-soldier, 8_d._ for a horse-soldier, and so on upwards) were, by agreement, to be charged to England. [Footnote: Rushw. V. 604-7; Parl. Hist. III. 200, 201; Baillie, II. 100 and 137.]

The condition on which the Scots had consented thus to aid the English Parliament must not be forgotten. It was the agreement of the two nations in one and the same religious Covenant. In all the negotiations that had been going on between London and Edinburgh, the Scots had always assumed the fulfilment of this condition on the part of the English. And, so far, we have seen, it had already been fulfilled. Since September 1643, when Henderson's Covenant had first been proposed to the English Parliament and the Westminster Assembly, and the Commons and the Westminster Divines had set the example by swearing to it collectively in one of the London churches, "the Covenant" had been a phrase familiar to the English mouth. In all the miscellaneous activity of the Parliament for the detection and disabling of "Malignants," there had been no instrument more effective or more commonly used. There were other tests and oaths by which the "malignants" might be distinguished from the "well-affected"; but the taking or not taking of the Solemn League and Covenant was the test paramount. Wherever the Parliament had power it had been in operation. Since December 20, for example, it had been the law that no one could be a Common Councilman of the City of London who had not subscribed to the Covenant. Still, in this matter of subscription to the Covenant, the English, both as the larger nation and as the less accustomed to Covenants, had remained considerably in arrear of the Scots; and, when the Scots actually did make their appearance in England, there was a sudden refreshing of the memory of the English Parliament on the subject, and a sudden exertion to make up the arrears. "The Scots are among us on the supposition that we have all taken the Covenant; and lo! we have not yet all taken it," was virtually the exclamation of the Parliament. Accordingly, that all might be brought in, that there might be no escape, and that there might remain to all time coming a vast register of the names of the Englishmen then living who had entered into this solemn league with their Scottish neighbours, there was passed, on the 5th of February, 1643-4, a new and conclusive ordinance on the subject. By this ordinance it was enacted that true copies of the Covenant should be sent to the Earl of Essex and other commanders of the army, and to all governors of towns, &c., to the intent that it might be sworn to by every man in the army; also that copies should be sent into all the counties, so that they should punctually reach every parish and every parish- minister—the instructions being that every minister should, the next Lord's day after the certified copy of the Covenant reached him, read it aloud to his congregation, discourse and exhort upon it, and then tender it to all present, who should swear to it with uplifted hands, and afterwards sign it with their names or marks. All men over eighteen years of age, whether householders or lodgers, were to take it in the parishes in which they were resident; and the names of all refusing, whether ministers or laymen, were to be reported. [Footnote: See Ordinance in Lords Journals, Feb. 5, 1643-4.] Nay, by an arrangement about the same time, the action of the Covenant was made to extend to English subjects abroad. Notwithstanding all this stringency, there is reason to believe that not a few soldiers in the army, and not a few ministers and others, contrived, in one way or another, to avoid the Covenant, without being called to account for the neglect. Where a minister otherwise unexceptionable, or an officer or soldier of known zeal and efficiency, had scruples of conscience against signing, the authorities, both civil and military, appear in many places to have exercised a discretion and winked at disobedience or procrastination.—The case of the Earl of Bridgewater may here be of some interest, on its own account, and as illustrating what went on generally. The Earl, known to us so long as "the Earl of Milton's Comus" had been living in retirement as an invalid during the war, his wishes on the whole being doubtless with the King, but his circumstances obliging him to keep on fair terms with the Parliament. The test of the Covenant seems to have sorely perplexed the poor Peer. "He says some things in the Covenant his heart goes along with them, and other things are doubtful to him; and therefore desires some time to consider of it." Such was the report to the Lords, Wednesday Feb. 7, 1643-4, by the Earls of Rutland and Bolingbroke, who had been appointed to deal with him and other absent Peers in the matter. "He shall have time till Friday morning next," was the entry ordered to be made. On the Friday named there is no mention of the subject in the Lords Journals; but on Saturday the 10th Lords Rutland and Bolingbroke were able to report that it was all right. Two days had convinced the Earl that signing would be best for him. [Footnote: Lords Journals of dates cited.]

Besides this universal imposition of the Covenant by Parliamentary ordinance upon all who had hitherto neglected to take it, there was another immediate effect of the presence of the Scots in England. The two nations being now in arms for the same cause, the fortunes of each nation depending largely on the conduct of the other, and the two national armies indeed having to co-operate strategically, there required to be some common directing power, intermediate between the English Parliament in Westminster and the Scottish Estates in Edinburgh, representing both, and acting for both in all matters of military concern. The Scots, on their part, had made provision accordingly. Besides appointing a stationary Committee of the Estates to manage matters from Edinburgh, and another Committee to be with the Scottish army as a kind of Council to the Earl of Leven, they had nominated (Jan. 9, 1643-4) a Special Commission of four persons to go to London with full powers to represent the views and interests of Scotland in the enterprise in which it was now conjoined with England. These were—the EARL OF LOUDOUN, High Chancellor of Scotland; LORD MAITLAND (already in London as Scottish Commissioner to the Westminster Assembly); SIR ARCHIBALD JOHNSTONE OF WARRISTON (due in London at any rate as a Commissioner to the Assembly); and MR. ROBERT BARCLAY, Provost of Irvine in Ayrshire. These Commissioners having presented their Commission to the English Parliament, Feb. 5, the Parliament were moved to appoint some of its trustiest men from the two Houses to be an English Committee of Consultation with the Scottish Commissioners, and in fact to form, along with them, a joint "Committee of the Two Kingdoms." Such an institution was not at all to the taste of Lord General Essex, inasmuch as it trenched on his powers as commander- in-chief. Some opposition was therefore offered. On the whole, however, the argument that the two kingdoms ought to be "joined in their counsels as well as in their forces" proved overpowering; and on the 16th of February an ordinance was passed appointing the following persons (7 Peers and 14 Commoners) to be a Committee for the purpose named—the EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND, the EARL OF ESSEX, the EARL OF WARWICK, the EARL OF MANCHESTER, VISCOUNT SAYE AND SELE, LORD WHARTON, LORD EGBERTS, WILLIAM PIERREPOINT, SIR HENRY VANE, Senr., SIR PHILIP STAPLETON, SIR WILLIAM WALLER, SIR GILBERT GERRARD, SIR WILLIAM ARMYN, SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG, SIR HENRY VANE, Junr., JOHN CREWE, ROBERT WALLOP, OLIVER ST. JOHN, SAMUEL BROWNE, JOHN GLYNN, and OLIVER CROMWELL. Six were to be a quorum, always in the proportion of one Lord to two Commoners, and of the Scottish Commissioners meeting with them two were to be a quorum. There can be no doubt that the object was that the management of the war should be less in Essex's hands that it had been. [Footnote: Lords Journals of dates Feb. 5 and 16, 1643-4; and Baillie, II. 141, 142]

The name of JOHN PYM may have been looked for in the Committee. Alas! no longer need his name be looked for among the living in this History. He had died on the 8th of December, 1643, when the Scots were expected in England, but had not yet arrived. He was buried magnificently in Westminster Abbey, all the Lords and Commons attending, and Stephen Marshall preaching the funeral sermon. England had lost "King Pym," her greatest Parliamentary man. No one precisely like him was left. But, indeed, he had done his work to the full; and, had he lived longer, he might have been loved the less! [Footnote: Rushworth V. 376; Parl. Hist. III. 186-7; and Baillie, II. 118.]