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

STATE OF THE WAR: SELF-DENYING ORDINANCE AND NEW MODEL.

During the six months the transactions of which, as far as the Westminster Assembly was concerned, we have thus presented in summary (Sept. 1644-March 1645), the hurry of more general events in England had been very marked. Of what use was the preparation of a Presbyterian Form of Church-government, and a Presbyterian Directory of Worship, for England, so long as it remained uncertain whether England might not be once again the King's, and the Parliament under his feet? And, really, there was this danger. Marston Moor had been a great blow to the King: it had spoilt his cause in the whole of the North. But Essex's defeat in Cornwall (Sept. 1) had come as a terrible set-off, In the confidence of that victory, the King was on the move out of the West back to Oxford (Sept. 30), sending proclamations before him, and threatening a march upon London itself. The taking of Newcastle by the Scots under Leven (Oct. 19) was a return of good fortune for the Parliament at the right moment; at least it provided the Londoners again with their long-missed coals. But it had come now to be a contest between the King's main force and the combined forces of Parliament in the South-English midlands. In the second Battle of Newbury (Sunday, Oct. 27) the issue was tried—the Earl of Manchester's army, with Cromwell second in it, having been joined to the recruited armies of Essex and Waller in order to resist the King. Manchester and Waller were the real Parliamentary commanders, Essex being ill. It was a severe battle. The King had, on the whole, the worst; but he got off, as Cromwell and others thought, less thoroughly beaten than he ought to have been. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 721-730; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. l59.] From the date of this second Battle of Newbury, accordingly, Cromwell became the spokesman of a dissatisfaction with the military and political conduct of the cause of Parliament as deep and as wide-spread throughout England as that dissatisfaction with the conduct of the religious question of which he had made himself the spokesman six weeks before.

What Cromwell had thought when he moved the Accommodation Order of Sept. 13 had been virtually this: "Here are you discoursing about strict Presbytery and what differences from it may be tolerated, when the real question is whether we shall have a free England for Presbytery or anything else to exist in, and how we can carry with us all honest men who will fight to make such a free England." And now, when, after the second Battle of Newbury, he again reappeared in Parliament, it was in this prolongation, or profounder state, of the same mood:—"The time has come when I must speak out. We, of this nation, must turn over a new leaf. We have been fighting the King now for more than two years, and we are very much as we were when we began. And why? Because the men who command our armies against the King do not want really to beat him; because they want only to seem to be beating him; because the picture they love to look on, as their heaven on earth to come, is a picture of their gracious sovereign, after he has been beaten no more than could be helped, surrounded by themselves as his reconciled and pardoned ministers and chatting pleasantly with them over the deeds of the campaigns. I say nothing personally of my Lord of Essex, or of Sir William Waller: they are most honourable men. But I speak generally as I feel. If the King is to be beaten, it can only be by generals who want to beat him, who will beat him to bits, who will use all means to beat him, who will gladly see in their armies the men who have the right spirit in them for beating him. Are these the Presbyterians only? I trow not. I know my men; and I tell you that many of those that you call Independents, that you call Anabaptists, Sectaries, and what not, are among the stoutest and godliest in England, and will go as far as any. Some weeks ago I complained to you of Major-general Crawford, because he would trouble these men, and would have no soldiers of Parliament in my Lord Manchester's army that did not agree with his own notions of Religion and Church-government. Now I complain of my Lord Manchester himself. In this last Battle of Newbury, I tell you, the King was beaten less than he might have been. He was allowed to get off. I advised pursuing him, and my Lord Manchester would not. It was that over again which has been from the first. And now I speak out what has long been in my mind, and what brave men in thousands are thinking. Before the Lord, we must turn over a new leaf in this War. We must have an Army of the right sort of men, and men of the right sort to command that Army."

This is a purely imaginary speech of Cromwell's; but it is an accurate expression of several months of English history. The shrewdest of men at all times, and also the most sincere, he was yet always the most tempestuous when the fit time came, and it was the characteristic of his life that he carried everything before him at such times by his bursts and tempests. There can be no doubt that, after the second Battle of Newbury, Cromwell was in one of his paroxysms. Of his vehemence against Manchester at that time, and of Manchester's recriminations on him, one may read at large in Rushworth and elsewhere. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 732-736; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 159, 160.] The brief account of Baillie, who had not yet left London, and was in the centre of the whole affair, will be sufficient here. "Lieutenant-general Cromwell," writes Baillie, Dec. 1, "has publicly, in the House of Commons, accused my Lord of Manchester of the neglect of fighting at Newbury. That neglect indeed was great; for, as we now are made sure, the King's army was in that posture that they took themselves for lost all-utterly. Yet the fault is most in justly charged on Manchester: it was common to all the general officers then present, and to Cromwell himself as much as to any other. Always my Lord Manchester has cleared himself abundantly in the House of Lords, and there has recriminate Cromwell as one who has avowed his desire to abolish the nobility of England; who has spoken contumeliously of the Scots' intention in coming to England to establish their Church-government, in which Cromwell said he would draw his sword against them; also against the Assembly of Divines; and has threatened to make a party of Sectaries, to extort by force, both from King and Parliament, what conditions they thought meet. This fire was long under the emmers; now it's broken out, we trust, in a good time. It's like, for the interest of our nation, we must crave reason of that darling of the Sectaries [i.e. bring Cromwell to a reckoning], and, in obtaining his removal from the army—which himself by his over-rashness has procured—to break the power of that potent faction. This is our present difficile enterprise: we had need of your prayers." [Footnote: Baillie, II. 243-245.] In this account Baillie mixes up the proceedings in the Commons on the 25th of November when Cromwell exhibited his charge against Manchester, and in the Lords a few days after when Manchester gave in his defence and countercharge, with current gossip, apparently true enough, of Cromwell and his awful sayings in private. Evidently Baillie thought Cromwell had ruined himself. Even the hero of Marston Moor could not beard all respectable England in this way, and it should not be the fault of the Scottish Commissioners if he did not find himself shelved! Little did Baillie know with what great things, beyond all Scottish power of resistance or machination, Cromwell's fury was pregnant.

While Baillie was writing the passage above quoted, the Scottish Commissioners, along with the Lord-general Essex, and some of Essex's chief adherents, including Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton, were consulting how they might trip Cromwell up. At a conference late one night at Essex-house, to which Whitlocke and Maynard were invited, the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun moved the business warily in a speech which Whitlocke mischievously tries to report in its native Scotch—"You ken vary weele that Lieutenant-general Cromwell is no friend of ours," &c. "You ken vary weele the accord 'twixt the twa kingdoms" &c. Loudoun wanted to know, especially from the two lawyers, whether the Scottish plan of procedure in such cases would have any chance in England, in other words whether Cromwell could be prosecuted as an incendiary; for "you may ken that by our law in Scotland we clepe him an incendiary whay kindleth coals of contention and raiseth differences in the State to the public damage." Whitlocke and Maynard satisfied his lordship that the thing was possible in law, but suggested the extreme difficulty there would be in proof, represented Cromwell's great influence in the Parliament and the country, and in fact discouraged the notion altogether. Holles, Stapleton, and others were still eager for proceeding, but the Scots were impressed and thought delay would be prudent. And so, Whitlocke tells us, the Presbyterian intriguers parted at two in the morning, and he had reason to believe that Cromwell knew all that had passed before many hours were over, and that this precipitated what followed. [Footnote: Whitlocke's Memorials (edit. Oxford, 1853), I. 3l3 et seq.]

On Wednesday the 9th of December, at all events, the Commons having met in grand committee on the condition of the kingdom through the continuance of the war, there was for a time a dead silence, as if something extraordinary was expected, and then Cromwell rose and made a short speech. It was very solemn, and even calm, but so hazy and general that the practical drift of it could not possibly have been guessed but for the sequel. Almost the last words of the speech were, "I hope we have such true English hearts, and zealous affections towards the general weal of our mother-country, as no members of either House will scruple to deny themselves, and their own private interests, for the public good." The words, vague enough in themselves, are memorable as having christened by anticipation the measure for which Cromwell, as he uttered them, was boring the way. For, after one or two more had spoken in the same general strain, Mr. Zouch Tate, member for Northampton, did the duty assigned him, and opened the bag which contained the cat. He made a distinct motion, which, when it had been seconded by young Vane, and debated by others (Cromwell again saying a few words, and luminous enough this time), issued in this resolution, "That no member of either House of Parliament shall during the war enjoy or execute any office or command, military or civil; and that an ordinance be brought in to that effect." This was on the 9th of December; and on the 19th of that month the ordinance itself, having gone through all its stages, passed the Commons. All London was astounded. "The House of Commons," writes Baillie, Dec. 26, "in one hour has ended all the quarrels which was betwixt Manchester and Cromwell, all the obloquies against the General, the grumblings against the proceedings of many members of their House. They have taken all office from all members of both Houses. This, done on a sudden, in one session, with great unanimity, is still more and more admired by some, as a most wise, necessary, and heroic action; by others as the most rash, hazardous, and unjust action that ever Parliament did. Much may be said on both hands, but as yet it seems a dream, and the bottom of it is not understood." To the House of Lords the Self-denying Ordinance was by no means palatable. They demurred, conferred with the Commons about it, and at last (Jan. 15) rejected it. Their chief ground of rejection being that they did not know what was to be the shape of the Army to be officered on the new principle, the Commons immediately produced their scheme in that matter. The existing armies were to be weeded, consolidated, and recruited into one really effective army of 21,000 men (of which 6,000 should be horse in ten regiments, 1,000 should be dragoons in ten single companies, and 14,000 should be foot in regiments of not less than 1,200 each), the whole to cost 44,955_l_. per month, to be raised by assessment throughout the kingdom. This army, it was farther resolved by the Commons (Jan. 21), should be commanded in chief by the trusty and popular Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had done so well in the North, and, under him, by the trusty and popular Major-general Skippon, whose character for bull-headed bravery even the disaster in Cornwall had only more fully brought out. [Footnote: I find, from the Commons Journals, that there was a division on the question whether Fairfax should be appointed commander-in-chief of the New Model—the state of the vote being Yeas 101 against Noes 69, or a majority of 32 for the appointment. The Tellers for the majority were the younger Vane and Cromwell; for the minority, Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapleton. There was a subsequent division, Feb. 7, on the question whether Fairfax's choice of officers under him should be subject to Parliamentary revision. Cromwell was one of the Tellers for the Noes—i.e. he wanted Fairfax to have full powers. The other side, however, beat this time by a majority of 82 against 63. After all it was arranged satisfactorily between Fairfax and Parliament.] On the 28th of January the New Model complete passed the Commons. The Lords hesitated about some parts of it, and were especially anxious for a provision in it incapacitating all from being officers or soldiers in the new army who should not have taken the Covenant: there were conferences on this point, and a kind of compromise on it by the Commons; and on the 15th of February the Ordinance for New Modelling of the Army was finally passed. The Self-denying Ordinance was then re-introduced in a changed form, and it passed the Lords, April 3, 1645. It ordained that all members of either House who had since November 20, 1640, been appointed to any offices, military or civil, should, at the end of forty days from the passing of the Ordinance, vacate these offices, but that all other officers in commission on the 20th of March, 1644-5, should continue in the posts they then held.

Thus the year 1645 (beginning, in English reckoning, March 25) opened with new prospects. Essex, Manchester, Waller, and all the officers under them, retired into ordinary life, with thanks and honours—Essex, indeed, with a great pension; and the fighting for Parliament was thenceforward to be done mainly by a re-modelled Army, commanded by Fairfax, Skippon, and officers under them, whose faces were unknown in Parliament, and whose business was to be to fight only and teach the art of fighting.

It was high time! For another long bout of negotiations with the King, begun as early as Nov. 20, 1644, and issuing in a formal Treaty of great ceremony, called "The Treaty of Uxbridge," had ended, as usual, in no result. Feb. 22, it had been broken off after such a waste of speeches and arguments on paper that the account of the Treaty occupies ten pages in Clarendon and fifty-six folio pages in Rushworth. It was clear that the year 1645 was to be a year of continued war. [Footnote: For this story of the Self-denying Ordinance and the New Modelling of the Army authorities are—Rushworth, VI. 1-16; Baillie, II. 247; Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857), I. 160-163. The Uxbridge Treaty is narrated in Clarendon's Hist. (one-volume ed. 1843), pp. 520-530, and in Rushworth, V. 787-842.]