DUNBAR.

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Cromwell's attention was soon attracted towards the West, where an army of five thousand men was raised, by order of the Committee of Estates, by Colonels Kerr and Strachan, in the associated counties of Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, Wigtown, and Dumfries. These people were of strict whiggamore notions, and were directly in correspondence with John Warriston, the Clerk Register of Parliament, and Gillespie and Guthrie, two ministers of the Kirk, who protested against having anything to do with the son of the beheaded Charles Stuart, who was an enemy to the Kirk, and whose son himself was a thorough Malignant. They drew up a Remonstrance of the Western army, in which they termed the king an incarnate solecism, and refused to fight under either him or Leslie. Cromwell, who saw little to prevent a union with this party, professing his old veneration for the Covenant, opened a communication with them, arguing that Charles ought to be banished, and thus remove the need of an English interference. In order to effect a coalition with these commanders, Cromwell marched to Glasgow, where he arrived on Friday, October 18th; and on Sunday, in the cathedral, listened to a violent sermon against him and his army from the Reverend Zachary Boyd. Coming to no agreement with Kerr and Strachan, he returned on Monday towards Edinburgh, and found many men advising that they shall give up the "hypocrite," meaning Charles, and make peace with England; but Kerr and Strachan, though their Remonstrance was voted a scandalous libel by Parliament, could not agree to this. They, in fact, differed in opinion. Strachan resigned his commission, and soon after came over with eighty troopers to Cromwell. Kerr showed a hostile aspect, agreeing with neither one party nor another, and soon came to nothing. Cromwell sent Lambert to look after him with three thousand horse, and Lambert, whilst lying at Hamilton, found himself suddenly attacked by Kerr. He, however, repulsed him, took him prisoner, killed a hundred of his men, losing himself only six, and took two hundred prisoners, horse and foot. The Western army was wholly dispersed. The condition of the Covenanting Scots was now deplorable; the Remonstrants, though they had lost their army, still continued to quarrel with the official or Argyll's party, and the country was thus torn by the two factions, under the name of Remonstrants and Resolutionists, when it should have been united against the enemy. Cromwell was now master of all the Lowlands, casting longing glances towards Stirling and Perth, which were in the hands of the royal party, and thus ended the year 1650.

On the first day of the new year, 1651, Charles rode, or rather was led, in procession, by his partisans to the church at Scone, and there solemnly crowned. There, on his knees, he swore to maintain the Covenant, to establish Presbyterianism, and embrace it himself, to establish it in his other dominions as soon as he recovered them. Argyll then placed the crown on his head, and Douglas, the minister, read him a severe lecture on the calamities which had followed the apostacy of his grandfather and father, and on his being a king only by compact with his people. But the fall of the Western army had weakened the rigid Presbyterian party. Argyll saw his influence decline, that of the Hamiltons in the ascendant, and numbers of the old Royalists pouring in to join the army. Charles's force soon displayed the singular spectacle of Leslie and Middleton in united command, and the army, swelled by the Royalists, was increased to twenty thousand men. Having fortified the passes of the Forth, the king thus awaited the movements of Cromwell. But the lord-general, during the spring, was suffering so much from the ague, that he contemplated returning home. In May, however, he grew better, and advanced towards Stirling. Whilst he occupied the attention of Charles and his army by his manœuvres in that quarter, he directed Lambert to make an attempt upon Fife, which succeeded, and Cromwell, crossing the Forth, advanced to support him. The royal army quickly evacuated Perth, after a sharp action, in which about eight hundred men on each side fell, and the Parliament colours were hoisted on the walls of that city.

If Cromwell's movement had been rapid and successful, he was now in his turn astonished by one as extraordinary on the part of the Prince. Charles saw that all the south of Scotland and a great part of England was clear of the enemy, and he at once announced his determination to march towards London. On the 31st of July his army was actually in motion, and Argyll, denouncing the enterprise as inevitably ruinous, resigned his commission and retired to Inverary.

On discovering Charles's object, Cromwell put the forces to remain in Scotland under the command of General Monk, sent Lambert from Fife to follow the royal army with three thousand cavalry, and wrote to Harrison in Newcastle to advance and harass the flank of Charles's army. He himself, on the 7th of August, commenced his march after it with ten thousand men.

Charles advanced at a rapid rate, and he had crossed the Mersey before Lambert and Harrison had formed a junction near Warrington, and attempted to draw him into a battle on Knutsford Heath. But Charles continued his hasty march till he reached Worcester, where he was received with loud acclamations by the mayor and corporation, and by a number of county gentlemen, who had been confined there on suspicion of their disaffection, but were now liberated. But such had been the sudden appearance of Charles, that no expectation of it, and therefore no preparation for it, had been made by the Royalists; and the bigoted ministers attending his army sternly refused all who offered to join them, whether Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or Catholics, because they had not taken the Covenant. It was in vain that Charles gave orders to the contrary, and sent forward General Massey to receive and bring into order these volunteers; the Committee of the Kirk rejected them, whilst Cromwell's forces on their march were growing by continual reinforcements, especially of the county militias. Colonel Robert Lilburne met with a party of Charles's forces under the Earl of Derby, between Chorley and Wigan, and defeated them, killing the Lord Widdrington, Sir Thomas Tildesley, and Colonels Boynton, Trollope, and Throgmorton. Derby himself was wounded, but escaped.

Charles issued a proclamation for all his male subjects between the ages of sixteen and sixty to join his standard on the 26th of August; but on that day he found that the whole of his forces amounted to only twelve thousand men, whilst Cromwell, who arrived two days after, was at the head of at least thirty thousand. On the 3rd of September, the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell determined to attack the royal army. Lambert, overnight, crossed the Severn at Upton, with ten thousand men, and the next morning Cromwell and Fleetwood, with the two other divisions of the army, crossed, Cromwell the Severn, and Fleetwood the Teme. Charles, who had been watching their progress from the tower of the cathedral, descended and attacked Fleetwood before he had effected his passage; but Cromwell was soon up to the assistance of his general, and after a stout battle, first in the meadows, and then in the streets of the city, the forces of Charles were completely beaten. Charles fought with undaunted bravery, and endeavoured to rally his soldiers for a last effort, but they flung down their weapons and surrendered. It was with difficulty that he was prevailed upon to fly, and save his life. Three thousand of the Royalists were slain, and six or seven thousand made prisoners, including a considerable number of noblemen—the Duke of Hamilton, but mortally wounded, the Earls of Rothes, Derby, Cleveland, Kelly, and Lauderdale, Lords Sinclair, Kenmure, and Grandison, and the Generals Leslie, Massey, Middleton, and Montgomery. The Duke of Buckingham, Lord Talbot, and others, escaped with many adventures.

It was an overthrow complete, and most astonishing to both conquered and conquerors. Cromwell, in his letter to the Parliament, styled it "a crowning mercy." The Earl of Derby and seven others of the prisoners suffered death as traitors and rebels to the Commonwealth. Derby offered the Isle of Man for his ransom, but his letter was read by Lenthall to the House too late, and he was executed at Bolton, in Lancashire.

As for Charles himself, the romance of his escape has been celebrated in many narratives. After being concealed for some days at White-ladies and Boscobel, two solitary houses in Shropshire, and passing a day in the boughs of an oak, he made his way in various disguises, and by the assistance of different loyal friends, to Brighton, whence he passed in a collier over to Fécamp in Normandy, but this was not till the 17th of October, forty-four days after the battle of Worcester.