From a military point of view, the King’s position was now utterly hopeless. If after Naseby he had collected the men wasted in petty garrisons he could have got together a force sufficient to meet the “New Model” in the field. But he neglected the moment, one after another his garrisons were taken, and his new levies were scattered before they could combine. His generals lost hope, and while the quarrels of Goring and Grenville paralysed the King’s western army, Rupert urged his uncle to make peace. Charles obstinately refused to listen either to him or to the rest of the peace party.
“If I had any other quarrel but the defence of my religion, crown, and friends,” wrote Charles, “you had full reason for your advice; for I must confess that speaking as a mere soldier or statesman, there is no probability but of my ruin. Yet as a Christian I must tell you that God will not suffer rebels to prosper, nor His cause to be overthrown, and whatever personal punishment it shall please Him to inflict upon me must not make me repine, much less give over this quarrel.”
The nation in general was weary of the war and impatient for peace. In the west and the south of England the country people began to form associations in order to keep all armed men of either party out of their districts, and to put an end to free quarter and the plunder of their cattle. In the south-west, these “Clubmen,” as they were called, fell under the influence of royalist agents, but generally they remained neutral. When Fairfax marched into Dorsetshire, he employed Cromwell to disperse gathering after gathering of rustics armed with clubs and muskets.
“I assured them,” wrote Cromwell to Fairfax, “that it was your great care, not to suffer them in the least to be plundered, and that they should defend themselves from violence, and bring to your army such as did them any wrong, where they should be punished with all severity; upon this very quietly and peaceably they marched away to their houses, being very well satisfied and contented.”
Another body fired on Cromwell’s men, and had to be dispersed by a cavalry charge. Some dozen were killed, and about three hundred made prisoners—“poor silly creatures” whom he released with an admonition. The moderation and just dealing of Cromwell and Fairfax, and the excellent discipline of their soldiers, speedily restored confidence. The countrymen came to perceive that the best hope of peace lay in the triumph of the Parliament. At the siege of Bristol, the Clubmen of the neighbourhood helped in the investment of the city, and at its surrender Rupert had to be guarded to prevent their taking vengeance for the plunderings he had sanctioned.
The feeling in favour of the parliamentary cause was still further strengthened by the discovery of the King’s negotiations for the introduction of foreign forces into England. The letters taken at Naseby in June showed that the King was negotiating with the Duke of Lorraine to send an army of ten thousand men into England. Those captured when Digby was defeated in his attempt to reach Scotland proved that Charles was trying to get troops from Denmark. In October, some more captured correspondence revealed a treaty made with the Irish rebels in the previous August, by which they were to furnish Charles with ten thousand men in return for the legal establishment of Catholicism in Ireland. Finally, in January, 1646, Fairfax intercepted letters from royalist agents in France concerning five thousand Frenchmen who were to be landed in the west. These successive discoveries alienated men who had fought for the King, and turned neutrals into supporters of the Parliament.
It was to anticipate any such landing of foreign forces in England that Fairfax took the field so early in 1646. During the last two months of 1645 he had been blockading Exeter, but at the beginning of January, though the snow was on the ground and there was a hard frost, a general advance was ordered. The royalist forces in Cornwall and Devon numbered not less than twelve thousand men, besides the garrisons, but, as Clarendon confesses, they were a “dissolute, undisciplined, wicked, beaten army,” more formidable to their friends than to their foes. Goring, to whose misconduct this disorganisation was due, had resigned his command at the end of 1645, and the brave and blameless Hopton, who succeeded him, could effect nothing with such troops. In two months, the resistance of the west collapsed. Cromwell opened the campaign by surprising Lord Wentworth’s brigade at Bovey Tracy on January 9th; Wentworth and most of his men escaped in the darkness, but four hundred horses were taken, and the whole brigade scattered. Ten days later, Fairfax took the strong fortress of Dartmouth by storm, capturing one hundred guns and over one thousand prisoners. On February 16th, a chance collision between outposts at Torrington in North Devon developed into a general engagement in which Hopton was driven from the town with the loss of six hundred men, and his infantry were completely dispersed. Hopton had still about five thousand horse left, so, in spite of the sufferings of his soldiers from hard marches and winter weather, Fairfax resolved to follow him into Cornwall, “the breaking of that body of horse there being the likeliest means to prevent or discourage the landing of any foreign forces in those parts.” When he entered the county, the Cornishmen, won by his good treatment of his prisoners and by the good behaviour of his soldiers, offered no opposition. Hopton’s troopers deserted daily, and those who stayed by their colours had no fight left in them. The Prince of Wales and his councillors fled to the Channel Islands, and on the 14th of March Hopton’s army capitulated. Fairfax wisely granted liberal terms, and every common soldier, on giving up horse and weapons, and promising not to bear arms any more against the Parliament, was given twenty shillings to carry him to his home.
From Cornwall, Fairfax now marched back to Exeter, which surrendered to him on April 9th, and thence to besiege Oxford, which he invested at the beginning of May. Cromwell stayed with Fairfax until Exeter fell, and then went to London at the General’s desire, to give Parliament an account of the state of the west. On April 23rd, he was thanked by the House of Commons for his “great and faithful services.” Rewards of another nature they had already conferred upon him. On December 1, 1645, the Commons, in drawing up the peace propositions to be offered to the King, had resolved that an estate of twenty-five hundred pounds a year should be settled on Lieutenant-General Cromwell, and that the King should be asked to make him a baron. The negotiations fell through, but on January 23rd the House ordered that the lands in Hampshire belonging to the Marquis of Worcester and his sons should be settled on Cromwell, and an ordinance for that purpose finally passed both Houses. As the rents of these lands fell short of the income promised, other estates of the same nobleman in Glamorganshire, Gloucestershire, and Monmouthshire were subsequently added to make up the sum.
Cromwell rejoined Fairfax at Oxford in time to take part in the negotiations for its surrender. Contemporary rumour attributed the leniency of the terms granted to the garrisons of Exeter and Oxford largely to his influence with Fairfax and the council of war. Oxford was strongly fortified, and it would have cost many men to take it, but, apart from this, there were political reasons of great weight which must have appealed to Cromwell. Just before Fairfax invested Oxford, King Charles escaped in disguise from the city, and took refuge in the camp of the Scottish army at Newark. For some months he had been negotiating with the Scots through the French Ambassador, and he hoped to be able to persuade them to adopt his cause against the English Parliament. There were rumours that the Scots meant to employ their army on his behalf, their complicity in his flight seemed proved, and an open breach between the two nations seemed more than possible. “The scurvy, base propositions which Cromwell has given to the Malignants of Oxford,” writes Baillie, “have offended many more than his former capitulation at Exeter; all seeing the evident design of these conscientious men to grant the greatest conditions to the worst men, that they may be expedited for their northern warfare.”
Even if the political situation had been otherwise, the necessity of healing the wounds of the war by liberal treatment of the conquered was an axiom with the army and its leaders. Politicians were as usual less generous than soldiers. The articles were reluctantly ratified by Parliament, and there were repeated complaints of their infringement. Cromwell and the officers of the army never ceased to represent that honour and policy alike demanded their exact observance. “There hath been of late a dispute about the Oxford articles,” said a royalist news-letter in February, 1648. “One gentleman being discontented at the largeness of them told the Lieutenant-General they should lose two hundred thousand pounds by keeping them; he replied they had better lose double as much than break one article.”