ENGLAND
AT THE END OF 1643.
The Solemn League and Covenant.
Thus the end of the campaign of 1643 left matters in the centre much as they had been nine months before. But on the flanks, in Yorkshire and the south-west, the Royalists had won much ground, and were in full communication with the king through their strong posts in Bristol and Newark. While arms had proved unable to settle the struggle, both sides had been trying to gain help from without—the Parliament in Scotland, the king in Ireland. The zealous Covenanters of the North, before consenting to give armed support to the Roundheads, insisted on receiving pledges from their allies. Accordingly, the Parliament swore a Solemn League and Covenant, "to preserve the Kirk of Scotland in doctrine, worship, and governance, and to reform religion in the Church of England according to God's Holy Word." The second clause implied the destruction of Episcopacy, and the introduction of Presbyterianism into the southern kingdom (September 25). In return for this pledge the Scots promised to send an army of 10,000 or 15,000 men over the Tweed in the following spring. The conclusion of this treaty was the last work of Pym, the king of the Commons, who died six weeks later. No civilian came forward among the ranks of the Parliamentarians to take up his mantle.
Charles seeks aid from Ireland.
Meanwhile the king had sought aid from Ireland. Ever since the massacre of 1641, the Irish rebels had been fighting with the Marquis of Ormonde, Strafford's successor in the governance of that unruly realm. They had occupied six-sevenths of the country, and held Ormonde's men pinned up in Dublin, Cork, and a few other strongholds. Charles now conceived a scheme for patching up a peace with the rebels, and thus making it possible to bring over Ormonde's army, Strafford's veteran regiments, to join in the English war. With this end he negotiated a truce called "the Cessation" with the Irish (September 15), leaving the "Catholic Confederates" to govern all the districts that were in their hands, and promising to devise a scheme of toleration for Romanists. This truce enabled Ormonde to begin sending over his troops to England; it was also arranged that native Irish levies should be lent to the king by the "Catholic Confederates," and Lord Taaffe, one of the leading rebels, promised to make a beginning by bringing over 2000 men. This alliance with the fanatical Romanists of Ireland, the perpetrators of the Ulster Massacre of 1641, did Charles much harm. The Puritans began to dream of England dragooned by wild Irish Papists, and thought that the fires of Smithfield would ere long be relighted. They grew fiercer than ever against the king.
1644. Rout of the Irish levies.—The Scots in England.