CHAPTER LIX.
CHARLES I.
1647.
The dominion of the parliament was of short duration. No sooner had they subdued their sovereign, than their own servants rose against them, and tumbled them from their slippery throne. The sacred boundaries of the laws being once violated, nothing remained to confine the wild projects of zeal and ambition: and every successive revolution became a precedent for that which followed it.
In proportion as the terror of the king’s power diminished, the division between Independent and Presbyterian became every day more apparent; and the neuters found it at last requisite to seek shelter in one or the other faction. Many new writs were issued for elections, in the room of members who had died, or were disqualified by adhering to the king; yet still the Presbyterians retained the superiority among the commons: and all the peers, except Lord Say, were esteemed of that party. The Independents, to whom the inferior sectaries adhered, predominated in the army; and the troops of the new model were universally infected with that enthusiastic spirit. To their assistance did the Independent party among the commons chiefly trust in their projects for acquiring the ascendant over their antagonists.
Soon after the retreat of the Scots, the Presbyterians, seeing every thing reduced to obedience, began to talk of diminishing the army; and, on pretence of easing the public burdens, they levelled a deadly blow at the opposite faction. They purposed to embark a strong detachment, under Skippon and Massey, for the service of Ireland; they openly declared their intention of making a great reduction of the remainder.[*] It was even imagined that another new model of the army was projected, in order to regain to the Presbyterians that superiority which they had so imprudently lost by the former.[**]
* Fourteen thousand men were only intended to be kept up;
six thousand horse, six thousand foot, and two thousand
dragoons. Bates.
** Rush. vol. vii. p. 564.
The army had small inclination to the service of Ireland; a country barbarous, uncultivated, and laid waste by massacres and civil commotions: they had less inclination to disband, and to renounce that pay which, having earned it through fatigues and dangers, they now purposed to enjoy in ease and tranquillity. And most of the officers, having risen from the dregs of the people, had no other prospect, if deprived of their commission, than that of returning to languish in their native poverty and obscurity.