[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Dec. 2.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Dec. 9.]
and of all whose patience had been exhausted by the quarrels among the commanders; and, when an exemption was suggested in favour of the lord-general, it was lost on a division by seven voices, in a house of one hundred and ninety-three members.[a] However, the strength of the opposition encouraged the peers to speak with more than their usual freedom. They contended, that the ordinance was unnecessary, since the committee was employed in framing a new model for the army; that it was unjust, since it would operate to the exclusion of the whole peerage from office, while the Commons remained equally eligible to sit in parliament, or to fill civil or military employments. It was in vain that the lower house remonstrated.[c] The Lords replied that they had thrown out the bill, but would consent to another of similar import, provided it did not extend to commands in the army.
But by this time the committee of both kingdoms had completed their plan of military reform, which, in its immediate operation, tended to produce the same effect as the rejected ordinance.[d] It obtained the sanction of the Scottish commissioners, who consented, though with reluctance, to sacrifice their friends in the upper house, for the benefit of a measure which promised to put an end to the feuds and delays of the former system, and to remove from the army Cromwell, their most dangerous enemy. If it deprived them of the talents of Essex and Manchester, which they seem never to have prized, it gave them in exchange a commander-in-chief, whose merit they had learned to appreciate during his service in conjunction[e]
[Transcriber's Note: Footnote 1 not found in the text]
[Footnote 1: Journals, Dec. 9, 17; Jan. 7, 10, 13. Lords' Journals, 129, 131, 134, 135. Rushworth, vi. 3-7.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1644. Dec. 17.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1644. Dec. 21.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. Jan. 15.]
[Sidenote d: A.D. 1645. Jan. 9.]
[Sidenote e: A.D. 1645. Jan. 21.]
with their forces at the siege of York. By the "new model" it was proposed that the army should consist of one thousand dragoons, six thousand six hundred cavalry in six, and fourteen thousand four hundred infantry in twelve regiments, under Sir Thomas Fairfax as the first, and Major-General Skippon as the second, in command. The Lords hesitated;[a] but after several conferences and debates they returned it with a few amendments to the Commons, and it was published by sound of drum in London and Westminster.[1]
This victory was followed by another. Many of the peers still clung to the notion that it was intended to abolish their privileges, and therefore resolved not to sink without a struggle. They insisted that the new army should take the covenant, and subscribe the directory for public worship; they refused their approbation to more than one half of the officers named by Sir Thomas Fairfax; and they objected to the additional powers offered by the Commons to that general. On these subjects the divisions in the house were nearly equal, and whenever the opposite party obtained the majority, it was by the aid of a single proxy, or of the clamours of the mob. At length a declaration was made by the Commons, that "they held themselves obliged to preserve the peerage with the rights and privileges belonging to the House of Peers equally as their own, and would really perform the same." Relieved from their fears, the Lords yielded to a power which they knew not how to control; the different bills were passed, and among them a new self-denying ordinance, by which every member of either house was discharged from all[c]
[Footnote 1: Journals, Jan. 9, 13, 25, 27; Feb. 11, 15; of Lords, 159, 175, 169, 193, 195, 204. Clarendon, ii. 569.]
[Sidenote a: A.D. 1645. Feb. 15.]
[Sidenote b: A.D. 1645. March 25.]
[Sidenote c: A.D. 1645. April 3.]