1647.

With the King in their keeping, and with a majority still on their side in the House of Commons, the Presbyterians were full of confidence, and their religious affairs seemed to promise a favourable issue. But the army became to them an increasing difficulty. To disband it appeared most desirable; but how to accomplish that object was the question. The soldiers did not choose to be disbanded. They said they were not Turkish janissaries, nor Swiss mercenaries—not mere adventurers of fortune, paid to throw their lances in a cause they did not care for—but Englishmen, who had been struggling for their rights, fighting in defence of hearth, home, and a free church; and, before they laid down their arms, they would know that their country had obtained what they and their brave comrades had shed their blood to win. They were entitled to be paid before they were dismissed, and paid they would be; but, what was more precious to them far than pay, they would secure for themselves and their fellow-countrymen liberty of conscience. To use Clarendon's words: "Hitherto there was so little security provided in that point, that there was a greater persecution now against religious and godly men than ever had been in the King's government, when the bishops were their judges."[640] This is exaggeration; yet it was thus that men talked around their camp-fires on frosty nights during that memorable winter. The army petitioned Parliament in the spring of 1647. Parliament objected to army petitions. The petitioners vindicated their rights in this respect; and some troopers boldly sent a letter to the honourable House, declaring that they would not disband until their requests were granted, and the liberties of the subject were placed beyond peril. A debate followed this appeal, and speeches were prolonged to a late hour. Denzil Holles, the Presbyterian leader, full of that passion and prejudice which often blinded his strong intellect and pushed on his resolute will, then hastily took a scrap of paper, and wrote across it, as it lay upon his knee, a resolution declaring the petition to be seditious, and that to support it was treason. Holles' resolution fell like a spark upon an open barrel of gunpowder.

This was in the month of April. In March, the House had resolved that every officer in garrison, and under the command of Fairfax, should take the Covenant, and conform to the Church by ordinance established. The vote aimed a blow at the Independents, and those who sympathized with them—Cromwell, Blake, Ludlow, Algernon Sidney, Ireton, Skippon, and Hutchinson.

Earl of Essex.

1647.

The Presbyterians were now walking in the dark on the edge of a pitfall. Their great general, the Earl of Essex, was dead.[641] The only son of Robert, Queen Elizabeth's favourite, he had enjoyed much of his father's popularity. Trained to arms in the Netherlands, he became an accomplished soldier of the old school; and, having served with distinction in the wars of the Palatinate, he had acquired the reputation of a Protestant champion before he was called upon to draw his sword within the shores of his native land. His military fame and his religious character pointed him out as a Parliamentary commander at the outbreak of the civil wars. A moderate Episcopalian in the first instance, yet wishing to see bishops excluded from the peerage, he glided into Presbyterianism, and at last would have been glad to bring about such a settlement of affairs as would give ascendancy to that system without the destruction of monarchical rule. In all respects moderate—fearing a decisive victory, such as would crush the King, scarcely less than he feared such a defeat of the Parliamentary army as would restore him to his former power—the history of the military career of the Earl of Essex in England was more cautious than brilliant, and from first to last abounded in Fabian delays. Nominally retaining supreme command of the forces till the year 1645, the influence of this nobleman had declined with the siege of Gloucester, in 1643.

The surrender of his army in the west, in the autumn of 1644, brought a cloud over his military career, though it left untarnished his personal honour. The old officers being displaced by the self-denying ordinance, Essex had to resign his baton. Without military command, he notwithstanding continued to be a man of great influence; which personal vanity, as well as higher considerations, prompted him to employ. Sympathizing with Presbyterians, and jealous of Independents, he incurred Cromwell's displeasure; and Cromwell, after the passing of the self-denying ordinance, became disliked by him. Had Essex lived, it was thought—though without sufficient reason—that he might have allayed party feeling and have prevented the terrible catastrophe which was not far distant. His death, however, struck at the hopes of compromise cherished by his Presbyterian friends, whilst, by that event, Cromwell and his party, as Clarendon reports, were wonderfully exalted, Essex being the only one "whose credit and interest they feared without any esteem of his person."[642]

The King and the Independents.

It should also be considered how unwise the Presbyterians had been in paying off and dismissing the Scotch army, which, so long as it continued on English ground, might be reckoned as an ally and a defender of the new Church. At least, that army remaining here would have served to hold the English one in check, and to render its commanders more prudent, if it did not make its men less bold. But the march of the Presbyterian regiments over the border left Cromwell and his brother officers free from all apprehensions of military resistance. The Independents thus became masters of the situation.

1647.