All these documents considered in reference to what they professed, were so much waste paper. Ostensibly they spoke of peace—virtually they meant war.
Indications of a coming conflict were visible. The people divided into two parties, and gave signs by hoisting colours. Tawny ribbons were mounted in the hats of the Royalists,[295] the Parliamentarians wore orange. Cavaliers insulted roundheads, and roundheads retaliated on cavaliers. The latter, it was reported, put the former to the test by requiring them to swear "a round oath." Pamphlets were published in vindication of taking up arms. In one of these publications, bearing the title of "Powers to be Resisted," it is declared, that if it be lawful in any case to contend with the sword it is in this; and, in reply to the objection, "No, not with the sword, but with prayer," comes the curious reductio ad absurdum, "contend against swine and dogs with prayer! I never heard the like since I was born; a vain thing, it is sure, to pray the swine not to trample the pearl under foot, to pray the dogs not to rend you."[296] Disturbance and insecurity appeared already. The quaint little newspapers of the day make complaints of assaults and pillage. The Kent waggoners, for example, were stopped on the road to London, and the well-laden wains robbed by cavalier banditti.
1642.
Fearful times had already come, and times still more fearful were at hand. The people of England trembled at the idea of a civil war; the insurrection of Wyat, and Kett's rebellion, had left grave recollections in London and Norfolk; but the blood shed in the wars of the Roses—a more terrible memory—now rose before peaceful households in crimson colour. Mental agitation increased at the sight of natural phenomena, which that agitation interpreted as supernatural portents; omens were detected in slightly unusual incidents, with a feeling akin to ancient Greek and Roman hope or terror under the augur's divination. Signs blazed in heaven—noises burst through the air—people talked of "a celestial beating of drums," and "discharging of muskets and ordnance for the space of an hour and more." Not satisfied with a recognition in the skies of the excitements on the earth, each of the two parties claimed the Divine Being on their own side, and had wonders to tell of judgments smiting opponents. Royalist churchmen related a story of a certain Puritan churchwarden who had taken down a painted glass window, and within two days his wife was exceedingly tormented in her limbs, raging and crying most fearfully. Parliamentary Puritans, with equal extravagance, declared how some wicked Royalist had stuck on the top of a pole a man in a tub to be shot at, and soon afterwards the Royalist was seized with convulsions. One who drank to the confusion of Roundheads, on beginning to dance, broke his leg. The divine indignation on account of setting up May-poles was equally apparent.[297]
The Coming Struggle.
In connection with all this, hostile preparations were made on both sides. Members of the House of Commons contributed horses, money, and plate for the service of Parliament,[298] whilst clergymen and their families sent spoons, cups, and beakers of silver, to be turned into money for the payment of the forces.[299] On the other hand, the friends of the King manifested their loyalty and devotion; but they did not make sacrifices with the same ardour, and to the same extent, as their fellow-countrymen who embraced the cause of the opposite party. Clarendon bitterly complains of the lukewarmness of the Royalists, and observes, that if they had lent their master a fifth part of what they afterwards lost, he would have been able to preserve his crown, and they would have retained their property.
1642.
The enlistment of soldiers was still more important than filling the military chests; and here again the advantage was on the side of the Parliament; the militia increased more rapidly than the forces gathered by the King's commission of array.[300] Hampden, as the wheat ripened in the Chiltern Hundreds, was engaged in raising volunteers; Cromwell made himself useful in Cambridge and the Fen Country after a similar fashion; Lord Brooke, too, rode up and down amongst the fields and orchards of Worcestershire on the same business; and soon England bristled all over with officers beating up recruits. As cavalier nobles and squires assembled their tenantry under the royal standard, there were other landed proprietors who espoused the popular cause, and who were still more successful in securing followers. At the same time, town halls and market-places echoed with appeals to citizens and burgesses to fight for the liberties of their country; whilst in various places ammunition and stores were collected with corresponding activity and zeal. Castles and manor-houses were stripped of armour which had hung for years upon the time-stained walls; and parish churches yielded up from the tombs of ancient knights rusty helmets and hauberks. Old bills and bows, matchlocks and pistols, pikes and lances, and even staves and clubs, were piled up as part of the extemporised equipment. After a little while, military matters took something of artistic form, and regiments well accoutred might be seen marching under the flags of their respective colonels. Redcoats, following Denzil Holles, tramped along the streets of London; purple rank and file drew up at Lord Brooke's command under the tower of Warwick Castle; Hampden saw with pride his green coats winding through the vales of Buckinghamshire; and Lord Say and Sele appeared at the head of a regiment in jackets of blue. Haselrig led on his troops of "lobsters"—so called from the cuirasses worn by his horsemen; and last, but not least, Cromwell rode at the head of cavalry, who, from the completeness of their armour, as well as the invincibleness of their courage, have always been known as his "Ironsides."[301] The Parliamentary officers tied an orange scarf over their accoutrements, and the standard of each regiment bore on one side the colonel's device, and on the other the Parliament's watchword, "God with us." Presbyterian divines became Parliamentary chaplains, in which capacity Dr. Spurstow was attached to John Hampden, and Simeon Ash—"good old Ash," as afterwards he used to be called—followed Lord Brooke. Marshall and Burgess attended upon the Earl of Essex, commander-in-chief.
Character of the Army.
The character of the Parliamentary army was not at first what it afterwards became. When the war commenced, as Cromwell subsequently remarked, "there were numbered among the soldiery, old, decayed serving men and tapsters," who dishonoured the cause; Papists, too, were reported to be in the ranks, strange as that report may appear. Charles, after the battle of Edgehill, flung the reproach in the face of his enemies, and declared that all men knew the great number of Papists who fought under their banner.[302] The Parliament indignantly repelled the accusation, as utterly inconsistent with their avowed opinions and designs. So undoubtedly it was, and if any adherents of the popish religion actually existed in the patriot camp, they could be there only as Jesuits in disguise, in order to corrupt the good affection of their comrades; still, it would appear that such a charge could never have been hazarded but for the miscellaneous character of the troops at the commencement of the outbreak. Religious instruction and discipline, however, were speedily instituted; the men were furnished with copies of the Scriptures;[303] the preaching of the Gospel prevailed in every place where the forces were quartered; and various means were employed to improve the moral and spiritual condition of the soldiers.