CHAPTER XV.
The Royalist Army.
Charles went to Oxford after the battle of Edge Hill, and there, during the civil wars, set up his head quarters. Occasionally he was absent with the army, but that central city, which was so convenient for the purpose in many respects, he made his fortress and his home. It underwent great alterations. Fortifications were contrived by Richard Rallingson, who also drew "a mathematical scheme or plot of the garrison;" and in an old print, by Anthony Wood, may be traced the zig-zag lines of defence, which were drawn on every side about the city.[465] Gownsmen transformed themselves into cavaliers, and exchanged college caps for steel bonnets. Streets echoed with the tramp of war horses and the clatter of iron-heeled hoots. Wagons, guarded by pikemen, and laden with ammunition and stores, rolled through the picturesque gateways; and valiant and loyal subjects rallied around their Sovereign in the hour of his need, ready to shed their last drop of blood beneath his standard. The colleges melted down their plate to supply military chests; and Magdalen especially stood true to the King's cause. Rupert took up his residence there, and the sound of his trumpets calling to horse disturbed the silence of the beautiful cloisters. Whilst most of the Fellows, being Divines, could only help with their prayers and their purses, one of them, who was a doctor of civil law, raised a troop of under-graduates, and fell fighting in his Majesty's service.[466] Amidst the excitement which followed the King's turns of fortune, he gathered together the relics of his court, and established in Christ Church Hall a mock parliament, which was intended to rival the real one at Westminster. Charles had grasped at absolute power, now nothing remained but the shadow of dominion. At Oxford he but played at kingship.
The Royalist Army.
1643.
In the Royal army, of which, perhaps, the worst portion might be found at Oxford, the principal officers were men of high spirit and courage, with a strong dash in them of old English chivalry; but, with some of the virtues of mediæval knighthood, they possessed a more than ordinary share of its vices. In retired parts of the country, especially in Cornwall, yeomen and peasants, of pure life and artless manners, followed Royalist commanders with a sort of feudal devotion; but it must be admitted, with regard to most of the regiments who fought for the King, that the men in the ranks were worse than those in command—for, wanting that tone of manners which marks the well-bred gentleman, they had nothing to check the ebullitions of coarse impiety and brutal ruffianism. We are not concerned to vindicate the soldiers on the other side. No doubt they were chargeable with excesses, some of which have been indicated in these pages. Irreligious people mixed with Puritans; tapsters and serving men appeared among patriots; but, whatever the drawbacks on the reputation of the Parliamentary forces, there is but little doubt that the moral character of the men on the other side was far worse. Indeed, this is virtually admitted by Royalists themselves; for Clarendon paints dark pictures of the debauchery of the Lords Goring and Wilmot; and Chillingworth, in a sermon preached at Oxford in the autumn of 1643, while charging the enemy with Pharisaism, hypocrisy, falsehood, want of justice, and pretence of reformation, is also unsparing in his reproofs of Royalist profanity, irreligion, and blasphemy.[467]
Fiery resentment burned in both camps, and was industriously fanned by the newspapers of the day. Parliamentary journals had nothing but what was good to say of their own party, and nothing but what was bad of their adversaries. Led away by idle rumours, editors and correspondents made mountains of molehills, and often stated as facts what only existed in their own distempered brains; all this the scribblers for the Oxford press paid back with interest.
The Royalist Army.