Little Arthur's history of England

by Lady Maria Callcott

In Ireland the Roman Catholics knew they should be treated worse by the Puritans than they had been by the king’s governors; and the English settlers expected to be no better used than the old Irish; so they all made ready to fight against the army of the English parliament, if it should be sent to Ireland.

In Scotland, those who had sold King Charles to the English parliament were so angry with the English Roundheads for killing the king, that they chose Prince Charles, the son of the poor dead king, for their king; and they got an army together to defend him and his friends.

As for England, the parliament (or rather the part of it that remained after the king’s death) chose a number of persons to govern the kingdom, and called them a council of state; and this council began to try to settle all those things quietly that had been disturbed by the sad civil war.

But the civil war in Ireland became so violent that the Council sent Oliver Cromwell, who was the best general in England, to that country; and he soon won a good many battles, and made great part of the country submit to the English. And he put his own soldiers into the towns, to keep them. As to the Irish who would have taken young King Charles’ part, and were Roman Catholics, he sent many of them abroad, and treated others so hardly that they were glad to get out of the country. So Cromwell made Ireland quiet by force, and left General Ireton to take care of it.

While Cromwell was in Ireland, a very brave Scotchman, whose name was James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, had gone to Scotland with soldiers from Germany and France, partly, as he said, to punish those who had allowed Charles the First to be beheaded, and partly to try to make Prince Charles king. This brave gentleman, whose story you will love to read some day, was taken prisoner by the Scotch army. The officers behaved very ill, for they forgot his bravery, and the kindness he had always shown to everybody when he was powerful. They forgot that he thought he was doing his duty in fighting for his king, and they put him to death very cruelly. They tied him to a cart, and dragged him disgracefully to prison. They hanged him on a tall gallows, with a book, in which his life was written, tied to his neck; then they cut off his head and stuck it up over his prison-door.

About a month after the Scotch had disgraced themselves by that cruel action, young Prince Charles, whom they called Charles the Second, arrived in Scotland. But he found that he was treated more like a prisoner than a king. The lords and generals of the Scotch army wanted him to be a presbyterian like them; but he liked better to go with the Scotch army into England, to try and persuade the English to fight for him, and to make him king.

But Cromwell, who had returned from Ireland, collected a large army in England, with which he marched into Scotland; and, finding that Charles meant to make war in England, he followed him back again with part of the army, and left General Monk in Scotland with the rest.

Cromwell found King Charles and his army at Worcester, and there he fought and won a great battle, in which a great many Scotch noblemen were killed, as well as several English gentlemen. Charles was obliged to run away and hide himself, and for this time he gave up all hopes of being really King of England.

You would like, I daresay, to hear how he contrived to escape from Cromwell, who would certainly have shut him up in prison if he had caught him.

I must tell you that the English generals had promised a great deal of money to anybody who would catch Charles and bring him to them; and they threatened to hang anybody who helped the poor young prince in any way; but there were some brave men and women too, who had pity on him, as you shall hear.