CHAPTER XXXV
THE NEW MODEL ARMY. 1644-1649

LEADING DATES
Reign of Charles I., 1625-1649

1. The Self-denying Ordinance and the New Model. 1645.—Cromwell dropped his attack on Manchester as soon as he found that he could attain his end in another way. A proposal was made for the passing of a Self-denying Ordinance,[23] which was to exclude all members of either House from commands in the army. The Lords, knowing that members of their House would be chiefly affected by it, threw it out, and the Commons then proceeded to form a New Model Army—that is to say, an army newly organised, its officers and soldiers being chosen solely with a view to military efficiency. Its general was to be Sir Thomas Fairfax, whilst the lieutenant-general was not named; but there can be little doubt that the post was intended for Cromwell. After the Lords had agreed to the New Model, they accepted the Self-denying Ordinance in an altered form, as, though all the existing officers were directed to resign their posts, nothing was said against their re-appointment. Essex, Manchester, and Waller resigned, but when the time came for Cromwell to follow their example, he and two or three others were appointed to commands in the new army. Cromwell became Lieutenant-General, with the command of the cavalry. The New Model was composed partly of pressed men, and was by no means, as has been often said, of a sternly religious character throughout; but a large number of decided Puritans had been drafted into it, especially from the army of the Eastern Association; and the majority of the officers were Independents, some of them of a strongly Sectarian type. The New Model Army had the advantage of receiving regular pay, which had not been the case before; so that the soldiers, whether Puritans or not, were now likely to stick to their colours.

2. Milton's 'Areopagitica.' 1644.—By Cromwell, who in consequence of his tolerance was the idol of the Sectarians in the army, religious liberty had first been valued because it gave him the service of men of all kinds of opinions. On November 24, 1644, Milton, some of whose books had been condemned by the licensers of the press appointed by Parliament, issued Areopagitica, in which he advocated the liberty of the press on the ground that excellence can only be reached by those who have free choice between good and evil. "He that can apprehend," he wrote, "and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain—he is the true warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out of the race, when that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat." Liberty was good for religion as much as it was for literature. "These are the men," he continued, "cried out against for schismatics and sectaries, as if, while the temple of the Lord was building, there should be a sort of irrational men who could not consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made in the quarry and in the timber ere the house of God can be built." The perfection of the building consisted "in this—that out of many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure."

3. The Execution of Laud. 1645.—In Parliament, at least, there was one direction in which neither Presbyterian nor Independent was inclined to be tolerant. They had all suffered under Laud, and Laud's impeachment was allowed to go on. The House of Lords pronounced sentence against him, and on January 10, 1645, he was beheaded. The Presbyterians had the majority in the House of Commons, and they were busy in enforcing their system, as far as Parliamentary resolutions would go. The Independents had to wait for better times.