45. Second Civil War (1648-52).—The close of the First Civil War left England and Scotland in the hands potentially of any one of the four parties or any combination of two or more that should prove strong enough to dominate the rest. Armed political Royalism was indeed at an end, but Charles, though practically a prisoner, considered himself and was, almost to the last, considered by the rest as necessary to ensure the success of whichever amongst the other three parties could come to terms with him. Thus he passed successively into the hands of the Scots, the Parliament and the New Model, trying to reverse the verdict of arms by coquetting with each in turn. The Presbyterians and the Scots, after Cornet Joyce of Fairfax’s horse seized upon the person of the king for the army (June 3, 1647), began at once to prepare for a fresh civil war, this time against Independency, as embodied in the New Model—henceforward called the Army—and after making use of its sword, its opponents attempted to disband it, to send it on foreign service, to cut off its arrears of pay, with the result that it was exasperated beyond control, and, remembering not merely its grievances but also the principle for which it had fought, soon became the most powerful political party in the realm. From 1646 to 1648 the breach between army and parliament widened day by day until finally the Presbyterian party, combined with the Scots and the remaining Royalists, felt itself strong enough to begin a second civil war.
46. The English War.—In February 1648 Colonel Poyer, the Parliamentary governor of Pembroke Castle, refused to hand over his command to one of Fairfax’s officers, and he was soon joined by some hundreds of officers and men, who mutinied, ostensibly for arrears of pay, but really with political objects. At the end of March, encouraged by minor successes, Poyer openly declared for the king. Disbanded soldiers continued to join him in April, all South Wales revolted, and eventually he was joined by Major-General Laugharne, his district commander, and Colonel Powel. In April also news came that the Scots were arming and that Berwick and Carlisle had been seized by the English Royalists. Cromwell was at once sent off at the head of a strong detachment to deal with Laugharne and Poyer. But before he arrived Laugharne had been severely defeated by Colonel Horton at St Fagans (May 8). The English Presbyterians found it difficult to reconcile their principles with their allies when it appeared that the prisoners taken at St Fagans bore “We long to see our King” on their hats; very soon in fact the English war became almost purely a Royalist revolt, and the war in the north an attempt to enforce a mixture of Royalism and Presbyterianism on Englishmen by means of a Scottish army. The former were disturbers of the peace and no more. Nearly all the Royalists who had fought in the First Civil War had given their parole not to bear arms against the Parliament, and many honourable Royalists, foremost amongst them the old Lord Astley, who had fought the last battle for the king in 1646, refused to break their word by taking any part in the second war. Those who did so, and by implication those who abetted them in doing so, were likely to be treated with the utmost rigour if captured, for the army was in a less placable mood in 1648 than in 1645, and had already determined to “call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for the blood he had shed.” On the 21st of May Kent rose in revolt in the king’s name. A few days later a most serious blow to the Independents was struck by the defection of the navy, from command of which they had removed Vice-Admiral Batten, as being a Presbyterian. Though a former lord high admiral, the earl of Warwick, also a Presbyterian, was brought back to the service, it was not long before the navy made a purely Royalist declaration and placed itself under the command of the prince of Wales. But Fairfax had a clearer view and a clearer purpose than the distracted Parliament. He moved quickly into Kent, and on the evening of June 1 stormed Maidstone by open force, after which the local levies dispersed to their homes, and the more determined Royalists, after a futile attempt to induce the City of London to declare for them, fled into Essex. In Cornwall, Northamptonshire, North Wales and Lincolnshire the revolt collapsed as easily. Only in South Wales, Essex and the north of England was there serious fighting. In the first of these districts Cromwell rapidly reduced all the fortresses except Pembroke, where Laugharne, Poyer and Powel held out with the desperate courage of deserters. In the north, Pontefract was surprised by the Royalists, and shortly afterwards Scarborough Castle declared for the king. Fairfax, after his success at Maidstone and the pacification of Kent, turned northward to reduce Essex, where, under their ardent, experienced and popular leader Sir Charles Lucas, the Royalists were in arms in great numbers. He soon drove the enemy into Colchester, but the first attack on the town was repulsed and he had to settle down to a long and wearisome siege en règle. A Surrey rising, remembered only for the death of the young and gallant Lord Francis Villiers in a skirmish at Kingston (July 7), collapsed almost as soon as it had gathered force, and its leaders, the duke of Buckingham and the earl of Holland, escaped, after another attempt to induce London to declare for them, to St Albans and St Neots, where Holland was taken prisoner. Buckingham escaped over-seas.
47. Lambert in the North.—By the 10th of July therefore the military situation was well defined. Cromwell held Pembroke, Fairfax Colchester, Lambert Pontefract under siege; elsewhere all serious local risings had collapsed, and the Scottish army had crossed the Border. It is on the adventures of the latter that the interest of the war centres. It was by no means the veteran army of Leven, which had long been disbanded. For the most part it consisted of raw levies, and as the kirk had refused to sanction the enterprise of the Scottish parliament, David Leslie and thousands of experienced officers and men declined to serve. The duke of Hamilton proved to be a poor substitute for Leslie; his army, too, was so ill provided that as soon as England was invaded it began to plunder the countryside for the bare means of sustenance. Major-General Lambert, a brilliant young general of twenty-nine, was more than equal to the situation. He had already left the sieges of Pontefract and Scarborough to Colonel Rossiter, and hurried into Cumberland to deal with the English Royalists under Sir Marmaduke Langdale. With his cavalry he got into touch with the enemy about Carlisle and slowly fell back, fighting small rearguard actions to annoy the enemy and gain time, to Bowes and Barnard Castle. Langdale did not follow him into the mountains, but occupied himself in gathering recruits and supplies of material and food for the Scots. Lambert, reinforced from the midlands, reappeared early in June and drove him back to Carlisle with his work half finished. About the same time the local horse of Durham and Northumberland were put into the field by Sir A. Hesilrige, governor of Newcastle, and under the command of Colonel Robert Lilburne won a considerable success (June 30) at the river Coquet. This reverse, coupled with the existence of Langdale’s force on the Cumberland side, practically compelled Hamilton to choose the west coast route for his advance, and his army began slowly to move down the long couloir between the mountains and the sea. The campaign which followed is one of the most brilliant in English history.
48. Campaign of Preston.—On the 8th of July the Scots, with Langdale as advanced guard, were about Carlisle, and reinforcements from Ulster were expected daily. Lambert’s horse were at Penrith, Hexham and Newcastle, too weak to fight and having only skilful leading and rapidity of movement to enable them to gain time. Far away to the south Cromwell was still tied down before Pembroke, Fairfax before Colchester. Elsewhere the rebellion, which had been put down by rapidity of action rather than sheer weight of numbers, smouldered, and Prince Charles and the fleet cruised along the Essex coast. Cromwell and Lambert, however, understood each other perfectly, while the Scottish commanders quarrelled with Langdale and each other. Appleby Castle surrendered to the Scots on the 31st of July, whereat Lambert, who was still hanging on to the flank of the Scottish advance, fell back from Barnard Castle to Richmond so as to close Wensleydale against any attempt of the invaders to march on Pontefract. All the restless energy of Langdale’s horse was unable to dislodge him from the passes or to find out what was behind that impenetrable cavalry screen. The crisis was now at hand. Cromwell had received the surrender of Pembroke on the 11th, and had marched off, with his men unpaid, ragged and shoeless, at full speed through the midlands. Rains and storms delayed his march, but he knew that Hamilton in the broken ground of Westmorland was still worse off. Shoes from Northampton and stockings from Coventry met him at Nottingham, and, gathering up the local levies as he went, he made for Doncaster, where he arrived on the 8th of August, having gained six days in advance of the time he had allowed himself for the march. He then called up artillery from Hull, exchanged his local levies for the regulars who were besieging Pontefract, and set off to meet Lambert. On the 12th he was at Wetherby, Lambert with horse and foot at Otley, Langdale at Skipton and Gargrave, Hamilton at Lancaster, and Sir George Monro with the Scots from Ulster and the Carlisle Royalists (organized as a separate command owing to friction between Monro and the generals of the main army) at Hornby. On the 13th, while Cromwell was marching to join Lambert at Otley, the Scottish leaders were still disputing as to whether they should make for Pontefract or continue through Lancashire so as to join Lord Byron and the Cheshire Royalists.
49. Preston Fight.—On the 14th Cromwell and Lambert were at Skipton, on the 15th at Gisburn, and on the 16th they marched down the valley of the Ribble towards Preston with full knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions and full determination to attack him. They had with them horse and foot not only of the army, but also of the militia of Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland and Lancashire, and withal were heavily outnumbered, having only 8600 men against perhaps 20,000 of Hamilton’s command. But the latter were scattered for convenience of supply along the road from Lancaster, through Preston, towards Wigan, Langdale’s corps having thus become the left flank guard instead of the advanced guard. Langdale called in his advanced parties, perhaps with a view to resuming the duties of advanced guard, on the night of the 13th, and collected them near Longridge. It is not clear whether he reported Cromwell’s advance, but, if he did, Hamilton ignored the report, for on the 17th Monro was half a day’s march to the north, Langdale east of Preston, and the main army strung out on the Wigan road, Major-General Baillie with a body of foot, the rear of the column, being still in Preston. Hamilton, yielding to the importunity of his lieutenant-general, the earl of Callendar, sent Baillie across the Ribble to follow the main body just as Langdale, with 3000 foot and 500 horse only, met the first shock of Cromwell’s attack on Preston Moor. Hamilton, like Charles at Edgehill, passively shared in, without directing, the battle, and, though Langdale’s men fought magnificently, they were after four hours’ struggle driven to the Ribble. Baillie attempted to cover the Ribble and Darwen bridges on the Wigan road, but Cromwell had forced his way across both before nightfall. Pursuit was at once undertaken, and not relaxed until Hamilton had been driven through Wigan and Winwick to Uttoxeter and Ashbourne. There, pressed furiously in rear by Cromwell’s horse and held up in front by the militia of the midlands, the remnant of the Scottish army laid down its arms on the 25th of August. Various attempts were made to raise the Royalist standard in Wales and elsewhere, but Preston was the death-blow. On the 28th of August, starving and hopeless of relief, the Colchester Royalists surrendered to Lord Fairfax. The victors in the Second Civil War were not merciful to those who had brought war into the land again. On the evening of the surrender of Colchester, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle were shot. Laugharne, Poyer and Powel were sentenced to death, but Poyer alone was executed on the 25th of April 1649, being the victim selected by lot. Of five prominent Royalist peers who had fallen into the hands of the Parliament, three, the duke of Hamilton, the earl of Holland, and Lord Capel, one of the Colchester prisoners and a man of high character, were beheaded at Westminster on the 9th of March. Above all, after long hesitations, even after renewal of negotiations, the army and the Independents “purged” the House of their ill-wishers, and created a court for the trial and sentence of the king. The more resolute of the judges nerved the rest to sign the death-warrant, and Charles was beheaded at Whitehall on the 30th of January.
50. Cromwell in Ireland.—The campaign of Preston was undertaken under the direction of the Scottish parliament, not the kirk, and it needed the execution of the king to bring about a union of all Scottish parties against the English Independents. Even so, Charles II. in exile had to submit to long negotiations and hard conditions before he was allowed to put himself at the head of the Scottish armies. The marquis of Huntly was executed for taking up arms for the king on the 22nd of March 1649. Montrose, under Charles’s directions, made a last attempt to rally the Scottish Royalists early in 1650. But Charles merely used Montrose as a threat to obtain better conditions for himself from the Covenanters, and when the noblest of all the Royalists was defeated (Carbisdale, April 27), delivered up to his pursuers (May 4), and executed (May 21, 1650), he was not ashamed to give way to the demands of the Covenanters, and to place himself at the head of Montrose’s executioners. His father, whatever his faults, had at least chosen to die for an ideal, the Church of England. Charles II. now proposed to regain the throne by allowing Scotland to impose Presbyterianism on England, and dismissed all the faithful Cavaliers who had followed him to exile. Meanwhile, Ireland, in which a fresh war, with openly anti-English and anti-Protestant objects, had broken out in 1648, was thoroughly reduced to order by Cromwell, who beat down all resistance by his skill, and even more by his ruthless severity, in a brief campaign of nine months (battle of Rathmines near Dublin, won by Colonel Michael Jones, August 2, 1649; storming of Drogheda, September 11, and of Wexford, October 11, by Cromwell; capture of Kilkenny, March 28, 1650, and of Clonmel, May 10). Cromwell returned to England at the end of May 1650, and on June 26 Fairfax, who had been anxious and uneasy since the execution of the king, resigned the command-in-chief of the army to his lieutenant-general. The pretext, rather than the reason, of Fairfax’s resignation was his unwillingness to lead an English army to reduce Scotland.
51. The Invasion of Scotland.—This important step had been resolved upon as soon as it was clear that Charles II. would come to terms with the Covenanters. From this point the Second Civil War becomes a war of England against Scotland. Here at least the Independents carried the whole of England with them. No Englishman cared to accept a settlement at the hands of a victorious foreign army, and on the 28th of June, five days after Charles II. had sworn to the Covenant, the new lord-general was on his way to the Border to take command of the English army. About the same time a new militia act was passed that was destined to give full and decisive effect to the national spirit of England in the great final campaign of the war. Meanwhile the motto frappez fort, frappez vite was carried out at once by the regular forces. On the 19th of July 1650 Cromwell made the final arrangements at Berwick-on-Tweed. Major-General Harrison, a gallant soldier and an extreme Independent, was to command the regular and auxiliary forces left in England, and to secure the Commonwealth against Royalists and Presbyterians. Cromwell took with him Fleetwood as lieutenant-general and Lambert as major-general, and his forces numbered about 10,000 foot and 5000 horse. His opponent David Leslie (his comrade of Marston Moor) had a much larger force, but its degree of training was inferior, it was more than tainted by the political dissensions of the people at large, and it was, in great part at any rate, raised by forced enlistment. On the 22nd of July Cromwell crossed the Tweed. He marched on Edinburgh by the sea coast, through Dunbar, Haddington and Musselburgh, living almost entirely on supplies landed by the fleet which accompanied him—for the country itself was incapable of supporting even a small army—and on the 29th he found Leslie’s army drawn up and entrenched in a position extending from Leith to Edinburgh.
52. Operations around Edinburgh.—The same day a sharp but indecisive fight took place on the lower slopes of Arthur’s Seat, after which Cromwell, having felt the strength of Leslie’s line, drew back to Musselburgh. Leslie’s horse followed him up sharply, and another action was fought, after which the Scots assaulted Musselburgh without success. Militarily Leslie had the best of it in these affairs, but it was precisely this moment that the kirk party chose to institute a searching three days’ examination of the political and religious sentiments of his army. The result was that the army was “purged” of 80 officers and 3000 soldiers as it lay within musket shot of the enemy. Cromwell was more concerned, however, with the supply question than with the distracted army of the Scots. On the 6th of August he had to fall back as far as Dunbar to enable the fleet to land supplies in safety, the port of Musselburgh being unsafe in the violent and stormy weather which prevailed. He soon returned to Musselburgh and prepared to force Leslie to battle. In preparation for an extended manœuvre three days’ rations were served out. Tents were also issued, perhaps for the first time in the civil wars, for it was a regular professional army, which had to be cared for, made comfortable and economized, that was now carrying on the work of the volunteers of the first war. Even after Cromwell started on his manœuvre, the Scottish army was still in the midst of its political troubles, and, certain though he was that nothing but victory in the field would give an assured peace, he was obliged to intervene in the confused negotiations of the various Scottish parties. At last, however, Charles II. made a show of agreeing to the demands of his strange supporters, and Leslie was free to move. Cromwell had now entered the hill country, with a view to occupying Queensferry and thus blocking up Edinburgh. Leslie had the shorter road and barred the way at Corstorphine Hill (August 21). Cromwell, though now far from his base, manœuvred again to his right, Leslie meeting him once more at Gogar (August 27). The Scottish lines at that point were strong enough to dismay even Cromwell, and the manœuvre on Queensferry was at last given up. It had cost the English army severe losses in sick, and much suffering in the autumn nights on the bleak hillsides.
53. Dunbar.—On the 28th Cromwell fell back on Musselburgh, and on the 31st, after embarking his non-effective men, to Dunbar. Leslie followed him up, and wished to fight a battle at Dunbar on Sunday, the 1st of September. But again the kirk intervened, this time to forbid Leslie to break the Sabbath, and the unfortunate Scottish commander could only establish himself on Doon Hill (see [Dunbar]) and send a force to Cockburnspath to bar the Berwick road. He had now 23,000 men to Cromwell’s 11,000, and proposed, faute de mieux, to starve Cromwell into surrender. But the English army was composed of “ragged soldiers with bright muskets,” and had a great captain of undisputed authority at their head. Leslie’s, on the other hand, had lost such discipline as it had ever possessed, and was now, under outside influences, thoroughly disintegrated. Cromwell wrote home, indeed, that he was “upon an engagement very difficult,” but, desperate as his position seemed, he felt the pulse of his opponent and steadily refused to take his army away by sea. He had not to wait long. It was now the turn of Leslie’s men on the hillside to endure patiently privation and exposure, and after one night’s bivouac, Leslie, too readily inferring that the enemy was about to escape by sea, came down to fight. The battle of Dunbar (q.v.) opened in the early morning of the 3rd of September. It was the most brilliant of all Oliver’s victories. Before the sun was high in the heavens the Scottish army had ceased to exist.
54. Royalism in Scotland.—After Dunbar it was easy for the victorious army to overrun southern Scotland, more especially as the dissensions of the enemy were embittered by the defeat of which they had been the prime cause. The kirk indeed put Dunbar to the account of its own remissness in not purging their army more thoroughly, but, as Cromwell wrote on the 4th of September, the kirk had “done its do.” “I believe their king will set up on his own score,” he continued, and indeed, now that the army of the kirk was destroyed and they themselves were secure behind the Forth and based on the friendly Highlands, Charles and the Cavaliers were in a position not only to defy Cromwell, but also to force the Scottish national spirit of resistance to the invader into a purely Royalist channel. Cromwell had only received a few drafts and reinforcements from England, and for the present he could but block up Edinburgh Castle (which surrendered on Christmas eve), and try to bring up adequate forces and material for the siege of Stirling—an attempt which was frustrated by the badness of the roads and the violence of the weather. The rest of the early winter of 1650 was thus occupied in semi-military, semi-political operations between detachments of the English army and certain armed forces of the kirk party which still maintained a precarious existence in the western Lowlands, and in police work against the moss-troopers of the Border counties. Early in February 1651, still in the midst of terrible weather, Cromwell made another resolute but futile attempt to reach Stirling. This time he himself fell sick, and his losses had to be made good by drafts of recruits from England, many of whom came most unwillingly to serve in the cold wet bivouacs that the newspapers had graphically reported.[7]