It is no easy thing to paint, with any accurate shadings, this opening period of the English Revolution. Looking habitually, as we do, at the maturer condition of the two great parties, we do not remember how gradual was their formation. The characters of Cavalier and Roundhead were not more the cause than the consequence of civil strife. There is no such chemical solvent as war; where it finds a mingling of two alien elements, it leaves them permanently severed. At the opening of hostilities, the two parties were scarcely distinguishable, in externals, from each other. Arms, costume, features, phrases, manners, were as yet common to both sides. On the battlefield, spies could pass undetected from one army to the other. At Edgehill, Chalgrove, and even Naseby, men and standards were captured and rescued, through the impossibility of distinguishing between the forces. An orange scarf, or a piece of white paper, was the most reliable designation. True, there was nothing in the Parliamentary army so gorgeous as Sir John Suckling's troop in Scotland, with their white doublets and scarlet hats and plumes; but that bright company substituted the white feather for the red one, in 1639, and rallied no more. Yet even the Puritans came to battle in attire which would have seemed preposterously gaudy to the plain men of our own Revolution. The London regiment of Hollis wore red, in imitation of the royal colors, adopted to make wounds less conspicuous. Lord Say's regiment wore blue, in imitation of the Covenanters, who took it from Numbers, xv. 38; Hampden's men wore green; Lord Brooke's purple; Colonel Ballard's gray. Even the hair afforded far less distinction than we imagine, since there is scarcely a portrait of a leading Parliamentarian which has not a display of tresses such as would now appear the extreme of foppery; and when the remains of Hampden himself were disinterred within twenty-five years, the body was at first taken for a woman's, from the exceeding length and beauty of the hair.
But every year of warfare brought a change. On the King's side, the raiment grew more gorgeous amid misfortunes; on the Parliament's, it became sadder with every success. The Royalists took up feathers and oaths, in proportion as the Puritans laid them down; and as the tresses of the Cavaliers waved more luxuriantly, the hair of the Roundheads was more scrupulously shorn. And the same instinctive exaggeration was constantly extending into manners and morals also. Both sides became ostentatious; the one made the most of its dissoluteness, and the other of its decorum. The reproachful names applied derisively to the two parties became fixed distinctions. The word "Roundhead" was first used early in 1642, though whether it originated with Henrietta Maria or with David Hyde is disputed. And Charles, in his speech before the battle of Edgehill, in October of the same year, mentioned the name "Cavalier" as one bestowed "in a reproachful sense," and one "which our enemies have striven to make odious."
And all social as well as moral prejudices gradually identified themselves with this party division. As time passed on, all that was high-born in England gravitated more and more to the royal side, while the popular cause enlisted the Londoners, the yeomanry, and those country-gentlemen whom Mrs. Hutchinson styled the "worsted-stocking members." The Puritans gradually found themselves excluded from the manorial halls, and the Cavaliers (a more inconvenient privation) from the blacksmiths' shops. Languishing at first under aristocratic leadership, the cause of the Parliament first became strong when the Self-denying Ordinance abolished all that weakness. Thus the very sincerity of the civil conflict drew the lines deeper; had the battles been fought by mercenaries, like the contemporary Continental wars, there would have grown up a less hearty mutual antipathy, but a far more terrible demoralization. As it was, the character of the war was, on the whole, a humane one; few towns were sacked or destroyed, the harvests were bounteous and freely gathered, and the population increased during the whole period. But the best civil war is fearfully injurious. In this case, virtues and vices were found on both sides; and it was only the gradual preponderance which finally stamped on each party its own historic reputation. The Cavaliers confessed to "the vices of men,—love of wine and women"; but they charged upon their opponents "the vices of devils,—hypocrisy and spiritual pride." Accordingly, the two verdicts have been recorded in the most delicate of all registers,—language. For the Cavaliers added to the English vocabulary the word plunder, and the Puritans the word cant.
Yet it is certain that at the outset neither of these peculiarities was monopolized by either party. In abundant instances, the sins changed places,—Cavaliers canted, and Puritans plundered. That is, if by cant we understand the exaggerated use of Scripture language which originated with the reverend gentleman of that name, it was an offence in which both sides participated. Clarendon, reviewing the Presbyterian discourses, quoted text against text with infinite relish. Old Judge Jenkins, could he have persuaded the "House of Rimmon," as he called Parliament, to hang him, would have swung the Bible triumphantly to his neck by a ribbon, to show the unscriptural character of their doings. Charles himself, in one of his early addresses to his army, denounced the opposing party as "Brownists, Anabaptists, and Atheists," and in his address to the city of London pleaded in favor of his own "godly, learned, and painfull preachers." Every royal regiment had its chaplain, including in the service such men as Pearson and Jeremy Taylor, and they had prayers before battle, as regularly and seriously as their opponents. "After solemn prayers at the head of every division, I led my part away," wrote the virtuous Sir Bevill Grenvill to his wife, after the battle of Bradock. Rupert, in like manner, had prayers before every division at Marston Moor. To be sure, we cannot always vouch for the quality of these prayers, when the chaplain happened to be out of the way and the colonel was his substitute. "O Lord," petitioned stout Sir Jacob Astley, at Edgehill, "thou knowest how busy I must be this day; if I forget thee, do not thou forget me!"—after which, he rose up, crying, "March on, boys!"
And as the Puritans had not the monopoly of prayer, so the Cavaliers did not monopolize plunder. Of course, when civil war is once begun, such laxity is mere matter of self-defence. If the Royalists unhorsed the Roundheads, the latter must horse themselves again, as best they could. If Goring "uncattled" the neighborhood of London, Major Medhope must be ordered to "uncattle" the neighborhood of Oxford. Very possibly individual animals were identified with the right side or the wrong side, to be spared or confiscated in consequence;—as in modern Kansas, during a similar condition of things, one might hear men talk of a pro-slavery colt, or an anti-slavery cow. And the precedent being established, each party could use the smallest excesses of the other side to palliate the greatest of its own. No use for the King to hang two of Rupert's men for stealing, when their commander could urge in extenuation the plunder of the house of Lady Lucas, and the indignities offered by the Roundheads to the Countess of Rivers. Why spare the churches as sanctuaries for the enemy, when rumor accused that enemy (right or wrong) of hunting cats in those same churches with hounds, or baptizing dogs and pigs in ridicule of the consecrated altars? Setting aside these charges as questionable, we cannot so easily dispose of the facts which rest on actual Puritan testimony. If, even after the Self-denying Ordinance, the "Perfect Occurrences" repeatedly report soldiers of the Puritan army, as cashiered for drunkenness, rudeness to women, pilfering, and defrauding innkeepers, it is inevitable to infer that in earlier and less stringent times they did the same undetected or unpunished. When Mrs. Hutchinson describes a portion of the soldiers on her own side as "licentious, ungovernable wretches,"—when Sir Samuel Luke, in his letters, depicts the glee with which his men plunder the pockets of the slain,—when poor John Wolstenholme writes to head-quarters that his own compatriots have seized all his hay and horses, "so that his wife cannot serve God with the congregation but in frosty weather,"—when Vicars in "Jehovah Jireh" exults over the horrible maiming and butchery wrought by the troopers upon the officers' wives and female camp-followers at Naseby,—it is useless to attribute exaggeration to the other side. In civil war, even the humanest, there is seldom much opening for exaggeration,—the actual horrors being usually quite as vivid as any imaginations of the sufferers, especially when, as in this case, the spiritual instructors preach, on the one side, from "Curse ye Meroz," and, on the other side, from "Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood."
We mention these things, not because they are deliberately denied by anybody, but because they are apt to be overlooked by those who take their facts at secondhand. All this does not show that the Puritans had, even at the outset, worse men or a cause no better; it simply shows that war demoralizes, and that right-thinking men may easily, under its influence, slide into rather reprehensible practices. At a later period the evil worked its own cure, among the Puritans, and the army of Cromwell was a moral triumph almost incredible; but at the time of which we write, the distinction was but lightly drawn. It would be easy to go farther and show that among the leading Parliamentary statesmen there were gay and witty debauchees,—that Harry Marten deserved the epithet with which Cromwell saluted him,—that Pym succeeded to the regards of Stafford's bewitching mistress,—that Warwick was truly, as Clarendon describes him, a profuse and generous profligate, tolerated by the Puritans for the sake of his earldom and his bounty, at a time when bounty was convenient and peers scarce. But it is hardly worth while farther to demonstrate the simple and intelligible fact, that there were faults on both sides. Neither war nor any other social phenomenon can divide infallibly the sheep from the goats, or collect all the saints under one set of staff-officers and all the sinners under another.
But, on the other hand, the strength of both sides, at this early day, was in a class of serious and devoted men, who took up the sword so sadly, in view of civil strife, that victory seemed to them almost as terrible as defeat. In some, the scale of loyalty slightly inclined, and they held with the King; in others, the scale of liberty, and they served the Parliament; in both cases, with the same noble regrets at first, merging gradually into bitter alienation afterwards. "If there could be an expedient found to solve the punctilio of honor, I would not be hero an hour," wrote Lord Robert Spencer to his wife, from the camp of the Cavaliers. Sir Edmund Verney, the King's standard-bearer, disapproved of the royal cause, and adhered to it only because he "had eaten the King's bread." Lord Falkland, Charles's Secretary of State, "sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent sighs, would, with a shriek and sad accent, ingeminate the words, Peace! Peace!" and would prophesy for himself that death which soon came. And these words show close approximation to the positions of men honored among the Puritans, as when Sir William Waller wrote from his camp to his chivalrous opponent, Sir Ralph Hopton,—"The great God, who is the searcher of my heart, knows with what reluctance I go upon this service."
As time passed on, the hostility between the two parties exceeded all bounds of courteous intercourse. The social distinction was constantly widening, and so was the religious antagonism. Waller could be allowed to joke with Goring and sentimentalize with Hopton,—for Waller was a gentleman, though a rebel; but it was a different thing when the Puritan gentlemen were seen to be gradually superseded by Puritan clowns. Strafford had early complained of "your Prynnes, Pims, and Bens, with the rest of that generation of odd names and natures." But what were these to the later brood, whose plebeian quality Mr. Buckle has so laboriously explored,—Goffe the grocer and Whalley the tailor, Pride the drayman and Venner the cooper, culminating at last in Noll Cromwell the brewer? The formidable force of these upstarts only embittered the aversion. If odious when vanquished, what must they have been as victors? For if it be disagreeable to find a foeman unworthy of your steel, it is much more unpleasant when your steel turns out unworthy of the foeman; and if sad-colored Puritan raiment looked absurd upon the persons of fugitives, it must have been very particularly unbecoming when worn by conquerors.
And the growing division was constantly aggravated by very acid satire. The Court, it must be remembered, was more than half French in its general character and tone, and every Frenchman of that day habitually sneered at every Englishman as dull and inelegant. The dazzling wit that flashed for both sides in the French civil wars flashed for one only in the English; the Puritans had no comforts of that kind, save in some caustic repartee from Harry Marten, or some fearless sarcasm from Lucy Carlisle. But the Cavaliers softened labor and sweetened care with their little jokes. It was rather consoling to cover some ignominious retreat with a new epigram on Cromwell's red nose, that irresistible member which kindled in its day as much wit as Bardolph's,—to hail it as "Nose Immortal," a beacon, a glow-worm, a bird of prey,—to make it stand as a personification of the rebel cause, till even the stately Montrose asked newcomers from England, "How is Oliver's nose?" It was very entertaining to christen the Solemn League and Covenant "the constellation on the back of Aries," because most of the signers could only make their marks on the little bits of sheepskin circulated for that purpose. It was quite lively to rebaptize Rundway Down as Run-away-down, after a royal victory, and to remark how Hazlerig's regiment of "lobsters" turned to crabs, on that occasion, and crawled backwards. But all these pleasant follies became whips to scourge them, at last,—shifting suddenly into very grim earnest when the Royalists themselves took to running away, with truculent saints, in steeple-hats, behind them.
Oxford was the stronghold of the Cavaliers, in these times, as that of the Puritans was London. The Court itself (though here we are anticipating a little) was transferred to the academic city. Thither came Henrietta Maria, with what the pamphleteers called "her Rattle-headed Parliament of Ladies," the beautiful Duchess of Richmond, the merry Mrs. Kirke, and brave Kate D'Aubigny. In Merton College the Queen resided; at Oriel the Privy Council was held; at Christ Church the King and Rupert were quartered; and at All Souls Jeremy Taylor was writing his beautiful meditations, in the intervals of war. In the New College quadrangle, the students were drilled to arms "in the eye of Doctor Pink," while Mars and Venus kept undisturbed their ancient reign, although transferred to the sacred precincts of Magdalen. And amidst the passion and the pomp, the narrow streets would suddenly ring with the trumpet of some foam-covered scout, bringing tidings of perilous deeds outside; while some traitorous spy was being hanged, drawn, and quartered in some other part of the city, for betraying the secrets of the Court. And forth from the outskirts of Oxford rides Rupert on the day we are to describe, and we must still protract our pause a little longer to speak of him.