[1643 A.D.] and determined woman, who aspired to direct councils and to lead armies. On the 27th of May she writes to the king from York, “I shall stay to besiege Leeds at once, although I am dying to join you; but I am so enraged to go away without having beaten these rascals, that, if you will permit me, I will do that, and then will go to join you; and if I go away I am afraid that they would not be beaten." She had her favourites, especially Jermyn and Digby, whose advancement she was constantly urging. The scandalous chroniclers of the time did not hesitate in casting the most degrading suspicions upon the queen in connection with one of these. Jermyn was made a peer.

On the 11th of July the queen entered Stratford-on-Avon, at the head of four thousand horse and foot soldiers. She slept at the house in which Shakespeare lived and died - then in the possession of his daugher, Mrs. Hall. On the 13th she met Charles where his first battle had been fought, and from Keinton they proceeded to Oxford. The tidings of a victory on the 15th over the parliamentary forces at Roundway Down in Wiltshire greeted their arrival. A previous victory over Sir William Waller at Lansdown, in Somersetshire, filled the royalists with the most sanguine hopes. Such partial successes on the other side as the brave defence of Nottingham Castle by Colonel Hutchinson had no material influence upon the state of affairs.

In the summer of 1643 the power of the parliament is visibly in danger. On the 27th of July, Bristol, a city only exceeded by London in population and wealth, is surrendered to Rupert, after an assault, with terrible slaughter on both sides. A design of Sir John Hotham to surrender Hull to the king was detected. He and his son were committed to the Tower on a charge of betraying the cause of the parliament. London was in a state of unusual agitation. The lords came to resolutions, upon a proposal of peace, of a far more moderate character than had previously been determined on. There was a conference between the two houses, in which the upper house urged that "these unnatural dissensions" would destroy all the former blessings of peace and abundance. The commons, by a majority of nineteen, decided that the proposals of the lords should be considered.

The city was in an uproar. A petition from the common-council called for the rejection of the proposals. Multitudes surrounded the houses to enforce the same demand. The proposals were now rejected by a majority of seven. An attempt was then made to enforce the demand for peace by popular clamour. Bands of women, with men in women's clothes, beset the doors of the house of commons, crying out, "Give us up the traitors who are against peace. We'll tear them in pieces. Give us up that rascal Pym." The military forced them away; but they refused to disperse. They were at last fired upon, and two were killed.

Many peers now left parliament and joined the king at Oxford, amongst whom was Lord Holland. Those who remained, peers or commoners, saw that the greatest danger was in their own dissensions. The royalist army was growing stronger in every quarter. London was again in peril.

Had there been unanimity in the councils of the king at this period of dissensions in London amongst the people; with the two houses divided amonst themselves; men of influence deserting the parliamentary cause; no man yet at the head of the parliamentary forces who appeared capable of striking a great blow, it is probable that if he had marched upon the capital the war would have been at an end. There would have been peace and a military despotism. Charles sent Sir Philip Warwick to the earl of Newcastle to propose a plan of co-operation between the armies of the south and north. "But

[1643 A.D.]

k

I found him very averse to this," Warwick writes, "and perceived that he apprehended nothing more than to be joined to the king's army, or to serve under Prince Rupert; for he designed himself to be the man that should turn the scale, and to be a self-subsisting and distinct army, wherever he was." With this serious difficulty in concentrating his forces Charles determined upon besieging Gloucester. The garrison consisted of fifteen hundred men, under Edward Massey, the parliamentary governor. The inhabitants were under five thousand.

The people of Gloucester immediately set fire to all the houses outside the walls. From the 10th of August till the 6th of September these resolute people defended their city with a resolution and bravery unsurpassed in this warfare. All differ

ences having been reconciled in London, the earl of Essex took the command of a force destined for the relief of "the godly city." At the head of fourteen thousand men he set out from London on the 24th of August. On the 5th of September he had arrived by forced marches within five miles of Gloucester. The king sent a messenger to him with pacific proposals. The answer was returned in a spirit of sturdy heroism: "The parliament gave me no commission to treat, but to relieve Gloucester; I

will do it, or leave my body beneath its walls." The soldiers shouted, "No propositions." Gloucester was relieved. From the Prestbury hills Essex saw the flames of burning huts rising from the king's quarter. The royal army had moved away. On the 8th the parliamentary general entered the beleaguered city, bearing provisions to the famished people, and bestowing the due meed of honour upon their courage and constancy. On the 10th he was on his march back to London.

Of the army of fourteen thousand men which marched to the relief of Gloucester, four regiments were of the London militia. These regiments were mainly composed of artisans and apprentices. At Prestbury they had to fight their way through Rupert's squadrons and to try how pikemen could stand up against a charge of horse. In less than a fortnight their prowess was to be proved in a pitched battle field. Charles and his army were lying round Sudeley Castle to the north-east of Gloucester. Essex marched to the south. In Cirencester which he surprised he found valuable stores for his men. The king's army moved in the same direction. Essex had passed Farringdon and was rapidly advancing upon Newbury on his road to Reading

[1643 A.D.] when his scattered horse were attacked by Rupert and his cavaliers. There was a sharp conflict for several hours and Essex was compelled to halt at Hungerford.

When Essex came near to Newbury on the 19th of September, he found the royal army in possession of the town. The king had come there two hours before him. Essex was without shelter, without provisions. The road to London was barred against him. He "must make his way through or starve." On the morning of the 20th, the outposts of each force became engaged, and the battle was soon general. It was fought all day "with great fierceness and courage"; the cavaliers charging "with a kind of contempt of the enemy"; and the roundheads making the cavaliers understand that a year of discipline had taught them some of the best lessons of warfare. "The London trained bands and auxiliary regiments (of whose inexperience of danger, or any kind of service, beyond the easy practise of their postures in the Artillery Garden, men had till then too cheap an estimation), behaved themselves to wonder; and were, in truth, the preservation of that army that day," says Clarendonƒ; "for they stood as a bulwark and rampire to defend the rest; and, when their wings of horse were scattered and dispersed, kept their ground so steadily, that, though Prince Rupert himself led up the choice horse to charge them, and endured their storm of small shot, he could make no impression upon their stand of pikes, but was forced to wheel about." The men of London, taken from the loom and the anvil, from the shops of Ludgate or the wharfs of Billingsgate, stood like a wall, as such men have since stood in many a charge of foreign enemies. On the night of the battle of Newbury, each army remained in the position it had occupied before that day of carnage. The loss of royalists of rank was more than usually great. Three noblemen fell, for whom there was lamentation beyond the ranks of their party - Lord Carnarvon, Lord Sunderland, and Lord Falkland.

Falkland, especially, still lives in memory, as one of the noblest and purest the true English gentleman in heart and intellect. What is called his apostacy has been bitterly denounced, and not less intemperately justified, by historical partisans. Arnold," whose intellect was as clear as his feelings were ardent in the cause of just liberty, has thus written of Falkland: "A man who leaves the popular cause when it is triumphant, and joins the party opposed to it, without really changing his principles and becoming a renegade, is one of the noblest characters in history. He may not have the clearest judgment or the firmest wisdom; he may have been mistaken, but as far as he is concerned personally, we cannot but admire him. But such a man changes his party not to conquer but to die. He does not allow the caresses of his new friends to make him forget, that he is a sojourner with them and not a citizen. His old friends may have used him ill, they may be dealing unjustly and cruelly; still their faults, though they may have driven him into exile, cannot banish from his mind the consciousness that with them is his true home, that their cause is habitually just and habitually the weaker, although now bewildered and led astray by an unwonted gleam of success. He protests so strongly against their evil that he chooses to die by their hands rather than in their company; but die he must, for there is no place left on earth where his sympathies can breathe freely; he is obliged to leave the country of his affections, and life elsewhere is intolerable. This man is no renegade, no apostate, but the purest of martyrs: for what testimony to truth can be so pure as that which is given uncheered by any sympathy; given not against enemies amidst applauding friends; but against friends, amidst unpitying or half-rejoicing enemies. And such a martyr was Falkland!”

[1643 A.D.]

It was not Falkland's duty to be in this battle. He was urged to stay away. "No," he said, "I am weary of the times; I foresee much misery to my country, but I believe I shall be out of it before night." Clarendon/ tells us why his life had become a burthen to Falkland: "From the entrance into this unnatural war, his natural cheerfulness and vivacity grew clouded, and a kind of sadness and dejection of spirit stole upon him, which he had never been used to. When there was any overture or hope of peace, he would be more erect and vigorous, and exceedingly solicitous to press anything which he thought might promote it; and, sitting among his friends, often, after a deep silence and frequent sighs, would, with a shrill and sad accent, ingeminate the word Peace, Peace; and would passionately profess, 'that the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would shortly break his heart.""

The relief of Gloucester and the battle of Newbury were fatal to many of the sanguine hopes of a speedy victory over disunited rebels which the royalists up to this time had entertained. They had seen how the despised trained bands had been disciplined into good soldiers. They had seen how such men as held the "godly city of Gloucester" for a whole (month against the best troops of the king would die rather than surrender. There was a fatal concurrence of events to render it certain that although the queen was bestowing places upon her favourite courtiers the real power of the monarchy was fading away. The royalists called the battle of Newbury "a very great victory." Before this issue had been tried the parliament had appointed commissioners to negotiate a treaty of alliance with the Scots; for the parliament felt weak and dispirited.1

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT WITH SCOTLAND

Sir Henry Vane, the chief negotiator, had acceded to the imperative demand of the Scots parliament that the religious system of Scotland should be adopted as that of England. Vane, who was an Independent, and a supporter of toleration, contrived, after great debate, to satisfy the zealous Presbyterians, who proposed "a covenant." Vane stipulated for a "solemn league and covenant." This obligation was to be taken by both nations. The Scots proposed a clause "for the preservation of the king's person." Vane added, "in preservation of the laws of the land and liberty of the subject." To the clause for "reducing the doctrine and discipline of both churches to the pattern of the best reformed," Vane added "according to the word of God." This solemn league and covenant was to bind those who subscribed to it, "to endeavour, without respect of persons, the extirpation of popery and prelacy."

On the 25th of September, all the members of parliament, assembled in St. Margaret's church, swore to maintain "the solemn league and covenant." The oath was signed by two hundred and twenty-eight members of the commons. It was adopted in the city with enthusiastic demonstrations of religious fervour. On the next day Essex was received in London with a warmth that

[The parliament," says May, the historian, "was now in a low ebb; they had no forces at all to keep the field, their main armies being quite ruined, and no hope in appearance left, bat to preserve awhile those forts and towns which they then possessed; nor could they long hope to preserve them, unless the fortune of the field should change."]

[• As Gardiner notes, Vane, who was eager for religious liberty, slipped in these words which the Scots could not reject, but which afterward enabled every Englishman to deny any distasteful part of the creed as not "according to the word of God." Gardiner emphasises the distinction between this Solemn League and Covenant and the covenant solely of the Scots in 1638.]

H. W. - VOL. XX. O

[1643 A.D.] may have consoled him for some previous complaints of his want of energy, and for annoyances which he had received in his command. The lords and commons gave him an assurance of their confidence: and he remained the general-in-chief, without the divided powers which had created a jealousy between himself and Sir William Waller.

GROWING IMPORTANCE OF CROMWELL

Whilst the members of parliament in London are lifting up their hands in reverent appeal to Heaven as they accept the covenant, and the people are shouting around the earl of Essex as the banners are displayed which he won in the Newbury fight, there is one man, fast growing into one of the most notable of men, who is raising troops, marching hither and thither, fighting whenever blows are needful-work which demands more instant attention than the ceremony of St. Margaret's church. In the early stages of his wonderful history nothing is more interesting than to trace the steps of this man, now Colonel Cromwell. Whatever he says or does has some marks of the vigour of his character-so original, so essentially different in its manifestations from the customary displays of public men. In Cromwell's speeches and writings we must not look for the smooth and equable movement of common diplomatists and orators. His grand earnestness makes the artifices of rhetoric appear petty by comparison. The fluency of the scholarly writer is weak by the side of his homely phrases. He is urging some great friends in Suffolk to raise recruits, and choose captains of horse: "A few honest men are better than numbers. * * * *I had rather have a plain russetcoated captain, who knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call 'a gentleman,' and is nothing else. I honour a gentleman that is so indeed."

In this spirit Cromwell is forming his "ironsides," and at this period is heading them in the earliest of those famous charges which determined so many battles. On the 10th of October, in the skirmish of Winceby, near Horncastle, his career is well nigh ended. His horse was killed at the first charge; and as he rose, he was knocked down by Sir Ingram Hopton, who led the royalists. He seized another horse, and the enemy was routed. Denzil Holles,p in his memoirs, more than insinuates doubts of Cromwell's personal courage. He calls him "as errand a coward, as he is notoriously perfidious, ambitious, and hypocritical"; and states, of his own knowledge, that he basely "kept out of the field at Keinton battle, where he, with his troop of horse, came not in, impudently and ridiculously affirming, the day after, that he had been all that day seeking the army and place of fight, though his quarters were but at a village near hand." We must receive this testimony for what it is worth, as coming from one who had become a bitter enemy of Cromwell, as the leader of the Independents. For the ambition of such a man as Cromwell, whether as a soldier or a politician, there was now ample room. His religious party was fast rising into importance. The secretaries of all denominations eagerly gathered under the standard of a leader who insisted that his men should be religious, but he left the particular form of religion to their own choice. The religious principle of the Civil War thus became more and more prominent, when enthusiasts of every denomination regarded it as a struggle for the right of private judgment in matters of faith, and despised every authority but that of the Bible.

Such a leader as Cromwell had tougher materials to conquer with than