Chapter XXIV: Charles I. And The Civil War (1)

War was resolved upon by the Parliamentary leaders as well as by the king. Preparations were being made with ardor on both sides; but all official relations were not yet broken off between the monarch and his subjects. The Houses, however, now negotiated with Charles I. on the footing of one power with another. They sent to York, as their permanent ambassadors at the court of the king, a committee of rich and consequential men well known in the northern provinces, commissioned to render an account to Parliament of all that took place under their eyes. The situation was difficult and unpleasant. The commissioners maintained their ground with firmness and resolution.

Even at York, in the presence of the king, the resistance of the country made itself felt. Charles had been desirous of raising a guard, and had applied to the gentry of the neighborhood; they had assembled in great numbers, but when it was desired to inscribe their names, fifty refused to enroll themselves. At their head was Sir Thomas Fairfax, young as yet, but already a resolute and sincere patriot. The freeholders and farmers claimed the right of discussing the affairs of the country with the gentlemen. The king convoked a great assemblage upon Heyworth Moor; it was numerous and animated, more than forty thousand men had hastened thither, but soon intelligence reached the king that a petition was being circulated in the ranks, imploring his Majesty to abandon all thoughts of war and come to an agreement with Parliament. Charles would not receive the petition. {93} He hastened to say a few hesitating words, and was withdrawing precipitately, when young Fairfax, suddenly kneeling before his horse, deposited the document upon the pommel of his saddle. The king urged his steed violently forward, and ran against the bold petitioner without compelling him to give way.

The royal partisans who arrived from London having officially severed their connection with Parliament, were struck painfully with the contrast which they observed between the bold efficiency of the Parliamentary government and the ostentatious feebleness which reigned around the king. Charles was poor. He had no money and had appealed to the zeal of his servants; but the resources which reached him were inconsiderable, and the sums which the queen enabled him to keep out of the sale of the crown jewels scarcely sufficed for daily wants. Parliament had also appealed to the popular patriotism. A loan was announced, and the sums received in ten days, the plate, the jewels offered to the public service, so greatly exceeded the expectations, that the poor women who brought their wedding-rings or the gold pins out of their hair, often waited for a long time until time was found for receiving them. Squadrons of cavalry began to be formed.

The majority of Parliament, delivered from the royalist members who had joined the king at York, voted nineteen propositions of reconciliation, which were sent to Charles as a supreme ultimatum. It was the complete subjugation of the crown to Parliament. {94} Even as regarded the education and marriage of the children of the king, nothing was henceforth to be decided without the formal approbation of the Houses. Upon reading these propositions, the king's countenance flushed deeply. "Should I grant these demands," he said, "I may be waited on bareheaded, I may have my hand kissed; the title of Majesty may be continued to me, and the king's authority signified by both Houses may still be the style of your commands; I may have swords and maces carried before me, and please myself with the sight of a crown and sceptre (though even these twigs would not long flourish when the block upon which they grew was dead), but as to true and real power, I should remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king." And he broke off the negotiation.

Parliament had only waited for this. Civil war was put to the vote and immediately decided on. The Houses seized upon all the public revenues for their benefit; the counties had orders to hold themselves ready at the first signal. The Earl of Essex was nominated commander of the army of Parliament, and the most illustrious men of the popular party, Lord Kimbolton, Lord Brook, Hampden, Hollis, Cromwell, received command of regiments.

All was ready in London, as in York. The assemblages of the partisans of the king or Parliament, the tours of the king in the counties of the north to encourage his friends or repress their violence, the gentlemen raising bodies of troops on their estates, the soldiery forming in the name of Parliament, the roads covered with armed travelers, everything bore the impress of hostilities; but both parties hesitated to declare war, ready as they were to risk all to maintain their rights, both trembled before the responsibility of the future. {95} The king at length took his resolve. On the 23d of August, he caused the royal standard to be set up at Nottingham. At six o'clock in the evening a small body of eight hundred horse surrounded Charles who caused his proclamation to be read by a herald. The standard bore the device: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." It was fixed at the summit of a tower. On the morrow the wind had blown it down. When it was desired to plant it in the ground in the level country, there was nothing to be found but rock, and it was necessary to scoop out a hole with daggers, and then to support by hand the tottering standard. All present were smitten with a deep depression. "What dark forebodings!" it was said.

The king awaited the result of his appeal, but the people did not rise. The army of Parliament was being formed at Northampton. "If they wish to attempt a bold stroke," said Sir Jacob Astley, major-general of the royal troops, "I do not answer for it but the king might be carried off from his bed." Charles was urged to open negotiations again. He yielded with reluctance, and sent to London four deputies who returned without success. A few days later, the king refused in his turn to receive a petition with which the commissioners of Parliament accompanying the Earl of Essex, were entrusted. It implored Charles to return to London, and, upon his refusal, it announced the intention to follow him everywhere, and "by battle or other means, to take away his Majesty, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, his two sons, from their perfidious councillors, and to bring them back to Parliament."

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The king was then at Shrewsbury, more confident and better served. He had received numerous reinforcements, and, to equip them, the arms of the soldiery of several counties had been taken by force; the convoys intended for Ireland had been stopped. The Catholics sent money; some of them had even come down from London. The king had about twelve thousand men. At the head of his cavalry, his nephew, Prince Rupert, son of his sister, had already made himself dreaded by his daring and detested for his habit of pillage and his cruelty. The Earl of Essex appeared disposed to adhere to the terms of the petition of Parliament and content himself with following the king everywhere. Twenty thousand men marched under the orange banners of his house; but he had been for three weeks at Worcester without doing anything when Charles, emboldened by this inaction, took the course of marching upon London, in order to end the war at one stroke. Essex thereupon went back to defend Parliament.

The agitation was great in London, and fear soon gave way to anger. Parliament took defensive measures against the king, and redoubled its severity towards the malevolents. All the population proceeded to the hurriedly constructed fortifications. Barricades were raised in the streets. Night and day the assault was expected, when, on the 24th of October, in the morning, the rumor of a great battle was suddenly spread throughout the city. Contradictory and confused rumors were abroad, some announcing the complete victory of the king, others that of Essex. Parliament caused the shops to be closed, armed the soldiery, and required of each of its members a declaration of firm adhesion to the parliamentary general as well as to his cause. Upon the morrow only, Lord Wharton and Mr. Strode arrived in London with the official news of the battle which had taken place at Edgehill, in Warwickshire.

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It was the Earl of Essex who commenced the struggle. The king was about to give the same order; he had been urged to try the fortune of war. Warwickshire was so hostile to his cause that the farriers fled, to avoid shoeing the horses of his troops. The cavalry of Parliament had been broken through by the onslaught of Prince Rupert, who had thereupon pursued the fugitives. Being arrested, however, by the regiment of Hampden, who arrived late with the artillery, the prince, compelled to retreat, had found the royal infantry destroyed, the Earl of Lindsay, generalissimo, mortally wounded and a prisoner, and the royal standard in the hands of the Parliamentarians. Charles, aided by his nephew, had desired to attempt a fresh charge; but the soldiers and horses were weary, and it was necessary to abandon the idea. Both armies encamped upon the battle-field. In the morning it was asked in the two camps whether the action would be recommenced. The king soon assured himself that the step was impossible. A great number of volunteers had already dispersed, a third of the infantry failed him. On the side of the Parliamentarians, the experienced soldiers, formed in the wars on the Continent, contested the opinion of Hampden and Hollis, who desired to give battle again. The Earl of Essex fell back upon Warwick, and the king removed his headquarters to Oxford, of all the great towns of the kingdom the most devoted to his cause. The two armies both claimed the victory and celebrated thanksgivings. {98} London and Parliament found themselves delivered from the attack which they dreaded, but the king had cause to congratulate himself upon the state of his affairs. Many towns of which the Parliamentarians thought themselves assured had opened their gates to the royal troops. The king therefore came and established himself at Reading. Prince Rupert carried on, even in the environs of London, his pillaging incursions. The Houses became uneasy. Essex was told to draw nearer. When he arrived the king was at Colebrook, fifteen miles from London; there were despatched to him five deputies, who were well received. Upon their advice, Sir Peter Killigrew set out to negotiate for an armistice. But, while negotiating, the king continued to advance. He fell unexpectedly upon the quarters of Hollis, situated at Brentford, seven miles from the capital. Hollis valiantly resisted; the regiments of Hampden and Lord Brook, encamped in the environs, had time to arrive, and alone bore, for some hours, the whole brunt of the attack of the royal army. At the first sound of the cannon, Essex, who sat in the House, mounted his horse, gathered together all that he was able, and set out to succor his troops. The action had ceased when he arrived. The king occupied Brentford; but the fight had been animated, and he did not appear to be in haste to press forward.

London was equally exasperated and alarmed. It was at the moment when he had shown himself disposed to negotiate that the king had attempted a surprise. He wished (it was said) to take the city by storm and to deliver it up to pillage. Parliament took advantage of the terror and anger of the people. {99} "Enroll," it was said to the apprentices, "and the time of your service shall reckon in your apprenticeship." The city supplied four thousand men taken from its trainbands and commanded by Skippon. "Come, my children, let us pray with all our heart, and fight with all our heart," he said, placing himself at the head of his troops; "remember that this is the cause of God, and He will bless you." Two days after the fight at Brentford, Essex reviewed twenty-four thousand men at Turnham Green, about a mile from the advanced posts of the royal forces.

The two armies thus confronted each other, but Essex still hesitated to assume the offensive. The Parliamentary officers urged him to proceed to the front. "Never," they said, "will the people be found so firmly assured and imperiously compelled to conquer." The general did not count much upon the people; he preferred to have time to make soldiers of them; he established himself everywhere upon the defensive, and the king retired to Oxford, where he took up his winter quarters.

Essex was not alone in his feelings of repugnance and hesitation. The popular party no longer marched forward with one same mind and one firm will as when it was a question of political reforms. Peace had numerous partisans who spoke more loudly every day. Strife was in the midst of Parliament, and this constant effort over itself deprived it of the leisure and energy necessary for actively urging forward the war. The greater part of the winter was passed without a single pitched battle.

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The war continued meanwhile to be irregular and spontaneous. Great noblemen or plain gentlemen, confederations of towns and counties raised at their expense small corps, asked for a commission from king or Parliament, and warred against each other with ardor, but without violence and without cruelty, as men of a common origin, often of the same family, who did not wish to break off all amicable relations forever. Blood flowed and the country already suffered, but the bitterness of the antagonistic passions had not yet taken possession of the combatants. In the eastern, central, and southeastern counties, the most thickly peopled and the richest, the Parliamentarians were in the ascendant. The preponderance pertained to the king in the north, in the west, and in the south-west. London was surrounded by counties devoted to Parliament, which formed, as it were, a formidable girdle for it. At Oxford, the king found himself placed in an advanced post.

In the month of February (1643) the queen arrived, animated and confident. She had succeeded in interesting in the king's favor the States of Holland. The Stadtholder, her son-in-law, had helped her with all his resources. She brought four ships loaded with supplies and troops. Admiral Batten did not contrive in time to intercept the convoy which landed at Burlington. The town was immediately cannonaded. The queen saw the balls fall even in her apartment. She fled into the country and sheltered herself under a bank. Lord Newcastle went to seek her with a body of troops, to conduct her to York. She installed herself there, and a mass of Catholics soon hastened to enroll themselves under her flag. Henrietta-Maria made no haste to rejoin her husband; she liked to reign alone and to maintain with her caressing ardor the zeal of her partisans. Hamilton and Montrose came from Scotland to confer with her upon the means of attaching that kingdom to the cause of the king. {101} Hamilton wished to win over Parliament. Montrose was desirous of making use of a corps of Irishmen under the orders of the Earl of Antrim, to subjugate and massacre the Presbyterian chiefs, rouse the highlanders, and take possession of the whole of Scotland. Intrigues with the Parliamentary commanders were carried on as much as conferences with the Royalists. Sir Hugh Cholmondeley promised to surrender Scarborough. Sir John Hotham appeared disposed to open the gates of Hull to the queen. Parliament began to grow uneasy.

The friends of peace took advantage of this moment to propose fresh negotiations. "It has been said in this House," said Sir Benjamin Rudyard, "that we were bound in conscience to finish the shedding of innocent blood; but who shall answer for all the innocent blood which is about to flow if we do not march to peace by the means of a prompt treaty?" His motion, which involved nothing less than the disbandment of the two armies as a preliminary of the negotiations, was rejected; but it was agreed to send to Oxford five commissioners entrusted to discuss, for twenty days at first, a suspension of arms, then a treaty. The committee, at the head of which was the Earl of Northumberland, set out from London on the 20th of March.

The king received the commissioners well, and their relations with the court were polite and courteous. The Royalists were magnificently treated at the residence of the Earl of Northumberland, who had caused his household to follow him; but when the negotiations were begun ill-feeling reappeared in full force. Neither the king nor Parliament had abated any of the conditions resolutely rejected before the war. {102} One evening the emissaries of Parliament believed they had gained something; on the morrow morning, the written reply of Charles did not resemble his words of the previous day; his councillors and the emissaries of the queen had induced him to alter his resolve. Secret and personal intrigues did not succeed better than official negotiations. The king had promised his wife never to make peace without her approbation, and she angrily wrote to him to dissuade him from it. These manœuvres corresponded with the secret wishes of the king, who did not desire peace. He ended by offering to the negotiators to return to the Houses, if the latter were willing to transport the seat of Parliament at least twenty miles from London. Upon this message the Houses suddenly recalled their commissioners, and, by an order so pressing that they deemed themselves compelled to set out on the same day (April 15th), although it was late, and their travelling coaches were not ready.

On the same day the Earl of Essex took the field again. Hampden would have preferred that a hasty march should be made to Oxford, there to besiege the king. The earl refused this, even when he had taken Reading, an indispensable town for the safety of Parliament. Complaints were uttered concerning his delay and hesitation. The most violent among the leaders of the Commons spoke even of appointing a successor. Hampden, Fairfax, Lord Manchester, Sir William Waller, had obtained successes and rendered great services. Colonel Cromwell, already famous for his bold strokes, as fortunate as they were skillful, had done more still. {103} He was lamenting one day with Hampden the inferiority of the Parliamentary cavalry, constantly defeated in the little engagements which had taken place with the cavaliers. "What would you?" said Cromwell; "your troops are most of them old, decayed serving-men and tapsters. Do you think that the spirits of such base and mean fellows will be ever able to encounter gentlemen that have honor and courage and resolution in them? I will raise men who have the fear of God before them, and I warrant you they will not be beaten." The levies of volunteers which he had formed, fanatical, proud, and severe of manner, engaged in the war for conscience sake, and under the orders of Cromwell from confidence in him. They already composed, at the opening of the campaign of 1643, a body of a thousand men, the germ and nucleus of the famous "Ironsides."

The bitter speeches against Essex came to no result. Complaints were made, but there was a disinclination to separate from him. The ill-will of the leaders, however, was manifested by the destitution in which the army was left, through the insufficiency of the resources and the irregularity of its pay. A royalist plot, upon the point of bursting forth in the city, was discovered: two of the conspirators only, Challoner and Tompkins, rich citizens of London, suffered the extreme penalty. Edmund Waller, a member of the House of Commons and already a famous poet, repurchased his life with cowardly revelations. Many important men were compromised, and while Parliament perceived that conspiracy was going on at its doors against its safety, successive disasters overtook its arms and placed its cause in peril.

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A great loss--that of Hampden--was the signal for these reverses. A trifling encounter of cavalry had taken place on the 18th of June, in the plain of Chalgrave, a few leagues from Oxford. Prince Rupert defeated the Parliamentarians. Hampden was there. "I saw him," said a prisoner, "go away, contrary to his custom, from the field of battle before the end of the action. His head was bent low, his hands rested upon the neck of his horse; without doubt he is wounded." The people of Oxford were agitated, almost fearing to rejoice. The king sent one of his physicians, a country neighbor of Hampden, to know whether he did not want assistance. A thought of conciliation towards this powerful adversary had crossed the mind of Charles. Doctor Giles found Hampden dying: a bullet had shattered his shoulder. He was told, however, who had sent to enquire after him, and with what intention. A violent agitation seized the wounded man. He wished to speak, but death had already frozen his tongue; he expired a few instants afterwards. When he was no longer to be feared, the people rejoiced in Oxford; while in London, and in nearly all the kingdom, the grief was as violent as it was profound.

"Never had man inspired so much confidence in a people. Whoever belonged to the national party, no matter in what degree or for what motives, counted upon Hampden for the success of his wishes. The more moderate believed in his wisdom, the more passionate in his patriotic devotion, the more honest in his uprightness, the more intriguing in his skill. Prudent and reserved, while ready to brave all perils, he who had never yet been wanting suddenly disappointed all hopes. A marvellous good fortune, which forever placed his name in the high position assigned to it by the expectation of his contemporaries, and perhaps saved his virtue as well as his glory, from the rocks whereon revolutions impel and shatter their noblest favorites!"

[Image] Death of Hampden.

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The people wept; they soon began to tremble. Everywhere the Parliamentary generals were beaten by the royalist chiefs. The enemies of Essex, by allowing his army to suffer, had reckoned upon the successes of his rivals. Fairfax had been beaten on the 30th of June at Atherton Moor. Sir John Hotham was upon the point of surrendering Hull to the queen. Lord Willoughby could no longer defend Lincolnshire against Lord Newcastle. The confederation of the eastern states, the great bulwark of Parliament, seemed about to be broken up. In Cornwall, where the command was in the hands of the most faithful and best servants of the king, the Marquis of Hertford, Sir Bevil Grenville, Sir Ralph Hopton, the peasants hereditarily attached to their lords had followed them to the war, as in France the Vendéans were to follow the nobles a hundred and fifty years later. Like them they seized upon the batteries, assaulting them with their staves. Sir William Waller there lost two battles in one week. Everywhere the cities opened their gates to the king. Bristol, the second stronghold in the kingdom, surrendered at the first attack. The queen had rejoined the king, bringing three thousand men and some cannon, upon that same plain of Keynton, where, in the preceding year, the two parties had for the first time come to blows. Charles and his wife returned to Oxford in triumph, and Sir William Waller came back to London without troops.

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Amidst so many disasters, Essex had not stirred, imputing his inaction to those very persons who reproached him with it. He caused the Upper House to be advised to sue for peace from the king. "If this proceeding does not bring about a treaty," he said, in conclusion, "it will be necessary, I think, to beg his Majesty to go away from this scene of slaughter, and then, in one day, the two armies must settle the dispute." A few days earlier the overtures of Essex might, perhaps, have been well received; but the king had recently declared officially that the individuals still assembled at Westminster, after the retirement of so many members, no longer formed two real Houses, that they had lost all legal existence, and no longer deserved the name of Parliament. He forbade all his subjects to obey this set of traitors and sedition-mongers. Parliament, thus attacked, voted the formation of a committee entrusted to ask assistance of the Scots, and the House of Lords declared that it would not address any proposal for peace to the king until he should have revoked his proclamation against the legality of Parliament.

It was not merely votes and declarations that were relied upon. The army of Essex received reinforcements and supplies; the formation of a new army began in earnest in the eastern counties; it was to be placed under the command of Lord Manchester, with Cromwell as lieutenant-general. In Hull, Lord Fairfax succeeded Sir John Hotham, arrested by order of the Commons before he had been able to accomplish his treason. Religious services increased in London. The wives and mothers of the combatants filled the churches; every morning, at beat of drum, a crowd of citizens, men and women, rich and poor, issued forth in a mass to work at the fortifications.

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The effort was great and general, but it was not more than necessity demanded; for the successes of the king continued, and the desire for peace began to spring up again in the minds of the majority of the Lords, with the gleam of hope revealed by a fresh proclamation of the king, more skillful and more agreeable than the preceding one. On the 5th of August the Upper House transmitted to the Commons pacific proposals which they had voted on the previous day, declaring in a sufficiently haughty tone that it was time to put an end to the calamities of the country. The leaders of the Commons grew alarmed. Peace, thus demanded, was a defeat. They had not been able to prevent the House from taking into consideration the proposals of the Lords. They called the people to their assistance; a riotous assemblage demanded with loud cries the continuation of the hostilities. The vote was doubtful in the Commons; a first scrutiny gave the majority to the partisans of peace. The party of war demanded a fresh examination; they carried this proposal at length, but with a majority of seven votes only. On the morrow, a crowd of women who besieged the gates of Westminster, demanding peace, could only be dispersed by a charge of cavalry; two corpses remained upon the ground.

The triumph of the popular leaders was complete, but it was stained with those frauds and acts of violence with which they had but recently so bitterly reproached the king. Six members of the Upper House quitted London, to repair to the court of Charles. Northumberland retired to his castle. The Commons were soon about to find themselves alone; they were astonished and uneasy, for the most impetuous sectaries and the most violent demagogues began to give themselves free play. {108} "If the king will not lend himself to every demand," wrote a pamphleteer, "he must be extirpated, he and his race, and the crown must be entrusted to some one else." Henry Martyn supported the pamphlet, attacked before the House. "Without doubt," he said, "the ruin of a single family is better than that of many." "I demand," exclaimed Sir Nevil Poole, "that Mr. Martyn be summoned to say of what family he speaks." "Of the king and his children," replied Martyn, without hesitating. The most violent spirits in the House had not yet gone to the length of proclaiming their hopes aloud. Martyn was suffered to be placed in the Tower without resistance, and was excluded from Parliament.

The danger, however, became too pressing to admit of division among the party. The king laid siege to Gloucester, the only stronghold which still arrested him in his march upon London, or impeded the free communication of the royal armies. Common sense gained the ascendant over party hatreds. The moderate understood that before negotiating it was necessary to conquer; the fanatics recognized the truth, that to gain a victory it was for them to serve, for their rivals to command. Essex and his friends regained everywhere the authority of which they had but recently been deprived, and the more impassioned of their adversaries omitted nothing in assuring them of the confidence of Parliament and the country. The week had scarcely passed when the earl set out at the head of fourteen thousand men, to proceed by forced marches to the relief of Gloucester, which city the king had been closely blockading for a fortnight.

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Charles had not found even in his most illustrious servants the intelligence and ready disinterestedness which inspired the leaders of the popular party. Lord Newcastle, victorious in Yorkshire, refused to rejoin the king under the walls of London. "As long as Hull shall not be taken," he said, "I cannot leave this part of the country." Hull was in the hands of Fairfax, and the king could not or dared not undertake to attack London unaided. He thought he had secret understandings with the town of Gloucester, and resolved to lay siege to it. A garrison of fifteen hundred men alone defended the town; but the inhabitants were devoted to Parliament, and replied to the order to surrender, "We hold this town for the service of his Majesty and his posterity. We consider ourselves obliged to obey the orders of his Majesty, as they are transmitted to us by the two Houses of Parliament; consequently with the help of God, we will guard the said town with all our might." For twenty-six days they had kept their word, when the king learnt that the Earl of Essex was approaching.

Every means, both warlike and peaceful, was tried to arrest him. Prince Rupert hastened to place himself before him with his cavalry; the king made proposals for peace to him. Essex did not fight, still pressing on his march, and he replied to Charles, "Parliament has not commissioned me to negotiate, but to deliver Gloucester. I will do it, or I will leave my body under the walls." As he deployed his army on the morrow, the 5th of September, upon the hills of Prestbury, two leagues from the besieged town, the sight of the quarters of the king in flames informed him that he had accomplished his task without striking a blow. Charles had raised the siege of Gloucester.

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It was not to avoid a combat that the cavaliers had abandoned an investment of which they were weary. Gloucester being revictualled, the Earl of Essex turned back towards London; but on arriving before Newbury, on the 19th of September, he perceived that the enemy had preceded him, and that a battle was inevitable. The action began at daybreak. Valiant was the fighting upon both sides; "the Royalists therein felt the hope of redeeming a reverse which had suspended the course of their triumphs; the Parliamentarians, the desire not to lose, when so near the goal, the fruit of a triumph which had put an end to so many reverses." The soldiery of London manifested the most brilliant courage. At nightfall, both parties maintained their positions. Essex, however, had gained ground, and was preparing to resume the action at daybreak; but the enemy withdrew during the night, and the road was free. On the 22d Essex and his army arrived at Reading, henceforth sheltered from all danger.

The royal army had suffered losses which cast down the courage of the chiefs and the soldiers. More than twenty officers of distinction had fallen; among others, and first of all, Lord Falkland, the honor of the royalist party. "Still a patriot, although proscribed in London, still respected by the people, although a royal counsellor at Oxford, nothing made it incumbent on him to seek the field of battle, but he sought danger with a painful ardor. Profoundly saddened by the evils which he contemplated and those which he foresaw, ill at ease amidst a party whose successes and reverses he almost equally dreaded, his temper had become embittered, he had grown taciturn and gloomy. 'Peace! peace!' he often exclaimed amidst the conversations of his friends; then he relapsed into his despondency. {111} On the morning of the combat he had attired himself carefully, according to his former custom, for some time abandoned, and, as he was urged to remain at his residence, 'No,' he said, 'too long has all this been breaking my heart; I hope that I shall be out of it before it is night,' and he went and joined the regiment of Lord Byron as a volunteer. He fell at the beginning of the action, being dead before his fall was noticed. His friends, Hyde especially, preserved an inconsolable remembrance of him. The courtiers learnt, without any great emotion, the death of a man who had been a stranger to them. Charles manifested decent regrets, and felt himself more at ease in council."

Joy reigned supreme in London. While Essex was re-entering the city with his triumphant troops, it became known that Vane had concluded with the Scots, under the name of "a solemn league" or "covenant," a close alliance, which was sworn to both in Edinburgh and in London. The Presbyterian leaders and people were at the summit of their wishes. Their general had conquered, and their natural allies, the Scots, were coming to their aid. They took advantage of this situation of affairs to exert their religious tyranny; the assemblage of theologians received orders to prepare a scheme of ecclesiastical government, and committees were formed to examine, in each county, the doctrine and conduct of the clericals. Those who had escaped the persecutions of Laud against the nonconformists, now succumbed to the Presbyterian inquisitions. Some few even, who had resumed possession of their livings since the fall of the episcopacy, found themselves again prosecuted. {112} More than two thousand clergymen were expelled from their parishes, and the Anabaptists, the Brownists, and the Independents, were thrown into prisons, where their tyrants had but recently groaned with them. Archbishop Laud, forgotten for three years past in his imprisonment, was summoned to the bar of the Upper House, to reply to the accusation of the Commons, the triumphant Presbyterians bringing the weight of their vengeance and their fears to bear upon adversaries of all parties.

They hastened, for the ground trembled beneath their feet. It was too much to cope, on the one hand, with the Royalists, and on the other with the religious or political Independents, who every day became more numerous and more bold. In religious matters, the Presbyterians admitted neither discussion nor liberty. They looked upon their doctrinal and ecclesiastical system as the only law and the only government permitted and revealed by the word of God. In politics they were moderate. They liked the monarchy while fighting against the king; they respected the prerogative while laboring to subjugate the crown; and they obeyed old customs as much as new requirements, without knowing precisely whether they were proceeding by means of the reforms which they had prosecuted for three years with so much ardor. The leaders themselves came from different sides, and were not all animated by the same desires. Hesitation began to discover itself among them: Rudyard no longer appeared in Parliament, except at rare intervals. St. John and Pym treated the Independents gently; the lords quitted Westminster by degrees and withdrew to their estates, when they did not proceed to rejoin the king. On the morrow of the battle of Newbury, ten lords only sat in the Upper House; they were, for the Presbyterians, an incumbrance rather than a support; the popular movement became every day more estranged from the high aristocracy, separated from the Presbyterians by the religious fanaticism of the latter. Revolution succeeded reform.

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The new party had grown in the shadow of the Presbyterian power; but from the first it had set up a very different flag. Liberty was the basis of the structure that liberty yet so misunderstood and so often dishonored by the very persons who demanded it. "Whatever may have been the boldness of their ventures, neither the politicians nor the devotees of the new party were a prey to vague desires, to unlimited pretensions. No precise design regulated their course, no historical or legal act comprised the limits of their belief. It was this very belief which they wished, at all costs, to set forth. Proud of its elevation, of its holiness, of its daring, they awarded to it the right of judging all, of ruling all; and taking it solely for their guide, the philosophers sought with indefatigable ardor, the truth; the enthusiasts, the Lord; the libertines, success. All could find therein full satisfaction for their schemes and hopes. The double policy of the Presbyterians did not hinder the progress of those free spirits who claimed to shake off all impediments and remake the world in their own fashion. Hostility increased every day between the new party of the Independents, impelled by the breeze of revolution as well as by popular favor, and the old Presbyterian party, triumphant and everywhere in power, but hesitating and uneasy in the very midst of its victories."

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At Oxford, divisions among the enemy were not unknown, and men of ability would have been ready to profit by them: but in vain were secret negotiations carried on sometimes with the Presbyterians, sometimes with the Independents; the plots were neither active nor efficacious, and they displeased the king even while he tolerated them. He had less repugnance in negotiating with other enemies, odious to England and his people. He was in treaty with the Irish rebels, with the ferocious Papists who had put Ireland to fire and sword, now organized by the great council which had been formed at Kilkenny. When Charles heard of the negotiations of the Scotch with Parliament, and when he saw that a fresh kingdom was about to slip from his grasp, he hastened to come to an end with the Irish. The Protestant army, commanded by the Earl of Ormond, which had always remained faithful to the royal cause, was disbanded; its regiments crossed the sea and joined the army of the king. A truce of one year was concluded with the rebels; Ireland was abandoned to the Papists. It was a terrible blow struck in England to the traditional respect which many people still preserved towards the king. His duplicity, his tedious falsehoods, the haughty tone of his protests, his decided tendency towards Roman Catholicism, all this recurred to the recollection of the people, and his name, hitherto treated with respect amidst the most bitter strife of the contending parties, was no longer spared from insult.

Charles was deeply offended at the violence which was manifested towards him. His timid and easily offended dignity was shocked at the idea that people should dare to judge him according to his acts. He sent for Hyde. "I desire to dissolve Parliament," he said. "The act by which I promised only to do so with their own consent, is, I am assured, null and void; for I could not thus abolish the prerogatives of the crown, but rather desire to make use of them. {115} Let a proclamation be prepared which shall declare the Houses dissolved from this time, and expressly forbid them from reassembling, or any one, whosoever he may be, from recognizing or obeying them." Hyde listened, surprised and grieved. "I cannot imagine," he said, "that your Majesty's forbidding them to meet any more at Westminster will prevent one man the more going there, and, nevertheless, the kingdom will, without doubt, take violent umbrage at it. It was the first powerful reproach they corrupted the people with against your Majesty, that you intended to dissolve this Parliament, and in the same way repeal all the other acts made by that Parliament, whereof some are very precious to the people. As your Majesty has always disclaimed any such thought, such a proclamation now would confirm all the jealousies and fears so excited, and trouble many of your true subjects. I implore your Majesty to reflect well before further pressing this project."

All the members of the council spoke like Hyde, and the king abandoned his project, not without ill-humor. It was necessary, however, to do something. Some one proposed, since the name of Parliament exercised such a dominion over the people, to convoke at Oxford all the members of the two Houses who had quitted Westminster, and thus to oppose to the factious and mutilated Parliament a real and legal Parliament, since the king would form part of it. The proposal displeased the king, who detested the very name of parliament. The queen was still more opposed to it; but the royalist party received the measure with ecstasy, and no one dared to withdraw it. The Parliament of the king was convoked at Oxford for the 22nd January, 1644.

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On the same day, at Westminster, a kind of muster of the Houses took place. Twenty-two lords still sat in the Upper House, and two hundred and eighty members of the Commons responded to their names. A certain number were absent in the service of the country and by order of Parliament. One of its oldest and most useful leaders had recently been taken from them. "Pym had died on the 8th of December, after a sickness of a few days. A man of a less brilliant renown than Hampden, in the secret councils as well as the public acts of the House, he had not rendered less important services. Firm, patient, and shrewd, skilled in pursuing an enemy, in directing a debate, or an intrigue, in fomenting the anger of the people, in engaging or retaining in his cause the great lords who were in a state of uncertainty, he was, moreover, an indefatigable member of the greater number of the committees, the customary chief mover of decisive measures, always ready to undertake onerous and dreaded duties; indifferent, in short, to labor, to mortifications, to fortune, to glory, and placing in success his sole ambition. The House felt its loss, and rendered the greatest honors to his memory. He was buried at Westminster."

The new Parliament had attempted to establish relations with Essex. It received from the Earl of Forth, commander-in-chief of the army of the king, a packet which it consigned in a sealed cover to the Upper House. After an examination by a committee of the two Houses, the papers were sent to Oxford without any answer. {117} A demand for a safe-conduct for the deputies whom the king desired to send to London was not better received. "My Lord," replied Essex, "when you ask for a safe-conduct in order that these gentlemen may repair, on behalf of the king, to the two Houses of Parliament, I will do, with all my heart, what shall be in my power to contribute to all that is desired by all good men--the re-establishment of an amicable understanding between his Majesty and his faithful and only council, the Parliament."

The king was delighted to find his adversaries so untractable; his hopes lay entirely in war and nowise in negotiations. The assembly of Oxford, consisting of forty-five Lords and a hundred and eighteen members of the Commons, obtained however a slight concession from him. The name of Parliament had not, in the first message rejected by Essex, been applied to the House at Westminster. A letter of the king was addressed "to the Lords and Commons of the Parliament assembled at Westminster;" but he spoke of the Lords and Commons assembled at Oxford as of their equals. A trumpeter from Essex brought the reply of the Houses. "The letter of your Majesty," it ran, "gives us, as to peace, the saddest thoughts. The persons now assembled at Oxford, and who, against their duty, have deserted your Parliament, are therein placed in the same rank as the latter, and this Parliament itself, convoked according to the fundamental laws of the kingdom, authorized to continue to sit by a special law sanctioned by your Majesty, finds itself denied even its name. We cannot betray in this manner the honor of the country entrusted to our keeping, and it is our duty to make known to your Majesty that we are firmly resolved to defend and maintain, at the risk of our fortunes and our lives, the just rights and the full powers of Parliament."

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The assembly of Oxford did not long resist. Henceforth, without hope of conciliation, and consequently without object, it continued to sit until the 16th of April, still faithful to the king, voting a few loans, and addressing long and bitter reproaches to the Houses of Westminster; but timid, inactive, and careful to manifest in presence of the court its ardent desire for legal order and peace. When their adjournment was at length pronounced, the king rejoiced with the queen at being delivered from this mongrel Parliament, the haunt of cowardly and seditious motions.

Charles counted upon war; but the campaign about to open presented itself under grievous aspects. All the small engagements which had taken place during the winter had turned to the advantage of the Parliamentarians. The Earl of Newcastle had been compelled by Fairfax to shut himself up in York. Parliament possessed five armies: those of the Scots, Essex, and Fairfax, were paid at the expense of the public treasury; those of Manchester and Waller were supported by the Eastern and Southern counties commissioned to recruit them. Under the name of Committee of the Two Kingdoms, a committee of the Chambers, composed of seven lords, fourteen members of the Commons, and four Scottish commissioners, was invested with almost absolute power over the war and foreign relations. The measures of Parliament were every day becoming more regular and energetic. Weakness and want of discipline, on the contrary, increased in the camp of the king.

[Image] Battle Of Marston Moor.

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Suddenly it became known at Oxford that the army of Essex, strengthened by that of Waller, was advancing to besiege the town. The troops of Fairfax and Manchester and the Scots were to assemble under the walls of York, and besieged that town in common. The two great towns and the two great armies of the royalists, the king and Lord Newcastle, were thus attacked at once by all the forces of Parliament. Such was the simple and bold plan which the committee of the two kingdoms had adopted.

The queen took alarm. She was in expectation of a child, but she was anxious not to be delivered within a besieged town. The evil effect of her departure was represented to her without success; she flew into a passion, wept, implored. She set out at length for Exeter, determined to proceed to France in case of danger. Her husband never saw her again.

A month later, at the end of May, Oxford was almost completely surrounded. A considerable reinforcement of militiamen coming from London, was about to put Essex in a position to complete the investment. The danger was so urgent that one of the faithful councillors of the king proposed to him to surrender to the earl. "It may be," said Charles in indignation, "that I may be found in the hands of the Earl of Essex, but I shall be dead." A week afterwards the army and Parliament learnt that the investment of Oxford had become useless, for the king had escaped.

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On the 3d of June, accompanied by the Prince of Wales, and leaving in the town the Duke of York with all his court, the king had issued forth from Oxford. Passing between the two hostile camps, and, joining a corps of light troops who awaited him upon the northern side, he rapidly placed himself out of reach. Seventeen days subsequently, while Waller was pursuing him in Worcestershire and Essex was advancing towards Lyme, which Prince Maurice kept besieged, Charles, bold and determined for the first time, reappeared in Oxford, and placing himself once more at the head of his troops, vigorously resumed the offensive. On the 29th of June he defeated, in Buckinghamshire, at Cropredybridge, the army of Waller, which had advanced to cut off his road to London. At rest upon this point, he resolved to pursue Essex, who had appeared before the walls of Exeter, and might terrify the queen, who had been delivered of a child two days before. One of the armies which had but recently kept him a prisoner was destroyed; the other, it seemed, would soon share its fate. Satisfied with his triumph, the king addressed from Evesham a message to the Houses, in which, without giving to them the name of Parliament, he made pacific protestations and offered to reopen negotiations; he then pursued his march towards the west.

Before his message arrived in London everything had assumed a different aspect. Fresh actors had entered upon the scene, the battle of Marston Moor, fought by the three armies of Fairfax, Manchester, and the Scots, against Prince Rupert and Lord Newcastle, had annihilated the royalist party in the north. York could not delay surrendering. Neither the defeats of Waller nor the former triumphs of Essex were thought of any longer.

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It was on the evening of the 2d of July, from seven to ten o'clock, at Marston Moor, that the battle had taken place which brought about these great results. At the approach of Prince Rupert the Parliamentary generals had raised the siege of York and proceeded towards him to arrest his progress. They had not succeeded; the prince had entered the town without striking a blow. The Parliamentarians retired; but notwithstanding the counsels of Lord Newcastle, Rupert followed them. When the two armies met, it was five o'clock in the evening; they spent two hours in sight of each other without engaging. "What position does your Highness intend for me" asked Newcastle of the prince. "I do not count upon making the attack before to-morrow morning," said Rupert; "you may rest until then." The earl retired and shut himself up in his coach. Scarcely was he settled there, when the firing informed him that the battle had begun; he ran thither, without command, at the head of a few volunteer gentlemen like himself. The most complete disorder reigned on the plain. The two armies were fighting helter-skelter, without leaders and without discipline: Parliamentarians and Royalists, horsemen and foot-soldiers, were wandering about the field of battle, seeking their corps, fighting upon meeting the enemy, but without result as well as without general purpose. The right wing of the Parliamentarians wavered under a charge of the Royalists; the Scottish cavalry took to flight. They were pursued, and a rumor of the victory of Prince Rupert spread as far as Oxford, where bonfires were lighted. But, as usual, the cavaliers had suffered themselves to be carried away by their ardor. When they returned to the field of battle, they found their positions occupied by the enemy. The cavalry of Prince Rupert had given way before the squadrons of Cromwell; the infantry of Manchester had completed his defeat. {122} The Parliamentarians had not pursued their adversaries, but had hastened to secure the field of battle. The combat which took place between the two victorious corps ended to the advantage of the Ironsides, a name given upon this occasion to the soldiers of Cromwell. Three thousand corpses strewed the field. Sixteen hundred Royalists were prisoners.

Rupert and Newcastle re-entered York in the middle of the night. Without seeing each other, they merely exchanged messages. "I have resolved," the prince sent word, "to set out this morning with my cavalry and what I have left of my infantry." "I start at once," Newcastle said, "and I am going to cross the sea to retire to the Continent." Both kept their word. York capitulated at the end of a fortnight.

Never had Parliament achieved so brilliant a success, and it was to the Independents that they owed it. The Scots, those allies whom the Presbyterians had brought from so far, had fled disgracefully. _The day of the Lord_ was at length coming, thought the enthusiasts. "My Lord," said Cromwell to Lord Manchester in their camp intercourse, "place yourself decisively with us, say no longer that we must hold ourselves in readiness for peace, or spare the House of Lords, or fear the refusals of Parliament. What have we to do with peace and the nobility? It never will be well with England till you are called plain Mr. Montague. If you will stick firm to honest men, you shall find yourself at the head of an army which shall give law both to king and Parliament."

The audacious counsels of Cromwell were not to serve the purpose of Lord Manchester; but himself and his party were nearing the goal of their hopes, for Essex had recently been vanquished.

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