Reign of Charles I. (Continued.) page 10

In the west, matters for awhile wore a better aspect for the king. Essex, on the escape of the king from Oxford, directed his course west. The royalists were strong in Devon, Cornwall, and Somersetshire; but to effectually compete with them, Waller should have united his forces with the commander-in-chief. He was too much in rivalry with him to do that. The king set off after Essex, to support his forces in the western counties, and Essex, as if unaware of the royal army following him, continued to march on. The queen, who had been confined of a daughter at Exeter, on the approach of Essex requested of him a safe conduct to Bath, on pretence of drinking the waters, whence she proposed to get to Falmouth, and thence back to France. Essex ironically replied that he would grant her an escort to London, where she could consult her own physicians, but where he knew that she was proclaimed guilty of high treason. Henrietta Maria, however, made her way to Falmouth without his courtesy, and thence in a Dutch vessel, accompanied by ten other ships, she reached France, though closely pursued by the English admiral, who came near enough to discharge several shots at the vessel.

Essex advanced to Lyme Regis, where he relieved Robert Blake, afterwards the celebrated admiral, who was there closely besieged by prince Maurice; and still proceeding, took Taunton, Tiverton, Weymouth, and Bridport. This was something like victory, but meantime, all men were wondering at his apparent unconsciousness that the royalist forces were inclosing him, and that with the exception of about two thousand horse under Middleton, which kept at a distance and never united with him, he was wholly unsupported by Waller's troops. In this manner he advanced into Cornwall, where prince Maurice joined his forces with those of the king to cut off his return. At this crisis many began to suspect that he meant to go over to the king's party, but in this they misjudged him, for at this time Charles made overtures to him, but in vain. He received a letter from the king, promising him if he would join him in endeavouring to bring the parliament to terms, he would guarantee both the liberties and religion of the people; and another from eighty-four of the king's principal officers, protesting that if the king should attempt to depart from his engagements, they would take up arms against him. Essex sent the letter to the parliament, proving his faith to them; but it would still have been better if he could have proved to them also his military ability. But near Liskeard, lie suffered himself to be hemmed in by different divisions of the royal army, and his supplies to be cut off by allowing the little port of Foy or Fowie to fall into the hands of the king's generals, Sir Jacob Astley and Sir Richard Grenville. He was now attacked by Charles on the one hand, and colonel Goring on the other. Essex sent pressing demands to parliament for succour and provisions, but none came; and on the last of October, in the night, Essex's horse, under Sir William Balfour, by a successful manoeuvre, passed the enemy, and made their way back to London. Essex, with lord Roberts and many of his officers, escaped in a boat to Plymouth, and major-general Skippon, with the fort, capitulated, leaving to the king their arms and artillery.

This was a most ignominious termination of Essex's movement westward, which he had undertaken and continued, spite of the remonstrance of the parliament. He had no right to expect anything but the most severe censure; but he retired to his house, and demanded an investigation, charging his failure to the neglect of Waller. The parliament, however, instead of reproaching him, thanked him for the fidelity which he had shown when tempted by the king, and for his many past services.

But there was an eye which had long been casting a scrutinising glance over the proceedings of the aristocratic generals, to whom was intrusted the care of the commonwealth, and a mind which was at war with their slow notions and their blind meanderings in aimless confusion. These were the eye and the mind of Oliver Cromwell. His clear perception seized at once on the general view of things; and by an unerring instinct, flew lightning like to the spot of necessary action. But it was in vain that he endeavoured to move the heavy spirit of his superior, the earl of Manchester, and hence they came more and more to disputes. Cromwell was insubordinate because it was impossible that fire could be subordinate to earth. In vain he pointed out what ought to be done, and he grew impatient and irritated at what was not done. That irritation and impatience became the greater as he turned his eyes on what Essex, Waller, and the rest of the parliamentary generals were doing. It seemed to him that they were asleep, paralysed, when a few bold strokes would bring the war to a close.

Charles having broken up Essex's army in Cornwall, and put Essex himself to flight, made a hasty march back again to Oxford to avoid being himself in turn cooped up in the narrow west. Already the parliament was mustering its forces for that purpose. Essex and Waller, the old slow-worm generals, were again set at the head of troops, and the victorious forces of Marston Moor, under Manchester and Cromwell, were summoned to join them, the enemy being quelled northwards. They endeavoured to stop the king in his attempt to reach Oxford, and encountered him again near the old ground of battle at Newbury. Charles was attacked in two places at once, Show on the eastern, and at Speen on the western side of the town. The earl of Essex was ill, or, as many believed, pretended to be so; at all events, the command fell to Manchester. On the 26th of October, this first brush took place, and the next morning being Sunday, the attack was renewed more vigorously. The soldiers of Manchester, or rather of Cromwell, went' into the fight singing psalms, as was their wont. The battle was fiercely contested, and it was not till ten o'clock at night that Charles retreated towards Wallingford. It was full moonlight, and Cromwell prepared to pursue Mm, but was withheld by Manchester. Again and again did Cromwell insist on the necessity of following and completing the rout of the royal army. "The next morning," says Ludlow, "we drew together and followed the enemy with our horse, which was the greatest body that I saw together during the war, amounting at least to seven thousand horse and dragoons; but they had got so much ground, that we could never recover sight of them, and did not expect to see any more in a body that year; neither had we, as I suppose, if encouragement had not been given privately by some of our party."

In other and plain words, there were strong suspicions that the aristocratic generals did not want to press the king too close. This became apparent ten days after. The king, on retreating, had done exactly as he did before at this same Newbury; he had thrown all his artillery into the castle of Donnington, and now he came back again to fetch it, nobody attempting to hinder him, as nobody had attempted to reduce Donnington and secure the artillery. So extraordinary was the conduct of the parliamentary generals, that though Charles passed through their lines both in going and returning from Donnington, and even offered them battle, no one stirred. The generals dispersed their army into winter quarters, and both parliament and public loudly complained of the affair of Newbury. The parliament set on foot an inquiry into the causes of the strange neglect of public duty, and they soon saw one powerful cause in the jealousies and contentions of the generals. Each and all laid the fault on the others. It was time that a new organisation was introduced, and Cromwell saw that beyond the mere incapacity of the commanders, there were aristocratic prejudices that stood in the way of any effectual termination of the war. The aristocrat, however intellectually endowed, stands no comparison in the great field of military action, as in many others, with the men who rise from the people, not perhaps or exclusively from the poor, but from the educated classes of commoners. Cromwell, Marlborough, Wellington, Bonaparte, all rose from the ranks of mere gentry, and had to push their fortunes. The greenhouse plant can never compete with the oak, which has sprung from the clefts of the rock and battled with all the tempests. There may be grace in the one, but there are vigour and robust spirit which belong to the other, and which give them the mastery.

Cromwell was at the head of the independents, and these were as adverse to the dominance and intolerance of the presbyterians, as Cromwell was to the slow-going generals. He knew that he should have their support, and he determined to come to a point on the vital question of the arrangement of the war. He had declared plumply, in his vexation, "That there never would be a good time in England till we had done with lords;" and he had horrified the milk-and-water aristocrats, by protesting that "if he met the king in battle, he would fire his pistol at him as he would at another." He was now resolved to have lords out of the army at least, and therefore, on the 25th of November, 1644. he exhibited a charge in the house of commons against the earl of Manchester, asserting that he had shown himself indisposed to finish the war; that since the taking of York lie had studiously obstructed the progress of the parliamentary army, as if he thought the king already too low, and the parliament too high, especially at Donnington. That since the junction of the armies he had shown this disposition still stronger, and had persuaded the council not to fight at all.

Manchester, eight days after, replied at great length, accusing Cromwell of insubordination, and was supported by major-general Crawford, whom the Scotch Presbyterians had got into the army of Manchester, to counteract the influence of Cromwell and the Independents. Crawford even dared to charge Cromwell with leaving the field of Newbury from a slight wound. Cromwell, on the 9th of December, leaving such charges to be answered by Marston Moor and his share of Newbury, proposed a measure which at once swept the army of all its dead weights. In the grand committee there was a general silence for a good space of time, one looking on the other, to see who would venture to propose the only real remedy for getting rid of the Essexes and Manchesters out of the army, when Cromwell arose and proposed the celebrated Self-denying Ordinance. It is now time to speak, he said, or for ever hold the tongue. They must save the dying nation by casting off all lingering proceedings, like those of the soldiers of fortune beyond the sea, who so pursued war because it was their trade. "What," he asked, "did the nation say?" That members of both houses had got good places and commands, and by influence in parliament or in the army, meant to keep them by lingering on the war. What he told them to their faces, he assured them was simply what all the world was saying behind their backs. But there was a sure remedy for all that, and for himself, he cared to go no further into the inquiry, but to apply that remedy. It was for every one to deny themselves and their own private interests, and for the public good to do what parliament should command. He told them that he would answer for his own soldiers, not that they idolised him, but because they looked to parliament, and would obey any commands the parliament should lay upon them for the cause.

Accordingly, the same day, Mr. Tate, of Northampton, formally moved the Self-denying Ordinance, that is, that no member of either house should hold a command in the army or a civil office. This was so surprising a measure, that even Whitelock observed that "our noble generals, the earls of Denbigh, Warwick, Manchester, the lords Roberts, Willoughby, and other lords in your armies, besides those in civil offices, and your members the lord Grey, lord Fairfax, Sir William Waller, lieutenant-general Cromwell, Mr. Hollis, Sir Philip Stapleton, Sir William Brereton, Sir John Meyrick, and many others must be laid aside if you pass this ordinance." The proposition seen in these dimensions was a daring and out-and-out proposition, but it was far more so when the interests and passions of parties, as well as the number and dignity of the persons concerned, were taken into the account. The religious question had now brought the parliamentarians to a point where they must explode with heat, and diverge violently one from another. Manchester, Essex, Denzell Hollis, Meyrick, Stapleton, and others, who had so long gone on stoutly and zealously side by side with Cromwell, Whitelock, and others, were now not only indignant at Cromwell's daring and aspiring tone, but bitterly opposed to him on the ground of faith and church government. They were for preserving church and state, and they were linked with the Scotch, who were vehement for the general acceptation of the presbyterian doctrine, if they could not carry its formula. They met at Essex House, and concerted how they were to put down not only this troublesome man, but the troublesome party of which he was the representative, the independents, who were for liberty in the church and the state, and would hear nothing of the denomination of synods and presbyteries any more than of bishops. They sent to White-lock and Maynard, to consult them as lawyers, on nothing less than impeaching Cromwell as an incendiary. The lord chancellor of Scotland addressed them thus: - Ye ken varra weel that lieutenant Cromwell is no friend of ours, and since the advance of our army into England, he hath used all underhand and cunning means to take off from our honour and merit with this kingdom - an evil requital of all our hazards and services; but so it is, and we are nevertheless fully satisfied of the affections and gratitude of the gude people of this nation in general. It is thought requisite for us, and for the carrying on of the cause of the twa kingdoms, that this obstacle or remora may be moved out of the way, who, we foresee, will otherwise be no small impediment to us, and the gude design that we have undertaken. He not only is no friend to us, and to the government of our church, but he is also no well-wilier to his excellency, whom you and us all have cause to love and honour; and if he be permitted to go on in his ways, it may, I fear, endanger the whole business. Ye ken varra weel the accord atwixt the twa kingdoms, and the union by the Solemn League and Covenant, and if any be an incendiary betwin the twa nations, how he is to be proceeded against." The chancellor regarded Cromwell as precisely such an incendiary, but wanted their opinion. Whitelock replied that the word incendiary meant just the same thing in English as it did in Scotch, but that whether Cromwell was an incendiary, was a thing that could only be established by proofs, and that, he thought, would be a tough matter; and that lieutenant-general Cromwell was a gentlemen of such quick and subtle parts, and had such influence on both the parliament and the country, that they should look well that they had such proofs before they interfered with him, as it might bring them into much trouble and disgrace. Maynard confirmed the views of Whitelock, and though Hollis, Stapleton, and others of the presbyterian party, vehemently urged an immediate impeachment, the Scotch, with their caution, paused.