Reign of Charles I. (Continued.) page 8

The parliamentarians lost five hundred men in the battle, the king three times that number and many officers; but the greatest loss of all was that of the amiable and conscientious lord Falkland, a man on the royalist side as much respected as Hampden was on the parliament side. He had gone with the parliament till he thought they had obtained all that they were justly entitled to, and pressed too hard on the king, when he felt it his duty to support the crown, and had accepted office as secretary of state. He was a man of a most cheerful, cordial, courteous disposition; but from the moment that the war broke out, all his cheerfulness fled. He seemed to feel in himself all the wounds and miseries of his bleeding country. He was constantly an advocate of peace, and was often observed sitting in a state of abstraction, uttering aloud and as unconsciously the words, "Peace! Peace!" As the war went on his melancholy increased; he neglected his dress, and became short and hasty in his temper. He declared that "the very agony of the war, and the view of the calamities and desolation which the kingdom did and must endure, took his sleep from him, and would break his heart." Whitelock says that "on the morning of the fight he called for a clean shirt, and being asked the reason of it, answered that if he were slain in the battle, they would not find his body in foul linen. Being dissuaded by his friends against going into the fight, as having no call to it, being no military officer, he said he was weary of the times, and foresaw much misery to his country, and did believe he should be out of it ere night, and could not be persuaded to the contrary, but would enter into the battle, and was there slain." His death was deeply lamented by all parties. Besides him fell the earls of Sunderland and Carnarvon.

When the king's affairs were in the ascendant by the successes in the west, the taking of Bristol, and the defeat of Waller at Roundaway Down, near Devizes, the earls Bedford, Northumberland, Holland, and Clare deserted the parliament cause. Northumberland, being cautious, retired to Petworth, to see how the other lords who meant to go over to the king should be received. Bedford, Clare, and Holland offered their services to the king, and went to Wallingford, where they were suffered to wait a great while, much to their chagrin. They then went to Oxford, whilst Charles was in the west, and were ordered to await his return. The queen and the courtiers, meanwhile, treated them not as valuable and influential allies, whose good reception would certainly bring over many more, but, with consummate folly, as renegades, who had forfeited all respect by taking part with the king's enemies. They followed the king to Gloucester, where they were coolly enough received, and afterwards fought on his side at Newbury; but nothing winning them that estimation which good policy would have granted them at once, as the king's prospects turned, they made their peace with parliament, and went back to London,; where, however, they found they had sunk greatly in public opinion, and were not permitted to take their seats in the house of peers or hold office. Their flight had lowered the: public estimation of the lords, and their reception at Oxford had seriously injured the king's cause. Whilst the king and queen retained their impolitic resentments, there was no hops of winning over friends from the ranks of their opponents. It was clear that neither time nor trouble had really taught them anything. At the same time we learn from Clarendon that there existed great discord and division in the camp and court at Oxford. Every one was jealous of the slightest promotion or favour shown to another; and the cavaliers, he says, had grown disorderly, and devoted to the plundering of the people, just as the parliamentary army was growing orderly, zealous, and efficient. Insomuch that one side seemed to fight for monarchy with weapons of confusion, and the other to destroy the king and government with all the principles and regularity of monarchy.

This was seen in nothing more than in the management with regard to Scotland. To both parties it was of the highest consequence to have the alliance of the Scots. Charles, on his last visit, had flattered the people, conceded to the notions of the covenanters, and conferred honours on their leaders. But Montrose, who knew the covenanters well, assured the king that he would never get them to fight on his side. They were too much united in interest and opinion with the puritan parliament not to adhere to them. He proposed, therefore, to raise another power in Scotland - that of the nobility and the Highlanders, who should at least divide the country, evade a hazard in an army of covenanters leaving the country, and thus at least save the king from the imminent danger of an invasion in that quarter, the first result of which would be to lose him his ascendancy in the northern counties of England. When the queen landed and came to York, Montrose waited on her, and did all in his power to awaken a sense of danger in Scotland, and offered to raise ten thousand men there, and paralyse the designs of the covenanters. But when these representations were made to Charles, the marquis of Hamilton, now made duke, strongly opposed the advice of Montrose, declared that it was monstrous to set Scots against Scots, and that he would undertake to keep them quiet. He prevailed, and Montrose, disappointed, retired again to Scotland to watch the progress of events. Hamilton went to Scotland, with authority from the king to take the lead in all movements of the royalists.

As was foreseen, the English parliament made overtures to the Scots for assistance, and the Scots were by no means loth, provided they could make advantageous terms. It determined to send a commission to Edinburgh to treat, and the Scots on their part resolved to call a parliament to receive their offers. The time fixed for the re-assembling of the Scottish parliament was not arrived by a full year, and it was one of the circumstances which the duke of Hamilton had most particularly pledged himself to the king to prevent assembling; yet on the 22nd of June, notwithstanding his remonstrance, it came together, and on the 20th of July the commissioners from the English parliament arrived, and were received by both parliament and general assembly with exultation, and their letters from the parliament of England were read with shouts of triumph - by many, with tears of joy. Their arrival was regarded as a national victory.

The conduct of Hamilton was now suspicious. If he was honest he had misled the king, for he found he had no power to resist the popular feeling in Scotland; but the general opinion coincided with that of Montrose, that he was a traitor. The royalists called upon him to summer them to his aid, to assemble them in. a large body, mounted and armed, and, supported by them, to forbid the meeting of parliament as illegal But that, Hamilton assured them, would frighten the people, and lead to disturbance. He proposed that the meeting should take place, that all the royalist members should appear in their places, and then he would declare the meeting illegal, and dismiss it. To their astonishment, however, Hamilton did not dismiss it, but allowed it to sit. On this Montrose posted away to England, followed the king to Gloucester, and represented to him the conduct of Hamilton as confirmative of all his former declarations of his perfidy. After the battle of Newbury, Charles listened more at leisure to these representations. He was so far convinced, that he thought of ordering the earl of Newcastle to send for Hamilton and his brother lord Lanark, and to confine them at York. But at that moment the two brothers, probably aware of the proceedings of Montrose, appeared themselves at Oxford, where Charles ordered the council to examine into the charges against them. Lanark managed to escape from custody, and hastened direct to London and to the parliament, which received him most cordially, a pretty strong proof of mutual understanding. This satisfied Charles of Hamilton's complicity, and he sent him in custody to the castle of Bristol, thence to Exeter, and thence to Pendennis, in Cornwall.

The commissioners sent to Scotland were Henry Vane the younger, Armyn, Hatcher, Darley, and Marshall, with Nye, an independent. The Scots proposed to invade England on condition that the parliament adopted the covenant, and engaged to establish uniformity of religion in both countries, "according to the pattern of the most reformed church," which, of course, meant presbyterianism. But the commissioners knew that this was impossible, for though a considerable number of the people were presbyterian in doctrine, many more were independent, and just as sturdy in their faith, to say nothing of the large section of the population which held conscientiously to both episcopacy and Catholicism. Vane himself was a stanch independent, and he was at the same time one of the most adroit of diplomatists. He consented that the kirk should be preserved in its purity and freedom, and that the church of England should be reformed "according to the word of God." As the Scots could not object to reformation according to the word of God, and "the example of the first reformed churches," which they applied especially to their own, they were obliged to be content with that vague language. Vane also obtained the introduction of the word league, also giving the alliance a political as well as a religious character. It was concluded to send a deputation with the commissioners to London, to see the solemn "League and Covenant" signed by the two houses of parliament, at the head of which went Alexander Henderson, the well known moderator of the assembly. Whilst they were on their journey, the ministers in Scotland readily proclaimed from their pulpits that now the Lord Jesus had taken the field against antichrist, that Judah would soon be enslaved if Israel was led away captive, and that the curse of Meroz would fall on all who did not come to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

On the 25th of September, the very day that Essex arrived in London after the battle of Newbury, and received the thanks of parliament, the two houses met with the Westminster divines in the church of St. Margaret, where, after various sermons, addresses, and blessings, the two houses signed the league and covenant, and their example was followed by the Scotch commissioners and the divines-. It was then ordered to be subscribed in every parish by all persons throughout the country.

It was agreed that the estates of Scotland should send an army of twenty-one thousand men into England, headed by the old earl of Leven. That they should receive thirty-one thousand pounds a month, and one hundred thousand pounds of it in advance, and another sum at the conclusion of peace. Sixty thousand pounds were soon remitted, the levies began, and in a few months Leslie mustered his army at Harlaw.

The union of the Scots with the parliament was an alarming blow to the royalists. If they had found it difficult to cope with parliament alone, how were they to withstand them and the Scots? To strengthen himself against this formidable coalition, Charles turned his attention to Ireland. There the army had actually grown to fifty thousand men, As the restorers of the English influence, these were to be paid out of the estates of the revolted Irish, and numbers of both English arid Scotch had flocked over. A large body of Scotch had landed under the command of general Monro, eager to revenge the massacre of their presbyterian brothers in Ulster. The natives had been driven back, and the invaders were busy parcelling out the evacuated lands. Two million and a half of acres had been promised by the English parliament as the reward of the victors.

To resist the tempest which threatened to exterminate them, the Irish catholics formed themselves into a confederation, and created a kind of parliament at Kilkenny. They imitated in everything the measures by which the Scotch had succeeded in enfranchising their religion. They professed the most profound loyalty to the sovereign, and asserted that they were in arms only for the protection of their religion and their lives. They established a synod which assumed the same religious authority as the Scotch assembly, and ordered a covenant to be taken, by which very one bound himself to maintain the catholic faith arid the rights of the sovereign and the subject. They appointed generals in each province, and all necessary officers for the command of their force. Charles, who suspected the allegiance of the earl of Warwick, had contrived to remove him, and appointed the marquis of Ormond in his place. To him the confederate catholics transmitted their petition, avowing he most unshaken loyalty, declaring that they had only taken up arms to defend their lives and properties from men who were equally the enemies of the king and their own. They were the same puritanic people, they said, who were seeking to deprive the king of his crown. These petitions forwarded to Charles, suggested to him the idea of deriving use from these forces. As they prayed him to assemble a new parliament in Ireland, to grant them the freedom of their religion and the rights of subjects, he instructed Ormond o come to terms with them, so that in their pacification they might be able to spare a considerable body of troops for his assistance in England. This was effected in September, 1643, and the confederates contributed directly thirty thousand pounds for the support of the royal army, fifteen thousand pounds in money, and fifteen thousand pounds in pensions.

This was not accomplished without exciting the notice of the parliament, who sent over commissioners to endeavour to win over the protestants in Ormond's army, but in vain. In the month of November Ormond shipped five regiments to the king. These were sent to Chester, to garrison that town under lord Byron, but they were rather marauders than soldiers; they had been raised by the parliament, and fought against it for the king, and they were as loose in discipline as in principles. In about six weeks after their arrival, they were visited by Sir Thomas Fairfax, at Nantwich, when fifteen thousand of them threw down their arms, amongst them the afterwards notorious general Monk. Nor was this the only mischief occasioned to the royal cause by these Irish troops. Their arrival disgusted the royal forces under Newcastle in the north, who declared that they would not fight with catholics and Irish rebels.

Whilst the Scotch were mustering to enter England, the marquis of Newcastle was bearing hard on the parliament forces in Yorkshire. He had cleared the country of them except Hull, which he was besieging; and Lincolnshire was also so overrun with his forces, that lord Fairfax, governor of Hull, was obliged to send his son, Sir Thomas, across the Humber, to the help of the earl of Manchester. Fairfax united with Cromwell near Boston, and at Winceby-on-the-Wolds, about five miles from Horncastle, the united army under Manchester came to a battle with the troops of Newcastle, and completely routed them, thus clearing nearly all Lincolnshire of them. Cromwell had a horse killed under him, and Sir Ingram Hopton, of Newcastle's army, was killed. The battle was won by Cromwell and Fairfax's cavalry