The Commonwealth. page 5

Whilst lying there the young king himself made a visit to the army at Leith, where he was received by the soldiers with acclamations; but the assembly of the kirk was soon scandalised by the drunkenness and profanity which his presence brought into the camp, and set on foot an inquiry, the result of which was that eighty officers, with many of their men, were dismissed that they might not contaminate the rest of the army. They also required Charles to sign a declaration to his subjects in his three kingdoms, informing them that he lamented the troubles which had been brought on the realm by the resistance of his father to the solemn league and covenant, and by the idolatry of his mother. That for himself he had subscribed the covenant with all his heart, and would have no friends or enemies but the friends or enemies of the covenant. That he repented making a peace with the papists of Ireland, and now declared it null and void; and that he detested all popery, prelacy, idolatry, and heresy. Finally, that he would accord to a free parliament of England the propositions agreed upon by the commissioners of the two kingdoms, and would settle the English church according to the plan organised by the Westminster assembly of divines.

Never was so flagrant a set of falsehoods forced on a reluctant soul! Charles read the declaration with indignation, and declared that he would sacrifice everything rather than thus to cast reproach on his parents and their supporters, who had suffered so on their behalf, or belie his own sentiments. But he was soon convinced that he must in reality see his cause totally abandoned if he did not comply, and at the end of three days he signed with tears and shame the humiliating document. The exulting kirk then proclaimed a certain victory from heaven over "a blaspheming general and a sectarian army."

And truly, affairs appeared very likely to come to such a conclusion. Cromwell found it difficult to feed his army; the weather continued stormy and wet, and his soldiers suffered extremely from fevers and other illness from exposure to the weather. Cromwell made a sudden march in the direction of Stirling, as though he intended to cut off that that city from communication with the capital. This set Leslie in motion; he hastily sent forward his forces, and the vanguards came to skirmishing, but could not engage in complete battle on account of the boggy ground between them. Cromwell as suddenly retreated, and firing his huts on the Pentlands, retreated towards Dunbar. This effectually roused the Scots; they knew his distress from sickness and lack of supplies, and they thought he meant now to escape into England. To prevent that, and to make themselves masters of the whole English army, as they now confidently expected, they marched rapidly along the feet of the Lammermoor Hills, and Leslie managed to outstrip him, and hem him in betwixt Dunbar and Doon hill. A deep ravine called Cockburn's Path, or, as Oliver pronounced it, Coppers Path, about forty feet deep and as many wide, with a rivulet running through it, lay betwixt Oliver and the Scotch army, which was posted on Doon Hill. On Oliver's right lay Belhaven Bay, on his left Brocksmouth House, at the mouth of a brook, and where there is a path southward. Leslie had secured the passes of Cockburn's Path, and imagined that he had Cromwell and his army secure from Sunday night to Tuesday morning, the 3rd of September. But on Monday afternoon, Cromwell observed Leslie moving his right wing down into the plain towards Brocksmouth House, evidently intending to secure that pass also; but Cromwell at once espied his advantage. He could attack and cut off this right wing, whilst the main body of Leslie's army, penned betwixt the brook and the hills, could not manoeuvre to help it. On observing this, Cromwell exclaimed to Lambert, "The Lord hath delivered us!" and arrangements were made to attack the right wing of Leslie at three o'clock in the morning. Leslie had twenty-three thousand men - Cromwell about half as many; but by a vigorous, unexpected attack on this right wing, after three hours of hard fighting, Cromwell threw the Scots into confusion, and Oliver exclaimed, "They run! I profess they run!" In fact, the horse of the Scots dashed frantically away over and through their own foot, and there was a wild flight in all directions. Three thousand slain lay on the spot, the Scotch army was in wild rout, and as the sun just then rose over St. Abb's Head and the sea, Oliver exclaimed to his soldiers, "Let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered!" "The lord-general," says Hodgson, "made a halt till the horse could gather for the chase, and sung the 117th Psalm. Then the pursuit was made as far as Haddington. Ten thousand prisoners were taken, with all the baggage, artillery, and ammunition of the enemy. A thousand men were slain in the pursuit. By nine o'clock in the morning, David Leslie, the general, was in Edinburgh, old lord Leven reached it by two, and what a city! The general complained that the ministers had occasioned the disaster; they would not let him rest till he descended from his height to attack the enemy on a disadvantageous ground. The ministers, though all their prophecies of victory were falsified, had yet plenty of other reasons for it. They published a "Short Declaration and Warning," in which they enumerated no less than thirteen causes for this terrible overthrow. The general wickedness of the country, the especial wickedness of the king's house, and the number of malignants amongst the king's followers, &c. &c. Cromwell told them plainly in letters which he addressed to them, that it was for taking up a family that the Lord had so eminently lifted up his hand against, and in pretending to cry down malignants, and yet receiving and setting up the head of them all. He advanced to Edinburgh and took up his quarters there, closely blockading the castle, which was soon compelled to surrender.

As for Charles II., he was rather delighted than otherwise with the defeat of his fanatic friends at Dunbar. He was grown most thoroughly tired of imperious dictation and morose religion, and he took the opportunity to steal away to join Murray, Huntley, Athol, and the royalists in the highlands. On the afternoon of the 4th of October, on pretence of hawking, he rode out of Perth, and dashed away for the braes of Angus. After galloping forty miles he came to a wretched hovel of a place called Clova, where he had nothing but a turf pillow to sleep on. There he was overtaken by colonel Montgomery - for Argyll was speedily apprised of the flight of his royal prisoner, and finding two regiments of horse at hand, he knew escape was hopeless, and returned. But "the Start," which Charles's elopement was called, had opened the eyes of the covenanters to the danger of pressing him too far. They now considerably relaxed their vigour towards him, admitted him to their deliberations in council, and they thus induced him to prevail on Athol, Middleton, and the highland forces to disband.

Cromwell's attention was soon attracted towards the west, where an army of five thousand men was raised, by order of the committee of estates, by colonels Kerr and Strachan, in the associated counties of Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, Wigton, and Dumfries. These people were of strict whiggamore notions, and were directly in correspondence with John Warriston, the clerk register of parliament, and Gillespie and Guthrie, two ministers of the kirk, who protested against having anything to do with the son of the beheaded Charles Stuart, who was an enemy to the kirk, and whose son himself was a thorough malignant. They drew up a remonstrance of the western army, in which they termed the king an incarnate solecism, and refused to fight under either him or Leslie. Cromwell, who saw little to prevent a union with this party, professing all his old veneration for the covenant, opened a communication with them, arguing that Charles ought to be banished, and thus remove the need of an English interference. In order to effect a coalition with these commanders, Cromwell marched to Glasgow, where he arrived on Friday, October 18th; and on Sunday, in the cathedral, listened to a violent sermon against him and his army from the reverend Zachery Boyd. Coming to no agreement with Kerr and Strachan, he returned on Monday towards Edinburgh, and found many men advising that they shall give up the "hypocrite," meaning Charles, and make peace with England; but Kerr and Strachan, though their remonstrance was voted a scandalous libel by parliament, could not agree to this. They, in fact, differed in opinion. Strachan resigned his commission, and soon after came over with eighty troopers to Cromwell. Kerr showed a hostile aspect, thus neither agreeing with one party nor another, and soon came to nothing. Cromwell sent Lambert to look after him with three thousand horse, and Lambert, whilst lying at Hamilton, found himself suddenly attacked by Kerr. He, however, repulsed him, took him prisoner, killed a hundred of his men, losing himself only six, and took two hundred prisoners, horse and foot. The western army was wholly dispersed. The condition of the covenanting Scots was now deplorable; the remonstrants, though they had lost their army, still continued to quarrel with the official or Argyll's party, and the country was thus torn by the two factions, under the name of Remonstrants and Resolutionists, when it should have been united against the enemy. Cromwell was now master of all the Lowlands, casting longing glances towards Stirling and Perth, which were in the hands of the royal party, and thus ended the year 1650.

On the first day of the new year, 1651, Charles rode, or rather was led, in procession, by his partisans to the church at Scone, and there solemnly crowned. There, on his knees, he swore to maintain the covenant, to establish presbyterianism, and embrace it himself, to establish it in his other dominions as soon as he recovered them. Argyll then placed the crown on his head, and Douglas, the minister, read him a severe lecture on the calamities which had followed the apostacy of his grandfather and father, and on his being a king only by compact with his people. But the fall of the western army had weakened the rigid presbyterian party. Argyll saw his influence decline, that of the Hamiltons in the ascendant, and numbers of the old royalists pouring in to join the army. Charles's force soon displayed the singular spectacle of Leslie and Middleton in united command, and the army, swelled by the royalists, was increased to twenty thousand men. Having fortified the passes of the Forth, the king thus awaited the movements of Cromwell. But the lord-general, during the spring, was suffering so much from the ague, that he contemplated returning home. In May, however, he grew better, and advanced towards Stirling. Whilst he occupied the attention of Charles and his army by his manoeuvres in that quarter, he directed Lambert to make an attempt upon Fife, which succeeded, and Cromwell, crossing the Forth, advanced to support him. The royal army quickly evacuated Perth, after a sharp action, in which about eight hundred men on each side fell, and the parliament colours were hoisted on the walls of that city.

If Cromwell's movement had been rapid and successful, he was now in his turn astonished by one as extraordinary on the part of the king. Charles saw that all the south of Scotland and a great part of England was clear of the enemy, and he at once announced his determination to inarch towards London. On the 31st of July his army was actually in motion, and Argyll, denouncing the enterprise as inevitably ruinous, resigned his commission, and retired to Inverary.

On discovering Charles's object, Cromwell put the forces to remain in Scotland under the command of general Monk, sent Lambert from Fife to follow the royal army with three thousand cavalry, and wrote to Harrison in Newcastle to advance and harass the flank of the king's army. He himself, on the 7th of August, commenced his march after it with ten thousand men.

Charles advanced at a rapid rate, and he had crossed the Mersey before Lambert and Harrison had formed a junction near Warrington, and attempted to draw him into a battle on Knutsford Heath. But Charles continued his hasty march till he reached Worcester, where he was received with loud acclamations by the mayor and corporation, and by a number of county gentlemen, who had been confined there on suspicion of their disaffection, but were now liberated. But such had been the sudden appearance of the king, that no expectation of it, and therefore no preparation for it, had been made by the royalists; and the bigoted ministers attending his army sternly refused all who offered to join them, whether presbyterians, episcopalians, or catholics, because they had not taken the covenant. It was in vain that Charles gave orders to the contrary, and sent forward general Massey to receive and bring into order these volunteers; the committee of the kirk rejected them, whilst Cromwell's forces on their march were growing by continual reinforcements, especially of the county militias. Colonel Robert Lilburne met with a party of the king's forces under the earl of Derby, betwixt Chorley and Wigan, and defeated them, killing the lord Widdrington, Sir Thomas Tildesley, and colonels Boynton, Trollope, and Throckmorton. Derby himself was wounded, but made his escape.

Charles issued a proclamation for all his male subjects betwixt the ages of sixteen and sixty to join his standard on the 26th of August; but on that day he found that the whole of his forces amounted to only twelve thousand men, whilst Cromwell, who arrived two days after, was at the head of at least thirty thousand. On the 3rd of September, the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell determined to attack the royal army. Lambert, overnight, crossed the Severn at Upton, with ten thousand men, and the next morning Cromwell and Fleetwood, with the two other divisions of the army, crossed, Cromwell, lit, Severn, and Fleetwood, the Team; and Charles, who had been watching their progress from the tower of the cathedral, descended and attacked Fleetwood before he had effected his passage; but Cromwell was soon up to the assistance of his general, and after a stout battle, first in the meadows, and then in the streets of the town, the forces of Charles were completely beaten. Charles fought with undaunted bravery, and endeavoured to rally his soldiers for a last effort, but they flung down their weapons and surrendered. It was with difficulty that he was prevailed upon to fly, and save his life. Three thousand of the royalists were slain, and six or seven thousand made prisoners, including a considerable number of noblemen - the duke of Hamilton, but mortally wounded, the earls of Rothes, Derby, Cleveland, Kelly, and Lauderdale, lords Sinclair, Kenmure, and Grandison, and the generals Leslie, Massey, Middleton, and Montgomery. The duke of Buckingham, lord Talbot, and others, escaped with many adventures.