commanded in the centre of his army; the right wing was led by Cromwell, and the left by Ireton, Crom- 1645. well's son-in-law. Ireton was worsted by Prince June 14. Rupert. Fairfax, opposed to the King, with difficulty kept his ground. Cromwell drove from the field the regiments which confronted him, led by Sir Marmaduke Langdale, and, having sufficiently dispersed them, turned back to the assistance of his commander. The infantry about the King gave way. Eight hundred of his men were killed. Fairfax lost two hundred more than that number; but his victory was complete. He captured all the royal artillery and ammunition, and five thousand prisoners, of whom an usual proportion were officers. The King's military force was irreparably broken, and his cause had received an incurable wound.

The loss of so large a part of his means for more fighting was not the whole, nor the worst, of his misfortune at Naseby. His cabinet fell into Fairfax's hands, with copies of letters to the Queen and others, disclosing the perfidy with which all along he had been acting in his transactions with the Parliament and in Ireland. Parliament caused a selection from them to be published. They justified whatever had been said of the ruthlessness of his schemes, and the danger of placing reliance on his word; and their effect was great in increasing the exasperation of his enemies, and in mortifying and distressing all, and alienating many, of those who, while they were willing to share the sufferings of an upright prince, shrank from a partnership with falsehood and dishonor.1

While the King escaped with some horse to hide himself in Wales, Fairfax recaptured Leicester; beat the royalists at Lamport in Somersetshire, killing three hundred men and making fourteen hundred prisoners; took Bath, Sherburne, and Bridgewater, the last with Conclusion a garrison of twenty-six hundred men; and civil war. 1 See these papers in an Appendix to the Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow.

of the first

then proceeded to lay siege to Bristol, whither Prince Rupert had retired. It capitulated after a poor defence; which so incensed the King, that he deprived his nephew of his commissions, and ordered him to leave the island. With some troops which he had gathered, Charles again moved to the relief of Chester, but was there defeated by Colonel Jones, with a loss of six hundred men killed and a thousand taken prisoners. He escaped with a fragment of his force, and shut himself up in Oxford. The midland counties were overrun by Cromwell; the southern by Fairfax, who, in one affair, compelled the surrender of five thousand royalists. Chester was reduced. The Marquis of Montrose, the King's lieutenant in Scotland, after a short career of brilliant successes, was disastrously defeated by Lesley; and a force of three thousand men, March 22. mostly cavalry, was routed in Gloucestershire by Colonel Morgan, on its march to Oxford to reinforce the King. Its commander, Lord Astley, taken prisoner, said to his captors, "You have done your work, and may now go to play, unless you choose to fall out among yourselves." A few detached posts still held out for a time ; but, in effect, the first war was over, and the valor and conduct of the Independents had been conspicuous in bringing it to its triumphant end.3

1646.

A brief survey of the occurrences of the next three years in England will suffice for the purposes of this history. After the "Self-denying Ordinance," there seemed

* Whitelocke, 207.

1 Three days after his arrival here, he held, at the Schools, his last Privy Cotton did not mean to have this Council, August 30, 1645. Previous to fact overlooked by his readers: :- "The this, there had been ten Councils held great salvation, and glorious victories, at Oxford, all of them at Christ Church. which the Lord hath wrought for EngThe last session of King Charles's Privy land these late years by any English Council at Whitehall took place Jan- power, his own right hand hath brought uary 8, 1642. Next it sat at Notting- to pass chiefly by such despised instruham, August 30 of that year; then at ments as are surnamed Independents.” Oxford, August 31, 1643. (Journal of (Way Cleared, I. 22.) the Privy Council.)

1

ments of the

party.

reason to believe, that Presbytery must hasten to make good its claim, and establish itself in the institutions of the country, or its opportunity would be lost. But, strong as it was in Parliament, it found itself unable to command a majority for extreme measures. "Cromwell and his party were no friends to the designs of conformity, but carried their business with Disappoint much privacy and subtilty." As they were not Presbyterian yet in a condition to assure themselves of success in a conflict, they avoided it by ostensible compliance. But with vigilance and skill they guarded against measures of a decisive kind; and, in so doing, they were able to profit by the aid of many of the Presbyterians themselves, whose purposes in politics predominated over their sectarian bias, and who, having helped in wresting from the King so many of his other prerogatives and investing them in the Parliament, were not disposed, in compliance with the wish of the Presbyterian divines, to transfer again from Parliament to an irresponsible religious tribunal the great royal prerogative of supremacy in the Church. An Ordinance was passed, establishing

1645.

Presbytery, with its gradation of parochial, sy- Aug. 19. nodical, provincial, and national councils, as the Church of England. But when the Westminster Assembly claimed for that system the sanction of divine right, Parliament refused assent; and it disappointed the ambition of the clergy by determining, by law, the offences which might be visited with excommunication, and by providing for appeals from the judgment of ecclesiastical courts.3

Oct. 20.

1646.

March 14.

By the great body of Englishmen the system was not cordially received. It was promptly organized and set prosperously at work in the City and in Lancashire; but

1 Rushworth, Collections, VII. 141. * Hallam, 348; Fuller, III. 490. Journal of the Lords, VII. 544,

545, 649; VIII. 209; Journal of the Commons, IV. 247, 475; comp. Rushworth, VI. 224 - 228, 260, 261.

June 5.

Aug. 28.

1648.

Impotence of

bly.

in other parts of the kingdom it was generally regarded with indifference where it was not regarded with dislike. Successive Ordinances "for the present settling (without further delay) of the Presbyterian Government in the Church of England;" ❝ for the Ordination of Ministers by the Classical Presbyters within their respective bounds, for the several congregations in the kingdom;" and "for the speedy Jan. 29. dividing and settling of the several Counties of the kingdom into distinct Classical Presbyteries and Congregational Elderships," received less and less attention while a swift current of different interests was sweeping on. What remains to be told of the story of the the Westmin- Assembly will cost but a few words. The lofty ster Assem- pretension of its beginning was not justified by its achievements. Nominally it continued in existence till some years after the formal ruin of the monarchy. Besides a Directory for Public Worship, it adopted a Confession of Faith, and a Larger and a Smaller Catechism, works which have exercised a vast influence on religious opinion among the later generations of the British race. But its ambition for political supremacy was frustrate. More and more, as time passed on, matters of greater practical interest than Presbyterian speculations and contrivances claimed the public attention; their friends out of Parliament cooled and fell away; their friends in Parliament were crippled by another force; and the venerable Assembly of Divines at Westminster was forgotten long before it ceased to keep up a show of action.1

1645.

From Wales, the King had stolen back again to Oxford, where the Parliamentary generals, unwilling to interrupt their operations for the settlement of the South The King and the West, left him undisturbed through the at Oxford. winter, to muse, in the beautiful solitude of St. John's College, on the gloomy aspect of his fortunes. The spring came, and brought no better prospect. Montrose, his defeated champion in Scotland, had been driven no one knew whither. Glamorgan, his confidential agent in Ireland, had been detected in intrigues so vile, that the King thought it necessary falsely to deny that he had authorized them. Hoping to derive some advantage from the religious feud which divided December. his opponents, he made new proposals to treat; but Parliament refused to receive either himself or 1646. commissioners from him, on the ground that Jan. 29. hitherto he had availed himself of such opportunities for treachery and intrigue; and, when he twice repeated the offer, they made him no reply. There remained in his possession not a port on the western coast for the landing of reinforcements from Ireland. Fairfax's brigades were now at leisure, and were closing around his retreat. His five thousand men, though Oxford had been skilfully fortified, could not long hold out against them. With two companions he left the magnificent academical city at midnight, dis- the Scottish guised as a servant. He came to Harrow on the April 27. Hill, and looked down on London; but thence, either from irresolution, or because of disappointment as to the reception of intelligence, he turned back, and, at the end of a week, presented himself at the head-quarters of the Earl of Leven, near Newark, in Nottinghamshire, where then the Scottish army lay.

small portion is legibly written out. A large part is written in unmixed short-hand, and a still larger part in short-hand mixed with hasty writing, equally without significance to the un

March.

army.

May 5.

practised eye. The last approval of ministers which is recorded took place March 25, 1652. More than twelve hundred sessions were held of the Assembly and its committees.