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CHAPTER II.

WHEN the Four Colonies of New England made their confederation, a few months only had passed since the breaking out of the war between Charles the First and his long-suffering subjects. It continued to be waged without important success on either side, till the second invasion from the North turned the tide against the King1 Marching from Dunbar through snow up to their knees, the Scots crossed the Tweed and entered 1644. England on the second day. The Marquis of Jan. 19. Newcastle, the King's general, with an army fourteen thousand strong, retreated slowly before them, till, having been joined by Parliamentary forces under Manchester, Fairfax, and Cromwell, they shut him up in York, with a garrison of six thousand troops. The city appeared to be reduced to extremity, when Prince Rupert, having overrun the western shires, arrived with twenty thousand men for its relief. The Parliamentary generals raised the siege, and advanced to meet him as far as Long-Marston-Moor, four miles distant. The Prince manoeuvred so as to pass them, crossed the river Ouse, and threw himself into York.

May.

July 1.

Unfortunately for him, he was not satisfied with this success. In contempt of the better judgment of Newcas tle, he insisted on following it up with an attack on the

1 See Vol. I. 579.

2 Rushworth, V. 603.

Lingard thinks that the course taken by Rupert was required by the King's orders. (History, X. 251, 252; comp. Evelyn's Memoirs, II. App., 89;

Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, II. 435, 445, 452.) But, on the other hand, see Guizot's English Revolution (II. 47), or Sandford's Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion, &c. (591).

Fight of

Marston

Moor.

rebel force. The battle was fought from seven till ten o'clock in the bright twilight of a midsummer evening. About twenty-five thousand men were July 2. engaged on each side. The right wing of the Royalists, commanded by Rupert, was driven off the field by Cromwell's cavalry. The left wing, under Goring and Lucas, was on the point of being successful against Fairfax and Lambert, when Cromwell, returning from his pursuit of the Prince, fell upon it and threw it into irreparable disorder. More than three thousand royalists killed, fifteen hundred made prisoners, and all the artillery taken, were the fruits of this battle, the bloodiest of the war. York presently surrendered, and Prince Rupert, with the remains of his army, moved rapidly to the West, to obtain new enlistments. The Marquis of Newcastle, disgusted by that inattention to his warnings which had occasioned the great calamity, withdrew to the Continent, where he lived for the next sixteen years. In the autumn the Scots took the town of Newcastle by storm, and the whole North Country was lost to the King.

October.

Successes of

the South.

In the South he had better success. Eluding the two armies of Lord Essex and Sir William Waller, which had nearly enclosed him at Oxford, he moved norththe King in westwardly towards Worcester. He beat Waller, who had followed him, and then, in his turn, pursued Essex into Cornwall. There, having been joined by forces under his nephew, Maurice, and Sir Richard Granville, he compelled the Parliamentary infantry and artillery to capitulate, on the condition of being dismissed without their arms, ammunition, and baggage. The horse, taking advantage of a thick mist, escaped. Essex, with some of his officers, reached Plymouth by sea. His honor was untouched. The Parliament understood the difficulties which had proved too great for him, and, from a sense of justice or from policy, sent him a vote of thanks.

Oct. 27.

Lord Manchester, with Cromwell for his lieutenant, was ordered from the North, to form a junction with Waller, and renew the struggle. They met and fought Second battle the King at Newbury, the scene, thirteen months of Newbury. before, of an indecisive engagement. Now he had decidedly the worst, and it was said that nothing but the approach of night prevented his total overthrow. Having obtained reinforcements from Oxford, he advanced again. Manchester, though his forces were still superior, refused to accept another battle, to the great displeasure of Cromwell; and the armies went into winter quarters.

Transactions

of 1644-45.

The transactions of the winter were momentous. A fruitless negotiation for peace exasperated the existing animosities; and the army of the Parliament was placed upon a new footing. The former of these of the winter proceedings involved the dispute between the Anglican Church and the Presbyterians; the latter, the dispute between the Presbyterians and the Independents. To understand the position in which affairs now stood, it is necessary to attend to some events of an earlier date.

polity.

The ecclesiastical constitution established in England on the reformation from Popery in the sixteenth century, is familiarly known to readers of English history, and has been sufficiently indicated in this work. On the Continent, the reformed churches of the German States, Lutheran of Denmark, and of Sweden, adopted the polity church of Luther, while in those of the Low Countries, of France, and of Switzerland, the institutions of Calvin were set up. Of the two, the Lutheran system recognized a closer union of the Church with the State. Like the Anglican, it asserted the supremacy of the sovereign in ecclesiastical affairs. He exercised this branch of his power through tribunals of his own appointment, known by the name of Consistories; and among the clergy there

was a diversity of ranks, and a sort of episcopate, though the name of bishop was avoided.1

1541. Presbyterian

ity of Calvin.

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The regimen of Calvin, though it did not make the churches independent of the government, assigned to them a larger province in their own administration. It acquired an establishment at Geneva, when its author, seeking a better sphere for his activity than his native land afforded, made himself a sort of autocrat in that city, and won for it the name of the Mechurch pol- tropolis of Reform. According to this scheme, which claimed the support of the letter of the New Testament, - all Presbyters, or Elders, are equal in rank and authority and competent alike to all sacred functions, and the officers of each congregation control its members in spiritual things; but each congregation is also a part, and subject to the government, of the aggregate national Church. . To administer this general government, Calvin established what he called a Consistory, composed of laymen and ecclesiastics, who were appointed from year to year, the former being the greater number. And this body, in its turn, was subject to the supervision of the Council of Two Hundred which governed the little republic. No greater elaboration was required for the convenient action of the system within so small a sphere.

When Calvin revived the Augustinian doctrine, exhibiting it with a sharper distinctness than its ancient champion had attained, and maintaining it with a more subtile logic, the welcome which was widely extended to his dogmatic theory among the reformed churches naturally recommended his scheme of Church polity to the favor of those great men of other countries who

1 Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, Histoire de France, VIII. 191, 323; Part II. Chap. II. §§ 12, 32. Dyer, Life of John Calvin, 121; Mignet, Mémoires Historiques, 360.

2 Calvin, Institutiones Christianæ, Lib. IV. Capp. III., IV.; Henri Martin,

owned him as the master of their minds. Accordingly when the Scotchman, John Knox, formerly chaplain to King Edward the Sixth, went home from a second visit to Geneva, it was with the Presbyterian model 1559. in his mind as the perfection of church rule, but as at the same time requiring extension and refinement in order to its complete adaptation to a Presbytery larger society. Many things were to be brought

May.

in Scotland.

to pass in Scotland before the work of ecclesiastical reconstruction could be done. It was formally at- 1560. tempted in the year after Knox's return; but the August. selfishness of the Reformed nobles effectually obstructed it, and it languished during his life.1

1578.

It was accomplished under the auspices of his scarcely less able successor, Andrew Melville. According to the Second Book of Discipline, which became the ecclesiastical law of the land, the minister of a single congregation is the highest church officer; with him ruling elders ought to be associated; and these officers together constitute a parochial court, called the Church Session. A small number of neighboring congregations are united in a Presbytery, in which they act by representatives; several neighboring Presbyteries in like manner are convened in a Synod, or Provincial Assembly; and the ultimate authority over all resides in a national convention of the Church, called the General Assembly, in which, as in all the inferior councils, lay members sit, as well as clergymen. Two years 1580. after the General Assembly was thus invested with supreme ecclesiastical power, it abolished the office of Bishop by a unanimous vote. The controversy was not over; but to follow it does not belong to the purposes of this work. The result of an attempt of King Charles to revive episcopacy in his Northern kingdom has

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