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indifference that the Independents saw him required by the Parliamentary negotiators, not only to abjure his own Episcopal religion, but to agree to the recognition of Presbytery as the exclusive national establishment. The parties separated to make another appeal to force. They could scarcely have expected anything else, when they met. Desirable to the King as a pacification was, could he have had it on his own conditions, one of his motives. for proposing it in the existing circumstances may reasonably be supposed to have been, to throw upon his opponents the odium of obstinate rebellion; a manœuvre which it was equally to be expected that they would traverse by accepting his overture, so as to convict him of the arrogance and hypocrisy of offering inadmissible

terms.

Oliver St. John and Henry Vane were at Uxbridge, looking on; and they were not men to read without discernment the signs of the times. The Independents and their allies had had little doubt that the war was to proceed, and they had already been taking their measures accordingly. The numerical strength was even now proportionately much greater in the army than in the Assembly or the Parliament; and their wise men did not fail to perceive what a power the army was rising to be in the State, as well as that, even more than Parliament or Assembly, it was a power to be controlled and used by the intelligence and resolution of single minds. The time had given them advantages. The events of the recent campaign, the disastrous defeats dealt to the King by their friends Fairfax and Cromwell, compared with the weakness of the war against him wherever the adherents of the rival party -Essex, Waller, and Manchester- had commanded, and the alleged misconduct of the Scots at Marston-Moor, had placed them in a position to feel great confidence in themselves and in one another, and to expect to be regarded with much deference. It was through Cromwell's

influence that Lord Manchester, previously to the important movements about York, in which he acted a leading part, had been placed in command of the levies from the counties composing what was called the "Eastern Association.” But Cromwell had been displeased with the inaction of his commander after the second battle of Newbury, and in his place in Parliament expressed his dissatisfaction in terms so vehement as to fall little short of a charge of treacherous disaffection to the

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The rising party urged upon Parliament the necessity of a new organization of the troops. They insisted that the war, as it had been hitherto conducted, without zeal, without activity, without judgment, without plan,— was cruelly harassing the country and affording no promise of a speedy issue. A day of fasting was kept, to implore Divine direction as to a method of Plan for the extrication from the existing embarrassments and tion of the fears. Some of the Independent ministers, in the City and elsewhere, used the occasion to trace the existing evils to such an ambition for self-aggrandizement on the part of eminent men, as caused them to retain high places at once in the civil and the military service, to the detriment of their efficiency in the field. Whether or not there had been concert between the Independents in the pulpit and the Independents in the House of Commons, the hint was taken up in Parliament. The day after the Fast, Sir Henry Vane, in his place, extolled the frankness of the preachers, ascribing it to an operation of the spirit of God. He earnestly recommended a course of self-abnegation; and, for his own part, proposed to resign at once the office which he held of Treasurer of the Navy. Cromwell followed in the same vein; and, while he cautioned the House not "to put trust in the arm of flesh," he assured them that, if members of Parliament should resign their military commands, there would not be the difficulty

that was apprehended in supplying the vacated places by officers fully competent.1

Whatever might be provable concerning the design of this movement, no sagacity was needed to foresee its result. The high military commands would pass out of Presbyterian hands. Essex, Waller, and Manchester, the senior generals of the army, Warwick, at the head of the fleet, Massey (the hero of Gloucester), Denbigh, Brereton, and many others, who hitherto had allied the physical force of the patriots to the majority in Parliament, would furnish that important link no longer. The Presbyterians could not avow their party jealousy as the principle of their hostility to the measure. They argued against it from considerations of the ingratitude of discarding men who had rendered honest and able service; of the difficulty of supplying fitly the places they would vacate; and of the easy authority now exerted over the soldiery, as well as the confidence inspired in the State, by the rank and wealth of the men whose services would be lost.

But the reasoning on the other side was too plausible and popular to be withstood. The vote of the compact body of Independents was strengthened by the votes probably of some men whom their general argument satisfied; perhaps of some men of too much delicacy to retain a precedence which was not cordially acceded; possibly of some men who were envious of the greatness

Such is Clarendon's account (II. 434-437) of the debate and of the manner in which it arose. Godwin (History of the Commonwealth, I. 396) questions the correctness of the statement, on the ground that it was on the 11th of December (Journal of the Commons, III. 721) that an order was passed for a Fast, to be observed on the 18th, while the matter of the Self-denying Ordinance was first introduced December 9th (Ibid. 718), and it was passed by the

Commons December 19th (Ibid. 728). At that period of frequent fastings, Lord Clarendon may have confounded some voluntary solemnity observed on the 8th with that which by public authority was kept on the 18th; or he may have mistaken the debate which took place on the day of the passage of the Ordinance for a debate on its introduction. Comp. Hansard, Parliamentary History, III. 326 – 338.

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of those whom the proposed action would displace. The "Self-denying Ordinance," as it was called, was Self Denying passed by the Commons.1 It prohibited all members of either House of Parliament from holding Dec. 19. office or command, civil or military, during the war. Peers rejected it once, and then, with ill-concealed reluctance and mortification, complied; not, January. however, till the Ordinance was so modified as to deprive it of its prospective character. The Earls of Essex, Manchester, Denbigh, and Warwick, Sir William Waller, and numerous other officers of high rank, resigned, and received the thanks of Parliament for their services.

2

Sir Thomas Fairfax was appointed General-in-chief; and it was determined to consolidate the army into a force of twenty-two thousand men. If anything would have reconciled the Presbyterian party to the Self-denying Ordinance, it would have been the prospect afforded of a riddance of Cromwell, as to his military command. But, whether by arrangement or by the course of events, this was not to follow. At the time of the resignation of the other officers, he was busy in the field. Parliament sent for him; but Fairfax replied with a special request to be allowed to retain him for a little time, till some immediate exigencies should be over. Cromwell constantly rendered himself still more necessary at head-quarters, and the General was indulged in not parting with him for the rest of the campaign. The longer he served, the more difficult was it found to do without him; and the

1 While the question was pending, the Scottish Commissioners consulted Lord Essex, Whitelocke, and Maynard, respecting a motion in the House of Commons to impeach Cromwell as an "incendiary." "You ken vary weel," they said, "that Lieutenant-General Cromwell is no friend of ours..... He is not only no friend to us, and to the government of our Church, but he

VOL. II.

9

is also no well-wisher to his Excellency [Lord Essex]." (Whitelocke, Memorials, 116.)

It passed as an "Ordinance for discharging the members of both Houses from enjoying any office, military or civil." (Journal of the Lords, VII. 302; comp. Hansard, Parliamentary History, III. 354–356.)

idea of dispensing with his services soon became one which it would have seemed absurd to suggest.

For the army was to be reconstituted, and the king was to be effectually beaten, and Cromwell and his superior were well informed, and well agreed, as to the ways of doing both. They proceeded to a vigorous use of the ample powers with which the new Commander-in-chief was invested by Parliament. Old regiments were broken up, and new ones were formed; capable and energetic men, hitherto unknown except to their comrades, received promotion; dissatisfied with their altered companionship, many officers, not displaced by law, voluntarily surrendered their commissions, to be bestowed on favorers of the new order of things. Especially chaplains left an army in which they found their influence greatly impaired, if indeed they were not often wounded by slight or contradiction. Among them were many of the most eloquent Presbyterian divines, who had been impelled to the field by an earnest desire to help on the work; and their retirement withdrew an agency which had been one of the hardest for the Independent interest to make head against.

the army.

The new efficiency infused into the Parliamentary army by the recent arrangements was at once apparent. In Taunton, Colonel Blake, afterwards the famous New vigor of Admiral, was besieged by eight thousand royalists. Colonel Weldon relieved him, with a detachment of half that strength from Fairfax's army. Chester, held by Lord Byron for the King, was blockaded by Sir William Brereton. The King, with his nephews, led ten thousand men from Oxford to its relief. He took Leicester by storm; and the victory was used, as was the habit of Prince Rupert, with ferocious severity. Returning towards Oxford, the King was met at Naseby, in Northamptonshire, by Fairfax, who had moved from Naseby. Windsor with about an equal force. Fairfax

Battle of

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