thereby, and whilk way wud be best to tak to proceed against him, if he be proved to be sic an incendiary, and that will clip his wings from soaring to the prejudice of our cause. Now you may ken that by our law in Scotland we clepe him an incendiary wha kindleth coals of contention, and raises differences in the state to the public damage, and he is tanquam publicus hostis patria. Whether your law be the same or not, you ken best wha are mickle learned therein: and, therefore, with the favour of his excellency we desire your judgments in these points.” *

Whitelock and Maynard were men of whom Lord Clarendon, who was intimate with them before the rebellion, has said, that "though they bowed their knees to Baal, and so swerved from their allegiance, it was with less rancour and malice than other men. They never led, but followed, and were rather carried away with the torrent than swam with the stream, and failed through those infirmities which less than a general defection and a prosperous rebellion could never have discovered." Such men were not likely to advise bold measures, in which they might be called upon to bear a part. They admitted the meaning of the word incendiary as defined by the Scotch chancellor, and as it stood in the Covenant; but they required proofs of particular words or actions tending to kindle the fire of contention: they themselves had heard of none, and till the Scotch commissioners could collect such, they were of opinion that the business had better be deferred. And they spoke of the influence and favour which the person in question possessed. "I take Lieutenant General Cromwell," said Whitelock, "to be a gentleman of quick and subtle parts, and one who hath, especially of late, gained no small interest in the House of Commons; nor is he wanting of friends in the House of Peers, nor of abili ties in himself to manage his own part or defence to the best advantage."† Hollis, Stapleton, and some others, related certain acts and sayings of Cromwell which they considered such proofs as the law required, and they were for proceeding boldly with the design. But the Scotch, who, at that time, had less at stake than the leaders of the English Presbyterians, chose the wary part; and Essex was always incapable of doing either good or evil, except as a tool in the hands of others.

[* Whitelock, p. 116, ed. 1732.] [t Whitelock, p. 117, ed. 1732.]

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Cromwell was too able a politician not to have agents at all times in the enemy's quarters. Some who were present at this meeting were false brethren." Whitelock and Maynard were liked by him the better for the opinion they had given; the attack which they had averted might easily have put an end to his career of advancement: a sense of the danger which he had escaped quickened his own measures, and with the co-operation of his friends, and others with whom he then acted, the Selfdenying Ordinance, was brought forward, an act which may justly be considered as the master-piece of his hypocritical policy. To effect this the alarm was first sounded by the "drum ecclesiastic;" the pulpits were manned on one of the appointed fast days, and the topic which the London preachers everywhere insisted on, was the reproach to which parliament was liable for the great emoluments which its members secured to themselves by the civil or military offices which they held; the necessity of removing this reproach, and of praying that God would take his own work into his own hand, and inspire other instruments to perfect what was begun, if those he had already employed were not worthy to bring so glorious a design to a conclusion. liament met the next day, and Sir Harry Vane (who, though a thorough fanatic in his notions, could not have acted more hypocritically if he had been pure knave) told them that if ever God had appeared to them, it was in the exercise of yesterday; he was credibly informed that the same lamentations and discourses as the godly preachers had made before them, had been made in all other churches; and this could only have proceeded from the immediate Spirit of God. He then offered to resign an office which he himself held. Cromwell took up the strain; desired that he might lay down his commission, enlarged upon the vices which were got into the army, "the profaneness and impiety, and absence of all religion, drinking, gaming, and all manner of licence and laziness." Till the whole army were new modelled, he said, and governed under a stricter discipline, they must not expect any notable success; and he desired the parliament not to be terrified with an imagination that if the highest offices were vacant, they should not be able to fill them with fit men, for, besides that it was not good to put so much trust in any arm of flesh as to think such a cause depended upon any one man, he upon himself to assure them they had officers in their army

took

who were fit to be generals in any enterprise in Christendom. The Self-denying Ordinance* was brought in, and after long debates, and some contests between the two Houses, it was carried. Essex was laid aside to reflect at leisure upon the irreparable evils which, through his agency, had been brought upon the kingdom, and Sir Thomas Fairfax was appointed general in his stead.

Few men have ever possessed in such perfection as Cromwell the art of rendering others subservient to purposes which they abhorred, and of making individuals of the most opposite characters, views, and principles co-operate in a design which they would all have opposed if they had perceived it. This rare dissembler availed himself at the same time of the sensual and profligate unbeliever, the austere sectarian, and the fierce enthusiast; and played his master-game at once with Vane and Fairfax, though the former had the craft of the serpent, and the latter

* Mr. Oliver Cromwell endeavours to refute Lord Clarendon's account of the origin of this Ordinance. His arguments are, that in Cromwell's speech as given by Rushworth there is no allusion to the fast sermons of the preceding day, and that in fact the fast was not appointed till after the Ordinance was past. That this gentleman should on all occasions be desirous of exculpating and vindicating his celebrated ancestor, is to be expected; there are cases in which erroneous opinions have their root in such good and noble feelings, that he who would eradicate them must profess a sterner philosophy than a good man would willingly adopt. In the present instance it has been overlooked by Mr. Cromwell, that the fast of which he speaks was ordered to implore a blessing on the intended new model of the army, after the ordinance was past; and that that of which Clarendon speaks was appointed to "seek God and desire his assistance to lead them out of the perplexities they were in." A punster of that age said that Fast days were properly so called because they came so fast, there were frequently three or four in a mouth. He has also failed to observe that the direct allusion to the preceding fast was made not by Cromwell, but by Sir Harry Vane. And when he censures Lord Clarendon for "taking upon himself to determine the motives of those who brought about that Ordinance," he forgets that the same motives are hinted at, not obscurely, by Rushworth, and directly stated by Whitelock, upon the avowal of some of the parties themselves. "Some of them," he says, "confess that this was their design; and it was apparent in itself, and the reason of their doing this was to make way for others, and because they were jealous that the Lord General was too much a favourer of peace, and that he would be too strong a supporter of monarchy and of nobility and other old constitu tions, which they had a mind to alter." The only apparent error which Mr. Cromwell has pointed out in Lord Clarendon's statement is his saying that Whitelock voted for the Ordinance, Whitelock having inserted in his Memorials his speech against that measure. But it is very probable that he who opposed the Ordinance in December when it was brought forward, might have assented to it three months afterwards for the reason assigned by Clarendon, "that there would be a general dissatisfaction among the people of London if it were rejected."

the simplicity of the dove, however unlike that bird in other respects. When Fairfax looked back upon his exploits, he rightly accounted them as his greatest misfortunes, and desired no other memorial of them than the Act of Oblivion: but he well knew that errors like his are not to be forgotten-that they are to be recorded as a warning for others; and the meagre memorial which he left of his own actions is not so valuable for anything as for the expression of that feeling, wishing that he had died before he accepted the command after the Self-denying Ordinance was passed. "By votes of the two houses of parliament," he says, "I was nominated, though most unfit, and so far from desiring it, that had not so great an authority (which was then unseparated from the royal interest) commanded my obedience, and had I not been urged by the persuasion of my nearest friends, I should have refused so great a charge. But whether it was from a natural facility in me that betrayed my modesty, or the powerful hand of God, which all things must obey, I was induced to receive the command,―though not fully recovered from a dangerous wound which I had received a little before, and which I believe, without the miraculous hand of God, had proved mortal. But here, alas! when I bring to mind the sad consequences that crafty and designing men have brought to pass since those first innocent undertakings, I am ready to let go that confidence I once had with God, when I could say with Job, 'till I die I will not remove my integrity from me, nor shall my heart reproach me so long as I live.' But I am now more fit to take up his complaint, and say, 'why did I not die?' Why did I not give up the ghost when my life was on the confines of the grave?" Fairfax was a good soldier, but he had no other talents. It is saying little for him that he meant well, seeing he was so easily persuaded not only to permit wicked actions to be done, but to commit them himself. His understanding was so dull, that even in this passage he speaks of the parliament as not being at that time separated from the interests of the King; and his feelings were so obtuse, that even when he penned this memorial he felt no remorse for the execution of Lucas, and Lisle, and the excellent Lord Capel, whose blood was upon his head, but justified what he had done as according to his commission and the trust reposed in him!

Such a man was easily induced to request that the Ordinance

might be dispensed with in Cromwell's behalf, first for a limited time and then indefinitely, to act under him as commander of the horse. They crippled the royal forces in the west, where so much zeal and heroic virtue had successfully been displayed on the King's side, but where everything now went to ruin under the profligate misconduct of Goring, a general who, notwithstanding his unquestionable courage and military talents, ought to have been considered as disqualified for any trust by his vices. Ere long they were ordered to the North, where Charles had struck a great blow by the taking of Leicester [May, 1645], and where his fortunes might still have been retrieved had it not been for the unsteadiness and irresolution of those about him, and that unhappy diffidence of himself which made him so often act against his own judgment in deference to others.

With shaking thoughts no hands can draw aright!

After some injudicious movements, the effect of bad information and vacillating councils, the King met the enemy at Naseby [14th June, 1645]. All those accidents upon which so much depends in war were against him; his erroneous information continued till the very hour of the action, so that the good order in which his army had been drawn up was broken, and the advantageous position which they had occupied abandoned; in the action itself the same kind of misconduct, which had proved so disastrous at Marston Moor, was committed, with consequences still more fatal. Prince Rupert in time of action always forgot the duty of a general, suffering himself to be carried away by mere animal courage; no experience, however dearly bought, was sufficient to cure him of this fault. His charge, as usual, was irresistible; but having broken and routed that wing of the enemy which was opposed to him, he pursued them as if the victory were secure. In this charge Ireton was wounded, thrown from his horse, and taken. The day was won by Cromwell, whose name is not mentioned by Ludlow in his account of the battle! * An unaccountable incident contributed to, and perhaps mainly occasioned its loss. Just as the King, at the head of his reserve, was about to charge Cromwell's horse, the Earl of Carnewarth suddenly seized his bridle, exclaiming, with "two or three full-mouthed Scottish oaths,Will you go upon your death in an instant ?" * A cry ran through [* Ludlow's Memoirs, p. 65, ed. 1771.] [† Clar. Hist. vol. v. p. 185, ed. 1826.]