The king was warned as well as the people, and he knew that his project of waging war would not take his enemies unawares. Away from London, where at every moment he had suffered humiliations and defeats, he no longer came into contact with any but his servants, faithful, and often confident of success. With the influence which they enjoyed in their counties his cavaliers found once more their joyful arrogance and valiant ardor. On all sides Charles was urged to declare war, and small isolated enterprises formed a prelude to hostilities. Two hundred cavaliers, commanded by Lunsford, had already repaired to Kingston, near London, the depot of the warehouses of the county; but Parliament adopted its measures, and Lunsford, with his cavaliers, proceeded towards Windsor, whither the king had transported himself. He did not reckon upon staying there long; the queen was secretly preparing to depart, carrying off the crown jewels, in order to make purchases of arms and supplies in Holland. Under the pretext of conducting to the Prince of Orange, the little Princess Henrietta Maria, whom he had married six months before, she was also to negotiate with the sovereigns of the Continent, from whom assistance might be hoped for. It was at York that the king reckoned upon establishing his quarters while awaiting succor. In order to veil his designs, he invited the Houses to make a summary of their grievances, promising to set them right immediately and thus put an end to their discussions.
The Upper House received the message with joy. Even among the popular lords, many were afraid of the struggle which was only at its beginning, and which they wished to see ended. They immediately proposed for the assent of the Commons some hasty thanks to the king; but the Lower House had no confidence in royal promises; it demanded that the king should first consent to consign the command of the Tower, the strongholds, and the soldiery to men enjoying the confidence of Parliament. The Lords rejected this amendment, but thirty-two votes among them had supported it, and the Commons presented their petition alone. As regards the Tower and the fortresses, the king absolutely refused; as regarded the soldiery, his reply was evasive and vague; he wished to gain time.
The Commons, however, knew that they had no time to lose, and the leaders excited among the people a new and keen emotion. They were easily aroused to insurrection; from all counties, from all classes, merchants, artisans, and even women, came numberless petitions, demanding reform of the Church, the punishment of Papists, the repression of malevolents. The multitude stopped at the gate of Westminster. "The Upper House impedes everything," it was said. "We have never doubted the House of Commons," cried the workmen; "but let them give us the names of those who prevent harmony between the good Lords and Commons, and we will see to it." Fear began to overcome the timid; the popular Lords more and more took up the cause of the Lower House. "Whoever refuses to join the Commons in the matter of the soldiery is an enemy of the state," said the Earl of Northumberland. Some few Lords withdrew, others altered their minds, and the bill regarding the soldiery, as well as that for the exclusion of the bishops, was at length voted by the two Houses. Once more the Commons triumphed.
Charles now announced to Parliament the approaching departure of the queen, and, to soften the irritation which he dreaded, he officially abandoned the prosecution of the five members, and nominated as governor of the Tower Sir John Conyers, who had been designated by the Commons; but when the bill for the exclusion of the bishops was presented to him, he was agitated and perplexed. His conscience opposed the acceptance. His best advisers, with the exception of Hyde, urged him to consent to it. The ordinance respecting the soldiery, which the leaders held in reserve, was more important in their eyes, for it completely disarmed the king. He could not refuse everything; the bishops were vanquished and in prison. … The king continued to hesitate; the queen intervened; she did not trouble herself in any way concerning the bishops, and feared that the House might oppose her departure. She supplicated, wept, flew into a passion, and, as usual, the king yielded, sorrowfully, regretfully, but he authorized commissioners to sign in his name, and set out to accompany his wife as far as Dover, where she was to embark.
The Commons were of the same opinion as Colepepper, and made a stand at the question of the soldiery even more than at that of the bishops. They followed the king with their messages as far as Dover, and on his return, having insisted upon a prompt sanction of the ordinance which they sent him, the king replied vaguely, but ill-humoredly, being exasperated by the persistent distrust of the Commons, as though his concessions had been sincere. On arriving at Greenwich, he there found his son, the Prince of Wales, whom the Marquis of Hertford, his tutor, had brought, notwithstanding the prohibition of the House. Being reassured as to the fate of his wife and children, he at length replied to Parliament, consenting to entrust the soldiery to the commanders who were designated, except in large towns, but preserving the right of dismissing them. He thereupon set out for York.
The Houses received the reply of the king as a formal refusal. At Theobalds, and at Newark, fresh messages reached him, haughty at first, then marked by a certain emotion, betraying itself in spite of the firmness of the language. The king was implored to return to London, and to come to an understanding with his people. Upon the brink of an unknown future, dark and troublous, all hesitated and reciprocally endeavored each to influence the other. The negotiations came to no issue, and they were carried on without hope of arriving at any result. Negotiations, however, continued. It was on behalf of the public, of the whole nation, rather than of an immediate and present adversary that the opposition contended. It was in the name of the liberties of old England, of the traditional rights of the people, invaded by royal tyranny, that the resistance of Parliament had begun; it was now in the name of the traditional rights of the crown, attacked by the innovations of Parliament, that the royalist party, every day stronger and more ardent, defended their cause. The ardor of men's minds was immense; the movement universal, strange, irregular. In London, in York, in all the great towns of the kingdom, pamphlets, periodicals, irregular journals increased in numbers, and were circulated in all directions. Amidst this outburst of views of all parties, and in the face of an appeal of so novel a kind, to the opinion of the people—even while the principle of national sovereignty in opposition to the divine right of kings had taken possession of all minds and was the foundation of all proceedings—the statutes, traditions, customs, were incessantly invoked as the only legitimate tests of the discussion. Revolution was everywhere in progress, though no one dared to say so, or even avow it to himself.
The situation became day by day more violent and more strained. A great number of members of Parliament had left London, many had joined the king at York. The Houses in their turn entered upon the path of tyranny. Lord Herbert and Sir Ralph Hopton, having raised their voices in favor of the king, one was placed in the Tower, the other censured and threatened; the royalist petitions were suppressed. Cromwell, as yet not very conspicuous in the House, but more involved than any other in the plots of the revolution, brought special ability to bear upon tracing out and denouncing the royalist conspiracies.
An unexpected incident widened irreparably the abyss which was opening up between the two parties: the king, on the 23d of April, asked Sir John Hotham, governor of Hull, to resign the town to him. Already the Duke of York and the Prince Palatine had entered it under the pretext of spending a day there. Already the mayor and some citizens were marching towards the gates, to open them to his Majesty, who was arriving at the foot of the ramparts. Hotham ordered them to return to their homes, and he appeared upon the wall, surrounded by his officers. The king summoned him to open the gates. Sir John fell upon his knees, apologizing for his resistance. He had, he said, taken an oath to Parliament. "Kill him! kill the traitor!" exclaimed the cavaliers who surrounded the king; "cast him down!" But the officers of Sir John were more resolute than he. The king was compelled to withdraw, and on the same day he addressed a message to Parliament, asking justice for such an offense.
Parliament approved of the act of its governor in all respects, saying that the strongholds and arsenals had been formerly confided to the king for the safety of the kingdom, and that the same reason might now command the Houses to seize them. This was a declaration of war. Thirty-two Lords and sixty-five members of the Commons, Mr. Hyde among others, set out for York. The Chancellor caused the great seal to be given over to the king, and made his escape on the morrow. Each party was about to make the last effort for sustaining the struggle. None foresaw how far it was to go, nor what misfortunes and crimes were to signalize the civil war which was now about to commence.
War was resolved upon by the Parliamentary leaders as well as by the king. Preparations were being made with ardor on both sides; but all official relations were not yet broken off between the monarch and his subjects. The Houses, however, now negotiated with Charles I. on the footing of one power with another. They sent to York, as their permanent ambassadors at the court of the king, a committee of rich and consequential men well known in the northern provinces, commissioned to render an account to Parliament of all that took place under their eyes. The situation was difficult and unpleasant. The commissioners maintained their ground with firmness and resolution.
Even at York, in the presence of the king, the resistance of the country made itself felt. Charles had been desirous of raising a guard, and had applied to the gentry of the neighborhood; they had assembled in great numbers, but when it was desired to inscribe their names, fifty refused to enroll themselves. At their head was Sir Thomas Fairfax, young as yet, but already a resolute and sincere patriot. The freeholders and farmers claimed the right of discussing the affairs of the country with the gentlemen. The king convoked a great assemblage upon Heyworth Moor; it was numerous and animated, more than forty thousand men had hastened thither, but soon intelligence reached the king that a petition was being circulated in the ranks, imploring his Majesty to abandon all thoughts of war and come to an agreement with Parliament. Charles would not receive the petition. He hastened to say a few hesitating words, and was withdrawing precipitately, when young Fairfax, suddenly kneeling before his horse, deposited the document upon the pommel of his saddle. The king urged his steed violently forward, and ran against the bold petitioner without compelling him to give way.
The royal partisans who arrived from London having officially severed their connection with Parliament, were struck painfully with the contrast which they observed between the bold efficiency of the Parliamentary government and the ostentatious feebleness which reigned around the king. Charles was poor. He had no money and had appealed to the zeal of his servants; but the resources which reached him were inconsiderable, and the sums which the queen enabled him to keep out of the sale of the crown jewels scarcely sufficed for daily wants. Parliament had also appealed to the popular patriotism. A loan was announced, and the sums received in ten days, the plate, the jewels offered to the public service, so greatly exceeded the expectations, that the poor women who brought their wedding-rings or the gold pins out of their hair, often waited for a long time until time was found for receiving them. Squadrons of cavalry began to be formed.
The majority of Parliament, delivered from the royalist members who had joined the king at York, voted nineteen propositions of reconciliation, which were sent to Charles as a supreme ultimatum. It was the complete subjugation of the crown to Parliament. Even as regarded the education and marriage of the children of the king, nothing was henceforth to be decided without the formal approbation of the Houses. Upon reading these propositions, the king's countenance flushed deeply. "Should I grant these demands," he said, "I may be waited on bareheaded, I may have my hand kissed; the title of Majesty may be continued to me, and the king's authority signified by both Houses may still be the style of your commands; I may have swords and maces carried before me, and please myself with the sight of a crown and sceptre (though even these twigs would not long flourish when the block upon which they grew was dead), but as to true and real power, I should remain but the outside, but the picture, but the sign of a king." And he broke off the negotiation.
Parliament had only waited for this. Civil war was put to the vote and immediately decided on. The Houses seized upon all the public revenues for their benefit; the counties had orders to hold themselves ready at the first signal. The Earl of Essex was nominated commander of the army of Parliament, and the most illustrious men of the popular party, Lord Kimbolton, Lord Brook, Hampden, Hollis, Cromwell, received command of regiments.
All was ready in London, as in York. The assemblages of the partisans of the king or Parliament, the tours of the king in the counties of the north to encourage his friends or repress their violence, the gentlemen raising bodies of troops on their estates, the soldiery forming in the name of Parliament, the roads covered with armed travelers, everything bore the impress of hostilities; but both parties hesitated to declare war, ready as they were to risk all to maintain their rights, both trembled before the responsibility of the future. The king at length took his resolve. On the 23d of August, he caused the royal standard to be set up at Nottingham. At six o'clock in the evening a small body of eight hundred horse surrounded Charles who caused his proclamation to be read by a herald. The standard bore the device: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." It was fixed at the summit of a tower. On the morrow the wind had blown it down. When it was desired to plant it in the ground in the level country, there was nothing to be found but rock, and it was necessary to scoop out a hole with daggers, and then to support by hand the tottering standard. All present were smitten with a deep depression. "What dark forebodings!" it was said.
The king awaited the result of his appeal, but the people did not rise. The army of Parliament was being formed at Northampton. "If they wish to attempt a bold stroke," said Sir Jacob Astley, major-general of the royal troops, "I do not answer for it but the king might be carried off from his bed." Charles was urged to open negotiations again. He yielded with reluctance, and sent to London four deputies who returned without success. A few days later, the king refused in his turn to receive a petition with which the commissioners of Parliament accompanying the Earl of Essex, were entrusted. It implored Charles to return to London, and, upon his refusal, it announced the intention to follow him everywhere, and "by battle or other means, to take away his Majesty, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York, his two sons, from their perfidious councillors, and to bring them back to Parliament."
The king was then at Shrewsbury, more confident and better served. He had received numerous reinforcements, and, to equip them, the arms of the soldiery of several counties had been taken by force; the convoys intended for Ireland had been stopped. The Catholics sent money; some of them had even come down from London. The king had about twelve thousand men. At the head of his cavalry, his nephew, Prince Rupert, son of his sister, had already made himself dreaded by his daring and detested for his habit of pillage and his cruelty. The Earl of Essex appeared disposed to adhere to the terms of the petition of Parliament and content himself with following the king everywhere. Twenty thousand men marched under the orange banners of his house; but he had been for three weeks at Worcester without doing anything when Charles, emboldened by this inaction, took the course of marching upon London, in order to end the war at one stroke. Essex thereupon went back to defend Parliament.
The agitation was great in London, and fear soon gave way to anger. Parliament took defensive measures against the king, and redoubled its severity towards the malevolents. All the population proceeded to the hurriedly constructed fortifications. Barricades were raised in the streets. Night and day the assault was expected, when, on the 24th of October, in the morning, the rumor of a great battle was suddenly spread throughout the city. Contradictory and confused rumors were abroad, some announcing the complete victory of the king, others that of Essex. Parliament caused the shops to be closed, armed the soldiery, and required of each of its members a declaration of firm adhesion to the parliamentary general as well as to his cause. Upon the morrow only, Lord Wharton and Mr. Strode arrived in London with the official news of the battle which had taken place at Edgehill, in Warwickshire.
It was the Earl of Essex who commenced the struggle. The king was about to give the same order; he had been urged to try the fortune of war. Warwickshire was so hostile to his cause that the farriers fled, to avoid shoeing the horses of his troops. The cavalry of Parliament had been broken through by the onslaught of Prince Rupert, who had thereupon pursued the fugitives. Being arrested, however, by the regiment of Hampden, who arrived late with the artillery, the prince, compelled to retreat, had found the royal infantry destroyed, the Earl of Lindsay, generalissimo, mortally wounded and a prisoner, and the royal standard in the hands of the Parliamentarians. Charles, aided by his nephew, had desired to attempt a fresh charge; but the soldiers and horses were weary, and it was necessary to abandon the idea. Both armies encamped upon the battle-field. In the morning it was asked in the two camps whether the action would be recommenced. The king soon assured himself that the step was impossible. A great number of volunteers had already dispersed, a third of the infantry failed him. On the side of the Parliamentarians, the experienced soldiers, formed in the wars on the Continent, contested the opinion of Hampden and Hollis, who desired to give battle again. The Earl of Essex fell back upon Warwick, and the king removed his headquarters to Oxford, of all the great towns of the kingdom the most devoted to his cause. The two armies both claimed the victory and celebrated thanksgivings. London and Parliament found themselves delivered from the attack which they dreaded, but the king had cause to congratulate himself upon the state of his affairs. Many towns of which the Parliamentarians thought themselves assured had opened their gates to the royal troops. The king therefore came and established himself at Reading. Prince Rupert carried on, even in the environs of London, his pillaging incursions. The Houses became uneasy. Essex was told to draw nearer. When he arrived the king was at Colebrook, fifteen miles from London; there were despatched to him five deputies, who were well received. Upon their advice, Sir Peter Killigrew set out to negotiate for an armistice. But, while negotiating, the king continued to advance. He fell unexpectedly upon the quarters of Hollis, situated at Brentford, seven miles from the capital. Hollis valiantly resisted; the regiments of Hampden and Lord Brook, encamped in the environs, had time to arrive, and alone bore, for some hours, the whole brunt of the attack of the royal army. At the first sound of the cannon, Essex, who sat in the House, mounted his horse, gathered together all that he was able, and set out to succor his troops. The action had ceased when he arrived. The king occupied Brentford; but the fight had been animated, and he did not appear to be in haste to press forward.
London was equally exasperated and alarmed. It was at the moment when he had shown himself disposed to negotiate that the king had attempted a surprise. He wished (it was said) to take the city by storm and to deliver it up to pillage. Parliament took advantage of the terror and anger of the people. "Enroll," it was said to the apprentices, "and the time of your service shall reckon in your apprenticeship." The city supplied four thousand men taken from its trainbands and commanded by Skippon. "Come, my children, let us pray with all our heart, and fight with all our heart," he said, placing himself at the head of his troops; "remember that this is the cause of God, and He will bless you." Two days after the fight at Brentford, Essex reviewed twenty-four thousand men at Turnham Green, about a mile from the advanced posts of the royal forces.
The two armies thus confronted each other, but Essex still hesitated to assume the offensive. The Parliamentary officers urged him to proceed to the front. "Never," they said, "will the people be found so firmly assured and imperiously compelled to conquer." The general did not count much upon the people; he preferred to have time to make soldiers of them; he established himself everywhere upon the defensive, and the king retired to Oxford, where he took up his winter quarters.
Essex was not alone in his feelings of repugnance and hesitation. The popular party no longer marched forward with one same mind and one firm will as when it was a question of political reforms. Peace had numerous partisans who spoke more loudly every day. Strife was in the midst of Parliament, and this constant effort over itself deprived it of the leisure and energy necessary for actively urging forward the war. The greater part of the winter was passed without a single pitched battle.
The war continued meanwhile to be irregular and spontaneous. Great noblemen or plain gentlemen, confederations of towns and counties raised at their expense small corps, asked for a commission from king or Parliament, and warred against each other with ardor, but without violence and without cruelty, as men of a common origin, often of the same family, who did not wish to break off all amicable relations forever. Blood flowed and the country already suffered, but the bitterness of the antagonistic passions had not yet taken possession of the combatants. In the eastern, central, and southeastern counties, the most thickly peopled and the richest, the Parliamentarians were in the ascendant. The preponderance pertained to the king in the north, in the west, and in the south-west. London was surrounded by counties devoted to Parliament, which formed, as it were, a formidable girdle for it. At Oxford, the king found himself placed in an advanced post.
In the month of February (1643) the queen arrived, animated and confident. She had succeeded in interesting in the king's favor the States of Holland. The Stadtholder, her son-in-law, had helped her with all his resources. She brought four ships loaded with supplies and troops. Admiral Batten did not contrive in time to intercept the convoy which landed at Burlington. The town was immediately cannonaded. The queen saw the balls fall even in her apartment. She fled into the country and sheltered herself under a bank. Lord Newcastle went to seek her with a body of troops, to conduct her to York. She installed herself there, and a mass of Catholics soon hastened to enroll themselves under her flag. Henrietta-Maria made no haste to rejoin her husband; she liked to reign alone and to maintain with her caressing ardor the zeal of her partisans. Hamilton and Montrose came from Scotland to confer with her upon the means of attaching that kingdom to the cause of the king. Hamilton wished to win over Parliament. Montrose was desirous of making use of a corps of Irishmen under the orders of the Earl of Antrim, to subjugate and massacre the Presbyterian chiefs, rouse the highlanders, and take possession of the whole of Scotland. Intrigues with the Parliamentary commanders were carried on as much as conferences with the Royalists. Sir Hugh Cholmondeley promised to surrender Scarborough. Sir John Hotham appeared disposed to open the gates of Hull to the queen. Parliament began to grow uneasy.
The friends of peace took advantage of this moment to propose fresh negotiations. "It has been said in this House," said Sir Benjamin Rudyard, "that we were bound in conscience to finish the shedding of innocent blood; but who shall answer for all the innocent blood which is about to flow if we do not march to peace by the means of a prompt treaty?" His motion, which involved nothing less than the disbandment of the two armies as a preliminary of the negotiations, was rejected; but it was agreed to send to Oxford five commissioners entrusted to discuss, for twenty days at first, a suspension of arms, then a treaty. The committee, at the head of which was the Earl of Northumberland, set out from London on the 20th of March.
The king received the commissioners well, and their relations with the court were polite and courteous. The Royalists were magnificently treated at the residence of the Earl of Northumberland, who had caused his household to follow him; but when the negotiations were begun ill-feeling reappeared in full force. Neither the king nor Parliament had abated any of the conditions resolutely rejected before the war. One evening the emissaries of Parliament believed they had gained something; on the morrow morning, the written reply of Charles did not resemble his words of the previous day; his councillors and the emissaries of the queen had induced him to alter his resolve. Secret and personal intrigues did not succeed better than official negotiations. The king had promised his wife never to make peace without her approbation, and she angrily wrote to him to dissuade him from it. These manœuvres corresponded with the secret wishes of the king, who did not desire peace. He ended by offering to the negotiators to return to the Houses, if the latter were willing to transport the seat of Parliament at least twenty miles from London. Upon this message the Houses suddenly recalled their commissioners, and, by an order so pressing that they deemed themselves compelled to set out on the same day (April 15th), although it was late, and their travelling coaches were not ready.
On the same day the Earl of Essex took the field again. Hampden would have preferred that a hasty march should be made to Oxford, there to besiege the king. The earl refused this, even when he had taken Reading, an indispensable town for the safety of Parliament. Complaints were uttered concerning his delay and hesitation. The most violent among the leaders of the Commons spoke even of appointing a successor. Hampden, Fairfax, Lord Manchester, Sir William Waller, had obtained successes and rendered great services. Colonel Cromwell, already famous for his bold strokes, as fortunate as they were skillful, had done more still. He was lamenting one day with Hampden the inferiority of the Parliamentary cavalry, constantly defeated in the little engagements which had taken place with the cavaliers. "What would you?" said Cromwell; "your troops are most of them old, decayed serving-men and tapsters. Do you think that the spirits of such base and mean fellows will be ever able to encounter gentlemen that have honor and courage and resolution in them? I will raise men who have the fear of God before them, and I warrant you they will not be beaten." The levies of volunteers which he had formed, fanatical, proud, and severe of manner, engaged in the war for conscience sake, and under the orders of Cromwell from confidence in him. They already composed, at the opening of the campaign of 1643, a body of a thousand men, the germ and nucleus of the famous "Ironsides."
The bitter speeches against Essex came to no result. Complaints were made, but there was a disinclination to separate from him. The ill-will of the leaders, however, was manifested by the destitution in which the army was left, through the insufficiency of the resources and the irregularity of its pay. A royalist plot, upon the point of bursting forth in the city, was discovered: two of the conspirators only, Challoner and Tompkins, rich citizens of London, suffered the extreme penalty. Edmund Waller, a member of the House of Commons and already a famous poet, repurchased his life with cowardly revelations. Many important men were compromised, and while Parliament perceived that conspiracy was going on at its doors against its safety, successive disasters overtook its arms and placed its cause in peril.
A great loss—that of Hampden—was the signal for these reverses. A trifling encounter of cavalry had taken place on the 18th of June, in the plain of Chalgrave, a few leagues from Oxford. Prince Rupert defeated the Parliamentarians. Hampden was there. "I saw him," said a prisoner, "go away, contrary to his custom, from the field of battle before the end of the action. His head was bent low, his hands rested upon the neck of his horse; without doubt he is wounded." The people of Oxford were agitated, almost fearing to rejoice. The king sent one of his physicians, a country neighbor of Hampden, to know whether he did not want assistance. A thought of conciliation towards this powerful adversary had crossed the mind of Charles. Doctor Giles found Hampden dying: a bullet had shattered his shoulder. He was told, however, who had sent to enquire after him, and with what intention. A violent agitation seized the wounded man. He wished to speak, but death had already frozen his tongue; he expired a few instants afterwards. When he was no longer to be feared, the people rejoiced in Oxford; while in London, and in nearly all the kingdom, the grief was as violent as it was profound.
"Never had man inspired so much confidence in a people. Whoever belonged to the national party, no matter in what degree or for what motives, counted upon Hampden for the success of his wishes. The more moderate believed in his wisdom, the more passionate in his patriotic devotion, the more honest in his uprightness, the more intriguing in his skill. Prudent and reserved, while ready to brave all perils, he who had never yet been wanting suddenly disappointed all hopes. A marvellous good fortune, which forever placed his name in the high position assigned to it by the expectation of his contemporaries, and perhaps saved his virtue as well as his glory, from the rocks whereon revolutions impel and shatter their noblest favorites!"
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Death of Hampden.
The people wept; they soon began to tremble. Everywhere the Parliamentary generals were beaten by the royalist chiefs. The enemies of Essex, by allowing his army to suffer, had reckoned upon the successes of his rivals. Fairfax had been beaten on the 30th of June at Atherton Moor. Sir John Hotham was upon the point of surrendering Hull to the queen. Lord Willoughby could no longer defend Lincolnshire against Lord Newcastle. The confederation of the eastern states, the great bulwark of Parliament, seemed about to be broken up. In Cornwall, where the command was in the hands of the most faithful and best servants of the king, the Marquis of Hertford, Sir Bevil Grenville, Sir Ralph Hopton, the peasants hereditarily attached to their lords had followed them to the war, as in France the Vendéans were to follow the nobles a hundred and fifty years later. Like them they seized upon the batteries, assaulting them with their staves. Sir William Waller there lost two battles in one week. Everywhere the cities opened their gates to the king. Bristol, the second stronghold in the kingdom, surrendered at the first attack. The queen had rejoined the king, bringing three thousand men and some cannon, upon that same plain of Keynton, where, in the preceding year, the two parties had for the first time come to blows. Charles and his wife returned to Oxford in triumph, and Sir William Waller came back to London without troops.
Amidst so many disasters, Essex had not stirred, imputing his inaction to those very persons who reproached him with it. He caused the Upper House to be advised to sue for peace from the king. "If this proceeding does not bring about a treaty," he said, in conclusion, "it will be necessary, I think, to beg his Majesty to go away from this scene of slaughter, and then, in one day, the two armies must settle the dispute." A few days earlier the overtures of Essex might, perhaps, have been well received; but the king had recently declared officially that the individuals still assembled at Westminster, after the retirement of so many members, no longer formed two real Houses, that they had lost all legal existence, and no longer deserved the name of Parliament. He forbade all his subjects to obey this set of traitors and sedition-mongers. Parliament, thus attacked, voted the formation of a committee entrusted to ask assistance of the Scots, and the House of Lords declared that it would not address any proposal for peace to the king until he should have revoked his proclamation against the legality of Parliament.
It was not merely votes and declarations that were relied upon. The army of Essex received reinforcements and supplies; the formation of a new army began in earnest in the eastern counties; it was to be placed under the command of Lord Manchester, with Cromwell as lieutenant-general. In Hull, Lord Fairfax succeeded Sir John Hotham, arrested by order of the Commons before he had been able to accomplish his treason. Religious services increased in London. The wives and mothers of the combatants filled the churches; every morning, at beat of drum, a crowd of citizens, men and women, rich and poor, issued forth in a mass to work at the fortifications.
The effort was great and general, but it was not more than necessity demanded; for the successes of the king continued, and the desire for peace began to spring up again in the minds of the majority of the Lords, with the gleam of hope revealed by a fresh proclamation of the king, more skillful and more agreeable than the preceding one. On the 5th of August the Upper House transmitted to the Commons pacific proposals which they had voted on the previous day, declaring in a sufficiently haughty tone that it was time to put an end to the calamities of the country. The leaders of the Commons grew alarmed. Peace, thus demanded, was a defeat. They had not been able to prevent the House from taking into consideration the proposals of the Lords. They called the people to their assistance; a riotous assemblage demanded with loud cries the continuation of the hostilities. The vote was doubtful in the Commons; a first scrutiny gave the majority to the partisans of peace. The party of war demanded a fresh examination; they carried this proposal at length, but with a majority of seven votes only. On the morrow, a crowd of women who besieged the gates of Westminster, demanding peace, could only be dispersed by a charge of cavalry; two corpses remained upon the ground.
The triumph of the popular leaders was complete, but it was stained with those frauds and acts of violence with which they had but recently so bitterly reproached the king. Six members of the Upper House quitted London, to repair to the court of Charles. Northumberland retired to his castle. The Commons were soon about to find themselves alone; they were astonished and uneasy, for the most impetuous sectaries and the most violent demagogues began to give themselves free play. "If the king will not lend himself to every demand," wrote a pamphleteer, "he must be extirpated, he and his race, and the crown must be entrusted to some one else." Henry Martyn supported the pamphlet, attacked before the House. "Without doubt," he said, "the ruin of a single family is better than that of many." "I demand," exclaimed Sir Nevil Poole, "that Mr. Martyn be summoned to say of what family he speaks." "Of the king and his children," replied Martyn, without hesitating. The most violent spirits in the House had not yet gone to the length of proclaiming their hopes aloud. Martyn was suffered to be placed in the Tower without resistance, and was excluded from Parliament.
The danger, however, became too pressing to admit of division among the party. The king laid siege to Gloucester, the only stronghold which still arrested him in his march upon London, or impeded the free communication of the royal armies. Common sense gained the ascendant over party hatreds. The moderate understood that before negotiating it was necessary to conquer; the fanatics recognized the truth, that to gain a victory it was for them to serve, for their rivals to command. Essex and his friends regained everywhere the authority of which they had but recently been deprived, and the more impassioned of their adversaries omitted nothing in assuring them of the confidence of Parliament and the country. The week had scarcely passed when the earl set out at the head of fourteen thousand men, to proceed by forced marches to the relief of Gloucester, which city the king had been closely blockading for a fortnight.
Charles had not found even in his most illustrious servants the intelligence and ready disinterestedness which inspired the leaders of the popular party. Lord Newcastle, victorious in Yorkshire, refused to rejoin the king under the walls of London. "As long as Hull shall not be taken," he said, "I cannot leave this part of the country." Hull was in the hands of Fairfax, and the king could not or dared not undertake to attack London unaided. He thought he had secret understandings with the town of Gloucester, and resolved to lay siege to it. A garrison of fifteen hundred men alone defended the town; but the inhabitants were devoted to Parliament, and replied to the order to surrender, "We hold this town for the service of his Majesty and his posterity. We consider ourselves obliged to obey the orders of his Majesty, as they are transmitted to us by the two Houses of Parliament; consequently with the help of God, we will guard the said town with all our might." For twenty-six days they had kept their word, when the king learnt that the Earl of Essex was approaching.
Every means, both warlike and peaceful, was tried to arrest him. Prince Rupert hastened to place himself before him with his cavalry; the king made proposals for peace to him. Essex did not fight, still pressing on his march, and he replied to Charles, "Parliament has not commissioned me to negotiate, but to deliver Gloucester. I will do it, or I will leave my body under the walls." As he deployed his army on the morrow, the 5th of September, upon the hills of Prestbury, two leagues from the besieged town, the sight of the quarters of the king in flames informed him that he had accomplished his task without striking a blow. Charles had raised the siege of Gloucester.
It was not to avoid a combat that the cavaliers had abandoned an investment of which they were weary. Gloucester being revictualled, the Earl of Essex turned back towards London; but on arriving before Newbury, on the 19th of September, he perceived that the enemy had preceded him, and that a battle was inevitable. The action began at daybreak. Valiant was the fighting upon both sides; "the Royalists therein felt the hope of redeeming a reverse which had suspended the course of their triumphs; the Parliamentarians, the desire not to lose, when so near the goal, the fruit of a triumph which had put an end to so many reverses." The soldiery of London manifested the most brilliant courage. At nightfall, both parties maintained their positions. Essex, however, had gained ground, and was preparing to resume the action at daybreak; but the enemy withdrew during the night, and the road was free. On the 22d Essex and his army arrived at Reading, henceforth sheltered from all danger.
The royal army had suffered losses which cast down the courage of the chiefs and the soldiers. More than twenty officers of distinction had fallen; among others, and first of all, Lord Falkland, the honor of the royalist party. "Still a patriot, although proscribed in London, still respected by the people, although a royal counsellor at Oxford, nothing made it incumbent on him to seek the field of battle, but he sought danger with a painful ardor. Profoundly saddened by the evils which he contemplated and those which he foresaw, ill at ease amidst a party whose successes and reverses he almost equally dreaded, his temper had become embittered, he had grown taciturn and gloomy. 'Peace! peace!' he often exclaimed amidst the conversations of his friends; then he relapsed into his despondency. On the morning of the combat he had attired himself carefully, according to his former custom, for some time abandoned, and, as he was urged to remain at his residence, 'No,' he said, 'too long has all this been breaking my heart; I hope that I shall be out of it before it is night,' and he went and joined the regiment of Lord Byron as a volunteer. He fell at the beginning of the action, being dead before his fall was noticed. His friends, Hyde especially, preserved an inconsolable remembrance of him. The courtiers learnt, without any great emotion, the death of a man who had been a stranger to them. Charles manifested decent regrets, and felt himself more at ease in council."
Joy reigned supreme in London. While Essex was re-entering the city with his triumphant troops, it became known that Vane had concluded with the Scots, under the name of "a solemn league" or "covenant," a close alliance, which was sworn to both in Edinburgh and in London. The Presbyterian leaders and people were at the summit of their wishes. Their general had conquered, and their natural allies, the Scots, were coming to their aid. They took advantage of this situation of affairs to exert their religious tyranny; the assemblage of theologians received orders to prepare a scheme of ecclesiastical government, and committees were formed to examine, in each county, the doctrine and conduct of the clericals. Those who had escaped the persecutions of Laud against the nonconformists, now succumbed to the Presbyterian inquisitions. Some few even, who had resumed possession of their livings since the fall of the episcopacy, found themselves again prosecuted. More than two thousand clergymen were expelled from their parishes, and the Anabaptists, the Brownists, and the Independents, were thrown into prisons, where their tyrants had but recently groaned with them. Archbishop Laud, forgotten for three years past in his imprisonment, was summoned to the bar of the Upper House, to reply to the accusation of the Commons, the triumphant Presbyterians bringing the weight of their vengeance and their fears to bear upon adversaries of all parties.
They hastened, for the ground trembled beneath their feet. It was too much to cope, on the one hand, with the Royalists, and on the other with the religious or political Independents, who every day became more numerous and more bold. In religious matters, the Presbyterians admitted neither discussion nor liberty. They looked upon their doctrinal and ecclesiastical system as the only law and the only government permitted and revealed by the word of God. In politics they were moderate. They liked the monarchy while fighting against the king; they respected the prerogative while laboring to subjugate the crown; and they obeyed old customs as much as new requirements, without knowing precisely whether they were proceeding by means of the reforms which they had prosecuted for three years with so much ardor. The leaders themselves came from different sides, and were not all animated by the same desires. Hesitation began to discover itself among them: Rudyard no longer appeared in Parliament, except at rare intervals. St. John and Pym treated the Independents gently; the lords quitted Westminster by degrees and withdrew to their estates, when they did not proceed to rejoin the king. On the morrow of the battle of Newbury, ten lords only sat in the Upper House; they were, for the Presbyterians, an incumbrance rather than a support; the popular movement became every day more estranged from the high aristocracy, separated from the Presbyterians by the religious fanaticism of the latter. Revolution succeeded reform.