The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of King George the Fifth Part 1

The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of King George the Fifth.

by John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc.

CHAPTER I.

CHARLES I.

Battle Of Edge Hill--Treaty At Oxford--Solemn Vow And Covenant--Battle Of Newbury--Solemn League And Covenant Between The English And Scottish Parliaments--Cessation Of War In Ireland-Royalist Parliament At Oxford--Propositions Of Peace--Battle Of Marston Moor--The Army Of Ess.e.x Capitulates In The West--Self-Denying Ordinance--Synod Of Divines--Directory For Public Wors.h.i.+p--Trial Of Archbishop Laud--Bill Of Attainder--His Execution.

It had been suggested to the king that, at the head of an army, he might negotiate with greater dignity and effect. From Nottingham he despatched to London the earl of Southampton, Sir John Colepepper, and William Uvedale, the bearers of a proposal, that commissioners should be appointed on both sides, with full powers to treat of an accommodation.[a] The two houses, a.s.suming a tone of conscious superiority, replied that they could receive no message from a prince who had raised his standard against his parliament, and had p.r.o.nounced their general a traitor.[b] Charles (and his condescension may be taken as a[c]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. August 25.]

[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. August 27.]

[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 4]

proof of his wish to avoid hostilities) offered to withdraw his proclamation, provided they on their part would rescind their votes against his adherents.[a] They refused: it was their right and their duty to denounce, and bring to justice, the enemies of the nation.[b] He conjured them to think of the blood that would be shed, and to remember that it would lie at their door; they retorted the charge; he was the aggressor, and his would be the guilt.[c] With this answer vanished every prospect of peace; both parties appealed to the sword; and within a few weeks the flames of civil war were lighted up in every part of the kingdom.[1]

Three-fourths of the n.o.bility and superior gentry, led by feelings of honour and grat.i.tude, or by their attachment to the church, or by a well-grounded suspicion of the designs of the leading patriots, had ranged themselves under the royal banner. Charles felt a.s.sured of victory, when he contemplated the birth, and wealth, and influence of those by whom he was surrounded; but he might have discovered much to dissipate the illusion, had he considered their habits, or been acquainted with their real, but unavowed sentiments. They were for the most part men of pleasure, fitter to grace a court than to endure the rigour of military discipline, devoid of mental energy, and likely, by their indolence and debauchery, to offer advantages to a prompt and vigilant enemy. Ambition would induce them to aspire to office, and commands and honours, to form cabals against their compet.i.tors, and to distract the attention of the monarch by their importunity or their complaints. They contained among them many who secretly disapproved of the war,

[Footnote 1: Journals, v. 327, 328, 338, 341, 358. Clarendon, ii, 8, 16.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Sept. 6.]

[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Sept. 11.]

[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 16.]

conceiving that it was undertaken for the sake of episcopacy,--an inst.i.tution in the fate of which they felt no interest, and others who had already in affection enrolled themselves among the followers of the parliament, though shame deterred them for a time from abandoning the royal colours.[1]

There was another cla.s.s of men on whose services the king might rely with confidence,--the Catholics,--who, alarmed by the fierce intolerance and the severe menaces of the parliament, saw that their own safety depended on the ascendancy of the sovereign. But Charles hesitated to avail himself of this resource. His adversaries had allured the zealots to their party, by representing the king as the dupe of a popish faction, which laboured to subvert the Protestant, and to establish on its ruins the popish wors.h.i.+p.

It was in vain that he called on them to name the members of this invisible faction, that he publicly a.s.serted his attachment to the reformed faith, and that, to prove his orthodoxy, he ordered two priests to be put to death at Tyburn, before his departure from the capital, and two others at York, soon after his arrival in that city.[2] The houses still persisted in the charge; and in all their votes and remonstrances attributed the measures adopted by the king to the advice and influence of the papists

[Footnote 1: Thus Sir Edward Varney, the standard-bearer, told Hyde, that he followed the king because honour obliged him; but the object of the war was against his conscience, for he had no reverence for the bishops, whose quarrel it was.--Clarendon's Life, 69. Lord Spencer writes to his lady, "If there could be an expedient found to salve the punctilio of honour, I would not continue here an hour."--Sidney Papers, ii. 667.]

[Footnote 2: Thomas Reynolds and Bartholomew Roe, on Jan. 21; John Lockwood and Edmund Caterick, on April 13.--Challoner, ii. 117, 200.]

and their adherents.[1] Aware of the impression which such reports made on the minds of the people, he at first refused to intrust with a commission, or even to admit into the ranks, any person, who had not taken the oaths of allegiance and supremacy; but necessity soon taught him to accept of the services of all his subjects without distinction of religion, and he not only granted[a] permission to the Catholics to carry arms in their own defence, but incorporated them among his own forces.[2]

While the higher cla.s.ses repaired with their dependants to the support of the king, the call of the parliament was cheerfully obeyed by the yeomanry in the country, and by the merchants and tradesmen in the towns. All these had felt the oppression of monopolies and s.h.i.+p-money; to the patriots they were indebted for their freedom from such grievances; and, as to them they looked up with grat.i.tude for past benefits,

[Footnote 1: In proof of the existence of such a faction, an appeal has been made to a letter from Lord Spencer to his wife.--Sidney Papers, ii.

667. Whether the cipher 243 is correctly rendered "papists," I know not. It is not unlikely that Lord Spencer may have been in the habit of applying the term to the party supposed to possess the royal confidence, of which party he was the professed adversary. But when it became at last necessary to point out the heads of this popish faction, it appeared that, with one exception, they were Protestants--the earls of Bristol, c.u.mberland, Newcastle, Carnarvon, and Rivers, secretary Nicholas, Endymion Porter, Edward Hyde, the duke of Richmond, and the viscounts Newark and Falkland.--Rushworth, v. 16. May, 163. Colonel Endymion Porter was a Catholic.--Also Baillie, i. 416, 430; ii. 75.]

[Footnote 2: Rushworth, iv. 772; v. 49, 50, 80. Clarendon, ii. 41. On September 23, 1642, Charles wrote from Shrewsbury, to the earl of Newcastle: "This rebellion is growen to that height, that I must not looke to what opinion men are, who at this tyme are willing and able to serve me.

Therefore I doe not only permit, but command you, to make use of all my loving subjects' services, without examining ther contienses (more than there loyalty to me) as you shall fynde most to conduce to the upholding of my just regall power."--Ellis, iii. 291.]

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642 August 10.]

so they trusted to their wisdom for the present defence of their liberties.

Nor was this the only motive; to political must be added religious enthusiasm. The opponents of episcopacy, under the self-given denomination of the G.o.dly, sought to distinguish themselves by the real or affected severity of their morals; they looked down with contempt on all others, as men of dissolute or irreligious habits; and many among them, in the belief that the reformed religion was in danger, deemed it a conscientious duty to risk their lives and fortunes in the quarrel.[1] Thus were brought into collision some of the most powerful motives which can agitate the human breast,--loyalty, and liberty, and religion; the conflict elevated the minds of the combatants above their ordinary level, and in many instances produced a spirit of heroism, and self-devoted-ness, and endurance, which demands our admiration and sympathy. Both parties soon distinguished their adversaries by particular appellations. The royalists were denominated Cavaliers; a word which, though applied to them at first in allusion to their quality, soon lost its original acceptation, and was taken to be synonymous with papist, atheist, and voluptuary; and they on their part gave to their enemies the name of Roundheads, because they cropped their hair short, dividing "it into so many little peaks as was something ridiculous to behold."[2]

Each army in its composition resembled the other. Commissions were given, not to persons the most fit to

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 76.]

[Footnote 2: Life of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 100. "The G.o.dly of those days, when the colonel embraced their party, would not allow him to be religious, because his hair was not in their cut, nor his words in their phrase."--Ibid. The names were first given a little before the king left Whitehall.--Clarendon, i. 339.]

command, but to those who were most willing and able to raise men; and the men themselves, who were generally ill paid, and who considered their services as voluntary, often defeated the best-concerted plans, by their refusal to march from their homes, or their repugnance to obey some particular officer, or their disapproval of the projected expedition. To enforce discipline was dangerous; and both the king and the parliament found themselves compelled to entreat or connive, where they ought to have employed authority and punishment. The command of the royal army was intrusted to the earl of Lindsey, of the parliamentary forces to the earl of Ess.e.x, each of whom owed the distinction to the experience which he was supposed to have acquired in foreign service. But such experience afforded little benefit. The pa.s.sions of the combatants despised the cool calculations of military prudence; a new system of warfare was necessarily generated; and men of talents and ambition quickly acquired that knowledge which was best adapted to the quality of the troops and to the nature of the contest.

Charles, having left Nottingham, proceeded to Shrewsbury, collecting reinforcements, and receiving voluntary contributions on his march.

Half-way between Stafford and Wellington he halted the army, and placing himself in the centre, solemnly declared in the presence of Almighty G.o.d that he had no other design, that he felt no other wish, than to maintain.

the Protestant faith, to govern according to law, and to observe all the statutes enacted in parliament. Should he fail in any one of these particulars, he renounced all claim to a.s.sistance from man, or protection from G.o.d; but as long as he remained faithful to his promise, he hoped for cheerful aid from his subjects, and was confident of obtaining the blessing of Heaven. This solemn and affecting protestation being circulated through the kingdom, gave a new stimulus to the exertions of his friends; but it was soon opposed by a most extraordinary declaration on the part of[a]

the parliament; that it was the real intention of the king to satisfy the demands of the papists by altering the national religion, and the rapacity of the Cavaliers by giving up to them the plunder of the metropolis; and that, to prevent the accomplishment of so wicked a design, the two houses had resolved to enter into a solemn covenant with G.o.d, to defend his truth at the hazard of their lives, to a.s.sociate with the well-affected in London and the rest of the kingdom, and to request the aid of their Scottish brethren, whose liberties and religion were equally at stake.[1]

In the meantime Waller had reduced Portsmouth,[b] while Ess.e.x concentrated his force, amounting to fifteen thousand men, in the vicinity of Northampton. He received orders from the houses to rescue, by force[c] if it were necessary, the persons of the king, the prince, and the duke of York, from the hands of those desperate men by whom they were surrounded, to offer a free pardon to all who, within ten days, should return to their duty, and to forward to the king a pet.i.tion that he would separate himself from his evil counsellors, and rely once more on the loyalty of his parliament. From Northampton Ess.e.x hastened to[d] Worcester to oppose the advance of the royal army.

At Nottingham the king could muster no more than six thousand men; he left Shrewsbury at the head of[e] thrice that number. By a succession of skilful manoeuvres

[Footnote 1: Clarendon, ii. 16. Rushworth, v. 20, 21. Journals, v.

376,418.]

[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Oct. 22.]

[Sidenote c: A.D. 1642. Sept. 9.]

[Sidenote d: A.D. 1642. Sept. 16.]

[Sidenote e: A.D. 1642. Sept. 23.]

[Sidenote f: A.D. 1642. Oct. 12.]

he contrived to elude the vigilance of the enemy; and had advanced two days' march on the road to the metropolis before Ess.e.x became aware of his object. In London the news was received with terror. Little reliance could be placed on the courage, less on the fidelity of the trained bands; and peremptory orders were despatched to Ess.e.x, to hasten with his whole force to the protection of the capital and the parliament. That general had seen his error; he was following the king with expedition; and his vanguard entered the village of Keynton on the same evening on which the royalists halted on Edgehill, only a few miles in advance. At midnight[a] Charles held a council of war, in which it was resolved to turn upon the pursuers, and to offer them battle. Early in the morning the royal army was seen in position[b] on the summit of a range of hills, which gave them a decided superiority in case of attack; but Ess.e.x, whose artillery, with one-fourth of his men, was several miles in the rear, satisfied with having arrested the march of the enemy, quietly posted the different corps, as they arrived, on a rising ground in the Vale of the Red Horse, about half a mile in front of the village. About noon the Cavaliers grew weary of inaction; their importunity at last prevailed; and about two the king discharged a cannon with his own hand as the signal of battle. The royalists descended in good order to the foot of the hill, where their hopes were raised by the treachery of Sir Faithful Fortescue, a parliamentary officer, who, firing his pistol into the ground, ranged himself with two troops of horse under the royal banner. Soon afterwards Prince Rupert, who commanded the cavalry on the right, charged twenty-two troops of parliamentary horse led by Sir James

[Sidenote a: A.D. 1642. Oct. 22.]

[Sidenote b: A.D. 1642. Oct. 23.]

Ramsay; broke them at the very onset; urged the pursuit two miles beyond Keynton, and finding the baggage of the enemy in the village, indulged his men for the s.p.a.ce of an hour in the work of plunder. Had it not been for this fatal imprudence, the royalists would probably have gained a decisive victory.

During his absence the main bodies of infantry were engaged under their respective leaders, the earls of Lindsey and Ess.e.x, both of whom, dismounting, led their men into action on foot. The cool and determined courage of the Roundheads undeceived and disconcerted the Cavaliers.

The royal horse on the left, a weak body under lord Wilmot, had sought protection behind a regiment of pikemen; and Sir William Balfour, the parliamentary commander, leaving a few squadrons to keep them at bay, wheeled round on the flank of the royal infantry, broke through two divisions, and made himself master of a battery of cannon. In another part of the field the king's guards, with his standard, bore down every corps that opposed them, till Ess.e.x ordered two regiments of infantry and a squadron of horse to charge them in front and flank, whilst Balfour, abandoning the guns which he had taken, burst on them from the rear. They now broke; Sir Edward Varner was slain, and the standard which he bore was taken; the earl of Lindsey received a mortal wound; and his son, the lord Willoughby, was made prisoner in the attempt to rescue his father[1].

Charles, who, attended by his troop of pensioners, watched the fortune of the field, beheld with dismay the slaughter of his guards;

[Footnote 1: The standard was nevertheless recovered by the daring or the address of a Captain Smith, whom the king made a banneret in the field.]

and ordering the reserve to advance, placed himself at their head; but at the moment Rupert and the cavalry reappeared; and, though they had withdrawn from Keynton to avoid, the approach of Hampden with the rear of the parliamentary army, their presence restored the hopes of the royalists and damped the ardour of their opponents. A breathing-time succeeded; the firing ceased on both sides, and the adverse armies stood gazing at each other till the darkness induced them to withdraw,--the royalists to their first position on the hills, and the parliamentarians to the village of Keynton. From the conflicting statements of the parties, it is impossible to estimate their respective losses. Most writers make the number of the slain to amount to five thousand; but the clergyman of the place, who superintended the burial of the dead, reduces it to about one thousand two hundred men.[1]

Both armies claimed the honour, neither reaped the benefit, of victory.

Ess.e.x, leaving the king to pursue his march, withdrew to Warwick, and thence to Coventry; Charles, having compelled the garrison[a] of Banbury to surrender, turned aside to the city of Oxford. Each commander wished for leisure to

[Footnote 1: This is the most consistent account of the battle, which I can form out of the numerous narratives in Clarendon, May, Ludlow, Heath, &c.

Lord Wharton, to silence the alarm in London, on his arrival from the army, a.s.sured the two houses that the loss did not exceed three hundred men.--Journ. v. 423. The prince of Wales, about twelve years old, who was on horseback in a field under the care of Sir John Hinton, had a narrow escape, "One of the troopers observing you," says Hinton, "came in fall career towards your highness. I received his charge, and, having spent a pistol or two on each other, I dismounted him in the closing, but being armed cap-a-pie I could do no execution on him with my sword: at which instant one Mr. Matthews, a gentleman pensioner, rides in, and with a pole-axe decides the business."--MS. in my possession.]