CHAPTER imposition of it in England was an insult and a burlesque. II. CHAS. I. A.D. 1643. In short, the Westminster assembly has left to ecclesiastics of every church, and in all ages, this useful caution; that public assemblies of divines, if they meet to discuss beneath the patronage of the civil powers, are too apt to run into the extremes of obsequiousness or of faction; that if the questions before them are not few, and of instant moment, and well defined, they will launch out into interminable discussions and break up into narrow parties. The cause of God and of undefiled religion, owes but little gratitude to synods, or convocations, or national councils. The necessities of the church may sometimes call for them; but they are the churches medicine and not its nourishment. They engender strife; and seldom fail to give to those who take the lead in them a distaste for the humbler, yet in truth far nobler, duties which are the proper calling of the christian minister. The assembly of divines, during the six years through which their tedious sessions were prolonged, accomplished nothing. They had scarcely broken up before their work had perished. But their parishes meantime had received many a wound; and in the absence of the faithful pastor, false doctrine, heresy, and schism had lifted its head-not soon to be destroyed. The tendency of clerical parliaments has always been the same. It is to unfit the mind for vigorous action except beneath excitement; to impart a relish for publicity and an itching for debate. The bustling member of a convocation may not, it is true, be an unfaithful steward; but of all faithful ministers he stands in the most exposed, and the most perilous condi- chapter tion. II. A.D. 1644. While the parliament and the assembly of divines CHAS. I. were thus occupied, the king remained at Oxford with his court and army, and the war went on. The campaign of 1643 closed with the battle of Newbury and the death of Falkland. Each side was eager to renew the conflict, and the year 1644 opened with a dismal prospect. No decisive advantage had been gained by either party; but their wounds rankled, and their passions were inflamed. Everything foreshewed a long and bitter contest, and a widening breach between the contending powers. The parliament met in Westminster on the 22nd of January, but only twenty-two members of the upper house were present; the house of commons numbered three hundred and eighty. On the same day the king met his council at Oxford-his mongrel parliament, as he styled it, in a confidential letter to the queen. Forty-five peers assembled; nearly an equal number were absent on his service, or in prison, or abroad. In all, eighty-three members of the peerage still clung to the royal cause. The lower house at Oxford consisted of one hundred and sixty-five members, seceders from the parliament in Westminster. The parliament opened the campaign with an overwhelming force of thirty-six thousand men, besides the Scotch allies, who numbered one-and-twenty thousand. The royal army was less numerous, though increased by ten Irish regiments. The parliamentary generals in a few weeks gained several advantages in the western counties, which were barely compensated by prince Rupert's gains H II. CHAS. I. A.D. 1644. CHAPTER in Lancashire. Amongst other towns, he reduced Bolton and Liverpool. They were insignificant places then; but they resisted bravely; and the horrors which modern readers associate with the peninsular war and the triumphs of Napoleon had their counterpart in these provincial sieges. In the streets of Bolton the slaughter was indiscriminate. Women, and infants at the breast, were massacred unsparingly, together with soldiers who had laid down their arms, and with four clergymen of the town, who of course were puritans: their names were Heycocke, Tilsbury, Harpur, and Fogge.* If we may credit a Lancashire minister who lived and wrote at the time, and almost upon the spot, eighteen hundred souls perished in the sack of Bolton. At Liverpool, which surrendered upon quarter, three hundred and sixty, friends and foes, were indiscriminately slaughtered in the streets.† On the 29th of June the king in person engaged sir William Waller at Cropredy near Oxford. Waller was defeated, and the joy of Charles was great; but it was soon turned into sorrow. On the 2nd of July the battle of Marston Moor was fought beneath the walls of York. Prince Rupert commanded, with twenty thousand men, for the king. The earl of Manchester commanded for the parliament; and second in command, but first in daring, and in the power of infusing his own mind into other men at will, was Cromwell, his lieutenant-general. The battle was decisive. At *Whitelocke, p. 85. + Life of Adam Martindale, from his MSS. in the British Museum; edited by the Rev. Richard Parkinson, canon of Manchester. 1845. pp. II. A.D. 1644. night three thousand royalists lay dead; there were CHAPTER sixteen hundred prisoners; and to Cromwell and his cavalry, by the acclamations of the field, re-echoed CHAS. I. through the kingdom, was the victory ascribed. In the north of England the royal cause was now lost, and in a few days even York surrendered. In the west of England the earl of Essex gained many advantages for the parliament; of which the least was not, that the queen, who had left Oxford in affright, and now resided at Exeter, where she had given birth to a daughter, retired to Falmouth, and from thence to France; never again to meet her unhappy lord. On the 26th of October, Essex arrayed his army against the king in the second battle of Newbury. Charles was again unfortunate, after a murderous struggle; and the next morning he retired to winter quarters at Oxford. Two years had passed since he unfurled his standard at Nottingham, and since the first battle of Edge Hill. There had been sieges and skirmishes in every county; four pitched battles had been fought, and the land was everywhere defiled with blood. Thousands longed for peace upon any terms; but the leaders on each side were stern. The parliament was resolute, and the king was false as ever, and unforgiving. The year 1644* closed with a dismal tragedy. The archbishop of Canterbury had for upwards of three years been a prisoner in the Tower. He was * It may be necessary to remind the reader that the year then closed on the 25th of March; but many writers had already begun to date it from the 1st of January. This is a source of constant perplexity, and has given rise to numerous mistakes. A respectable modern writer, for example, is in doubt whether Charles was beheaded in 1648 or 1649. Our forefathers felt the inconvenience, and attempted to redress it by writing the year from the 1st of January to the 25th of March thus :-January, &c. 164. CHAPTER now impeached by the house of commons, and II. CHAS. I. A.D. 1644. brought up for trial on the charge of high treason before the shadow of an upper house, which still sat at Westminster. The prosecution was managed by the commons; and by an ordinance of both houses he was condemned to die. The indictment was contained in ten articles; but the main heads Laud, in opening his defence, reduced to two.* In six, he was charged with attempting to subvert the laws of the land; in the remaining four, with the design of overthrowing the protestant faith and restoring popery. These crimes, it was said, in the aggregate amounted to high treason. The trial continued through seventeen days; the charges were urged by the commissioners of the house of commons with all the advantage of numbers, of legal skill, and of well-practised eloquence. Bitterness, personality, and invective lent their aid. An Englishman who now reads the trial may indeed commiserate the old man who pleaded at the bar; but stronger emotions and a deeper sense of shame steal over him as he reflects that the scene was in the house of lords, and that the actors were his countrymen. Laud, no doubt, was a great delinquent; had he been deposed from his sacred office, had he been heavily fined, had he been imprisoned for the remainder of his days, his sentence would have been well deserved. More than any living man he was responsible for the destruction of the church of England which had recently taken place, and for the Canterbury's Doom; or a history of the trial of Laud, late archbishop, &c.; by William Prynne; published by order of the house of commons, |