majesty trusts to be enabled through the establishment of a happy peace here, by means of the present treaty, to chastise their odious and obstinate rebellion; and if now the parliament will give his majesty sufficient security, that the war in Ireland shall be prosecuted with vigour, by sending over the requisite supplies of men and money, he will put an end to the truce."

Thus those propositions which came into discussion under the three general heads of the church, the army, and Ireland, admitting as they did, in the instructions given by the parliament to their commissioners, of no modification, offered (for so they were designed to do) insuperable obstacles to the procuring of peace. Had the possible result, however, been different, had the difficulties presented in them been found surmountable, the enemies of peace, viz. the Independents and the entire party of the movement, were provided with others equally unpalatable, though less prominent, on which they were, in that case, to fall back. Such, for example, was the exception from pardon of the king's best friends and most loyal subjects, including among them some of the most eminent individuals in the realm, his two nephews, the Princes Rupert and Maurice, being placed at the head of the list; such also was the confiscation of the estates of all persons, in any degree obnoxious to the parliament, under the title of delinquents, for the purpose of defraying the expenses of the war. An accommodation, in such circumstances, was clearly hopeless. Nevertheless the commissioners, on Charles's part, desirous that their fellow-subjects should understand that no unreasonable impediment to their just desire of peace arose from the king, applied for an extension of the period allowed for the treaty; it was refused, notwithstanding the interposition, by letter, of the agent of the French government, and of the ambassadors of the United States in a personal appeal to both the houses. So resolved, in fact, were the parliament to make no concession in this particular, that the royal commissioners judged it necessary to observe the letter of their safe-conduct, and precipitately returned to Oxford on the last day for which their safety was guaranteed, wearied with the fruitless labour of twenty anxious days and broken nights.

A formal seal was thus put to that hopelessness of a peaceful arrangement of the quarrel between Charles the First and his rebel parliament, which, previously to the negotiation, the one party had fixed, and the other too truly apprehended: the certainty of victory in the field, with the consequent power to dictate, to crush, or extinguish, was henceforth to be the only peace-maker. The king had foreseen this result, and sanguinely believed himself prepared for the consequences; the late campaign had added no presage of final success to the prospects of his adversaries; he had received promises of continental aid; while a diversion in his favour, of most flattering brilliancy, had lately been made by means of the rapid exploits of Montrose in Scotland. At Westminster, in justification, politically speaking, of the course pursued in the treaty, a more subtle design was in agitation-a design carried on by the boldest and ablest men, based on solid expectations, and supported by the command of the chief resources of the empire, The third great party, the suffering and deluded people, who had had no voice in the late

momentous but undeliberative assembly, were, as they always are, the last to comprehend the true nature of their own position; they were in consternation at learning the abortive close of the negotiations, and that the sword was not to be returned to the scabbard till blood of theirs had dyed it yet more deeply; but they were as little disposed as ever to distrust those who had so long led them to the sacrifice, encouraging their self-immolation with the cry, abused in every age, but in none so grossly as in this, of religion and liberty!

150

CHAPTER XVII.

NEW MODEL OF THE PARLIAMENTARIAN ARMY-MONTROSE.

THE civil wars of the seventeenth century, though in effect political, had their origin in the deeper sources of religious discontent. Puritanism had long been preparing the people for resistance, when that injudicious attempt, already described, to force upon the rude and fearless sects an ecclesiastical polity which they abhorred, recoiled upon its authors, and English dissent acquired consistency, and ripened into rebellion, beneath the cold but vigorous influences of Scotch presbyterianism. Political disaffection and personal ambition eagerly availed themselves of the alliance, at once to cover and effectually to promote their darker purposes. For a time, common hatred of a church, become in selfdefence somewhat intolerant, and a monarchy constitutional in its nature, but despotically administered, bound together as harmoniously as could be expected of such a principle, the distinct though not heterogeneous elements of the great movement; long, indeed, after their mutual hostility had grown deadly, either side continued to wear the semblance of unanimity, the more effectually to secure the ruin of that ancient authority, ecclesiastical and monarchical, which both had made, by many insults and wrongs, a more intolerable if not more dangerous foe. Yet the grave nonconformist, who had no objection to a servile monarch, and the unflinching republican leveller who sought to be sole monarch, at least of himself; the Independent who insisted on constructing his own church, or, rather, on having none; and the presbyterian who insisted on intolerantly forcing on all other men a church which he found divinely framed in his interpretation of scripture, began early to feel alike the uneasiness of that copartnership into which prejudice, passion, worldly interest, and some sense of common wrong, had combined to hurry them.

We have already hinted at the existence of insubordination in the parliamentarian army. Before the point of time at which we have now arrived, similar jealousies and discontents had begun to explode in the more central arena of the parliament. The critical moment was now near when the younger-born of those confederates was to seize, with youthful but giant grasp, that power which the elder deemed his birthright. Yet the seizure was to be made, in the first instance, furtively, and under the purest pretences. The decent veil of unquestionable patriotism, the affectation of a personal sacrifice for the sake of the public good, was to shroud the step which included disloyalty to the covenanted partnership of the rebel allies, and the final throwing away of the scabbard, into which it was hitherto pretended the sword of rebellion was ever ready to be returned. In seasons of commotion no act is to be done which has long to wait its agent. To make the first great step towards republican domination, only one man in England was fit; but

that one man were so in the most consummate sense. For this work both courage and dissimulation were needed, and in Cromwell daring without parallel was united to a depth of hypocrisy not to be fathomed even by himself. In order to understand the subsequent history of the civil wars of the seventeenth century, we must keep our attention fixed on Cromwell and his knot of friends-at first the associates, then the submissive creaturesbut, from first to last, able and variously gifted as they were, the dupes, or the tools, of that inscrutable person.

With this faction, but in particular with the bold republican theorist, young Vane, Cromwell had by this time come to the conclusion that the epoch was arrived when the first commanders of the parliamentarian armies must be set aside for men more suited to existing circumstances. Of those qualifications, on the ground of which they had originally been appointed, some were now discovered to have no existence, while others actually unfitted their possessors for present command. The military talents of Essex had been overrated, and even his courage now appeared dubious; the successes of Manchester's army were chiefly to be ascribed to the ability and vigilance of his officers; the high civil rank of Warwick and Denbigh did not prevent their insignificance as generals; in fine, the interest such men had in the security of the throne, and their personal sympathy, as peers, with the sovereign, had rendered them heartless and inactive in a cause, the success of which must involve the complete humiliation if not the destruction of the monarchy. The Scotch and presbyterian party had attempted, by means of a charge of cowardice, deposed to by Crawford, a Scot, and major-general under Manchester, to wither the laurels won by Cromwell at Marston Moor: the recent occurrences before Donnington Castle presented a favourable occasion for re-opening the quarrel, with a prospect at once of effectual advantage to the cause of independency, and of satisfactory vengeance for the lieutenant-general. Having procured himself to be called upon in the House of Commons to explain why the king's challenge to a second battle had been disregarded by the conjoined army, and his subsequent march to Oxford permitted without any attempt at interruption, Cromwell threw the blame on Manchester's unwillingness to obtain such a victory in the field as must have proved an obstacle to the establishment of peace. "I showed him evidently," he said, "how this success might be obtained; and only desired leave with my own brigade of horse, to charge the king's army in their retreat, leaving it in the earl's choice, if he thought proper, to remain neutral with the rest of his forces. But, notwithstanding my importunity, he positively refused his consent, and gave no other reason, but, that if we met with a defeat, there was an end of our pretensions-we should all be rebels and traitors, and be executed and forfeited by law." These charges were immediately met by Manchester in the House of Lords. Having vindicated his own conduct in the war, he retorted upon Cromwell himself the accusation of inefficiency at the battle of Newbury. He proceeded to advance proofs of the lieutenant-general's republican schemes and disaffection to the covenant; in one of his few unguarded moments, Cromwell had told his superior officer that "it would never be well with England till he were made plain Mr. Montague-meaning, till the privileges of peers were abolished; that the Scots had crossed the Tweed for no other purpose than to establish a rcligious

despotism, and that in that cause he would as soon draw his sword against them as against the king; and lastly, that it was his purpose to form an army of Independents, which should compel both king and parliament to submit to such conditions as he should dictate." To this proceeding of Manchester's, Essex was a party, and a consultation was held in the lord-general's house, between the Scotch commissioners and the English leaders of the presbyterian faction, of which the result would have been the public denunciation of Cromwell in parliament as an incendiary, and an enemy of both nations, had not Whitelocke and Maynard, who attended the conference in the capacity of legal advisers, declared their opinion that the proofs were not sufficient to sustain such a charge against "a gentleman of his subtle parts and great interest in the two houses."

But a scheme was now ready for the light—a master-contrivance of republican policy -which, if it could not silence the voice of parliamentary censure, would at least place the army in a great degree beyond its reach. Under the conduct of the managers of this scheme, on the 9th of November, the House of Commons resolved itself into a committee to consider of the sad condition of the kingdom, in reference to the intolerable burden of the war, and the little prospect there was of its being brought to a conclusion without some alteration in the state of the army. In the committee a general silence was observed for a space, each member looking upon others as if not knowing who was to begin the debate. Cromwell at length rose. "The occasion of his rising," he said, "was of no less importance than to save the nation out of its present bleeding, nay almost dying condition. Without a more speedy, vigorous, and effectual prosecution of the war, casting off all lingering proceedings like soldiers of fortune beyond the sea to spin out the contest, we shall make the kingdom weary of us, and hate the name of a parliament. For, what do the enemy say?-nay, what do many say, that at the beginning of the war were friends? Even this: that the members of both houses have got great places and commands, and the sword into their hands; and what by interest in the parliament, and what by power in the army, will perpetually continue themselves in grandeur, and not permit the war speedily to end, lest their own power should determine with it. This I speak here to our own faces, is but what others do utter abroad behind our backs. I am far from reflecting on any; I know the worth of those commanders, members of both houses, who are yet in power." "And especially," he proceeded, "I recommend it to your prudence, not to insist upon a complaint of oversight on the part of any commander-inchief upon any occasion whatsoever. For as I must acknowledge myself guilty of oversights, so I know they can rarely be avoided in military affairs. Therefore, waving a strict inquiry into the causes of the present state of things, let us apply ourselves to the remedy which is most necessary; for I am persuaded, that if the army be not put into a better method, and the war more vigorously prosecuted, the people will enforce you to a dishonourable peace." He expressed a confident belief, that the parliament was composed of such true English hearts-men of such zealous affections towards the general weal, that no member of either house would scruple to perform a great act of self-denial for the public good; and he concluded by proposing the following resolution: "That no member of either house of parliament shall, during the war, enjoy or execute any office or