had incurred the displeasure of the whole nation by giving him the command of the Tower of London: was it not odious ingratitude to make his royal master the return he had that day made? "Gentlemen," continues the dying earl, "tell my Lord Essex that he ought to throw himself at the king's feet, and implore forgiveness; speedily let him do it, if he would not have his name a word of reproach among his countrymen!" The passionate earnestness of the loyal veteran quickened the exhausting flow of blood. The parliamentary officers retired in silence. Ere morning dawned, Lord Willoughby, amid his unavailing services by that forlorn bed of death, had become Earl of Lindsey. Charles made earnest efforts for the immediate release of the victim of filial affection; but the parliament refused to accept any exchange for young Lindsey, and he remained nearly a year their prisoner. Other scenes, no less sad, were passing nigh at hand: the following is related, as one of the affecting incidents of this bloody field. "A parliamentary soldier, dying of his wounds, declared that his deepest grief was having received his death from the hand of his brother. Him he had recognized among the royal troops, and turned aside; but the carbine was impetuously discharged by the hand which had never before been raised but in affection."

As soon as the armies had quitted the ground, other parties took possession of it. The fugitive soldiers who had skulked in the neighbouring villages, returned with the rude rustics to rifle the dying and the dead. The clergy of the vicinity assembled their more charitable parishioners to register and give sepulture to those earliest sacrifices to the Moloch of intestine strife. Brother sought out brother, and sons their fathers, to snatch the remains of those they loved from an undistinguished grave, or it might be, to cherish and rekindle the yet lingering spark of life. The name of more than one son, of knightly race, is preserved, who, after a search of days, found his parent, naked, covered with wounds, and well nigh frozen in his blood; and had his pious cares repaid by the sufferer's recovery.

Both sides claimed the victory at Edge-hill, which, in fact, neither obtained. The parliament voted that their army had been victorious, and ordered a solemn thanksgiving. The king published a “declaration" of his acts and motives; and forwarded a proclamation, offering a free pardon to the cities of London and Westminster, if they would lay down their arms, in which it is implied that his majesty had been prosperous in the late action. With Charles rested, at all events, the advantages of victory. While Essex, his rear harassed by the royal horse, retreated on Warwick and Coventry, the king's army pushed forward towards the metropolis; took Banbury, with Lord Peterborough's regiment of six hundred men, quartered in the town; and continued its march, without interruption, to Oxford.

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CHAPTER VII.

PARTISAN WARFARE-LORDS BROOKE AND NORTHAMPTON.

WHILE, after the battle of Edge-hill, the operations of the two great armies were suspended, or conducted with languor, the warfare of partisans, in the more remote provinces, grew every day sharper and more general. There the movements of the leaders were unembarrassed by public responsibility or political views; and the private feuds of families and individuals stimulated their zeal, or even determined their choice of a party. The means of commencing and carrying on those little insulated wars, into which every man, even in the remotest corners of the country, if he failed to be drawn by his inclinations, was nevertheless cruelly forced by the circumstances of the time, were obtained in two ways. In the one case, the predominant disposition of a district, of a county, or even of several adjoining counties, influenced and directed probably by one or more distinguished proprietors, embodied itself in an application to the parliament or the king, respectively, for authority to raise troops, and enforce contributions for their maintenance. Such authority was readily given; a chief or chiefs appointed, or sanctioned, on the recommendation of the applicants, free from all control, except the duty of now and then communicating to the great belligerent parties at Westminster or at Oxford a statement of their operations; or if need arose, of asking advice or assistance. Of these associations, the earliest were those of the northern counties, under the Earl of Newcastle; of the eastern counties, under the Earl of Manchester and Cromwell; of the midland counties, under the Lord Brooke. In the other case, a single bold and zealous individual raised, equipped, and supported, at his own expense, his little band of guerilla warriors, drawn from among his tenantry and neighbours; and carried on the war, as occasion offered, either singlehanded, or in conjunction with other adventurers like himself, until his forces became absorbed in some more considerable armament. Of such bodies, the strength, the position, the objects, were continually changing from day to day. One thing alone was permanent, and common to all-to imitate on a smaller scale, but with greater freedom from constraint, the deeds ad vices of more numerous armies. Yet the generous nature of the objects of contention,-loyalty, liberty, religion,-in which selfishness had no part, rendered the explosion of the coarser passions in acts of heartless or wanton violence comparatively rare. The English have proved that revolution and civil war, while they rouse honour from the embrace of luxury, and awaken slumbering genius in high and low, are not necessarily the worst of public evils. Englishmen, in the deadliest conflicts of the Civil War, seldom forgot that they were such; nor was there any one circumstance which contributed more to injure Charles's reputation with this partially misled, but, upon the whole, sound-hearted people, than the powers and indulgences lavished on an