Alderman Towes, Alderman Warner, and Alderman Andrewes, to grant receipts to the lenders, and certain commissaries to value the horses and arms which should be furnished for the national service. Forthwith a great mass of money was heaped up at Guildhall, and daily increased by the free contributions of the people. The poor contributed with the rich. "Not only the wealthiest citizens and gentleman who were near dwellers brought in their large bags and goblets, but the poorer sort, like that widow in the gospel, presented their mites also; insomuch that it was a common jeer of men disaffected to the cause, to call this the thimble and bodkin army."3 on security of his forests and parks for the prin- cent. interest; and they appointed four treacipal and eight per cent. interest. He forbade | surers, Sir John Wollaston, alderman of London, all levies without his consent, and called upon his subjects to be mindful of their oath of allegiance, and faithful to his royal person. It was now found that he had a strong party in the country: the church, the universities, the majority of the nobles, and perhaps of the country gentleman the loyalty of the latter class being generally great in proportion to their distance from the court and their ignorance of court life--rallied round him. The austerity of the Puritans' manners, and their severe doctrine, drove most of the gay and dissolute, and many who were gay without being dissolute, into his party, which was further strengthened by many good, virtuous, and moderate men, who disliked his former conduct, who dreaded his tyrannical disposition, but dreaded the untried democratic violence still more. Nor was Charles wanting in solemn protestations and assurances. To the lords who had gathered around him at York, and to the members of his privy council there, he made a short and comprehensive declaration of his just and liberal intentions and tender regard for the liberties of his people. And it was upon this express declaration that those lords contracted a solemn engagement, and signed a bond to stand by him, to defend his majesty's person, crown, and dignity, with his just and legal prerogative, against all persons, parties, and powers whatsoever. 2 Charles wrote a letter to the lord-mayor of London, the aldermen and sheriffs, forbidding these contributions, and inveighing bitterly against the parliament. This letter was wholly without effect, as was an attempt made at the same time to win over the fleet. Clarendon says that this latter scheme only failed through a mistake or blunder of the king's agents; but it appears evident that the cause of its failure really was the devotion of the captains and seamen to the popular cause. The Earl of Warwick, a great lover of the sea-service and highly popular as a commander, called a council of war, and laid before his officers both the ordinance of parliament which appointed him to the command, and the letters of the king which required him to surrender that command to Sir John Pennington. With the exception of five, all the sea-captains agreed with the earl that at this crisis the orders of the two houses were more binding than those of the sovereign, and that the fleet could not be put into the hands of Pennington without the greatest peril to the nation's liberties. At the same time the parliament, declaring all these measures to be against law and the national liberties, made their preparations with at least equal vigour. On the 10th of June an order was made by both houses for bringing in money and plate to maintain horse, horsemen, and arms, for the preservation of the public peace, and defence of the king's person; for the parliament, down to the appointment of Oliver Cromwell to the chief command, always joined this expres-ters of the navy, voted that an army should be sion with that of their own safety. The two houses engaged the public faith, that whosoever should bring in any money or plate, or furnish men or arms, should be repaid with eight per "The spirit of chivalry left behind it a more valuable suc cessor. The character of knight gradually subsided in that of gentleman; and the one distinguishes European society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as much as the other did in the preceding ages. A jealous sense of honour, less romantic, but equally elevated; a ceremonious gallantry and politeness; a strictness in devotional observances; an high pride of birth, and feeling of independence upon any sovereign for the dignity it gave; a sympathy for martial honour, though more subdued by civil habits, are the lineaments which prove an indisputable descent. The Cavaliers of Charles I. were genuine successors of Edward's knights; and the resemblance is much more striking, if we ascend to the civil wars of the League. Time has effaced much also of this gentlemanly, as it did before of the chivalrous character. From the latter part of the seventeenth century, its vigour and purity have undergone a tacit decay, and yielded, On the 12th of July, the parliament, thus mas raised for the safety of the king's person and defence of the country and parliament; that the Earl of Essex should be captain-general of this army, and the Earl of Bedford general of the perhaps in every country, to increasing commercial wealth, more diffused instruction, the spirit of general liberty in some, and of servile obsequiousness in others, the modes of life in great cities, and the levelling customs of social intercourse."-Hallam, History of England, vol. iii. p. 510. 2 These are the names of those who subscribed:-The Lordkeeper Littleton; Duke of Richmond; Marquis of Hertford; Earls of Lindsay, Cumberland, Huntingdon, Bath, Southampton, Dorset, Salisbury, Northampton, Devonshire, Bristol, Westmoreland, Berkshire, Monmouth, Rivers, Newcastle, Dover, Caernarvon, Newport; Lords Mowbray and Maltravers, Willoughby of Eresby, Rich, Charles Howard of Charleton, Newark, Paget, Chandois, Falconbridge, Paulet, Lovelace, Coventry, Savile, Mohun, Dunsmore, Seymour, Grey of Ruthven, Falkland, the comptroller, Secretary Nicholas, Sir John Culpeper, Lord Chief-justice Banks. 3 May. In vigour and success, and was foremost in securing horse. They appointed a committee of both houses to assist the Earl of Essex, and to nominate colonels, field-officers, and captains to this army, “which, considering the long peace that had prevailed in England, and the unprovided state of the country in respect of military stores, was not only raised, but also well armed, in a short time." Many of the lords, who still sat in the house at Westminster, took commissions as colonels, under Essex, and many gentlemen of the House of Commons of greatest rank and quality there, entered the service, some in the cavalry, some in the common foot regiments. Among these latter were Sir John Merrick, the Lord Grey of Groby, Denzil Hollis, Sir Philip Stapleton, Bulstrode Whitelock, Sir William Waller, and the excellent Hampden, who took a colonel's commission, and went into Buckinghamshire to raise a regiment of infantry among his own tenants and servants, friends and neighbours. Hampden's regiment was known by its excellent appointments, its green uniform, and its standard, which bore on one side the watch-ral liked the ordinance, and the militia they raised word of the parliament, "God with us," and on the other the patriot's own motto, Vestigia nulla retrorsum." This high-minded commoner, who had been bred up in wealth and in peace, and who had studied the art of war only in books, presently became one of the best officers in the parliamentary service, and he made his regiment one of the very best. He made himself tho-lord-lieutenant, raised the militia in spite of the roughly master of his military duties, and, according to Clarendon, he performed them upon all occasions most punctually. 'He was," says Clarendon, "of a personal courage equal to his best parts; so that he was an enemy not to be wished wherever he might have been a friend, and as much to be apprehended where he was so as any man could deserve to be." Meanwhile the king was moving about from place to place to gather forces, and draw over the people. His commission of array and the parliament's ordinance of militia were jostling together in nearly every county in England; the greatest of the nobility upon both sides coming forward personally to seize upon those places which they were appointed to look after either by the king or by the parliament. The one party held the ordinances to be illegal, the other denounced the royal proclamatious. Yet in some counties there was no struggle at all, but one party wholly prevailed from the beginning. Generally speaking, the more commercial, more civilized and thriving districts were for the parliament; the more remote, the less prosperous, and less civilized were for the king; but this general rule had its exceptions. In Lincolnshire the Lord Willoughby of Parham, who was appointed lord-lieutenant by the parliament, raised the militia with great was too strong to permit the other party to engage in a war; those gentlemen that attempted to raise men or provide arms for the king were crushed at the beginning, and from first to last one of the greatest supports of the parliamentary cause was found in the county of Cromwell's birth. In Berkshire the Earl of Holland, the parliament's faint resistance of the Earl of Berkshire, the Lord Lovelace, and others. Hampden fell upon the Earl of Berkshire soon after, made him prisoner while engaged in an attempt to seize the magazine of arms, ammunition, &c., gathered at Watlington in Oxfordshire, and sent him up to the parliament. Buckinghamshire, Hampden's county, was true almost to a man to the parliament. The county of Southampton was divided at first, and long continued to be so. In Derbyshire, where many great lords and gentlemen dwelt, not one of note stood for the parliament, except Sir John Gell and his brother. Farther north the king's party was very prevalent: the Earl of Newcastle kept the town of Newcastle with a strong garrison for the king; and the Earl of Cumberland, Charles's lord-lieutenant of Yorkshire, actively pressed the commission of array, although resisted by the Lord Fairfax and other parliamentarians. In Lancashire the Lord Strange, son to the Earl of Derby, whom Charles had appointed lord-lieutenant of Lancashire and Cheshire, endeavoured to put in action the commission of array, while Sir Thomas Stanley, the Egertons, and others, urged forward the ordinance. On the 15th of July, Lord Strange made an attempt to gain Manchester; a skirmish ensued, and one man was slain, "which," says May, 66 was the first blood shed in these civil wars." Some time after Strange returned to Manchester with 3000 men, but he was beaten off, and that time with considerable loss. Nor was he more successful in Cheshire, where Charles had joined in commission with him the Roman Catholic Earl of Rivers. It was in Lancashire and Cheshire that the Papists were most numerous: in the first they kept quiet, in Cheshire they were disarmed by the parliamentarians. In the west of England, especially in the extreme west, the king's party was numerous. The most considerable skirmish that occurred before Charles's raising his standard, was in Somersetshire, where the Marquis of Hertford was opposed by the deputylieutenants of the county, and where ten men were slain and many wounded.' ing a sum for their present uses out of a loan made by adventurers for reducing Ireland, and affirming that they were the cause of prolonging the bloody rebellion in that country. This was turning upon parliament one of the heaviest accusations they had made against the king. They replied vehemently, and yet circumstantially, calling to remembrance the many particulars of their care for the relief of Ireland, and the many instances in which the king had hindered it.3 Charles flattered himself that, if he could only obtain possession of Hull, he might soon be undisputed master of all the north. A secret correspondence was opened with Sir John Hotham, who so far departed from his former line of conduct as to allow the royalists to entertain hopes that he would betray the parliament and deliver up that important town. The king posted Lord Lindsay at Beverley, with 3000 foot and 1000 horse, to carry the place by siege, if Hotham should not keep his engagement; and in the meantime he himself visited other points; "and, within three weeks, both in his own person and by his messengers, with speeches, proclamations, and declarations, he advanced his business in a wonderful manner. At Newark he made a speech to the gentry of Nottinghamshire in a loving and winning way, commending their affections towards him; which was a great part of persuasion for the future, coming from a king himself. Another speech he made at Lincoln to the gentry of that county, full of protestations concerning his good intentions, not only to them, but to the whole kingdom, the laws and liberties of it." From Lincoln Charles went to Leicester, where the Earl of Stamford was executing the parliament's ordinance of the militia. He hoped to take the earl in the fact, but that nobleman fell back upon Northampton, whither Charles durst not follow him; for Northampton was a town so true to the parliament, that it would have shut its gates against the king, as Hull had done. The king, however, seized that noted victim of Laud's barbarity, Dr. Bastwick, who had taken a commission under the Earl of Stamford, and remained doing his duty in levying men when his general beat a retreat. Charles would have had him instantly indicted of high treason at the assizes then sitting, but the judge entreated his majesty not to put a matter of so great moment About the end of July the parliament had sent a commission to the king, who was then at Beverley, to entreat him to forbear his hostile preparations, and dismiss his garrisons. His reply was, that they ought to lay down their arms first, and he ordered this answer, which contained many bitter reflections on their proceedings, to be read in all churches. They replied, ordering their answer to be read in churches and everywhere else. A few days after, Charles published a declaration to all his loving subjects, concerning the proceedings of this present parliament. This paper occupied fifty large and close quarto pages of print; it contained a kind of history of all that had passed between him and the houses, vowed a wonderful love to parliaments, but required that the Lord Kimbolton, and the five members of the House of Commons before accused, and two other members, Mr. Henry Martin and Sir Henry Ludlow, should be given up to the king's justice. Charles also desired to have delivered up to him Alderman Pennington, the new lord-mayor of London, and Captain Venu, an officer of the city train-bands; and he required that indictments of high treason should be drawn against the Earls of Essex, Warwick, and Stamford, the Lord Brooke, Sir John Hotham, and Sergeant-major-general Skippon, as likewise against all those who should dare to raise the militia by virtue of the ordinance of parliament. The royal pen was, indeed, "very quick upon all occasions;" and the day after the publication of this long declaration, Charles sent a message, upbraiding both houses for borrow-upon one single judge, but to cause the law in May; Rushworth; Whitelock; Ludlow. that case to be declared by all the twelve judges. The latter course, he said, might do his majesty ? Sir Richard Gurney, the late lord-mayor of London, was at good, whereas the publishing of his particular this time a prisoner in the Tower, to which he had been committed by the parliament, for being a mover of sedition in the kingdom, in causing the king's proclamation concerning the commission of array to be cried in the city. He was put from his mayoralty, declared incapable of ever bearing any office in city or commonwealth, and sentenced to imprisonment during the pleasure of both houses. VOL. II. opinion could only destroy himself, and nothing advance his majesty's service. This judge also expressed his doubts whether any jury suddenly summoned at that moment would have courage 3 May; Rushworth. 172 4 May. to find the bill; and upon this suggestion Charles gave up the idea of hanging, drawing, and quartering the doctor, who had already been scourged, pilloried, mutilated, and branded by Laud. There is a great deal in this little transaction to show that the character of the king had undergone no change. The night before his leaving Leicester, the judge and the gentlemen of the county, including even those that were most loyal, waited upon him with a request that he would liberate the prisoner, or suffer the judge to do so upon his habeas corpus. Charles told them "he would think of it till the next morning;" and in the meanwhile he directed a messenger of the chamber very early, with such assistance as the sheriff should give, to carry Bastwick away to Nottingham, and by the help of the sheriff there, to the jail at York, all which was executed accordingly with expedition and secrecy, for fear of a rescue.' Returning to Beverley, Charles received a letter from Lord Digby, who had returned from the Continent in disguise, and smuggled himself into Hull, where he had voluntarily discovered himself to the governor for the purpose of tampering with him. But now Digby, the daring and restless head of the queen's faction, informed Charles that he found Hotham much shaken in his resolution of delivering Hull-seeing, as Sir John said, that his officers were of a temper not to be relied upon, and his own son, the younger Hotham, was grown jealous of some design, and was counterworking it. Presently after this information, the king's army, not confident of carrying the town by open force, and no longer counting on the treachery of the governor, had recourse to another plot; and, knowing some men within the walls fit for their purpose, they arranged that Hull should be set on fire in four several places, and that, while the parliament soldiers and inhabitants were busied in quenching the flames, 2000 men should assault the walls. The signal to those within the town, was to be a fire lit in the night on Beverley Minster; but the plot was discovered by one of the instruments, and it so provoked the townsmen of Hull that the walls could not contain them; but 500 of them, conducted by Sir John Meldrum, made a sortie, and fell fiercely upon the beleaguerers. The king's soldiers seemed inclined to fight bravely, but the train-bands of that county were not forward to I Clarendon, Hist. be engaged against their neighbours, and horse and foot fled as fast as they could to Beverley. Sir John Meldrum followed in their wake, killed two, took thirty prisoners, and carried some important magazines which the king had placed between Beverley and Hull, where again the train-bands and other Yorkshiremen, bearing no great affection to that war, ran away and left their arms behind them. The king now called a council of war, wherein it was resolved to break up the siege of Hull and march away. Meldrum, that fiery Scot, got back to Hull with a good prize in ammunition and arms; but the elder Hotham, who was still wavering, and who evidently wished to keep well with both parties, safely dismissed to the king the Lord Digby and that other active servant of royalty, John Ashburnham.2 Charles dismissed the train-bands, and returned to York, in much less credit than when he came from thence. But his spirits were revived by the news "that so notable a place as Portsmouth had declared for him, . . . and that so good an officer as Goring was returned to his duty, and in possession of that town." Hereupon he published a declaration, in which he recapitulated all the insolent and rebellious actions of the two houses, forbidding all his subjects to yield any obedience to what was no longer a parliament, but a cabal and faction. And at the same time he issued his proclamation requir NOTTINGHAM CASTLE.-From a drawing by P. Sandby. ing all men that could bear arms to repair to him at Nottingham by the 25th of August. "According to the proclamation," proceeds the noble historian, "upon the 25th day of August, the standard was erected about six of the clock in the evening of a very stormy and tempestuous day. The king himself, with a small train, rode to the top of the castle-hill, Varney, the knight 2 May; Rushworth; Clarendon; Warwick. marshal, who was standard-bearer, carrying the standard, which was then erected in that place with little other ceremony than the sound of drums and trumpets. Melancholy men observed many ill presages about that time. There was not one regiment of foot yet brought thither, so that the train-bands which the sheriff had drawn together were all the strength the king had for his person and the guard of the standard. There appeared no conflux of men in obedience to the proclamation; the arms and ammunition were not yet come from York, and a general sadness covered the whole town. The standard was blown down the same night it had been set up, by a very strong and unruly wind, and could not be fixed again in a day or two, till the tempest was allayed. This was the melancholy state of the king's affairs when the standard was set up."1 charge for the honour of arms. Discouraged, hopeless, and wavering, the royalists at Nottingham proposed the king's immediate return to York, conceiving that not even his person was secure at Nottingham, as Essex was concentrating his forces at Northampton, where in fact that earl soon saw himself surrounded by an army of 15,000 men, composed of substantial yeomen and industrious burghers, the inhabitants of trading and manufacturing towns. Charles would not hear of this retreat; and when some of his council urged the expediency of making overtures for an accommodation with his parliament, he was so offended at the advice, that he declared he would never yield to it, and hastily broke up the council, that it might be no longer urged. The next day, however, the king yielded to the earnestness of the Earl of Southampton, who suggested to his majesty that if the parliament should refuse to treat, as it was thought they would, they would render themselves odious to the people, and thus dispose men to serve the king. It was upon this plea that Charles reluctantly agreed to send the Earls of Southampton and Dorset and Sir John Culpeper to London, on the third day after raising the standard at Nottingham. Culpeper was very obnoxious in the capital, for he was one of those who were considered as rene The king's dejection of spirits was increased by the failure of an attempt which he had made two or three days before upon the town of Coventry. Learning that Hampden's regiment and some other corps of parliamentarians were marching, by order of the Earl of Essex, to garrison Coventry, he had struck aside in that direction at the head of his cavalry, amounting to about 800 men, not doubting that he should secure the town, provided only he could arrive before the parliamentarian foot. But the people of Coventry,gades; but all three of the king's messengers like those of most manufacturing places, loved their parliament and their Puritan preachers; and, though he did arrive first, the gates were shut in his face and some shots fired from the STONELEIGH, WARWICKSHIRE. From a print in the King's Collection, British Museum. walls, by which some of his attendants were wounded. He had then retired to Stoneleigh, near Warwick, to pass the night there; and in the morning he had seen his horse in an open plain decline giving combat to Hampden's foot, and retreat before them without making a single 1 Clarendon, Hist. Rushworth says that the standard was raised, not on the 25th of August, but on the twenty-second. His account differs in other essentials. were watched very suspiciously, and all the answer they could get was, that the parliament would enter upon no negotiations whatever until the king should have taken down his standard, and called in those proclamations by which he had declared the Earl of Essex and his adherents to be traitors, and had put the two houses out of his protection, proclaiming their actions to be treasonable. Another message was sent from the king to the two houses: but, on every ground, it was now hopeless to think of a peaceful arrangement; and Charles's nephew, Prince Rupert, who had at last arrived in England, insulted all the royalists that still ventured to recommend pacific measures. This rash young man, who was instantly appointed to the highest command, so excited some of the principal officers with indignation at the thought of the overture recently made to parliament, that they were well nigh offering personal violence to the members of the council who had recommended that measure. Rupert, whom the English people soon learned to call "Prince Robber," was accompanied by his younger brother, Prince Maurice, and both "showed themselves very forward and active." Prince Rupert, the elder brother, and 2 May. |