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CHAP. IX.

41. The King shut out of Hull. While the two parties thus gradually advanced to the civil war, which was now no longer doubtful, an unexpected incident hastened their movements, and irrevocably separated them. The two great magazines of the kingdom, at that time, were, Hull and the Tower. All the King's attempts to secure the latter stronghold had failed; but the former still remained; and, being told that the governor, Sir John Hotham, felt little attachment to the popular cause, Charles went, at the head of 300 horse (April 23rd), and demanded admittance. But Hotham refused, and he was thereupon declared a traitor. This produced a series of angry messages between the King and parliament; in which the former maintained that Hull, being a royal town, the fortress was the private property of the crown, and the latter, that no national fortresses were personal property which the King could claim, as a citizen could claim his field or his house. The care of these places, they said, had been vested in the sovereign for the safety of the kingdom, to be managed by him by the advice of parliament. This answer, frank and legitimate enough, was equivalent to a declaration of Men begin war, and both parties so considered it. Thirty lords, and their places more than sixty commoners, departed for York. The Earls of Essex and Holland, refusing to obey the King's order to join him, were deprived of the offices they held in the royal household; but Lord-keeper Lyttleton was induced, by Hyde, to send the great seal to the King, and repair to York. The latter circumstance produced great sensation in London, because legal government was considered inherent in the possession of the great seal; the Commons, however, would have had a new one made, but the Lords objected.+

to take

the

42. Preparations for war. The energy of the Commons soon prevented any further indecision; the absent members were summoned to return; every citizen was forbidden to take up arms at the command of the King; directions were sent into every county for the immediate organisation of the militia; the Energy of stores of Hull were safely transferred to London; the Commons. King had ordered the Westminster assizes to be held at York, in order to concentrate around him all legal government, but the parliament opposed the order, and was obeyed; a loan was negotiated in the city; commissioners were despatched to York to watch the King's proceedings; and the Earls of Warwick and Essex were appointed, the first, to command the fleet, the second, to command the army. On the other hand, the King

* Guizot's Eng. Rev., 151; Forster's Lives, III., 263-265. † Clarendon's Life.

1642

was not idle. Numbers of the nobility, gentry, and clergy, lent him money; the university of Oxford sent its plate; and Cambridge, following its example, also had its plate packed up; part of it, indeed, was already gone, when Cromwell, ever vigilant, arrived suddenly with a troop of horse, seized the magazine and the castle, and prevented the university from sending off the remainder. A vessel sent by the Queen from Holland, brought a supply of arms, ammunition, and 16 pieces of cannon; and, in opposition to the ordinance for levying the militia, The King's Charles issued commissions of array, for each separate preparation■ county, according to the ancient custom. Thus the whole kingdom was thrown into confusion. In every shire, almost in every township, were persons raising men at the same time for the King and the parliament; in the southern and eastern counties, the latter generally prevailed; the former in the northern and western counties. In many places rencontres took place between the parties; blood was shed, and prisoners were made. To excite the zeal of the Royalists, Charles made a progress through the counties of York, Leicester, Derby, Nottingham, and Lincoln, holding meetings of the nobility. These gatherings, the speeches that were made at them, the gentry forsaking or fortifying their houses, the citizens re-building the walls of their towns, the roads covered with armed travellers, the daily exercise of the militia, all presented the aspect of declared war.* The King could muster about three-fourths of the nobility and superior gentry; but 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. Many of them, however, indeed almost all, had joined the royal army spirit from no other feeling than that subtle and delicate sense mated the of honour which the term loyalty inspires; while their Cavaliers. voices were their own in the great parliamentary struggle for the liberties and laws, their swords, they argued, were the King's alone. "I would not continue here an hour," wrote Lord Robert Spencer to his wife, from the King's camp, "if there could be an expedient found to solve the punctilio of honour." So thought Sir Edward Varney, the first standard-bearer to Charles, who told Hyde it was no love for the cause which retained him in the royal ranks, but "he had eaten of the King's bread," and honour bound him to the service. Such a man, again, was the upright Falkland, whose agonising doubts expressed

* Guizot's Eng. Rev., 162,

which ani

And the

CHAP. IX.

themselves in those shrill and sad accents which he was constantly uttering, "peace! peace!" and who passionately prayed to be delivered soon out of the troubles and evils of the times. These men soon fell, and thus had their high-souled scruples solved. But while honour alone thus bound a great portion of the royal party together, the faster and firmer bond of liberty held together the parliamentary army, massing in one compact array all the substantial yeomanry, the merchants, the men of the towns, and a very large and formidable minority of the peerage and landed gentry. No doubts or scruples troubled these men ; they had felt the oppression of monopolies and ship money; to the patriots they were indebted for their freedom from Roundheads. such grievances; and as to them they looked in gratitude for past benefits, so they trusted to their wisdom for the present defence of their liberties. To political, they added also religious enthusiasm. The opponents of Episcopacy, under the self-given domination of the godly, sought to distinguish themselves by the severity of their morals; they despised all others as men of dissolute or irreligious habits, and in the belief that the reformed religion was in danger, they deemed it a conscientious duty to risk their lives and fortunes in the quarrel. Thus were brought into collision some of the most powerful motives which can agitate the human breast, loyalty, liberty, and religion; the conflict elevated the minds of the combatants above their ordinary level, and produced a spirit of heroism, self-devotedness, and endurance, which demands our admiration and sympathy. Father fought against son, and son against father; brother against brother, and of cousins without number, one part was with the King, the other with the parliament. "The Earl of Warwick fighteth for the parliament," says a curious pamphlet of the day, "and my Lord Rich, his son, is with the King; the Earle of Dover is with the King, and my Lord Rochford, his son, is with the parliament; the Earle of Northumberland with the parliament, and his brother with the King;" and so the pamphlet goes on to mention many more.* The day came, however, in which good and evil, salvation and peril, were so obscurely confounded and intermixed, that the firmest minds, incapable of disentangling them, were made the instruments of God, who alternately chastises kings by their people, and people by their kings.t

The war unnatural.

43. State and composition of the two armies. Each army in its composition resembled the other. Commissions were given, *Forster's Lives, III., 345. + Guizot's Eng. Rev., 159.

1642

mentary

not to the ablest men, but to those who were most willing and able to raise troops; and the troops themselves, who were generally ill-paid, and who considered their services as voluntary, often defeated the best concerted plans by their refusal to obey orders. To enforce discipline was dangerous; and both the King and the parliament were compelled to entreat or connive where they ought to have employed authority and punishment. The parliamentary levies were formed into foot regiments of about 1,000 each, of which there were twenty, and into troops of horse, of which there were seventy-five of sixty men each. Sir Thomas Fairfax was entrusted with the command of The parlia those which were destined to make head against the forces. Marquis of Newcastle, in the north; a like charge devolved on Sir William Waller, in the west, where Sir Ralph Hopton, Grenville, and Stanning, occupied the greater part of the country, and some of the small seaports, for the King; Lord Brook in Warwickshire, Lord Say and his sons in Northamptonshire; the Earl of Bedford in Bedfordshire; and Lord Kimbolton and Cromwell in Huntingdonshire and Cambridge; together with many others in the adjoining counties, held similar trusts. The whole of these forces were placed under the command of the Earl of Essex, and a committee of public safety, appointed by act of parliament, had the supreme management (July 4th). The divisions were generally placed under the command of such of the chiefs as had served in the wars of Gustavus Adolphus; and a few French and German engineers were engaged in superintending the fortifications and drilling the artillery. The regiments of infantry, as their clothing became more complete, assumed the colours of their respective leaders-generally such as had been worn by the serving men of their families. Holles's were the London red-coats; Lord Brook's the purple; Hampden's the green-coats; Lord Say's and Lord Mandeville's (Kimbolton) the blue. The orange, which had long been the colour of Lord Essex's household, and was now that of his body guard, was worn in a scarf over the armour of all the officers of the parliamentary army, as the distinguishing symbol of their cause. Each regiment also carried a small standard or cornet, with the motto or device of its colonel on one side, and the parliamentary watchword, "God with us," on the other. The Earl of Essex's bore the inscription, "Cave, adsum"; Algernon Sidney, the second son of the Earl of Leicester, who entered the war in its third year, inscribed his standard with the words, "Sanctus amor patriæ dat animum"; and the motto which was borne at the head of

CHAP. IX.

Hampden's regiment resolutely vindicated its great leader's course,

It was not so easy to equip these
Matchlocks, pikes, and poleaxes

"Vestigia nulla retrorsum."
regiments as to raise them.
supplied, however, the greater number of the infantry; but the
cavalry were better provided. The steel cap and gorget, the back
and breast plates, the tussets descending to the knees, the long
sword, carbine, and pistols, and occasionally the long lances,
presented a tolerable set out. The completeness of the defences
of Hazelrigge's regiment won them the name of "The Lobsters,"
and that of Ironsides" has been immortally appropriated by
Cromwell's men.

66

Both parties soon distinguished their adversaries by particular names. The parliamentarians were called Roundheads, the origin of which we have before seen; and the royalists, Cavaliers; a French term, not necessarily of reproach, but certainly used in that sense by the popular party, to denote the un-English character of those desperadoes who defended the Queen and her papist adherents from the insults of the mob at Whitehall.+

44. The "nineteen propositions." Although active preparations for war were thus going on, there were many, both at York and at London, who laboured to effect an accommodation, and on the 27th of May, 1642, parliament was induced to appoint a committee, which drew up nineteen propositions to be tendered to the King at York. They demanded:

1 and 3. That the privy council and officers of state should be approved by parliament, and take such an oath as it prescribed.

2. That during the intervals of parliament, no vacancy in the council should be supplied without the assent of the majority, subject to the future sanction of the two houses.

4 and 5. That the education and marriages of the King's children should be subject to parliamentary control.

6 and 7. That the penal laws against papists should be strictly enforced, and the votes of popish lords taken away.

8. That the church government and the liturgy should be reformed as both houses should advise.

9, 15, and 16. That the militia, and all fortified places, should be put in such hands as parliament should approve, and the forces now attending his majesty, discharged. And no forces raised in future, except according to law, in case of actual rebellion or invasion.

10, 13, 14, and 18. That members of either house who had been deprived of office, should be restored; delinquents punished; the five members cleared; and the general pardon offered by the King subject to such exceptions as both houses should advise.

11 and 12. That the Petition of Right, and other statutes passed by this parliament, should be observed, on oath; and that judges should hold their offices during good behaviour.

* Nugent's "Memorials of Hampden and His Times."

+ Forster's "Arrest of the Five Members."

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