Dismounted

told to look their last upon the sun. dragoons, with carbines unslung, poured volley after volley on the helpless prisoners, until the last was butchered in cold blood. "A more atrocious outrage," says Alexander Piterkin, in his "Records of the Kirk of Scotland," "against all the usages of civilised warfare, was never committed, save in the modern times of Spanish barbarity; and these helpless men, it must be remembered, were taken prisoners while bearing arms under the commission and in the cause of their lawful sovereign. If in the future turns of fortune the Covenanters became the victims of a bloody persecution, let it not be forgotten that this system of wholesale murder originated in the massacre at Newark Castle."

They were all interred at the place now called the Slain Man's Lee; and when, in 1810, the ground was opened for building purposes, their bones and skulls were found in vast numbers. Principal Baillie records in his "Letters" that 1,000 bodies were interred after the massacre, and of these only fifteen were of Leslie's dragoons who had fallen on the field.

251

But the slaughter did not end at Newark. Eighty fugitives from that dreadful scene, women and children, were overtaken by the Covenanters at Linlithgow Bridge, when they were flung into the foaming Avon, fifty feet below; there all were drowned, for a few who reached the banks were thrust back by pikes and destroyed. "Thus, man and woman, infant and suckling perished, for again and again were the conquerors told that the curses which befel those who spared the enemies of God would fall upon him who suffered one Amalekite to escape."

Then followed a Reign of Terror in Scotland, and Montrose escaped to the Continent; while in England, the unfortunate Charles left Oxford at midnight, and thence, in despair, fled to the army of the Covenant-Cromwell's allies-at the siege of Newark-on-Trent, and by that army he was ultimately delivered to the Parliament of England, in a manner that resounded little to its honour, if it did not cover it with the blackest infamy.

Now came those events which led to Cromwell entering Scotland, and to the battles of Dunbar and Worcester. Charles ill deserved the treatment he encountered so ungenerously at the hands of the Scots, although, through the evil advice of Laud and Strafford, he had at one time sought to interfere with their mode of Church government; for, as his own countrymen, in the more prosperous years of his reign he had ever favoured them, to the exclusion even of the English.

A quaint work, called "A Just Defence of the Royal Martyr, printed for A. Roper, at the 'Black Boy,' in Fleet Street, 1699," has the following on this subject:

"Now although King Charles looked more narrowly into his revenue than his father, and would not suffer them to be their own carvers of what he had more urgent occasions for, yet, as to places of profit in Court and elsewhere, the Scotch carried all before them, to so vast a disproportion, as 'twas generally concluded there were three to one Englishman. Dr. Heylin observes that once at a full table of waiters in Whitehall, each of them had a servant or two to attend him, while he and his

man were the only English in the company. And in the Church so many of that nation were beneficed and preferred in all parts of the country, that their ecclesiastical revenues could not but amount to more than all the rents of the Kyrk of Scotland. And as the whole revenue of that crown was spent among themselves at home, so did several of their grandees live in more state here than any of their former kings, to support which they had not only the best places, as Master of the Horse, Captain of the Guards, Privy Purse, Warden of the Cinque Ports, Lieutenant of the Tower, &c."

When Charles was surrendered, in his misery, by the Covenanters to the English Parliament, they stipulated expressly for his safety and freedom; and the English expressed great indignation that they should be suspected of any evil designs against their anointed sovereign. their anointed sovereign. Hence it is but due to these Scottish Presbyterians, with all their callous disloyalty, to say that when they gave up Charles, they had not the faintest suspicion of the dark and bloody crime which it was intended to perpetrate in Whitehall Yard.

But the network round the victim was woven

rapidly. Acting under secret orders from Cromwell, a band of horse, under a Puritan named Cornet Joyce, seized Charles at Holmby House, in Northamptonshire. He found means to escape and reach the Isle of Wight, in the hope of reaching his queen on the Continent; but being forced to take refuge in Carisbrook Castle, he was more closely guarded than ever by a ruffian named Major Rolfe, who once declared he was ready to have shot the king with his own hand! There Charles now

and who, though a brave noble, was yet an inex perienced soldier, as events proved. One who knew him well has recorded that he was somewhat hard-visaged, and less graceful in person than the old marquis his father; that he wore his hair cut short like the Puritans, and covered by a little calotte cap. A sombre expression hovered on his countenance and in his keen eyes; and though a thorough courtier, he affected something of the soldier, and was fond of quoting his royal leader,

abandoned himself to complete dejection of spirit, so as even to neglect his person, permitting his long flowing hair and pointed beard to remain unclipped and uncombed, "till his appearance became at last savage and desolate in the extreme."

And now some of the Scots becoming alarmed at the fast-growing power of the Independents, some inspired by remorse for the fate to which they had brought their king, and others by that wild, passionate, and unthinking loyalty that never dies in the North, prepared, when too late, an army for his relief.

The command of this force was bestowed upon James, first Duke of Hamilton, K.G., who had commanded 6,000 Scots in the service of Gustavus,

Gustavus Adolphus, and using High Dutch campphrases and proverbs.

In the Parliament of Scotland he had protested against the delivery of the king to the English, and a portion of his speech is remarkable in its prophetic spirit.

"Will Scotland now quit her possession and interest in her sovereign, and do it to those whose enmity to him and to us doth so visibly appear? Is this the result of all your protestations of duty and affection to His Majesty? Is this the keeping of your covenant, wherein you have sworn to defend the king's person and authority? Is this a suitable return for the king's goodness, both in consenting to all your desires in 1641, and in his

General Robert Munro, author of the "Expedition," who had long served with distinction at the head of Lord Reay's Highlanders in Germany, and who commanded the Scottish forces in Ulster.

Although the duke, impelled by necessity, openly protested that the Covenant was the foundation of all his measures, he entered into a secret correspondence with Sir Marmaduke Langdale and Sir Philip Musgrave, who were levying considerable forces for the king in the North of England.

Many peers who, by age or otherwise, were unable to accompany him, gave the duke money; and so much had the land become impoverished by ten years' of civil war, that the princely Earl of

Unlawful Engagement. In consequence of the hostility of the Church, only 1,000 horse and 10,000 foot could be mustered, nor were these ready until the month of July, and by that time the best moment for action in behalf of the captive king was lost.

England was convulsed in every shire, and full of discontent; and had the force originally proposed by Hamilton crossed the Border, its success can scarcely be doubted. Impatient of delays on the part of the Scots, which they failed to understand, the English Royalists had already taken up arms in Wales, Kent, Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk, and other districts. The people found themselves loaded by taxes, hitherto unknown, for

Clarendon, made him appear a wise man, while his "having been in command under the King of Sweden, and his continued discourse of battles and fortifications, made him be thought a soldier; and both these mistakes made him be looked upon as a worse and more dangerous man than in truth he deserved to be."

A rapid march on London might have crushed the obnoxious Independents and saved the king; for Fairfax was still busy with the siege of Colchester, while Cromwell had his hands full at Pembroke; but the duke loitered away forty days on a march of eighty miles!

He drew Musgrave's English garrison out of Carlisle, and replaced it by Scots; and instead of advancing through Yorkshire, as Major-General Baillie urged him to do, he marched through Lancashire, where the population were hostile; and his forces, instead of being concentrated, were scattered over many miles of country, so far apart as to be incapable of supporting or communicating with each other. Thus, when his main body reached the banks of the Ribble, near Preston, Langdale was far in advance of it; while Munro, with the oldest trained soldiers in the army, was thirty miles off, at Kirby, in Westmoreland; and so defective was the duke's intelligence, that he remained in ignorance alike of the surrender of Pembroke, of the approach of Cromwell at the head of his victorious troops, and of his junction with those of Major-General Lambert, until their united forces fell on those of Sir Marmaduke Langdale on the 17th of August; and the latter obtained no support from the Scots, of whose leaders Patrick Gordon, of Ruthven, says as follows :—

The duke 66 was fitter for a cabinet counsell nor for a counsell of warre; he could have been president in the gravest senat that ever sat in the Vatican n; yet he knew not what belonged to the leadinge of ane armie. . . The Earl of Calendare, can more hardlie be excused for those errours, who, from his youth had bien bred up in the best academie that the world could afford for the Airt Militaire, under the command of that Mars of men, the Prince of Orange, under whom he had been a commander-in-cheefe; and he had also many years' experience, to the enlargement of his honour, having followed the warrs in Germanie."

The Prince of Orange referred to was Henry Frederick of Nassau, who was born on the 23rd of February, 1584, and died in March, 1647. He fought many battles with the Spaniards both by sea

and land.

Ludlow says, "The House of Commons declared the Scots who invaded England to be enemies,

255

and ordered the lieutenant-general to advance and fight them; but the Lords, in this doubtful posture of affairs, declined to concur with them. Yet both of them, with the city of London, joined in driving on a personal treaty with the king in the Isle of Wight, and to that end revoked the votes for nonaddresses, whereby the king seemed to be on sure ground; for if the Scots army failed, he might still make terms with the Parliament."

Cromwell was at the head then of only 8,000 horse and foot when he fell suddenly on Sir Marmaduke Langdale, near, Preston, in Lancashire, after holding a Council of War at Hodder Bridge, on the Ribble. He had thrown forward 200 horse and 400 foot, whom he styles his "Forlorns" in his dispatch to Parliament. These were briskly encountered by the advanced posts of Sir Marmaduke, who, after his main body was engaged, sent pressing messages to the Scottish army for support, but without effect. Cromwell pressed onward at the head of his whole force, over wet miry ground, and charging furiously through a lane, after a four hours' dispute with pike and musket, drove Langdale, with the loss of many men slain or taken prisoners, back upon Preston.

In this affair, called the battle of Ribbledale, it is stated by Noble that one of Cromwell's sons, Henry, a captain in Harrison's regiment of horse, was slain.

At this crisis the Duke of Hamilton arrived with a few Scottish cavalry, but brought them up in such disorder that they only served to add to the confusion of Langdale's retreat. Their presence, however, caused a renewal of the conflict in the streets and at the bridge, where the Royalists made a most determined stand.

"Then ensued," says Cromwell, "a very hot dispute betwixt the Lancashire regiments, part of my Lord-General's (Hamilton's) and them being at push of pike; but they were beaten from the bridge, and our horse and foot following them, killed many and took divers prisoners. We possessed the bridge over the Derwent, and a few houses there, the enemy being drawn up within musket-shot of us, we not being able to attempt further upon them, the night preventing us. In this position did we lie most part of that night " (Rushworth, Vol. VII.).

Superior in number to their united assailants, the Scottish troops might and should have made a vigorous resistance; but "head and heart seemed alike to have failed the unfortunate duke."

In the course of the night, to the surprise and satisfaction of Cromwell and Lambert, he began a hasty retreat, over execrable roads, under torrents of