places of the five members, and after a short address, remarking that the birds had flown, withdrew amid cries of "Privilege, privilege." The birds had indeed flown, and taken refuge among the citizens of London. Thither the House followed them, and appointed a great permanent committee to sit in the Grocers' Hall. It was in vain that the King went himself thither, requesting the city magistrates to surrender the five members. They were not forthcoming. He was reluctantly forced to confess that his blow had failed; and, unable to bear the sight of the triumphant return to Parliament of those he had accused, he left London, never to return to it till just before his death.

Charles leaves

London for York

Jan. 10.

He was now in the miserable plight of a plotter whose scheme has miscarried; he felt that his last card had been played, and that nothing was left but war. To carry on this with effect, and to give an opportunity for those who favoured him to rally round him, he determined to betake himself to a new capital, and settled upon York for that purpose. But before he could proceed to extremities, it was necessary to have his hands clear of domestic interests, and at the same time to find some means of collecting money. He therefore determined to send his wife abroad. He purchased a moment's respite by giving his assent to the Bill for the removal of the Bishops, and then hurried with his Queen to Dover, sending with her the Crown jewels, on which to raise money. The Commons, meanwhile, striking while the iron was hot, now demanded security from such violent measures as the King had lately taken. They entreated him to return to London, and to put the militia—that is, the trainbands of the country, the only constitutional army of that time-into their hands. The request was brought to the King at Newmarket. It was peremptorily refused. The King had taken his part, and meant to play it to the last.

Sends the Queen to Holland.

The next few months were occupied in preparation by the rival parties. Unable to obtain the King's consent, Parliament passed the ordinance of the militia without it. By this they were empowered to nominate the Lords-Lieutenants of the counties to hold power during their will. The King, on the other hand, retired to York, and was there disappointed to find the feeling by no means so thoroughly in his favour as he expected. What may be called the first instance of armed opposition to his orders took place at Hull. In that town were stored the arms and ammunition of the late Northern army. It was intrusted to Sir John Hotham, and Parliament now

1642]

PREPARATIONS FOR WAR

659

The King, Hull refuses him its arms

and ammunition.

April 23.

Ordinance of

ordered that the magazine should be brought to London. on the other hand, claimed it as his own, as no doubt constitutionally it was. On the Parliament's refusal to deliver it up, he attempted to use his personal influence, as he was throughout his life too prone to do. He appeared before the gates in person, but Sir John was true to his trust, and the King withdrew baffled. At once the ordinance of militia was put in force, and to meet it the King issued a Commission of Array. There were thus in every county two recruiting centres, the one attempting to June 12. carry out the Parliament's ordinance, and the other the King's commission. Active and energetic members betook themselves to their own counties to assist the Parliamentary claim, and England was filled with petty skirmishes and disputes.

Militia, and

Commission

of Array.

Royalist and

It is difficult to draw a geographical line separating the Royalist from the Puritan party. It may be said roughly that Division of the parts about London were belonging to the Parlia- the country, ment party, and the North and the counties near Wales Puritan. were inclined towards the King. The only counties which were whole-hearted were those around London, and the Eastern counties, where Cromwell had already become important, and which speedily formed themselves into that great association which supplied subsequently the nucleus of the new-modelled army. As yet, however the levies on the Parliament side were either needy adventurers, to whom the pay was an object, or such men as the personal influence of the Parliamentary leaders could gather. Round the King, meanwhile, collected many nobles and gentry, bringing with them a train of dependants, what may be spoken of as their feudal followers, full of affection and reliance on their immediate leaders. Money was still wanting to the King. The arrival of a ship from Holland supplied this deficiency, while the young Princes of the Rhenish Palatinate, Rupert and Maurice, if they added no wisdom, at least brought military energy to his side. To Essex was given the command of the Parliamentary army, which gradually collected in the Midland counties. The Earl of Lindsay was nominally the Royalist general, but his counsel was practically overruled by the advice of the hot-headed Rupert.

Essex and

Rupert made

generals of the

two armies.

The King raises

At length the crisis arrived. On the 22nd of August the King raised his standard at Nottingham, and aware at last that he could not rely on the inhabitants of Yorkshire, his standard. moved to Shrewsbury, at once to collect the Catholic

Aug. 22.

น

gentry of Lancashire and Cheshire, to receive the Royalist levies of Wales, and to secure the valley of the Severn. The movement was successful. In a few days his little army was increased fourfold, and he felt himself strong enough to make a direct march towards the capital. Essex had garrisoned Northampton, Coventry and Warwick, and lay himself at Worcester; but the King, waiting for no sieges, left the garrison towns unmolested and passed on towards London, and Essex received peremptory orders to pursue and interpose if possible between the King and London. On the 22nd of October he was close upon the King's rear at Keynton, between Stratford and Banbury. But his army was by no means at its full strength; some regiments had been left to garrison the West, others, under Hampden, had not yet joined him.

Battle of
Edgehill.
Oct. 23.

But delay was impossible, and the first battle of the war was fought on the plain at the foot of the north-west slope of Edgehill, over which the royal army descended, turning back on its course to meet Essex. Both parties claimed the victory. In fact it was with the King. The Parliamentary cavalry found themselves wholly unable to withstand the charge of Rupert's cavaliers. Whole regiments turned and fled without striking & blow; but, as usual, want of discipline ruined the royal cause. Rupert's men fell to plundering the Parliamentary baggage, and returned to the field only in time to find that the infantry, under the personal leading of Essex, had re-established the fight. Night closed the battle. The King's army withdrew to the vantage-ground of the hills, and Essex, reinforced by Hampden, passed the night upon the field. But the Royalist army was neither beaten nor checked in its advance, while the rottenness of the Parliamentary troops had been disclosed, so that Cromwell told Hampden, that "it was plain that men of religion were wanted to withstand these gentlemen of honour,"the secret which ultimately decided the fortune of the war.

The Parliament determined to regard this somewhat doubtful battle as a victory, and formal thanks were voted to Lord-General Essex. At the same time it was plain that the parties were more evenly balanced than had been thought, and the Parliament began to think of making overtures for peace. While the preliminaries of the intended treaty were still undetermined, and while a cessation of arms was still under discussion, the King suddenly moved towards

Charles approaches London.

Nov. 18.

London, and having advanced as far as Brentford, there fell upon an outlying regiment of Parliamentary troops. The alarm in London was great.

The

1642]

CHARACTER OF THE WAR

661

citizens were embodied in haste under Skippon; troops lying at Kingston were hurriedly brought through London. Essex himself took the command, and before long an army of no very good material, but sufficiently numerous for the purpose, prevented the further advance of the King. Essex indeed would seem to have been over-cautious, and, in his anxiety to put a strong force between the King and the City, made no attempt to disturb the retreat of the Royalists, who shortly fell back upon Oxford, which Retires to henceforward became the centre of their operations. Oxford. The treaty, as was expected by the wiser Parliamentarians, came to nothing. As the terms demanded included the abolition of the Church, and the King's assent to the militia ordinance, it was not indeed likely that anything could have come of it. War was again the only resource, and speedily became universal.

The character of a civil war, when the question at issue is not one of geographical supremacy but of political feeling, Character precludes the possibility of any regular plan of action, of the war. and renders very difficult any consecutive narrative of events. There was local fighting over the whole of England. But it is possible to form some general notion as to the main centres of action. The headquarters of the King were constantly at Oxford, from which, as from a centre, Rupert would suddenly make rapid raids, now in one direction, now in another. Between him and London, about Reading, Aylesbury, and Thame, lay what may be spoken of as the main army of Parliament, under the command of Lord-General Essex. Not that this army was by any means the largest or best supplied of the Parliamentary forces. There was no very warm feeling between the Parliament and their general, and Essex had frequently to complain of the superior equipment and larger numbers of troops allowed to his subordinates. The other two chief scenes of the war were Yorkshire and the West. In Yorkshire the Fairfaxes, Ferdinando Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas, made what head they could against what was known as the Popish army under the command of the Earl, subsequently Marquis of Newcastle, which consisted mainly of the troops of the Northern counties, which had become associated under Newcastle in favour of Charles. Newark, in Nottinghamshire, was early made a royal garrison, and formed the link of connection between the operations in Yorkshire and at Oxford. In the extreme South-west, Lord Stamford, the Parliamentary General, was making a somewhat unsuccessful resistance against Sir Ralph, afterwards Lord Hopton. Wales was wholly Royalist, and one of the chief

objects of Charles's generals was to secure the Severn valley, and thus connect the war in Devonshire with the central operations at Oxford. In the Eastern counties matters assumed rather a different form. The principle of forming several counties into an association, already mentioned in reference to the North, was adopted by the Parliament, and several such associations were The Association. formed, but none of these came to much except that of the Eastern counties, which was known by way of pre-eminence as "The Association." Its object was to keep the war entirely beyond the borders of the counties of which it consisted. The reason of its success was the genius and energy of Cromwell, who, though not yet nominally commander of the Association (which was at first under Lord Grey and afterwards under the Earl of Manchester), was in reality its moving spirit. Beyond the exclusion of the war from their own borders, the object of the associated counties was to complete the conquest of Lincolnshire, and thus to connect London with the Fairfaxes in the North. The main obstacle to this-which remained an obstacle throughout the war-was the existence of the garrison of Newark on their north-western frontier.

Inaction of Essex.

The year 1643 was on all sides disastrous to the Parliament. The army of Essex lay idle and useless, in spite of the remonstrance of Hampden and the more energetic commanders. A great plan was formed to bring up the armies of the Eastern counties to join it, and to fall upon Oxford; but the cautious disposition of the general brought to nothing what was in itself a hopeful scheme. The fighting was confined to skirmishes with Rupert's horse, which would every now and then beat up the quarters of a regiment. In one of these raids the Royalists got into the rear of the Parliamentary army, piercing as far as Chinner. Such an isolated movement was of course speedily checked. Hampden led the pursuit of the retiring Royalists. In crossing Chalgrove Field a slight skirmish took place, of no importance except that it cost the life of Hampden, whose energy as a commander had been such, that men were beginning to think of him as a more efficient Lord-General than the sluggish Essex. While the chief army lay thus idle, the Fairfaxes had been almost driven from Yorkshire by the superior power of NewYorkshire. castle; they had been thoroughly defeated at Atherton Moor (June 30), and driven backwards to Hull. The arrival of the Queen (Feb. 22), bringing with her commanders, and arms obtained by the Crown jewels, had also much improved the posi

Death of
Hampden.

June 18.

Royalist conquest of