Is defeated

at Nantwich.

Jan. 25.

The Scotch enter England.

It was against these troops that the Parliamentary efforts in the next year were first directed. Fairfax was hurried from Lincolnshire into Cheshire, and there, at Nantwich, destroyed the newly arrived Irish, capturing among other prisoners Monk, afterwards so famous, who, after a short imprisonment, took service in the Parliamentary army. On the very same day as the success at Nantwich the Scotch army crossed the Border. Their advance was not wholly triumphant; they were foiled at Newcastle by the Marquis of Newcastle, but still that nobleman found himself obliged to fall back towards York, fearing to be enclosed by the army of Fairfax coming from the South and the Scotch coming from the North. There seemed every opportunity of at length destroying the royal influence in Yorkshire. There, therefore, all available troops were hurried. Sir Thomas Fairfax, after his success at NantYorkshire. wich, had advanced to the siege of Latham House, held gallantly for the King by the Countess of Derby; this siege he shortly resigned into the hands of Mr. Rigby, who completely failed in his attempts, and had to retire in disgrace upon the advance of Prince Rupert. But meanwhile Fairfax had hurriedly joined his father in Yorkshire, where it soon became plain that a critical battle would be fought, for there the armies of both parties were concentrating. Rupert was ordered to join Newcastle at York, and Manchester, who had assumed command of the Association with Cromwell, was brought up to reinforce the Fairfaxes. The Prince, evading the armies which were lying round York, crossed the Ouse, and effected a junction with Newcastle. The three generals, having united their armies, appeared with their combined forces

Gathering of the armies in

Battle of

Marston Moor.
July 2.

upon the plains of Long Marston. The armies were not in presence till five in the afternoon, and it seemed as if even then no battle would take place. But about seven in the evening the Parliamentary generals began the fight. For the first time the Association troops, carefully formed and organized by Cromwell, in accordance with the principle he had laid down after Edgehill, met the dashing cavalry of Prince Rupert. The men of religion had at length been found to meet the gentlemen of honour. The victory of the Parliament, which was complete, seems to have been due to Cromwell. The Association troops were upon the left wing, opposed to Prince Rupert's horse. In his own description of the battle, Cromwell writes: "We never charged but we routed the enemy. The left wing, which I commanded, being

1644]

BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR

669

our own horse, saving a few Scots in our rear, beat all the Prince's horse. God made them as stubble to our swords; we charged their regiments afoot with our horse, and routed all we charged." While thus victorious upon the left, the Parliamentary troops had been so thoroughly worsted upon the right, that several generals, Leven among the number, had left the field, believing that the day was lost. But Cromwell's victorious wing, held back from pursuit by his prudence, fell upon the Royalists, disordered by their victory, and completely re-established the battle. It was with difficulty that Rupert could collect, after his flight, 4000 or 5000 men, while Newcastle, always at enmity with the Prince, and attributing his defeat to Rupert's bad management, withdrew to the coast, and retired in dudgeon to the Continent.

elsewhere.

The fruits of the victory were the cities of York and Newcastle. The North of England was in fact conquered, and the troops and generals available elsewhere, where they were much wanted. It was Cromwell, and Cromwell's troops alone, who seemed able to secure success. In the rest of England all had been disaster. Parliamentary The two armies of Waller and Essex had attempted in disasters vain to enclose the King at Oxford. By a simple stratagem he had got out of the city unsuspected, and passed between the two armies to Worcester. Essex was ordered to follow him wherever he went, while for Waller was intended the command of the army in the South and West. Between Essex and Waller there was a standing jealousy, and Essex, indignant at the important work being given to his rival, insisted upon leaving the pursuit of the King to Waller, while he himself undertook the Western campaign. Waller's pursuit was useless. The King succeeded in getting safely back to Oxford, and in inflicting a defeat upon his pursuer at Copredy Bridge. Copredy Bridge. After this, Waller found his army disap- June 29. pearing, and had to return to London. Essex pursued his march into Devonshire and to Cornwall; but the King's forces, now free to act, gradually closed round him. His horse cut their way Essex defeated through the enemy, but the Earl himself, leaving his in Cornwall. army to its fate, escaped by sea to Plymouth, and from thence to Portsmouth. His infantry, under Skippon, were forced to capitulate.

The Parliament received its fugitive general without speedily reconstituted armies both for him and Waller, and summoned Manchester and Cromwell from the East to their aid. The combined forces of these generals

Sept 1.

complaint, After Marston Moor, Cromwell

joins the Southern army.

Second battle of Newbury. Oct. 22.

met the King at Newbury, as he marched from Basingstoke to Oxford. This second battle of Newbury was as indecisive as the first. The King, who in the general opinion was worsted, marched off unmolested in the night, although there was a bright moon, to Wallingford, and thence to Oxford. He left his baggage and artillery in Dennington Castle, a stronghold close to Newbury, and fetched it thence, again unmolested, twelve days after. As Essex was absent from ill-health, the blame of this transaction rested with Manchester, whose want of activity brought to a point a quarrel which for some time had been rising between him and Cromwell, a quarrel which, though it took at first a personal form, was in fact one of principle, and the first step in the great contest between the Independents and Presbyterians.

Rise of
Independency.

It has been already mentioned that the political views of the leaders of the Long Parliament were at first conservative; that conservative reform and the restoration of the old liberties of England under trustworthy safeguards were the objects they had in view. At the same time, the Presbyterian form of religion, which, as the only organized rival to English Episcopacy at that time existing, was the form to which the majority of the Puritans naturally inclined, was essentially republican. Its republicanism, however, was of a very dogmatic and tyrannical sort. Now the real fault of the Roman Catholic and English forms of religion—that fault which had excited the opposition of the greater part of the religious men of England-was their want of spirituality. For a time the less sensuous and more spiritual character of Presbyterianism seemed to satisfy the want of men's minds. But as that form of religion had become predominant, as its dogmatic character had become more obvious, the same class of deeply religious minds which had supplied the enthusiasm necessary to carry out the early reforms of Parliament

Cromwell's

practical,

religious, and political views.

gradually awoke to the feeling that the spirit cannot be confined under arbitrary forms at all, that different minds will of necessity form different ideas upon religious subjects. There had thus grown up a large number of earnest men to whom the tyranny of Presbyterianism was scarcely less irksome than the Episcopal tyranny it had superseded. By far the most prominent of this class was Cromwell, whose genius and energy had rapidly forced him forward into a position of great prominence. To him spiritual religion was everything, the outward form which it took mattered little. But his mind was not only devoted to spiritual religion, it was also in the highest degree practical, and the ill effects

1644]

CROMWELL'S VIEWS

671

of Presbyterian tyranny had forced themselves upon his notice in more ways than one. He had set before himself the duty of forming an army, the members of which should be all of them thoroughly in earnest, and inspired with an enthusiasm capable of withstanding that enthusiasm which the sentiment of loyalty inspired, and who should at the same time be excellent practical soldiers. In carrying out this plan he had found himself frequently thwarted by the narrow theological views of the Presbyterians. Again and again we find in his letters marks of the opposition upon religious grounds which had been made to the employment of officers whom he could trust, and calumnious reports appear to have been set on foot against himself as a favourer of Anabaptists and sectaries.

The same practical tendency of his mind had led him and others of the same way of thinking to arrive at some political and social conclusions different from those which as yet had been prevalent. The conservative feeling of the English Reformers, and the loyalty of the Scots, with whom they worked in common, had induced them as yet to employ in all high places men of large property and high social rank, irrespective, in some degree at least, of their capacities, and to maintain on all occasions, even when most opposed to him, an outward respect for the King. In their most violent assaults upon Charles's policy it had been usual to introduce the clause "seduced by evil counsellors." Now Cromwell saw that this constitutional but illogical state of feeling tended only to prolong the war, while his practical knowledge of the working of the army led him to see that far abler generals might be found than the wealthy lords at first employed, who, moreover, were restrained, by the greatness of the interests they had at stake, from wishing to drive matters to extremity. The representative to him of these lukewarm, inefficient commanders was his own immediate superior, the Earl of Manchester. In him he seemed to see personified the ill effects both of the dogmatism of Presbyterianism and the undue respect for social position as contrasted with the real worth of the individual. The wasted success at Newbury brought matters to a crisis. Cromwell publicly His quarrel with charged Manchester in the House with having wilfully Manchester. neglected to render that victory decisive. It was in vain, he said, that he had urged the General to allow him to fall with his horse on the retreating enemy and complete their defeat; and he accused him further of wilful mismanagement of the Association troops before his junction with Waller. Manchester, backed by the Presbyterians, and especially by Crawford, a Scotchman, whom the Presbyterian party

had made his Major-General, defended himself, and recriminated upon Cromwell. But the sense of the nation, weary of the lengthened war, justified Cromwell's attack; and the open assault upon the aristocratic general tended much to hasten a project which had already been formed, of reorganizing, or, as it was then called, remodelling the army.

Cromwell and his friends-who never did things by halves, and

Self-denying

1645.

who were bent, even at their own expense, at getting the Ordinance. war into more energetic hands-introduced, as a preparation for this reorganization, what is known as the Self-denying Ordinance. By this all members of either House of Parliament were made ineligible for commands in the new army. This at once, in an honourable way, would remove Manchester, Essex, Denbigh and Waller, and Cromwell himself, from the list of new commanders. The arguments by which it was supported-such, for instance, as the necessity for supporting the dignity of Parliament against the attacks of the King by keeping its numbers as full as possible; the danger which the Parliament ran of being accused of being self-seeking, and of wilfully prolonging the war for the sake of the authority with which it invested many of its members; and the certainty that as good or better generals were to be found among men of lower social rank-prevailed without much difficulty in the Lower House. In the Upper House, where the Presbyterian party was strong, after some debate it was rejected, on the ground that before passing such an ordinance it was necessary to know the form that the new modelled army would take. The object of the Self-denying Ordinance was no secret. It was understood to be a delicate way of getting rid of the old commanders. Cromwell urged the acceptance of the measure in a noble and patriotic speech. After remarking the danger the House ran of being charged with selfishness in continuing the war, he went on : "But this I recommend to your prudence, not to insist upon any complaint or oversight of any commander-in-chief on any occasion whatsoever, for as I must acknowledge myself guilty of oversights, so I know they can rarely be avoided in military affairs. Therefore, waiving strict inquiry into the causes of these things, let us apply ourselves to the remedy, which is most necessary. And I hope we have such true English hearts and zealous affections towards the general weal of our mother country, as no members of either House will scruple to deny themselves and their own private interests for the public good."

Checked by the Lords, the Commons proceeded to remove