The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649
by
David Masson
Part 7 out of 13
news of the victory reached London, the Parliament, amid their various
rejoicings, and their voting of a day of public thanksgiving to God, a
jewel worth 500_l_. to Fairfax, and the like, did not forget one
practical inference from what had happened. That same day (June 16) the
Commons signified to the Lords their desire that Cromwell's exceptional
Lieutenant-generalship should be prolonged; and, accordingly, on June 18
it was agreed by both Houses "That Lieutenant-general Cromwell shall
continue as Lieutenant-general of the Horse, according the established
pay of the Army, for three months from the end of the forty days formerly
granted to him." This extended his command under Fairfax only to Sept.
22; but, that we may not have to refer to the matter again, we may here
state that, before that date arrived, the term of his service was
stretched for other four months, with an understanding in fact that it
was to be indefinitely elastic. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of
days named.]
Naseby proved the beginning of the end. It was the shivering of the
central mass of Royalism in England, and the subsequent events of the war
may be regarded as only so much provincial addition, and tedious pursuit
of the fragments. A sketch of these events will suffice.
The beaten King having fled, with the wrecks of his army, back through
Leicestershire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, into Wales, and the
Midlands thus being safe, Fairfax was at liberty to transfer his
victorious New Model to the part of England where its presence was then
most sorely needed, i.e. the West and South-West.--The brigade which he
had detached, under Colonel Welden, for the relief of Taunton, when
recalled himself from his former march westward, had successfully
accomplished that object (May 12), but only itself to be shut up in
Taunton by a second and severer siege by Goring's forces, returned into
those parts. By way of a temporary arrangement for action in the West in
these circumstances, Parliament had by an ordinance, May 24, entrusted a
separate command in chief of whatever forces could be raised for the West
to Major-general Edward Massey, an officer well acquainted with that part
of the country, and distinguished by his previous services in it
throughout the war. [Footnote: The Ordinance is in the Lords Journals
under the date named.] But Massey was to hold the separate command only
till Fairfax could assume it in person. Accordingly, when Fairfax, after
seeing the King fairly chased away from Naseby, turned once more
southwards, and, by rapid marches through Warwickshire and
Gloucestershire, arrived in Wilts (June 27), the conduct of the war in
the South-West became the regular work of the New Model, with Massey as
but an auxiliary. The progress was rapid. July 3, Taunton was relieved
the second time, and Goring's forces obliged to retire: July 10, Lamport
Battle was fought, in which Goring was defeated with great loss; July 23,
Bridgewater was taken by storm; July 30, the city of Bath surrendered.
Thus in one month the King's power was broken all through Somersetshire.
August sufficed for the same result in Dorsetshire, where Sherborne
Castle was battered and stormed on the 15th. On the 10th of September
came the splendid success of the storming of Bristol. This great city was
defended by Prince Rupert, who had made his way again into the South-West
for the purpose, and who had assured the King that he would hold it to
the last. Nevertheless, after a siege of eighteen days, he was glad to
surrender--himself and his men marching out with their personal baggage
and the honours of war, but leaving all the ordnance, arms, and
ammunition in the city as the spoil of the Parliament. [Footnote: Young
Major Bethell was mortally wounded in the storming of Bristol; and here
is a touching little incident of the same action from Mr. Markham's
_Life of Fairfax_. "Among the slain (in one of the attacks) was a
young officer named Pugsley, who was buried by Fairfax's order, with
military honours in a field outside the fort. He was just married, and
his wife survived him for 60 years. On her death, in 1705, she was
buried, according to her expressed wishes, without a coffin, in her
wedding dress, and with girls strewing flowers and fiddlers playing
before her. In this way she was borne to her final resting place by the
side of her husband, and the place is still known as Pugsley's Field."]
It was the greatest blow the King had received since Naseby; and he was
so enraged with Rupert that he revoked all his commands, and ordered him
to leave England. Rupert, however, having gone to the King, a
reconciliation was brought about; and, though he held no high command
again during the rest of this war, he remained in the King's service. The
surrender of Bristol was followed by that of Devizes Castle (Sept. 23)
and that of Laycock House (Sept. 24) in Wilts, and by the storming of
Berkeley Castle (Sept. 23) in Gloucestershire. [Footnote: This summary is
chiefly from Sprigge; where, in addition to the text there is an
excellent chronological table of actions and sieges: one or two of the
facts are from Clarendon, and Carlyle's _Cromwell_.]
POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY.
Let us leave the West and South-West for a time, and turn to the North.--
As late as May and June 1645, Baillie, then back in London and again on
duty in the Westminster Assembly, had still been hoping great things from
his beloved Scottish Army in the North. Since the taking of Newcastle
(Oct. 1644), indeed, the services of this army had been mainly dumb-show,
so that the English had begun to despise it and to ask whether it was
worth its wages. Baillie's hope, however, was that, somehow or other
after all, it would be the Scottish Army, and not this New Model, the
invention of the Independents and the Sectaries, that would perform the
finishing action, and reap the final credit. What then were his thoughts
when the news of Naseby reached him? "This accident," he writes, June 17,
1645, three days after the Battle, "is like to change much the face of
affairs here. We hope the back of the Malignant [Royalist] Party is
broken; [but] some fears the insolence of others, to whom alone the Lord
has given the victory of that day." The news of the taking of Carlisle at
last by the Scots (June 28) may have helped to revive his spirits; but
that also may have been an indirect consequence of Naseby, and the
subsequent small success of the Scots during those months when Fairfax,
Cromwell, and the New Model were succeeding so splendidly in the South-
West, again threw Baillie into despondency. The taking of Pontefract
Castle (July 21) and of Scarborough (July 25) in Yorkshire, and finally
that of Latham House in Lancashire, after its two years' defence by the
Countess of Derby (Dec. 4), were the work of the English Parliamentarians
of the Northern Counties; and all the Scots did was very disappointing.
From Carlisle they did, indeed, march south, to keep a watch on the
King's movements in the Midlands after Naseby, and, after hovering about
in those parts, they laid siege to the town of Hereford, by the desire of
Parliament (July 31). But early in September they raised the siege, Leven
pleading that he had not received the promised support and was unable to
remain. With such grumblings and complaints of arrears in their pay, the
Scots returned northwards, through the mid-counties, to Yorkshire, the
English Parliament thinking worse and worse of them, but still speaking
them fair, and desiring to retain them for minor service somewhere in
England while the New Model was doing the real work. [Footnote:
Rushworth, VI. 118-127; and Baillie, II. 286-316.]
THE EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND.
It was not only the small performance and continued grumbling of the
Scottish Auxiliary Army in England that had begun, by September 1645, to
disgust the English Parliamentarians with their friends of the Scottish
nation. In Scotland itself there had been an extraordinary outbreak of
Royalism, which had not only perturbed that country throughout, but had
latterly advanced to the very borders of England, threatening to connect
itself with all of English Royalism that was not already beaten, and so
undo the hard work and great successes of the New Model. Who that has
read Scott's _Legend of Montrose_ but must be curious as to the
facts of real History on which that romance was founded? They are
romantic enough in themselves, and they form a very important episode in
the general history of the Civil War.
Our last sight of the young Earl of Montrose was in November 1641, when
the King, during his visit to Scotland, procured his release, and that of
his associates in the Merchiston House Compact, from their imprisonment
in Edinburgh Castle (Vol. II. p. 307). The life of the young Earl had
then been given back to him, but in what circumstances! Not only had all
his expectations from the Merchiston House Compact been falsified,
expectations of the overthrow of the Argyle supremacy in Scotland, and of
the establishment of a new government for the King on an aristocratic
basis; but, by the King's own acts, Argyle was left doubly confirmed in
the supremacy, with the added honour of the Marquisate, and the
Presbyterian clergy dominant around him. Such a Scotland was no country
for Montrose. Away from Edinburgh, therefore, on one or other of his
estates, in Perthshire, Forfarshire, Stirlingshire, or Dumbartonshire,
and only occasionally in the society of his wife and his four little
boys, we see him for some months, thrown back moodily upon himself,
hunting now and then, corresponding with his friends Napier and Keir, but
finding his chief relief in bits of Latin reading, dreams of Plutarch's
heroes, and the writing of scraps of verse. Thus:--
"An Alexander I will reign,
And I will reign alone;
My thoughts did evermore disdain
A rival on my throne:
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all."
Alas! in a Scotland abject under a squint-eyed Argyle, with Loudoun and
Warriston for his lieutenants, and a thousand rigid and suspicious black-
coats giving the law singly in their pulpits and parishes, and thundering
it collectively from their Assemblies, what room or opening was there for
any such Plutarchian life? It was little better in England, from which
anyhow he was debarred. He would go abroad. Were there not great strifes
in Europe, struggles other than Presbyterian, into which a young Scottish
Earl might fling himself, to win a glorious name, or die sword in hand?
[Footnote: Napier's _Montrose_ (1856), 371-3, and Appendix to Vol.
I. p. xxxiv.; Wishart's Memoirs of Montrose (translation of 1819 from the
original Latin of 1648), Preface, p. vi.] So till August 1642, when the
King raised his standard for the Civil War in England. Then there was
again hope. The King remembered the fiery young Scottish Earl, and
communications had passed between them. Montrose went into England; saw
the Queen immediately after her landing at Burlington Bay (February 1642-
3); and pressed upon her his views as to the way in which Scotland might
be roused in the King's behalf. He seemed to her Majesty but a brave
young enthusiast; and, the Marquis of Hamilton having hastened from
Scotland to counteract him, and to promise that he himself and his
brother Lanark would keep Scotland firm to the King's interest without
that open rising against the Argyle government which Montrose
recommended, the cooler counsel had prevailed, Hamilton and Montrose had
thus gone back into Scotland together, Hamilton with the new title of
Duke (April 12, 1643) to encourage him in his difficult labour, and
Montrose disappointed, watched, and in fresh danger. Again, however, as
months had passed on, the chance of some such bold enterprise for
Montrose as he himself had projected had become more likely. How ill
Hamilton and Lanark had succeeded in _their_ milder undertaking we
already know. They had not been able to check the tide of sympathy in
Scotland with the English Parliamentarians; they had not been able to
prevent that sudden Convention of the Scottish Estates which Argyle
thought necessary in the crisis (June 1643); they had not been able to
prevent the cordial reception there of the Commissioners from the English
Parliament, nor the offer of armed aid from Scotland to the cause of the
Parliament on the terms of Henderson's _Solemn League and Covenant_
(August 1643). Montrose, who had foreseen this result, and had been
trying in vain to engage the Marquis of Huntley and other Scottish nobles
in an independent coalition for the King, had not gone near the
Convention, but, while it was yet deliberating in Edinburgh, had taken
care to be again in England, on his way to the King with his budget of
advices. A Scottish Covenanting army would certainly invade England in
the cause of the Parliament: let their Majesties be in no doubt about
that! He had himself the best reason to know the fact; for had not the
Covenanting chiefs been secretly negotiating with him, and offering to
forgive him all the past, if only now he would return to his allegiance
to the Covenant, and accept the Lieutenant-generalship of their projected
army under the Earl of Leven? If he had seemed to dally with this
temptation, it had only been that he might the better fathom the purposes
of the Argyle government, and report all to their Majesties! No service,
however eminent, under Argyle, or with any of the crafty crew of the
Covenant, was that on which his soul was bent, but a quite contrary
enterprise, already explained to the Queen, by which the Argyle
government should be laid in the dust, Scotland recovered for the King,
and all her resources put at his disposal for the recovery of his power
in England also! Hitherto their Majesties had not seen fit to confide in
him, but had trusted rather the Hamiltons, with their middle courses and
their policy of compromise! Were their Majesties aware what grounds might
be shown for the belief that these Hamiltons, with all their
plausibilities and fair seeming, were in reality little better than
traitors, who had wilfully mismanaged the King's affairs in Scotland for
interests and designs of their own? So, through the autumn of 1643, had
Montrose been reasoning with the King and Queen, as yet to little
purpose. But, when the autumn had passed into winter, and there had
gathered round the King, in his head-quarters at Oxford, other refugee
Scottish Royalists, driven from their country by the stress of the new
League and Covenant, and bringing intelligence that Leven's invading army
was actually levied and ready to march, then the tune of the Royal mind
did somewhat change. The Duke of Hamilton and his brother Lanark, coming
to Oxford, December 16, to clear themselves, were immediately arrested on
charges suggested by Montrose and the other Scots at Court. To wait trial
on these charges, the Duke was sent as a prisoner to Pendennis Castle;
whence he was removed to St. Michael's Mount in the same county of
Cornwall. Lanark, escaping from his arrest at Oxford, took refuge for a
time in London, was cordially received there by the Scottish
Commissioners and the English Parliamentarians, and returned thence to
Scotland, converted by the King's treatment of him into an anti-Royalist
and Covenanter to all temporary appearance, whatever he might still be at
heart. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 73, 74; Wishart, 31-47; Napier, 373-384;
Burnet's _Hamiltons_ (edit. 1852), 280-349. Burnet gives the charges
against the Hamiltons, with their answers, at length, and narrates events
anxiously in their behalf.]
The Hamiltons being out of the way, Montrose obtained a better hearing
for his plan. In the main, it was that the King should openly commission
him as his Majesty's Lieutenant in Scotland, and furnish him with some
small force with which to cut his way back into the heart of the country,
and there rouse the elements, whether Lowland or Highland, that were
ready for revolt against the Argyle supremacy. In connexion with this,
however, there was the scheme of an Irish contingent. Was not the Earl of
Antrim then with his Majesty at Oxford--that very Randal Macdonnell, Earl
of Antrim, whom it had been proposed, as far back as 1638, to send
secretly into Argyleshire with a force of Irishry, to aid the King in his
first strife with the Covenanters (Vol. II. p. 23)? Six years had elapsed
since then; but there was still extant in Antrim, as the head of the
great Scoto-Irish clan of the Macdonnells and Macdonalds, that power for
mischief in Scotland which consisted in the hereditary feud between this
clan and all the family of the Campbells. Let Antrim go back to Ireland,
raise a force of his Macdonnells and Macdonalds and whatever else, and
make a landing with these on the West Scottish coast; and then, if the
time could be so hit that Montrose should be already in Scotland as his
Majesty's commissioned Lieutenant, might there not be such a junction of
the two movements that the Argyle government would be thrown into the
agonies of self-defence, and the recall of Leven's army from England
would be a matter of immediate necessity? So much at least might be
surely anticipated; but Montrose promised still larger results. Listening
to his arguments, iterated and reiterated at Oxford through January 1643-
4, the King and Queen hardly knew what to think. Montrose's own
countrymen round about the King were consulted. What thought Traquair,
Carnwath, Annandale, and Roxburgh? They would have nothing to do with
Montrose's plan, and talked of him as a would-be Hotspur. Only a few of
the younger Scottish lords at Oxford, including Viscount Aboyne (the
Marquis of Huntley's second son) and Lord Ogilvy (the Earl of Airlie's
son and heir), adhered to him. Among the King's English counsellors, of
course, there were few that could judge of his enterprise. One of these,
however, whom a kindred daring of spirit drew to Montrose, helped him all
he could. This was the young Lord Digby. Chiefly by his means, the King's
hesitations were at length overcome. Late in January, Antrim, created a
Marquis for the occasion, did go over to Ireland, vowing that, by the 1st
of April 1644, he would land so many thousands of men in Scotland with
himself at their head; and on the 1st of February 1643-4, or when Leven's
Scottish army had been ten days in England, a commission was made out
appointing Montrose Lieutenant-general of all his Majesty's forces in
Scotland. It had been proposed to name him Viceroy and Commander-in-
chief; but he had himself suggested that this nominal dignity should be
conferred rather on the King's nephew, Prince Maurice. For his own work
in Scotland the subordinate commission, with some small force of
volunteer Scots and English troopers to assist him in displaying it,
would in the meantime be quite enough. [Footnote: Wishart, 47-52;
Baillie, II.73, 74, and 164; Clarendon, 533-537; Rushworth, V. 927; and
Napier, 385-388.]
Leaving Oxford, with a slender retinue of Scots, among whom were Aboyne
and Ogilvy, Montrose went to York, and thence to Durham, where he
attached himself to the Marquis of Newcastle, then engaged in resisting
the advance of Leven's army. From that nobleman he implored, in the
King's name, some troops for his convoy into Scotland. Newcastle, himself
ill-supplied, could spare him but 200 horse, with two brass field-pieces.
There was an accession from the Cumberland and Northumberland militia, so
that the band with which Montrose entered Scotland (April 13, 1644) was
about 1,000 strong. Hardly, however, had he entered Scotland when most of
the English mutinied and went back. With what force he had left he pushed
on to Dumfries, surprised that town into surrender, and displayed his
standard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could be
done. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the West
Highlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all to
the north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. To
try to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in the
Highlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up the
attempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, most
reluctantly, into the North of England, pursued by the execration of all
Presbyterian Scotland, and by a sentence of excommunication pronounced
against him in the High Church of Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 52-55,
Napier, 385-397, Rushworth, V. 927-9.]
"Montrose's foolish bravado is turned to nothing," Baillie was able to
write early in May 1644. This was the general impression. True, in
recognition of his bravery, a patent for his elevation to the Marquisate
had been made out at Oxford. It was fitting that, if ever he did come to
represent the King in Scotland, it should be a Marquis of Montrose that
should contend with the Marquis of Argyle. But would there ever be such a
contest? Few can have entertained the belief besides Montrose himself.
For some weeks after his retreat into England we hear of him as mingling
actively in the war in Northumberland and Durham, taking and pillaging
Morpeth, and the like; then we hear of him hurrying southwards to join
Prince Rupert in his effort to raise the siege of York, but only to meet
the Prince beaten and fugitive from the field of Marston Moor (July 2).
"Give me a thousand of your horse; only give me a thousand of your horse
for another raid into Scotland," was the burthen of his talk with Rupert.
The Prince promised, and then retracted. Though a younger man than
Montrose, he had more faith in what he could himself do with a thousand
horse in England than in what any Scot could do with them in Scotland.
And so, though Lord Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spoke
manfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, late
in July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued the
strangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctly
southwards, as if all thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothing
remained but to rejoin the King at Oxford. The band, however, had been
but two days on their march when they found that their leader had given
them the slip, and left the duty of taking them to Oxford to his second,
Lord Ogilvy. He himself had returned to Carlisle. It was barely known
that he had done so when he mysteriously disappeared (Aug. 18). No one,
except Lord Aboyne, whom he had left in Carlisle with certain secret
instructions, could tell what had become of him; but it was afterwards
remembered, like the beginning of a novel, that on such an autumn day
three persons had been seen riding from Carlisle towards the Scottish
border, two gentlemen in front, one of whom had a club foot, and the
third behind, as their groom, mounted on a sorry nag, and leading a spare
horse. The two gentlemen were a Colonel Sibbald and a lame Major Rollo,
intimate friends of Montrose, and the supposed groom was Montrose
himself. [Footnote: Wishart, 56-64; Napier 396-413; Rushworth, V. 928]
There was a distinct cause for Montrose's entry into Scotland in this
furtive manner. The Scottish Parliament (a regular Parliament, and not an
informal Convention of Estates like that of the previous year) had met on
the 4th of June, with Argyle, Loudoun, and twenty other Peers, more than
forty lesser Barons, and about the same number of Commissioners from
Burghs, present at the opening. On the 12th of July, when they were
approaching the end of their business, there had been this occurrence:
"Five several letters read in the House from divers persons of credit,
showing of the arrival of fifteen ships, with 3,000 rebels in them, from
Ireland, in the West Isles, with the Earl of Antrim's brother, and the
sons of Coll Kittoch, and desiring the States with all expedition to send
the Marquis of Argyle there by land, with some ships likewise by sea, and
powder and ammunition." On subsequent days there were corrections of this
intelligence, bringing it nearer to the exact fact. That fact was that
Antrim's invasion of Scotland, arranged by him with the King and Montrose
at Oxford six months before, had at last come to pass, not indeed in the
shape of that full Irish army with Antrim himself in command which had
been promised, but in the shape of a miscellany of about 2,000 Irish and
Scoto-Irish who had landed at Ardnamurchan in the north of Argyleshire
under the command of a redoubtable vassal of Antrim's, called (and here,
for Miltonic reasons, the name must be given in full) Alastair Mac
Cholla-Chiotach, Mhic-Ghiollesbuig, Mhic-Alastair, Mhic-Eoin Chathanaich,
_i.e._ Alexander, son of Coll the Left-Handed, son of Gillespie, son
of Alexander, son of John Cathanach. This long-named Celt was already
pretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of his
name, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespie, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, or
Alexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay. His father, Alexander
Macdonald the elder, was a chief of the Scottish Island of Colonsay, off
the Argyleshire coast, but nearly related by blood to the Earl of Antrim,
professing himself therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as the
Irish Macdonnells, and sharing their ancient grudge against the whole
race of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of being
ambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well as
with his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll the
Left-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster,
it was not uncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and young
Colkittoch. The old gentleman had for some time been in durance in
Edinburgh; but his sons had remained at large, and Alaster had been
recently figuring in Antrim's train in Ulster, and acting for Antrim
among the Irish rebels, with great repute for his bravery, and his huge
stature and strength. Not inclined at the last moment for the command of
the Scottish expedition himself, Antrim had done his best by sending this
gigantic kinsman as his substitute. It was certainly but a small force,
and most raggedly equipped, that he led; but, thrown as it was into the
territories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glens
before it, all rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, it
might work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the
16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, the
Marquis of Argyle received a full commission of military command against
the invaders, and left Edinburgh for the region of danger. [Footnote:
Balfour's Annals, III. 215 _et seq._; Napier, 416-7 and 504; Wishart, 67;
Baillie, II. 217; Rushworth, V. 928. There is a curious, but confused,
story of the wrongs which old Colkittoch and his family had received at
the hands of Argyle in Walker's Hist. of Independency (1660), Appendix to
Part I. pp. 3-6.]
This was what had caused Montrose's inexplicable restlessness about
Carlisle through the latter part of July, and at length, on the 18th of
August, his desperate plunge into Scotland in disguise, and with only two
companions. By what route the three adventurers rode one does not know;
but on the 22nd of August they turned up at the house of Tullibelton in
Perthshire, near Dunkeld. It was the seat of Patrick Graham of
Inchbrakie, a kinsman of Montrose. Received here by Inchbrakie himself,
and by his eldest son, Patrick Graham the younger, locally known as
"Black Pate," Montrose lay close for a few days, anxiously collecting
news. As respected Scottish Royalism, the reports were gloomy. The Argyle
power everywhere was vigilant and strong; no great house, Lowland or
Highland, was in a mood to be roused. Only among the neighbouring
Highlanders of Athole, or North Perthshire, known to Montrose from his
childhood and knowing him well, could he hope to raise the semblance of a
force. All this was discouraging, and made Montrose more eager for
intelligence as to the whereabouts of Colkittoch and his Irish. He had
not long to wait. Since their landing at Ardnamurchan (July 8) they had
been making the most of their time in a wild way, roving hither and
thither, ravaging and destroying, taking this or that stronghold, sending
out the fiery cross and messages of defiance to Covenanting Committees.
They had come inland at length as far as Badenoch, the wildest part of
Inverness-shire, immediately north of Athole and the Grampians; and there
were reasons now why they should be inquiring as anxiously after Montrose
as he was inquiring after them. For their condition was becoming
desperate. The great clan of the Seaforth Mackenzies, north of
Argyleshire, from whom they had expected assistance, had failed to give
any; other clans refused to be led by a mere Macdonald of Colonsay; the
fleet of vessels in which they had landed had been seized and burnt by
Argyle; that nobleman was following them; and orders were out for a
general arming for the Covenant north of the Grampians. Accordingly,
Colkittoch, imagining that Montrose was still in Carlisle, had written to
him there. The rude postal habits of those parts being such that the
letters came into the hands of Black Pate, Montrose received them sooner
than the writer could have hoped. His reply, dated from Carlisle by way
of precaution, was an order to Macdonald to descend at once into Athole
and make his rendezvous, if possible, at Castle Blair. [Footnote: Napier,
413-419; Wishart, 64-68; Rushworth, V. 928-9. I have had the satisfaction
of rectifying a portion of the tale of Montrose's romantic adventure into
Scotland as it is told by his biographers. Wishart distinctly makes him
first hear of the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish _after_ he had
come into Scotland and was hiding about Tullibelton; and Mr. Napier's
narrative conveys the same impression. But the idea is absurd. As the
landing of Colkittoch and his Irish at Ardnamurchan on the 8th of July
was known in Edinburgh, and discussed in the Parliament there, on the
12th of the same month, it must have been well known about Tullibelton at
that time too, or six weeks before Montrose appeared there; and the news
must have reached Montrose about July 13 or 14, when he was yet in the
North of England, and must have been, in fact, the cause of his
resolution to make his way into the Highlands. It is possible, of course,
that, after Montrose came to Tullibelton, he may have been uncertain for
a time of Colkittoch's exact whereabouts; and there is a seemingly
authentic anecdote to the effect that Montrose himself related that he
first learnt that Colkittoch had broken into Athole by meeting in the
wood of Methven a man running with a fiery cross to carry the dreadful
news to Perth. A misconstruction of this anecdote, with inattention to
dates, has led to the larger, and intrinsically absurd, hypothesis.]
A walk of twenty miles over the hills brought Montrose and Black Pate to
the rendezvous. They found there a mixed crowd, comprising, on the one
hand, the Irish, with a few Badenoch Highlanders, whom Colkittoch had
brought with him, and on the other, the native Athole Highlanders,
looking askance at the intruders, and, though willing enough to rise for
King Charles, having no respect for an outlandish Macdonald from
Colonsay. The appearance of Montrose put an end to the discord. He had
put on the Highland dress, and looked "a very pretty man," fair-haired,
with a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, a brow of unusual breadth, and
an air of courage and command; but the Irish, noting his rather small
stature, could hardly believe that he was the great Marquis. The wild joy
of the Athole-men and the Badenoch-men on recognising him removed their
doubts; and, amid shouts from both sides, Montrose assumed his place as
Lieutenant-general for his Majesty, adopting the tall Macdonald as his
Major-general. The standard was raised with all ceremony on a spot near
Castle Blair, now marked by a cairn; and, when all was ready, the troops
were reviewed. They consisted of about 1,200 Irish, with a following of
women and children, and 1,100 Scottish Highlanders (Stuarts, Robertsons,
Gordons, &c.). Artillery there was none; three old hacks, one of them for
the lame Major Rollo, were the cavalry; money there was none; arms and
ammunition were, for the most part, to seek, even clothing was miserably
deficient. So began Montrose's little epic of 1644-5. He was then thirty-
two years of age. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 928-9; Napier, 419-422.]
It was the track of Mars turned into a meteor. Marches and battles,
battles and marches: this phrase is the summary of the story. Flash the
phrase through the Highlands, flash it through the Lowlands, for a whole
year, and you have an epitome of this epic of Montrose and his triumph.
Our account of the details shall be as rapid as possible.
Breaking forth southwards from Athole, to avoid Argyle's advance from the
west, Montrose crossed the Tay, and made for Perth. Having been joined by
his kinsman, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Menteith, Sir John
Drummond, son of the Earl of Perth, and David Drummond of Maderty, he
gave battle, at Tippermuir, near Perth, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1644, to a
Covenanting force of some 6,000 men, gathered from the shires of Perth
and Fife, and under the command of Lord Elcho, the Earl of Tullibardine,
Lord Drummond and Sir John Scot. The rout of the Covenanters, horse and
foot, was complete. They were chased six miles from the field, and about
2,000 were slain. Perth then lying open for the victors, Montrose entered
that town, and lie remained there three days, issuing proclamations,
exacting fines and supplies, and joined by two of his sons, the elder of
whom, Lord Graham, a boy of fourteen, accompanied him from that time. But
movement was Montrose's policy. Recrossing the Tay, and passing north-
eastwards, he came in sight of Dundee; but, finding that town too well
defended, he pushed on, still north-east, joined on the way by the Earl
of Airlie, and his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, and
came down upon Aberdeen. That city, too familiar with him in the days of
his Covenanting zeal, was now to experience the tender mercies of his
Royalism. Defeating (Sept. 12) a Covenanting force of Forbeses, Erasers,
and others, who opposed him at the Bridge of Dee under Lord Burleigh and
Lord Lewis Gordon (third son of the Marquis of Huntley, and for the time
on this side), he let his Irish and Highlanders loose for four days on
the doomed Aberdonians. Then, as Argyle was approaching with a
considerable army, and no reinforcement was forthcoming from
Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, he withdrew west, into the country of the
upper Spey. Thence again, on finding himself hopelessly confronted by a
muster of Covenanters from the northern shires of Moray, Ross,
Sutherland, and Caithness, he plunged, for safety, into the wilder
Highlands of Badenoch, and so back into Athole (Oct. 4). Not, however, to
remain there! Again he burst out on Angus and Aberdeenshire, which Argyle
had meanwhile been traversing on behalf of the Covenant. For a week or
two, having meanwhile despatched his Major-general, Macdonald, into the
West Highlands to fetch what recruits he could from the clans there, he
made it his strategy, with the small force he had left, to worry and
fatigue Argyle and his fellow-commander the Earl of Lothian, avoiding
close quarters with their bigger force, and their cannon and horse. Once
at Eyvie Castle, which he had taken October 14, they did surprise him;
but, with his 1,500 foot and 50 horse, he made a gallant stand, so that
they, with their 2,500 foot and 1,500 horse, had no advantage. As much of
this time as he could give was spent by him in the Marquis of Huntley's
own domain of Strathbogie, still in hopes of rousing the Gordons. At
length, winter coming on, and the distracted Gordons refusing to be
roused, and Argyle's policy of private dealings with Montrose's
supporters individually having begun to tell, so that even Colonel
Sibbald had deserted him, and few people of consequence remained to face
the winter with him except the faithful Ogilvies, Montrose, after a
council of war held in Strathbogie, retired from that district (Nov. 6),
again by Speyside, into savage Badenoch. But here, ere he could take any
rest, important news reached him. Argyle had certainly sent his horse
into winter-quarters; but he had gone with all his foot to Dunkeld,
whence the more easily to ply his craft of seduction among Montrose's
trustiest adherents, the men of Athole. No sooner had Montrose heard this
than, clambering the Grampian barrier between Badenoch and Athole, he
brought his followers, by one tremendous night-march of twenty-four
miles, over rocks and snow, down into the region in peril. He was yet
sixteen miles off, when Argyle, bidding his men shift for themselves,
fled from Dunkeld, and took refuge with the Covenanting garrison of
Perth, on his way to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 71-105; Napier, 426-
469; Rushworth, V. 929-931.]
Argyle's soldiering, it had been ascertained, was not the best part of
him. He knew this himself, and, on his return to Edinburgh in the end of
November, insisted on resigning his military commission. It was difficult
to find another commander-in-chief; but at length it was agreed that the
fit man was William Baillie, the Lieutenant-general, under Leven, of the
auxiliary Scottish army in England. He had recently been in Edinburgh on
private business, and was on his way back to England when he was recalled
by express. Not without some misgivings, arising from his fear that
Argyle would still have the supreme military direction, he accepted the
commission. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 262: also at 416 _et seq._,
where there is an interesting letter of General Baillie to his namesake
and kinsman.] Then Argyle went off to his own castle of Inverary, there
to spend the rest of the winter.
It was time that Argyle should be at Inverary. Montrose, left in assured
possession of his favourite Athole, had been rejoined by his Major-
general, Mac-Colkittoch, bringing reinforcements from the Highland clans.
There was the chief of Clanranald with 500 of his men; there were
Macdonalds from Glengarry, Glencoe, and Lochaber; there were Stuarts of
Appin, Farquharsons of Braemar, Camerons from Lochiel, Macleans,
Macphersons, Macgregors. What was winter, snow more or less upon the
mountains, ice more or less upon the lakes, to those hardy Highlanders?
Winter was their idlest time; they were ready for any enterprise: only
what was it to be? On this point Montrose held a council of war. "Let us
winter in the country of King Campbell," was what the Macdonalds and
other clans muttered among themselves; and Montrose, who would have
preferred a descent into the Lowlands, listened and pondered. "But how
shall we get there, gentlemen? It is a far cry to Lochawe, as you know;
how shall we find the passes, and where shall we find food as we go?"
Then up spoke Angus MacCailen Duibh, a warrior from dark Glencoe. "I
know," he said, "every farm in the land of MacCallummore; and, if tight
houses, fat cattle, and clean water will suffice, you need never want."
And so it was resolved, and done. From Athole, south-west, over hills and
through glens, the Highland host moves, finding its way somehow--first
through the braes of the hostile Menzieses, burning and ravaging; then to
Loch Tay (Dec. 11); and so through the lands of the Breadalbane
Campbells, and the Glenorchy Campbells, still burning and ravaging, till
they break into the fastnesses of the Campbell in chief, range over
Lorne, and assault Inverary. Argyle, amazed by the thunder of their
coming, had escaped in a fishing-boat and made his way to his other seat
of Roseneath on the Clyde; but Inverary and all Argyleshire round it lay
at Montrose's mercy. And, from the middle of December 1644 to about the
18th of the January following, his motley Highland and Irish host ranged
through the doomed domain in three brigades, dancing diabolic reels in
their glee, and wreaking the most horrible vengeance. No one knows what
they did. One sees Inverary in flames, the smoke of burning huts and
villages for miles and miles, butcheries of the native men wherever they
are found, drivings-in of cattle, and scattered pilgrimages of wailing
women and children, with relics of the men amongst them, fugitive and
starving in side glens and corries, where even now the tourist shudders
at the wildness. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 930, 931; Baillie, II. 262;
Wishart, 106-108; Napier, 470-473.]
The Scottish Parliament had reassembled for another Session on the 7th of
January, without Argyle in it, but in constant communication with him;
and about the same time General Baillie and a Committee of the Estates
had gone to consult with Argyle at Roseneath. About the middle of the
month they became aware that Montrose was on the move northward, out of
Arglyeshire by Lorne and Lochaber in the direction of the great Albyn
chain of lakes, now the track of the Caledonian Canal. They knew,
moreover, that directly ahead of him in this direction there was a strong
Covenanting power, under the Earl of Seaforth, and consisting of the
garrison of Inverness and recruits from Moray, Ross, Sutherland and
Caithness. Evidently it was Montrose's intention to meet this power and
dispose of it, so as to have the country north of the Grampians wholly
his own. In these circumstances the arrangements of Baillie and Argyle
seemed to be the best possible. Baillie, instead of going on to
Argyleshire, as he had intended, went to Perth, to hold that central part
of Scotland with a sufficient force; and Argyle, with 1,100 seasoned
infantry, lent him by Baillie, and with what gathering of his own broken
men he could raise in addition, went after Montrose, to follow him along
the chain of lakes. Of this army Argyle was to be nominally commander;
but he had wisely brought over from Ireland his kinsman Sir Duncan
Campbell of Auchinbreck, a brave and experienced soldier, to command
under him. The expectation was that between Seaforth, coming in strength
from the north end of the trough of lakes, and Argyle, advancing
cautiously from the south end, Montrose would be caught and crushed, or
that, if he did break eastward out of the trough between them, he would
fall into the meshes of Baillie from his centre at Perth. [Footnote:
Balfour's Annals, III. 246 _et seq._; Wishart, 109, 110; Napier,
475-477; and General Baillie's letter to his cousin Robert Baillie, in
Baillie's Letters, II. 417t.]
Then it was that Montrose showed the world what is believed to have been
his most daring feat of generalship. On the 29th and 30th of January he
was at Kilchuilem on Loch Ness near what is now Fort Augustus. Thence it
was his purpose to advance north to meet Seaforth, when he received news
that Argyle was thirty miles behind him in Lochaber, at the old cattle of
Inverlochy, at the foot of Ben Nevis, near what is now Fort William. He
saw at once the device. Argyle did not mean to fight him directly, but to
keep dogging him at a distance and then to come up when he should be
engaged with Seaforth! Instantly, therefore, he resolved not to go on
against Seaforth, but to turn back, and fall upon Argyle first by
himself. Setting a guard on the beaten road along the lakes, to prevent
communication with Argyle, he ventured a march, where no march had ever
been before, or could have been supposed possible, up the rugged bed of
the Tarf, and so, by the spurs of big Carryarick and the secrets of the
infant Spey, now in bog and wet, now knee-deep in snow, over the
mountains of Lochaber. It was on Friday the 31st of January that he began
the march, and early in the evening of Saturday the 1st of February they
were down at the foot of Ben Nevis and close on Inverlochy. It was a
frosty moonlight night; skirmishing went on all through the night; and
Argyle, with the gentlemen of the Committee of Estates who were with him,
went on board his barge on Loch Eil. Thence, at a little distance from
the shore, he beheld the battle of the next day, Sunday, Feb. 2. It was
the greatest disaster that had ever befallen the House of Argyle. There
were slain in all about 1,500 of Argyle's men, including brave
Auchinbreck and many other important Campbells, while on Montrose's side
the loss was but of a few killed, and only Sir Thomas Ogilvy, among his
important followers, wounded mortally. And so, with a heavy heart, Argyle
sailed away in his barge, wondering why God had not made him a warrior as
well as a statesman; and Montrose sat down to write a letter to the King.
"Give me leave," he said, "after I have reduced this country to your
Majesty's obedience and conquered from Dan to Beersheba, to say to your
Majesty then, as David's general did to his master, 'Come thou thyself,
lest this country be called by _my_ name.'" [Footnote: Rushworth, V.
931-2; Wishart, 110-114; Napier, 477-484. Mr. Napier winds up his account
of the Battle of Inverlochy by quoting entire (484-488) Montrose's
supposed letter to the King on the occasion. The letter, he says, was
first "obscurely printed by Dr. Welwood in the Appendix to his Memoirs,
1699;" but he adds an extract from the _Analecta_ of the Scottish
antiquary Wodrow, to the effect that Wodrow had been told, by a person
who had seen the original letter, that Welwood's copy was a "vitiated"
one. No other copy having been found among the Montrose Papers, Mr.
Napier has had to reprint Welwood's; which he does with great ceremony,
thinking it a splendid Montrose document. It certainly is a striking
document; but I cannot help suspecting the genuineness of it as it now
stands. There are anachronisms and other slips in it, suggesting
posthumous alteration and concoction.]----The Battle of Inverlochy was
much heard of throughout England, where Montrose and his exploits had
been for some time the theme of public talk. The King was greatly elated;
and it was supposed that the new hopes from Scotland excited in his mind
by the success of Montrose had some effect in inducing him to break off
the Treaty of Uxbridge then in progress. The Treaty was certainly broken
off just at this time (Feb. 24, 1644-5).
On Wednesday the 12th of February, ten days after Inverlochy, the Marquis
of Argyle was in Edinburgh, and presented himself in the Parliament,
"having his left arm tied up in a scarf." The day before, the Parliament
had unanimously found "James, Earl of Montrose" (his title of Marquis not
recognised) and nineteen of his chief adherents, including the Earl of
Airlie, Viscount Aboyne, Alexander Macdonald MacColkittoch, and Patrick
Graham younger of Inchbrakie, "guilty of high treason," and had
forfaulted "their lives, honours, titles, lands and goods;" also ordering
the Lyon King of Arms, Sir James Balfour, to "delete the arms of the
traitors out of his registers and books of honour." The General Assembly
of the Kirk was then also in session, rather out of its usual season
(Jan. 22-Feb. 13), on account of important ecclesiastical business
arising out of the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly; and Baillie
and Gillespie had come from London to be present. Of course, the
rebellion of Montrose was much discussed by that reverend body; and, in a
document penned by Mr. Gillespie, and put forth by the Assembly (Feb.
12), there was this passage:--"In the meantime, the hellish crew, under
the conduct of the excommunicate and forfaulted Earl of Montrose, and of
Alaster Macdonald, a Papist and an outlaw, doth exercise such barbarous,
unnatural, horrid, and unheard-of cruelty as is beyond expression." But,
though Parliament might condemn and proscribe Montrose, and the General
Assembly might denounce him, the real business of bringing him to account
rested now with General Baillie. To assist Baillie, however, there was
coming from England another military Scot, to act as Major-general of
horse. He was no other than the renegade Urry, or Hurry, who had deserted
from the English Parliament to the King, and been the occasion of
Hampden's death in June 1643 (Vol. II. 470-1). Though the King had made
him a knight, he had again changed sides. [Footnote: Sir James Balfour's
Annals, III. 270-273; Baillie's Letters II. 258-263; Acts of General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland (edition of 1843), p. 126.]
After Inverlochy, Montrose had resumed his northward march along the
chain of lakes to meet Seaforth. That nobleman, however, had been cured
of any desire to encounter him. Feb. 19, Elgin surrendered to Montrose;
and here, or at Gordon Castle, not far off, he remained some little time,
issuing Royalist proclamations, and receiving new adherents, among whom
were Lord Gordon and his younger brother Lord Lewis Gordon, nay Seaforth
himself! Lord Gordon remained faithful; Lord Lewis Gordon was more
slippery; Seaforth had yielded on compulsion, and was to break away as
soon as he could. At Gordon Castle Montrose's eldest son and heir, who
had been with him through so many hardships, died after a short illness.
Hardly had the poor boy been buried in Bellie church near, when his
father, now reinforced by the Gordons, so that he could count 2,000 foot
and 200 horse, was on his "fiery progress" south through Aberdeenshire,
"as if to challenge Generals Baillie and Urry." March 9, he was at
Aberdeen; March 21, he was at Stonehaven and Dunnottar in
Kincardineshire, burning the burgh and its shipping, and the barns of
Earl Marischal's tenants under the Earl's own eyes. Baillie and Urry kept
zig-zagging in watch of him; but, though he skirmished with Urry's horse
and tried again and again to tempt on battle, they waited their own time.
Once they nearly had him. He had pushed on farther south through
Forfarshire, and then west into Perthshire, meaning to cross the Tay at
Dunkeld on his way to the Forth and the Lowlands. The desertion of Lord
Lewis Gordon at this point with most of the Gordon horse obliged him to
desist from this southward march; but, having been informed that Baillie
and Urry had crossed the Tay in advance of him to guard the Forth
country, he conceived that he would have time for the capture of Dundee,
and that the sack of so Covenanting a town would be a consolation to him
for his forced return northwards. Starting from Dunkeld at midnight,
April 3, he was at Dundee next morning, took the town by storm, and set
fire to it in several places. But lo! while his Highlanders and Irish
were ranging through the town, still burning and plundering, and most of
them madly drunk with the liquors they had found, Baillie and Urry, who
had not crossed the Tay after all, were not a mile off. How Montrose got
his drunken Highlanders and Irish together out of the burning town is an
inexplicable mystery; but he did accomplish it somehow, and whirled them,
by one of his tremendous marches, of three days and two nights, himself
in the rear and the enemy's horse close in pursuit all the while, past
Arbroath, and so, by dexterous choice of roads and passes, in among the
protecting Grampians. "Truly," says his biographer Wishart, "I have often
heard those who were esteemed the most experienced officers, not in
Britain only, but in France and Germany, prefer this march of Montrose to
his most celebrated victories." [Footnote: Wishart, 115-127; Rushworth,
VI. 2.8; Napier, 490-497.]
Except Inverlochy, his most celebrated victories were yet to come. There
were to be three of them. The first was the Battle of Auldearn in
Nairnshire (May 9, 1645), in which Montrose's tactics and MacColl's mad
bravery beat to pieces the regular soldier-craft of Urry, assisted by the
Earls of Seaforth, Sutherland, and Findlater. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI.
229; Wishart, 128-138; Napier, 500-506.] The second was the Battle of
Alford in Aberdeenshire (July 2, 1645), where Montrose defeated Baillie
himself. MacColkittoch was not present in this battle, the commanders in
which, under Montrose, were Lord Gordon, Nathaniel Gordon, Lord Aboyne,
Sir William Rollo, Glengarry, and Drummond of Balloch, while Baillie was
assisted in chief by the Earl of Balcarres. Montrose's loss was trifling
in comparison with Baillie's, but it included the death of Lord Gordon
[Footnote: Wishart, 133-152; Napier, 526-536]. To the Covenanting
Government the defeat of Alford was most serious. The Parliament, which
had adjourned at Edinburgh on the 8th of March, was convoked afresh for
two short sessions, at Stirling (July 8-July 11), and at Perth (July 24-
Aug. 5); and the chief business of these sessions was the consideration
of ways for retrieving Baillie's defeat and prosecuting the war
[Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 292 307.]. Baillie, chagrined at the
loss of his military reputation, wanted to resign, throwing the blame of
his disaster partly on Urry for his selfish carelessness, and partly on
the great Covenanting noblemen, who had disposed of troops hither and
thither, exchanged prisoners, and granted passes, without regard to his
interests or orders. The Parliament, having exonerated and thanked him,
persuaded him at first to retain his commission, appointing a new
Committee of Estates, with Argyle at their head, to accompany and advise
him (July 10). Not even so was Baillie comfortable; and on the 4th of
August he definitively gave in his resignation. It was then accepted,
with new exoneration and thanks, but with a request that, to allow time
for the arrival of his intended successor (Major-general Monro) from
Ireland, he would continue in the command a little longer. Goodnaturedly
he did so, but unfortunately for himself. He was in the eleventh day of
his anomalous position of command and no-command, when he received from
Montrose another thrashing, more fatal than the last, in the Battle of
Kilsyth in Stirlingshire (Aug. 15, 1645). On both sides there had been
great exertion in recruiting, so that the numbers in this battle were,
according to the estimate of Montrose's biographers, 6,000 foot and 1,000
horse under Baillie against 4,400 foot and 500 horse under Montrose.
Baillie would not have allowed this estimate, for he complains that the
recruiting for him had been bad. Anyhow, his defeat was crushing. In
various posts of command under Montrose were the aged Earl of Airlie,
Viscount Aboyne, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Maclean of Duart, the chief of
Clanranald, and MacColkittoch with his Irish. Acting under Baillie, or,
as he would have us infer, above him and in spite of him, were Argyle,
the Earls of Crawfurd and Tullibardine, Lords Elcho, Burleigh, and
Balcarres, Major-general Holborn, and others. Before the battle,
Montrose, in freak or for some deeper reason, made all his army, both
foot and horse, strip themselves, above the waist, to their shirts
(which, with the majority, may have implied something ghastlier); and in
this style they fought. The battle was not long, the Macleans and
Clanranald Highlanders being conspicuous in beginning it, and the old
Earl of Airlie and his Ogilvies in deciding it. But, after the battle,
there was a pursuit of the foe for fourteen miles, and the slaughter was
such as to give rise to the tradition of thousands slain on Baillie's
side against six men on Montrose's. Many prisoners were taken, but the
chief nobles escaped by the swiftness of their horses. Argyle was one of
these. Carried by his horse to Queens-ferry, he got on board a ship in
the Firth of Forth (the third time, it was noted, of his saving himself
in this fashion), sailed down the Firth into the open sea, and did not
come ashore till he was at Newcastle. [Footnote: Wishart, 162-171;
Napier, 542-541. But see General Baillie's touching and instructive
vindication of himself in three documents, printed in his cousin
Baillie's Letters and Correspondence (II. 4l7-424). Baillie goes over the
whole of his unfortunate commandership against Montrose, from his meeting
with Argyle at Roseneath after Inverlochy (Jan. 1644-5) to the Battle of
Kilsyth (Aug. 15. 1645); and the pervading complaint is that he had never
been allowed to be real commander-in-chief, but had been thwarted and
overridden by Argyle, Committees of Estates, and conceited individual
nobles.]
The Battle of Kilsyth placed all Scotland at Montrose's feet. He entered
Clydesdale, took the city of Glasgow under his protection, set up his
head-quarters at Bothwell, and thence issued his commands far and wide.
Edinburgh sent in its submission on summons; other towns sent in their
submissions; nobles and lairds that had hitherto stood aloof gathered
obsequiously round the victor; and friends and supporters, who had been
arrested and imprisoned on charges of complicity with him during his
enterprise, found themselves released. Dearest among these to Montrose
were his relatives of the Merchiston and Keir connexion--the veteran Lord
Napier, Montrose's brother-in-law and his Mentor from his youth; Sir
George Stirling of Keir, and his wife, Lord Napier's daughter; and
several other nieces of Montrose, young ladies of the Napier house. In
fact, so many persons of note from all quarters gathered round Montrose
at Bothwell that his Leaguer there became a kind of Court. The great day
at this Court was the 3rd of September, eighteen days after the victory
of Kilsyth. On that day there was a grand review of the victorious army;
a new commission from the King, brought from Hereford by Sir Robert
Spotswood, was produced and read, appointing Montrose Lord Lieutenant and
Captain-general of Scotland with those Viceregal powers which had till
then been nominally reserved for Prince Maurice; and, after a glowing
speech, in which Montrose praised his whole army, but especially his
Major-general, Alaster Macdonald MacColkittoch, he made it his first act
of Viceroyalty to confer on that warrior the honour of knighthood. On the
following day proclamations were issued for the meeting of a Parliament
at Glasgow on the 20th of October. Montrose then broke up his Leaguer, to
obey certain instructions which had come from the King. These were that
he should plant himself in the Border shires, co-operating there with the
Earls of Traquair, Hume, and Roxburgh, and other Royalists of those
parts, so as to be ready to receive his Majesty himself emerging from
England, or at least such an auxiliary force of English as Lord Digby
should be able to despatch. For Montrose's triumph in Scotland had been
reported all through England and had altered the state and prospects of
the war there. Kilsyth (Aug. 15) had come as a considerable compensation
even for Naseby (June 14) and the subsequent successes of the New Model.
The King's thoughts had turned to the North, and it had become his idea,
and Digby's, that, if the successes of the New Model still continued, it
would be best for his Majesty to transfer his own presence out of England
for the time, joining himself to Montrose in Scotland. [Footnote:
Baillie, II. 313-314; Rushworth, VI. 231; Wishart, 190; Napier, 552-569.]
In obedience to his Majesty's instructions Montrose did advance to the
Border. For about a week he prowled about, on the outlook for the
expected aid from England, negotiating at the same time with some of the
Border lords, and in quest of others with whom to negotiate. On the 10th
of September he was encamped at Kelso; thence he went to Jedburgh; and
thence to Selkirk. [Footnote: Napier, 570-575.] While he is at this last
place, let us pause a little to ask an important question.
What was Montrose's meaning? What real political intention lay under the
meteor-like track of his marches and battles? What did he want to make of
Scotland? This is not a needless question. For, as we know, Montrose was
not, after all, a mere military madman. He was an idealist in his way, a
political theorist (Vol. II. 296-298). Fortunately, to assist our
guesses, there is extant a manifesto drawn up under Montrose's dictation
at that very moment of his triumph at which we have now arrived. The
document is in the handwriting of Lord Napier, his brother-in-law and
closest adviser, and consists of some very small sheets of paper, in
Napier's minutest autograph, as if it had been drawn up where writing
materials were scarce. It was certainly written after Kilsyth, and in all
probability at one of Montrose's halts on the Border. In short, it was
that vindication of himself and declaration of his policy which Montrose
meant to publish in anticipation of the meeting of a Scottish Parliament
at Glasgow which he had summoned for the 20th of October.
The document is vague, and much of it is evidently a special pleading
addressed to those who remembered that Montrose had formerly been an
enthusiastic Covenanter Still there are interesting points in it. His
defence is that it was not _he_ that had swerved from the original
Scottish Covenant of 1638. He had thoroughly approved of that Covenant,
and had gone on with Argyle and the rest of the Covenanters, perhaps
"giving way to more than was warrantable," till their deviation from the
true purposes of the Covenant had passed all legal hounds. He had seen
this to be the ease at the time of the Treaty of Ripon at the conclusion
of the Second Bishops' War; and at that point he had left them, or rather
they had finally parted from him (Oct. 1640). He had since then gone on
in perfect consistency with his former self; and they had gone on, in
their pretended Parliaments and pretended General Assemblies, from bad to
worse. The State was in the grasp of a few usurpers at the centre and
their committees through the shires; finings and imprisonings of the
loyal were universal; and all true liberty for the subject was gone. The
Church too had passed into confusion, "the Brownistical faction"
overruling it, joined "in league with the Brownists and Independents in
England, to the prejudice of Religion." [Footnote: Several times in the
course of the document this accusation of Brownism or Independency comes
in--an absurdly selected accusation at the very time when the most patent
fact about the Presbyterian Kirk of Scotland was its deadly antagonism to
Independency and all forms of Brownism. Montrose and Napier were probably
a little behind-hand in their knowledge of English Ecclesiastical
History, and merely clutched "Brownism" as a convenient phrase of
reproach, much sanctioned by the King in his English proclamations
against Parliament.] So much for a review of his past acts; but what were
his _present_ grounds? Here one listens with curiosity. One of his
"grounds" he lays down definitely enough, and indeed with extraordinary
and repeated emphasis. Let his countrymen be assured that he retained his
hatred of Episcopacy and would never sanction its restoration in
Scotland! He would not, indeed, be for uprooting Episcopacy in England,
inasmuch as the King and his loyal subjects of that country did not
desire it; nor was he pledged to that by any right construction of the
Scottish Covenant of 1638. That Covenant referred to Scotland only, and
it was that Covenant, and not the later League and Covenant of 1643, that
he had signed. But he had not forgotten that the very cause of that
original Scottish Covenant was the woe wrought by Prelacy in Scotland.
"It cannot be denied," says the document, "neither ever shall be by us,
that this our nation was reduced to almost irreparable evil by the
perverse practices of the sometime pretended Prelates; who, having abused
lawful authority, did not only usurp to be lords over God's inheritance,
but also intruded themselves in the prime places of civil government,
and, by their Court of High Commission, did so abandon themselves, to the
prejudice of the Gospel, that the very quintessence of Popery was
publicly preached by Arminians, and the life of the Gospel stolen away by
enforcing on the Kirk a dead Service-book, the brood of the bowels of the
Whore of Babel." For the defence, therefore, of genuine old Scottish
Presbyterianism, he protests "in God's sight" he would be "the first
should draw a sword." But a spurious Presbyterianism had been invented,
and "the outcasting of the locust" had been the "inbringing of the
caterpillar." As he abjured Episcopacy, so he thought the system that had
been set up instead "no less hurtful;" wherefore, he concludes,
"resolving to eschew the extremities, and keep the middle way of our
Reformed Religion, we, by God's grace and assistance, shall endeavour to
maintain it with the hazard of our lives and fortunes, and it shall be no
less dear to us than our own souls."--Allowing for the fact that
Montrose, or Napier for him, must have considered it politic to
conciliate the anti-Prelatic sentiment, we cannot but construe these
passages into a positive statement that Montrose really was, and believed
himself to be, a moderate Presbyterian. His programme for Scotland, in
fact, was Moderate Presbyterianism together with a restoration of the
King's prerogative. In this, of course, was implied the annihilation of
every relic of the Argyle-Hamilton machinery of government and the
substitution of another machinery under the permanent Viceroyalty of the
Marquis of Montrose. [Footnote: The document described and extracted from
in the text is printed entire by Mr. Napier, who seems first to have
deciphered it (Appendix to Vol. I. of his Life of Montrose, pp. xliv.-
liii.), and whose historical honesty in publishing it is the more to be
commended because it must have jarred on his own predilections about his
hero. Many of Montrose's admirers still accept him in ignorance as a
champion and hero of high Episcopacy; and for these Mr. Napier's document
must be unwelcome news.]
Ah! how Fortune turns her wheel! This manifesto of Montrose was to remain
in Lord Napier's pocket, not to be deciphered till our own time, and the
Parliament for which it was a preparation was never actually to meet.
In England there had been amazement and grief over the news of Montrose's
triumph. The Parliament had appointed Sept. 5 to be a day of public fast
and prayer in all the churches on account of the calamity that had
befallen Scotland; and on that day the good Baillie, walking in London to
and from church, was in the deepest despondency. Never, "since William
Wallace's days," he wrote, had Scotland been in such a plight; and "What
means the Lord, so far against the expectation of the most clear-sighted,
to humble us so low?" But he adds a piece of news, "On Tuesday was eight
days" (_i.e._ Aug. 27), in consequence of letters from Scotland,
David Leslie, the Major-general of Leven's Scottish army in England, had
gone in haste from Nottingham towards Carlisle and Scotland, taking with
him 4,000 horse. This was the wisest thing that could have been done.
David Leslie was the very best soldier the Scots had, better by far than
Lieutenant-general Baillie, whom Montrose had just extinguished, and
better even than Monro, whom the Scottish Estates had resolved to bring
from Ireland as Baillie's successor. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 313-315.]
Actually, on the 6th of September, Leslie passed the Tweed, with his
4,000 Scottish horse from Leven's army, and some 600 foot he had added
from the Scottish garrison of Newcastle. He and Montrose were, therefore,
in the Border counties together, watching each other's movements, but
Leslie watching Montrose's movements more keenly than Montrose watched
Leslie's. Montrose does not seem to have known Leslie's full strength,
and he was himself in the worst possible condition for an immediate
encounter with it. It was the custom of the Highlanders in those days,
when they had served for a certain time in war, to flock back to their
hills for a fresh taste of home-life; and, unfortunately for Montrose,
his Highlanders had chosen to think the review at Bothwell a proper
period at which to take leave. They had been encouraged in this, it is
believed, by Colkittoch, who, having had the honorary captaincy-general
of the clans bestowed upon him by Montrose in addition to knighthood, had
projected for himself, and for his old father and brothers, the private
satisfaction of a war all to themselves in the country of the Campbells.
Montrose had submitted with what grace he could; and the Highlanders,
with some of the Irish among them, had marched off with promises of
speedy return. But, at the same critical moment, Viscount Aboyne,
hitherto the most faithful of the Gordons, had "taken a caprice," and
gone off with his horse. He had been lured away, it was suspected, by his
uncle Argyle, who had come back from his sea-voyage to Newcastle, and was
busy in Berwickshire. Then Montrose's negotiations with the Border lords
had come to nearly nothing, David Leslie's presence and Argyle's counter-
negotiations having had considerable influence. Finally, of the King
himself or the expected forces from England there was no appearance. It
was, therefore, but with a shabby little army of Irish and Lowland foot
and a few horse that Montrose, with his group of most resolute friends--
Lord Napier, the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie, Crawfurd, and
Hartfell, Lords Ogilvy, Erskine, and Fleming, Colonel Nathaniel Gordon,
Sir John Dalziel, Drummond of Balloch, Sir Robert Spotswood, Sir William
Rollo, Sir Philip Nisbet, the young master of Napier, and others--found
himself encamped, on the 12th of September, at Philiphaugh near Selkirk.
His intention was not to remain in the Border country any longer, but to
return north and get back among his Grampian strongholds. But somehow his
vigilance, when it was most needed, had deserted him. The morning of
Saturday, Sept. 13, had risen dull, raw, and dark, with a thick grey fog
covering the ground; and Montrose, ill-served by his scouts, was at early
breakfast, when Leslie sprang upon him out of the fog, and in one brief
hour finished his year of splendour. Montrose himself, the two Napiers,
the Marquis of Douglas, the Earls of Airlie and Crawfurd, with others,
cut their way out and escaped; but many were made prisoners, and the
places where the wretched Irish were shot down and buried in heaps, and
the tracks of the luckier fugitives for miles from Philiphaugh, are now
among the doleful memories of the Braes of Yarrow. [Footnote: Rushworth,
VI. 231-2; Wishart, 189-207; Napier, 557-580. I have seen, in the
possession of the Rev. Dr. David Aitken, Edinburgh, a square-shaped
bottle of thick and pretty clear glass, which was one of several of the
same sort accidentally dug up some few years ago at Philiphaugh, in a
place where there were also many buried gunflints. There were traces, I
am told, from which it could be distinctly inferred that the bottles had
contained some kind of Hock or Rhenish wine; and the belief of the
neighbourhood was that they had been part of Montrose's tent-stock, on
the morning when he was surprised by Leslie.]
Montrose and his fellow-fugitives found their way back to their favourite
Athole, and were not even yet absolutely in despair. The venerable
Napier, indeed, had come to his journey's end. Worn out by fatigue, he
died in Athole, and was buried there. Montrose's wife died about the same
time in the eastern Lowlands, and Montrose, at some risk, was present at
her funeral. To these bereavements there was added the indignant grief
caused by the vengeances taken by the restored Argyle Government upon
those of his chief adherents who had fallen into their hands. Sir William
Rollo (the same Major Rollo who had crossed the Border with Montrose in
his disguise), Sir Philip Nisbet, young Ogilvy of Innerquharity, and
others, were beheaded at Glasgow; and Colonel Nathaniel Gordon, Captain
Andrew Guthrie, President Sir Robert Spotswood, and William Murray, the
young brother of the Earl of Tullibardine, were afterwards executed at
St. Andrews--Lord Ogilvy, who had been condemned with these last, having
contrived to escape. The desire of retaliation for these deaths co-
operating with his determination to make his Captaincy-general in
Scotland of some avail still for the King's cause, Montrose lurked on
perseveringly in his Highland retirement, trying to organize another
rising, and for this purpose appealing to MacColkittoch and every other
likely Highland chief, but above all to the Marquis of Huntley and his
fickle Gordons. In vain! To all intents and purposes Montrose's
Captaincy-general in Scotland was over, and the Argyle supremacy was
reestablished. All that could be said was that he was still at large in
the Highlands, and that, while he was thus at large, the Argyle
Government could not reckon itself safe. And so for the present we leave
him, humming to himself, as one may fancy, a stanza of one of his own
lyrics:--
"The misty mounts, the smoking lake,
The rock's resounding echo,
The whistling winds, the woods that shake,
Shall all with me sing _Heigho_!
The tossing seas, the tumbling boats,
Tears dripping from each oar,
Shall tune with me their turtle notes:
'I'll never love thee more!'"
[Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 232; Wishart, 208-258; Napier, 581-630, with
Montrose's Poems in Appendix to Vol. I.]
FAG-END OF THE WAR IN ENGLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS.
Montrose's defeat at Philiphaugh (Sept. 13, 1645) having relieved the
English Parliament from the awkwardness of the Royalist uprising in
Scotland while the New Model was crushing Royalism in England, and the
storming of Bristol by the New Model (Sept. 10) having just been added as
a most important incident in the process of the crushing, the war in
England had reached its fag-end.
The West and the Southern Counties were still the immediate theatre of
action for the New Model. Cromwell, fresh from his share with Fairfax in
the recent successes in Somersetshire, Gloucestershire, and Wilts, was
detached into Hants; and here, by his valour and skill, were accomplished
the surrender of Winchester (Oct. 8), and the storming of Basing House,
the magnificent mansion of the Marquis of Winchester, widower of that
Marchioness on whom Milton had written his epitaph in 1631, but now again
married (Oct. 14). Thus, by the middle of October, Royalism had been
completely destroyed in Hants, as well as in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset,
and what relics of it remained in the south-west were cooped up in the
extreme shires of Devon and Cornwall, whither the Prince of Wales had
retired with Lord Hopton. Here they lingered through the winter.
[Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge.]
Meanwhile the King had been steadily losing ground in the Midlands and
throughout the rest of England. Not even after Philiphaugh had he given
up all hopes of a junction with Montrose in Scotland; and a northward
movement, from Hereford through Wales, which he had begun before the news
of that battle reached him, was still continued. He had got as far as
Welbeck in Nottinghamshire (Oct. 13) when he was induced to turn back,
only sending 1,500 horse under Lord Digby and Sir Marmaduke Langdale to
make their way into Scotland if possible. Though defeated by the
Parliamentarians in Yorkshire, Digby and Langdale did get as far as the
Scottish border; but, finding farther progress hopeless, they left their
men to shift for themselves, and escaped to the Isle of Man, whence Digby
went to Dublin. The King himself had gone first to Newark, on the eastern
border of Nottinghamshire, which was one of the places yet garrisoned for
him; but, after a fortnight's stay there, he returned once more to his
head-quarters at Oxford (Nov. 5). Here he remained through the winter,
holding his court as well as he could, issuing proclamations, and
observing the gradual closing in upon him of the Parliamentarian forces.
The position of the Scottish auxiliary army in particular had then become
of considerable importance to him.--We have seen (_antè_, p. 339)
how, in September, that army had raised the siege of Hereford, and had
sulkily gone northward as far as Yorkshire, as if with the intention of
leaving England altogether. There was some excuse for them in the state
of Scotland at the time, where all the resources of the Argyle Government
had failed in the contest with Montrose; but not the less were the
English Parliamentarians out of humour with them. Angry messages had been
interchanged between the English Parliament and the Scottish military and
political leaders; and a demand had been put forth by the Parliament that
the Scots should hand over into English keeping Carlisle and other
northern towns where they had garrisons. At length, Montrose having been
suppressed by David Leslie's horse, and great exertions having been made
by the Scottish Chancellor Loudoun to restore a good feeling between the
two nations, Leven's army did come back out of Yorkshire, to undertake a
duty which the English Parliament had been pressing upon it, as a
substitute for its late employment at Hereford. This was the siege of
Newark. About the 26th of November, 1645, or three weeks after the King
had left Newark to return to Oxford, the Scottish army sat down before
Newark and began the siege. The direct distance between Oxford and Newark
is about a hundred miles.--Through the winter, though the New Model had
not quite completed its work of victory in the South-west, the chief
business of the King at Oxford consisted in looking forward to the now
inevitable issue, and thinking with which party of his enemies it would
be best to make his terms of final submission. Negotiations were actually
opened between him and the Parliament, with offers on his part to come to
London for a personal Treaty; and there was much discussion in Parliament
over these offers. The King, however, being stubborn for his own terms,
the negotiations came to nothing; and by the end of January 1645-6 it was
the general rumour that he meant to baulk the Parliament, and take refuge
with the Scottish army at Newark. Till April 1646, nevertheless, he
remained irresolute, hoping against hope for some good news from the
South-west.
No good news came from that quarter. Operations having been resumed there
by the New Model, there came, among other continued successes of the
Parliament, the raising of the siege of Plymouth (Jan. 16, 1645-6), the
storming of Dartmouth (Jan. 19), and the storming of Torrington (Feb.
16). The action then came to be chiefly in Cornwall, where (March 14)
Lord Hopton surrendered to Fairfax, giving up the cause as hopeless, and
following the Prince of Wales, who had taken refuge meanwhile in the
Scilly Isles. On the 15th of April, 1646, the picturesque St. Michael's
Mount yielded, and the Duke of Hamilton, the King's prisoner there, found
himself again at liberty. The surrender of Exeter (April 13) and of
Barnstaple (April 20) having then cleared Devonshire, the war in the
whole South-west was over, save that the King's flag still waved over far
Pendennis Castle at Falmouth. [Footnote: Chronological Table in Sprigge]
The New Model having thus perfected its work in the South-west and being
free for action in the Midlands, and Cromwell being back in London, and a
body of Royalist troops under Lord Astley (the last body openly in the
field) having been defeated in an attempt to reach Oxford from the west,
and Woodstock having just set even the Oxfordshire garrisons the example
of surrendering, procrastination on the King's part was no longer
possible. His last trust had been in certain desperate schemes for
retrieving his cause by help to be brought from beyond England. He had
been intriguing in Ireland with a view to a secret agreement with the
Irish Rebels and the landing at Chester or in Wales of an army of 10,000
Irish Roman Catholics to repeat in England the feat of MacColkittoch and
his Irish in Scotland; he had been trying to negotiate with France for
the landing of 6,000 foreign troops at Lynn; as late as March 12 he had
fallen back on a former notion of his, and proposed to invoke the aid of
the Pope by promising a free toleration of the Roman Catholic Religion in
England on condition that his Holiness and the English Roman Catholics
would "visibly and heartily engage themselves for the re-establishment"
of his Crown and of the Church of England. All these schemes were now in
the dust. He was in a city in the heart of England, without chance of
Irish or foreign aid, and hemmed round by his English subjects,
victorious at length over all his efforts, and coming closer and closer
for that final siege which should place himself in their grasp. What was
he to do? A refuge with the Scottish army at Newark had been for some
time the plan most in his thoughts, and actually since January there had
been negotiations on his part, through the French Ambassador Montreuil,
both with the Scottish Commissioners in London and with the chiefs of the
Scottish army, with a view to this result. Latterly, however, Montreuil
had reported that the Scots refused to receive him except on conditions
very different from those he desired. The most obvious alternative,
though the boldest one, was that he should make his way to London
somehow, and throw himself upon the generosity of Parliament and on the
chances of terms in his favour that might arise from the dissensions
between the Presbyterians and the Independents. But, should he resolve on
an escape out of England altogether, even that was not yet hopeless.
Roads, indeed, were guarded; but by precautions and careful travelling
some seaport might be reached, whence there might be a passage to
Scotland, to Ireland, to France, or to Denmark. [Footnote: Twenty-two
Letters from Charles at Oxford to Queen Henrietta Maria in France, the
first dated Jan. 4, 1645-6 and the last April 22, 1646, forming pp. 1-37
of a series of the King's Letters edited by the late Mr. John Bruce for
the Camden Society (1856) under the title of "_Charles I. in_ 1646."
See also Mr. Bruce's "Introduction" to the Letters. They contain curious
facts and indications of Charles's character.]
It was apparently with all these plans competing in Charles's mind, that,
on Monday the 27th of April, his Majesty, with his faithful groom of the
bedchamber Mr. John Ashburnham and a clergyman named Dr. Hudson for his
sole companions, slipped out of Oxford, disguised as a servant and
carrying a cloak-bag on his horse. He rode to Henley; then to Brentford;
and then as near to London as Harrow-on-the-Hill. He was half-inclined to
ride on the few more miles that would have brought him to the doors of
the Parliament in Westminster. At Harrow, however, as if his mind had
changed, he turned away from London, and rode northwards to St. Alban's;
thence again by crossroads into Leicestershire; and so eastwards to
Downham in Norfolk. Here he remained from April 30 to May 4; and it is on
record that he had his hair trimmed for him here by a country barber, who
found much fault with its unevenness, and told him that the man who had
last cut it had done it very badly. It was now known in London that his
Majesty was at large; it was thought he might even be in hiding in the
city; and a Parliamentary proclamation was issued forbidding the
harbouring of him under pain of death. On the 5th of May, however, he
ended all uncertainty by presenting himself at the Scottish Leaguer at
Newark. He had made up his mind at last that he would remain in England
and that he would be safer with the Scots there than with the English
Parliament.--It was a most perilous honour for the Scots. The English
Parliament were sure to demand possession of the King. Indeed the Commons
did vote for demanding him and confining him to Warwick Castle; and,
though the vote was thrown out in the Lords, eight Peers protested
against its rejection (May 8). In these circumstances the resolution of
the Scots was to keep his Majesty until the course of events should be
clearer. Newark, however, being too accessible, in case the Parliament
should try to seize him, Leven persuaded the King to give orders to the
Royalist governor of that town to surrender it to the Parliament; and,
the siege being thus over, the Scottish army, with its precious charge,
withdrew northward to the safer position of Newcastle (May 13).
[Footnote: Iter _Carolinum_ in Gulch's, Collectanea Curiosa(178l),
Vol. II. pp. 445-448; Rushworth, VI. 267-2/1; Clar 601-2; Baillie, II.
374-5.]
On the 10th of June the King issued orders from Newcastle to all the
commanders yet holding cities, towns, or fortresses, in his name,
anywhere in England, to surrender their trusts. Accordingly, on the 24th
of June, the city of Oxford, which the King had left two months before,
was surrendered to Fairfax, with all pomp and ceremony, by Sir Thomas
Glenham. The surrender of Worcester followed, July 22; that of
Wallingford Castle in Berks, July 27; that of Pendennis Castle in
Cornwall, Aug. 17; and that of Raglan Castle in Monmouthshire, Aug. 19.
Thus the face of England was cleared of the last vestiges of the war. The
defender of Raglan Castle, and almost the last man in England to sustain
the King's flag, was the aged Marquis of Worcester. [Footnote: Rushworth,
VI. 276-297; and Sprigge's Table of Battle, and Sieges.]
FALLEN AND RISEN STARS.
In August 1646, therefore, the long Civil War was at an end. The King
being then at Newcastle with the Scots, where were the other chief
Royalists? I. _The Royal Family._ The Queen had been abroad again
for more than two years. In July 1644, having just then given birth at
Exeter to her youngest child, the Princess Henrietta Maria, she had
escaped from that city as Essex was approaching it with his army, and had
taken ship for France, leaving the child at Exeter. Richelieu, who had
kept her out of France in her former exile, being now dead, and Cardinal
Mazarin and the Queen Regent holding power in the minority of Louis XIV.,
she had been well received at the French Court, and had been residing for
the two past years in or near Paris, busily active in foreign intrigue on
her husband's behalf, and sending over imperious letters of advice to
him. It was she that was to be his agent with the Pope, and it was she
that had procured the sending over of the French ambassador Montreuil to
arrange between the Scots and Charles. The destination of the Prince of
Wales had for some time been uncertain. From Scilly he had gone to
Jersey, accompanied or followed thither by Lords Hopton, Capel, Digby,
and Colepepper, Sir Edward Hyde, and others (April 1646). Digby had a
project of removing him thence into Ireland, and Denmark was also talked
of for a refuge; but the Queen being especially anxious to have him with
her in Paris, her remonstrances prevailed. The King gave orders from
Newcastle that her wishes should be obeyed, and to Paris the Prince went
(July). The young Duke of York, being in Oxford at the time of the
surrender, came into the hands of the Parliament; who committed the
charge of him, and of his infant brother the Duke of Gloucester, with the
Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, to the Earl of Northumberland in London.
The baby Princess Henrietta, left at Exeter, had also come into the hands
of the Parliament on the surrender of that city (April 1646), but had
been cleverly conveyed into France by the Countess of Morton. The King's
fighting nephews, Rupert and Maurice, who had been in Oxford when it
surrendered, were allowed to embark at Dover for France, after an
interview with their elder brother, the Prince Elector Palatine, who had
been for some time in England as an honoured guest of the Parliament; and
an occasional visitor in the Westminster Assembly. II. _Chief Royalist
Peers and Counsellors._ Some of these, including the Duke of Richmond,
the Marquis of Hertford, the Marquis of Worcester, and the Earl of
Southampton, remained in England, submitting moodily to the new order of
things, and studying opportunities of still being useful to their
sovereign. Others, and perhaps the majority, either disgusted with
England, or being under the ban of Parliament for delinquency of too deep
a dye, dispersed themselves abroad, to live in that condition of
continental exile which had already for some time been the lot of the
Marquis of Newcastle and other fugitives of the earlier stage of the war.
Some, such as Digby and Colepepper, accompanied the Prince of Wales to
Paris; others, among whom was Hyde, remained some time in Jersey. The
Queen's conduct and temper, indeed, so much repelled the best of the
Royalist refugees that, when they did go to France (as most of them were
obliged to do at last), they avoided her, or circled round her at a
respectful distance.
While these were the descending or vanishing stars of the English
firmament, who were the stars that had risen in their places? As the
question interests us now, so it interested people then; and, to assist
the public judgment, printers and booksellers put forth lists of those
who, either from the decisiveness and consistency of their
Parliamentarianism from the first, or from its sufficiency on a total
review, were entitled, at the end of the war, to be denominated _The
Great Champions of England._ [Footnote: One such fly sheet, published
July 30, 1646 by "Francis Leach at the Falcon in Shoe Lane," has been
already referred to (see Vol. II, p. 480, _Note,_ and p. 433, _Note_).
The lists there given, though very useful to us now, contain a great many
errors--misspellings of names, entries of persons as still alive who were
dead some time, &c. In those days of scanty means of publicity, it was
far more difficult to compile an accurate conspectus of contemporaries
for any purpose than it would be now.]
There were two classes of these Champions, though not a few individuals
belonged to both classes:--I. _The Political Champions, or Champion
Peers and Commoners._ The Champion Peers were reckoned as exactly
twenty-nine; and, if the reader desires to know who these twenty-nine
were, let him repeat here the list already given of those who were
Parliamentarian Peers at the outset (Vol. II. pp. 430-1), only deleting
from that list the heroic Lord Brooke and the Earls of Bolingbroke and
Middlesex as dead, and the Earls of Bedford, Clare, and Holland, as
having proved themselves fickle and untrustworthy, and adding a new Earl
of Middlesex (son and successor of the former), an Earl of Kent, an Earl
of Nottingham, and a Lord Montague of Boughton (successors of the
deceased Royalists or Non-effectives who had borne these titles), and
Lord Herbert of Cherbury, once a Royalist, but now passing as a
Parliamentarian. The Champion Commoners were, of course, a much larger
multitude. At the beginning of the war, as we saw (Vol. II. pp. 431-4).
about three-fifths of the Commons House as then constituted, or 300 of
the members in all, might be regarded as declared or possible
Parliamentarians. Of these, however, death or desertion to the other side
in the course of four years had carried off a good few, so that, with
every exertion to swell the list of the original Commoners who at the end
of the war might be reckoned among the faithful, not more than about 250
could be enumerated in this category. On the other hand, it has to be
remembered that, since August 1645, when the New Model was in its full
career of victory, the House of Commons had been increased in numerical
strength by the process called Recruiting, _i.e._ by the issue of
writs for the election of new members in the places of those who had
died, and of the much larger host who had been disabled as Royalists. Of
this process of Recruiting, and its effects on the national policy, we
shall have to take farther account; meanwhile it is enough to say that,
between Aug. 1645, when the first new writs were issued, and Aug. 1646,
when the war ended, as many as 179 Recruiters had been elected, and were
intermingled in the roll of the House with the surviving original
members. [Footnote: This is my calculation from the Index of new Writs in
the Commons Journals between August 21, 1645, and August 1, 1646. See
also Godwin's _Commonwealth_, II. 84-39.] Now, most of these Recruiters,
from the very conditions of their election, were Parliamentarians, and
some had even attained eminence in that character since their election.
About 140 of them, I find, were reckoned among the "Champions;" and, if
these are added to the 250 original members also reckoned as such, the
total number of the Champion Commoners will be about 390. [Footnote: In
Leach's fly-sheet the exact number of Champion Commoners given is 397.
Among these he distinguishes the Recruiters from the original members by
printing the names of the Recruiters in italics. In at least _eleven_
cases, however, I find he has put a Recruiter among the original members.
Also I am sure, from a minute examination of his list throughout, that he
admitted into it, from policy or hurry, a considerable number whose
claims were dubious.] It must not be supposed that they had all earned
this distinction by their habitual presence in the House. Only on one
extraordinary occasion since the beginning of the war had as many as 280
been in the House together; very seldom had the attendance exceeded 200;
and, practically, the steady attendance throughout the war had been about
100. Employment in the Parliamentary service, in various capacities and
various parts of the country, may account for the absence of many; but,
on the whole, I fancy that, if England allowed as many as 390 original
members and Recruiters together to pass as Champion Commoners at the end
of the war, it was by winking hard at the defects of some scores of them.
II. _Military Champions_. Here, from the nature of the case, there
was less doubt. In the first place, although the Army had been remodelled
in Feb. 1644-5, and the Self-Denying Ordinance had excluded not a few of
the officers of the First Parliamentary Army from commands in the New
Model, yet the services of these officers, with Essex, Manchester, and
Sir William Waller, at their head, were gratefully remembered.
Undoubtedly, however, the favourite military heroes of the hour were the
chief officers of the victorious New Model, at the head of whom were
Fairfax, Cromwell, Skippon, Thomas Hammond, and Ireton. For the names of
the Colonels and Majors under these, the reader is referred to our view
of the New Model at the time of its formation (_antè_ pp. 326-7).
Young Colonel Pickering, there mentioned, had died in Dec. 1645, much
lamented; Young Major Bethell, there mentioned, had been killed at the
storming of Bristol, Sept. 1645, also much lamented; but, with allowance
for the shiftings and promotions caused by these deaths, and by the
retirement of several other field-officers, or their transference to
garrison-commands, the New Model, after its sixteen months of hard
service, remained officered much as at first. While, with this allowance,
our former list of the Colonels and Majors of the New Model proper yet
stands good, there have to be added, however, the names of a few of the
most distinguished military coöperants with the New Model: _i.e._ of
those surviving officers of the old Army, or persons of later appearance,
who, though not on our roll of the New Model proper, had yet assisted its
operations as outstanding generals of districts or commanders of
garrisons. Such were Sir William Brereton, M.P. for Cheshire, and Sir
Thomas Middleton, M.P. for Denbighshire, in favour of whom, as well as of
Cromwell, the Self-Denying Ordinance had been relaxed, so as to allow
their continued generalship in Cheshire and Wales respectively (_antè_,
p. 334, Note); such was General Poyntz, who had been appointed to succeed
Lord Ferdinando Fairfax in the chief command of Yorkshire and the North;
such were Major-general Massey, who had held independent command in the
West (_antè_, p. 337), and Major-general Browne, who had held similar
command in the Midlands; and such also were Colonel Michael Jones
(Cheshire), Colonel Mitton (Wales), Colonel John Hutchinson (Governor of
Nottingham), Colonel Edmund Ludlow (Governor of Wardour Castle, Wilts),
and Colonel Robert Blake (the future Admiral Blake, already famous for
his Parliamentarian activity in his native Somersetshire, his active
governorship of Taunton, and his two desperate defences of that town
against sieges by Lord Goring). Several of these distinguished coöperants
with the New Model, as well as several of the chief officers of the New
Model itself, had already been honoured by being elected as Recruiters
for the House of Commons. [Footnote: My authorities for this list of the
military stars in August 1646, besides those already cited for the New
Model at its formation (_antè_, p. 327, _Note_) and an imperfect list in
Leach's fly-sheet (_antè_, p. 376, _Note_) are stray passages in the
Lords Journals, in Whitelocke, and in more recent Histories. I think I
have picked out the chief coöperants with the New Model, but cannot vouch
that I have done so. When one has done one's best, one still stumbles on
a Colonel _this_ or a Lieut-colonel _that_, evidently of some note,
perplexing one's lists and allocations.]
If one were to write out duly the names of all the Englishmen that have
been described or pointed to in the last paragraph as the risen stars of
the new Parliamentary world of 1646, whether for political reasons or for
military reasons, there would be nearly five hundred of them. Now, as
History refuses to recollect so many names in one chapter, as the eye
almost refuses to see so many stars at once in one sky, it becomes
interesting to know which were the super-eminent few, the stars of the
highest magnitude. Fortunately, to save the trouble of such an inquiry
for ourselves, we have a contemporary specification by no less an
authority than the Parliament itself. In December 1645, when Parliament
was looking forward, with assured certainty, to the extinction of the few
last remains of Royalism, and was preparing Propositions to be submitted
to the beaten King, it was anxiously considered, among other things, who
were the persons whose deserts had been so paramount that supreme rewards
should be conferred upon them, and the King should be asked to do his
part by admitting some of them, and promoting others, among the English
aristocracy. This was the result:--
THE EARL OF ESSEX:--King to be asked to make him a Duke. The Commons had
already voted him a pension of £10,000 a year.
THE EARL OF NORTHUMBERLAND:--To be made a Duke, and provision for him to
be considered.
THE EARL OF WARWICK (Parliamentary Lord High Admiral):--To be made a
Duke, with provision; but the dukedom to descend to his grandchild,
passing over his eldest son, Lord Rich, who had taken the wrong side.
THE EARL OF PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY:--To be made a Duke, and all his
debts to the public to be cancelled.
THE EARL OF MANCHESTER:--To be made a Marquis, and provision to be
considered for him.
THE EARL OF SALISBURY:--To be made a Marquis.
VISCOUNT SAYE AND SELE:--To be made an Earl,
LORD ROBERTS:--To be made an Earl.
LORD WHARTON:--To be made an Earl.
LORD WILLOUGHBY OF PARHAM:--To be made an Earl.
DENZIL HOLLES:--To be made a Viscount.
GENERAL SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX:--To be made an English Baron and an Estate of
£5,000 a year in lands to be settled on him and his heirs for ever: his
father LORD FERDINANDO FAIRFAX at the same time to be made an English
Baron.
LIEUTENANT-GENERAL CROMWELL:--To be made an English Baron, and an Estate
of £2,500 a year to be settled on him and his heirs for ever.
SIR WILLIAM WALTER:--To be made an English Baron, with a like Estate of
£2,500 a year.
SIR HENRY VANE, SEN.:--To be made an English Baron. As the peerage would
descend to his son, SIR HENRY VANE THE YOUNGER, the honour included
_him_.
SIR ARTHUR HASELRIG:--£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever.
SIR PHILIP STAPLETON:--£2,000 a year to him and his heirs for ever.
SIR WILLIAM BRERETON:--£1,500 a year to him and his heirs for ever.
MAJOR-GENERAL PHILIP SKIPPON:--£l,000 a year to him and his heirs for
ever. [Footnote: Commons Journals, Dec 1, 1645.]
Had Pym and Hampden been alive, what would have been the honours voted
for them? They had been dead for two years, and the sole honour for Pym
had been a vote of £10,000 to pay his debts, It mattered the less because
these Dukedoms, Earldoms, Viscountcies, and Baronages were all to remain
_in nubibus_. They were contemplated on the supposition of a direct
Peace with the King; and such a peace had not been brought to pass, and
had been removed farther off in prospect by the King's escape at the last
moment to the Scottish Army. It remained to be seen whether Parliament
could arrange any treaty whatever with him in his new circumstances, and,
if so, whether it would be worth while to make the proposed new creations
of peers and promotions in the peerage a feature of the treaty, or
whether it would not be enough for the Commons to make good the honours
that were in their own power--viz. the voted estates and pensions. For
Essex, who was at the head of the list, the suspense (if he cared about
the matter at all) was to be very brief. He died at his house in the
Strand, September 14, 1646, without his dukedom, and having received
little of his pension. Parliament decreed him a splendid funeral.
CHAPTER II.
WORK IN PARLIAMENT AND THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY DURING THE SIXTEEN MONTHS
OF THE NEW MODEL--THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES--INDEPENDENCY
AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY CONTINUED:
CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION COLLEGE AND
THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN PARLIAMENT--
PRESBYTERIAN FRAME OF CHURCH-GOVERNMENT COMPLETED: DETAILS OF THE
ARRANGEMENT--THE RECRUITING OF THE COMMONS: EMINENT RECRUITERS--EFFECTS
OF THE RECRUITING: ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENCY AND ERASTIANISM: CHECK GIVEN
TO THE PRESBYTERIANS: WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY REBUKED AND CURBED--
NEGOTIATIONS ROUND THE KING AT NEWCASTLE--THREATENED RUPTURE BETWEEN THE
SCOTS AND THE ENGLISH: ARGYLE'S VISIT TO LONDON: THE NINETEEN
PROPOSITIONS--PARLIAMENT AND THE ASSEMBLY RECONCILED: PRESBYTERIANIZING
OF LONDON AND LANCASHIRE: DEATH OF ALEXANDER HENDERSON.
During the sixteen months of those New Model operations in the field
which had brought the war so decisively to an end (April 1645--August
1646), there had been a considerable progress in Parliament, in the
Westminster Assembly, and in the public mind of England, on the seemingly
interminable Church-business and its collaterals.
THE TWO CONTINUED CHURCH CONTROVERSIES.
That the Church of England should be Presbyterian had been formally
decided in January 1644-5 (_antè_, pp. 172--175). Not even then,
however, could the Presbyterians consider their work over. There were two
reasons why they could not. (1) Although the essentials of Presbytery had
been adopted, the details remained to be settled. What were to be the
powers of the parochial consistories and the other church courts
respectively? What discretion, for example, was to be left to each
minister and his congregational board of elders in the matter of
spiritual censure, and especially in the exclusion of offenders from the
communion? Was there to be any discretion; or was the State to regulate
what offences should be punished by excommunication? Again, were the
various Church-courts, once established, to act independently of the
Civil courts and the State; or was there to be an appeal of
ecclesiastical questions at any point from Presbytery, or Synod, or the
entire National Assembly, to the Civil courts and Parliament? (2) Another
great question which remained undetermined was that of Toleration. Should
the new Presbyterian State Church of England be established with or
without a liberty of dissent from it? A vast mass of the English people,
represented by the Army-Independents and some leading Sectaries, demanded
an absolute, or at least a very large, freedom of religious belief and
practice; the Independent Divines of the Assembly claimed a certain
amount of such freedom; nay, Parliament itself, by its Accommodation
Order of September 1644, had recognised the necessity of some toleration,
and appointed an inquiry on the subject. In the universal belief of the
Presbyterians, on the other hand, Toleration was a monster to be attacked
and slain. Toleration was a demon, a chimera, the Great Diana of the
Independents, the Daughter of the Devil, the Mother and Protectress of
blasphemies and heresies, the hideous Procuress of souls for Hell!
Such were the questions for continued controversy between the
Presbyterians and their opponents in England in the beginning of 1645,
when the New Model took the field. What progress had been made in these
questions, and what changes had occurred in the attitudes of the two
parties mainly concerned, during the victorious sixteen months of the New
Model?
INDEPENDENCY AND SECTARIANISM IN THE NEW MODEL: TOLERATION CONTROVERSY
CONTINUED: CROMWELL'S PART IN IT: LILBURNE AND OTHER PAMPHLETEERS: SION
COLLEGE AND THE CORPORATION OF LONDON: SUCCESS OF THE PRESBYTERIANS IN
PARLIAMENT.
The New Model itself, as we know, had been a great chagrin to the
Presbyterians. Fairfax, indeed, was understood to be Presbyterian enough
personally; but the Army was full of Independents and Sectaries, it was
largely officered by Independents, and its very soul was the Arch-
Independent Cromwell. For a while, accordingly, it was the secret hope of
the Presbyterians that this Army might fail. But, when evidently it was
not to fail, when NASEBY was won (June 14, 1645), and when all the while
the Scottish Presbyterian army in England was doing so ill in comparison,
a sense of departing superiority sank on the spirits of the
Presbyterians. "Honest men served you faithfully in this action," were
Cromwell's words to Speaker Lenthall in his letter from Naseby field:
"Sir, they are trusty; I beseech you, in the name of God, not to
discourage them. I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humility
in all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the
liberty of his country, I wish he may trust God for the liberty of his
conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for." [Footnote: Carlyle's
Cromwell, I. 176.] This immediate use by Cromwell of the victory of
Naseby as an argument for Toleration did not escape the notice of the
Presbyterians. "My Lord Fairfax," writes Baillie, June 17, "sent up, the
last week, an horrible Anti-Triastrian [Anti-Trinitarian]: the whole
Assembly went in a body to the Houses to complain of his blasphemies. It
was the will of Cromwell, in his letter of his victory, to desire the
House not to discourage those who had ventured their life for them, and
to come out expressly with their much-desired Liberty of Conscience. You
will see the letter in print, by order, as I think, of the Houses."
[Footnote: Baillie, II. 280] The horrible Anti-Trinitarian here mentioned
was Paul Best (see _antè_, p. 157). He was accused of "divers
prodigious blasphemies against the deity of our Saviour and the Holy
Ghost." Parliament, informed thereof by the Assembly, had been appalled,
and had committed the culprit to close confinement in the Gatehouse to
await his trial (June 10). The next day (June 11) the impression had been
deepened by a complaint in the Commons against another culprit on similar
grounds, and the House had instructed Mr. Millington, member for
Nottingham, to prepare an ordinance on the subject of blasphemy
generally. [Footnote: Commons Journals of dates given. Paul Best's case
lasted two years.] All this only a day or two before Naseby; and now from
the field of Naseby, in Cromwell's hand, a pleading of that victory on
behalf of Toleration! Would Cromwell tolerate a Paul Best?
What Cromwell and the Army-Independents would have said about Paul Best
must be left to conjecture. What they were saying about the state of
things in general we learn from the Presbyterian Richard Baxter. Being at
Coventry at the time of the battle of Naseby, Baxter, then a pious
preacher of twenty-nine years of age, with a lean cadaverous body, and
the gauntest hook-nosed face ever seen in a portrait, paid a visit of
curiosity to the field immediately after the battle, and went thence to
the quarters of the victorious army at Leicester, to seek out some of his
acquaintances. "When I came to the army, among Cromwell's soldiers," he
says, "I found a new face of things which I never dreamt of: I heard the
plotting heads very hot upon that which intimated their intention to
subvert both Church and State. Independency and Anabaptistry were most
prevalent; Antinomianism and Arminianism were equally distributed; and
Thomas Moor's followers (a weaver of Wisbeach and Lynn, of excellent
parts) had made some shifts to join these two extremes together.
Abundance of the common troopers, and many of the officers, I found to be
honest, sober, orthodox men, and others tractable, ready to hear the
Truth, and of upright intentions; but a few proud, self-conceited, hot-
headed sectaries had got into the highest places, and were Cromwell's
chief favourites, and by their heat and activity bore down the rest, or
carried them along with them, and were the soul of the Army. ... They
said, What were the Lords of England but William the Conqueror's
colonels, or the Barons but his majors, or the Knights but his captains?
They plainly showed me that they thought God's providence would cast the
trust of Religion and the Kingdom upon them as conquerors." They were
full of railings and jests, Baxter adds, against the Scots or _Sots_, the
Presbyterians or _Priest-biters_, and the Assembly of Divines or _Dry-
vines_; and all their praises were of the Separatists, Anabaptists, and
Antinomians.--Grieved at what he found, and thinking he might be of some
use by way of antidote, Baxter at once gave up his charge at Coventry, to
become chaplain to Col. Whalley's regiment. He had the more hope of being
useful because he had some previous acquaintance with Cromwell. But his
reception was far from satisfactory. "As soon as I came to the army," he
says, "Oliver Cromwell coldly bid me welcome, and never spoke one word to
me more while I was there, nor once all that time vouchsafed me an
opportunity to come to the headquarters, where the councils and meetings
of the officers were." Baxter never forgave that coolness of Cromwell to
him. Hugh Peters, who was constantly with Cromwell as his chaplain, and
would make camp-jokes at Baxter's expense, was never forgiven either.
[Footnote: Baxter's Autobiography (_Reliquiæ Baxterianæ), 1696, pp. 50,
51.]
Not only in the New Model Army was there this ferment of Anti-
Presbyterianism, Anti-Scotticism, Independency, and Tolerationism,
passing on into a drift of universally democratic opinion. Through
English society, and especially in London, there was much of the same.
Since the publication of Edwards's _Antapologia_ in July 1644 the
war of pamphlets on the questions of Independency and Toleration had been
increasingly virulent. The pamphleteers were numberless; but the chief of
them, on the side of Presbyterianism and Anti-Toleration, were perhaps
Prynne, Bastwick, and John Vicars, and, on the side of Independency and
Toleration, Henry Burton, John Goodwin, and Hanserd Knollys, If
Bibliography were to apply itself to the investigation of the popular
English Literature of the latter half of the year 1644 and the first half
of the year 1645, it would come upon these, and other controversialists
whose names have been long forgotten, writhing together like a twisted
knot of serpents, not to be uncoiled except by a distinct enumeration of
several scores or hundreds of the most quaintly-entitled pamphlets, in
the exact order of their publication, and with an account of the nature
of each. London contained so many of these pamphleteers that the most
deadly antagonists in print could not avoid each other in the streets,
and Burton, for example, meeting Dr. Bastwick, would ask him with
irritating politeness when his new book was coming out. Many of the
pamphlets, however, and these the most daring and intemperate in
expression, were anonymous. Such was _The Arraignment of
Persecution_, purporting to be "printed by Martin Claw-Clergy for
Bartholomew Bang-Priest," and to be on sale at "his shop in Toleration
Street, right opposite to Persecution Court." In this and other popular
squibs, to which neither authors nor printers dared to put their names,
the toleration which Goodwin and Burton argued for gravely and logically
was demanded with passionate vehemence, and with the most unsparing abuse
of the Presbyterians, the Scots, and the Westminster Assembly. [Footnote:
Wood's Ash. III. 860 (Prynne) and 308-9 (Vicars); Jackson's Life of John
Goodwin, 61--79; Hanbury's Memorials, II. 385 et seq. (Prynne and
Burton), and III. 68, 69 (Bastwick, Burton, and others). Notes of my own
from the Stationers' Registers.]--One Tolerationist, here deserving a
notice by himself, was John Lilburne. An avowed Independent even before
the meeting of the Long Parliament, and forward as a Parliamentary
captain from the very beginning of the war (Vol. II. 175, 458, and 588-
9), Lilburne had been one of those who regarded the Solemn League and
Covenant of 1643 as incompatible with Liberty of Conscience, and whom no
persuasions could induce to sign that document. He had risen,
nevertheless, by Cromwell's arrangement, to be Lieutenant-colonel in
Manchester's own dragoon regiment, and he had served bravely at Marston
Moor. Between him and Cromwell there was the most friendly understanding.
Lilburne looked upon Cromwell as "the most absolute single-hearted great
man in England;" and Cromwell owned a kindly feeling for Lilburne. But
there was a pig-headedness in Lilburne's honesty which even Cromwell
could not control. "If only John Lilburne were left in the world, then
John would quarrel with Lilburne and Lilburne with John" was Henry
Marten's witty, and yet perfectly true, description of him. Having been a
witness for Cromwell in Cromwell's impeachment of Manchester, he thought
Cromwell culpably weak in allowing the impeachment to drop and not
bringing Manchester to the scaffold; and he had himself brought a charge
against a superior officer, named King. Then he had become utterly
disgusted with the general conduct of affairs and the subservience of
Parliament to the Presbyterians. He would leave the army; he would "dig
for turnips and carrots before he would fight to set up a power to make
himself a slave." His two brothers, Robert and Henry, continued to hold
commands in the New Model; but not all Cromwell's arguments could induce
Lilburne himself to come into it. On the 30th of April, 1645, he had
resigned his commission, presenting at the same time a petition to the
Commons for his arrears of pay, amounting to £880 2_s_. He had resolved
to be thenceforward a political agitator, a link between the Independency
of the Army and what Independency there was already in London itself.
Accordingly, from the beginning of 1645, Lilburne, still not more than
twenty-seven years of age, is to be reckoned as one of the most prominent
Anti-Presbyterians in London, an especial favourite of all the sectaries,
and even of the populace generally, on account of his boundlessly
libertarian sentiments and his absolute fearlessness of consequences.
There was talk of trying to get him into Parliament on a convenient
opportunity. Meanwhile he took to pamphleteering, selecting as his first
object of attack his old master, Prynne. In the first half of 1645
Lilburne and Prynne were seen wrestling with each other, Lilburne for
toleration and Independency, and Prynne for coercion and Presbyterianism,
with a ferocity hardly paralleled in any contemporary duel, and made more
piquant to the public by the recollection of the former intimacy of the
duellists. [Footnote: Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. 1-24, and
418-19; Wood's Ath. III. 353-4, and 860; Edwards's _Gangræna,_ Part I.
46, 47, Part II. 38, and Part III. 153 _et seq._; Commons Journals, Jan.
17, 1644-5; Prynne's _Fresh Discovery._]
The denunciation of Paul Best (June 10, 1645) was a Presbyterian
masterstroke. Even moderate people stood aghast at the idea of tolerating
opinions like his; and that the wretched owner of them could plead his
liberty of conscience (which Best did in prison) was more likely than
anything else to put people out of patience with Conscience and its
Liberty. But, about the same time that Paul Best was put in prison to be
tried for his life for Blasphemy, there were persecutions and punishments
of others, whose offence was far less theological heterodoxy than mere
Independency or Anti-Presbyterianism. "Blessed be God," writes Baillie,
July 8, 1645, "all the London ministers are with us: Burton and Goodwin,
the only two that were Independent, are by the Parliament removed from
their places." In other words, John Goodwin had just been ejected from
his vicarage of St. Stephen's, Coleman Street, and Henry Burton for the
second time from his living in Friday Street, nominally for irregular
practices in their ministry, but really because they were in the way of
Prynne and the Presbyterians. Mr. Goodwin, who had a large following in
the City, had little difficulty in setting up an Independent meeting-
house of his own in Coleman Street; but poor old Mr. Burton seems to have
been in sad straits for some time. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 299; Jackson's
Life of Goodwin, 79 _et seq._; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 78, note.--
Burton, I believe, migrated to Stepney.]----Burton and Goodwin having
been called to account, the next blow was at John Lilburne. With
characteristic bluntness Lilburne had been for some months pressing the
business of his own petition for arrears of pay upon the House of
Commons, going to the House personally, waiting on the Speaker,
circulating printed copies of his petition among the members, and always
with outspoken comments on affairs, and attacks on this person and on
that. On one occasion he and Prynne had met by chance, and there had been
a violent altercation between them. Twice, in consequence, Lilburne had
been in custody for examination as to his concern in certain Anti-
Presbyterian pamphlets, but on each occasion he had been discharged. He
had then gone down to the Army, and procured a letter from Cromwell,
recommending his case to the House. "He hath done both you and the
kingdom good service," wrote Cromwell, "and you will not find him
unthankful." Returning to London, Lilburne had caused this letter to be
printed and had circulated copies of it. No effect followed, and Lilburne
still haunted Westminster Hall, waylaying members as they went into the
House, till they abhorred the sight of him. On the 19th of July he was in
the Hall, and was overheard by his enemies Colonel King and Dr. Bastwick
taking part in a conversation in which dreadful things were said of the
Speaker, his brother, and other public men. The information was
immediately reduced to writing by King and Bastwick, and sent in to the
Speaker, with this result: "_Resolved_, That Lieutenant-colonel
Lilburne be taken into custody, and so kept till the House take further
order." Questioned in custody by a committee of the House, Lilburne
refused to answer, stood on his rights as a freeborn citizen, &c. He also
caused to be printed _A Letter to a Friend_, stating his case in his
own way; this Letter, as increasing his offence, was reported to the
House, Aug. 9; and, on the 11th of August, having been again contumacious
in private examination and committed to Newgate, he was ordered to remain
there for trial at Quarter Sessions. He remained in Newgate till Oct. 14,
when he was discharged, by order of the House, without trial. [Footnote:
Godwin's Hist. of the Commonwealth, II. l5-21; Commons Journals of dates
given; Wood's Ath. III. 860.]
Such prosecutions of individuals formed an avowed part of the method of
the Presbyterians for suppressing the Toleration heresy. Cromwell, away
with the Army, could only continue to hint his remonstrances to
Parliament in letters; but this he did. The greatest success of the New
Model after Naseby was the storming of Bristol, Sept. 10, 1645; and in
the long letter which Cromwell wrote to the Speaker, giving an account of
this success (Sept. 14), he recurred to his Toleration argument.
"Presbyterians, Independents, all," he wrote, "have here the same spirit
of faith and prayer, the same presence and answer; they agree here, have
no names of difference: pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere! All
that believe have the real unity, which is most glorious, because
_in_ the Body and _to_ the Head. For being united in forms, commonly
called Uniformity, every Christian will, for peace sake, study and do as
far as conscience will permit. And for brethren, in things of the mind,
we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason." By order of
Parliament this Letter was read in all the churches of London on Sunday,
Sept. 21, and also circulated in print. It does not seem, however, to
have sunk very deep. [Footnote: Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 188.--As late as
1648 I find this passage of Cromwell's letter quoted and largely
commented on by the Scottish Presbyterian Rutherford (_A Survey of the
Spiritual Antichrist._ 1648, p. 250 _et seq._) in proof of Cromwell's
dangerousness, and his sympathy with Familism, Antinomianism, and other
errors.]
Cromwell's hints from the field in favour of Liberty of Conscience may be
regarded as little "Accommodation Orders" in his own name, reminding
Parliament and the Westminster Assembly of that formal "Accommodation
Order" which he had moved in the House a year before, and which had then
been passed (_antè,_ pp. 168-9). What had become of this Accommodation
Order? The story may be given in brief:--The Grand Accommodation
Committee had immediately appointed a small Sub-Committee, consisting of
Dr. Temple and Messrs. Marshall, Herle, and Vines, for the Presbyterians,
and Messrs. Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye for the Independents. The
business of this Sub-Committee, called "The Sub-Committee of Agreements,"
was to reduce into the narrowest compass the differences between the
Independents and the rest of the Assembly. The Sub-Committee did their
best, and reported to the Grand Committee; but for various reasons the
Grand Committee postponed the subject. Meanwhile these proceedings had
obtained for the Independents a re-hearing in the Assembly itself. The
five original Independents in the Assembly, Messrs. Goodwin, Nye, Bridge,
Burroughs, and Simpson, with Mr. William Carter and Mr, William Greenhill
now added to their number, presented in writing (Nov. 14, 1644) their
Reasons of Dissent from the propositions of Presbytery most disagreeable
to them; [Footnote: The increase of the number of avowed Independents in
the Assembly at this point from Five to Seven is worth noting. From the
very first, however, there must have been a few in sympathy to some
variable extent with the leading Five. Thus Baillie, as early as Dec. 7,
1643 (Letters, II. 110), speaks of "the Independent men, whereof there
are some _ten_ or _eleven_ in the Synod, many of them very able men," and
mentions Carter, Caryl, Phillips, and Sterry, as of the number. (See our
List of the Assembly, Vol. II. 516-524,) There had been efforts on the
part of the Independents in Parliament to bring more representatives of
Independency into the Assembly. Actually, on the 2nd of Nov. 1643, the
very day on which the Lords agreed with the Commons in the nomination of
John Durie to succeed the deceased Calibute Downing, the Lords on their
own account nominated John Goodwin of Coleman Street to ho of the
Assembly, and with him "Dr. Homes of Wood Street, and Mr. Horton,
Divinity Lecturer at Gresham College" (Lords Journals of date). The
Commons, whose concurrence was necessary, seem quietly to have withheld
it, and thus the Assembly missed having John Goodwin in it as well as
Thomas. "Homes" (Nathaniel Holmes: Wood's Ath. III. 1, 168) was also an
Independent, and probably "Horton" leant that way (Thomas Horton: Wood's
Fasti, II. 172).] and the Assembly produced (Dec. 17) an elaborate
Answer. Copies of both documents were furnished to Parliament; but,
without reference to the objections of the Independents, the essential
parts of the Frame of Presbyterial Government had been ratified by
Parliament in January 1644-5. [Footnote: The Reasons of Dissent by the
Seven Independents and the Assembly's Answer were not published till
1648. They then appeared by order of Parliament; and they were
republished in 1652 under the title of _The Grand Debate concerning
Presbytery and Independency_.] Affairs then took a new turn in the
Assembly. The Independents having often been taunted with being merely
critical and never bringing fully to light their own views, one of them
was led in a moment of heat to declare that they were quite willing to
prepare their own complete Model of Congregationalism, to be contrasted
with that of Presbytery. The Assembly eagerly caught at the imprudent
offer, and the Seven Independents were appointed to be a committee for
bringing in a Frame of Congregational Church Government, with reasons for
the same. This was in March 1645; and from that time the Seven, supposed
to be busy in Committee upon the work assigned them, had a dispensation
from attendance at the general meetings. Spring passed, summer passed,
September arrived; and still the Independents had not brought in their
Model. The Assembly became impatient, and insisted on expedition. At
length, on the 13th of October, the Seven presented to the Assembly--
what? Not the Model on which they were supposed to have been engaged for
seven months, but a brief Paper of Reasons for not bringing in a Model at
all! "Upon these considerations," they said in concluding the Paper, "we
think that this Assembly hath no cause to require a Report from us; nor
will that Report be of any use: seeing that Reports are for debates, and
debates are for results to be sent up to the Honourable Houses; who have
already voted another Form of Government than that which we shall
present."--It was the astutest policy that the Independents could
possibly have adopted; and the Presbyterians, feeling themselves
outwitted, were furious. The machinery of the Accommodation Order had
again to be put in motion by Parliament (Nov. 14). There were conferences
of the Divines with members of the two Houses. What was the upshot? "The
Independents in their last meeting of our Grand Committee of
Accommodation," writes Baillie, Nov. 25, "have expressed their desires
for toleration, not only to themselves, but to other sects." That was the
upshot! Army Independency and Assembly Independency had coalesced, and
their one flag now was Indefinite Toleration. [Footnote: Hetherington's
Hist. of the Westminster Assembly (1843), pp. 220-236; Hanbury's
Memorials, II. 548-559, and III. 1-32; Baillie, II. 270-326; Commons
Journals, Nov. 14, 1645.]
The Presbyterians behaved accordingly. There was an end to their
endeavours to reason over the few Independents in the Assembly, or
arrange a secret compromise with them; and there was a renewed onset on
the Toleration principle by the whole Presbyterian force. As if on a
signal given, there was a fresh burst of Anti-Toleration pamphlets from
the press. Prynne published one; Baillie sent forth his _Dissuasive_
(_antè_, p. 142); and Edwards was printing his immortal _Gangræna_
(_antè_, p. 141). But appeals to the public mind through the press were
not enough. The real anxiety was about the action of Parliament. The
expectation of the Presbyterians, grounded on recent experience, as that
Parliament, even if left to itself, would see its duty clearly, and
repudiate Toleration once and for ever. Still it would only be prudent to
bring to bear on Parliament all available external pressure. Through
December 1645 and January 1645-6, accordingly, the Presbyterians were
ceaseless in contriving and promoting demonstrations in their favour. And
with signal success:--Only a certain selected number of the parish-clergy
of London and the suburbs, it is to be remembered, were members of the
Assembly: the mass of them remained outside that body. But this mass,
being Presbyterian almost to a man, had organized itself in such a way as
both to act upon the Assembly and to obey it. Since 1623 there had been
in the city, in the street called London Wall, a building called SION
COLLEGE, with a library and other conveniences, expressly for the use of
the London clergy, and answering for them most of the purposes of a
modern clubhouse. Here, as was natural, the London clergy had of late
been in the habit of meeting to talk over the Church-question, so that
at length a weekly conclave had been arranged, and Sion College had
become a kind of discussion forum, apart from the Assembly, and yet in
connexion with it. At Sion College the London Presbyterians could concoct
what was to be brought forward in the Assembly, and a hint from the
Assembly to Sion College in any moment of Presbyterian difficulty could
summon all the London clergy to the rescue. At the moment at which we
have arrived such a hint was given; and on the 18th of December, 1645,
there was drawn up at Sion College a Letter to the Assembly by all the
ministers of the City of London expressly against Toleration. "These are
some of the many considerations," they say in the close of the Letter,
"which make a deep impression upon our spirits against that Great Diana
of Independents and all the Sectaries, so much cried up by them in these
distracted times, namely, A Toleration--A Toleration. And, however none
should have been more rejoiced than ourselves in the establishment of a
brotherly, peaceable, and Christian _accommodation_, yet, this being
utterly rejected by them, we cannot dissemble how, upon the fore-
mentioned grounds, we detest and abhor the much-endeavoured _Toleration_.
Our bowels, our bowels, are stirred within us, &c." The Letter was
presented to the Assembly Jan. 1, 1645-6, and the Assembly took care that
it should be published that same day.[Footnote: Cunningham's London, Art.
_Sion College_; Hanbury's Memorials, III. 97-99; Stationers' Registers,
Jan. 1, 1645-6.]--The Corporation of London was as staunchly Presbyterian
as the clergy, and they too were stirred up. "We have gotten it, thanks
to God, to this point," writes Baillie, Jan. 15, "that the Mayor,
Aldermen, Common Council, and most of the considerable men, are grieved
for the increase of sects and heresies and want of government. They have
yesterday had a public Fast for it, and solemnly renewed their Covenant
by oath and subscription, and this day have given in a strong Petition
for settling Church-government, and suppressing all sects, without any
toleration." The Petition was to the Commons; and it was particularly
represented to that House, by Alderman Gibbs, as the spokesman for the
Petitioners, that "new and strange doctrines and blasphemies" were being
vented in the City by women-preachers. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 337;
Hanbury, III. 99, 100; Commons Journals, January 15, 1645-6.]
Environed by such a sea of Presbyterian excitement, what could the
Parliament do? They did what was expected. They shook off Toleration as
if it had been a snake. Not only did they assure the Aldermen and Common
Council that there would be due vigilance against the sects and heretics;
but on the 29th of January, or within a fortnight after they had received
the City Petition, they took occasion to prove that their assurance was
sincere. The two Baptist preachers Cox and Richardson, it seems, had been
standing at the door of the House of Commons, distributing to members
printed copies of the Confession of Faith of the Seven Baptist
Congregations in London (see _antè_, p. 148). It was as if they had
said, "Be pleased to look for yourselves, gentlemen, at the real tenets
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