him: Will your Majesty grant us Power of the Militia; Accept this list of Lord-Lieutenants?' On the 9th of March, still advancing northward without affirmative response, he has got to Newmarket; where another message overtakes him, earnestly urges itself upon him: Could not your Majesty please to grant us Power of the Militia for a limited time? No, by God!' answers his Majesty, 'not for an hour!'-On the 19th of March he is at York; where his Hull Magazine, gathered for service against the Scots, is lying near; where a great Earl of Newcastle, and other northern potentates will help him; where, at least, London and its Puritanism, now grown so fierce, is far off.

"There we will leave him; attempting Hull Magazine, in vain, exchanging messages with his Parliament; messages, missives, printed and written papers without limit:-Law-pleadings of both parties before the great tribunal of the English Nation, each party striving to prove itself right, and within the verge of Law: preserved still in acres of typography, once thrillingly alive in every fibre of them; now a mere torpor, readable by a few creatures, not rememberable by any. It is too clear his Majesty will have to get himself an army, by Commission of Array, by subscriptions of loyal plate, pawning of crown-jewels, or how he can. The Parliament by all methods is endeavouring to do the like. London subscribed 'Horses and Plate,' every kind of plate, even to women's thimbles, to an unheard of amount; and when it came to actual enlisting, in London alone there were 'four thousand enlisted in a day.' The reader may meditate that one fact. Royal messages, Parliamentary messages, acres of typography thrillingly alive in every fibre of them, these go on slowly abating, and military preparations go on steadily increasing till the 23rd of October next. The King's Commission of Array for Leicestershire, came out on the 12th of June, commissions for other counties following as convenient; the Parliament's 'Ordinance for the Militia,' rising cautiously pulse after pulse towards clear emergence, had attained completion the week before. The question puts itself to every English soul, Which of these will you obey?-and in all quarters of English ground, with swords getting out of their scabbards, and yet the constable's baton struggling to rule supreme, there is a most confused solution of it going on."

In the meanwhile Oliver is not idle, he takes great interest in the progress of the Irish Rebellion, gives much advice, and offers to lend money in aid of its suppression. He also moves in the House for an order "to allow the townsmen of Cambridge to raise two companies of volunteers, and to appoint captains over them." This is on the 15th July,-a month afterwards. "Mr. Cromwell has seized the magazine in the Castle, at Cambridge, and hath hindered the carrying off the plate from that University." Prompt measures these, and not without danger too. Yet as Carlyle says, "The like was going on in all shires of England; wherever the Parliament had a zealous member, it sent him down to his shire in these critical months the most confused months England ever saw. In

every shire, in every parish; in court-houses, ale-houses, churches, markets, wheresoever men were gathered together, England with sorrowful confusion in every fibre, is tearing itself into hostile halves, to carry on the voting by pike and bullet henceforth."

After this Oliver took command as Captain, in troop sixtyseven, of the army led by the Earls of Essex and Bedford, the one as Lord General, the other as General of the Horse. "How," says our author, "a staid, most pacific, solid farmer of three-and-forty, decides on girding himself with warlike iron, and fighting against principalities and powers, let readers who have formed any notion of this man, conceive for themselves." On Sunday, the 23rd of October, the Battle of Edgehill was fought. The fight was indecisive, and Cromwell made this memorable remark to Colonel Hampden, "we shall never get on with a set of poor tapsters and town apprentice people fighting against men of honour. To cope with men of honour we must have men of religion." Whereupon Hampden said, "It is a good notion if it can be executed." Cromwell thought so too; and he acted in accordance therewith as soon as possible.

A few months after this, Cromwell obtained the rank of Colonel. He became very active in the counties of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk-stayed the progress of royalism, and banished it from his whereabouts altogether. In March, 1643, he took Norwich, and thence he proceeded to Lincolnshire, which he hoped to annex to his already powerful association of counties, and his hopes were realized before the end of the year; and Lincoln, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Herts and Hunts were the famous seven associated counties which "make a great figure in the old books, and kept the war wholly out of their own borders, having had a man of due forwardness among them." In the May following, (it is worthy of mention, being indicative of the state of things at that critical period), Cheapside Cross, Charing Cross, and other monuments of Papist idolatry were torn down by authority, "troops of soldiers sounding their trumpets, and all the people shouting." In July, the Parliament nominated Cromwell to the Governorship of Ely; then came Winceby fight and many skirmishes, wherein Oliver was once well nigh killed-and so the old year goes out, and 1644 looks in on a nation struggling in a very mild way after something not quite visible, except to very far seeing men, who proclaim not what they descry. "The King will have nothing to do with Presbyterianism, will not stir a step without his surplices at All-hallowtide-there remains only war." On the 2nd of July, 1644, the battle of Marston Moor was fought, it raged from seven till ten o'clock in the evening, and Prince Rupert, the "Prince of plunderers" was totally

beaten. Cromwell lost his nephew in this violent fight, and wrote a letter of condolence to his brother in a spirit that does him honour. He soon becomes Lieutenant-General. His superiors, Essex and Manchester, act in a manner not at all pleasing to him; they lack the activity, the indomitable energy of the sturdy Noll, and a rupture very quickly ensues between him and Manchester. On the 25th of November, 1644, the Lieutenant-General exhibits in the House of Commons, some heavy charges, to which says Carlyle, "Manchester makes heavy answer," of which the following is part.

"How his Lordship had once in those very Newbury days, ordered Cromwell to proceed to some rendezvous with the horse, and Cromwell, very unsuitably for a Lieutenant-General, had answered, The horses were already worn off their feet; "if your Lordship want to have the skins of the horses, this is the way to get them!"-Through which small slit, one looks into large seas of general discrepancy in those old months! Lieutenant-General Crom

well is also reported to have said, in a moment of irritation surely, "There would never be a good time in England till we had done with Lords."* But the most appalling report that now circulates in the world is this, of his saying once, "If he met the King in battle, he would fire his pistol at the King as at another;"-pistol, at our poor semi-divine misguided Father fallen insane: a thing hardly conceivable to the Presbyterian human mind!†

On the 9th December he speaks again in order to get the Essexes and Manchesters out of the army. Many unhappy differences had arisen among the Parliament leaders, and it was proposed by Zouch Tate and seconded by Vane, that all members of Parliament should be excluded from serving in the army. It was considered "that by passing this ordinance, the members taken off from other employments would be better able to attend to their duties in Parliament, whereby the frequent objection of the thinness of the House at the passing of important votes would be obviated, as would also that other capital objection, that the members of Parliament sought their own profit, honour, and power, which would be no longer believed when the world saw them so ready to exclude themselves from all commands and offices." This motion was carried, and in about a month a Bill was passed in the Commons and sent up to the Lords, who rejected it. They looked at it—and very naturally too, with a very jealous eye. By disqualifying members of Parliament from command, all the hereditary nobility were excluded, while but a portion of the gentry felt the effects of the ordnance. All who did not sit in the House could act, and therefore it operated very unequally on the two classes. In the

*Rushworth, v. 734. † Old Pamphlets sæpius, onwards to 1649.

meanwhile, the new model army was in active process of formation; Sir Thomas Fairfax was named Commander-in-chief, in place of Essex; Skippon was made Major-General; and the Lieutenant-Generalship remained to be filled. The best man for that is known-but his time has not yet come. The Bill for the next two or three months is bandied about from house to house, with alterations and re-alterations, till at last it is agreed that the old officers should resign, but they are not to be prevented from serving at any future time, as was first thought on. The dismissal is to be but temporary, suiting the exigency of the times, and not to be deemed irrevocable. Ah! your Lordships must take care, we think there are longer heads than your own in the lower House. Rub thy noble eyes, and peer into the future; alas! thy patrician optics are very weak, and we have no spectacles for thee. Verily, thou art in a parlous state,

"Ye sleep too much o' nights."

Look at Prince Rupert: he is making a very formidable show at Worcester, and presently goes towards the King, who is at Oxford, thrashing Colonel Massey on his way, who wanted to prevent his Highness from going where he would. Now mark the result, ye sapient peers! Fairfax looks blank, and his officers also show a dejected visage; presently silence is broken, and a murmuring is heard. A man is needed who is not among them. "Twere ruination to let him wear out his life in shapeless idleness. What more is done need not be told, save that Oliver Cromwell, in a very few days after, enters the camp with six hundred horse, " amid the shouts of the whole army," with a commission in his pocket nominating him Lieutenant-General for the next three months. Thus the place is filled up in spite of the " self-denying" ordinance by a member of the House, who two days after decides on the field of Naseby "what the liberties and laws of England, and what the King's power and prerogative should hereafter be." Think of this, ye sleek-headed Manchesters!

In

In the following September, Bristol is taken by storm in gallant style. Next comes the taking of Basing; Oliver then serves with Fairfax in the west throughout the winter. April next (1646) the King got from Oxford in disguise, and hurried northward. Cromwell took his seat again in Parliament, and though some detached castles and towns still hold out," yet" the first civil war, we may say, has now ended.”

66

It is not for us to develop fully the progress of events throughout the momentous period of Cromwell's life. History chronicles the extraordinary actions performed upon this little isle in the seventeenth century, and to history we must refer. Nor can we

shew to the reader the valuable letters of Cromwell contained in the volume before us, or favor him with aught more than a few specimens of Thomas Carlyle's power as a commentator.

From 1646 to 1648 there was a tremendous hurly-burly, alternating with awful groanings and ominous silence, born of savage discontent. The king proved tricky, and the army began to murmur in such sort as was not in any wise pleasant to royal ears, or any other auricular organs whatsoever. From mutterings they proceeded to full-spoken ire; and in the course of time, by some of the strangest and saddest acts ever recorded in the tablets of a nation's memory, Charles Stuart, the monarch of the land, was brought to judgment.

On the 1st of January, 1649, an ordinance was prepared by a committee of thirty-eight, the preamble to which contained the following passages: "That Charles Stuart, being admitted king of England, and therin trusted with a limited power to govern by and according to the laws of the land, and not otherwise, and by his trust, oath, and office being obliged to use the power committed to him for the good and benefit of the people, and for the preservation of their rights and liberties, yet nevertheless out of a wicked design to erect and uphold in himself an unlimited and tyrannical power, to rule according to his will, and to overthrow the rights and liberties of his people, yea to take away and make void the foundations thereof, and of all redress and remedy of misgovernment which by the fundamental constitutions of this kingdom were reserved, on the people's behalf, in the right and power of frequent and successive parliaments, or national meetings in council, he, the said Charles Stuart, for accomplishing of such his designs, and for the protecting of himself and his adherents in his and their wicked practices, to the same ends hath traitorously and maliciously levied war against the present parliament and the people therein represented." The ordinance was sent on the day following to the House of Lords, where there were only about a dozen Peers. These rejected it unanimously, whereupon, with closed doors, the House of Commons made this memorable resolve," That the Commons of England, in Parliament assembled, being chosen by and representing the people, have the supreme power in this nation. And do also declare, that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in Parliament assembled, hath the force of a law; and all the people of this nation are concluded thereby, although the consent and concurrence of King, or House of Peers be not had thereunto." Verily! His Majesty is in a perilous predicament, and the nobles are not in the most favorable position possible. Yet it is recorded in the fatal