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KING CHARLES THE FIRST,

OF GREAT BRITAIN.

Born 1600. Died 1649.

It is not here intended to write a biography of King 1642. Charles, further than as his life was connected with His early his service in the field of battle. It is not necessary military to notice his birth and parentage, his youth, or even training. his civil career, but simply to recount his campaigns. Scarcely any other leader saw such long-continued and severe service :- -no general probably commanded an army oftener before the enemy; and few had more generals serving under him with varied success. I shall not question the right or the wrong of this King to raise his standard of defiance, or to bring a dispute respecting government to the arbitrament of gunpowder. The questions at issue did not arise, as almost all similar state disputes had theretofore arisen, from legitimacy or illegitimacy of birth and succession,

1642.

-

Adverse circum

the great civil war.

or breach of trust; but touching a matter entirely new to the world—the respective powers and their limits in the governor and governed. Divine right could not define this question;-Jurists were at fault upon it;— the tangled puzzle could be unwound by the sword. alone and it is the history of this war that will here constitute the biography of Charles I.

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Never did any Prince begin a war against the stances un- whole strength of his kingdom under such circumder which stances as those under which Charles commenced the Charles He had not a garrison nor a company commenced great civil war. of soldiers in his pay-not a stand of arms, nor a barrel of powder, musket, cannon, or mortar; he had not one ship of war; and what was worse, he had no money, nor any legally acquired power to procure any the Parliament had all his navy, ordnance, stores, and magazines. It is strange, and a sad instance of the distraction of the King's affairs, that, as he must have long seen to what extremity all things tended, he should not have had the sagacity and moral courage to have secured in the hands of trusty servants those magazines and stores of war that might have been preserved for his use until he might need them 1. With undeniable and impartial truth this may very justly be called " an unpolitic honesty :" -He thought that he was in the right, and he was content to adhere, as long as he could, to his duty, even though against his own interests. It certainly was a very grievous indiscretion in a man of ordinary sense to commence a quarrel with a bigoted and obstinate people like the Scots, for a ceremony and Book of Discipline, which embroiled him with his Parliament in England, in order to get money; until, being beggared and beaten in one kingdom, he got embroiled with his subjects in another, until those whose advice first led him into trouble betrayed him. In an evil hour he

1 Defoe.

repaired to the House of Commons in person to seize 1642. some refractory members;-a proceeding that alarmed the whole gentry of England, and excited heats under which the flame of civil war was kindled; and after some time spent in fruitless altercations between the King and the Parliament, Charles erected the Royal Standard at Nottingham on the 25th August, 1642. It was about six o'clock in the evening of a very stormy and tempestuous day that His Majesty, with a very small train, rode to the top of the Castle hill, attended by Sir Edmund Verney, the King's Knight Marshal and Standard-bearer, who erected the standard on that place with little other ceremony than the sound of some miserable drums and trumpets. There was not a single regiment organized to guard it; it was protected only by Sir John Digby, the Sheriff of - the County, with about 300 of the trained bands. The standard was blown down the same night by a violent tempest, which was an evil presage to the minds of many people.

25.

The same day the King published a "Declaration," The King's and he also drew up a "Proclamation," which he Declaration and directed a herald to read, declaring the ground and Proclamacause of this warlike solemnity, and calling upon all tion : Aug. men to repair to the standard, as to his own Royal person. But it is related that when the herald was about to begin his task some scruple seemed to cross Charles's mind, and, calling for pen and ink, he read it over again as he sat in the saddle, and made several verbal alterations; and then returned it to be read. Then the herald, puzzled with the writing, boggled over the corrections made by His Majesty. The standard was a large blood-red ensign, bearing the Royal arms, and having a hand portrayed pointing to the crown, with the motto, "Render unto Cæsar his due." In order to give greater significance to the act, it was repeated the following day. The King, the Prince of Wales, Prince Rupert, Sir Thomas Brooks, Sir Arthur

1642.

Charles collects his forces for

Hopton, Sir Francis Wortley, Sir Robert Daddington, and many other lords and gentlemen, mounted or on foot, from the surrounding country, indulging a laudable curiosity in the conduct of an ancient ceremony, never before witnessed in the memory of the oldest of them. Having taken his resolution, the King exerted himself with some activity to get a force together. the conflict. Despatches were sent to the Marquis of Worcester in Wales, one to the Marquis of Newcastle in the North, and one into Scotland. The Queen had already repaired to France to see what assistance could be rendered to the Royal cause by her Royal relations, and to endeavour to raise money there to purchase arms. In a very short time Her Majesty so bestirred herself, that a fine train of artillery, and some good officers with arms and ammunition, safely joined the King; and the Queen herself speedily followed them and joined the army of the Marquis of Newcastle in the North. The King forthwith marched to Shrewsbury, where he was received with the acclamations of the people, while a concourse of nobility and gentry flocked to his standard. His Majesty, seeing this general alacrity for the Royal cause, issued out commissions to organize regiments of horse and foot; and was now joined by some field-pieces and by some experienced officers from France: so that his retainers began to look like soldiers. Such was the energy of the King at this period that, notwithstanding the wonderful expedition used by the Parliament, he was in the field. before them; and the spirit thus given to the Royal cause induced the gentry in many places to bestir themselves, and to seize upon and garrison several considerable places for the King. The Marquis of Newcastle obtained possession of the entire North excepting Hull: and Cornwall, and most of the western counties, declared for the Royal cause under Lord Hopton. The Parliament still held what were termed "the associated counties," which were nearest to the

metropolis, where their main support lay. The King 1642. had a personal escort of a Royal troop of young gentlemen, of whom thirty-two were lords, and thirty-eight younger sons of the nobility. He established his principal camp or base with his court at Oxford, which he caused to be regularly fortified, establishing posts at Abingdon, Wallingford, Basing, and Reading, as outworks of the principal intrenchment. The war gradually spread into every corner of the country, and all were in breathless suspense as to where the first blow would be struck.

of the Par

encounter,

Oct. 23.

On the 8th or 12th October, 1642, King Charles took The the initiative, and issued his orders for the Royal army his army strength of to march. It consisted of 10,000 foot, and 4000 horse; contrasted the latter under the command of Prince Rupert. This with that force was little, if at all, inferior in numbers to liament. that commanded for the Parliament by the Earl of The first Essex. Quitting Shrewsbury, the King marched by Sept. 23. Bridgnorth, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and Kenil- Battle of worth, and reached Southam on the 21st. The Earl of Edgehill, Essex had quitted London to assume the command of the Parliamentary army on the 9th September, and proceeded to Northampton, whence he had advanced to Worcester, leaving garrisons by the way at Coventry and Warwick. On the 23rd Prince Rupert, who had been sent by the King to escort Sir John Byron, who was on his way from Oxford with a small detachment conveying money and plate for the King, first encountered some Parliamentarians, under Colonel Sandys, in a narrow lane, on the road to Ludlow, and entirely routed the whole detachment and mortally wounded the commander. This was the first blood drawn in the great quarrel. Essex pushed on some outposts to Hereford, and towards Shrewsbury, but does not appear to have heard that the King was in march till the 19th, when he found the Royal army to be actually nearer London than himself. He instantly quitted Worcester, and leaving his artillery, ammunition, and

VOL. II.

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