give a detail of them as they are delivered by Lord Clar. endin.* A fast, on the last Wednesday of every month, had been ordered by the parliament at the beginning of these commotions; and their preachers on that day were careful to keep alive, by their ve.iement declamations, the popular prejudices entertained against the king, against prelacy, and against Popery. The king, that he might combat the parliament with their own weapons, appointed likewise a monthly fast, wher the people should be instructed in the duties of loyalty, and of submission to the higher powers; and he chose the second Friday of every month for the devotion of the royalists. It was now proposed and carried in parliament, by the Independents, that a new and more solemn fast should be voted; when they should implore the divine assistance for extricating them from those perplexities in which they were at present involved. On that day, the preachers, after many political prayers, took care to treat of the reigning divisions in the parliament, and ascribed them entirely to the selfish ends pursued by the mem bers. In the hands of those members, they said, are lodged all the considerable commands of the army, all the lucrative offices in the civil administration: and while the nation is falling every day into poverty, and groans under an insupportable load of taxes, these men multiply possession on possession, and will in a little time be masters of all the wealth of the kingdom. That such persons, who fatten on the calamities of their country, will ever embrace any effectual measure for bringing them to a period, or insuring final success to the war, cannot reasonably be expected. Lingering expedients alone will be pursued; and operations in the field concurring in the same pernicious end with deliberations in the cabinet, civil commotions will forever be perpetuated in the nation. After exaggerating these disorders, the ministers returned to their prayers; and besought the Lord that he would take his own work into his own hand; and if the instruments whom he had hitherto employed were not worthy to bring to a conclusion so glorious a design, that he would inspire others more ht, who might perfect what was begun, and, by establishing true religion, put a speedy period to the public miseries. On the day subsequent to these devout animadversions when the parliament met, a new spirit appeared in the looks • Clarer don, vol. v. p. 565 + Rush. vol. vi. p. 364. of many. Sir Henry Vane told the commons, that if ever God appeared to them, it was in the ordinances of yesterday. that, as he was credibly informed by many who had been present in different congregations, the same lamentations and discourses which the godly preachers had made before them, had been heard in other churches: that so remarkable a concurrence could proceed only from the immediate operation of the Holy Spirit that he therefore entreated them, in vindication of their own honor, in consideration of their duty to God and their country, to lay aside all private ends, and renounce every office attended with profit or advantage: that the absence of so many members, occupied in different employments, had rendered the house extremely thin, and diminished the authority of their determinations: and that he could not forbear, for his own part, accusing himself as one who enjoyed a gainful office, that of treasurer of the navy; and though he was possessed of it before the civil commotions, and owed it not to the favor of the parliament, yet was he ready to resign it, and to sacrifice, to the welfare of his country, every consideration of private interest and advantage. Cromwell next acted his part, and commended the preachers for having dealt with them plainly and impartially, and told them of their errors, of which they were so unwilling to be informed. Though they dwelt on many things, he said, on which he had never before reflected, yet, upon revolving them, he could not but confess that, till there were a perfect reformation in these particulars, nothing which they undertook could possibly prosper. The parliament, no doubt, continued he, had done wisely on the commencement of the war, in engaging several of its members in the most dangerous parts of it, and thereby satisfying the nation that they intended to share all hazards with the meanest of the people. But affairs are now changed. During the progress of military operations, there have arisen in the parliamentary armies many excellent officers, who are qualified for higher commands than they are now possessed of. And though it becomes not men engaged in such a cause "to put trust in the arm of flesh," yet he could assure them, that their troops contained generals fit to command in any enterprise in Christendom. The army, indeed, he was sorry to say it, did not correspond by ts discipline to the merit of the officers; nor were there any hopes, till the present vices and disorders which prevail among the soldiers were repressed by a new model that their forces would ever be attended with signal success in any under aking. : In opposition to this reasoning of the Independents, many of the Presbyterians showed the inconvenience and danger of the projected alteration. Whitlocke, in particular, a man of honor, who loved his country, though in every change of gov ernment he always adhered to the ruling power, said, that besides the ingratitude of discarding, and that by fraud and artifice, so many noble persons, to whom the parliament had hitherto owed its chief support, they would find it extremely difficult to supply the place of men now formed by experience to command and authority: that the rank alone possessed by such as were members of either house, prevented envy, retained the army in obedience, and gave weight to military orders that greater confidence might safely be reposed in men of family and fortune, than in mere adventurers, who would be apt to entertain separate views from those which were embraced by the persons who employed them that no maxim of policy was more undisputed, than the necessity of preserving an inseparable connection between the civil and military powers, and of retaining the latter in strict subordination to the former: that the Greeks and Romans, the wisest and most passionate lovers of liberty, had ever intrusted to their senators the command of armies, and had maintained an unconquerable jealousy of all mercenary forces and that such men alone, whose interests were involved in those of the public, and who possessed a vote in the civil deliberations, would sufficiently respect the authority of parliament, and never could be tempted to turn the sword against those by whom it was committed to them.* Notwithstanding these reasonings, a committee was chosen to frame what was called the "self-denying ordinance," by which the members of both houses were excluded from all civil and military employments, except a few offices which were specified. This ordinance was the subject of great debate, and for a long time rent the parliament and city into factions. But at last, by the prevalence of envy with some; with others, of false modesty; with a great many, of the republican and Independent views; it passed the house of commons, and was sent to the upper house. The peers, though the scheme was in part levelled against their order; though all of them wers *Whitlocke, p. 114, 115. Rush. vol. vii. p. 6. at bottom extremely averse to it; though they even ventured once to reject it; yet possessed so little authority, that they durst not persevere in opposing the resolution of the com. mons; and they thought it better policy, by an unlimited compliance, to ward off that ruin which they saw approaching. The ordinance, therefore, having passed both houses, Essex, Warwick, Manchester, Denbigh, Waller, Brereton, and many others, resigned their commands, and received the thanks of parliament for their good services. A pension of en thousand pounds a year was settled on Essex. * [1645.] It was agreed to recruit the army to twenty-two thousand men; and Sir Thomas Fairfax was appointed gen eral. It is remarkable that his commission did not run, like that of Essex, in the name of the king and parliament, but in that of the parliament alone; and the article concerning the safety of the king's person was omitted: so much had animos. ities increased between the parties.‡ Cromwell, being a member of the lower house, should have been discarded with the others; but this impartiality would have disappointed all the views of those who had introduced the self-denying ordinance. He was saved by a subtlety, and by that political craft in which he was so eminent. At the time when the other officers resigned their commissions, care was taken that he should be sent with a body of horse to relieve Taunton besieged by the royalists. His absence being remarked orders were despatched for his immediate attendance in parliainent; and the new general was directed to employ some other officer in that service. A ready compliance was feigned; and the very day was named on which, it was averred, he would take his place in the house. But Fairfax, having appointed a rendezvous of the army, wrote to the parliament, and desired leave to retain for some days Lieutenant General Cromwell, whose advice, he said, would be useful in supplying the place of those officers who had resigned. Shortly after, he begged, with much earnestness, that they would allow Cromwell to serve that campaign. And thus the Independ ents, though the minority, prevailed by art and cunning over the Presbyterians, and bestowed the whole mil tary authority in appearance, upon Fairfax; in reality, upon Cromwell. *Rush. vol. vii. p. 8, 15. Whitlocke, p. 118. Rush. vol. vii. p. 7. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 629, 630. Whitlocke, p. 141 Fairfax was a person equally eminent for courage and for humanity; and though strongly infected with prejudices, or principles derived from religious and party zeal, he seems never, in the course of his public conduct, to have been diverted by private interest or ambition from adhering strictly to these principles. Sincere in his professions, disinterested in his views, open in his conduct, he had formed one of the tnost shining characters of the age, had not the extreme narrowness of his genius in every thing but in war, and his embarrassed and confused elocution on every occasion but when he gave orders, diminished the lustre of his merit, and rendered the part which he acted, even when vested with the snpreme command, but secondary and subordinate. Cromwell, by whose sagacity and insinuation Fairfax was entirely governed, is one of the most eminent and most singular personages that occurs in history: the strokes of his character are as open and strongly marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during the time, dark and impenetrable. His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most enlarged projects: his enterprising genius was not dismayed with the boldest and most dangerous. Carried by his natural temper to magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy, he yet knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation, the most oblique and refined artifice, the semblance of the greatest moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, though his public conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, though he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; he was engaged in crimes from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation which is in general irresistible to human nature. And by using well that authority which he had attained by fraud and violence, he has lessened, if not overpowered, our detestation of his enormities, by our admiration of his success and of his genius. During this important transaction of the self-denying ordinance, the negotiations for peace were likewise carried on, though with small hopes of success. The king having sent two messages, one from Evesham,* another from Tavistoke,† desiring a treaty, the parliament despatched commissioners to Oxford with proposals, as high as if they had obtained a complete victory. The advantages gained during the campaign 8th of Sept 1644. * 4th of July, 1644. Dugdale, p. 737. Rush. vol. vi. p 80. |