Manchester, by way of recrimination, informed the parlia ment, that, at another time, Cromwell having proposed some scheme to which it seemed improbable the parliament would agree, he insisted, and said, " My lord, if you will stick firm to honest men, you shall find yourself at the head of an army which shall give law both to king and parliament." "This discourse," continued Manchester, " made the greater impression on me, because I knew the lieutenant-general to be a man of very deep designs; and he has even ventured to tell me, that it never would be well with England till I were Mr. Montague, and there were ne'er a lord or peer in the kingdom." So full was Cromwell of these republican projects, that, notwithstanding his habits of profound dissimulation, he could not so carefully guard his expressions, but that sometimes his favorite notions would escape him. These violent dissensions brought matters to extremity, and pushed the Independents to the execution of their designs. The present generals, they thought, were more desirous of protracting than finishing the war; and having entertained a scheme for preserving still some balance in the constitution, they were afraid of entirely subduing the king, and reducing him to a condition where he should not be entitled to ask any concessions. A new model alone of the army could bring complete victory to the parliament, and free the nation from those calamities under which it labored. But how to effect this project was the difficulty. The authority, as well as merits, of Essex was very great with the parliament. Not .only he had served them all along with the most exact and scrupulous honor: it was in some measure owing to his popularity that they had ever been enabled to levy an army, or make head against the royal cause. Manchester, Warwick, and the other commanders, had likewise great credit with the public; nor were there any hopes of prevailing over them, but by laying the plan of an oblique and artificial attack, which® would conceal the real purposes of their antagonists. The Scots and the Scottish commissioners, jealous of the progress of the Independents, were a new obstacle, which, without the utmost art and subtlety, it would be difficult to surmount.† The methods by which this intrigue was conducted are so sin gular, and show so fully the genius of the age, that we shal. * Clarendon, vol. v. p. 562. † Clarendon, vol. v. p. 562. give a detail of them as they are delivered by Lord Clarndon.* A fast, on the last Wednesday of every month, had been ordered by the parliament at the beginning of these commoions; and their preachers on that day were careful to keep alive, by their vehement 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, when 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 Independ ents, 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 members. 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 fall. ing 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 fit, 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 Clarendon, 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 its 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 undertaking. 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 government 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 speci. fied. 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 were *Whitlocke, p. 114, 115. Rush, vol. vii. p. 6. 't 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 commons; 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 ten 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 general. 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 animosities 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 parliament; 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 Independents, though the minority, prevailed by art and cunning over the Presbyterians, and bestowed the whole military authority in appearance, upon Fairfax; în 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. |