worth and bravery bound to the cause of royalty, was no empty shadow, but a principle pregnant with the most formidable opposition to the popular cause. They never would get on with a set of decayed serving-men, tapsters, and the like base fellows, fighting against men of honour. They must match loyalty with a higher principle, if such can be found. To face men of honour, says Cromwell, they must have men of religion; and well he proved the soundness of his advice. He set himself forthwith to organize his immortal troop of Ironsides. Fourteen squadrons of English yeomen were raised through time, every man of them with his heart in the work, and contending for the realization of principles to them most sacred and noble. Here was a loyalty that could match the delusive chivalry of "punctilios of honour." With Cromwell at their head, they bade defiance to all opponents. From that moment the destinies of England were changed. They never knew defeat. But this was not the only good service for which Cromwell appeared to be the sole able man in all England. Royalist high-sheriffs and justices were presently forward enough in all counties, seizing on malecontents; arresting horses, arms, plate, &c.; levying forced loans; and by all zealous means, sorely afflicting every Puritan corner of the land. To these there soon followed royalist enlistment and foraging parties, headed by Prince Rupert, and his plunderers, till the most peaceable rose in self-defence; and county associations were formed all over England for opposing them. Cromwell set himself very effectually to organize the "Eastern Association," as it was called, including the whole Fencountry and its neighbourhood. Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, and Herts, were all bound together in this defensive league; and while the other associations dropped to pieces, one after another, for lack of some master-spirit to keep them together, this one maintained itself during the whole war, doing good service to the popular cause,

and reaping ample reward; by the very terror of its name scaring war and invasion from its borders, while nearly every other district of England was alternately pillaged and overrun. Cromwell, indeed, never missed an opportunity of advancing the parliamentary cause, or checking its opponents.

To this period belongs the oft-told domiciliary visit of Captain Cromwell to his cavalier uncle and god-father, once Knight of Hinchinbrook. The sumptuous entertainer of royalty in its former progresses through Huntingdonshire was now sadly reduced, and compelled to shelter, with wofully tarnished magnificence, at some poor jointure house near Ramsey Mere, which had happily been saved when all else of his princely fortunes went to wreck. Thither came the parliamentary captain, with his new levies, and searched for arms, ammunition, and everything that seemed to promise supplies for the King, in his new course of open warfare. While Oliver's dragoons made rigorous search, Oliver himself, say the old biographers, respectfully conversed with his uncle, refusing even to remain covered in his presence—a thing credible enough of Oliver Cromwell, who was just the man we might expect to exercise his duty to parliament without fear or favour, and yet in all reconcileable ways not to forget what might be due to his uncle. Hypocrisy, however, and revenge for punishments inflicted of old on the wayward boy, form the more popular explanation of the scene. That revenge,

at least, had nothing to do with it, is proved by the shelter Cromwell afterwards afforded to his kinsman when he had the power; of the hypocrisy the reader can judge: meanwhile let him see another example of Cromwell's activity. The high-sheriff of Herts, a zealous royalist, and bent on doing good service to his master, rode into St. Albans, the first stage north of London, surrounded with an armed retinue, and on the market-day read aloud the King's writ, proclaiming the Earl of Essex and all who followed

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him traitors, and commanding all Englishmen to arm in the King's behalf,- -a bold and well-devised measure, not unlikely in skilful hands considerably to augment the royal army, and cripple the parliament with an opposition so near their own head quarters. The bumpkins of Hertfordshire were listening with open-mouthed wonder to the highsheriff's appeal for loyal aid against traitors, when suddenly Cromwell's dragoons dash into the market-place, seize on the high-sheriff, and carry him off, not without difficulty, and against considerable odds-a piece of service recorded in the journals of the day as one of the best that had been done for a long time. This was the more apparent, as there were also taken at the same time a large store of ammunition, a number of excellent saddles, and a quantity of pistols, powder, shot, and other warlike supplies provided for a great force, which were thus carried off to be employed against the very party at whose cost they had been provided. The high-sheriff lay in the Tower for some years, doing no farther service or disservice, and Hertfordshire was in no hurry to array itself for defence of royalty. Cromwell appears, by the glimpses we can catch of him in letters, journals, and chance allusions of various kinds, to have been riding about with celerity, and the most consummate tact, doing like services wherever opportunity offered; now forwarding some object of the parliament, now checking, or altogether overturning, some hopeful scheme of the enemy, and all this without waiting for orders from the somewhat phlegmatic Essex, whose elephantine gravity of procedure but little accorded with such guerilla practice. For the last piece of service, Cromwell received his colonel's commission, and augmented the number of his followers in the way we have already indicated. We see, indeed, that while only the captain of a troop, he was the life and soul of the parliamentary army, a man ever ready to step out of the beaten path, and make precedents wherein weaker men could follow.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT.

THE first decided engagement between Charles and his subjects has already been described. Friend had met friend, and brother stood opposed to brother in the conflict. One of the most terrible events that can befall a nation was now developing itself; and its course inevitable. Arguments of reason, and all efforts at moral suasion were now thrown aside; and sword to sword, the great question of England's liberties was to be tried. In every decisive movement that hastened on the determination of the great question at issue Cromwell is found foremost. With his clear-sighted sagacity he saw no good that could be anticipated from temporizing, after the sword had been appealed to as final umpire; and, like the surgeon who has given up all hope of milder cure, he applied the amputating knife as the swiftest and only satisfactory remedy for the diseased limb.

At the head of twelve troops of his invincible cavalry Cromwell entered Lincolnshire, in defiance of a strong royalist, and a strong local interest, opposed to him, strengthened by many old Roman Catholic families, all of whom declared for Charles. Cromwell speedily altered the aspect of affairs. Sweeping through the country, he everywhere disarmed the disaffected, took Stamford and Burleigh House, and, as Mrs. Hutchinson writes, "he alone, by his diligence, prevented the designs of the royal party." On the 13th of May, 1643, he writes from Grantham, "God hath given us this evening a glorious victory over our enemies." Approaching the town of Grantham towards sunset, with his harassed troops anticipating rest and refreshment so soon as they should

reach it, Cromwell was suddenly alarmed by the appearance of a large body of cavalry, more than double the number of his men, bearing rapidly down upon him. They were under the command of General Cavendish, a young royalist anxious to achieve renown, and who had levied a large force to accomplish the recovery of Lincolnshire for the King. Though checked by the superior numbers of the enemy Cromwell stood his ground, and presented so determined a front to them, that young Cavendish was fain to call a halt, and content himself with skirmishing with the advanced line. This continued with firing on both sides for about half an hour, till Cromwell, watching his opportunity, and, as he characteristically writes, "they not advancing towards us, we agreed to charge them;" and did execute the charge so effectually, that the flying enemy were completely routed, and pursued with severe slaughter for several miles. Officers were taken prisoners, colours seized, and Lincolnshire for the present very effectually freed from all royalist demonstrations. General Cavendish contrived to escape from this dreadful route; some comfort to the discomfited royalists, who still anticipated deeds of daring and better fortune from his generalship. The reader, indeed, sometimes will smile, and oftener sigh, over the blighted hopes and promises of such great eras. Sir William Waller, "that valiant soldier and patriot of his country," is now "the observed of all observers," the expected people's leader. Colonel Hampden too, a patriot known by good service done with other weapons than the sword, and, notwithstanding his gentle courtesy, already approved as a brave soldier in the field, is being named by many as destined to supersede the Lord General Essex, the expected protector of the commonwealth. Cromwell, meanwhile, makes himself heard from time to time by such achievements as we have related. Soon after the route of General Cavendish and his troops, he