visions of kingly power and courtly fame, as he dashed all plumed and scarfed through fields of blood, had nothing but the fortune of the day to fear. The Puritan, dark and grim, stood stoutly to his arms as one who knew that freedom or the scaffold were his only alternative.

I speak of the two great Parties at the period of the "setting up of the Standard;" when Hampden, Rudyard, and such like, ruled the passions of the popular party to noble ends, controlled their selfishness and shamed their hypocrisy. As the war proceeded, the balance of integrity seems greatly to have changed: gradually, the Royal cause, by suffering and trial, and yielding of its assumptions, became purified, ennobled, and more constitutional;' gradually, by the exercise of

1 I shall here offer to the reader the testimony of their most eloquent enemy in favour of the Cavaliers: "The sentiment of individual independence was strong within them: they were indeed, misled, but by no base or selfish motive. Compassion and romantic honour, the prejudices of childhood, and the venerable names of history, threw a spell over them potent as that of Duessa. . . . . . It was not for a treacherous King or an intolerant Church that they fought, but for the old banner that had waved over the heads of their fathers, and for the altars at which they had received the hands of their brides. With many of the vices of the Round Table they had also many of its virtues,-courtesy, generosity, veracity, tenderness and respect for women. They had also far more of profound and polite learning than the

wealth and power and arrogance, the Parliamentary cause degenerated into faction, its patriotism into party. At first the noble spirits of the opposing party had many sympathies in common. When Hampden adopted one side, and Falkland the other, when Essex feared to conquer, and Sunderland trembled at the King's success, how saving and temperate a compromise might have been effected, "soiled by no patriot's blood, no widow's,

Puritans; their manners were more engaging, their tempers more amiable, their tastes more elegant, and their households more cheerful."-Essays of Macaulay, vol. i. p. 540.

Thus also speaks Sir James Mackintosh :-"The Cavaliers were zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance. Yet they had sturdy English hearts, which would never have endured real despotism."-Mackintosh's England, 246.

Hear also what Mr. Macaulay says of the Puritans, of what he calls "the second generation," that which he considers the right one: "Major-generals fleecing their districts,—soldiers revelling on the spoils of a ruined peasantry,-upstarts, enriched by the public plunder, taking possession of the hospitable firesides and hereditary trees of the old gentry,-boys smashing the beautiful windows of cathedrals,-Fifth-Monarchy men shouting for King Jesus,-Quakers riding naked through the market-place,―agitators lecturing from tubs on the fate of Agag. . . . . . In spite of their hatred of popery, they often fell into the worst vices of that bad system-intolerance and extravagant austerity; they had their anchorites and their crusades, their Dominics and their Escobars," &c. To do Mr. Macaulay justice, he finely adds, "Be it so it is the nature of the devil of tyranny to rend and tear the body that it leaves ;" and so proceeds to plead, with his accustomed power, in favour of those whom his witnesses have forced him to arraign.—Essays, i. 39.

orphan's tear;" how just an interpretation of the true meaning of our constitutional laws might have been secured! "But the last hope of a victory as spotless as the cause was buried in the grave of Hampden;" the stronghold of despotism was gallantly stormed and taken by assault, but then the conquerors broke loose into licence and rapine and "self-seeking;" turning their glory into shame. Popular violence uprooted the ancient fabric of the Constitution, levelling all that wise and heroic men had laboured for ages to erect, and consummated their destructive labours by reducing themselves to that state of simple servility which their fathers, six centuries before, had scarcely borne to endure.1 But the instinct of liberty is more irrepressible than its forms; the people soon discovered that they had made a capital mistake; they had allowed a man to set himself above the law. The mere shows of outraged parliaments could not long

1 "From so complete and well concerted a scheme of servility [as that of William the Conqueror] it has been the work of generations for our ancestors to redeem themselves and their posterity into that state of freedom we now enjoy."-Blackstone, iv. 432.

2 Rousseau, himself the apostle or, at least, the forerunner of revolution, thus speaks: "It is the antiquity of laws that renders them sacred and venerable: the people soon despise those they see changing every day. The great problem in politics is to find a form of government which shall place the Law above the Man."

disguise the humbling fact, that Cromwell was the only power in England! His timely death spared him and his country the consequences of the discovery; but his son was contemptuously set aside, and monarchy was restored to its old and honoured place in the Constitution, as unexpectedly as it had been banished thence.

How Charles the Second affronted God and man by his vices and his follies,-how he mocked the enthusiastic hope, the generous trust, of his insulted people,-how the Cavaliers of the Court, too generally, followed this King in corruption and effeminate luxury, as they had followed his brave father in warlike trials and privation: all this falls less within the scope of my undertaking, but has also been noticed as candidly and as briefly as was in my power.

I have given to Prince Rupert the most prominent place in the following work: the letters which constitute its chief value were written by, or addressed to him; his character forms the best type of the Cavaliers,' of whom he was the "chief," the

I speak here of the Cavalier soldier as distinct from the Royalist patriots and statesmen, who in the bitter alternative adopted the King's cause as being, in their judgment, the most conducive to, or least subversive of, the liberties of their country. 2 King's Collection, 83, 4. Sir P. Warwick's "Memoirs."

"leader," and the "life;" and, moreover, the papers which I have the responsibility of editing enable me to present to the public the only complete biography of this extraordinary man that has yet appeared.

I have some hope that these volumes may help to vindicate Prince Rupert's character. There is no personage in history at the same time so notorious and so little known, for his true memory lies hidden under the calumnious cloud of Puritan hatred and Royalist envy and disparagement. He was bravest among the brave; honest among knaves; reproached as pure by profligates; philosophical among triflers; modest among boasters; generous in his lifetime, and poor at the period of his death.

The first years of his career are unconnected with the principal matter of this work-the Civil War. This portion, therefore, will require a chapter to itself; I shall then venture to offer a summary of the very debatable matters anterior and conducive to the setting up the Royal Standard. Thenceforward, the history of Prince Rupert be

1 Whitelocke and others.

2 May causes, &c., Maseres' Tracts.