[1650 A.D.] appearance above the horizon; and Cromwell, turning to his own regiment of foot, exclaimed, "Let the Lord arise, and scatter his enemies." They instantly moved forward with their pikes levelled; the horse rallied; and the enemy's lancers hesitated, broke, and fled. At that moment the mist dispersed, and the first spectacle which struck the eyes of the Scots, was the rout of their cavalry. A sudden panic instantly spread from the right to the left of their line; at the approach of the English they threw down their arms and ran. Cromwell's regiment halted to sing Psalm cxvii; but the pursuit was continued for more than eight miles; the dead bodies of three thousand Scots strewed their native soil; and ten thousand prisoners, with the artillery, ammunition, and baggage, became the reward of the conquerors. Of the prisoners, five thousand one hundred, something more than one-half, being wounded, were dismissed to their homes, the other half were driven "like turkies" into England. Of these, one thousand six hundred died of a pestilential disease, and five hundred were actually sick on October 31st. h Gardiner says: "Dunbar ranks with Naseby as one of the two decisive battles of Cromwell's career. As Naseby rendered forever impossible the re-establishment of purely personal government in England, Dunbar struck down the Solemn League and Covenant, and rendered it forever impossible that Scotland should attempt to impose upon England a form of ecclesiastical or political government against the will of Englishmen. Nor was Dunbar less decisive in its influence on the domestic affairs of Scotland herself. Never again would the stricter covenanters grasp the reins of government and mould armies at their pleasure." Cromwell now thought no more of his retreat. He marched back to the capital; the hope of resistance was abandoned; Edinburgh and Leith opened their gates, and the whole country to the Forth submitted to the will of the English general. CHARLES II'S "START," AND HIS CORONATION Still the presumption of the six ministers who formed the committee of the kirk was not humbled. Though their predictions had been falsified, they were still the depositaries of the secrets of the Deity; and, in a "Short Declaration and Warning," they announced (Sept. 12) to their countrymen the thirteen causes of this national calamity, the reasons why "God had veiled for a time his face from the sons of Jacob." It was by the general profaneness of the land, by the manifest provocations of the king and the king's house, by the crooked and precipitant ways of statesmen in the Treaty of Breda, by the toleration of maligants in the king's household, by suffering his guard to join in the battle without a previous purgation, by the diffidence of some officers who refused to profit by advantages furnished to them by God, by the presumption of others who promised victory to themselves without eyeing of God, by the rapacity and oppression exercised by the soldiery, and by the carnal self-seeking of men in power, that God had been provoked to visit his people with so direful and yet so merited a chastisement. To the young king the defeat at Dunbar was a subject of real and ill-dissembled joy. Hitherto he had been a mere puppet in the hands of Argyll and his party; now their power was broken, and it was not impossible for him to gain the ascendancy. He entered into a negotiation with Murray, Huntley, Athol, and the numerous royalists in the highlands; but the secret, without the particulars, was betrayed to Argyll, probably by Buckingham, who dis['Cromwell claimed to have lost only twenty slain. Many of the prisoners were shipped to New England where they underwent a brief servitude.] [1650 A.D.] approved of the project; and all the cavaliers but three received an order to leave the court in twenty-four hours the kingdom in twenty days. The vigilance of the guards prevented the execution of the plan which had been laid; but one afternoon, under pretence of hawking, Charles escaped from Perth, and riding forty-two miles, passed the night in a miserable hovel, called Clova, in the braes of Angus. At break of day he was overtaken by Colonel Montgomery, who advised him to return, while the viscount Dudhope urged him to proceed to the mountains, where he would be joined by seven thousand armed men. Charles wavered; but Montogmery directed his attention to two regiments of horse that waited at a distance to intercept his progress, and the royal fugitive consented to return to his former residence in Perth. The Start (so this adventure was called) proved, however, a warning to the committee of estates. They prudently admitted the apology of the king, who attributed his flight to information that he was that day to have been delivered to Cromwell; and they allowed him, for the first time, to preside at their deliberations, and they employed his authority to pacify the royalists in the Highlands, who had taken arms in his name under Huntley, Athol, Seaforth and Middleton. These, after a long negotiation, accepted an act of indemnity, and disbanded their forces. In the mean while Cromwell in his quarters at Edinburgh laboured to unite the character of the saint with that of the conqueror; and, surrounded as he was with the splendour of victory, to surprise the world by a display of modesty and self-abasement. To his friends and flatterers, who fed his vanity by warning him to be on his guard against its suggestions, he replied, that he "had been a dry bone, and was still an unprofitable servant," a mere instrument in the hands of almighty power; if God had risen in his wrath, if he had bared his arm and avenged his cause, to him, and to him alone, belonged the glory. Assuming the office of a missionary, he exhorted his officers in daily sermons to love one another, to repent from dead works, and to pray and mourn for the blindness of their Scottish adversaries; and, pretending to avail himself of his present leisure, he provoked a theological controversy with the ministers in the castle of Edinburgh, reproaching them with pride in arrogating to themselves the right of expounding the true sense of the Solemn League and Covenant; vindicating the claim of laymen to preach the gospel and exhibit their spiritual gifts for the edification of their brethern; and maintaining that, after the solemn fasts observed by both nations, after their many and earnest appeals to the God of armies, the victory gained at Dunbar must be admitted an evident manifestation of the divine will in favour of the English commonwealth. Finding that he made no proselytes of his opponents, he published his arguments for the instruction of the Scottish people; but his zeal did not escape suspicion; and the more discerning believed that, under the cover of a religious controversy, he was in reality tampering with the fidelity of the governor.h To raise a new army was now the first object of the Scottish government, but this could hardly be effected if the religious test were retained in all its rigour. The commissioners of the kirk, on being consulted, passed two resolutions to the following effect: those who had made defection or had been hitherto backward in the work, ought to be admitted to make profession of repentance, and on doing so might be allowed to serve and to defend their country. Mock penitents now appeared in abundance; royalists, engagers, and all the excluded crowded to court and camp. But a new schism hence arose, for the more rigid and fanatic portion of the clergy protested against the resolutions as an insult to God and a betrayal of the good cause. [1651 A.D.] The kirk was now split into resolutioners and protesters, or remonstrants: for the five most fanatic counties of the west, Renfrew, Ayr, Galloway, Wigton, and Dumfries, presented a remonstrance against the treaty with the king, and required him to be excluded from the government. On the first day of the new year, however, Charles was solemnly crowned at Scone, January 1, 1651. When he had sworn on his knees and with upraised hand to observe the two covenants, to maintain presbytery, govern according to the laws of God and the land, and root out false religion and heresy, the crown was placed on his head by the marquis of Argyll, and the nobility and people swore allegiance to him.i During the ceremony, and after the conclusion, Douglas, the minister, addressed the king, reminding him that he was king by compact with his people; that his authority was limited by the law of God, the laws of the people, and the association of the estates with him in the government; that, though every breach did not dissolve the compact, yet every abuse of power to the subversion of religion, law, or liberty, justified opposition in the people; that it was for him, by his observance of the covenant, to silence those who doubted his sincerity; that the evils which had afflicted his family arose out of the apostasy of his father and grandfather; and that, if he imitated them, he would find that the controversy between him and God was not ended, but would be productive of additional calamities. The reader may imagine what were the feelings of Charles while he listened to the admonitions of the preacher, and when he swore to perform conditions which his soul abhorred, and which he knew that on the first opportunity he should break or elude. But he passed with credit through the ceremony; the coronation exalted him in the eyes of the people; and each day brought to him fresh accessions of influence and authority. His friends were now admitted to parliament, and to gain Argyll more entirely to his side he hinted at a marriage with his daughter; but that wary nobleman was not to be caught by an offer in which he knew he was not sincere. By the joint exertions of all parties, an army of twenty thousand men was assembled at Stirling in the month of April. The king himself took the chief command, with Hamilton for his lieutenant, and Leslie for his major-general. The passes of the Forth were secured, and the army was encamped in a strong position at the Torwood, near Stirling. Cromwell, who had been suffering so severely from ague as to have obtained permission to return to England, finding himself unexpectedly better at the approach of summer, resumed operations in July. By means of a fleet of boats which had been collected at Queensferry Överton passed over and fortified a hill at Inverkeithing; he was followed by Lambert; the Scottish force sent to oppose them was driven off (July 21st); Cromwell lost no time in transporting the remainder of the army; the whole of Fife was rapidly reduced, and Perth opened her gates August 2nd. The communications of the royal army with the north were now cut off, and if it remained in its present position it must either starve, disband, or fight at a disadvantage. In this dilemma the king proposed the desperate expedient of a march into England; Argyll alone opposed it in the council, and when his reasons were rejected he obtained permission to retire to his estates. The king then at the head of fourteen thousand men left Stirling (July 31st) on his way for England. Cromwell immediately sent Lambert with a body of three thousand horse to hang on his rear, and he ordered Harrison to advance from Newcastle with an equal number to press on his flank; he himself, leaving Monk with five thousand men to complete the conquest of Scotland, moved rapidly (August 7th) in the direction of York. [1651 A.D.] THE BATTLE OF WORCESTER AND THE FLIGHT OF CHARLES (1651 A.D.) Charles entered England at Carlisle; at Warrington (August 16th) Lambert and Harrison attempted to prevent his passage of the Mersey, but they were not in time to break down the bridge, and he passed them by, and marching rapidly through Cheshire and Shropshire came to Worcester (August CHARLES II (1630-1685) 22nd), where he was solemnly common hangman; and they proclaimed him and all his abettors guilty of high-treason; they put suspected persons into prison, and ordered the militia of the adjoining counties to march toward Worcester. The very day that Charles entered Worcester, a Presbyterian clergyman named Love, and a layman named Gibbons, were beheaded on Tower Hill for their share in a conspiracy, in favour of royalty as is later described. Cromwell himself soon arrived (August 28th), and found himself at the head of thirty thousand men, while the royalists were not half the number and but a sixth part of them English. That very day Lambert made himself master of the bridge over the Severn at Upton, in the defence of which Massey received a severe wound which deprived the royal army of his valuable services. On the 3rd of September (the day of the victory at Dunbar) Fleetwood, advancing from Upton on the west bank of the Severn, proceeded to force the passage of the Team, while Cromwell threw a bridge of boats over the Severn to come to his aid. The Scots having the advantage of the [1651 A.D.] numerous hedges in that part, fought gallantly; but Cromwell having passed over some regiments, they were at length driven back to the city. Meantime the remainder of the royal forces issued from the town and attacked the troops on the east side. At first their efforts were successful, but they were finally driven back by Cromwell's veteran reserve and forced into the city. Cromwell stormed the fort named Fort Royal,1 and turned its guns on the town, which the royalists speedily abandoned. The battle had lasted five hours; the Scots had fought nobly. "This has been," said Cromwell in his despatch, "a very glorious mercy, and as stiff a contest for four or five hours as ever I have seen." Of the vanquished three thousand men were slain, of the victors only two hundred; but as the whole country rose against the Scots, whose speech betrayed them, the number of the prisoners amounted to ten thousand. Among these were the earls of Derby, Cleveland, and Shrewsbury of the English nobility, and the duke of Hamilton (who was mortally wounded), the earls of Lauderdale, Rothes, and Kelly, and the lords Sinclair, Kenmore, and Spynie of the Scottish; also the generals Leslie, Middleton, and Massey. The earl of Derby and two others were tried by a court-martial at Chester and put to death; the others were kept in prison, from which Massey and Middleton escaped. "It is certain," says Godwin, o "there was on the whole a great spirit of clemency displayed in the limits the government thought proper to prescribe to itself on this occasion. Of the common soldiers taken prisoners, the greater part were sent to the plantations [as slaves], and fifteen hundred were granted to the Guinea merchants, and employed to work in the mines of Africa." Not one word of reprehension has the prejudiced historian to bestow on this barbarous treatment of the freeborn soldiers of an independent nation! The republicans seemed resolved, we may see, to tread faithfully in the foot-prints of the Greeks and Romans. The dangers and escapes of Charles after the defeat of Worcester are so interesting in themselves and serve so much to display the nobler and more generous feelings of our nature, that we cannot refrain from relating them somewhat in detail. Charles, who had shown no want of courage during the battle, left the town with the Scottish horse; but he parted from them during the night with about sixty followers, and directed his course for Boscobel House in Staffordshire, the seat of Mrs. Cotton, a Catholic lady, where Lord Derby had found shelter some days before. He was, however, conducted instead to White Ladies, another of Mrs. Cotton's houses, and here his companions took leave of him. He cut off his hair, stained his face and hands, and putting on the coarse threadbare clothes of a rustic, went forth in the morning with a bill in his hand, as a wood-cutter, in the company of four brothers, labouring men, named Penderel, and Yates their brother-in-law, all Catholics. One of them accompanied him into the thickest part of the wood while the rest kept watch. As the day was wet and stormy and Charles was weary with his previous exertions, his companion spread a blanket for him under a tree, whither Yates' wife brought him some food. He was startled at the sight of her, but she assured him that she would die sooner than betray him; and the aged mother of the Penderels, when she ['Gardiner says that Cromwell, at the risk of his own life, rode up to offer quarter. The entire army was either made prisoners or slain, and the force absolutely disappeared as a fighting unit. It was the first battle since Cropredy bridge in which non-professional soldiers took part, nearly a third of the English army being militia evoked by the hatred of invasion. As Gardner points out Cromwell now for the first time had secured the popular support.] |