Punishment for Dr. Featley:—"Some whose necessary shifts have long inured them to cloak the defects of their unstudied years and hatred now to learn under the appearance of a grave solidity—which estimation they have gained among weak perceivers—find the ease of slighting what they cannot refute, and are determined, as I hear, to hold it not worth the answering. In which number I must be forced to reckon that Doctor who, in a late equivocating Treatise plausibly set afloat against the Dippers, diving the while himself with a more deep prelatical malignance against the present State and Church Government, mentions with ignominy the 'Tractate of Divorce;' yet answers nothing, but instead thereof (for which I do not commend his marshalling), sets Moses also among the crew of his Anabaptists, as one who to a holy nation, the Commonwealth of Israel, gave laws 'breaking the bonds of marriage to inordinate lost' These are no mean surges of blasphemy—not only 'dipping' Moses the Divine Lawgiver, but dashing with a high hand against the justice and purity of God Himself; as these ensuing Scriptures, plainly and freely handled, shall verify to the lancing of that old apostemated error. Him, therefore, I leave now to his repentance." [Footnote: Poor Dr. Featley died April 17, 1645 (aetat 65), only six weeks after this punishment of him was published. He had then been restored to liberty, for he died in his house at Chelsea. Milton knew him perfectly when he characterized him as one of those who had gained among "weak perceivers" a reputation for "grave solidity." And yet it is touching to have before me, as I now have in a copy of the Sixth Edition of the Dippers Dipt (1651), not only an elaborate portrait of Featley by the engraver Marshall, done in the ordinary way, but also an engraving representing the old man most painfully as he looked when lying in his winding-sheet before they put him into his coffin. Over the corpse are these words, "I have fought a good fight; I have finished my course; I have kept the faith;" and underneath is Featley's Latin Epitaph, telling that he was "Impugnator Papismi, Propugnator Reformationis," and "Theologus Insignis, Disputator Strenuus, Conscionator Egregius."—The word "marshalling" which I have italicised in the extract from Milton about Featley is, no doubt, a punning allusion to an engraving by Marshall in the Dippers Dipt, giving caricatures of different kinds of Sectaries, with a representation of men and women bathing in the centre (see ante, p. 188, Note). ]

A fact which might have been guessed independently, but which it is interesting to have told us by Milton himself, is that there were some persons who were particularly courteous in acknowledging the ability shown in the Divorce treatise, the "wit and parts" of the author, his "elocution," and the more than ordinary "industry, exactness, and labour" he had expended on the subject, but who made all this only an excuse for not discussing his proposition seriously. On this class of his critics Milton is very severe. They were like those, he said, who used to get off from Socrates, when they could not resist the force of his truths, by saying that Socrates could at any time make the worse cause seem the better. To what would the world, to what would England, come, if this habit of regarding all novelty as sophistry, of making the very ability and learning bestowed upon a doctrine an objection to the receipt of that doctrine, were to become general? "Ignorance and illiterate presumption," he says, "which is yet but our disease, will turn at length into our very constitution, and prove the hectic evil of this age." He hoped better of the Parliament; he hoped that they would not overlook the necessity of a change of the Law in this matter of Divorce. At all events he had done his part. "Henceforth, except new cause be given, I shall say less and less. For, if the Law make not a timely provision, let the Law, as reason is, bear the censure of those consequences which her own default now more evidently produces. And, if men want manliness to expostulate the right of their due ransom, and to second their own occasions, they may sit hereafter and bemoan themselves to have neglected, through faintness, the only remedy of their sufferings, which a seasonable and well-grounded speaking might have purchased them. And perhaps in time to come others will know how to esteem what is not every day put into their hands, when they have marked events, and better weighed how hurtful and unwise it is to hide a secret and pernicious rupture under the ill counsel of a bashful silence." Here Milton seems to be speaking for himself. He seems to be giving warning what he means to do without leave of the Law if the Law will not give him leave,

COLASTERION.

COLASTERION is Greek for "Punishment." Now Mr. Herbert Palmer and Dr. Featley had each had his colasterion in the Dedication prefixed to the TETRACHORDON. Three other persons were waiting for their turn of the lash. These were the anonymous author of that Answer to Milton's Treatise which had been published in the preceding November; [Footnote: See its full title, ante, pp. 299-300.] the Rev. Mr. Joseph Caryl, the licenser of that Answer; and the famous Mr. Prynne. The COLASTERION, expressly so called, published by Milton on the same day with the TETRACHORDON, settled accounts with these gentlemen. It is a short tract of twenty-seven pages, without preface. Its full title was as follows;— "Colasterion: A Reply to a Nameles Answer against 'The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce,' Wherein the trivial Author of that Answer is discovver'd, the licenser conferr'd with, and the Opinion which they traduce defended. By the former author, J. M. Prov. xxvi. 5. Answer a Fool according to his folly, lest hee bee wise in his own conceit. Printed in the year 1645."

First for Mr. Caryl. What was his offence? It was that, not content with merely licensing the anonymous answer to Milton, he had become godfather to it by expressing the license thus:—

"To preserve the strength of the Marriage-bond and the Honour of that estate against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses of it which common discontents (on this side Adultery) are likely to make in unstaid minds and men given to change, by taking in or grounding themselves upon the opinion answered and with good reason confuted in this Treatise, I have approved the printing and publishing of it.—November 14, 1644. Joseph Caryl."

Now Caryl was not a nobody. He was one of the Assembly of Divines, and in that Assembly was tending by this time to the side of the Independents. He was also Lincoln's Inn preacher, had published some sermons, and was known to be engaged on an exposition of the Book of Job; which attained at length, when it was published (1648-66), the vast dimensions of twelve quarto volumes. [Footnote: Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual, by Bohn: Art. Caryl; and Wood's Athenae, III. 979—983.] He was about four years older than Milton; who thus "confers with" him:—

Punishment for Mr. Caryl:-"A Licenser is not contented now to give his single "Imprimatur," but brings his chair into the title-leaf; there sits and judges up or judges down what book he pleases. If this be suffered, what worthless author, or what cunning printer, will not be ambitious of such a stale to put off the heaviest gear?—which may in time bring in round fees to the Licenser, and wretched mis-leading to the people. But to the matter. He approves 'the publishing of this Book, to preserve the strength and honour of Marriage against those sad breaches and dangerous abuses of it.' Belike then the wrongful suffering of all these sad breaches and abuses in marriage to a remediless thraldom is 'the strength and honour of Marriage!' A boisterous and bestial strength, a dishonourable honour, an infatuated doctrine, worse than the salvo jure of tyrannizing which we all fight against! Next he saith that 'common discontents make these breaches in unstaid minds and men given to change.' His words may be apprehended as if they disallowed only divorce for 'common discontents in unstaid minds,' having no cause but a 'desire for change;' and then we agree. But, if he take all discontents 'on this side adultery' to be common, that is to say, not difficult to endure, and to affect only 'unstaid minds,' it might administer just cause to think him the unfittest man that could be to offer at a comment upon Job, as seeming by this to have no more true sense of a good man in his afflictions than those Edomitish friends had, of whom Job complains, and against whom God testifies his anger. Shall a man of your coat, who hath espoused his flock, and represents Christ more in being the true husband of his congregation than an ordinary man doth in being the husband of his wife—and yet this representment is thought a chief cause why marriage must be inseparable—shall this spiritual man, ordinarily for the increase of his maintenance, or any slight cause, forsake that wedded cure of souls that should be dearest to him, and marry another and another; and shall not a person wrongfully afflicted, and persecuted even to extremity, forsake an unfit, injurious, and pestilent mate, tied only by a civil and fleshly covenant? If you be a man so much hating change, hate that other change; if yourself be not guilty, counsel your brethren to hate it; and leave to be the supercilious judge of other men's miseries and changes, that your own be not judged. The reasons of your licensed pamphlet, you say, 'are good.' They must be better than your own then . ... Mr. Licenser ... you are reputed a man discreet enough, religious enough, honest enough—that is, to an ordinary competence in all these. But now your turn is to hear what your own hand hath earned ye, that when you suffered this nameless hangman to cast into public such a despiteful contumely upon a name and person deserving of the Church and State equally to yourself, and one who hath done more to the present advancement of your own tribe than you or many of them have done for themselves, you forgot to be either honest, religious, or discreet." [Footnote: In 1645, according to Wood (Ath. III. 979), Mr. Caryl was appointed to the living of St. Magnus near London Bridge. It is probably with this readiness of his to leave one congregation and wed another that Milton twits him. Evidently Milton would not spare an Independent, any more than a Presbyterian or Prelatist, who had given him offense.]

The punishment for Mr. Prynne is milder, and it comes in incidentally at the very beginning of the Colasterion:—

Punishment for Mr. Prynne:—"After many rumours of confutations and convictions forthcoming against The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, and now and then a bye-blow from the Pulpit, feathered with a censure, strict indeed, but how true more beholding to the authority of that devout place which it borrowed to be uttered in than to any sound reason which it could oracle,—while I still hoped, as for a blessing, to see some piece of diligence or learned discretion come from them—it was my hap at length, lighting on a certain parcel of Queries that seek and find not, to find not seeking, at the tail of 'Anabaptistical,' 'Antinomian,' 'Heretical,' 'Atheistical' epithets, a jolly slander called 'Divorce at Pleasure.' [Footnote: See the quotation from Prynne's "Queries" ante, pp. 298-9.] I stood a while and wondered what we might do to a man's heart, or what anatomy use, to find in it sincerity; for all our wonted marks every day fail us, and where we thought it was we see it is not—for alter and change residence it cannot sure. And yet I see no good of body or of mind secure to a man for all his past labours, without perpetual watchfulness and perseverance, whenas one above others [i.e. Prynne] who hath suffered much and long in the defence of Truth shall, after all this, give her cause to leave him so destitute, and so vacant of her defence, as to yield his mouth to be the common road of Truth and Falsehood, and such falsehood as is joined with the rash and heedless calumny of his neighbour. For what book hath he ever met with, as his complaint is, 'printed in the city,' maintaining, either in the title or in the whole persuance, 'Divorce at Pleasure?' 'Tis true that to divorce upon extreme necessity, when, through the perverseness or the apparent unaptness of either, the continuance can be to both no good at all, but an intolerable injury and temptation to the wronged and the defrauded, to divorce then there is a book that writes it lawful. And that this law is a pure and wholesome national law, not to be withheld from good men because others likely enough may abuse it to their pleasure, cannot be charged upon that book, but must be entered a bold and impious accusation against God himself, who did not for this abuse withhold it from his own people. It will be just, therefore, and best for the reputation of him who in his Subitanes hath thus censured, to recall his sentence. And if, out of the abundance of his volumes, and the readiness of his quill, and the vastness of his other employments, especially in the great Audit for Accounts, he can spare us aught to the better understanding of this point, he shall be thanked in public, and what hath offended in the book shall willingly submit to his correction— provided he be sure not to come with those old and stale suppositions, unless he can take away clearly what that discourse hath urged against them, by one who will expect other arguments to be persuaded the good health of a sound answer than the gout and dropsy of a big margent, littered and overlaid with crude and huddled quotations."

But it is the anonymous author of the pamphlet which Mr. Caryl had licensed that comes in for the most ferocious and protracted punishment. On the evidence of the pamphlet itself one can see that he was some very insignificant person, not worth Milton's while on his own account, but only because Milton wanted to toss and gore somebody publicly for a whole hour, by way of deterring others.

The Answerer begins by announcing that he is first to show what the Doctrine or Discipline of Divorce really is, then to give some reasons "why a man may not put away his wife for indisposition, unfitness, or contrariety of mind, although manifested in much sharpness," and finally to reply to the arguments to the contrary brought forward in Milton's book. Nine pages having sufficed for the first two divisions, the remaining thirty-five are devoted to Milton. They are dull and plodding, the punctuation and expression showing that the author was ill-educated and little accustomed to write; and, from the frequent use of scrivener- like or attorney-like phrases and illustrations, one soon comes to conjecture the pamphlet to have been written by some one in a small way of law-business. Occasionally there is a little hit of personal reference, proving that the writer knew something about Milton and his reputed habits. Thus, speaking of Milton's complaint of a wife "to all due conversation inaccessible," he says, "It is true, if every man were of your breeding and capacity, there were some colour for this plea; for we believe you to count no woman to due conversation accessible as to you, except she can speak Hebrew, Greek, Latin and French, and dispute against the Canon Law as well as you, or at least be able to hold discourse with you. But other gentlemen of good quality are content with fewer and meaner endowments, as you know well enough." Sometimes he criticises Milton's phraseology. "The rankest politician," Milton had said in one of his sentences; on which this is the comment: "Is this the fine language that your book is commended for? Good your worship, look a little more upon your rhetoric in this one piece, shall I say of nonsense? However, I am sure it is contrary to all laws and customs of speaking. 'Rankest politician!' Wonderful!" Milton's phrase describing a dull woman as "an image of earth and phlegm" likewise attracts notice. "We confess," he says, "this is something of a sad case; but yet I believe you speak but hyperbolically (as they use to say): for women are usually more than earth and phlegm; they have many times spirit enough to wear the breeches, if they meet not with a rare wit to order them. I wonder you should use such phrases: I know nor hear of maids or women that are all earth and phlegm, much less images of earth and phlegm. If there be any such, yet you need take no thought for them; there are enough dull enough to own them; and, for yourself or any other who desire them, there are spirited dames enough who are something besides mere images of earth and phlegm." Here is a specimen of the argumentation:— "Suppose you should covenant with a man at Hackney that he should dwell in your house at Aldersgate Street, and you in requital should dwell in his house at Hackney, for a time: I doubt not but your main end in this your covenant was your own solace, peace, refreshing. Well, but suppose, when you came there, the Cavaliers or other soldiers should trouble you, and should be quartered there; who, peradventure, if they did not quite put you out, yet would lie in your most pleasant chamber, best situate for your solace, peace, and refreshing, and divers other ways would annoy you, by means whereof you could not enjoy that pleasure and delight which you intended in your covenant when you changed houses with the other. Think you in this case it would be lawful or accepted on by the other party if now you should come to him and say 'Sir, I covenanted for your house at Hackney for my own refreshing, comfort, and solace; but I am disturbed of it, I do not enjoy the end of my covenant: give me my own house again, and go you and live there.' He would tell you, and so he might justly, 'Stay, Sir; take your own fortune; a bargain is a bargain; you must even stand to it.'" Sometimes the writer thinks he will rebuke sharply. Thus:—"This is a wild, mad, and frantic Divinity, just like to the opinions of the maids of Aldgate [some Antinomian young women that had been making themselves notorious]. 'Oh,' say they, 'we live in Christ and Christ doth all for us: we are Christed in Christ and Godded in God, and at the same time that we sin here we, joined to Christ, do justice in him.' ... Fie, fie, blush for shame, and publish no more of this loose Divinity." But the choicest bit shall come last. Criticising the conclusion of a passage in Milton's treatise, the language of the first portion of which is pronounced "too sublime and angelical for mortal creatures to comprehend it," the Answerer declares, "This frothy discourse, were it not sugared over with a little neat language, would appear so immeritous, so contrary to all humane learning, yea truth and common experience itself, that all that read it must needs count it worthy to be burnt by the hangman."

Milton's first glance at the anonymous pamphlet, he tells us, had shown him the sort of person he had to deal with. He could be no educated man, for in the very first page of his pamphlet, where he quotes Greek and Hebrew words, he misspells them. This was no serious crime in itself; only a man falsely pretending to know a language would do worse! "Nor did I find this his want of the pretended languages alone, but accompanied with such a low and homespun expression of his mother-English all along, without joint or frame, as made me, ere I knew further of him, often stop and conclude that this author could for certain be no other than some mechanic." It was singular also that, while the Second Edition of the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce had been out for months before the publication of this Answer, only the First Edition was referred to in the Answer. This, indeed, had enabled Milton to find out who the Answerer was, and the whole history of his pamphlet. For, in the course of the preceding summer, he had been amused by hearing that there was in the press, half printed, an Answer to the First Edition of his Divorce Book, concocted by a committee of heads, in the centre of whom was—"let the reader hold his laughter," he says, and hear the story out—"an actual serving-man." At least, he had been a serving-man, waiting at table, cleaning trenchers, and the like; but he was ambitious of rising in the world, and had turned Solicitor. Zeal for public morality, or some farther ambition for literary distinction, had put it into his head to answer the First Edition of Milton's treatise; and, taking into his confidence one or two raw young Divines of his acquaintance, he had actually composed something, and sent it to the press. Milton had resolved that, if the thing did appear, he would leave it unnoticed. For some months, during which it had been lying unfinished in the press, he had quite dismissed it from his mind. But lo! here it was at length, stitched and published—this precious composition of the Serving-man turned Solicitor. Not quite as it had come from his pen, however! A Divine of note—no other, in fact, than Mr. Caryl himself, the Licenser— had looked over the thing, and "stuck it here and there with a clove of his own calligraphy to keep it from tainting." This, and Caryl's approbation prefixed, had rather altered the state of matters; and Milton had resolved that, when he had leisure for a little recreation, his man of law "should not altogether lose his soliciting."

Nor does he. Never was poor wretch so mauled, so tumbled and rolled, and kept on tumbling and rolling, in ignominious mire. Milton indeed pays him the compliment of following his reasonings, restating them in their order, and quoting his words; but it is only, as it were, to wrap up the reasoner in the rags of his own bringing, and then kick him along as a football through a mile of mud. We need not trouble ourselves with the reasonings, or with the incidental repetitions of Milton's doctrine to which they give rise; it will be enough to exhibit the emphasis of Milton's foot administered at intervals to the human bundle it is propelling. "I mean not to dispute Philosophy with this Pork." he says near the beginning; "this clod of an antagonist," he calls him at the next kick; "a serving-man both by nature and function, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by presumption," is the third propulsion; after which we lose reckoning of the number of the kicks, they come sometimes so ingeniously fast. "Basest and hungriest inditer," "groom," "rank pettifogger," "mere and arrant pettifogger," "no antic hobnail at a morris but is more handsomely facetious;" "a boar in a vineyard," "a snout in this pickle," "the serving-man at Addlegate" (suggested by 'the maids at Aldgate'), "this odious fool," "the noisome stench of his rude slot," "the hide of a varlet," "such an unswilled hogshead," "such a cock-brained solicitor;" "not a golden, but a brazen ass;" "barbarian, the shame of all honest attorneys, why do they not hoist him over the bar and blanket him?"—such are a few of the varied elegancies. Two or three of them break the bounds within which modern taste permits quotation. "I may be driven," he says in the end, "to curl up this gliding prose into a rough Sotadic, that shall rime him into such a condition as, instead of judging good books to be burnt by the executioner, he shall be readier to be his own hangman. So much for this nuisance." After which, as if feeling that he had gone too far, he begs any person dissenting from his Doctrine, and willing to argue it fairly, not to infer from this Colasterion that he was displeased at being contradicted in print, or that he did not know how to receive a fair antagonist with civility. Practically, however, I should fancy that, after the Colasterion, most people would be indisposed to try the experiment of knowing what Milton meant by being civil to an antagonist.



BOOK III.

April 1645-August 1646.

HISTORY.—SIXTEEN MONTHS OF THE NEW MODEL, AND OF THE LONG PARLIAMENT AND WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY CONTINUED.—BATTLE OF NASEBY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES: EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND: FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS AND CONCLUSION OF THE CIVIL WAR.—PROGRESS OF THE TOLERATION CONTROVERSY AND OF THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THE INDEPENDENTS—LONDON AND LANCASHIRE PRESBYTERIANIZED.

BIOGRAPHY:—RETURN OF MILTON'S WIFE: HIS REMOVAL FROM ALDERSGATE STREET TO BARBICAN: FIRST EDITION OF HIS POEMS: THREE MORE SONNETS: CONTINUED PRESBYTERIAN ATTACKS ON MILTON: HIS RETALIATION: TROUBLES OF THE POWELL FAMILY.



CHAPTER I.

COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MODEL, AND VIEW OF THE WORK LYING BEFORE IT—FIRST ACTIONS OF THE NEW MODEL—CROMWELL RETAINED IN COMMAND: BATTLE OF NASEBY: OTHER SUCCESSES OF THE NEW MODEL—POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY—EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND—FAG-END OF THE WAR IN ENGLAND, AND FLIGHT OF THE KING TO THE SCOTS—FALLEN AND RISEN STARS.

By the Ordinance for New-Modelling the Parliamentarian Army, passed February 15, 1644-5, and by the Self-Denying Ordinance, which followed April 3, 1645, excluding all members of either House from commands in the New Army, the prospects of the war had been completely altered. From these dates people everywhere were talking of the New Model, and what it was likely to accomplish, the only difference being that the bulk of the Parliamentarians expected great things from it, while the Royalists, and perhaps also those of the Parliamentarians who resented the removal of Essex from the chief command, and their own removal from commands under him, regarded the whole experiment rather sneeringly, and ridiculed it as the New Noddle. Which of these sets of prophets were in the right will appear presently; meanwhile it is desirable that we should know as exactly as possible what the New Model or New Noddle really was.

COMPOSITION OF THE NEW MODEL, AND VIEW OF THE WORK LYING BEFORE IT.

The following is an account of the organization of the New Model, with a list of its chief Officers when it was first organized:—

TOTAL ARMY ESTIMATED AT 22,000.

Commander-in-Chief: SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX (aetat. 33).

Second-in-Command (for the present): PHILIP SKIPPON, with the rank of Serjeant Major-General.

Chief of Ordnance: THOMAS HAMMOND. He was a brother of the Royalist Divine and King's faithful Chaplain, Dr. Henry Hammond (see Vol. II. 519 and 526, Note); and the split of the Hammond family into Royalists and Parliamentarians was much noticed.

Scout-Master-General: LEONARD WATSON, "originally a goldsmith in Lincoln."

Chaplain to the Commander-in-Chief: Mr. EDWARD BOWLES.

Secretary to the Commander-in-Chief: JOHN RUSHWORTH.

I. FOOT = 14,400.

These consisted of twelve Regiments, each of 1,200 men, and each divided into ten Companies, The officers of the Regiments, respectively, were as follows:—

1. (The Commander-in-Chief's Regiment):—Colonel SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX; Lieutenant-Colonel JACKSON; Major COOKE; and seven Captains.

2. (The Serjeant-Major-General's Regiment):—Colonel PHILLIP SKIPPON; Lieutenant-Colonel FRANCIS; Major ASHFIELD; and seven Captains.

3. Colonel HOLBORN; Lieutenant-Colonel COTTESWORTH; Major SMITH; and seven Captains.

4. Colonel CRAWFORD or CRAYFORD, succeeded soon by young Colonel ROBERT HAMMOND (aetat. 24), a nephew of the chief of the Ordnance and of the Royalist Dr. Henry Hammond; Lieutenant-Colonel ISAAC EWER (reported to have been "a serving man"); Major SAUNDERS; and seven Captains.

5. Colonel BARCLAY; Lieutenant-Colonel EWINS (INNES?); Major COWELL; and seven Captains.

6. Colonel EDWARD MONTAGUE (aetat. only 20: he was cousin of the Earl of Manchester, being son of the Earl's brother, Sir Sidney Montague, who had been M.P. for Hunts, but was now dead); Lieutenant-Colonel ELLIS GRIMES; Major KELSEY; and seven Captains.

7. Colonel ALDRIDGE; Lieutenant-Colonel WALTER LLOYD (who succeeded to the Colonelcy); Major READ; and seven Captains.

8. Colonel JOHN PICKERING (of the family of the Pickerings, of Tichmarsh, Northamptonshire, "a little man," quite young, and cousin of the boy who was to be known as the poet Dryden); Lieutenant-Colonel JOHN HEWSON (originally a shoemaker in Westminster, but who had risen from the ranks by his valour); Major JUBBS; and seven Captains, one of whom was a Captain AXTELL.

9. Colonel FORTESCUE; Lieutenant-Colonel BULSTRODE; Major RICHBELL; and seven Captains.

10. Colonel RICHARD INGOLDSBY (aetat. 23: his father was Sir Richard Ingoldsby of Lenthenborough, and his mother was a cousin of Cromwell's); Lieutenant-Colonel FARRINGTON; Major PHILIP CROMWELL (a cousin of Cromwell's: second son of his uncle Sir Philip Cromwell); and seven Captains.

11. (Artillery) Colonel THOMAS RAINSBOROUGH (once "a skipper of Lynn," who had seen service at sea); Lieutenant-Colonel OWEN; Major DOVE; and seven Captains.

12. (Artillery) Colonel RALPH WELDEN, a veteran; whose under-officers I have not ascertained, save that one of them seems to have been ROBERT LILBURNE (brother of John Lilburne), who in time succeeded to the Colonelcy.

II. HORSE AND DRAGOONS = 7,600.

The Horse (6,600) consisted of eleven Regiments, each of 600, divided into six troops; the Dragoons consisted of one Regiment (1,000), in ten troops of 100 each. They were officered thus:—

1. (The Commander-in-Chiefs Regiment):—Colonel SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX; Major JOHN DESBOROUGH (a brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell's: married to his younger sister, Jane Cromwell); and four Captains, one of them a Captain BERRY.

2. Colonel MIDDLETON; Major RICHARD NORTON; and four Captains.

3. Colonel THOMAS SHEFFIELD (a younger son of the aged Earl of Mulgrave, and uncle of Sir Thomas Fairfax); Major SHEFFIELD (the Colonel's son or brother?); and four Captains.

4. Colonel CHARLES FLEETWOOD (a young man of a good Buckinghamshire family, and well known to Milton from his childhood, as Milton himself tells us: he had served first as a private trooper in the Earl of Essex's guards, and had rapidly distinguished himself); Major THOMAS HARRISON (formerly an attorney's clerk in London); and four Captains.

5. Colonel EDWARD ROSSITER; Major TWISTLETON; and four Captains.

6. Colonel VERMUYDEN (a Dutchman, who resigned after a month or two of good service, and returned to Holland, where his father, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, was engaged in engineering works); Major HUNTINGDON (who succeeded Vermuyden in the Colonelcy); and four Captains.

7. Colonel ALGERNON SIDNEY (famous long afterwards for his death: now aetat. 23: third son of the Earl of Leicester: had served as a Captain in Manchester's army—he and his eldest brother, Philip, Lord Lisle, being more actively Parliamentarian than their father); Major ALFORD; and four Captains.

8. Colonel SIR ROBERT PYE, junior (son of the Sir Robert Pye who had been M.P. for Woodstock, as colleague with Speaker Lenthall, since the beginning of the Long Parliament, and was now a conspicuous man in the House); Major MATTHEW TOMLINSON (said to have been "a gentleman-usher to a lady"); and three Captains, one of whom was HENRY IRETON (a B.A. of Oxford, and barrister of the Middle Temple, aetat. 35, who had taken to soldiering: described as of "a melancholic, reserved, dark nature," and great ability).

9. Colonel EDWARD WHALLEY (rumoured by the Royalists to have been "a woollen-draper or petty merchant in London," who had got into debt and migrated to Scotland for a time; but certainly of a Nottinghamshire family of mark, and certainly a cousin of Cromwell's; recently also known for excellent service under Cromwell as Major in Cromwell's own regiment); Major BETHELL; and four Captains.

10. Colonel RICHARD GRAVES; Major ADRIAN SCROOP; and four Captains.

11. Colonel Sir MICHAEL LIVESEY, Bart., of Co. Kent; Major SEDASOUE; and four Captains.

Regiment of Dragoons: Colonel JOHN OKEY (originally, it is said, a "drayman," then "stoker in a brewhouse at Islington," and next a "most poor chandler in Thames Street;" said also to have been "of more bulk than brains;" but certainly of late an invincible dragoon-officer); Major WILLIAMS or GWILLIAMS; and eight Captains.

N.B. Some of the above-mentioned officers (such as Colonels Middleton, Livesey, Holborn, and Barclay) do not seem to have taken the places assigned them in the New Model. Others therefore had to be brought in by Fairfax almost at once. Among these were:—1. As Colonels of Horse: Colonel BUTLER; the Hon. JOHN FIENNES (third son of Viscount Saye and Sele); CHARLES RICH (he had been nominated in the Commons for a Colonelcy Feb. 28 and March 1, 1644-5, and rejected both times; but must have been appointed soon afterwards). 2. As Colonels of Foot: EDWARD HARLEY (whose Lieutenant-Colonel was THOMAS PRIDE, a foundling who had been a drayman); JOHN LAMBERT (who had been a Colonel under Fairfax in the North); SIR HARDRESS WALLER (aetat. 41, cousin of Sir William Waller). [Footnote: In the Lords Journals, date March 18, 1644-5, there is a list of the intended officers of the New Model as then agreed to, after a month or two of choosing, between the Lords and the Commons. This has been my chief authority; but it has been aided and checked by the Anglia Rediviva of the New Model chaplain Sprigge (pp. 8-10 et seq. of Oxford Edition of 1854) and by Rushworth (VI.13-17 et seq.). Mr. Clements Markham's account of the New Model Army in his life of Fairfax (pp. 188-202) has likewise been of use, though it does not profess to be more than general, nor to be calculated for the very commencement of the New Model. Some particulars of information respecting persons I have taken from Mr. Markham; others I have had to gather miscellaneously from the Parliamentary Journals, Wood, Carlyle's Cromwell, Walker's Hist. of Independency, Reprint of The Mystery of the Good Old Cause (a satirical tract of 1660) at end of Vol. III. of Parl. Hist., &c. I have had to rectify the spellings of some of the names in the original Lords Journals list, and to find out the Christian names where possible. It is not always so easy as one might suppose to ascertain the Christian name of a man who may have been of considerable note in his day and have left his mark.]

Such was the famous New Model. [Footnote: In the New Model the reader ought to note three things:—(1) The comparative youth of the officers. There were veterans; but the Commander-in-chief was but thirty three years of age, and most of the Colonels were still younger. (2) The blending of different ranks of society in the body of the officers. The majority were decidedly from the ranks of the aristocracy and gentry— peers' younger sons, knights, sons of knights and country-gentlemen, &c.; but in men like Skippon, Colonel Okey, Colonel Rainsborough, Lieutenant- Colonel Ewer, Lieutenant-Colonel Hewson, Lieutenant-Colonel Pride, Major Harrison, and Major Tomlinson, there was a conspicuous sprinkling of stout representatives of a lower and more popular stratum. The Royalists, and even the Presbyterians, fastened on this fact and exaggerated it. All the army, from the general to the meanest sentinel, could not muster L1,000 a year in lands among them; so it was laxly said. (3) Another fact, of which the Presbyterians and the Royalists, and other anti- Cromwellians, afterwards made the most, was the unusual number of relatives of Cromwell that there were among the officers. To those who regarded the whole invention and organization of the New Model as a deep design of Cromwell's craft, with Fairfax as his temporary tool, this fact was blackly significant. But, apart altogether from that theory, the fact is important, and ought to be borne in mind. There was not only much of the Cromwell spirit in the New Model from the first, but a large leaven of the Cromwell kin.] Where was it first to be employed? This was an anxious question; and, to understand it, we must have the map of England before us as it appeared to the Parliamentarians in the early months of 1645.

England then, in the eyes of the Parliamentarians, consisted of four regions, as follows:—(I.) The Pre-eminent and assured Parliamentarian Region. This included London and Middlesex, with the Eastern and South-Eastern counties at their back, or immediately flanking them north and south—viz.: Herts, Essex, Cambridge, Bedford, Northamptonshire, Hunts, Suffolk, Norfolk, and almost all Lincoln, together with Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. All this sweep of country was now thoroughly in the possession of the Parliament, and constituted the region whence it drew its main strength. The services of the New Model were not required in it; for it was the main feeder and support of the New Model. (II.) The Northern Counties. Here, beyond the Humber and Mersey, or perhaps even beyond the Trent, the cause of Parliament was also in the ascendant. Since Marston Moor Royalism lingered here only in a few towns and garrisons. In Cumberland, Carlisle still held out for the King, and the siege of this city, together with the preservation of the North generally, was the work now specially expected from the Scottish auxiliary army. In Yorkshire, the castles of Skipton, Pontefract, Scarborough, Sandal, and Bolton, and, in Lancashire, Latham House and Greenhaugh Castle, kept up the King's flag, but were surrounded by local Parliamentary besiegers. On the whole there was no reason for anxiety now about the North within itself; and the hope was that the Scottish Army and other stray forces in those parts might be able soon to move southwards and co-operate with the New Model. (III.) The South-West and Mid-Southern Counties. Here the King was vastly in the ascendant. Cornwall was absolutely his; Devon was wholly his, with the exception of the port of Plymouth, still held for the Parliament, but besieged by the King's forces; Somerset was wholly his, save that Taunton was holding out for Parliament in great distress; all Wilts was his, except Malmesbury Castle; in Dorset he was nearly master, though the three port-towns of Poole, Lyme, and Weymouth (Melcombe) had Parliamentary garrisons; and even in Hants, where the Parliament divided the power with him more equally, he held the two strong places of Winchester and Basing. The King's field-forces in all this southwestern and southern region were extremely numerous, apart from the garrisons, and were commanded by Lords Goring and Hopton, Sir Richard Greenville, Major-General Sir John Digby, and others. With them was the Prince of Wales, now fifteen years of age. He had been recently sent from Oxford into those parts, with a view both to his own safety and to the effects of his influence. (IV.) The English Midlands, backed by Wales. Here also the King was firmly established. Here it was that, with the Princes Rupert and Maurice as his chiefs in command, he directly faced the massed Parliamentarianism of London and the Eastern Counties. In Bucks and Berks, indeed, his forces and those of the Parliament overlapped each other. Aylesbury, the chief town in Bucks, was the Parliament's, while Boarstall House, ten or twelve miles east from it, was the King's; and, similarly, the east of Berks, with Windsor, Reading, and Abingdon, were mainly held by Parliament, while in the same county the King had some strong garrisons. Oxford, however, the county of the King's head-quarters, was wholly in his possession, with the exception of Henley on the Berks border. To the north of Oxfordshire was Warwickshire, all the King's except Warwick Castle, though bordered by Northamptonshire, which was all the Parliament's; and farther north were the shires of Leicester, Nottingham, and Stafford, in each of which, though the Parliament held the county- town, the King had countervailing strongholds. Then, at the back of this row of central counties facing the massed Parliamentarianism of the East, there were the shires of Gloucester, Worcester, Salop, and Chester, in which Parliament had scarcely any hold; that of Hereford, in which it had no hold; and the whole bulk of Wales, in which the two castles of Pembroke and Montgomery were the sole Parliamentarian specks. Leaning back upon Wales, and the English counties of the Welsh border, the King, from Oxford, with its flanking counties north and south, fronted Parliament very formidably. [Footnote: In this survey of the state of the war over all England in April 1645, I have availed myself of the introductory Tables in Sprigge (pp. xi-xvi, Edit. 1854), repeated in Rushworth, VI. pp. 18-22. The geographical information in the Tables is, however, somewhat confused, and I have recast it.]

FIRST ACTIONS OF THE NEW MODEL.

Clearly, it was against one or other of the two last-mentioned regions that the New Model must first show its prowess. Which of the two should it be?

The West had many claims. Besides the importance of relieving the besieged Parliamentary garrisons in that direction, there was the necessity of taking precaution against the possible advance from it of Goring's forces towards London. Accordingly, even before the Self-Denying Ordinance had become law, Cromwell and Sir William Waller had been ordered on a special expedition into the West (February 27), "for relief of Melcombe and the garrisons and places adjacent, and for preventing and breaking the enemy's levies and recruits." Cromwell's men were very reluctant to go on this expedition, probably because they did not like to serve with Waller. But, Cromwell having managed them, he and Waller did go into the West as far as Dorset and Somerset, and, after as much success as was possible, returned about the middle of April. The Self- Denying Ordinance was then law; and on the 22nd of April Cromwell was at Windsor, to resign his command, and take leave of Fairfax.

Suddenly, on the following morning, a message from the Committee of the two Kingdoms came to Windsor ordering Fairfax to employ Cromwell on a new enterprise of pressing moment. [Footnote: This "Committee of the two Kingdoms" originally appointed in Feb. 1643-4, after the coming in of the Scots Auxiliary Army (see list of members ante, p. 41) is found very active after the organization of the New Model—a quorum always sitting in Derby House, Canon Row, Westminster, close to Parliament (the house in which Pym had died) and sending orders, &c., to Fairfax. Manchester, Saye and Sele, Wharton, and Vane the younger, of the English members of the Committee, and Loudoun and Sir Archibald Johnstone of the Scottish members, signed most such orders and letters in May and June 1645 (see Rushworth, VI. 27-33).] He was to ride with all haste into Oxfordshire, to intercept, if possible, a convoy of 2,000 horse, which Prince Rupert was to detach from Worcester, then the head-quarters of the King's main army, for the purpose of fetching off the King and his Artillery-train from Oxford. As the forty days of grace fixed by the Self-Denying Ordinance did not expire till the 13th of May, Cromwell would have time to perform this service before the exact day on which his resignation was required! In fact, he performed it thoroughly in two days. On the 24th of April he met the enemy, consisting of the Queen's own regiment, the Earl of Northhampton's, and Lord Wilmot's, at Islip Bridge, routed them utterly, slew many, and took about 200 prisoners and 400 horses, besides the Queen's standard. Not only so; but, some of the fugitives having taken refuge in Bletchington House, then commanded by Colonel Thomas Windebank, son of the ex-Secretary, with a garrison of 200 men, Cromwell had summoned the house to surrender, and, though a defence might easily have been made, Windebank had actually surrendered that same night, giving up all his stores.

Such were the first actions of the New Model; and, as they carried joy into the Parliamentarian heart, so in the King's quarters they caused rage and vexation. Windebank was tried by court-martial for cowardice, and, notwithstanding his connexions, was shot to death in the court of Merton College, Oxford (May 3). [Footnote: For facts in the preceding three paragraphs see Commons Journals, Feb. 27 and 28, and March 4 and at 20, 1644-5; Sprigge's Angliae Reduc. (1854) 11-13: Carlyle's Cromwell (ed. 1857) I. 163-167; Rushworth, VI. 23-25. We had a glimpse of young Windebank at an earlier period, when he little foresaw this end. See Vol. II. p. 70.]

CROMWELL RETAINED IN COMMAND: BATTLE OF NASEBY: OTHER SUCCESSES OF THE NEW MODEL.

On the 1st of May, while Cromwell was still absent in Oxfordshire, the main body of the New Model, under Fairfax and Skippon, was on the move in another direction. It had seemed on the whole that it would be of most use in the South-West. In especial, there was great anxiety for the relief of Taunton. But, when Fairfax had got as far as into Dorset, on his way to Taunton, he was overtaken by an Ordinance of the two Houses, in conformity with a resolution of the Committee of both Kingdoms (May 6), recalling him and Skippon, with the bulk of the New Model, for service, after all, in the Mid-English Counties. For Goring had carried much of the South-Western force thither, and had joined Rupert and Maurice, so that there was a great stir of something new intended about Oxford and round the King's person. Accordingly, detaching only a brigade of some 7,000, consisting of Welden's, Lloyd's, Fortescue's, and Ingoldsby's foot-regiments, and Graves's horse-regiment, with some other district forces, all under Welden's chief command, to push on for the relief of Taunton, Fairfax wheeled his main force back north-east, and, after forced cross-country marching, found himself (May 14) at the well- known Newbury, on his way to Oxford. By this time he knew, if he had not known it before, that he was to have the help of other generalship under him than that of Skippon. If it had ever been really intended that Cromwell should retire from the Army with the others, according to the strict terms of the Self-Denying Ordinance, the successes at Islip Bridge and Bletchington House had put it into all men's minds to inquire how the Army could get on without him. The Army itself had but one opinion on the subject. For many months past he had been the darling of the entire force, so that, whenever he appeared unexpectedly on the field, there were shouts of "A Cromwell! A Cromwell!" Willingly or unwillingly, Parliament had to defer to this sentiment; and on May 10, three days before the expiry of the forty days of grace fixed by the Self-Denying Ordinance, a special ordinance of the Commons continuing Cromwell in his employment for forty days longer, i.e. till June 22, was agreed to by the Lords. There was murmuring among the Presbyterians and the friends of the late generals, Essex, Manchester, and Waller; but the thing was inevitable. Nay, when Fairfax and other officers of the New Model, not content with the vague and brief additional use of Cromwell's services thus offered, petitioned distinctly for his appointment as Lieutenant- general, with chief command of the horse, that also had to be conceded. The petition was read in the Commons and agreed to, June 10; on which day a letter was drawn up, signed by the Speaker, and despatched to Fairfax, "to desire him, if he shall so think fit, to appoint Lieutenant-general Cromwell to command the horse during so long time as the House shall dispense with his absence." [Footnote: Commons Journals of days named.]

Within four days after the formal appointment of Cromwell to the Lieutenant-generalship under Fairfax there came that great action of the year which more than justified the appointment. The circumstances were these:—While Fairfax had been on the march towards Taunton, the King, with his Artillery-train, &c., had left Oxford (May 7) and taken the field with his main army of the Midlands under Prince Rupert. Cromwell, who had remained in Oxfordshire, kept hovering after him and watching his movements. These were uncertain; but it appeared as if he were tending northwards, to relieve Chester, then besieged by a Parliamentarian force from Lancashire and Cheshire under Sir William Brereton. [Footnote: It is to be remembered that, apart from the New Model, there were still English Parliamentary garrisons, and field forces, here and there, doing necessary district work. Sir William Brereton, M.P. for Cheshire, had had in his hands much of the management of the war in those parts; and as he was still useful, Parliament had exempted him as well as Cromwell, from the same hate operation of the Self Denying Ordinance, extending his command (May 12) for forty days. The same extension, on the same day, was given to Sir Thomas Middleton, M.P. for Denbighshire, at work on the Welsh border, but with a reserve that, after the forty days his command was to be resigned to a Colonel Mitton Common Journal.] When, therefore, Fairfax had wheeled back from his South-Western expedition, and was once more in the Midlands, the question arose whether he and his New Model should besiege Oxford in the King's absence, or whether they should pursue his Majesty and fight him in the field. The siege of Oxford seemed the preferable course; and, accordingly (May 22), Fairfax, now rejoined by Cromwell, sat down before that city. Soon, however, it became questionable whether the war-committee had judged rightly. For discomfiting the King's design for the relief of Chester the Parliament had trusted to the Scottish Army, aided by the English Parliamentarians of the Northern Counties, and by a band of the New Model horse despatched north under Colonel Vermuyden. But the Scots, out of humour with the New Model altogether, had been backward or careless; the King, through Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire, had made his way into Cheshire; his approach had relieved Chester; he had then turned eastwards into Staffordshire, had crossed that county, entered Leicestershire, and (May 30) taken the town of Leicester by storm. He was thus on the very verge of the Parliament's own faithful Association of the Eastern Counties, and might be expected to break into that Association. Immediately, therefore, the plans of the Parliament were changed. On the very day on which the news of the storming of Leicester arrived, Cromwell was off from Oxford into the Eastern Counties, and on the 5th of June, Fairfax, with the rest of the New Model, raised the siege of Oxford and marched north. June 13, he was in the north-west of Northamptonshire, within sight of the King's main force, which had advanced out of Leicestershire into that county. Early on that morning, while he was holding a council of war, Cromwell came in, fresh from his work in the Association, and welcomed as the man most wanted. He at once assumed his Lieutenant-generalship; and on the next day, Saturday, June 14, 1645, there was fought the great BATTLE OF NASEBY. There had been nothing like it since Marston Moor. The King's Army, commanded by the King in person, Prince Rupert, Prince Maurice, Sir Jacob Astley (now Lord Astley), Lord Barnard Stuart, Sir George Lisle, Sir Marmaduke Langdale, and Colonel Howard, was utterly defeated and ruined. The prisoners taken amounted to 5,000, and included many of the King's chief officers; all the artillery was captured, and much baggage, including the King's cabinet, with his private papers and correspondence. These papers were speedily published by Parliament under the title of The Kings Cabinet Opened; and, by the revelations they made of the King's duplicity, his absolute subjection to the Queen, and his secret dealings with the Irish and Papists, they did as much to discredit his cause as the battle itself. [Footnote: Sprigge, 21-51; Rushworth, VI. 29-48; and Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 169-l76.—Here is a note from the Stationers' Registers, July 9 (1645): "Robert Bostock entered for his copy, by special command, under the hands of Mr. Henry Parker and Mr. Thomas May, Secretaries, and Mr. Miller, Warden, a Book entitled The King's Cabinet Opened, or certain Packets of Secret Letters and Papers, written by the King's own hand, taken in his Cabinet at Naseby Field." For an account of Naseby battle and review of previous accounts, see Markham's Fairfax, 213- 230.]

Though Fairfax was voted everywhere the brave and worthy commander-in- chief at Naseby, and though Skippon had behaved like himself and kept his post after having been seriously wounded, much of the credit of the battle, as of that of Marston Moor, went to Cromwell. He had commanded the Horse on the right wing, and his success there against the enemy's left had been effectual and decisive. Moreover, in the whole marshalling of the battle, and in what had prepared for it, people saw, or thought they saw, Cromwell's influence. The horse regiments engaged were, on the right wing, Fairfax's Life-guards, Cromwell's Ironsides, Colonel Whalley's, Colonel Sir Robert Pye's, Colonel Rossiter's, Colonel Sheffield's, and Colonel Fiennes's, and, on the left wing, Colonel Butler's, Colonel Vermuyden's (now Huntingdon's), Colonel Rich's, Colonel Fleetwood's, and another; and the foot regiments engaged were Fairfax's own, Skippon's, Colonel Sir Hardress Waller's, young Colonel Pickering's, young Colonel Montague's, young Colonel Hammond's, Colonel Rainsborough's, and Lieutenant-colonel Pride's. Fairfax in person, with Skippon, commanded the foot or main body; Cromwell, as we have seen, commanded the right wing; but who commanded the left wing? It was the Colonel of that horse-regiment which we have left anonymous. And who was he? No other than that HENRY IRETON, the melancholic, reserved lawyer of the Middle Temple, who was only a Captain in Sir Robert Pye's regiment at the formation of the New Model three months before (ante, p. 327). He had been recently promoted to a Colonelcy, and on the eve of the battle Fairfax had made him Commissary-general of Horse, with command of the left wing, over the heads of the other Colonels. This was at Cromwell's request, who had reason to know Ireton, and had special confidence in him. Nor did the result belie Cromwell's judgment. Ireton's wing, indeed, had given way and fled under the shock of Rupert's charges, but not till Ireton himself had had his horse shot under him, received two wounds, and been taken prisoner in a counter-attack. Rescued by the turn of the battle, he came in for a share of the praise. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 42, 43. Carlyle's Cromwell, I. 176.—It came to be an assertion with the Presbyterians, thought I do not believe they believed it themselves, that Cromwell's military fame had been gained by systematic puffing on the part of the Independents. "The news books taught to speak no language but Cromwell and his party, and were mute on such actions as he and they could claim no share in," wrote Clement Walker a year or two after Naseby (Hist. of Indep. Part I, 30). We have see Baillie writing rather in the same way after Marston Moor.]—When the news of the victory reached London, the Parliament, amid their various rejoicings, and their voting of a day of public thanksgiving to God, a jewel worth 500l. to Fairfax, and the like, did not forget one practical inference from what had happened. That same day (June 16) the Commons signified to the Lords their desire that Cromwell's exceptional Lieutenant-generalship should be prolonged; and, accordingly, on June 18 it was agreed by both Houses "That Lieutenant-general Cromwell shall continue as Lieutenant-general of the Horse, according the established pay of the Army, for three months from the end of the forty days formerly granted to him." This extended his command under Fairfax only to Sept. 22; but, that we may not have to refer to the matter again, we may here state that, before that date arrived, the term of his service was stretched for other four months, with an understanding in fact that it was to be indefinitely elastic. [Footnote: Commons and Lords Journals of days named.]

Naseby proved the beginning of the end. It was the shivering of the central mass of Royalism in England, and the subsequent events of the war may be regarded as only so much provincial addition, and tedious pursuit of the fragments. A sketch of these events will suffice.

The beaten King having fled, with the wrecks of his army, back through Leicestershire, Staffordshire, and Shropshire, into Wales, and the Midlands thus being safe, Fairfax was at liberty to transfer his victorious New Model to the part of England where its presence was then most sorely needed, i.e. the West and South-West.—The brigade which he had detached, under Colonel Welden, for the relief of Taunton, when recalled himself from his former march westward, had successfully accomplished that object (May 12), but only itself to be shut up in Taunton by a second and severer siege by Goring's forces, returned into those parts. By way of a temporary arrangement for action in the West in these circumstances, Parliament had by an ordinance, May 24, entrusted a separate command in chief of whatever forces could be raised for the West to Major-general Edward Massey, an officer well acquainted with that part of the country, and distinguished by his previous services in it throughout the war. [Footnote: The Ordinance is in the Lords Journals under the date named.] But Massey was to hold the separate command only till Fairfax could assume it in person. Accordingly, when Fairfax, after seeing the King fairly chased away from Naseby, turned once more southwards, and, by rapid marches through Warwickshire and Gloucestershire, arrived in Wilts (June 27), the conduct of the war in the South-West became the regular work of the New Model, with Massey as but an auxiliary. The progress was rapid. July 3, Taunton was relieved the second time, and Goring's forces obliged to retire: July 10, Lamport Battle was fought, in which Goring was defeated with great loss; July 23, Bridgewater was taken by storm; July 30, the city of Bath surrendered. Thus in one month the King's power was broken all through Somersetshire. August sufficed for the same result in Dorsetshire, where Sherborne Castle was battered and stormed on the 15th. On the 10th of September came the splendid success of the storming of Bristol. This great city was defended by Prince Rupert, who had made his way again into the South-West for the purpose, and who had assured the King that he would hold it to the last. Nevertheless, after a siege of eighteen days, he was glad to surrender—himself and his men marching out with their personal baggage and the honours of war, but leaving all the ordnance, arms, and ammunition in the city as the spoil of the Parliament. [Footnote: Young Major Bethell was mortally wounded in the storming of Bristol; and here is a touching little incident of the same action from Mr. Markham's Life of Fairfax. "Among the slain (in one of the attacks) was a young officer named Pugsley, who was buried by Fairfax's order, with military honours in a field outside the fort. He was just married, and his wife survived him for 60 years. On her death, in 1705, she was buried, according to her expressed wishes, without a coffin, in her wedding dress, and with girls strewing flowers and fiddlers playing before her. In this way she was borne to her final resting place by the side of her husband, and the place is still known as Pugsley's Field."] It was the greatest blow the King had received since Naseby; and he was so enraged with Rupert that he revoked all his commands, and ordered him to leave England. Rupert, however, having gone to the King, a reconciliation was brought about; and, though he held no high command again during the rest of this war, he remained in the King's service. The surrender of Bristol was followed by that of Devizes Castle (Sept. 23) and that of Laycock House (Sept. 24) in Wilts, and by the storming of Berkeley Castle (Sept. 23) in Gloucestershire. [Footnote: This summary is chiefly from Sprigge; where, in addition to the text there is an excellent chronological table of actions and sieges: one or two of the facts are from Clarendon, and Carlyle's Cromwell.]

POOR PERFORMANCE OF THE SCOTTISH AUXILIARY ARMY.

Let us leave the West and South-West for a time, and turn to the North.— As late as May and June 1645, Baillie, then back in London and again on duty in the Westminster Assembly, had still been hoping great things from his beloved Scottish Army in the North. Since the taking of Newcastle (Oct. 1644), indeed, the services of this army had been mainly dumb-show, so that the English had begun to despise it and to ask whether it was worth its wages. Baillie's hope, however, was that, somehow or other after all, it would be the Scottish Army, and not this New Model, the invention of the Independents and the Sectaries, that would perform the finishing action, and reap the final credit. What then were his thoughts when the news of Naseby reached him? "This accident," he writes, June 17, 1645, three days after the Battle, "is like to change much the face of affairs here. We hope the back of the Malignant [Royalist] Party is broken; [but] some fears the insolence of others, to whom alone the Lord has given the victory of that day." The news of the taking of Carlisle at last by the Scots (June 28) may have helped to revive his spirits; but that also may have been an indirect consequence of Naseby, and the subsequent small success of the Scots during those months when Fairfax, Cromwell, and the New Model were succeeding so splendidly in the South- West, again threw Baillie into despondency. The taking of Pontefract Castle (July 21) and of Scarborough (July 25) in Yorkshire, and finally that of Latham House in Lancashire, after its two years' defence by the Countess of Derby (Dec. 4), were the work of the English Parliamentarians of the Northern Counties; and all the Scots did was very disappointing. From Carlisle they did, indeed, march south, to keep a watch on the King's movements in the Midlands after Naseby, and, after hovering about in those parts, they laid siege to the town of Hereford, by the desire of Parliament (July 31). But early in September they raised the siege, Leven pleading that he had not received the promised support and was unable to remain. With such grumblings and complaints of arrears in their pay, the Scots returned northwards, through the mid-counties, to Yorkshire, the English Parliament thinking worse and worse of them, but still speaking them fair, and desiring to retain them for minor service somewhere in England while the New Model was doing the real work. [Footnote: Rushworth, VI. 118-127; and Baillie, II. 286-316.]

THE EPISODE OF MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND.

It was not only the small performance and continued grumbling of the Scottish Auxiliary Army in England that had begun, by September 1645, to disgust the English Parliamentarians with their friends of the Scottish nation. In Scotland itself there had been an extraordinary outbreak of Royalism, which had not only perturbed that country throughout, but had latterly advanced to the very borders of England, threatening to connect itself with all of English Royalism that was not already beaten, and so undo the hard work and great successes of the New Model. Who that has read Scott's Legend of Montrose but must be curious as to the facts of real History on which that romance was founded? They are romantic enough in themselves, and they form a very important episode in the general history of the Civil War.

Our last sight of the young Earl of Montrose was in November 1641, when the King, during his visit to Scotland, procured his release, and that of his associates in the Merchiston House Compact, from their imprisonment in Edinburgh Castle (Vol. II. p. 307). The life of the young Earl had then been given back to him, but in what circumstances! Not only had all his expectations from the Merchiston House Compact been falsified, expectations of the overthrow of the Argyle supremacy in Scotland, and of the establishment of a new government for the King on an aristocratic basis; but, by the King's own acts, Argyle was left doubly confirmed in the supremacy, with the added honour of the Marquisate, and the Presbyterian clergy dominant around him. Such a Scotland was no country for Montrose. Away from Edinburgh, therefore, on one or other of his estates, in Perthshire, Forfarshire, Stirlingshire, or Dumbartonshire, and only occasionally in the society of his wife and his four little boys, we see him for some months, thrown back moodily upon himself, hunting now and then, corresponding with his friends Napier and Keir, but finding his chief relief in bits of Latin reading, dreams of Plutarch's heroes, and the writing of scraps of verse. Thus:—

"An Alexander I will reign, And I will reign alone; My thoughts did evermore disdain A rival on my throne: He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch To gain or lose it all."

Alas! in a Scotland abject under a squint-eyed Argyle, with Loudoun and Warriston for his lieutenants, and a thousand rigid and suspicious black- coats giving the law singly in their pulpits and parishes, and thundering it collectively from their Assemblies, what room or opening was there for any such Plutarchian life? It was little better in England, from which anyhow he was debarred. He would go abroad. Were there not great strifes in Europe, struggles other than Presbyterian, into which a young Scottish Earl might fling himself, to win a glorious name, or die sword in hand? [Footnote: Napier's Montrose (1856), 371-3, and Appendix to Vol. I. p. xxxiv.; Wishart's Memoirs of Montrose (translation of 1819 from the original Latin of 1648), Preface, p. vi.] So till August 1642, when the King raised his standard for the Civil War in England. Then there was again hope. The King remembered the fiery young Scottish Earl, and communications had passed between them. Montrose went into England; saw the Queen immediately after her landing at Burlington Bay (February 1642- 3); and pressed upon her his views as to the way in which Scotland might be roused in the King's behalf. He seemed to her Majesty but a brave young enthusiast; and, the Marquis of Hamilton having hastened from Scotland to counteract him, and to promise that he himself and his brother Lanark would keep Scotland firm to the King's interest without that open rising against the Argyle government which Montrose recommended, the cooler counsel had prevailed, Hamilton and Montrose had thus gone back into Scotland together, Hamilton with the new title of Duke (April 12, 1643) to encourage him in his difficult labour, and Montrose disappointed, watched, and in fresh danger. Again, however, as months had passed on, the chance of some such bold enterprise for Montrose as he himself had projected had become more likely. How ill Hamilton and Lanark had succeeded in their milder undertaking we already know. They had not been able to check the tide of sympathy in Scotland with the English Parliamentarians; they had not been able to prevent that sudden Convention of the Scottish Estates which Argyle thought necessary in the crisis (June 1643); they had not been able to prevent the cordial reception there of the Commissioners from the English Parliament, nor the offer of armed aid from Scotland to the cause of the Parliament on the terms of Henderson's Solemn League and Covenant (August 1643). Montrose, who had foreseen this result, and had been trying in vain to engage the Marquis of Huntley and other Scottish nobles in an independent coalition for the King, had not gone near the Convention, but, while it was yet deliberating in Edinburgh, had taken care to be again in England, on his way to the King with his budget of advices. A Scottish Covenanting army would certainly invade England in the cause of the Parliament: let their Majesties be in no doubt about that! He had himself the best reason to know the fact; for had not the Covenanting chiefs been secretly negotiating with him, and offering to forgive him all the past, if only now he would return to his allegiance to the Covenant, and accept the Lieutenant-generalship of their projected army under the Earl of Leven? If he had seemed to dally with this temptation, it had only been that he might the better fathom the purposes of the Argyle government, and report all to their Majesties! No service, however eminent, under Argyle, or with any of the crafty crew of the Covenant, was that on which his soul was bent, but a quite contrary enterprise, already explained to the Queen, by which the Argyle government should be laid in the dust, Scotland recovered for the King, and all her resources put at his disposal for the recovery of his power in England also! Hitherto their Majesties had not seen fit to confide in him, but had trusted rather the Hamiltons, with their middle courses and their policy of compromise! Were their Majesties aware what grounds might be shown for the belief that these Hamiltons, with all their plausibilities and fair seeming, were in reality little better than traitors, who had wilfully mismanaged the King's affairs in Scotland for interests and designs of their own? So, through the autumn of 1643, had Montrose been reasoning with the King and Queen, as yet to little purpose. But, when the autumn had passed into winter, and there had gathered round the King, in his head-quarters at Oxford, other refugee Scottish Royalists, driven from their country by the stress of the new League and Covenant, and bringing intelligence that Leven's invading army was actually levied and ready to march, then the tune of the Royal mind did somewhat change. The Duke of Hamilton and his brother Lanark, coming to Oxford, December 16, to clear themselves, were immediately arrested on charges suggested by Montrose and the other Scots at Court. To wait trial on these charges, the Duke was sent as a prisoner to Pendennis Castle; whence he was removed to St. Michael's Mount in the same county of Cornwall. Lanark, escaping from his arrest at Oxford, took refuge for a time in London, was cordially received there by the Scottish Commissioners and the English Parliamentarians, and returned thence to Scotland, converted by the King's treatment of him into an anti-Royalist and Covenanter to all temporary appearance, whatever he might still be at heart. [Footnote: Baillie, II. 73, 74; Wishart, 31-47; Napier, 373-384; Burnet's Hamiltons (edit. 1852), 280-349. Burnet gives the charges against the Hamiltons, with their answers, at length, and narrates events anxiously in their behalf.]

The Hamiltons being out of the way, Montrose obtained a better hearing for his plan. In the main, it was that the King should openly commission him as his Majesty's Lieutenant in Scotland, and furnish him with some small force with which to cut his way back into the heart of the country, and there rouse the elements, whether Lowland or Highland, that were ready for revolt against the Argyle supremacy. In connexion with this, however, there was the scheme of an Irish contingent. Was not the Earl of Antrim then with his Majesty at Oxford—that very Randal Macdonnell, Earl of Antrim, whom it had been proposed, as far back as 1638, to send secretly into Argyleshire with a force of Irishry, to aid the King in his first strife with the Covenanters (Vol. II. p. 23)? Six years had elapsed since then; but there was still extant in Antrim, as the head of the great Scoto-Irish clan of the Macdonnells and Macdonalds, that power for mischief in Scotland which consisted in the hereditary feud between this clan and all the family of the Campbells. Let Antrim go back to Ireland, raise a force of his Macdonnells and Macdonalds and whatever else, and make a landing with these on the West Scottish coast; and then, if the time could be so hit that Montrose should be already in Scotland as his Majesty's commissioned Lieutenant, might there not be such a junction of the two movements that the Argyle government would be thrown into the agonies of self-defence, and the recall of Leven's army from England would be a matter of immediate necessity? So much at least might be surely anticipated; but Montrose promised still larger results. Listening to his arguments, iterated and reiterated at Oxford through January 1643- 4, the King and Queen hardly knew what to think. Montrose's own countrymen round about the King were consulted. What thought Traquair, Carnwath, Annandale, and Roxburgh? They would have nothing to do with Montrose's plan, and talked of him as a would-be Hotspur. Only a few of the younger Scottish lords at Oxford, including Viscount Aboyne (the Marquis of Huntley's second son) and Lord Ogilvy (the Earl of Airlie's son and heir), adhered to him. Among the King's English counsellors, of course, there were few that could judge of his enterprise. One of these, however, whom a kindred daring of spirit drew to Montrose, helped him all he could. This was the young Lord Digby. Chiefly by his means, the King's hesitations were at length overcome. Late in January, Antrim, created a Marquis for the occasion, did go over to Ireland, vowing that, by the 1st of April 1644, he would land so many thousands of men in Scotland with himself at their head; and on the 1st of February 1643-4, or when Leven's Scottish army had been ten days in England, a commission was made out appointing Montrose Lieutenant-general of all his Majesty's forces in Scotland. It had been proposed to name him Viceroy and Commander-in- chief; but he had himself suggested that this nominal dignity should be conferred rather on the King's nephew, Prince Maurice. For his own work in Scotland the subordinate commission, with some small force of volunteer Scots and English troopers to assist him in displaying it, would in the meantime be quite enough. [Footnote: Wishart, 47-52; Baillie, II.73, 74, and 164; Clarendon, 533-537; Rushworth, V. 927; and Napier, 385-388.]

Leaving Oxford, with a slender retinue of Scots, among whom were Aboyne and Ogilvy, Montrose went to York, and thence to Durham, where he attached himself to the Marquis of Newcastle, then engaged in resisting the advance of Leven's army. From that nobleman he implored, in the King's name, some troops for his convoy into Scotland. Newcastle, himself ill-supplied, could spare him but 200 horse, with two brass field-pieces. There was an accession from the Cumberland and Northumberland militia, so that the band with which Montrose entered Scotland (April 13, 1644) was about 1,000 strong. Hardly, however, had he entered Scotland when most of the English mutinied and went back. With what force he had left he pushed on to Dumfries, surprised that town into surrender, and displayed his standard in it with a flourish of trumpets. But nothing more could be done. Of Antrim's Irish contingent, which was to have been in the West Highlands by the 1st of April, there were no tidings; and Scotland all to the north of Dumfries was full of Covenanters now alarmed and alert. To try to dash through these at all hazards, so as to lodge himself in the Highlands, was his thought for a moment; but he had to give up the attempt as impossible. From Dumfries, therefore, he backed again, most reluctantly, into the North of England, pursued by the execration of all Presbyterian Scotland, and by a sentence of excommunication pronounced against him in the High Church of Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 52-55, Napier, 385-397, Rushworth, V. 927-9.]

"Montrose's foolish bravado is turned to nothing," Baillie was able to write early in May 1644. This was the general impression. True, in recognition of his bravery, a patent for his elevation to the Marquisate had been made out at Oxford. It was fitting that, if ever he did come to represent the King in Scotland, it should be a Marquis of Montrose that should contend with the Marquis of Argyle. But would there ever be such a contest? Few can have entertained the belief besides Montrose himself. For some weeks after his retreat into England we hear of him as mingling actively in the war in Northumberland and Durham, taking and pillaging Morpeth, and the like; then we hear of him hurrying southwards to join Prince Rupert in his effort to raise the siege of York, but only to meet the Prince beaten and fugitive from the field of Marston Moor (July 2). "Give me a thousand of your horse; only give me a thousand of your horse for another raid into Scotland," was the burthen of his talk with Rupert. The Prince promised, and then retracted. Though a younger man than Montrose, he had more faith in what he could himself do with a thousand horse in England than in what any Scot could do with them in Scotland. And so, though Lord Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spoke manfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, late in July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued the strangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctly southwards, as if all thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothing remained but to rejoin the King at Oxford. The band, however, had been but two days on their march when they found that their leader had given them the slip, and left the duty of taking them to Oxford to his second, Lord Ogilvy. He himself had returned to Carlisle. It was barely known that he had done so when he mysteriously disappeared (Aug. 18). No one, except Lord Aboyne, whom he had left in Carlisle with certain secret instructions, could tell what had become of him; but it was afterwards remembered, like the beginning of a novel, that on such an autumn day three persons had been seen riding from Carlisle towards the Scottish border, two gentlemen in front, one of whom had a club foot, and the third behind, as their groom, mounted on a sorry nag, and leading a spare horse. The two gentlemen were a Colonel Sibbald and a lame Major Rollo, intimate friends of Montrose, and the supposed groom was Montrose himself. [Footnote: Wishart, 56-64; Napier 396-413; Rushworth, V. 928]

There was a distinct cause for Montrose's entry into Scotland in this furtive manner. The Scottish Parliament (a regular Parliament, and not an informal Convention of Estates like that of the previous year) had met on the 4th of June, with Argyle, Loudoun, and twenty other Peers, more than forty lesser Barons, and about the same number of Commissioners from Burghs, present at the opening. On the 12th of July, when they were approaching the end of their business, there had been this occurrence: "Five several letters read in the House from divers persons of credit, showing of the arrival of fifteen ships, with 3,000 rebels in them, from Ireland, in the West Isles, with the Earl of Antrim's brother, and the sons of Coll Kittoch, and desiring the States with all expedition to send the Marquis of Argyle there by land, with some ships likewise by sea, and powder and ammunition." On subsequent days there were corrections of this intelligence, bringing it nearer to the exact fact. That fact was that Antrim's invasion of Scotland, arranged by him with the King and Montrose at Oxford six months before, had at last come to pass, not indeed in the shape of that full Irish army with Antrim himself in command which had been promised, but in the shape of a miscellany of about 2,000 Irish and Scoto-Irish who had landed at Ardnamurchan in the north of Argyleshire under the command of a redoubtable vassal of Antrim's, called (and here, for Miltonic reasons, the name must be given in full) Alastair Mac Cholla-Chiotach, Mhic-Ghiollesbuig, Mhic-Alastair, Mhic-Eoin Chathanaich, i.e. Alexander, son of Coll the Left-Handed, son of Gillespie, son of Alexander, son of John Cathanach. This long-named Celt was already pretty well known in Scotland by one or other of the abbreviations of his name, such as Mac-Coll Mac-Gillespie, or Alaster Mac-Colkittoch, or Alexander Macdonald the younger of Colonsay. His father, Alexander Macdonald the elder, was a chief of the Scottish Island of Colonsay, off the Argyleshire coast, but nearly related by blood to the Earl of Antrim, professing himself therefore of the same race, kin, and religion as the Irish Macdonnells, and sharing their ancient grudge against the whole race of the Campbells. He had the personal peculiarity of being ambidexter, or able to wield his claymore with his left hand as well as with his right; and hence his Gaelic name of Coll Kittoch, or Coll the Left-Handed. The peculiarity having been transmitted to his son Alaster, it was not uncommon to distinguish the two as old Colkittoch and young Colkittoch. The old gentleman had for some time been in durance in Edinburgh; but his sons had remained at large, and Alaster had been recently figuring in Antrim's train in Ulster, and acting for Antrim among the Irish rebels, with great repute for his bravery, and his huge stature and strength. Not inclined at the last moment for the command of the Scottish expedition himself, Antrim had done his best by sending this gigantic kinsman as his substitute. It was certainly but a small force, and most raggedly equipped, that he led; but, thrown as it was into the territories of King Campbell, and with a hundred miles of Highland glens before it, all rife and explosive with hatred to the name of Campbell, it might work havoc enough. So the Parliament in Edinburgh thought. On the 16th of July, or four days after the first rumour of the invasion, the Marquis of Argyle received a full commission of military command against the invaders, and left Edinburgh for the region of danger. [Footnote: Balfour's Annals, III. 215 et seq.; Napier, 416-7 and 504; Wishart, 67; Baillie, II. 217; Rushworth, V. 928. There is a curious, but confused, story of the wrongs which old Colkittoch and his family had received at the hands of Argyle in Walker's Hist. of Independency (1660), Appendix to Part I. pp. 3-6.]

This was what had caused Montrose's inexplicable restlessness about Carlisle through the latter part of July, and at length, on the 18th of August, his desperate plunge into Scotland in disguise, and with only two companions. By what route the three adventurers rode one does not know; but on the 22nd of August they turned up at the house of Tullibelton in Perthshire, near Dunkeld. It was the seat of Patrick Graham of Inchbrakie, a kinsman of Montrose. Received here by Inchbrakie himself, and by his eldest son, Patrick Graham the younger, locally known as "Black Pate," Montrose lay close for a few days, anxiously collecting news. As respected Scottish Royalism, the reports were gloomy. The Argyle power everywhere was vigilant and strong; no great house, Lowland or Highland, was in a mood to be roused. Only among the neighbouring Highlanders of Athole, or North Perthshire, known to Montrose from his childhood and knowing him well, could he hope to raise the semblance of a force. All this was discouraging, and made Montrose more eager for intelligence as to the whereabouts of Colkittoch and his Irish. He had not long to wait. Since their landing at Ardnamurchan (July 8) they had been making the most of their time in a wild way, roving hither and thither, ravaging and destroying, taking this or that stronghold, sending out the fiery cross and messages of defiance to Covenanting Committees. They had come inland at length as far as Badenoch, the wildest part of Inverness-shire, immediately north of Athole and the Grampians; and there were reasons now why they should be inquiring as anxiously after Montrose as he was inquiring after them. For their condition was becoming desperate. The great clan of the Seaforth Mackenzies, north of Argyleshire, from whom they had expected assistance, had failed to give any; other clans refused to be led by a mere Macdonald of Colonsay; the fleet of vessels in which they had landed had been seized and burnt by Argyle; that nobleman was following them; and orders were out for a general arming for the Covenant north of the Grampians. Accordingly, Colkittoch, imagining that Montrose was still in Carlisle, had written to him there. The rude postal habits of those parts being such that the letters came into the hands of Black Pate, Montrose received them sooner than the writer could have hoped. His reply, dated from Carlisle by way of precaution, was an order to Macdonald to descend at once into Athole and make his rendezvous, if possible, at Castle Blair. [Footnote: Napier, 413-419; Wishart, 64-68; Rushworth, V. 928-9. I have had the satisfaction of rectifying a portion of the tale of Montrose's romantic adventure into Scotland as it is told by his biographers. Wishart distinctly makes him first hear of the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish after he had come into Scotland and was hiding about Tullibelton; and Mr. Napier's narrative conveys the same impression. But the idea is absurd. As the landing of Colkittoch and his Irish at Ardnamurchan on the 8th of July was known in Edinburgh, and discussed in the Parliament there, on the 12th of the same month, it must have been well known about Tullibelton at that time too, or six weeks before Montrose appeared there; and the news must have reached Montrose about July 13 or 14, when he was yet in the North of England, and must have been, in fact, the cause of his resolution to make his way into the Highlands. It is possible, of course, that, after Montrose came to Tullibelton, he may have been uncertain for a time of Colkittoch's exact whereabouts; and there is a seemingly authentic anecdote to the effect that Montrose himself related that he first learnt that Colkittoch had broken into Athole by meeting in the wood of Methven a man running with a fiery cross to carry the dreadful news to Perth. A misconstruction of this anecdote, with inattention to dates, has led to the larger, and intrinsically absurd, hypothesis.]

A walk of twenty miles over the hills brought Montrose and Black Pate to the rendezvous. They found there a mixed crowd, comprising, on the one hand, the Irish, with a few Badenoch Highlanders, whom Colkittoch had brought with him, and on the other, the native Athole Highlanders, looking askance at the intruders, and, though willing enough to rise for King Charles, having no respect for an outlandish Macdonald from Colonsay. The appearance of Montrose put an end to the discord. He had put on the Highland dress, and looked "a very pretty man," fair-haired, with a slightly aquiline nose, grey eyes, a brow of unusual breadth, and an air of courage and command; but the Irish, noting his rather small stature, could hardly believe that he was the great Marquis. The wild joy of the Athole-men and the Badenoch-men on recognising him removed their doubts; and, amid shouts from both sides, Montrose assumed his place as Lieutenant-general for his Majesty, adopting the tall Macdonald as his Major-general. The standard was raised with all ceremony on a spot near Castle Blair, now marked by a cairn; and, when all was ready, the troops were reviewed. They consisted of about 1,200 Irish, with a following of women and children, and 1,100 Scottish Highlanders (Stuarts, Robertsons, Gordons, &c.). Artillery there was none; three old hacks, one of them for the lame Major Rollo, were the cavalry; money there was none; arms and ammunition were, for the most part, to seek, even clothing was miserably deficient. So began Montrose's little epic of 1644-5. He was then thirty- two years of age. [Footnote: Rushworth, V. 928-9; Napier, 419-422.]

It was the track of Mars turned into a meteor. Marches and battles, battles and marches: this phrase is the summary of the story. Flash the phrase through the Highlands, flash it through the Lowlands, for a whole year, and you have an epitome of this epic of Montrose and his triumph. Our account of the details shall be as rapid as possible.

Breaking forth southwards from Athole, to avoid Argyle's advance from the west, Montrose crossed the Tay, and made for Perth. Having been joined by his kinsman, Lord Kilpont, eldest son of the Earl of Menteith, Sir John Drummond, son of the Earl of Perth, and David Drummond of Maderty, he gave battle, at Tippermuir, near Perth, on Sunday, Sept. 1, 1644, to a Covenanting force of some 6,000 men, gathered from the shires of Perth and Fife, and under the command of Lord Elcho, the Earl of Tullibardine, Lord Drummond and Sir John Scot. The rout of the Covenanters, horse and foot, was complete. They were chased six miles from the field, and about 2,000 were slain. Perth then lying open for the victors, Montrose entered that town, and lie remained there three days, issuing proclamations, exacting fines and supplies, and joined by two of his sons, the elder of whom, Lord Graham, a boy of fourteen, accompanied him from that time. But movement was Montrose's policy. Recrossing the Tay, and passing north- eastwards, he came in sight of Dundee; but, finding that town too well defended, he pushed on, still north-east, joined on the way by the Earl of Airlie, and his two younger sons, Sir Thomas and Sir David Ogilvy, and came down upon Aberdeen. That city, too familiar with him in the days of his Covenanting zeal, was now to experience the tender mercies of his Royalism. Defeating (Sept. 12) a Covenanting force of Forbeses, Erasers, and others, who opposed him at the Bridge of Dee under Lord Burleigh and Lord Lewis Gordon (third son of the Marquis of Huntley, and for the time on this side), he let his Irish and Highlanders loose for four days on the doomed Aberdonians. Then, as Argyle was approaching with a considerable army, and no reinforcement was forthcoming from Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, he withdrew west, into the country of the upper Spey. Thence again, on finding himself hopelessly confronted by a muster of Covenanters from the northern shires of Moray, Ross, Sutherland, and Caithness, he plunged, for safety, into the wilder Highlands of Badenoch, and so back into Athole (Oct. 4). Not, however, to remain there! Again he burst out on Angus and Aberdeenshire, which Argyle had meanwhile been traversing on behalf of the Covenant. For a week or two, having meanwhile despatched his Major-general, Macdonald, into the West Highlands to fetch what recruits he could from the clans there, he made it his strategy, with the small force he had left, to worry and fatigue Argyle and his fellow-commander the Earl of Lothian, avoiding close quarters with their bigger force, and their cannon and horse. Once at Eyvie Castle, which he had taken October 14, they did surprise him; but, with his 1,500 foot and 50 horse, he made a gallant stand, so that they, with their 2,500 foot and 1,500 horse, had no advantage. As much of this time as he could give was spent by him in the Marquis of Huntley's own domain of Strathbogie, still in hopes of rousing the Gordons. At length, winter coming on, and the distracted Gordons refusing to be roused, and Argyle's policy of private dealings with Montrose's supporters individually having begun to tell, so that even Colonel Sibbald had deserted him, and few people of consequence remained to face the winter with him except the faithful Ogilvies, Montrose, after a council of war held in Strathbogie, retired from that district (Nov. 6), again by Speyside, into savage Badenoch. But here, ere he could take any rest, important news reached him. Argyle had certainly sent his horse into winter-quarters; but he had gone with all his foot to Dunkeld, whence the more easily to ply his craft of seduction among Montrose's trustiest adherents, the men of Athole. No sooner had Montrose heard this than, clambering the Grampian barrier between Badenoch and Athole, he brought his followers, by one tremendous night-march of twenty-four miles, over rocks and snow, down into the region in peril. He was yet sixteen miles off, when Argyle, bidding his men shift for themselves, fled from Dunkeld, and took refuge with the Covenanting garrison of Perth, on his way to Edinburgh. [Footnote: Wishart, 71-105; Napier, 426- 469; Rushworth, V. 929-931.]