# The Works of Thomas Carlyle/Volume 6/Preliminary

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PART SECOND
TO THE END OF THE FIRST CIVIL WAR
1642-1646
There is therefore a great dark void, from February 1641 to January 1643, through which the reader is to help himself from Letter III. over to Letter IV., as he best may. How has pacific England, the most solid pacific country in the world, got all into this armed attitude; and decided itself to argue henceforth by pike and bullet till it get some solution? Dryasdust, if there remained any shame in him, ought to look at those wagonloads of Printed Volumes, and blush! We, in great haste, offer the necessitous reader the following hints and considerations.
It was mentioned above that Oliver St. John, the noted Puritan Lawyer, was already, in the end of January 1641, made Solicitor-General. The reader may mark that as a small fraction of an event showing itself above ground, completed; and indicating to him a grand subterranean attempt on the part of King Charles and the Puritan Leaders, which unfortunately never could become a fact or event. Charles, in January last or earlier (for there are no dates discoverable but this of St. John’s), perceiving how the current of the Nation ran, and what a humour men were getting into, had decided on trying to adopt the Puritan leaders, Pym, Hampden, Holles and others, as what we should now call his ‘Ministers’: these Puritan men, under the Earl of Bedford ​as chief, might have hoped to become what we should now call a ‘Majesty’s Ministry,’ and to execute peaceably, with their King presiding over them, what reforms had grown inevitable. A most desirable result, if a possible one; for of all men these had the least notion of revolting, or rebelling against their King!
This negotiation had been entered into, and entertained as a possibility by both parties so much is indubitable; so much and nothing more, except that it ended without result. It would in our days be the easiest negotiation; but it was then an impossible one. For it meant that the King should content himself with the Name of King, and see measures the reverse of what he wished and willed take effect by his sanction. Which, in sad truth, had become a necessity for Charles I. in the England of 1641. His tendency and effort has long been the reverse of England’s; he cannot govern England, whatever he may govern! And yet to have admitted this necessity,—alas, was it not to have settled the whole Quarrel, without the eight-and-forty years of fighting, and confused bickering and oscillation, which proved to be needful first? The negotiation dropped; leaving for visible result only this appointment of St. John’s. His Majesty on that side saw no course possible for him.
Accordingly he tried it in the opposite direction, which also, on failure by this other, was very natural for him. He entered into secret tamperings with the Officers of the English Army; which, lying now in Yorkshire, ill-paid, defeated, and in neighbourhood of a Scotch Army victoriously furnished with 850l. a-day, was very apt for discontent. There arose a ‘first Army-Plot’ for delivering Strafford from the Tower; then a second Army-Plot for some equally wild achievement, tending to deliver Majesty from thraldom, and send this factious Parliament about its business. In which desperate schemes, though his Majesty strove not to commit himself beyond what was necessary, it became and still remains in​dubitable that he did participate;—as indeed, the former course of listening to his Parliament having been abandoned, this other of coercing or awing it by armed force was the only remaining one.
These Army-Plots, detected one after another, and investigated and commented upon, with boundless interest, in Parliament and out of it, kept the Summer and Autumn of 1641 in continual alarm and agitation; taught all Opposition persons, and a factious Parliament in general, what ground they were standing on;—and in the factious Parliament especially, could not but awaken the liveliest desire of having the Military Force put in such hands as would be safe for them. ‘The Lord-Lieutenants of Counties,’ this factious Parliament conceived an unappeasable desire of knowing who these were to be:—this is what they mean by ‘Power of the Militia;’ on which point, as his Majesty would not yield a jot, his Parliament and he,—the point becoming daily more important, new offences daily accumulating, and the split ever widening,—ultimately rent themselves asunder, and drew swords to decide it.
Such was the well-known consummation; which in Cromwell’s next Letter we find to have arrived. Here are a few dates which may assist the reader to grope his way thither. From ‘Mr Willingham in Swithin’s Lane’ in February 1641, to the Royal Standard at Nottingham in August 1642, and ‘Mr. Barnard at Huntingdon’ in January 1643, which is our next stage, there is a long vague road; and the lights upon it are mostly a universal dance of will-o’-wisps, and distracted fireflies in a state of excitement—not good guidance for the traveller!
1641
Monday 3d May. Strafford’s Trial being ended, but no sentence yet given, Mr. Robert Baillie, Minister of Kilwinning, who was here among the Scotch Commissioners at present, saw in Palaceyard, Westminster, ‘some thousands of Citizens and ​Apprentices’ (Miscellaneous Persons and City Shopmen, as we should now call them), who rolled about there ‘all day,’ bellowing to every Lord as he went in or came out, ‘with a loud and hideous voice’: ‘Justice on Strafford! Justice on Traitors!’—which seemed ominous to the Rev. Mr. Baillie.
In which same hours, amid such echoes from without, the honourable House of Commons within doors, all in great tremor about Army-Plots, Treasons, Death-perils, was busy redacting a ‘Protestation’; a kind of solemn Vow, or miniature Scotch Covenant, the first of a good many such in those earnest agitated times,—to the effect: ‘We take the Supreme to witness that we will stand by one another to the death in prosecution of our just objects here; in defence of Law, Loyalty and Gospel here.’ To this effect; but couched in very mild language, and with a ‘Preamble,’ in which our Terror of Army-Plots, the moving principle of the affair, is discreetly almost shaded out of sight; it being our object that the House should be ‘unanimous’ in the Protestation. As accordingly the House was; the House, and to a great extent the Nation. Hundreds of honourable Members, Mr. Cromwell one of them, sign the Protestation this day; the others on the following days: their names all registered in due succession in the Books. Nay, it is ordered that the whole Nation be invited to sign it; that each honourable Member send it down to his constituents, and invite them to sign it. Which, as we say, the constituents, all the reforming part of them, everywhere in England, did; with a feeling of solemnity very strange to the modern mind. Striking terror into all Traitors; quashing down Army-Plots for the present, and the hopes of poor Strafford for ever. A Protestation held really sacred; appealed to, henceforth, as a thing from which there was no departing. Cavalcades of Freeholders, coming up from the country to petition the Honourable House,—for instance, the Four-thousand Petitioners from Buckinghamshire, about ten ​months hence,—rode with this Protestation ‘stuck in their hats.’ A very great and awe-inspiring matter in those days; till it was displaced by greater of the like kind,—Solemn League and Covenant, and others.
Monday next, 10th May, his Majesty accordingly signed sentence on Strafford; who was executed on the Wednesday following. No help for it. A terrible example; the one supremely able man the King had.
On the same Monday 10th May, his Majesty signed likewise another Bill, That this Parliament should not be dissolved without its own consent. A Bill signed in order that the City might lend him money on good Security of Parliament; money being most pressingly wanted, for our couple of hungry Armies Scotch and English, and other necessary occasions. A Bill which seemed of no great consequence except financial; but which, to a People reverent of Law, and never, in the wildest clash of battle-swords, giving up its religious respect for the constable’s baton, proved of infinite consequence. His Majesty’s hands are tied; he cannot dismiss this Parliament, as he has done the others,—no, not without its own consent.
August 10th. Army-Plotters having fled beyond seas; the Bill for Triennial Parliaments being passed; the Episcopacy-Bill being got to sleep; and by the use of royal varnish a kind of composure, or hope of composure, being introduced: above all things, money being now borrowed to pay the Armies and disband them,—his Majesty, on the 10th of the month, set out for Scotland. To hold a Parliament, and compose matters there, as his Majesty gave out. To see what old or new elements of malign Royalism could still be awakened to life there, as the Parliament surmised, who greatly opposed his going.—Mr. Cromwell got home to Ely again, for six weeks, this autumn; there being a recess from 9th September when the business was got gathered up, till 20th October ​when his Majesty was expected back. An Interim Committee, and Pym, from his ‘lodging at Chelsea,’ managed what of indispensable might turn up.
November 1st. News came to London, to the re-assembled Parliament, that an Irish Rebellion, already grown to be an Irish Massacre, had broken out. An Irish Catholic imitation of the late Scotch Presbyterian achievements in the way of ‘religious liberty’;—one of the best models, and one of the worst imitations ever seen in this world. Erasmus’s Ape, observing Erasmus shave himself, never doubted but it too could shave. One knows what a hand the creature made of itself, before the edgetool could be wrenched from it again! As this poor Irish Rebellion unfortunately began in lies and bluster, hoping to make itself good that way, the ringleaders had started by pretending or even forging some warrant from the King; which brought much undeserved suspicion on his Majesty, and greatly complicated his affairs here for a long while.
November 22d. The Irish Rebellion blazing up more and more into an Irish Massacre, to the terror and horror of all antipapist men; and in England, or even in Scotland, except by the liberal use of varnish, nothing yet being satisfactorily mended, nay all things hanging now, as it seemed, in double and treble jeopardy,—the Commons had decided on a ‘Grand Petition and Remonstrance,’ to set forth what their griefs and necessities really were, and really would require to have done for them. The Debate upon it, very celebrated in those times, came on this day, Monday 22d November. The longest Debate ever yet known in Parliament; and the stormiest,—nay, had it not been for Mr. Hampden’s soft management, ‘we had like to have sheathed our swords in each other’s bowels,’ says Warwick; which I find otherwise to be true. The Remonstrance passed by a small majority. It can be ​read still in Rushworth, drawn up in precise business order; the whole 206 Articles of it,—every line of which once thrilled electrically into all men’s hearts, as torpid as it has now grown. ‘The chimes of Margaret’s were striking two in the morning when we came out.’—It was on this occasion that Oliver, ‘coming down stairs,’ is reported to have said, He would have sold all and gone to New England, had the Remonstrance not passed;—a vague report, gathered over dining-tables long after, to which the reader need not pay more heed than it merits. His Majesty returned from Scotland on the Thursday following, and had from the City a thrice-glorious Civic Entertainment.
December 10th. The Episcopal business, attempted last Spring in vain, has revived in December, kindled into life by the Remonstrance; and is raging more fiercely than ever; crowds of Citizens petitioning, Corporation ‘going in sixty coaches’ to petition; the Apprentices, or City Shopmen, and miscellaneous persons, petitioning:—Bishops ‘much insulted’ in Palaceyard as they go in or out. Whereupon hasty Welsh Williams, Archbishop of York, once Bishop of Lincoln and Lord Keeper, he with Eleven too hasty Bishops, Smectymnuus Hall being one of them, give in a Protest, on this 10th of December, That they cannot get to their place in Parliament; that all shall be null and void till they do get there. A rash step; for which, on the 30th of the same month, they are, by the Commons, voted guilty of Treason; and ‘in a cold evening,’ with small ceremony, are bundled, the whole dozen of them, into the Tower. For there is again rioting, again are cries ‘loud and hideous’;—Colonel Lunsford, a truculent one-eyed man, having ‘drawn his sword’ upon the Apprentices in Westminster Hall, and truculently slashed some of them; who of course responded in a loud and hideous manner, by tongue, by fist, and single-stick; nay, on the morrow, 28th of December, they came marching many ​thousands strong, with sword and pistol, out of the City. ‘Slash us now! while we wait on the Honourable House for an answer to our petition!’—and insulted his Majesty’s Guard at Whitehall. What a Christmas of that old London, of that old year! On the 6th of February following, Episcopacy will be voted down, with blaze of ‘bonfires,’ and ‘ringing’ of all the bells,—very audible to poor old Dr. Laud over in the Tower yonder.
1642
January 4th. His Majesty seeing these extremities arrive, and such a conflagration begin to blaze, thought now the time had come for snatching the main livecoals away, and so quenching the same. Such coals of strife he counts to the number of Five in the Commons House, and One in the Lords: Pym, Hampden, Haselrig, with Holles and Strode (who held down the Speaker fourteen years ago), these are the Five Commons; Lord Kimbolton, better known to us as Mandevil, Oliver’s friend, of the ‘Soke of Somersham,’ and Queen’s-Court Committee, he is the Lord. His Majesty flatters himself he has gathered evidence concerning these individual firebrands, That they ‘invited the Scots to invade us’ in 1640: he sends, on Monday 3d January, to demand that they be given up to him as Traitors. Deliberate, slow and, as it were, evasive reply. Whereupon, on the morrow, he rides down to St. Stephen’s himself, with an armed very miscellaneous force, of Five-hundred or of Three-hundred truculent braggadocio persons at his back; enters the House of Commons, the truculent persons looking in after him from the lobby,—with intent to seize the said Five Members, five principal hot coals; and trample them out, for one thing. It was the fatalest step this poor King ever took. The Five Members, timefully warned, were gone into the City; the whole Parliament removed itself into the City, ‘to be safe from armed violence.’ From London City, and from all England, rose one loud voice of lamentation, ​condemnation: Clean against law! Paint an inch thick, there is, was, or can be, no shadow of law in this. Will you grant us the Militia now; we seem to need it now!—His Majesty’s subsequent stages may be dated with more brevity.
January 10th. The King with his Court quits Whitehall; the Five Members and Parliament purposing to return tomorrow, with the whole City in arms round them. He left Whitehall; never saw it again till he came to lay down his head there.
March 9th. The King has sent away his Queen from Dover, ‘to be in a place of safety,’—and also to pawn the Crown Jewels in Holland, and get him arms. He returns Northward again, avoiding London. Many Messages between the Houses of Parliament and him: ‘Will your Majesty grant us Power of the Militia; accept this list of Lord-Lieutenants?’ On the 9th of March, still advancing Northward without affirmative response, he has got to Newmarket; where another Message overtakes him, earnestly urges itself upon him: Could not your Majesty please to grant us Power of the Militia for a limited time? ‘No, by God! answers his Majesty, ‘not for an hour!’—On the 19th of March he is at York; where his Hull Magazine, gathered for service against the Scots, is lying near; where a great Earl of Newcastle, and other Northern potentates, will help him; where at least London and its Puritanism, now grown so fierce, is far off.
There we will leave him; attempting Hull Magazine, in vain; exchanging messages with his Parliament; messages, missives, printed and written Papers without limit:—Law-pleadings of both parties before the great tribunal of the English Nation, each party striving to prove itself right, and within the verge of Law: preserved still in acres of typography, once thrillingly alive in every fibre of them; now a mere torpor, readable by few creatures, not rememberable by any. It is too clear his Majesty will have to get himself an army, by Commission of Array, by subscriptions of loyal plate, ​pawning of crown jewels, or how he can. The Parliament by all methods is endeavouring to do the like. London subscribed ‘Horses and Plate,’ every kind of plate, even to women’s thimbles, to an unheard-of amount; and when it came to actual enlisting, in London alone there were ‘Four-thousand enlisted in a day.’ Four-thousand, some call it Five-thousand, in a day, the reader may meditate that one fact. Royal messages, Parliamentary messages; acres of typography thrillingly alive in every fibre of them,—these go on slowly abating, and military preparations go on steadily increasing till the 23d of October next. The King’s ‘Commission of Array for Leicestershire’ came out on the 12th of June, commissions for other counties following as convenient; the Parliament’s ‘Ordinance for the Militia,’ rising cautiously pulse after pulse towards clear emergence, had attained completion the week before. The question puts itself to every English soul, Which of these will you obey?—and in all quarters of English ground, with swords getting out of their scabbards, and yet the constable’s baton still struggling to rule supreme, there is a most confused solution of it going on.
Of Oliver in these months we find the following things noted; which the imaginative reader is to spread out into significance for himself the best he can.
February 7th. ‘Mr. Cromwell,’ among others, ‘offers to lend Three-hundred Pounds for the service of the Commonwealth,’—towards reducing the Irish Rebellion, and relieving the afflicted Protestants there, or here. Rushworth, copying a List of such subscribers, of date 9th April 1642, has Cromwell’s name written down for ‘500l.’—seemingly the same transaction; Mr. Cromwell having now mended his ​offer: or else Mr. Rushworth, who uses the arithmetical cipher in this place, having misprinted. Hampden’s subscription there is 1,000l. In Mr. Cromwell it is clear there is no backwardness, far from that; his activity in these months notably increases. In the D’Ewes mss. he appears and reappears; suggesting this and the other practical step, on behalf of Ireland oftenest; in all ways zealously urging the work.
July 15th. ‘Mr. Cromwell moved that we might make an order to allow the Townsmen of Cambridge to raise two Companies of Volunteers, and to appoint Captains over them.’ On which same day, 15th July, the Commons Clerk writes these words: ‘Whereas Mr. Cromwell hath sent down arms into the County of Cambridge, for the defence of that County, it is this day ordered,’—that he shall have the ‘100l.’ expended on that service repaid him by and by. Is Mr. Cromwell aware that there lies a colour of high treason in all this; risk not of one’s purse only, but of one’s head? Mr. Cromwell is aware of it, and pauses not. The next entry is still stranger.
August 15th. ‘Mr. Cromwell in Cambridgeshire has seized the Magazine in the Castle at Cambridge; and hath hindered the carrying of the Plate from that University; which, as some report, was to the value of 20,000l. or thereabouts.’ So does Sir Philip Stapleton, member for Aldborough, member also of our new ‘Committee for Defence of the Kingdom,’ report this day. For which let Mr. Cromwell have indemnity.—Mr. Cromwell has gone down into Cambridgeshire in person, since they began to train there, and assumed the chief management,—to some effect, it would appear.
The like was going on in all shires of England; wherever ​the Parliament had a zealous member, it sent him down to his shire in these critical months, to take what management he could or durst. The most confused months England ever saw. In every shire, in every parish; in courthouses, alehouses, churches, markets, wheresoever men were gathered together, England, with sorrowful confusion in every fibre, is tearing itself into hostile halves, to carry on the voting by pike and bullet henceforth.
Brevity is very urgent on us, nevertheless we must give this other extract. Bramston the Shipmoney Judge, in trouble with the Parliament and sequestered from his place, is now likely to get into trouble with the King, who in the last days of July has ordered him to come to York on business of importance. Judge Bramston sends his two sons, John and Frank, fresh young men, to negotiate some excuse. They ride to York in three days; stay a day at York with his Majesty; then return, ‘on the same horses,’ in three days,—to Skreens in Essex; which was good riding. John, one of them, has left a most watery incoherent Autobiography, now printed, but not edited,—nor worth editing, except by fire to ninety-nine hundredths of it; very distracting; in which, however, there is this notable sentence; date about the middle of August, not discoverable to a day. Having been at York, and riding back on the same horses in three days:
‘In our return on Sunday, near Huntingdon, between that and Cambridge, certain musketeers start out of the corn, and command us to stand; telling us we must be searched, and to that end must go before Mr. Cromwell, and give account from whence we came and whither we were going. I asked where Mr. Cromwell was? A soldier told us, He was four miles off. I said, it was unreasonable to carry us out of our way; if Mr. Cromwell had been there, I should have willingly given him all the satisfaction he could desire;—and putting my hand into my pocket, I gave one of them Twelvepence, who said, we might pass. By this I saw plainly it would not be possible for my Father to get to the King with his ​coach’;—neither did he go at all, but stayed at home till he died.
September 14th. Here is a new phasis of the business. In a ‘List of the Army under the command of the Earl of Essex,’ we find that Robert Earl of Essex is ‘Lord General for King and Parliament’ (to deliver the poor beloved King from traitors, who have misled him, and clouded his fine understanding, and rendered him as it were a beloved Parent fallen insane); that Robert Earl of Essex, we say, is Lord General for King and Parliament; that William the new Earl of Bedford is General of the Horse, and has, or is every hour getting to have, ‘seventy-five troops of 60 men each’; in every troop a Captain, a Lieutenant, a Cornet and Quartermaster, whose names are all given. In Troop Sixty-seven, the Captain is ‘Oliver Cromwell’,—honourable member for Cambridge; many honourable members having now taken arms; Mr. Hampden, for example, having become Colonel Hampden,—busy drilling his men in Chalgrove Field at this very time. But moreover, in Troop Eight of Earl Bedford’s Horse, we find another ‘Oliver Cromwell, Cornet’;—and with real thankfulness for this poor flint-spark in the great darkness, recognise him for our honourable member’s Son. His eldest Son Oliver, now a stout young man of twenty. ‘Thou too, Boy Oliver, thou art fit to swing a sword. If there ever was a battle worth fighting, and to be called God’s battle, it is this; thou too wilt come!’ How a staid, most pacific, solid Farmer of three-and-forty decides on girding himself with warlike iron, and fighting, he and his, against principalities and powers, let readers who have formed any notion of this man conceive for themselves.
On Sunday 23d October, was Edgehill Battle, called also Keinton Fight, near Keinton on the south edge of Warwickshire. In which Battle Captain Cromwell was present, and ​did his duty, let angry Denzil say what he will. The Fight was indecisive; victory claimed by both sides. Captain Cromwell told Cousin Hampden, They never would get on with a set of poor tapsters and town-apprentice people fighting against men of honour. ‘To cope with men of honour they must have men of religion. ‘Mr. Hampden answered me, It was a good notion, if it could be executed.’ Oliver himself set about executing a bit of it, his share of it, by and by.
‘We all thought one battle would decide it,’ says Richard Baxter;—and we were all much mistaken! This winter there arise among certain Counties ‘Associations’ for mutual defence, against Royalism and plunderous Rupertism; a measure cherished by the Parliament, condemned as treasonable by the King. Of which ‘Associations,’ countable to the number of five or six, we name only one, that of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Herts; with Lord Grey of Wark for Commander; where, and under whom, Oliver was now serving. This ‘Eastern Association’ is alone worth naming. All the other Associations, no man of emphasis being in the midst of them, fell in few months to pieces; only this of Cromwell’s subsisted, enlarged itself, grew famous;—and indeed kept its own borders clear of invasion during the whole course of the War. Oliver, in the beginning of 1643, is serving there, under the Lord Grey of Wark. Besides his military duties, Oliver, as natural, was nominated of the Committee for Cambridgeshire in this Association; he is also of the Committee for Huntingdonshire, which as yet belongs to another ‘Association.’ Member for the Committee of Huntingdonshire; to which also has been nominated a ‘Robert Barnard, Esquire,’—who, however, does not sit, as I have reason to surmise!
* ↑ Whitlocke, Clarendon; see Forster’s Statesmen, ii. 150-7.
* ↑ Baillie, i. 351.
* ↑ Commons Journals, ii. 132-3, etc; Rushworth, iv. 241-4.
* ↑ 12th January 1641-2; Rushworth. iv. 486.
* ↑ Copy of it, sent to Cambridge: Appendix, No. 3.
* ↑ Wharton’s Laud, p. 62.
* ↑ His Report, Commons Journals, ii. 289.
* ↑ Laud, p. 62; Commons Journals, in die.
* ↑ Commons Journals, in die; D’Ewes mss, f. 179 b.
* ↑ Rushworth, iv. 438-51; see also 436-7.
* ↑ Clarendon.
* ↑ Rushworth, iv. 429.
* ↑ Vicars, p. 56.
* ↑ Rushworth, iv. 467.
* ↑ Ib. iv. 464.
* ↑ Wharton’s Laud, p. 62; see also p. 65.
* ↑ Commons Journals, ii. 367.
* ↑ Vicars, p. 64.
* ↑ Rushworth, iv. 533.
* ↑ Vicars, pp. 93, 109; see Commons Journals, 10th June 1642.
* ↑ Wood’s Athena, iii. 193.
* ↑ Husbands the Printer’s First Collection (Lond. 1643), pp. 346, 331.
* ↑ Commons Journals, ii. 408.
* ↑ Rushworth, iv. 564.
* ↑ February—July 1642.
* ↑ D’Ewes mss. f. 658-661.
* ↑ Commons Journals, ii. 674.
* ↑ Commons Journals, ii. 720, 6. See likewise Tanner mss. lxiii. 116; Querela Cantabrigiensis (and wipe away its blubberings and inexactitudes a little), Life of Dr. Barwick, etc.,—Cambridge Portfolio (London, 1840), ii. 386-8.
* ↑ Autobiograhy of Sir John Bramston, Knt. (Camden Society, 1845), p. 86.
* ↑ King’s Pamphlets, small 4to, no. 73.
* ↑ Antea, p. 60.
* ↑ Vicars, p. 198; Denzil Holles’s Memoirs (in Mazeres’s Tracts, vol. i.).
* ↑ Life (London, 1696), Part i. p. 43.
* ↑ Husbands, i. 892; see for the other particulars, ii. 183, 327, 804, 809; Commons Journals, etc.