CHAPTER X.

COMMENCEMENT OF THE WAR-BATTLE of edgehill-KING'S ATTACK ON BRENTFORD.

IN the second chapter of this History I have cited from an ancient roll of Parliament, furnished by Sir Robert Cotton from his valuable collection of records to Sir John Eliot, the precedent of the misgovernment of King John and Henry III. as a parallel to the misgovernment of King James and Charles I. Hume justly remarks that the power of the Norman princes in England had become so great that it required a very great amount of misgovernment on the part of even so weak and vicious a king as John, before his barons could entertain the view of conspiring against him, in order to retrench his prerogative. The parallel between the times of John and Henry III. and those of James and Charles I., holds here also as well as in other points. The power of the crown had become so great in England after the Wars of the Roses that foreign ambassadors in England express their astonishment at the patience of the English people under the misgovernment of James, calling it cowardice,' some of them going so far as to say that there were no men in England. And yet Mr. Hallam affirms of the Parliament that "scarce two or three public acts of justice,

1 See the despatches of the French ambassador Tillierès, cited in Chap. I. of this History, and published from the French archives in Raumer, ii. 263265, 270, 271.

humanity, or generosity, and very few of political wisdom or courage, are recorded of them, from their quarrel with the King to their expulsion by Cromwell." It seems as strange to talk of the Parliament's quarrel with the King as it would be to talk of a traveller having a quarrel with a highwayman because the highwayman wanted to rob him. The barons had a quarrel with King John, and made him pass Magna Charta, which of course he and his son violated whenever they could; and then, again, the barons had another quarrel with Henry III., and conquered him and made him a prisoner. But here the parallel stops, for Henry III. and his son Edward I. escaped from imprisonment; but Charles I. had got into the gripe of men who were resolved he should be made an example, to show to all succeeding ages that kings were not to commit crimes with impunity.

Upon the raising of the royal standard, on the 25th of August 1642, the war broke out over almost all England. In the battles and skirmishes which then took place it it appeared that, for the first year, at least, the advantage was, for the most part, with the royal cause. So that the balance which at the commencement of the war was in favour of the Parliament, from their being in possession of most of the fortified places in England, with the magazines of arms and ammunition which they contained, and from having also great numbers of men at their disposal, with power to raise large sums of money to pay them, was after a little time turned in favour of the King. This appears to have arisen chiefly from the fact, to which I have adverted before, of the superior skill, the result of long practice, in the use of arms, of the nobility and gentry, a much larger number of whom joined the army. of the King than that of the Parliament. The servants

of these gentlemen, too, particularly their grooms and gamekeepers, as well as their tenants, would be likely to possess both more skill in the use of arms, and, from their open-air occupations, more power to endure the fatigues and hardships of war, than the citizens, accustomed to indoor occupations and a town life, who would form the bulk of the troops of the Parliament. In some respects the intelligence of the Parliamentary troops might be superior. However, under ordinary circumstances, a capability of enduring fatigue, privations, and all the varieties of weather, wet, heat, and cold, coupled with obedience to orders, may be found more useful than superior intelligence in the soldier. But the circumstances. of this war were extraordinary, inasmuch as the element of religious enthusiasm entered strongly into it; and there only needed a man of genius who could see how to avail himself of this element in order to render his troops by means of it, joined to discipline in them and skill and daring in their leaders, even though in a considerable part composed of tradesmen accustomed to indoor occupations, able to face with advantage in the field countrygentlemen and their tenants and servants.

It is but justice to add, that the success of the King's cause in the beginning of this war was also in a great degree owing to the royal cavalry, a body of men conspicuous for their gallantry, and chiefly composed of the sons and kinsmen of the English nobility and gentry, and to the spirit of their commander, Prince Rupert, the King's nephew, who, though not possessed of prudence corresponding to his bravery and activity, must be reckoned a very active and enterprising cavalry officer. Whatever may be the opinion of the cause for which they fought, it must be admitted,

on the testimony of no less an authority than Cromwell himself, that those partisans of the Stuarts in the middle. of the seventeenth century fought well and strongly for a race of kings who brought nothing but dishonour and disaster upon them and theirs.

Having mentioned the activity of Prince Rupert, I must also notice some other qualities which belonged to him, and which gave a sanguinary character to the struggle at its very commencement.

Prince Rupert, the second son of the Elector Palatine by the Princess Elizabeth, the sister of King Charles, and Prince Maurice, his younger brother, had arrived in England in September 1642, and were soon put by the King their uncle into employment and command; "in which they showed themselves," says May, "very forward and active: and if they were more hot and furious than the tender beginnings of a civil war would seem to require, it may be imputed to the fervour of their youth, and the great desire which they had to ingratiate themselves with the King, upon whom, as being no more than soldiers of fortune, their hopes of advancement wholly depended." Prince Rupert, the elder and the more furious of the two, within a fortnight after his arrival, at the head of a small party, made a rapid march through several counties, "not inviting the people," says May, "so much by fair demeanour as compelling them by extreme rigour to follow that side which he had taken. Many towns and villages he plundered, that is to say, robbed (for at that time first was the word plunder used in England, being born in Germany, when that stately country was so miserably wasted and pillaged by foreign armies), and committed other outrages upon those who stood affected to the Parliament, executing

some, and hanging up servants at their masters' doors for not discovering of their masters." "

I

Besides the difference between the qualities of the royal and those of the Parliamentary troops already noticed, there were other circumstances unfavourable to the cause of the Parliament at the beginning of the war. So many of the members of the House of Lords had, when actual war broke out, gone over to the King, that it was deemed necessary to gratify those that remained by conferring on them the chief commands both in the army and the fleet. The advantage, therefore, of making ability the only test of a commander was at first entirely lost. Thus the Earl of Essex was appointed to the command of the army of the Parliament.

Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, had served in the Low Countries, and it seems to have been thence inferred, somewhat rashly, that he was competent to command the army. Whether the ill-usage he had formerly sustained from the Court tended to give him some degree of popularity, or his own character, like that of his father, was calculated to gain him friends, or his rank as the representative, or at least the bearer, of an ancient title determined the Parliament in his favour, they certainly committed a very grave error in committing to him the command of their army; as they did generally in concluding that the peerage of their time, because they bore many of the titles, were the representatives either of the military power or the military qualities of the ancient nobility. While Humphrey de Bohun, the Earl of Essex and Hereford of the thirteenth century, who married Elizabeth Plantagenet, daughter of Edward I., could bid open defiance to the most vigorous

r May, History of the Parliament, bk. iii. ch. i. pp. 159, 160. Maseres' edition. London, 1812.