God's

"Let me," said he, "escape from these miseries which I have endured so long. will be done! I am willing to leave the world; no man can be more willing to dismiss me, than I am to be gone." And perceiving through the crevices of the platform, that some persons were standing beneath, immediately under the block, he requested that they might be removed, or that dust might be spread over the crevices: it was no part of his desire that his blood should fall upon the heads of the people. All this he did as collectedly "as if he rather had been taking order for some nobleman's funeral, than preparing for his own." The zeal of Clotworthy could no longer respect this awful moment, or the sublime propriety with which the archbishop performed his great part. He demanded of the dying prelate, what was the most comfortable saying for a man at the point of death? Laud replied: "Cupio dissolvi, et esse cum Christo,-I desire to depart, and to be with Christ." "A good desire," admitted the inquisitor; "but then, how shall a dying man find assurance?" The primate answered, that such assurance was to be found within, but that it could not fitly be expressed in words. The assurance, however, Clotworthy still insisted, "was founded upon a word; and that word should be known." "It is founded on the knowledge of Jesus Christ," was the reply, "and on that alone." Laud now turned to the executioner, "as the gentler and discreter person of the two;" and putting some money into his hands, with the same unaffected composure which he had preserved throughout, said, "Here, honest friend; God forgive thee, as I do. Do thine office upon me with mercy.' "He then fell again upon his knees, and, having pronounced a brief but expressive prayer, laid his head upon the block. A moment's pause-he gave the signal-" Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!" At one blow the axe did its fearful office; and instantly the sufferer's countenance, which, up to that present moment, had retained the animated flush, that, through life, was peculiar to it, became pale as ashes; to the confusion of some present, who affirmed that he had painted his cheeks, in order that, by his complexion at least, he might obtain the credit of fortitude.

Thus fell Laud; and with him fell the Church of England; for the same day that the house of Lords passed the ordinance for his destruction, they likewise passed an act for the suppression of the Liturgy, and for setting up the Directory for public Worship-a meagre formulary, prepared for the assembly of divines, in which no place is found for the creed, the Lord's prayer, or the commandments. The body of the primate was interred, in the church of All-hallows, Barking, near the Tower. The Directory, in which burials are ordered to be without any religious observance, was already in use; yet the sorrowing friends of Laud enjoyed the mournful consolation of depositing his remains in the grave, according to the majestic rites of that church for which he lived and died, and whose funeral they might be said to have solemnized at the same time with the primate's.

This is not the place to speak of the schisms and religious confusion which followed; yet the noisome weeds did not wait to spring up till the tree that supplied life to the national morals was laid low every stroke that before thinned its branches, had opened a fresh space for them to overspread. Already the assembly of divines had applied to the Lords and Commons in parliament for powers to correct the "brutish ignorance," and root out the gross vices, which contempt of the church and persecution of the clergy, had

let in upon the people. We will once more have recourse here to the very words of those who saw, with their own eyes, the evils they describe. From the numerous contemporary tracts, we select, for quotation, one which, though occasionally defective in taste, seems free from the exaggerations of party. The writer imagines himself to hear England deploring her condition in regard to morality and religion :

"I should traduce and much wrong religion," he says, "if I should cast this war upon her: yet methinks I hear her lament that she is not also without her grievances. Some of her chiefest governors, for want of moderation, could not be content to walk upon the battlements of the church, but they must mount also to the turrets of civil policy; some of her preachers grew to be mere parasites-some to the court, some to the country; some would have nothing in their mouths but prerogative, others nothing but privilege: some would give the crown all, some nothing; some, to feed zeal would famish the understanding; others, to feast the understanding, and tickle the outward ear with essays and flourishes of rhetoric, would quite starve the soul of her true food.

"But the principal thing that I hear that reverend lady, that queen of souls, complain of, is, that that seamless garment of unity and love, which our Saviour left her for a legacy, should be torn and rent into so many scissures and sects. I hear her cry out at the monstrous exorbitant liberty, that almost every capricious mechanic takes to himself to shape and form what religion he lists. For the world is come to that pass, that the tailor and shoemaker may cut out what religion they please; the vintner and tapster may broach what religion they please; the dyer may put what colour, the painter may put what face upon her he pleases; the blacksmith may forge what religion he pleases,— and so every artisan, according to his profession and fancy, may form her as he pleases. Methinks I hear that venerable matron complain, how her pulpits are become beacons ; how, for lights, her churches are full of firebrands: how every caprice of the brain is termed tenderness of conscience, every frantic fancy, or rather frenzy, of some shallowbrained sciolist; and whereas others have been used to go mad from excess of knowledge, men grow mad now-a-days from excess of ignorance. It stands upon record in my story, that when the Norman had got firm footing within my realm, he did demolish many churches and chapels in the New Forest, to make fitter for his pleasure; but amongst other judgments which fell upon this sacrilege, one was, that tame fowl grew wild: I fear God Almighty is more angry with me now than then, and that I am guilty of worse crimes; for not my fowl but my folk and people are grown, in many places, half wild; they would not worry one another so in that wolfish belluine manner, else. They would not precipitate themselves else into such a mixed mongrel war; a war which makes strangers cry out, that I am turned into a kind of great bedlam, that Barbary is come into the midst of me, that my children are grown so savage, so fleshed in slaughter, and become so inhuman and obdurate, that with the same tenderness of sense they can see a man fall, as a horse, or some other brute animal; they have so lost all reverence to the image of their Creator, which was used to be more valued in me than among other nations."

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CHAPTER XIV.

CAMPAIGN OF 1644-MARSTON-MOOR.

THE return of the Earl of Essex to London, and the king's retirement to Oxford, after the fight at Newbury, though those movements terminated the campaign of 1643, as it regarded the two main armies, did not put an end to the military operations of the year. The greater part of England was alive with a ceaseless war of skirmishes and sieges. Prince Rupert, in the midland counties, maintained his reputation for courage and activity, for severity and rapine. In the west, his brother Maurice, after receiving the submission of several garrisons, which the brilliant successes of the royal arms at Roundway Down and Bristol had frightened into ready submission, besieged Plymouth, without taking it; and then sat down with a large force before the paltry ditches of the little town of Lyme.-The war in the north presented features of more interest.

The Earl of Manchester, having reduced Lynn, drew his forces into Lincolnshire, and on the 11th of October, was joined by Cromwell, now his lieutenant-general, and by Sir Thomas Fairfax. The following day, they were attacked by a strong body of cavalry, from the royalist garrisons of Lincoln, Newark, and Gainsborough, at Waisby field, near Horncastle. That spirit of religious enthusiasm, which was the secret of Cromwell's extraordinary influence over his own unconquered regiments of troopers, had by this time widely diffused its electric sympathy through the ranks of the army in which he commanded. On the appearance of the enemy, he gave the word of onset-" Truth and Peace;" called on his soldiers to charge, in the name of the Highest; uplifted his loud harsh voice in a psalm, which officers and men, column after column, took up with hearty zeal; and, while it was yet sounding through their ranks, bore fiercely down upon the startled enemy. Midway, a volley met them from the royalist dragoons: they answered it by a louder note of that solemn defiance. A second discharge saluted them, when within a few paces of the hostile column. Cromwell's horse was shot dead, and fell upon him; and when, after a moment's struggle, he rose from the ground, he was again struck down, by an officer who had, at first, singled him out for the charge. Stunned for a moment, he presently rose a second time from among the slain, mounted the horse of a common soldier, which chanced to be at hand, and plunged forward into the fight. But by this time a regiment, commanded by Sir William Savile, which had received the first overwhelming shock of the parliamentarians, giving ground, disordered and put to flight the whole van of the royalists. The rout quickly became general. Manchester, hastening up with the infantry, found Waisby Field, and the road towards Lincoln, strewed with the royalist dead and dying; the survivors were utterly dispersed. A

R

thousand of the king's troops are said to have perished in this short but terrible action. The next day the Marquess of Newcastle raised the siege of Hull.

Now began the splendid and more decisive campaign of 1644. Vainly had Charles sought to prevent, what he had long foreseen, the irruption of the Scots. In his name, though contrary to his proclamation, those levies were raised, whose entrance on the field was to turn against him the balanced scale of fortune: and on the 19th of January, 21,000 men of that nation, led by Lesley, Earl of Leven, marched, knee-deep in snow, upon the soil of England; the same Lesley, who, on receiving that title (such was the faith of those who were never weary of charging the king with faithlessness!) had solemnly promised his sovereign never more to bear arms against him. Passing Alnwick, after a summons to the brave Sir Thomas Glemham, who, with many of the gentry of Northumberland, was shut up in that fortress, they came before Newcastle, into which place the marquess had thrown himself the day before. Disappointed in their hope of surprising the town, they continued their march southward, skirmishing, now and then, with small parties of the royalists; and some days later, were discovered by the marquess, who had gone in pursuit of them, occupying a strong position by the sea, near Sunderland. For weeks, the two armies kept each other at bay; till at length the marquess, "seeing no possibility" of forcing the Scots to an engagement, drew off towards Durham. Had he resolved on creating such a possibility and vigorously followed it up, Newcastle might now have risen from the dubious reputation of a gallant amateur commander, to the fame of a great general; and if he had not arrested the final triumph of the parliament, might at least have forced it into a more honourable path to victory, than one carved out by the swords of hypocritical mercenaries.

Unable, in the distracted state of affairs in England, to reduce the Irish rebels to obedience, Charles had consented to a truce, and had invited the veteran soldiers of that country to join his forces in England. Numbers flocked over; but nothing was accomplished by those auxiliaries, to compensate for the odium of employing men practised in such barbaraties as had disgraced the savage contest in Ireland, and many of them suspected, at least, of Popery. So generally hateful was the name of Irishmen, that many of the king's adherents, in Newcastle's army and elsewhere, laid down their arms as soon as it became known that the king had proposed to accept the services of that people; and the parliament passed an ordinance for the massacre of Irish prisoners of war, without any apparent shock to the public feeling. Some parties of these veterans having made their appearance in the county of Chester, the gallant Lord Byron, who commanded there for the king, united them with the forces already under his command, and laid seige to Nantwich, the only garrison in those parts which still held out for the parliament. This incident gave occasion to one of those brilliant actions, which marked the dawn of Sir Thomas Fairfax's military fame. In the depth of that inclement winter he marched across from Lincolnshire, joined the forces of Sir William Brereton, from the county of Leicester, and, appearing unexpectedly before Nantwich, forced the besiegers to draw off, and routed them with a severe loss. Of 3,000 foot, commanded by Byron, more than half were slain or captured. This defeat was a severe blow to the king's cause. His Irish