precipitation, of which Prince Rupert had set the example, threw themselves among the ranks of the enemy's foot. While thus engaged, his horse was killed under him, and he found himself alone on the ground, surrounded by furious enemies. The colonel of the regiment, among whose ranks he fell, advancing to encounter him, the men drew back, only to see their commander fall, slain by the earl. The enraged soldiers now closed round the gallant nobleman, striking at him on all sides. One of them, with his heavy matchlock, smote off his helm. They now-such was their own report-offered him quarter; which, it was said, he refused, exclaiming that he scorned to take quarter at the base hands of rebels. A ruffian halberdier then dashed his weapon into his brain behind, and he fell covered with wounds. Sir Thomas Byron, colonel of the prince's regiment, now followed up the impression made by his commander, in a successful charge upon the infantry of the parliamentarians. But the victory that day was turned into mourning. "They who had all the ensigns of victory but their general, thought themselves undone; while the other side, who escaped in the night, and made a hard shift to carry his dead body with them, hardly believed they were losers." They refused to give it up on any other terms than the restitution of all their prisoners, cannon, and ammunition; they even, with what a writer not apt to censure that party with severity terms an "incredible baseness," denied to the filial piety of the young earl (who, with two of his brothers, had charged by his father's side at Hopton Heath) permission to send surgeons to embalm the mangled remains.

In less than a month the walls of Lichfield Cathedral-objects, during that period, of the ruthless violence, and witnesses to the insolent profaneness, of the puritan soldiers —once again echoed to the roar of the besiegers' cannon. Prince Rupert, with a strong body of horse and seven hundred foot, marched from Oxford to recover that singular fortress to the king; and being joined by some of the troops which had lately been victorious under the Earl of Northampton, entered the town on the 8th of April, without opposition, and immediately laid siege to the Close. It was now strongly garrisoned, commanded by a resolute officer, and supplied with everything necessary to a protracted resistance. For several days the fire of the royalist batteries made no impression. The prince now opened a mine under the walls; it was met by a counter-mine on the side of the besiegers: the hostile parties met, and fought with fury, in the bowels of the earth. A second mine was sprung, in a place where the besieged were least prepared for it. A tower, with a party of the defenders in it, was blown up; and a breach of twenty feet in width being made in the walls, the prince assaulted it with his whole available force, but was ultimately forced to retire with the loss of many officers and men. A second time he prepared for the assault; when the garrison, knowing that the king's orders to his highness were to grant them honourable terms, surrendered, and marched out the following day, under a convoy, to Coventry. Prince Rupert left a powerful garrison in Lichfield, and committed the government of it to Colonel Bagot. Then directing his army to follow him with all possible expedition, he immediately hastened off, with only a few attendants, to rejoin his majesty.

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CHAPTER VIII.

QUEEN HENRIETTA.

A MODERN historian, speaking of the lively consort of Charles I., styles her "that pernicious woman; " Warburton is severe even to rancour, in his strictures upon her conduct in short, poor Henrietta is exposed to nearly equal censures from both friend and foe of her husband. The daughter of Henri IV. was, it is true, the most unfit of princesses to be, in that age, queen of England. The English disliked her country, despised her manners, and abhorred her religion,—all of which appeared to herself perfection. Her numerous foreign attendants; the spies who lurked about her in the guise of ambassadors; the evil counsellors who enjoyed her unlimited confidence under the character of chaplains and confessors, did unspeakable mischief to the royal cause. Their insolent behaviour was among the most palpable means of disgusting the people, of inflaming the misunderstandings between the court and the country, and hence, of hurrying on the nation into the vortex of civil war. Charles, while he had an extreme contempt for all those parties, was fretted so much by nothing else as by their impertinences, and proved both, by the manner in which he at length freed himself from the annoyance; yet the people, instead of pitying him, believed him to be in league with his tormentors. He was tender of his consort's honour, and intent on what he deemed her happiness; but the moral English nation visited this virtuous behaviour as a crime, because the fair object of it was a daughter of France, and a bigoted Roman Catholic. He was as firm and enlightened a foe to her religion, as any in his dominions; but she was his wife; she was known to have great influence over the monarch, and to use it unsparingly:—could he, whatever were his professions, be, in heart, less than a papist? Finally, the parliament, as if at once to direct against her the full measure of the popular dislike, rewarded the most commendable action of her life by impeaching her of high treason!-But we are anticipating the course of events.

Before the queen's departure from England, in the spring of 1642, it had become obvious to both parties, though both were far from making the avowal, that the sword must ultimately decide their differences. At that time, however, Charles had not the means of raising a single regiment. The great object of Henrietta was, therefore, to strengthen her husband's interest in Holland, whither she had retired; and, in particular, to procure arms and ammunition, to be transported to England as his necessities might require. Her activity and address surmounted the repugnance which was naturally felt by the States (with whose assertion of their freedom England had warmly sympathized), to favour any design which might impede the struggles of the English in winning their

own. It was to little purpose that the parliament sent over an ambassador armed with declarations and remonstrances, to desire, at least, a complete neutrality. The States affected compliance; but the queen's preparations went on as before. It was chiefly owing to her exertions, that Charles had been enabled to bring an army into the field. She had repeatedly sent him arms and ammunition, and, what he equally wanted, officers of experience, to train and discipline his forces. At length, after a year's absence from England, she herself sailed, with a convoy of four vessels supplied by her son-in-law, the Prince of Orange; eluded the vigilance of Batten, the parliament's vice-admiral, who had received orders to intercept her; and landed safely at Burlington, in Yorkshire, on the 22nd day of February, 1643.

The Earl of Newcastle, with a detachment of those forces which, on account of the favour he was in with her majesty, and because they had from time to time been reinforced by her means, was styled by the parliament, "the Queen's army of Papists," had drawn towards the coast, for the purpose of conducting her to York. Designing, however, to rest a day or two from the fatigues and anxieties of the voyage, she took up her residence in a house on the quay. The second night Batten arrived, unperceived, with his fleet, anchored in the road, and, enraged at his disappointment, exposed the adventurous princess to a new danger, by an outrage, the particulars of which are preserved in her own spirited narrative. "About five of the clock in the morning, the ships began to ply us so fast with their ordnance, that they made us all rise out of our beds and leave the village. One of them did me the favour to flank upon the house where I lay, and before I was out of my bed the cannon bullets whistled so loud about me, that all the company pressed me earnestly to go out of the house, their cannon having totally beaten down all the neighbour houses, and two cannon bullets falling from the top to the bottom of the house where I was; so that, clothed as well as in haste I could be, I went on foot some little distance out of the town, under the shelter of a ditch, like that of Newmarket, whither, before I could get, the cannon bullets fell thick about us, and a servant was killed within seventy paces of me. We in the end gained the ditch, and stayed there two hours, whilst their cannon played all the while on us. The bullets flew, for the most part, over our heads; some few only grazing on the ditch, covered us with earth, &c., till the ebbing of the tide, and the threats of the Holland admiral, put an end to that danger." Information of these particulars was sent to the parliament, and the Lords voted an order to the Earl of Warwick to inquire into their truth; but no further notice was taken of the outrage. On the contrary, it was for this act of romantic obedience to the sentiments of the heart and the laws of society, that the Queen of England was charged by the Commons with the crime of high treason. The impeachment was, as usual, carried up to the bar of the House of Lords by Pym; and this odious attempt was the last effort, in his peculiar province, of the now failing patriot. Could the statesman, who thus sacrificed all other considerations at the shrine of a daring policy, be indeed the same, who, really in the great contest for the Petition of Right, and ostensibly in the prosecution of Strafford, contended for freedom, the blessing which both enables men to

enjoy, and teaches them to venerate, the great moral duties of mankind; and for law, and that imprescriptible justice, which is its fathomless source?

The displeasure of the parliament was so far justified, that the arrival of the queen certainly imparted a new impulse to the king's affairs, and contributed in no small degree to the successful issue of the ensuing campaign. It was the signal for fresh exertions among his adherents; and supplied a point for the discussion of new projects, and the diffusion of a more general spirit of loyalty. The balanced successes of that noble commander, and his able opponents, the Fairfaxes, father and son, which had so long devastated the northern counties without any decisive result, now preponderated in favour of the royal cause. Sir Hugh Cholmondeley, who had served the parliament with great courage and vigour against the earl, attracted by the new aspect of affairs, or yielding to the contagion of chivalrous feeling, offered his allegiance to the queen; delivered up the castle of Scarborough; and received again the command of that fortress for the king. Proposals to raise a party for Charles in Scotland were earnestly made to her majesty by Montrose, but defeated, for the present, by the craft or prudence of Hamilton. Even Sir John Hotham seemed not indisposed to admit Henrietta within the fortress whose gates he had formerly closed against her royal lord; and it was one of the charges on the trial of his unfortunate son, that he had suffered the royal convoy to pass unmolested from Burlington to York.

Four months the queen, in the enjoyment of the sunny prospects thus opened before her, held her court in the capital of the northern counties; her ambition taking delight in the exercise of an independent power, and the affability and liveliness of her manner imparting it to all around her. Immediately after her landing, she had forwarded a part of her supply of arms and ammunition under a strong convoy to the king; but to have pursued her journey towards him at that time, would have been to throw herself into the power of her enraged enemies.