Civil War: The History of England Volume III (42 page)

Prince Rupert arrived outside York, in the last days of June, only to find that the forces of the parliamentary besiegers had made a tactical retreat. Animated by bravado or by faith in his strategy he pursued his enemy to Marston Moor, in the north of the country, for what might have been a final confrontation. The parliamentary soldiers, wearing white handkerchiefs or white pieces of paper in their caps, were the stronger force; they were the first to charge, from the advantage of higher ground, and their sudden onslaught scattered the royalists. An eyewitness, Arthur Trevor, wrote that ‘the runaways on both sides were so many, so breathless, so speechless, so full of fears, that I should not have taken them for men’.

In what was the largest battle ever fought on English soil, 4,000 of the king’s troops had been killed, and his army had disintegrated. In a letter to his brother-in-law, Valentine Walton, Cromwell said of the enemy that ‘God made them as stubble to our swords’. Prince Rupert, in a spirit of mockery rather than admiration, dubbed the victorious commanders as ‘Ironsides’. The cities of York and Newcastle surrendered. It was a notable victory for parliament and, at least in retrospect, it marked a turning point of the civil war.

The victory of Cromwell at Marston Moor lifted him to eminence in parliament no less than on the field of battle. One of his most notable opponents, the earl of Clarendon, admitted that he possessed ‘a great spirit, an admirable circumspection and sagacity, and a most magnanimous resolution’. He was resolute and fearless, and thus a fitting adversary for a king.

He had not distinguished himself in early life and seems happy to have farmed the flat land of the south-east midlands. He once declared that ‘I was by birth a gentleman living neither in any considerable height nor yet in obscurity’. He was one of what were called the ‘middling sort’. Yet even in that enviable condition he was not free from superstitious terror, and in his first years of married life he consulted a London physician who recorded in his case-book
that Cromwell was ‘
valde melancholicus
’; by this he meant that his patient was nervous or depressed to an abnormal degree. Another doctor had suggested that he suffered from hypochondria and indeed, under stress or nervous excitement, he would sometimes fall ill.

His religion was the most important aspect of his character. His depression of spirits may have been the context or the catalyst for the sudden revelation – we do not know when it was vouchsafed – that he was one of ‘the elect’. The blinding light of God’s grace surrounded him, and he was transformed. He wrote to his cousin, Elizabeth St John, that ‘I live (you know where) in Mesheck, which they say signifies Prolonging; in Kedar, which signifies blackness; yet the Lord forsaketh me not’. The reference is to the 120th psalm: ‘Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!’ This scriptural allusiveness and simple piety are at the heart of Cromwell’s faith.

He knew that he had been saved by the grace of God, and the certainty of redemption lay behind all of his judgements; he believed implicitly in the power of divine will to guide the actions of men. He waited on providence. He prayed for a sign. He wrote that ‘we follow the Lord that goeth before’. He sought for the divine meaning of the events occurring around him and saw all things in the context of the eternity of God. Since he had a private sense of what he called ‘true knowledge’ or ‘life eternal’, he was impatient of religious debate and doctrinal niceties. What did they matter before the overwhelming power of God? He once said that ‘I had rather that Mahometanism were permitted among us than that one of God’s children should be persecuted’.

His first years in parliament were not particularly auspicious; he was regarded as a forceful and impetuous, rather than elegant, speaker whose manner was sometimes clumsy or unprepossessing. But together with his family connections at Westminster – the puritan party was in some sense a wide circle of relatives – he fought steadily and assiduously for the parliamentary cause. He was adept at committee work, and was blessed with an acute understanding of human character. Yet he professed not to have been ambitious on his own behalf but rather for the cause he had chosen.

Cromwell was of singular appearance. The London doctor whom he had consulted noted that he had pimples upon his face. These
seem to have been supplanted by warts on his chin and forehead. His thick brown hair was always worn long over the collar, and he had a slim moustache; a tuft of hair lay just below his lower lip. He had a prominent nose and one or his officers, Arthur Haselrig, once said to him that ‘if you prove false, I will never trust a fellow with a big nose again’; his eyes, in colour somewhere between green and grey, were described by Andrew Marvell as being of ‘piercing sweetness’. He was about 5 feet 10 inches in height and, according to his steward, John Maidstone, ‘his body was well compact and strong’; he had a ‘fiery’ temperament but was very quickly settled, and was ‘compassionate . . . even to an effeminate measure’. He was often boisterous in company, with a taste for rough country humour; there were times indeed when, according to Richard Baxter, he displayed too much ‘vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity, as another man hath when he hath drunken a cup too much’.

Like his opponents he thoroughly enjoyed hawking and the pursuits of the field; he also liked to play bowls. He had a great love of music and one of his colleagues, Bulstrode Whitelocke, recalled that ‘he would sometimes be very cheerful with us, and laying aside his greatness he would be exceeding familiar with us, and by way of diversion would make verses with us and everyone must try his fancy. He commonly called for tobacco, pipes and a candle, and would now and then take tobacco himself; then he would fall again to his serious and great business.’

That great business was, at the latter end of 1644, to drive the war forward until the king surrendered; in this purpose, however, he was not supported by other parliamentary commanders. The earl of Essex and the earl of Manchester, in particular, were in favour of some accommodation with Charles; it was suspected by some, therefore, that they were less than zealous in their military offensives. Manchester used to say that it was easy to begin a war, but no one could tell where it would end. He was in command of the eastern association, with Cromwell as his lieutenant-general, and the earl’s desire for peace led to a complete breakdown in trust between the two men. Manchester in particular had an impatient dislike of sectarians and what he called ‘fanatics’, among whom he placed Cromwell himself.

At a council of war the following exchange took place.

Manchester
: If we beat the king ninety and nine times yet he is king still and so will his posterity be after him; but if the king beat us once we shall all be hanged and our posterity made slaves.

Cromwell
: My lord, if this be so why did we take up arms at first? This is against fighting ever hereafter. If so, let us make peace, be it ever so base.

Cromwell had already written to his brother-in-law that ‘we have some among us much slow in action’.

The argument between the two military commanders came to a head after an inconclusive battle with the king at Newbury, where it seemed that Manchester had deliberately held back his army. He is supposed to have said to one of his colleagues, who urged instant action, that ‘thou art a bloody fellow. God send us peace, for God does never prosper us in our victories to make them clear victories.’ It was now believed, by Cromwell and others, that Manchester had become a traitor to the cause.

Towards the end of November Cromwell came into the Commons in order to denounce Manchester; the earl’s ‘backwardness of all action’ and his ‘averseness to engagement’ sprang from his unwillingness to prosecute the war ‘to a full victory’. He was therefore questioning his loyalty. Three days later Manchester returned fire, in the Lords, and charged his opponent with insubordination and slander. Cromwell was accused of saying that he hoped for a day when there would be no peers left in England. The ‘peace party’ on the parliamentary side now considered a move to impeach Cromwell for treason, but was persuaded that it was not wise to do so. A single sheet of print was found in the streets of the city attacking Essex and Manchester with the words ‘Alas poor parliament, how art thou betrayed!’

On 9 December Cromwell pressed home his advantage. He told the Commons that ‘it is now a time to speak, or forever hold the tongue. The important occasion now is no less than to save a nation out of a bleeding, nay almost dying, condition which the long continuance of war hath already brought it into, so that without a more speedy, effectual and vigorous prosecution of the war . . . we shall make the kingdom weary of us and hate the name of
Parliament’. He realized that only a clear victory over the king would decide the issue.

The eastern association had already informed the ‘committee of both kingdoms’ that local contributions were not enough to maintain an army, and the committee therefore decided ‘to consider of a frame or model of the whole militia’. This was Cromwell’s opportunity. It had become time to reorganize the various armies on a different basis, and for Cromwell the most obvious model was that of his own regiment of ‘godly’ men. He had said that ‘I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else’.

Immediately after Cromwell’s speech another member of the Commons, Zouch Tate, rose to suggest a thorough reorganization of the army. It was first necessary to dismiss such fractious and incompetent commanders as Essex and Manchester. So Tate, no doubt in collaboration with Cromwell, proposed what was called ‘a self-denying ordinance’ by means of which no member of either house could take on a military command or an official place in the state. This removed at a stroke the noble earls. In theory it also removed Cromwell but it was widely and correctly believed that an exception would be made for such a successful military leader. The whole business might therefore be seen as an enterprising bid by Cromwell for sole command.

It may be worth remarking that this session of parliament was the one that abolished Christmas. The traditional festival was deemed by the Commons to encourage ‘liberty to carnal and sensual delights’ and instead the day was to become one of fast and penance.

Cromwell had told his colleagues that until ‘the whole army were new modelled and governed under a stricter discipline’ there would be no certain or ultimate victory. So the force became known as the New Model Army, known to its enemies as the ‘New Noddle’. It was effectively a standing army from which all aristocratic commanders had been displaced; no English army had ever before been so constituted. It was to be organized on a national basis, and financed by a new national tax; the morale of the soldiers would therefore be maintained by consistent payment. It was to be professional, disciplined and purposeful. Its commander, known as ‘Black
Tom’ for his muddy complexion, was Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had previously been in charge of parliament’s northern army.

It was an amalgamation of older regiments rather than a new army, but it was designed to be a more stable and coherent force drawn up with the sole purpose of defeating the king in battle. That is why Essex and Manchester had been removed from any military command. The commission given to Fairfax made no mention of the old provision that he was bound to preserve the king’s safety on the field of battle. New muskets, swords and pistols were manufactured; the coats of the infantry were of red cloth, becoming the standard uniform for the next 200 years.

Some of its officers believed in a religious mission for themselves and their soldiers; Cromwell’s regiment, for example, considered itself to be a ‘gathered Church’. ‘Go now,’ one preacher declared, ‘and fight the battles of the Lord!’ It is unlikely that the rest of the army shared that godly purpose, but they may have been animated by the zeal of their more pious fellows.

But what was now meant by the godly? Cromwell and his colleagues favoured the Independent cause in religion, effectively espousing toleration in England; the earl of Manchester and his supporters had adopted the Presbyterian cause with no room for other sects or groups. In this endeavour they were supported by their Scottish allies. Even while parliament was debating the arrangements of the new army, the Book of Common Prayer was abolished and a puritan Directory of Worship took its place; this new text was to be delivered to the people by means of a national Presbyterian system. That system was not destined to last for very long.

One of the great expositors of the Book of Common Prayer was now led to the scaffold. On 10 January 1645, Archbishop Laud was taken from the Tower to the place of death on Tower Hill. He told the people assembled there that ‘this is a very uncomfortable place’. As he knelt for the executioner, he prayed aloud for ‘grace of repentance to all bloodthirsty people, but if they will not repent, O Lord, confound all their devices’. Essex lamented the old man’s death. ‘Is this’, he asked, ‘the liberty which we promised to maintain with our blood?’ The political philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that ‘it was done for the entertainment of the Scots’. It had been a year of much blood.

There was now very little intention of compromise on either side, but some brief negotiations took place at Uxbridge in February 1645. The two parties divided the town, with the parliamentary team in one inn and the royalist delegation in the other. Nothing was achieved, of course, but the king was still sanguine about his chances. Despite the disaster at Marston Moor he had not yet been decisively defeated, and he believed that the divisions in the opposite party between Independents and Presbyterians would work to his advantage. He was calm and indomitable, sustained by his belief that no one could touch the Lord’s anointed. His commanders, and his forces, were still a match for those of parliament.

He had also received welcome news from Scotland where his principal supporter, the earl of Montrose, had already won notable victories over the Scottish covenanters. ‘Give me leave’, Montrose wrote to him, ‘with all humility to assure your majesty that through God’s blessing I am in the fairest hopes of reducing this kingdom to your majesty’s obedience.’ This in turn rendered the covenanting army in the north uneasy, distracted by the argument that they should withdraw from England and return to fight for their home territory. Charles was firmly persuaded that the fortunes of battle might still be with him.