English, found itself confronted by Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, all in active hostility, and by an England smouldering in various uncertain stages of disaffection. A portion of the fleet was already in revolt, and no one knew how far the mutiny might go. All must depend upon the army, and for the presbyterian party the success of the army would be the victory of a master and an enemy.

At the moment of the flight to Carisbrooke, Cromwell had sternly stamped out an incipient revolt. At a rendezvous near Ware two regiments appeared on the field without leave, and bearing disorderly ensigns in their hats. Cromwell rode among them, bade them remove the mutinous symbol, arrested the ringleaders of those who refused to obey, and after a drum-head courtmartial at which three of the offenders were condemned to death, ordered the three to throw dice for their lives, and he who lost was instantly shot (November 15, 1647). Though not more formidable than a breakdown of military discipline must have proved, the political difficulties were much less simple to deal with. Cromwell had definitely given up all hope of coming to terms with the king. On the other hand he was never a republican himself, and his sagacity told him that the country would never accept a government founded on what to him were republican chimeras. Every moment the tide of reaction was rising. From Christmas (1647) and all through the spring there were unmistakable signs of popular discontent. Puritan suppression of old merrymakings was growing too hard to bear, for the old Adam was not yet driven out of the free-born Englishman by either law or gospel. None of the sections into which opinion was divided had confidence in the parliament. The rumours of bringing the king to trial and founding a military republic perturbed many and incensed most in every class. Violent riots broke

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out in the city. In the home counties disorderly crowds shouted for God and King Charles. Royalist risings were planned in half the counties in England, north, west, south, and even east. The royalist press was active and audacious. In South Wales the royal standard had been unfurled, the population eagerly rallied to it, and the strong places were in royalist hands. In Scotland Hamilton had got the best of Argyle and the covenanting ultras, in spite of the bitter and tenacious resistance of the clergy to every design for supporting a sovereign who was champion of episcopacy; and in April the parliament at Edinburgh had ordered an army to be raised to defend the king and the covenant. In face of public difficulties so overwhelming, Cromwell was personally weakened by the deep discredit into which he had fallen among the zealots in his own camp, as the result of his barren attempt to bring the king to reason. Of all the dark moments of his life this was perhaps the darkest.

He tried a sociable conference between the two ecclesiastical factions, including laymen and ministers of each, but each went away as stiff and as high as they had come. Then he tried a conference between the leading men of the army and the extreme men of the Commonwealth, and they had a fruitless argument on the hoary theme, dating almost from the birth of the Western world, of the relative merits of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Cromwell wisely declined to answer this threadbare riddle, only maintaining that any form of government might be good in itself or for us, according as Providence should direct us "the formula of mystic days for modern opportunism. The others replied by passages from the first book of Samuel, from Kings, and Judges. We cannot wonder that Cromwell, thinking of the ruin he saw hanging imminent in thunder-clouds

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over cause and kingdom, at last impatiently ended the idle talk by flinging a cushion at Ludlow's head and running off down the stairs.

What is called the second civil war was now inevitable. The curtain was rising for the last, most dubious, most exciting, and most memorable act of the long drama in which Charles had played his leading and ill-starred part. Even in the army men were "in a low, weak, divided, perplexed condition." Some were so depressed by the refusal of the nation to follow their intentions for its good, that they even thought of laying down their arms and returning to private life. Thus distracted and cast down, their deep mystic faith drew them to the oracles of prayer, and at Windsor in April they began their solemn office, searching out what iniquities of theirs had provoked the Lord of Hosts to bring down such grievous perplexities upon them. Cromwell was among the most fervid, and again and again they all melted in bitter tears. Their sin was borne home to them. They had turned aside from the path of simplicity, and stepped, to their hurt, into the paths of policy. The root of the evil was found out in those cursed carnal conferences with the king and his party, to which their own conceited wisdom and want of faith had prompted them the year before. And so, after the meeting had lasted for three whole days, with prayer, exhortations, preaching, seeking, groans, and weeping, they came without a dissenting voice to an agreement that it was the duty of the day to go out and fight against those potent enemies rising on every hand against them, and then it would be their further duty, if ever the Lord should bring them back in peace, to call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for all the blood he had shed, and all the mischief he had done against the Lord's cause and people in these poor nations. When this vehement hour of

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exaltation had passed away, many of the warlike saints, we may be sure, including Oliver himself, admitted back into their minds some of those politic misgivings for which they had just shown such passionate contrition. But to the great majority it was the inspiration of the Windsor meetings, and the directness and simplicity of their conclusion, that gave such fiery energy to the approaching campaign, and kept alive the fierce resolve to exact retribution to the uttermost when the time appointed should bring the arch-delinquent within their grasp.

CHAPTER V

SECOND CIVIL WAR-CROMWELL IN LANCASHIRE

EVEN as the hour of doom drew steadily nearer, the prisoner at Carisbrooke might well believe that the rebels and traitors were hastening to their ruin. The political paradox grew more desperate as the days went on, and to a paradox Charles looked for his deliverance. It is worth examining. The parliamentary majority hoped for the establishment of presbytery and the restoration of the king, and so did the Scottish invaders. Yet the English presbyterians were forced into hostility to the invaders, though both were declared covenanters, because Scottish victory would mean the defeat of the parliament. The Scottish presbyterians were hostile or doubtful, because they found their army in incongruous alliance with English cavaliers. The Scots under Hamilton were to fight for the covenant; their English confederates, under Langdale, were openly fighting for the antagonistic cause of church and king, and refused point-blank to touch the covenant. If the Scotch invaders should win, they would win with the aid of purely royalist support in the field, and purely royalist sympathy in the nation. The day on which they should enter London would be the day of unqualified triumph for the king, of humiliation for the English parliament, and of final defeat both for the great cause and the brave men who for nearly twenty years had toiled and bled for it. For whose sake, then, was