CHAP. V MONTROSE IN SCOTLAND 169 God, not to discourage them. I wish their actions may beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for." In plainer words, the House of Commons should not forget how much the independents had to do with the victory, and that what the independents fought for was above all else liberty of conscience. For the king the darkness was lightened by a treacherous ray of hope from Scotland. The Scots, whose aid had been of such decisive value to the parliament at the end of 1643, on the stricken field at Marston in the summer of 1644, and in the seizure of Newcastle three months later, had been since of little use. At Naseby they had no part nor lot, and they even looked on that memorable day with a surly eye: although it had indeed broken the malignants, it had mightily exalted the independents. A force of Scots still remained on English ground, but they were speedily wanted in their own country. One of the fiercest of the lesser episodes of the war happened in Scotland, where in the northern Highlands and elsewhere the same feeling for the national line of their princes came into life among chieftains and clansmen, that survived with so many romantic circumstances and rash adventures down to the rebellion of 1745. In August 1644, Montrose, disguised as a groom and accompanied by two of his friends, rode across the south-western border from Carlisle and made his way to Athole. There he was joined by a mixed contingent of Highlanders and twelve hundred Irish, lately brought over under Highland leadership into Argyllshire. This was the beginning of a flame of royalism that blazed high for a year, was marked by much savagery and destruction, left three or four new names upon the historic scroll of the bloody scuffles between Campbells, Forbeses, Frasers, Macleans, Macdonalds, Gordons, Ogilvies, Grahams, and the rest, and then finally died down at the battle of Philiphaugh. Montrose reached the top of his success at the engagement of Kilsyth, just two months after Naseby. In another month the rushing meteor went out. David Leslie, who fought at Cromwell's side at Marston Moor and was now on duty in England, took his force up to the border, crossed the Tweed, found Montrose and his ragged and scanty force of clansmen encamped at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk (September 13, 1645), and there fell suddenly upon them, shattering into empty air both Montrose's phantasies and the shadowy hopes of the dreaming king. Charles's resolution was still unshaken. As he told Digby, if he could not live like a king, he would die like a gentleman. Six weeks after the fatal battle he writes to Prince Rupert (Aug. 3): "I confess that, speaking either as a mere soldier or statesman, I must say that there is no probability but of my ruin. But as a Christian, I must tell you that God will not suffer rebels and traitors to prosper, or this cause to be overthrown. And whatever personal punishment it shall please him to inflict upon me must not make me repine, much less to give over this quarrel. Indeed, I cannot flatter myself with expectations of good success more than this, to end my days with honour and a good conscience, which obliges me to continue my endeavours, as not despairing that God may in due time avenge his own cause. Though I must avow to all my friends that he that will stay with me at this time, must expect and resolve either to die for a good cause, or (which is worse) to live as miserable in maintaining it as the violence of insulting rebels can make it.' This patient stoicism, which may attract us when we read about it in a book, was little to the mind of the shrewd soldier to whom the king's firm words CHAP. V SURRENDER OF BRISTOL 171 were written. Rupert knew that the cause was lost, and had counselled an attempt to come to terms. A disaster only second to Naseby and still more unforeseen soon followed. After a series of victorious operations in the west at Langport, Bridgewater, Bath, and Sherborne, Fairfax and Cromwell laid siege to Bristol, and after a fierce and daring storm (September 10) Rupert, who had promised the king that he could hold out for four good months, suddenly capitulated and rode away to Oxford under the humiliating protection of a parliamentary convoy. The fall of this famous stronghold of the west was the severest of all the king's mortifications, as the failure of Rupert's wonted courage was the strangest of military surprises. That Rupert was too clear-sighted not to be thoroughly discouraged by the desperate aspect of the king's affairs is certain, and the military difficulties of sustaining a long siege were thought, even by those who had no reasons to be tender of his fame, to justify the surrender. The king would listen to no excuses, but wrote Rupert an angry letter, declaring so mean an action to be the greatest trial of his constancy that had yet happened, depriving him of his commissions, and bidding him begone beyond the seas. Rupert nevertheless insisted on following the king to Newark, and after some debate was declared to be free of all disloyalty or treason, but not of indiscretion. Another quarrel arose between the king and his nephews and their partisans. The feuds and rivalries of parliament at their worst, were always matched by the more ignoble distractions and jealousies of the court. Suspicions even grew up that Rupert and Maurice were in a plot for the transfer of the crown to their elder brother, the Elector Palatine. That the Elector had been encouraged in such aspirations by earlier incidents was true. Cromwell improved the fall of Bristol as he had improved Naseby. "Faith and prayer," he tells the Speaker, "obtained this city for you. It is meet that God have all the praise. Presbyterians, independents, and all here have the same spirit of faith and prayer, the same presence and answer; they agree here, have no names of difference; pity it is it should be otherwise anywhere." So he urges to the end of his despatch. Toleration is the only key-word. All that believe have the real unity, which is most glorious because inward and spiritual. As for unity in forms, commonly called uniformity, every Christian will study that. But in things of the mind we look for no compulsion but that of light and reason. In other things God hath put the sword in the hands of the parliament for the terror of evildoers and the praise of them that do well." These high refrains were not at all to the taste of the presbyterian majority, and on at least one occasion they were for public purposes suppressed. After Bristol Winchester fell. Then Cromwell sat down before Basing House, which had plagued and defied the generals of the parliament for many long months since 1643. Its valorous defender was Lord Winchester, a catholic, a brave, pious, and devoted servant of the royal cause, indirectly known to the student of English poetry as husband of the young lady on whose death, fourteen years earlier, Milton and Ben Jonson had written verses of elegiac grief. "Cromwell spent much time with God in prayer the night before the storm of Basing. He seldom fights without some text of scripture to support him." This time he rested on the eighth verse of the One Hundred and Fifteenth Psalm : They that make them [idols] are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them,”—with private application to the theologies of the popish Lord Winchester. stormed this morning," Oliver reports (October 14, 1645), "after six of the clock; the signal for falling on was the firing four of our cannon, which being "We CHAP. V STORM OF BASING HOUSE 66 173 done, our men fell on with great resolution and cheerfulness." Many of the enemy were put to the sword; all the sumptuous things abounding in the proud house were plundered; popish books, with copes and such utensils," were flung into the purifying flame, and before long fire and destruction had left only blackened ruins. Among the prisoners was Winchester himself. In those days the word in season was held to be an urgent duty. Hugh Peters thought the moment happy for proving to his captive the error of his idolatrous ways, just as Cheynell hastened the end of Chillingworth by thrusting controversy upon his last hour, and as Clotworthy teased the unfortunate Laud, at the instant when he was laying his head upon the block, with questions upon what his assurance of salvation was founded. The stout-hearted cavalier of Basing, after long endurance of his pulpit tormentors, at last broke out and said that "if the king had no more ground in England than Basing House, he would still adventure as he had done, and so maintain it to the uttermost." After Basing the king had indeed not very much more ground in England or anywhere else. This was the twentieth garrison that had been taken that summer. Fairfax, who had parted from Cromwell for a time after the fall of Bristol, pushed on into Devon and Cornwall, and by a series of rapid and vigorous operations cleared the royalist forces out of the west. He defeated Hopton, that good soldier and honourable man, first at Torrington and then at Truro, and his last achievement was the capture of Exeter (April 1646). Cromwell, who had joined him shortly after the fall of Basing House, was with the army throughout these operations, watching the state of affairs at Westminster from a distance, in a frame of mind shown by the exhortations in his despatches, and constant to his steadfast rule of attending with close diligence to the actual duties of |
