posture of defence. He contributed £600 to the proposed Irish
campaign and £500 for raising forces in England—large sums
from his small estate—and on his own initiative in July 1642 sent
arms of the value of £100 down to Cambridge, seized the magazine
there in August, and prevented the king’s commission of array
from being executed in the county, taking these important steps
on his own authority and receiving subsequently indemnity by
vote of the House of Commons. Shortly afterwards he joined
Essex with sixty horse, and was present at Edgehill, where his
troop was one of the few not routed by Rupert’s charge, Cromwell
himself being mentioned among those officers who “never stirred
from their troops but fought till the last minute.”
During the earlier part of the year 1643 the military position
of Charles was greatly superior to that of the parliament. Essex
was inactive near Oxford; in the west Sir Ralph
Hopton had won a series of victories, and in the north
Beginning
of
Civil War.Newcastle defeated the Fairfaxes at Adwalton Moor,
and all Yorkshire except Hull was in his hands. It
seemed likely that the whole of the north would be laid open and
the royalists be able to march upon London and join Charles
and Hopton there. This stroke, which would most probably have
given the victory to the king, was prevented by the “Eastern
Association,” a union of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire
and Hertfordshire, constituted in December 1642 and augmented
in 1643 by Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire, of which Cromwell
was the leading spirit. His zeal and energy met everywhere
with conspicuous success. In January 1643 he seized the royalist
high sheriff of Hertfordshire in the act of proclaiming the king’s
commission of array at St Albans; in February he was at
Cambridge taking measures for the defence of the town; in
March suppressing royalist risings at Lowestoft and Lynn; in
April those of Huntingdon, when he also recaptured Crowland
from the king’s party. In May he defeated a greatly superior
royalist force at Grantham, proceeding afterwards to Nottingham
in accordance with Essex’s plan of penetrating into Yorkshire to
relieve the Fairfaxes; where, however, difficulties, arising from
jealousies between the officers, and the treachery of John Hotham,
whose arrest Cromwell was instrumental in effecting, obliged
him to retire again to the association, leaving the Fairfaxes to
be defeated at Adwalton Moor. He showed extraordinary
energy, resource and military talent in stemming the advance of
the royalists, who now followed up their victories by advancing
into the association; he defeated them at Gainsborough on the
28th of July, and managed a masterly retreat before overwhelming
numbers to Lincoln, while the victory on the 11th of
October at Winceby finally secured the association, and maintained
the wedge which prevented the junction of the royalists
in the north with the king in the south.
One great source of Cromwell’s strength was the military reforms he had initiated. At Edgehill he had observed the inferiority of the parliamentary to the royalist horse, composed as it was of soldiers of fortune and the dregs Cromwell’s soldiers. of the populace. “Do you think,” he had said, “that the spirits of such base, mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution in them? You must get men of a spirit that is likely to go as far as gentlemen will go or you will be beaten still.” The royalists were fighting for a great cause. To succeed the parliamentary soldiers must also be inspired by some great principle, and this was now found in religion. Cromwell chose his own troops, both officers and privates, from the “religious men,” who fought not for pay or for adventure, but for their faith. He declared, when answering a complaint that a certain captain in his regiment was a better preacher than fighter, that he who prayed best would fight best, and that he knew nothing could “give the like courage and confidence as the knowledge of God in Christ will.” The superiority of these men—more intelligent than the common soldiers, better disciplined, better trained, better armed, excellent horsemen and fighting for a great cause—not only over the other parliamentary troops but over the royalists, was soon observed in battle. According to Clarendon the latter, though frequently victorious in a charge, could not rally afterwards, “whereas Cromwell’s troops if they prevailed, or though they were beaten and routed, presently rallied again and stood in good order till they received new orders”; and the king’s military successes dwindled in proportion to the gradual preponderance of Cromwell’s troops in the parliamentary army. At first these picked men only existed in Cromwell’s own troop, which, however, by frequent additions became the nucleus of a regiment, and by the time of the New Model included about 11,000 men.
In July 1643 Cromwell had been appointed governor of the Isle of Ely; on the 22nd of January 1644 he became second in command under the earl of Manchester as lieutenant-general of the Eastern Association, and on the 16th of February 1644 a member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms with greatly increased influence. In March he took Hillesden House in Buckinghamshire; in May was at the siege of Lincoln, when he repulsed Goring’s attempt to relieve the town, and subsequently took part in Manchester’s campaign in the north. At Marston Moor (q.v.) on the 2nd of July he commanded all the horse of the Eastern Association, with some Scottish troops; and though for a time disabled by a wound in the neck, he charged and routed Rupert’s troops opposed to him, and subsequently went to the support of the Scots, who were hard pressed by the enemy, and converted what appeared at one time a defeat into a decisive victory. It was on this occasion that he earned the nickname of “Ironsides,” applied to him now by Prince Rupert, and afterwards to his soldiers, “from the impenetrable strength of his troops which could by no means be broken or divided.”
The movements of Manchester after Marston Moor were marked by great apathy. He was one of the moderate party who desired an accommodation with the king, and was opposed to Cromwell’s sectaries. He remained at Lincoln, did nothing to prevent the defeat of Essex’s army in the west, and when he at last advanced south to join Essex’s and Waller’s troops his management of the army led to the failure of the attack upon the king at Newbury on the 27th of October 1644. He delayed supporting the infantry till too late, and was repulsed; he allowed the royal army to march past his outposts; and a fortnight afterwards, without any attempt to prevent it, and greatly to Cromwell’s vexation, permitted the moving of the king’s artillery and the relief of Donnington Castle by Prince Rupert. “If you beat the king ninety-nine times,” Manchester urged at Newbury, “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 be made slaves.” “My lord,” answered Cromwell, “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.” The contention brought to a crisis the struggle between the moderate Presbyterians and the Scots on the one side, who decided to maintain the monarchy and fought for an accommodation and to establish Presbyterianism in England, and on the other the republicans who would be satisfied with nothing less than the complete overthrow of the king, and the Independents who regarded the establishment of Presbyterianism as an evil almost as great as that of the Church of England. On the 25th of November Cromwell charged Manchester with “unwillingness to have the war prosecuted to a full victory”; which Manchester answered by accusing Cromwell of having used expressions against the nobility, the Scots and Presbyterianism; of desiring to fill the army of the Eastern Association with Independents to prevent any accommodation; and of having vowed if he met the king in battle he would as lief fire his pistol at him as at anybody else. The lords and the Scots vehemently took Manchester’s part; but the Commons eventually sided with Cromwell, appointed Sir Thomas Fairfax general of the New Model Army, and passed two self-denying ordinances, the second of which, ordering all members of both houses to lay down their commissions within forty days, was accepted by the lords on the 3rd of April 1645.
Meanwhile Cromwell had been ordered on the 3rd of March by the House to take his regiment to the assistance of Waller, under whom he served as an admirable subordinate. “Although
