14th of October and burnt to the ground. Cromwell, his work finished, returned to headquarters, and the army wintered in the neighbourhood of Crediton.
44. End of the First War.—The military events of 1646 call for no comment. The only field army remaining to the king was Goring’s, and though Hopton, who sorrowfully accepted the command after Goring’s departure, tried at the last moment to revive the memories and the local patriotism of 1643, it was of no use to fight against the New Model with the armed rabble that Goring turned over to him. Dartmouth surrendered on January 18, Hopton was defeated at Torrington on February 16, and surrendered the remnant of his worthless army on March 14. Exeter fell on April 13. Elsewhere, Hereford was taken on December 17, 1645, and the last battle of the war was fought and lost at Stow-on-the-Wold by Lord Astley on March 21, 1646. Newark and Oxford fell respectively on May 6 and June 24. On August 31 Montrose escaped from the Highlands. On the 19th of the same month Raglan Castle surrendered, and the last Royalist post of all, Harlech Castle, maintained the useless struggle until March 13, 1647. Charles himself, after leaving Newark in November 1645, had spent the winter in and around Oxford, whence, after an adventurous journey, he came to the camp of the Scottish army at Southwell on May 5, 1646.
45. Second Civil War (1648–52).—The close of the First Civil War left England and Scotland in the hands potentially of any one of the four parties or any combination of two or more that should prove strong enough to dominate the rest. Armed political Royalism was indeed at an end, but Charles, though practically a prisoner, considered himself and was, almost to the last, considered by the rest as necessary to ensure the success of whichever amongst the other three parties could come to terms with him. Thus he passed successively into the hands of the Scots, the Parliament and the New Model, trying to reverse the verdict of arms by coquetting with each in turn. The Presbyterians and the Scots, after Cornet Joyce of Fairfax’s horse seized upon the person of the king for the army (June 3, 1647), began at once to prepare for a fresh civil war, this time against Independency, as embodied in the New Model—henceforward called the Army—and after making use of its sword, its opponents attempted to disband it, to send it on foreign service, to cut off its arrears of pay, with the result that it was exasperated beyond control, and, remembering not merely its grievances but also the principle for which it had fought, soon became the most powerful political party in the realm. From 1646 to 1648 the breach between army and parliament widened day by day until finally the Presbyterian party, combined with the Scots and the remaining Royalists, felt itself strong enough to begin a second civil war.
46. The English War.—In February 1648 Colonel Poyer, the Parliamentary governor of Pembroke Castle, refused to hand over his command to one of Fairfax’s officers, and he was soon joined by some hundreds of officers and men, who mutinied, ostensibly for arrears of pay, but really with political objects. At the end of March, encouraged by minor successes, Poyer openly declared for the king. Disbanded soldiers continued to join him in April, all South Wales revolted, and eventually he was joined by Major-General Laugharne, his district commander, and Colonel Powel. In April also news came that the Scots were arming and that Berwick and Carlisle had been seized by the English Royalists. Cromwell was at once sent off at the head of a strong detachment to deal with Laugharne and Poyer. But before he arrived Laugharne had been severely defeated by Colonel Horton at St Fagans (May 8). The English Presbyterians found it difficult to reconcile their principles with their allies when it appeared that the prisoners taken at St Fagans bore “We long to see our King” on their hats; very soon in fact the English war became almost purely a Royalist revolt, and the war in the north an attempt to enforce a mixture of Royalism and Presbyterianism on Englishmen by means of a Scottish army. The former were disturbers of the peace and no more. Nearly all the Royalists who had fought in the First Civil War had given their parole not to bear arms against the Parliament, and many honourable Royalists, foremost amongst them the old Lord Astley, who had fought the last battle for the king in 1646, refused to break their word by taking any part in the second war. Those who did so, and by implication those who abetted them in doing so, were likely to be treated with the utmost rigour if captured, for the army was in a less placable mood in 1648 than in 1645, and had already determined to “call Charles Stuart, that man of blood, to an account for the blood he had shed.” On the 21st of May Kent rose in revolt in the king’s name. A few days later a most serious blow to the Independents was struck by the defection of the navy, from command of which they had removed Vice-Admiral Batten, as being a Presbyterian. Though a former lord high admiral, the earl of Warwick, also a Presbyterian, was brought back to the service, it was not long before the navy made a purely Royalist declaration and placed itself under the command of the prince of Wales. But Fairfax had a clearer view and a clearer purpose than the distracted Parliament. He moved quickly into Kent, and on the evening of June 1 stormed Maidstone by open force, after which the local levies dispersed to their homes, and the more determined Royalists, after a futile attempt to induce the City of London to declare for them, fled into Essex. In Cornwall, Northamptonshire, North Wales and Lincolnshire the revolt collapsed as easily. Only in South Wales, Essex and the north of England was there serious fighting. In the first of these districts Cromwell rapidly reduced all the fortresses except Pembroke, where Laugharne, Poyer and Powel held out with the desperate courage of deserters. In the north, Pontefract was surprised by the Royalists, and shortly afterwards Scarborough Castle declared for the king. Fairfax, after his success at Maidstone and the pacification of Kent, turned northward to reduce Essex, where, under their ardent, experienced and popular leader Sir Charles Lucas, the Royalists were in arms in great numbers. He soon drove the enemy into Colchester, but the first attack on the town was repulsed and he had to settle down to a long and wearisome siege en règle. A Surrey rising, remembered only for the death of the young and gallant Lord Francis Villiers in a skirmish at Kingston (July 7), collapsed almost as soon as it had gathered force, and its leaders, the duke of Buckingham and the earl of Holland, escaped, after another attempt to induce London to declare for them, to St Albans and St Neots, where Holland was taken prisoner. Buckingham escaped over-seas.
47. Lambert in the North.—By the 10th of July therefore the military situation was well defined. Cromwell held Pembroke, Fairfax Colchester, Lambert Pontefract under siege; elsewhere all serious local risings had collapsed, and the Scottish army had crossed the Border. It is on the adventures of the latter that the interest of the war centres. It was by no means the veteran army of Leven, which had long been disbanded. For the most part it consisted of raw levies, and as the kirk had refused to sanction the enterprise of the Scottish parliament, David Leslie and thousands of experienced officers and men declined to serve. The duke of Hamilton proved to be a poor substitute for Leslie; his army, too, was so ill provided that as soon as England was invaded it began to plunder the countryside for the bare means of sustenance. Major-General Lambert, a brilliant young general of twenty-nine, was more than equal to the situation. He had already left the sieges of Pontefract and Scarborough to Colonel Rossiter, and hurried into Cumberland to deal with the English Royalists under Sir Marmaduke Langdale. With his cavalry he got into touch with the enemy about Carlisle and slowly fell back, fighting small rearguard actions to annoy the enemy and gain time, to Bowes and Barnard Castle. Langdale did not follow him into the mountains, but occupied himself in gathering recruits and supplies of material and food for the Scots. Lambert, reinforced from the midlands, reappeared early in June and drove him back to Carlisle with his work half finished. About the same time the local horse of Durham and Northumberland were put into the field by Sir A. Hesilrige, governor of Newcastle, and under the command of Colonel Robert Lilburne won a considerable success (June 30) at the river Coquet. This reverse, coupled with the existence of Langdale’s
