force on the Cumberland side, practically compelled Hamilton to choose the west coast route for his advance, and his army began slowly to move down the long couloir between the mountains and the sea. The campaign which followed is one of the most brilliant in English history.
48. Campaign of Preston.—On the 8th of July the Scots, with Langdale as advanced guard, were about Carlisle, and reinforcements from Ulster were expected daily. Lambert’s horse were at Penrith, Hexham and Newcastle, too weak to fight and having only skilful leading and rapidity of movement to enable them to gain time. Far away to the south Cromwell was still tied down before Pembroke, Fairfax before Colchester. Elsewhere the rebellion, which had been put down by rapidity of action rather than sheer weight of numbers, smouldered, and Prince Charles and the fleet cruised along the Essex coast. Cromwell and Lambert, however, understood each other perfectly, while the Scottish commanders quarrelled with Langdale and each other. Appleby Castle surrendered to the Scots on the 31st of July, whereat Lambert, who was still hanging on to the flank of the Scottish advance, fell back from Barnard Castle to Richmond so as to close Wensleydale against any attempt of the invaders to march on Pontefract. All the restless energy of Langdale’s horse was unable to dislodge him from the passes or to find out what was behind that impenetrable cavalry screen. The crisis was now at hand. Cromwell had received the surrender of Pembroke on the 11th, and had marched off, with his men unpaid, ragged and shoeless, at full speed through the midlands. Rains and storms delayed his march, but he knew that Hamilton in the broken ground of Westmorland was still worse off. Shoes from Northampton and stockings from Coventry met him at Nottingham, and, gathering up the local levies as he went, he made for Doncaster, where he arrived on the 8th of August, having gained six days in advance of the time he had allowed himself for the march. He then called up artillery from Hull, exchanged his local levies for the regulars who were besieging Pontefract, and set off to meet Lambert. On the 12th he was at Wetherby, Lambert with horse and foot at Otley, Langdale at Skipton and Gargrave, Hamilton at Lancaster, and Sir George Monro with the Scots from Ulster and the Carlisle Royalists (organized as a separate command owing to friction between Monro and the generals of the main army) at Hornby. On the 13th, while Cromwell was marching to join Lambert at Otley, the Scottish leaders were still disputing as to whether they should make for Pontefract or continue through Lancashire so as to join Lord Byron and the Cheshire Royalists.
49. Preston Fight.—On the 14th Cromwell and Lambert were at Skipton, on the 15th at Gisburn, and on the 16th they marched down the valley of the Ribble towards Preston with full knowledge of the enemy’s dispositions and full determination to attack him. They had with them horse and foot not only of the army, but also of the militia of Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland and Lancashire, and withal were heavily outnumbered, having only 8600 men against perhaps 20,000 of Hamilton’s command. But the latter were scattered for convenience of supply along the road from Lancaster, through Preston, towards Wigan, Langdale’s corps having thus become the left flank guard instead of the advanced guard. Langdale called in his advanced parties, perhaps with a view to resuming the duties of advanced guard, on the night of the 13th, and collected them near Longridge. It is not clear whether he reported Cromwell’s advance, but, if he did, Hamilton ignored the report, for on the 17th Monro was half a day’s march to the north, Langdale east of Preston, and the main army strung out on the Wigan road, Major-General Baillie with a body of foot, the rear of the column, being still in Preston. Hamilton, yielding to the importunity of his lieutenant-general, the earl of Callendar, sent Baillie across the Ribble to follow the main body just as Langdale, with 3000 foot and 500 horse only, met the first shock of Cromwell’s attack on Preston Moor. Hamilton, like Charles at Edgehill, passively shared in, without directing, the battle, and, though Langdale’s men fought magnificently, they were after four hours’ struggle driven to the Ribble. Baillie attempted to cover the Ribble and Darwen bridges on the Wigan road, but Cromwell had forced his way across both before nightfall. Pursuit was at once undertaken, and not relaxed until Hamilton had been driven through Wigan and Winwick to Uttoxeter and Ashbourne. There, pressed furiously in rear by Cromwell’s horse and held up in front by the militia of the midlands, the remnant of the Scottish army laid down its arms on the 25th of August. Various attempts were made to raise the Royalist standard in Wales and elsewhere, but Preston was the death-blow. On the 28th of August, starving and hopeless of relief, the Colchester Royalists surrendered to Lord Fairfax. The victors in the Second Civil War were not merciful to those who had brought war into the land again. On the evening of the surrender of Colchester, Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle were shot. Laugharne, Poyer and Powel were sentenced to death, but Poyer alone was executed on the 25th of April 1649, being the victim selected by lot. Of five prominent Royalist peers who had fallen into the hands of the Parliament, three, the duke of Hamilton, the earl of Holland, and Lord Capel, one of the Colchester prisoners and a man of high character, were beheaded at Westminster on the 9th of March. Above all, after long hesitations, even after renewal of negotiations, the army and the Independents “purged” the House of their ill-wishers, and created a court for the trial and sentence of the king. The more resolute of the judges nerved the rest to sign the death-warrant, and Charles was beheaded at Whitehall on the 30th of January.
50. Cromwell in Ireland.—The campaign of Preston was undertaken under the direction of the Scottish parliament, not the kirk, and it needed the execution of the king to bring about a union of all Scottish parties against the English Independents. Even so, Charles II. in exile had to submit to long negotiations and hard conditions before he was allowed to put himself at the head of the Scottish armies. The marquis of Huntly was executed for taking up arms for the king on the 22nd of March 1649. Montrose, under Charles’s directions, made a last attempt to rally the Scottish Royalists early in 1650. But Charles merely used Montrose as a threat to obtain better conditions for himself from the Covenanters, and when the noblest of all the Royalists was defeated (Carbisdale, April 27), delivered up to his pursuers (May 4), and executed (May 21, 1650), he was not ashamed to give way to the demands of the Covenanters, and to place himself at the head of Montrose’s executioners. His father, whatever his faults, had at least chosen to die for an ideal, the Church of England. Charles II. now proposed to regain the throne by allowing Scotland to impose Presbyterianism on England, and dismissed all the faithful Cavaliers who had followed him to exile. Meanwhile, Ireland, in which a fresh war, with openly anti-English and anti-Protestant objects, had broken out in 1648, was thoroughly reduced to order by Cromwell, who beat down all resistance by his skill, and even more by his ruthless severity, in a brief campaign of nine months (battle of Rathmines near Dublin, won by Colonel Michael Jones, August 2, 1649; storming of Drogheda, September 11, and of Wexford, October 11, by Cromwell; capture of Kilkenny, March 28, 1650, and of Clonmel, May 10). Cromwell returned to England at the end of May 1650, and on June 26 Fairfax, who had been anxious and uneasy since the execution of the king, resigned the command-in-chief of the army to his lieutenant-general. The pretext, rather than the reason, of Fairfax’s resignation was his unwillingness to lead an English army to reduce Scotland.
51. The Invasion of Scotland.—This important step had been resolved upon as soon as it was clear that Charles II. would come to terms with the Covenanters. From this point the Second Civil War becomes a war of England against Scotland. Here at least the Independents carried the whole of England with them. No Englishman cared to accept a settlement at the hands of a victorious foreign army, and on the 28th of June, five days after Charles II. had sworn to the Covenant, the new lord-general was on his way to the Border to take command of the English army. About the same time a new militia act was passed that was destined to give full and decisive effect to the
