paid at all, lived at free quarters and wasted the country. The example of reckless and dissolute conduct was given them by their own commanders. In the west, the country most favourable to the royalist cause, the peasants collected in bands under the name of club men, to save their belongings from the soldiers of Rupert and Goring. They had on their banners :— "If you offer to plunder our cattle Be assured we will give you battle." During the whole of April the young general went on working with Major-General Skippon to reorganise the army. It has been repeated by prejudiced or ignorant writers that Fairfax was a mere tool who acted under the suggestions of Cromwell, and it has been even stated in shallow little histories that Sir Thomas Fairfax,1 save in military matters, was a man of small intellect. This last assertion shows an ignorance of human character and military affairs which entitles those who make it to a certificate of total incapacity to write history. To get through all the multifarious 1 Mr Clements R. Markham, in his Life of the Great Lord Fairfax, easily sustains the credit of the Commander-in-chief of the army of the parliament. Cromwell," he observes, "advocated the self-denying ordinance because he saw that, unless the war was carried on with more energy, the end would inevitably be disastrous. But he had nothing whatever to do with the organisation of the new army; he was quite ready to resign his appointment as a member of the House, and fully expected to have been called upon to do so, and his subsequent continuance in the army was solely due to the application of the general for his services. Sir Thomas Fairfax held no divided responsibility. He was in all respects the Commander-in-chief of the new army; he selected the officers, organised the regiments, and conducted the operations in the field. Cromwell was subsequently his very efficient lieutenantgeneral of horse, but was of no use to him in preparing for the field, nor in making the important arrangements at Windsor, where Major-General Skippon, and not Cromwell, was Sir Thomas's right hand” (pp. 194-195). PARLIAMENTARY EXECUTIVE 259 duties of the commander of a large army against a capable enemy requires the exercise of so many faculties both intellectual and moral that no one who successfully discharges them can be less than a man of great mental ability. A man may be a good general and no poet, and a man may write good verses and be no general; but a man who like Fairfax could do both, must possess varied mental power of a high order. The truth is that Cromwell seems to have been only once at Windsor during the new organisation of the army, and even in the campaign which followed he was mostly engaged in military operations apart from the army of the general. But we have no mind to chase the Cromwellian legend up and down, satisfied to be able to state the events as they really happened. Three skulls are shown in different places as all belonging to Cromwell, and those who look at history backwards give him credit for three times more than he ever did. By the end of April 1645, Fairfax was ready to take the field with his new model army, much decried by the Presbyterians and ridiculed by the Cavaliers. In the meantime the forces of the parliament had taken the important town of Shrewsbury and recovered Weymouth. At this time the executive power had been entrusted by the parliament to the committee of both kingdoms made up of twenty-one English and four Scottish members, who met in Derby House. Northumberland, Essex, Manchester, Warwick, Saye, and Wharton were amongst the peers; Lord Loudon and Johnston of Wariston were the most prominent Scottish commissioners. The two Vanes, elder and younger, and Sir Arthur Hesilrige, were amongst the Commoners. The younger Vane was ready for every business where skill, tact, and diligence were needed. His name often strikes the eye in the reports of the proceedings of the committee, as well as of the parliament where he was now the recognised leader of the independent party. CHAPTER XV The New Model Army takes the Field. Cromwell's Exploits. The Battle of Naseby. The King's Cabinet of Letters. New Elections. Farther Victories of Fairfax. The Glamorgan Treaty. Overtures to Vane. Leslie defeats Montrose. Charles surrenders to the Scots. The Marquess of Argyll. By the end of April the new model army was ready to take the field. The design of the parliament was to call the Scottish army to march southward to engage the king's army. Fairfax should go to relieve Taunton, where the unconquerable Blake was still holding at bay a large force of Western royalists behind a barrier of palisades. The young general, solicitous to keep Cromwell's services as long as he could, had sent him to attack the enemy's posts about Oxford. He was not long in reporting successes after his characteristic style, how at Islip "a body of the king's troops were put into confusion, so that we had the chace of them three or four miles: wherein we killed many, and took near to 200 prisoners, and about 400 horse. Many of them escaped towards Oxford and Woodstock; divers were drowned; and others got into a strong house in Bletchinton." Colonel Windebank was terrified into a surrender. "This was the mercy of God," wrote the Puritan leader, "though I have had greater mercies, yet none clearer; because, in the first, God brought them to our hands when we looked not for them; and delivered them out of our hands, when we laid a reasonable design to surprise them, and which we carefully endeavoured." Colonel Windebank, the son of the exiled secretary, had no mercy from Charles who got him before a court-martial and condemned to be shot for surrendering the castle with so little resistance. Cromwell finished his letter thus: "I hope you will pardon me, if I say God is not enough owned; we look too much to men and visible helps; this has much hindered our success." Such words might imply a reckless fatalism: not so with Cromwell. While he used every visible help he nourished a conviction that an unseen arm was sustaining him, and in every new success he read a new proof that he was a chosen instrument of God's will. On the 10th of May the parliament ordered that General Cromwell should continue in his command for forty days longer. At the pressing requests of Fairfax, supported by seventeen of the chief officers of the army, Cromwell's attendance at parliament was dispensed with, and he was given the command of the whole cavalry force, a post which had been probably left open for him. It was not without difficulty that Cromwell was excepted from the Self-Denying Ordinance. Some treated it as the result of crafty management on his part; yet everything goes to show that, in supporting the ordinance in parliament, Cromwell assumed that he would have to resign his military commission along with the rest, and that he was prepared to do so. But in the stress of a still doubtful war it was felt that the army should not lose the services of so great a leader. Fairfax, acting upon new instructions, marched with his main army to besiege Oxford, sending a column to relieve Taunton. In the meantime Charles advancing northwards took |