remained of the great patriot was borne to Westminster Abbey on the shoulders of ten of the chief men of the House of Commons, among whom were Denzil Holles, Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Oliver St John, and Sir Henry Vane the younger, followed by both houses of parliament all in mourning, and by the assembly of divines and many others. An eloquent sermon was preached by Doctor Marshall, which ended with the memorable words: "I beseech you let not any of you have one sad thought touching him, nor apprehension as the enemies have, and for which they rejoice, as if our cause were not good, or we should lose it for want of hands and heads to carry it on. No, no, beloved, this cause must prosper; and although we were all dead, our armies overthrown, and even our parliaments dissolved, this cause must prevail."

As it was found by inquiry of a parliamentary committee that the deceased statesman had in his care of the public liberties neglected his private estate, £10,000 were voted to pay his debts, and a pension was accorded to his son, Charles Pym.

Two great parliamentary leaders had already given their lives in actual combat for the popular cause John Hampden and Lord Lord Brook. The Cavaliers now hoped that the parliament would not hold together after the death of King Pym, as they derisively styled him. But in that wonderful assembly there were not wanting men to take their places. Young Vane now appeared as the leading statesman in the House, while as the fulfilment of his dexterous diplomacy, a Scottish army of 18,000 foot and 2500 horse crossed the Tweed about the middle of January

THE SCOTTISH ARMY

219

The Marquis of Newcastle, the king's lieutenant in the north, saw that the Scottish sword would turn the scale against him. The Fairfaxes, no longer shut up in Hull, had driven the royalists out of the East and West Ridings, and were advancing on the North Riding. The Scots were overrunning Northumberland. Newcastle wrote to the king imploring reinforcements: "If your majesty beat the Scots, your game is absolutely won"; but even in the west his majesty's partisans had much to do to hold their

own.

CHAPTER XIII

Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. The Battle of Marston Moor.

THE first heroes of the parliament were the Earl of Essex, "the darling of the swordsmen," Sir William Waller, the champion of the Presbyterians, and stout old Skippon, who drilled the train-bands. Then amidst the shock of arms other names were heard ever oftener and louder. Thomas Fairfax, born the same year as Henry Vane, came of an old Yorkshire family, which had given birth to many warriors. His grandfather was the companion in arms of Lord Vere; his granduncle made the first and still the best translation of Tasso. Two of his uncles had met their death in the Thirty Years' War. When a youth of eighteen Thomas Fairfax had seen war along with Turenne at the siege of Bois-le-Duc in the Low Countries, where he suffered from ague, which weakened his health for years after. He married Anne, the daughter of Lord Vere. He had attracted notice by presenting a petition to the king at York, which his majesty had disdainfully rejected. In this family there were none of the distressing divisions of kinsmen which frequently attended the Civil War. All the Fairfaxes took the side of the parliament. With his father, Lord Ferdinando Fairfax, Sir

Thomas was active in rallying the Yorkshire Ridings against the Cavaliers, who were at the beginning better appointed, and under the Marquis of Newcastle drew many hardy recruits from Northumberland.

The Fairfaxes were followed by their tenants and many of the yeomanry, and the rising manufacturing towns of the country. Sir Thomas was a tall man with brown hair, fair complexion, and somewhat high cheek-bones. Accomplished in all military exercises, courteous and generous as he was brave, his skill in war and power of organisation soon marked him as a great leader. Commanding the navigation of the Humber, Hull was of signal value both to the south of Yorkshire and to Lincolnshire, where the forces of the parliament were greater. In the south-eastern

counties the Earl of Manchester was entrusted with command by the parliament. A man not born to control, he soon yielded to the ascendency of Oliver Cromwell.

Originally from Glamorganshire and bearing the name of Williams, the Cromwells had been settled for three generations in Huntingdonshire, where they had received grants of church lands in the days of Henry VIII. Robert Cromwell, or Williams, the father of Oliver, was the second son of Sir Henry Cromwell, one of whose daughters was the mother of John Hampden. When seventeen years old Oliver was sent to Cambridge University. It is reported that in his youth he was rough and quarrelsome, and more addicted to field sports than to study, which accounts for his skill shown later in life as a rider, and in the use of weapons.'

1 Without giving credit to the malicious statements of royalist writers,

Going to London to study civil law, Oliver married when twenty-one, the daughter of a city merchant, after which he led a decorous life and consorted with the zealous Puritans. With him religious emotion was too vivid for the haberdashery and posturings of the episcopal church. Sir Philip Warwick has preserved a note of his mental condition when still a private gentleman which is worthy of quotation in full :

"After the rendition of Oxford, I, living some time with Lady Beadle (my wife's sister) near Huntingdon, had occasion to converse with Mr Cromwell's physician, Dr Simcott, who assured me that for many years his patient was a most splenetic man, and had fancies about the cross in that town, and that he had been called up to him at midnight, and such unseasonable hours, very many times, which made him believe he

the assertion that Oliver Cromwell was wild in his youth seems to rest upon some evidence. Sanford (in his Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion, London, 1858, p. 221), quotes a letter written by him to his cousin, the wife of the celebrated Oliver St John: "You know what my manner of life hath been. Oh, I lived in and loved darkness, and hated light; I was a chief, the chief of sinners. This is true; I hated godliness, yet God had mercy upon me." It needs some straining to get rid of such direct testimony, even though allowance be made for the wont of religious persons to deplore the depravities of their unconverted state. Sir Philip Warwick lived some time in Huntingdon, and conversed with Sir Oliver, the protector's uncle, and with his physician, Dr Simcott. Warwick tells us that "the first years of his manhood were spent in a dissolute course of life, in good fellowship and gaming, which afterwards he seemed very sensible of and sorrowful for, and as if it had been a good spirit that had guided him therein, he used a good method upon his conversion, for he declared that he was ready to make restitution unto any man who would accuse him, or whom he could accuse himself to have wronged."-Memoirs of the Reign of Charles I., p. 276.

Richard Baxter, whom Cromwell invited to be chaplain in his own regiment, writes that Cromwell had been "a prodigal in his youth, and afterwards changed to a zealous religiousness."-See Reliquiæ Baxteriana, London, 1696, lib. i., p. 98.