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he replied to to Falkland's question whether there had been a debate, with "I will take your word for it another time. If the Remonstrance had been rejected, I would have sold all I had the next morning, and never have seen England any more; and I know there are many other honest men of the same resolution."

In the constitutional by-play which followed-the question of the Bishops' protest and the resistance to the attempt on the Five Members -Cromwell took no prominent part, though his motion for an address to the King, asking him to remove the Earl of Bristol from his counsels on the ground that he had formerly recommended Charles to bring up the northern army to his support, shows in what direction his thoughts were moving. The dispute between Parliament and King had SO deepened that each side deprecated the employment of force by the other, whilst each side felt itself justified in arming itself ostensibly for its own defence. It was no longer a question of conformity to the constitution in the shape in which the Tudors had handed it down to the Stuarts. That constitution, resting as it did on an implied harmony between King and people, had hopelessly broken down when Charles had for eleven years ruled without a Parliament. The only question was how it was to be reconstructed. Cromwell was not the man to indulge in constitutional speculations, but he saw distinctly that if religion—such as he conceived it was to be protected, it must be by armed force. A King to whom religion in that form was detestable, and who was eager to stifle it by calling in troops from any foreign country which could be induced to come to his aid, was no longer to be trusted with power.

As far as we know, Cromwell did not intervene in the debates on the control of the militia. He was mainly concerned with seeing that the militia was in a state of efficiency for the defence of Parliament. As early as January 14, 1642, soon after the attempt on the five members had openly revealed Charles's hostility, it was on Cromwell's motion that a committee was named to put the kingdom in a posture of

defence, and this motion he followed up by others, with the practical object of forwarding repression in Ireland or protection to the Houses at Westminster. Though he was far from being a wealthy man, he contributed £600 to the projected campaign in Ireland, and another £500 to the raising of forces in England. Mainly through his efforts, Cambridge was placed in a state to defend itself against attack. Without waiting for a Parliamentary vote, he sent down arms valued at £100. On July 15 he moved for an order "to allow the townsmen of Cambridge to raise two companies of volunteers, and to appoint captains over them." A month later the House was informed that "Mr. Cromwell, in Cambridgeshire, hath seized the magazine in the castle at Cambridge," that is to say, the store of arms--the property of the County-ready to be served out to the militia when called upon for service or training, "and hath hindered the carrying of the plate from that University; which, as was reported, was to the value of £20,000 or thereabouts." Evidently there was one member of Parliament prompt of decision and determined in will, who had in him what so few-if anyof his colleagues had-the makings of a great soldier in him.

When at last Essex received the command to create a Parliamentary army, Cromwell accepted a commission to raise a troop of arquebusiers -the light horse of the day-in his own county. He can have had no difficulty in finding recruits, especially as his popularity in the fen-land had been, if possible, increased by his conduct in a committee held in the preceding summer, where he bitterly resented an attempt of the Earl of Manchester to enclose lands in defiance of the rights of the commoners. He was, however, resolved to pick the sixty men he needed. We can well understand that in choosing his subordinates he would be inspired by an instinctive desire to prize those qualities in his subordinates which were strongly developed in his own character, in which strenuous activity was upheld by unswerving conviction and prefervid spiritual emotion. He could choose the better because he had neighbours, friends and kinsmen from whom to select. The Quartermaster of his troop

John Disbrowe, his brother-in-law, whilst another brother-in-law, Valentine Wauton, though not actually serving under Cromwell, rallied to his side, and became the captain of another troop in the Parliamentary army. To the end of his career Cromwell never forwarded the prospects of a kinsman or friend unless he was persuaded of his efficiency, though he never shrank from the promotion of kinsmen whom he believed himself able to trust, in order to shake off the charge of nepotism from himself.

The sobriety of Cromwell's judgment was as fully vindicated by his choice of the cavalry arm for himself, as by the selection of his subordinates. If the result of the coming war was to be decided by superiority in cavalry, as would certainly be the case, the chances were all in favour of the royalist gentry, whose very nickname of "cavaliers" was a presage of victory, and who were not only themselves familiar with horsemanship from their youth up, but had at their disposal the grooms and the huntsmen who were attached to their service. "Your troops," he said some weeks later to his cousin Hampden, after the failure of the Parliamentary horse had become manifest, "are most of them old decayed serving men and tapsters, and such kind of fellows; and their troops are gentlemen's sons and persons of quality. Do you think the spirits of such base and mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour and courage and resolution in them? . . . You must get men of spirit, and, take it not ill what I say-I know you will not-of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go, or else you will be beaten still." The importance of a good cavalry was in those days relatively much greater than it is now. A body of infantry, composed in about equal proportions of pikemen and musketeers, the latter armed with a heavy and unwieldy weapon, only to be fired at considerable intervals, and requiring the support of a rest to steady it, needed to be placed behind hedges to resist a cavalry charge. It was a recognised axiom of war that a foot regiment marching across open country required cavalry as a convoy to ward off destructive attacks by the enemy's horse.

So unquestioned was the inferiority of infantry, that unless the horsemen who gathered round Charles's standard when it was displayed on the castle-hill at Nottingham could be overpowered, the resistance of the Parliamentary army could hardly be prolonged for many months. That they were overpowered was the achievement of Cromwell, and of Cromwell alone.

It was something that Cromwell had gathered round him his sixty God-fearing men. It was more, that he did not confide, as a mere fanatic would have done, in their untried zeal. His recruits were subjected to an iron discipline. The hot fire of enthusiasm for the cause in which they had been enlisted burnt strongly within them. They had drawn their swords not for constitutional safeguards, but in the service of God Himself, and God Himself, they devoutly trusted, would shelter His servants in the day of battle against the impious men who were less their enemies than His. It was no reason-so they learnt from their captain-that they should remit any single precaution recommended by the most worldly of military experts. Cromwell almost certainly never told his soldiers-in so many words-to trust in God and keep their powder dry. Yet, apocryphal as is the anecdote, it well represents the spirit in which Cromwell's commands were issued. The very vividness of his apprehension of the supernatural enabled him to pass rapidly without any sense of incongruity from religious exhortations to the practical satisfaction of the demands of the material world.

When on October 23, 1642, the first battle of the war was fought at Edgehill, Cromwell's troop was one of the few not swept away by Rupert's headlong charge. Whether he owed this distinction to his own skill in withdrawing behind the unbroken portion of the Parliamentary infantry, or to the commands of his superior officers, is unknown. At all events, he took his share in the indispensable service rendered by the little force of cavalry still remaining at Essex's disposal, after the whole of the Royalist horse had galloped off in uncurbed pursuit. It was its co-operation which, by assailing in flank

and rear the King's foot regiments, whilst the infantry broke them up in front, enabled the Parliamentary army to claim at least a doubtful victory in the place of the rout which would otherwise have befallen it if Rupert, on his late return, had found his master's foot in a condition to carry on the struggle. Whatever else Cromwell learnt from his first experience of actual warfare, he had learnt from Rupert's failure after early success, never to forget that headlong valour alone will accomplish little, and that a good cavalry officer requires to know when to draw rein, as well as when to charge, and to subordinate the conduct of the attack in which he is personally engaged to the needs of the army as a whole.

Many months were to pass away before Cromwell was to measure swords with Rupert. He remained under Essex almost to the end of the year, and was present at Turnham Green, when Essex saw Charles, after taking up a position at Brentford in the hope of forcing a passage to London, march off to Reading and Oxford without attempting to strike a blow. Towards the end of 1642, or in the early part of 1643, Cromwell had work found for him which was eventually to breathe a new spirit into the Parliamentary army. Enormous as was the advantage which the devotion of London conferred upon Parliament, London by no means exercised that supreme influence which was exercised by Paris in the times of the French Revolution. therefore, put forth their efforts in organising local forces, but of all the local organisations which were brought into existence, the only one entirely successful was the Eastern Association, comprising Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Herts, and that mainly because Cromwell was at hand to keep it up to the mark. There was to be a common fund at the service of the Association, whilst the forces raised in the several shires of which it was composed were to be at the disposal of a common committee.

Both parties,

In England generally the first half of 1643 was a time of desultory fighting, alternating with efforts to make peace without the conditions

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