Page:Behemoth 1889.djvu/217

 army under Lambert; which quickly defeated the Cheshire party, and recovered Chester, Liverpool, and all the other places they had seized. Divers also of their commanders in and after the battle were taken prisoners, whereof Sir George Booth himself was one.

This exploit done, Lambert, before his return, caressed his soldiers with an entertainment at his own house in Yorkshire, and got their consent to a petition to be made to the House, that a general might be set up in the army; as being unfit that the army should be judged by any power extrinsic to itself.

B. I do not see that unfitness.

A. Nor I. But it was (as I have heard) an axiom of Sir Henry Vane’s. But it so much displeased the Rump, that they voted, that the having of more generals in the army than were already settled, was unnecessary, burthensome, and dangerous to the commonwealth.

B. This was not Oliver’s method; for though this Cheshire victory had been as glorious as that of Oliver at Dunbar, yet it was not the victory that made Oliver general, but the resignation of Fairfax, and the proffer of it to Cromwell by the Parliament.

A. But Lambert thought so well of himself, as to expect it. Therefore, at his return to London, he and other of the officers assembling at Wallingford House, drew their petition into form, and called it a representation; wherein the chief point was to have a general, but many others of less importance were added; and this they represented to the House, October the 4th, by Major-General Desborough. And this so far forth awed them, as to teach them so much good manners as to promise to take it presently into debate. Which they did; and October the 12th, having recovered their spirits, voted: that the commissions of Lambert, Desborough, and others of the council at Wallingford House, should be void: item, that the army should be governed by a commission to Fleetwood, Monk, Hazlerig, Walton, Morley, and Overton, till February the 12th following. And to make this good