Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/260

246 disposition still stronger, and had persuaded the council not to fight at all.

Sir Thomas Fairfax. From an authentic Portrait.

Manchester, eight days after, replied at great length, accusing Cromwell of insubordination, and was supported by major-general Crawford, whom the Scotch presbyterians had got into the army of Manchester, to counteract the influence of Cromwell and the independents. Crawford even dared to charge Cromwell with leaving the field of Newbury from a slight wound. Cromwell, on the 9th of December, leaving such charges to be answered by Marston Moor and his share of Newbury, proposed a measure which at once swept the army of all its dead weights. In the grand committee there was a general silence for a good space of time, one looking on the other, to see who would venture to propose the only real remedy for getting rid of the Essexes and Manchesters out of the army, when Cromwell arose and proposed the celebrated Self-denying Ordinance. It is now time to speak, he said, or for ever hold the tongue. They must save the dying nation by casting off all lingering proceedings, like those of the soldiers of fortune beyond the sea, who so pursued war because it was their trade. "What," he asked, "did the nation say?" That members of both houses had got good places and commands, and by influence in parliament or in the army, meant to keep them by lingering on the war. What he told them to their faces, he assured them was simply what all the world was saying behind their backs. But there was a sure remedy for all that, and for himself, he cared to go no further into the inquiry, but to apply that remedy. It was for every one to deny themselves and their own private interests, and for the public good to do what parliament should command. He told them that he would answer for his own soldiers, not that they idolised him, but because they looked to parliament, and would obey any commands the parliament should lay upon them for the cause.

Accordingly, the same day, Mr. Tate, of Northampton, formally moved the Self-denying Ordinance, that is, that no member of either house should hold a command in the army