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254 condition that they at once gave him substantial aid against the rebels of Scotland and Ireland. At this moment, too, the news of the successes of Montrose in Scotland, added to his confidence.

The two armies in England now prepared to try their strength. Charles, lying at Oxford, had a considerable number of troops: the west of England was almost wholly in his interest, north and south Wales were wholly his, excepting the castles of Pembroke and Montgomery. He had still Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract; but his army, though experienced in the field, was the most licentious and debauched which had appeared since that of Wallenstein in the Thirty Years' War. The officers were at violent feud amongst themselves, jealous of each other, playing little regard to the commands of the king. As a measure of popularity, and to diminish the envy of prince Rupert being commander-in-chief, the king nominated the prince of Wales to that post, and Rupert, the real commander, was general under him. The prince was sent into the west of England for greater security, and Rupert and the garrisons scattered through the country, ravaged the unhappy inhabitants at pleasure. The soldiers lived at free quarters, and made themselves more terrible to their enemies. The whole army, officers and privates, prided themselves on their profligacy and debauchery, to contrast themselves against what they called the army of the saints and roundheads. Drinking, gambling, blaspheming, riot, and robbery, were fashionable, as a set off to what they deemed the demure hypocrisy of the parliamentarians. Clarendon, the royalist historian, confirms this awful account repeatedly; and lord Colepepper, writing to lord Digby, says, "Good men are so scandalised at the horrid impiety of our armies, that they will not believe that God can bless any cause in such hands."

In fact, such were the sufferings of all classes under the plunderings and harassing of the contending factions of that unhappy war, that the gentry in many counties, especially in Wilts, Dorset, Somerset, and Worcester, formed themselves into associations, and called upon their tenants and the villagers to form themselves into drilled and armed bodies under them, for the defence of their property, their homes, and their persons. They assumed the name of clubmen, from many of them being armed merely with clubs and pitchforks, and they assembled to the number of four, six, and even ten thousand men. In those quarters where the soldiery were in numbers or in march, that menaced depredations. They declared themselves perfectly neutral, that they had no object but to protect their lives and substance, and became so strong, that they began to talk of putting down the unnatural contest by force. They wore white ribbons as a distinction, and petitioned both king and parliament to cease hostilities, offering to hold the forts and castles till a satisfactory peace was concluded. Fairfax, however, reported to parliament that he found their leaders consisting chiefly of men who had been in the king's service, and had a leaning to that party much more than to the parliament. The two houses accordingly pronounced all persons appearing in arms without authority traitors to the commonwealth.

The parliamentary army, now remodelled, presented a very different spectacle to that of the king. The strictest discipline was introduced, and the men were called upon to observe the duties of religion. The officers had been selected from those who had served under Essex, Manchester, and the other lords; but having cleared the command of the aristocratic element, a new spirit of activity and zeal was infused into it. The king's officers ridiculed the new force, which had no leaders of great name except Sir Thomas Fairfax, and was brought together in so new a shape, that it appeared a congregation of raw soldiers. The ridicule of the cavaliers even infected the adherents of the commonwealth, and there was great skepticism as to the result of such a change. May, the parliamentary historian, says, never did an array go forth who had less the confidence of their friends, or more the contempt of their enemies. But both parties were extremely deceived. Cromwell was now the real soul of the movement, and the religious enthusiasm which glowed in him was diffused through the whole army. The whole system seemed a revival of that of the pious Gustavus Adolphus—no man suffered a day to go over without religious service, and never commenced a battle without a prayer. The soldiers now employed their time in zealous military exercises and in equally zealous prayer and singing of psalms. They sang in their march, they advanced into battle with a psalm. The letters of Cromwell to the parliament, giving an account of the proceedings of the army, are full of this religious spirit, which it has been the custom to treat as cant, but which was the genuine expression of his feelings, and was shown by effects such as cant and sham never produce. Victory, which he and his soldiers ascribed only to God, success, the most rapid and wonderful, attended him.

It is remarkable that the very man who had introduced the Self-denying Ordinance, was the only man who was never debarred by it from pursuing his military career. This has, therefore, been treated as an artifice on his part; but, on the contrary, it was the mere result of circumstances Cromwell was the great military genius of the age. Every day the success of his plans and actions was bursting more and more on the public notice, and no one was more impressed by the value of his services than the new commander-in-chief. Sir Thomas Fairfax. He had sent Cromwell, Massey, and Waller, into the west, before laying down their commissions, to attack colonel Goring, who was threatening the parliamentary lines. They had driven him back towards Wells and Glastonbury, and not deeming it safe to push farther with their small force into a quarter where the royal interest was so strong, and Cromwell advising parliament to send more troops to Salisbury to defend that point against Rupert, who was reported at Trowbridge, he had returned to Windsor to resign his command according to the ordinance. There, however, he found the parliament had suspended the ordinance in his instance for forty days, in order that he might execute a service of especial consequence, and which it particularly wished him to undertake. This was to attack a body of two thousand men conveying the king's artillery from Oxford to Worcester, to which place Rupert had marched, having defeated colonel Massey at Ledbury.

This was on the 22nd of April, and Cromwell took horse the next morning, and dashed rapidly into Oxfordshire and routed the enemy at Islip Bridge, consisting of four