Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/159

 coach’; —neither did he go at all, but stayed at home till he died.

September 14th. Here is a new phasis of the business. In a ‘List of the Army under the command of the Earl of Essex,’ we find that Robert Earl of Essex is ‘Lord General for King and Parliament’ (to deliver the poor beloved King from traitors, who have misled him, and clouded his fine understanding, and rendered him as it were a beloved Parent fallen insane); that Robert Earl of Essex, we say, is Lord General for King and Parliament; that William the new Earl of Bedford is General of the Horse, and has, or is every hour getting to have, ‘seventy-five troops of 60 men each’; in every troop a Captain, a Lieutenant, a Cornet and Quartermaster, whose names are all given. In Troop Sixty-seven, the Captain is ‘Oliver Cromwell’,—honourable member for Cambridge; many honourable members having now taken arms; Mr. Hampden, for example, having become Colonel Hampden,—busy drilling his men in Chalgrove Field at this very time. But moreover, in Troop Eight of Earl Bedford’s Horse, we find another ‘Oliver Cromwell, Cornet’;—and with real thankfulness for this poor flint-spark in the great darkness, recognise him for our honourable member’s Son. His eldest Son Oliver, now a stout young man of twenty. ‘Thou too, Boy Oliver, thou art fit to swing a sword. If there ever was a battle worth fighting, and to be called God’s battle, it is this; thou too wilt come!’ How a staid, most pacific, solid Farmer of three-and-forty decides on girding himself with warlike iron, and fighting, he and his, against principalities and powers, let readers who have formed any notion of this man conceive for themselves.

On Sunday 23d October, was Edgehill Battle, called also Keinton Fight, near Keinton on the south edge of Warwickshire. In which Battle Captain Cromwell was present, and