Page:Works of Thomas Carlyle - Volume 06.djvu/219

 may sum itself up practically in this one fact, That he helped Cromwell and the Earl of Manchester to quarrel; and his character in this other, That he knew Lieutenant-General Cromwell to be a coward. This he, Crawford, knew; had seen it; was wont to assert it, and could prove it. Nay once, in subsequent angry months, talking to the Honourable Denzil Holles in Westminster Hall, he asserted it within earshot of Cromwell himself; ‘who was passing into the House, and I am very sure did hear it, as intended’;—who, however, heard it as if it had been no affair of his at all; and quietly walked on, as if his affairs lay elsewhere than there! From which I too, the knowing Denzil, drew my inferences,—ignominious to the human character!—Poor Crawford, after figuring much among the Scotch Committee-men and Presbyterian Grandees for a time, joined or rejoined the Scotch Army under Lesley; and fell at the Siege of Hereford in 1645, fighting gallantly I doubt not, and was quiet thenceforth.

In these same weeks there is going on a very famous Treaty once more, ‘Treaty of Uxbridge’: with immense apparatus of King’s Commissioners and Parliament and Scotch Commissioners; of which, however, as it came to nothing, there need nothing here be said. Mr. Christopher Love, a young eloquent divine, of hot Welsh blood, of Presbyterian tendency, preaching by appointment in the place, said, He saw no prospect of an agreement, he for one; ‘Heaven might as well think of agreeing with Hell’; words which were remembered against Mr. Christopher. The King will have nothing to do with Presbyterianism, will not stir a step without his Surplices at Allhallowtide; there remains only War; a supreme managing ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’;