The general-in-chief of the Parliamentary army was the Earl of Essex,a gentleman of honour and an excellent soldier.A little while before the war broke out,there had been some rioting at Westminster between certain officious law students and noisy soldiers,and the shopkeepers and their apprentices,and the general people in the streets.At that time the King's friends called the crowd,Roundheads,because the apprentices wore short hair;the crowd,in return,called their opponents Cavaliers,meaning that they were a blustering set,who pretended to be very military.These two words now began to be used to distinguish the two sides in the civil war.The Royalists also called the Parliamentary men Rebels and Rogues,while the Parliamentary men called THEM Malignants,and spoke of themselves as the Godly,the Honest,and so forth.
The war broke out at Portsmouth,where that double traitor Goring had again gone over to the King and was besieged by the Parliamentary troops.Upon this,the King proclaimed the Earl of Essex and the officers serving under him,traitors,and called upon his loyal subjects to meet him in arms at Nottingham on the twenty-fifth of August.But his loyal subjects came about him in scanty numbers,and it was a windy,gloomy day,and the Royal Standard got blown down,and the whole affair was very melancholy.The chief engagements after this,took place in the vale of the Red Horse near Banbury,at Brentford,at Devizes,at Chalgrave Field (where Mr.Hampden was so sorely wounded while fighting at the head of his men,that he died within a week),at Newbury (in which battle LORD
FALKLAND,one of the best noblemen on the King's side,was killed),at Leicester,at Naseby,at Winchester,at Marston Moor near York,at Newcastle,and in many other parts of England and Scotland.
These battles were attended with various successes.At one time,the King was victorious;at another time,the Parliament.But almost all the great and busy towns were against the King;and when it was considered necessary to fortify London,all ranks of people,from labouring men and women,up to lords and ladies,worked hard together with heartiness and good will.The most distinguished leaders on the Parliamentary side were HAMPDEN,SIR THOMAS FAIRFAX,and,above all,OLIVER CROMWELL,and his son-in-law IRETON.
During the whole of this war,the people,to whom it was very expensive and irksome,and to whom it was made the more distressing by almost every family being divided-some of its members attaching themselves to one side and some to the other-were over and over again most anxious for peace.So were some of the best men in each cause.Accordingly,treaties of peace were discussed between commissioners from the Parliament and the King;at York,at Oxford (where the King held a little Parliament of his own),and at Uxbridge.But they came to nothing.In all these negotiations,and in all his difficulties,the King showed himself at his best.
He was courageous,cool,self-possessed,and clever;but,the old taint of his character was always in him,and he was never for one single moment to be trusted.Lord Clarendon,the historian,one of his highest admirers,supposes that he had unhappily promised the Queen never to make peace without her consent,and that this must often be taken as his excuse.He never kept his word from night to morning.He signed a cessation of hostilities with the blood-stained Irish rebels for a sum of money,and invited the Irish regiments over,to help him against the Parliament.In the battle of Naseby,his cabinet was seized and was found to contain a correspondence with the Queen,in which he expressly told her that he had deceived the Parliament-a mongrel Parliament,he called it now,as an improvement on his old term of vipers-in pretending to recognise it and to treat with it;and from which it further appeared that he had long been in secret treaty with the Duke of Lorraine for a foreign army of ten thousand men.Disappointed in this,he sent a most devoted friend of his,the EARL OF GLAMORGAN,to Ireland,to conclude a secret treaty with the Catholic powers,to send him an Irish army of ten thousand men;in return for which he was to bestow great favours on the Catholic religion.And,when this treaty was discovered in the carriage of a fighting Irish Archbishop who was killed in one of the many skirmishes of those days,he basely denied and deserted his attached friend,the Earl,on his being charged with high treason;and-even worse than this-had left blanks in the secret instructions he gave him with his own kingly hand,expressly that he might thus save himself.