Memoirs of a Cavalier<br />A Military Journal of the Wars in Germany, and the Wars in England.<br /> by Daniel Defoe (best romantic books to read TXT) 📕

the morning to ten at night. But they fought for advantages; sometimes one side had the better, sometimes another. They fought twice through the town, in at one end, and out at the other; and in the hedges and lanes, with exceeding fury. The king lost the most men, his foot having suffered for want of the succour of their horse, who on two several occasions could not come at them. But the Parliament foot suffered also, and two regiments were entirely cut in pieces, and the king kept the field.

Essex, the Parliament general, had the pillage of the dead, and left us to bury them; for while we stood all day to our arms, having given them a fair field to fight us in, their camp rabble stripped the dead bodies, and they not daring to venture a second engagement with us, marched away towards London.

The king lost in this action the Earls of Carnarvon and Sunderland, the Lord Falkland, a French marquis and some very gallant officers, and about 1200 men. The Earl of Carnarvon was brought into an inn in Newbury, where the king came to see him. He had just life enough to speak to his Majesty, and died in his presence. The king was exceedingly concerned for him, and was observed to shed tears at the sight of it. We were indeed all of us troubled for the loss of so brave a gentleman, but the concern our royal master discovered, moved us more than ordinary. Everybody endeavoured to have the king out of the room, but he would not stir from the bedside, till he saw all hopes of life was gone.

The indefatigable industry of the king, his servants and friends, continually to supply and recruit his forces, and to harass and fatigue the enemy, was such, that we should still have given a good account of the war had the Scots stood neuter. But bad news came every day out of the north; as for other places, parties were always in action. Sir William Waller and Sir Ralph Hopton beat one another by turns; and Sir Ralph had extended the king's quarters from Launceston in Cornwall, to Farnham in Surrey, where he gave Sir William Waller a rub, and drove him into the castle. But in the north, the storm grew thick, the Scots advanced to the borders, and entered England in confederacy with the Parliament, against their king; for which the Parliament requited them afterwards as they deserved.

Had it not been for this Scotch army, the Parliament had easily been reduced to terms of peace; but after this they never made any proposals fit for the king to receive. Want of success before had made them differ among themselves. Essex and Waller could never agree; the Earl of Manchester and the Lord Willoughby differed to the highest degree; and the king's affairs went never the worse for it. But this storm in the north ruined us all; for the Scots prevailed in Yorkshire, and being joined with Fairfax, Manchester, and Cromwell, carried all before them; so that the king was obliged to send Prince Rupert, with a body of 4000 horse, to the assistance of the Earl of Newcastle, where that prince finished the destruction of the king's interest, by the rashest and unaccountablest action in the world, of which I shall speak in its place.

Another action of the king's, though in itself no greater a cause of offence than the calling the Scots into the nation, gave great offence in general, and even the king's own friends disliked it; and was carefully improved by his enemies to the disadvantage of the king, and of his cause.

The rebels in Ireland had, ever since the bloody massacre of the Protestants, maintained a war against the English, and the Earl of Ormond was general and governor for the king. The king, finding his affairs pinch him at home, sends orders to the Earl of Ormond to consent to a cessation of arms with the rebels, and to ship over certain of his regiments hither to his Majesty's assistance. 'Tis true, the Irish had deserved to be very ill treated by the English; but while the Parliament pressed the king with a cruel and unnatural war at home, and called in an army out of Scotland to support their quarrel with their king, I could never be convinced, that it was such a dishonourable action for the king to suspend the correction of his Irish rebels till he was in a capacity to do it with safety to himself; or to delay any farther assistance to preserve himself at home; and the troops he recalled being his own, it was no breach of his honour to make use of them, since he now wanted them for his own security against those who fought against him at home.

But the king was persuaded to make one step farther, and that, I confess, was unpleasing to us all; and some of his best and most faithful servants took the freedom to speak plainly to him of it; and that was bringing some regiments of the Irish themselves over. This cast, as we thought, an odium upon our whole nation, being some of those very wretches who had dipped their hands in the innocent blood of the Protestants, and, with unheard-of butcheries, had massacred so many thousands of English in cool blood.

Abundance of gentlemen forsook the king upon this score; and seeing they could not brook the fighting in conjunction with this wicked generation, came into the declaration of the Parliament, and making composition for their estates, lived retired lives all the rest of war, or went abroad.

But as exigences and necessities oblige us to do things which at other times we would not do, and is, as to man, some excuse for such things; so I cannot but think the guilt and dishonour of such an action must lie, very much of it, at least, at their doors, who drove the king to these necessities and distresses, by calling in an army of his own subjects whom he had not injured, but had complied with them in everything, to make war upon him without any provocation.

As to the quarrel between the king and his Parliament, there may something be said on both sides; and the king saw cause himself to disown and dislike some things he had done, which the Parliament objected against, such as levying money without consent of Parliament, infractions on their privileges, and the like. Here, I say, was some room for an argument at least, and concessions on both sides were needful to come to a peace. But for the Scots, all their demands had been answered, all their grievances had been redressed, they had made articles with their sovereign, and he had performed those articles; their capital enemy Episcopacy was abolished; they had not one thing to demand of the king which he had not granted. And therefore they had no more cause to take up arms against their sovereign than they had against the Grand Seignior. But it must for ever lie against them as a brand of infamy, and as a reproach on their whole nation that, purchased by the Parliament's money, they sold their honesty, and rebelled against their king for hire; and it was not many years before, as I have said already, they were fully paid the wages of their unrighteousness, and chastised for their treachery by the very same people whom they thus basely assisted. Then they would have retrieved it, if it had not been too late.

But I could not but accuse this age of injustice and partiality, who while they reproached the king for his cessation of arms with the Irish rebels, and not prosecuting them with the utmost severity, though he was constrained by the necessities of the war to do it, could yet, at the same time, justify the Scots taking up arms in a quarrel they had no concern in, and against their own king, with whom they had articled and capitulated, and who had so punctually complied with all their demands, that they had no claim upon him, no grievances to be redressed, no oppression to cry out of, nor could ask anything of him which he had not granted.

But as no action in the world is so vile, but the actors can cover with some specious pretence, so the Scots now passing into England publish a declaration to justify their assisting the Parliament. To which I shall only say, in my opinion, it was no justification at all; for admit the Parliament's quarrel had been never so just, it could not be just in them to aid them, because 'twas against their own king too, to whom they had sworn allegiance, or at least had crowned him, and thereby had recognised his authority. For if maladministration be, according to Prynne's doctrine, or according to their own Buchanan, a sufficient reason for subjects to take up arms against their prince, the breach of his coronation oath being supposed to dissolve the oath of allegiance, which however I cannot believe; yet this can never be extended to make it lawful, that because a king of England may, by maladministration, discharge the subjects of England from their allegiance, that therefore the subjects of Scotland may take up arms against the King of Scotland, he having not infringed the compact of government as to them, and they having nothing to complain of for themselves. Thus I thought their own arguments were against them, and Heaven seemed to concur with it; for although they did carry the cause for the English rebels, yet the most of them left their bones here in the quarrel.

But what signifies reason to the drum and the trumpet! The Parliament had the supreme argument with those men, viz., the money; and having accordingly advanced a good round sum, upon payment of this (for the Scots would not stir a foot without it) they entered England on the 15th of January 1643[-4], with an army of 12,000 men, under the command of old Leslie, now Earl of Leven, an old soldier of great experience, having been bred to arms from a youth in the service of the Prince of Orange.

The Scots were no sooner entered England but they were joined by all the friends to the Parliament party in the north; and first, Colonel Grey, brother to the Lord Grey, joined them with a regiment of horse, and several out of Westmoreland and Cumberland, and so they advanced to Newcastle, which they summon to surrender. The Earl of Newcastle, who rather saw than was able to prevent this storm, was in Newcastle, and did his best to defend it; but the Scots, increased by this time to above 20,000, lay close siege to the place, which was but meanly fortified, and having repulsed the garrison upon several sallies, and pressing the place very close, after a siege of twelve days, or thereabouts, they enter the town sword in hand. The Earl of Newcastle got away, and afterwards gathered what forces together he could, but [was] not strong enough to hinder the Scots from advancing to Durham, which he quitted to them, nor to hinder the conjunction of the Scots with the forces of Fairfax, Manchester, and Cromwell. Whereupon the earl, seeing all things thus going to wreck, he sends his horse away, and retreats with his foot into York, making all necessary preparations for a vigorous defence there, in case he should be attacked, which he was pretty sure of, as indeed afterwards happened. York was in a very good posture of defence, the fortifications very regular, and exceeding strong; well furnished with provisions, and had now a garrison of 12,000 men in it. The governor under the Earl of Newcastle was Sir Thomas Glemham, a good soldier, and a gentleman brave enough.

The Scots, as I have said, having taken Durham, Tynemouth Castle, and Sunderland, and being joined by Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had taken Selby, resolve, with their united strength, to besiege York; but when they came to view the city, and saw a plan of the works, and had intelligence of the strength of the garrison, they sent expresses to Manchester and Cromwell for help, who came on, and joined them with 9000, making together about 30,000 men, rather more than less.

Now had the Earl of Newcastle's repeated messengers convinced the king that it was absolutely necessary to send some forces to his assistance, or else all would be lost in the north. Whereupon Prince Rupert was detached, with orders first to go into Lancashire and relieve Lathom House, defended by the brave Countess of Derby, and then, taking all the forces he could collect in Cheshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire, to march to relieve York.

The prince marched from Oxford with but three