CHAPTER if he called his comrade a roundhead he was III. cashiered. Cromwell himself was at once the CHAS. I. general and chief pastor: he guided their devotions 1643-4-5. and he commanded in the field. Clarendon, whose

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insight into character, and power of describing it,
is, amongst English historians, unrivalled, fails to
present us with any just view of Cromwell as a
religious man. There were elements in the rude
soldier which the philosopher and statesman could
not comprehend. Cromwell, he says, spent much
of his time in praying with his soldiers and in
religious conversation; and he resolves the pecu-
liarity of his conduct into the vulgarity of mind
which had given him a distaste for society and
elegant pursuits. But the example of Cromwell
and his legion infected the whole army. The
commanders held prayer-meetings as officers in
general hold councils of war. The two, indeed,
were never separated. The plan of a battle was de-
voutly spread before the Lord. Deliberation followed
earnest prayer; and
prayer was preceded by the
reading of the scriptures. Nor were they merely
read: they were consulted for authorities and
precedents, with the same confidence with which
a lawyer consults the statute-book or refers to
previous judgments of the court. The common
soldiers joined in similar devotions. In some regi-
ments, from every tent the murmurings of prayer
arose and the louder voice of praise. Religion was
the recreation of the puritan soldiery. The hours
that were not spent in discipline were devoted to
improvement, to religious conference, to singing
hymns and psalms, in which they took great

III.

CHAS. I.

delight, and hearing sermons. Martindale was CHAPTER chaplain to the troops which defended Liverpool against prince Rupert. He says, "I lived in peace A.D. in the beleaguered town, and enjoyed sweet com- 1613-4-5. munion with the religious officers of the company,

who used to meet every night by turns, to read the scriptures, to confer of good things, and to pray together.' Their pious demeanour was not, as in most armies, an exception to the general practice; for we can scarcely turn over a page of the military memoirs of the puritans without finding some such intimations. The battle-cry on both sides was significant. The royalists chose some patriotic sentiment: "The queen," for instance, in one fight; "For God and the king," in another. The puritans, when they gained the ramparts in the storm of Bristol, shouted with a voice that rose above the clash of arms and the ringing of their musquetry, "For the Lord of hosts." This was afterwards their favourite word at Dunbar and Worcester, and in many a field of blood. At Naseby their cry was "God is with us" The appeal went to every heart and gave fresh courage: it was feebly answered from the royalists with an idle sentiment, which stirred no emotion now that the question was of death or victory-" For the Queen Mary." Before an engagement the sound of prayer and singing, and the awful tones in which some fervent preacher was denouncing the enemies of God and of his saints, floated on the wind to the royal camp, and filled many a brave heart and many a proud spirit with dismay. Amongst the royalists, no

* Martindale's Diary, Chetham Soc. Ed. p. 37.

III.

CHAPTER doubt, these fervours were easily explained: it was a vulgar fanaticism, and nothing more. But the CHAS. I. terror was not lessened by the explanation; for who 1643-4-5. SO formidable as an armed fanatic? And there

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were those in the king's army who keenly felt and helplessly deplored the contrast between the rebels and themselves. In the enemy's camp, a morality lofty and severe; fervent prayer and exhortation before the fight, and louder thanksgivings afterwards offered upon the very field of blood. In the king's army, licentiousness and oaths, and, in general, a contempt of all seriousness in religion that disdained to be concealed.

In the parliamentary army under the earl of Essex, the first commander-in-chief, each regiment had its chaplain. The appointment was felt to be of great importance. It was not left to novices and men despairing of preferment; the best of the presbyterian divines were to be met with in the camp. Too often the chaplain of a regiment is in danger of contempt. Soldiers are apt to despise the man who claims authority and yet retires from danger; and they undervalue the patient virtues of the christian minister which hazard neither life nor limb. The parliamentary army was an exception. It received its impulses, we might say its commands, scarcely less from its chaplains than from its officers. On the night before the battle of Edge Hill, Stephen Marshall, himself chaplain to the general, went from tent to tent and fired the soldiers with a determined courage by his fervent exhortations and more fervent prayers. The clergy who attended the earl of Essex's army, says Baxter,

II.

CHAS. I.

A.D.

"were famous and excellent divines." To mention CHAPTER the names of some of them is all that is necessary to justify this high praise. Dr. Burgess, deputychairman of the Westminster assembly, was, as 1643-4-5. well as Marshall, chaplain to the commander-inchief. Byfield, the assembly's scribe or secretary, was chaplain to sir Henry Cholmondely's regiment; Perkins to colonel Goodwin's; Simeon Ashe to the earl of Manchester's; Dr. Spurstowe, Hampden's friend and the rector of his parish, was also chaplain to his regiment. The presbyterians had few greater men. He had been one of bishop Hall's opponents in the famous episcopalian controversy; he was afterwards master of Catherine hall, Cambridge. In all the deliberations of the assembly of divines his name had weight,—and in the counsels of those in power, who often sought for his advice. A long life gave him the opportunity, which others wanted, of proving his integrity by suffering for the cause in which he had embarked. Without retracting any of his earlier opinions as to the justice of the war, he bitterly deplored the king's death. He refused to own Cromwell's authority and was deprived of his mastership. Yet he was a nonconformist to the last. After the restoration he defended the old cause against its old opponents the prelatic churchmen; he was driven into obscurity, and died as he had lived a cheerful benevolent and holy man. Six alms-houses which he built and which still exist at Hackney, prove that his own misfortunes had not steeled his heart to the wants of others. Baxter was solicited by Cromwell to become his chaplain; he declined the invitation and

III.

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CHAPTER lived to regret his unwise decision. There were several points in Baxter's character which fitted CHAS. I. him in a remarkable degree for such a post. He 1643—4—5. had talents eloquence and zeal; and an amazing love of disputation, to which he could always bring no small share of dialectic skill and learning. He liked the rigid presbyterian system as little as Cromwell himself: and the general proposed that he should form, not a presbyterian, but "a gathered church" among his squadrons. At this early period of the war Cromwell would probably have felt (and without shame he might have been willing to confess) the influence of such a mind as Baxter's. The fate of Cromwell and of the puritan cause, nay of England and her happiness for a century to come, perhaps quivered in the scale when Baxter refused to march with Cromwell's regiment. One ill consequence appeared immediately. It was now that Cromwell, not choosing a presbyterian, and perhaps not willing to ask the services of any inferior man to Baxter, became the chaplain as well as the general of his own squadrons. This amazingly increased his influence; he now held the two swords, the temporal and spiritual. In his troops the spark lay hid which soon overspread the army with its insane excesses, and covered England with innumerable sectaries of the wildest kind. The contagion spread through the army rapidly, for it was in accordance both with the logic of the camp and its prepossessions, that Cromwell's being the bravest troops, should be the most enlightened christians. But if Cromwell intruded into the ministerial office, there were ministers of the gospel,