the war speedily to end, lest their own power should determine with it. This that I speak here to our own faces is but what others do utter abroad behind our backs. I am far from reflecting on any. I know the worth of those commanders, members of both houses, who are yet in power; but if I may speak my conscience without reflection upon any, I do conceive, if the army be not put into another method, and the war more vigorously prosecuted, the people can bear the war no longer, and will enforce to a dishonourable peace.

you

"But this I would recommend to your prudence-not to insist upon any complaint or oversight of any commander-in-chief upon any occasion whatsoever; for as I must acknowledge myself guilty of oversights, so I know they can rarely be avoided in military affairs. Therefore, waiving a strict inquiry into the causes of these things, let us apply ourselves to the remedy, which is most necessary. And I hope we have such true English hearts, and zealous affections towards the general weal of our mother conntry, as no members of either house will scruple to deny themselves, and their own private interests, for the public good; nor account it to be a dishonour done to them, whatever the Parliament shall resolve upon in this weighty matter."

The question of the self-denying ordinances were debated for ten days in the Commons, where it was carried at last, but the Lords threw it out. Notwithstanding which, the Commons went on re-modelling the army. Finding the Commons in earnest, the Peers came to terms, and the work of re-organization went on bravely.

The condition of the king's army at this time was anything but satisfactory. Clarendon, the royal historian, tells us :

"The king's army was united less than ever; the old general was set aside, and Prince Rupert put into the command, which was no popular change, for the other was known to be an officer of great experience, and had committed no oversights in his conduct; was willing to hear everything debated, and always concurred with the most reasonable opinion; and though he was not of many words, and was not quick in hearing, yet upon any action he was sprightly, and commanded well. The prince was rough and passionate, and loved not debate; liked what was proposed, as he liked the persons who proposed it; and was so great an enemy of Digby and Colepepper, who were only present in debates of the war with the officers, that he crossed all they proposed. The truth is, all the army had been disposed, from the first raising it, to a neglect and contempt of

the council; and the king himself had not been solicitous to preserve the respect due to it, in which he lost his own dignity.

"Goring, who was now general of the horse, was no more gracious to Prince Rupert than Wilmot had been, and had all the other's faults, and wanted his regularity, and preserving his respect with the officers. Wilmot loved debauchery, but kept it out from his business; never neglected that, and rarely miscarried in it. Goring had a much better understanding and a sharper wit, except in the very exercise of debauchery, and then the other was inspired, a much keener courage and presentness of mind in danger. Wilmot discovered it farther off, and because he could not behave himself so well in it, commonly prevented, or warily declined it, and never drank when he was within distance of an enemy. Goring was not able to resist the temptation when he was in the middle of them, nor would decline it to obtain a victory; and in one of those fits he suffered the horse to escape out of Cornwall, and the most signal misfortunes of his life in war had their rise from that uncontrollable license. Neither of them valued their professions, promises, or friendships, according to any rules of honour or integrity; but Wilmot violated them less willingly, and never but for some great benefit or convenience to himself; Goring, without scruple, out of humour, or for wit's sake, and loved no man so well but that he would cozen him, and then expose him to the public mirth for having been cozened. Therefore he had always fewer friends than the other, but more company, for no man had a wit that pleased the company better. The ambition of both was unlimited, and so equally incapable of being contented, and both unrestrained by any respect to good nature or justice, from pursuing the satisfaction thereof; yet Wilmot had more scruples from religion to startle him, and would not have attained his end by any gross or foul act of wickedness. Goring could have passed through those pleasantly, and would, without any hesitation, have broken any trust, or done any act of treachery, to have satisfied an ordinary passion or appetite; and, in truth, wanted nothing but industry-for he had wit, and courage, and understanding, and ambition uncontrolled by any fear of God or man-to have been as eminent and successful in the highest attempt in wickedness, of any man in the age he lived in or before. Of all his qualifications dissimulation was his masterpiece, in which he had so much excelled, that men were not ordinarily ashamed or out of countenance with being deceived but twice by him.

"The court was not much better disposed than the army; they who had no preferment were angry with those who had, and thought they had not deserved it as well as themselves. They who were envied found no satisfaction or delight in what they were envied for, being poor and necessitous, and the more sensible of their being so, by the titles they had received upon their violent importunity, so that the king was without any joy in the favours he had conferred, and yet was not the less solicited to grant more to others of the same kind, who, he foresaw, would be no better pleased than the rest; and the pleasing one man this way displeased a hundred, as his creating the Lord Colepepper at this time, and making him a baron-who, in truth, had served him with great abilities, and though he did imprudently in desiring it, did deserve it-did much dissatisfy both the court and the army, to neither of which he was in any degree gracious, but his having no ornament of education to make men more propitious to his parts of nature, and disposed many others to be very importunate to receive the same obligation."

The affair between the king and his people was rapidly approaching a crisis. While the royalists decreased in number and strength, the Commoners were rising in power, "old Ironsides not hindmost;" and "Captain Cromwell" had become an essential element. The armies met at

NASEBY.

Says Thomas Carlyle :-"The old hamlet of Naseby stands yet on its old hill top, very much as it did in Saxon days, on the north-western border of Northamptonshire, some seven or eight miles from MarketHarborough in Leicestershire, nearly on a line, and nearly mid-way between that town and Daventry. A peaceable old hamlet, of perhaps five hundred souls; clay cottages for labourers, but neatly thatched and swept; smith's shop, saddler's shop, beer shop, all in order; forming a kind of square, which leads off, north and south, into two long streets: the old church, with its graves, stands in the centre, the truncated spire finishing itself with a strange old ball, held up by rods; a 'hollow copper ball, which came from Boulogne in Henry the Eighth's time,' -which has, like Hudibras' breeches, 'been at the siege of Bullen.' The ground is upland, moorland, though now growing corn; was not enclosed till the last generation, and is still somewhat bare of wood. It stands nearly in the heart of England; gentle dullness, taking a turn at etymology, sometimes derives it from Navel; 'Navesby, quasi Navelsby, from

being,' etc. Avon Well, the distinct source of Shakspere's Avon, is on the western slope of the high grounds; Nen and Welland streams leading towards Cromwell's Fen-country, begin to gather themselves from boggy places on the eastern side. The grounds, as we say, lie high; and are still, in their new subdivisions, known by the name of 'Hills,' 'Rutput Hill,' 'Mill Hill,' 'Dust Hill,' and the like, precisely as in Rushworth's time; but they are not properly hills at all; they are broad, blunt, clayey masses, swelling towards and from each other, like indolent waves of a sea, sometimes of miles in extent.

"It was on this high moor-ground, in the centre of England, that King Charles, on the 14th of June, 1645, fought his last battle; dashed fiercely

Obelisk Erected on Naseby Field in Commemoration of the Battle.

against the New-Model army, which he had despised till then; and saw himself shivered utterly to ruin thereby. 'Prince Rupert, on the king's right wing, charged up the hill, and carried all before him;' but Lieutenant-General Cromwell charged down-hill on the other wing, likewise carrying all before him, and did not gallop off the field to plunder. Cromwell, ordered thither by the Parliament, had arrived from the association two days before, amid shouts from the whole army:' he had the ordering of the horse this morning. Prince Rupert, on returning from his plunder finds the king's infantry a ruin; prepares to charge again with the rallied cavalry; but the cavalry too, when it came to the point, broke all asunder,'-never to reassemble more. The chase went

through Harborough; where the king had already been that morning, when in an evil hour he turned back, to revenge some 'surprise of an outpost at Naseby the night before,' and gave the Roundheads battle.

"The parliamentary army stood ranged on the height still partly called 'Mill Hill,' as in Rushworth's time, a mile and a half from Naseby; the king's army on a parallel Hill,' its back to Harborough, with the wide table of upland now named Broad Moor between them; where indeed the main brunt of the action still clearly enough shows itself to have been. There are hollow spots, of a rank vegetation, scattered over that Broad Moor; which are understood to have once been burial mounds; some of which have been (with more or less of sacrilege) verified as such. A friend of mine has in his cabinet two ancient grinder-teeth, dug lately from that ground, and waits for an opportunity to re-bury them there. Sound effectual grinders, one of them very large, which ate their breakfast on the fourteenth of June two hundred years ago, and, except to be clenched once in grim battle, had never work to do more in this world!"

Another popular historian thus describes the battle :"The parliamentary army ranged itself on a hill, called yet the Mill Hill, and the king's on a parallel hill, with its back to Harborough. The right wing was led by Cromwell, consisting of six regiments of horse, and the left consisting of nearly as many, was, at his request, committed to his friend Colonel Ireton, a Nottinghamshire man. Fairfax and Skippon took charge of the main body, and colonels Pride, Rainsborough, and Hammond, brought up the reserves. Rupert and his brother Maurice led on the right wing of Charles's army, Sir Marmaduke Langdale the left, Charles himself the main body, and Sir Jacob Astley, the Earl of Lindsay, the Lord Baird, and Sir George Lisle, the reserves. The word for the day of the royalists, was 'God and Queen Mary!' that of the parliamentarians, 'God our strength!' A wide moorland, called Broad Moor, lay between them. The cavaliers made themselves very merry at the new modelled army of Roundheads, for which they had the utmost contempt, having nothing aristocratic about it, and its head being farmer Cromwell, or the brewer of Huntingdon, as they pleased to call him. They expected to sweep them away like dust, and Rupert making one of his headlong charges, seemed to realise their anticipations, for he drove the left wing of the Roundheads into instant confusion and flight, took Ireton prisoner, his horse being killed under him, and himself wounded severely in two