which peace might be obtained. ‘Give the state of England,’ he wrote to the committee of estates, ‘that satisfaction and security for their peaceable and quiet living beside you which may in justice be demanded from a nation who have, as you, taken their enemy into their bosom whilst he was in hostility against them’ (Letter cl.) Nor did these declarations entirely fail of their effect. A serious division began among the Scots, and the rigid covenanters of the west separated themselves from the mixed army under Leslie’s command. For the moment they repelled Cromwell’s advances and attempted to carry on the war independently. But their army was routed by Lambert on 1 Dec. 1650, and as Edinburgh Castle surrendered a few days later (19 Dec.), all the south of Scotland was subdued by the close of 1650. During the spring of 1651 operations were delayed by the dangerous illness of Cromwell. An intermittent fever brought on by exposure attacked him in February; more than once his life was in danger; three successive relapses took place, and parliament urged him to remove to England until he recovered strength. In June Cromwell was again well enough to take the field, and found Leslie strongly entrenched near Stirling. Unable to attack successfully in front, Cromwell threw Lambert’s division across the Firth of Forth into Fifeshire, and followed himself with the bulk of the army a week later. Perth was captured on 2 Aug., Leslie’s supplies were cut off, and his defences were taken in the rear. The road to England was thus left open to Charles, and Cromwell was well aware that he would be blamed for not having prevented the invasion which took place. But he explained that his movement was decided rather by necessity than choice. Another winter’s war would have ruined the English army and emptied the treasury of the republic. The plan he had adopted was the only way to dislodge the enemy from their position and prevent the prolongation of the war. Except with a commanding army on both sides of the Forth, it would have been impossible at once to invade Fife and bar the road to England (Letter clxxx.) Sending his cavalry before to impede the king’s march, Cromwell hurried after him with the foot through central England, summoning all the militia of the southern and midland counties to meet him. With their aid he was able to surround Worcester with an army of thirty thousand men and attack the royalists with an overpowering force on both sides of the Severn. As usual Cromwell freely exposed himself in the battle. He was the first man to cross the Teme and bring support to Fleetwood’s hard-pressed troops. When victory was assured he rode in person to offer quarter to the enemy’s foot in the Fort Royal, and was received by a volley which he luckily escaped. In his letter before the battle he had encouraged the parliament to hope for a victory like that of Preston, but none so complete as this had marked the course of the civil wars. ‘The dimensions of this mercy,’ wrote Cromwell to the speaker, ‘are above my thought; it is, for aught I know, a crowning mercy’ (Letter clxxxiiii) Parliament recognised the completeness of the victory by voting the general lands to the value of 4,000l. a year, and by granting him Hampton Court as a country residence (6, 11 Sept. 1651). Hostile observers have professed to trace henceforth in Cromwell’s conduct the signs of his approaching usurpation. Ludlow sees a sinister meaning in the words of his letter to Lenthal. Whitelocke, who notes the ‘seeming’ humility of Cromwell’s bearing after Worcester, records expressions which appeared to reveal his secret ambition. In the conferences on the settlement of the kingdom in December 1651 he let fall the opinion that a settlement with somewhat of monarchical power in it would be best. ‘What if a man should take upon him to be king?’ was his significant question in the following November (Whitelocke, Memorials, pp. 517, 549). But these recollections were not written till long after the events to which they refer, and Cromwell’s immediate actions showed no trace of personal motives. There is no reason for doubting his statement that he begged in vain to be relieved from his command and allowed to retire into private life (Speech iii.) But the parliament could not afford to dispense with his services, and outside the parliament all looked to him and his influence for the accomplishment of the promised reforms.
‘Great things God has done by you in war, and good things men explicit from you in peace,’ wrote Erbery to L mwell, ‘to break in pieces the oppressor, to ease the oppressed of their burdens, to release the prisoners out of bonds, and to relieve poor smilies with bread’ (Nickolls, Letters addressed to Cromwell, p. 88).
All these things and more Cromwell had urged on the parliament in his despatches from Scotland (Carlyle, Letters cxl. clxxv.), and his return to his place in the house was followed by a marked increase in its legislative activity. Parliament took up once more the question of putting a limit to its own sittings, but could not be persuaded to fix the date of dissolution earlier than November 1654. His influence was more successfully exerted in the Act of Pardon and Oblivion
