chief of all the forces of the Commonwealth. Fairfax’s resignation was caused by unwillingness to attack the Scots unless they actually invaded England. Cromwell, on the other hand, held that it was just and necessary to forestall their invasion. The energy with which he endeavoured to convert Fairfax to these views is the best refutation of the theory that Cromwell intrigued to obtain his post. Whitelocke and Ludlow, who record his arguments, were both at the time convinced of his sincerity. It was not till long afterwards that they came to doubt it (Ludlow, Memoirs, 122; Whitelocke, Memorials, f. 460). ‘I have not sought these things ; truly I have been called unto them by the Lord,’ was Cromwell’s own account of his promotion (Letter cxxxiv.) Less than a month after his appointment Cromwell entered Scotland with sixteen thousand men (22 July 1650). He found David Leslie entrenched in a strong position near Edinburgh, and spent a month in fruitless attempts to draw him from it. On 30 Aug. the council of war decided to retreat to Dunbar and fortify that place, to await there the arrival of provisions and reinforcements. Leslie pursued, and succeeded in seizing the passes beyond Dunbar and the hills behind it. The Scots boasted that they had Cromwell in a worse pound than the king had Essex in Cornwall. Cromwell himself, in a letter written the day before the battle, admitted the greatness of the danger. ‘We are upon an engagement very difficult. The enemy hath blocked up our way at the pass at Copperspath, through which we cannot get without almost a miracle, he lieth so upon the hills that we know not how to come that way without great difficulty; and our lying here daily consumeth our men, who fall sick beyond imagination’ (Letter cxxxix.) On the evening of the day on which these words were written the Scots began to move down from the hill to the narrow space at its loot with the intention of attacking. Cromwell saw the opportunity their movement gave him, and the advantage of seizing the offensive himself. Early on the morning of 3 Sept. he fell on their exposed right wing with an overwhelming force, and after a sharp struggle threw their whole army into confusion. ‘The sun rising upon the sea,’ says one of Cromwell’s captains, ‘I heard Noll say, "Now let God arise, and let his enemies be scattered;" and he following us as we slowly marched, I heard him say, “I profess they run,” and then was the Scots army all in disorder, and running both right wing and left and main battle. They routed one another after we had done their work on their right wing’ (Memoirs of Captain Hodgson, p. 148). Three thousand men fell in the battle, and ten thousand were taken prisoners. Edinburgh, Leith, and the eastern portion of the Scottish lowlands passed into Cromwell’s hands. But he made no attempt to press his victory to the utmost, and seemed more solicitous to improve it by argument than by arms. From the moment the Scotch war began Cromwell’s strongest wish had been to come to some agreement with the Scots. ‘Since we came to Scotland,’ wrote Cromwell in his Dunbar despatch, ‘it hath been our desire and longing to have avoided blood in this business, by reason that God hath a people here fearing his name, though deceived.’
With this object he had begun the campaign by a series of declarations and letters protesting his affection to the Scots, and endeavouring to convince them of their error in adopting the Stuart cause. In spite of the ill success of his overtures, he was urged to persist in them by many leading independents. Ireton wrote from Ireland expressing to Cromwell the fear that he had not been sufficiently forbearing and long suffering with the Scots. St. John reminded him that while the Irish were a people of atheists and papists, to be ruled with a rod of iron, the Scots were many of them truly children of God. ‘We must still endeavour to heap coals of fire on their heads, and carry it with as much mercy and moderation towards them as may consist with safety’ (Nickolls, Letters addressed to Cromwell, pp. 25–73). In accordance with those views, which were also his own, Cromwell now began a new series of expostulations, directed particularly against the Scotch clergy and their claims to guide public policy, he charged them with pretending a reformation and laying the foundation of it in getting to themselves worldly power; with perverting the covenant, which in the main intention was spiritual, to serve politics and carnal ends ; with claiming to be the infallible expositors of the covenant and the scriptures, his own theory of the position of the clergy he summed up in half a dozen words: ‘We look at ministers as helpers of, not lords over, God's people.’
In equally vigorous language he refuted their claim to suppress dissent in order to suppress error. ‘Your pretended fear lest error should step in is like the man who would keep all wine out of the country lest men should be drunk. It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon a supposition he may abuse it. When he doth abuse it, judge’ (Letter cxlviii.)
Once more he stated the conditions on
