Essex and Waller had, for the third or even fourth time, chiefly by the exertions of ever-zealous London, been fitted out with Armies; had marched forth together to subdue the West;—and ended in quite other results than that. The two Generals differed in opinion; did not march long together: Essex, urged by a subordinate, Lord Roberts, who had estates in Cornwall and hoped to get some rents out of them,[1] turned down thitherwards to the left; Waller bending up to the right;—with small issue either way. Waller’s last action was an indecisive, rather unsuccessful Fight, or day of skirmishing, with the King, at Cropredy Bridge on the border of Oxford and Northampton Shires,[2] three days before Marston Moor. After which both parties separated: the King to follow Essex, since there was now no hope in the North; Waller to wander London-wards, and gradually ‘lose his Army by desertion,’ as the habit of him was. As for the King, he followed Essex into Cornwall with effect; hemmed him in among the hills there, about Bodmin, Lostwithiel, Foy, with continual skirmishing, with ever-growing scarcity of victual; forced poor Essex to escape to Plymouth by the Fleet,[3] and leave his Army to shift for itself as best might be: the horse under Balfour to cut their way through; the foot under Skippon to lay-down their arms, cease to be soldiers, and march away ‘with staves in their hands’ into the wide world. This surrender was effected 1st September 1644, two months after Marston Moor. The Parliament’s and Cromwell’s worst anticipation, in that quarter, is fulfilled.
The Parliament made no complaint of Essex; with a kind of Roman dignity, they rather thanked him. ‘They proceeded to recruit Waller and him, summoned Manchester with Cromwell his Lieutenant-General to join them; by which three bodies, making again a considerable army, under the command of Manchester and Waller (for Essex lay ‘sick,’ or
