The Works of Thomas Carlyle/Volume 6/Letter 35
TO THE HONOURABLE WILLIAM LENTHALL, ESQUIRE, SPEAKER TO THE HONOURABLE HOUSE OF COMMONS: THESE
Sir,—I gave you an account, the last night, of my marching to Langford House. Whither I came this day, and immediately sent them in a Summons. The Governor desired I should send two Officers to treat with him; and I accordingly appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Hewson and Major Kelsey thereunto. The Treaty produced the Agreement, which I have here enclosed to you.
The General, I hear, is advanced as far West as Collumpton, and hath sent some Horse and Foot to Tiverton. It is earnestly desired that more Foot might march up to him;—it being convenient that we stay “here” a day for our Foot that are behind and coming up.
I wait your answer to my Letter last night from Wallop: I shall desire that your pleasure may be speeded to me;—and rest, Sir, your humble servant,
Basing is black ashes, then; and Langford is ours, the Garrison ‘to march forth tomorrow at twelve of the clock, being the 18th instant.’[2] And now the question is, Shall we attack Dennington or not?—
Colonel Dalbier, a man of Dutch birth, well known to readers of the old Books, is with Cromwell at present; his Second in command. It was from Dalbier that Cromwell first of all learned the mechanical part of soldiering; he had Dalbier to help him in drilling his Ironsides; so says Heath, credible on such a point. Dennington Castle was not besieged at present; it surrendered next Spring to Dalbier.[3] Cromwell returned to Fairfax; served through Winter with him in the West, till all ended there.
About a month before the date of this Letter, the King had appeared again with some remnant of force, got together in Wales; with intent to relieve Chester, which was his key to Ireland: but this force too he saw shattered to pieces on Rowton Heath, near that City.[4] He had also had an eye towards the great Montrose in Scotland, who in these weeks was blazing at his highest there: but him too David Lesley with dragoons, emerging from the mist of the Autumn morning, on Philipshaugh near Selkirk, had, in one fell hour, trampled utterly out. The King had to retire to Wales again; to Oxford and obscurity again.
On the 14th of next March, as we said, Sir Ralph Hopton surrendered himself in Cornwall.[5] On the 22d of the same month, Sir Jacob Astley, another distinguished Royalist General, the last of them all,—coming towards Oxford with some small force he had gathered,—was beaten and captured at Stow among the Wolds of Gloucestershire:[6] surrendering himself, the brave veteran said, or is reported to have said, ‘You have now done your work, and may go to play,—unless you will fall out among yourselves.’
On Monday night, towards twelve of the clock, 27th April 1646, the King in disguise rode out of Oxford, somewhat uncertain whitherward,—at length towards Newark and the Scots Army.[7] On the Wednesday before, Oliver Cromwell had returned to his place in Parliament.[8] Many detached Castles and Towns still held out, Ragland Castle even till the next August; scattered fires of an expiring conflagration, that need to be extinguished with effort and in detail. Of all which victorious sieges, with their elaborate treaties and moving accidents, the theme of every tongue during that old Summer, let the following one brief glimpse, notable on private grounds, suffice us at present.
Oxford, the Royalist metropolis, a place full of Royalist dignitaries and of almost inexpugnable strength, had it not been so disheartened from without,—was besieged by Fairfax himself in the first days of May. There was but little fighting, there was much negotiating, tedious consulting of Parliament and King; the treaty did not end in surrender till Saturday 20th June. And now, dated on the Monday before, at Holton, a country Parish in those parts, there is this still legible in the old Church Register,—intimately interesting to some friends of ours! ‘Henry Ireton, Commissary-General to Sir Thomas Fairfax, and Bridget, Daughter to Oliver Cromwell, Lieutenant-General of the Horse to the said Sir Thomas Fairfax,—were married, by Mr. Dell, in the Lady Whorwood her House in Holton, 15th June 1646.—Alban Eales, Rector.’[9]
Treton, we are to remark, was one of Fairfax’s Commissioners on the Treaty for surrendering Oxford, and busy under the walls there at present: Holton is some five miles east of the City; Holton House we guess by various indications to have been Fairfax’s own quarter. Dell, already and afterwards well known, was the General’s Chaplain at this date. Of ‘the Lady Whorwood’ I have traces, rather in the Royalist direction; her strong moated House, very useful to Fairfax in those weeks, still stands conspicuous in that region, though now under new figure and ownership; drawbridge become fixed, deep ditch now dry, moated island changed into a flower-garden;—‘rebuilt in 1807.’ Fairfax’s Lines, we observe, extended ‘from Headington Hill to Marston,’ several miles in advance of Holton House, then ‘from Marston across the Cherwell, and over from that to the Isis on the North side of the City’; southward and elsewhere, the besieged, ‘by a dam at St. Clement’s Bridge, had laid the country all under water’:[10]—in such scene, with the treaty just ending and general Peace like to follow, did Ireton welcome his Bride,—a brave young damsel of twenty-one; escorted, doubtless by her Father among others, to the Lord General’s house; and there, by the Rev. Mr. Dell, solemnly handed over to new destinies!
This wedding was on Monday 15th June; on Saturday came the final signing of the treaty: and directly thereupon, on Monday next, Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice took the road, with their attendants, and their passes to the sea-coast; a sight for the curious. On Tuesday ‘there went about 300 persons, mostly of quality’; and on Wednesday all the Royalist force, ‘3,000’ (or say 2,000) ‘to the Eastward, 500 to the North’; with ‘drums beating, colours flying,’ for the last time; all with passes, with agitated thoughts and outlooks: and in sacred Oxford, as poor Wood intimates,[11] the abomination of desolation supervened!—Oxford surrendering with the King’s sanction quickened other surrenders; Ragland Castle itself, and the obstinate old Marquis, gave-in before the end of August: and the First Civil War, to the last ember of it, was extinct.
The Parliament, in these circumstances, was now getting itself ‘recruited,’—its vacancies filled-up again. The Royalist Members, who had deserted three years ago, had been, without much difficulty, successively ‘disabled,’ as their crime came to light: but to issue new writs for new elections, while the quarrel with the King still lasted, was a matter of more delicacy; this too, however, had at length been resolved upon, the Parliament Cause now looking so decidedly prosperous, in the Autumn of 1645. Gradually, in the following months, the new Members were elected, above Two-hundred-and-thirty of them in all. These new Members, ‘Recruiters,’ as Anthony Wood and the Royalist world reproachfully call them, were, by the very fact of their standing candidates in such circumstances, decided Puritans all,—Independents many of them. Colonel, afterwards Admiral Blake (for Taunton), Ludlow, Ireton (for Appleby), Algernon Sidney, Hutchinson known by his Wife’s Memoirs, were among these new Members. Fairfax, on his Father’s death some two years hence, likewise came in.[12]
- ↑ King’s Pamphlets, small 4to, no. 229, art. 19 (no. 42 of The Weekly Account).
- ↑ Sprigge, p. 145.
- ↑ 1st April 1646 (Rushworth, vi. 252).
- ↑ 24th September 1645 (Rushworth, vi. 17; Lord Digby’s account of it, Ormond Papers, ii. 90).
- ↑ Hopton’s own account of it, Ormond Papers, ii. 109-26.
- ↑ Rushworth, vi. 139-41.
- ↑ Ibid. vi. 267; Iter Carolinum.
- ↑ Cromwelliana, o. 31.
- ↑ Parish Register of Holton (copied, Oct. 1846). Poor Noble (i. 134) seems to have copied this same Register, and to have misread his own Note: giving instead of Holton Nalton, an imaginary place; and instead of June January, an impossible date. See antea, p. 70; postea, Letter XLI. p 25.
- ↑ Rushworth, vi. 279-285.
- ↑ Fasti, ii. 58, sec. edit.
- ↑ The Writ is issued 16th March 1647-8 (Commons Journals).