liers, though shining qualities in individual gentlemen, had a strong tendency to render them little amenable to military discipline, and as a consequence, no match for adversaries possessed of equal hardihood, and habituated to soldier-like obedience. "The king's horse," observes Lord Clarendon, "though bold and vigorous upon action and execution, were always less patient of duty and ill accommodation, than they should be." (2) Not so with Hazelrigge's brigade, or Cromwell's Ironsides. In the very outset of the civil war, Oliver had foreseen and provided against this danger. "The royal troops," said he to Hampden, "are gentlemen, sons and younger sons of persons of quality; do you think that the spirits of base and mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen that have honour, and courage, and resolution in them. You must get men of a spirit, and take it not ill that I say, of a spirit that is like to go as far as these gentlemen will go, or else I am sure you will be beaten still." Hampden liked his kinsman's scheme, but thought it impracticable. "I told him "-continued Cromwell"that I could do somewhat in it; and truly I raised such men as had the fear of God before them, and made some conscience of what they did, and from that day forwards they were never beaten." (3)

(2) "Those under the king's commanders grew insensibly into all the license, disorders, and impieties with which they rebuked the rebels; and they, into great discipline, diligence, and sobriety, which begot courage and resolution in them, and notable dexterity in achievements and enterprises :-insomuch as one side seemed to fight for monarchy with the weapons of confusion, and the other to destroy the king and government with all the principles and regularity of monarchy.."-Clar. Hist. Reb. Vol. 3, p. 384.

(3) "Most of Cromwell's men were freeholders, and freeholders' sons, who upon matter of conscience engaged in the quarrel, and being thus well armed within by the satisfaction of their own consciences, and without by good iron arms, they would as one man stand firmly and charge desperately.-Whitelocke.

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"Pray raise honest, godly men, and I will have them in my regiment.”—Cromwell's Correspondence, 2nd August 1643. "Hasten your horses, a few hours may undo you. I beseech you be careful what Captains of horse you choose;-what men be mounted;a few honest men are better than numbers. if you send such men as Essex hath sent, it will be to little purpose. My troops increase, I have a lovely company, you would respect them did you know them. They are no Ana-Baptists, they are honest, sober Christians :-they expect to be used as such."-Ibid Sept. 1643. "Indeed we never find our men so cheerful as when there is work to do."-1b. 5th Sept. 1643, "We, (Cromwell and his Ironsides,)". never charged but we routed the enemy. God made Prince Rupert's horse as stubble to our swords."--Ibid 5th July 1644.

This was no vaunt,-for Cromwell never boasted.

"Upon the ground where they had kneeled,

His men would die or win the field,—”

and friends and adversaries alike bear testimony, that in his camp,"the most rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest resolution; that his troops moved to victory with the precision of machines, while burning with the wildest fanatacism of crusaders."

In no campaign were the characteristics of the contending armies brought more prominently forward than in that of 1643. During the spring and early summer of that year, it was felt by both parties, that on the capture, or the relief, of Gloucester, the fate of the entire war depended. "The bright city," therefore, as the Saxons, or "the godly city," as its garrison and indwellers termed it, was besieged closely, and resolutely defended. The cavalier wits and ballad mongers had ridiculed,-not perhaps unreasonably, the sour looks and woe-begone appearance of the envoys sent by Governor Massey to the camp of Charles. In the event however, the townsmen with their "lean, pale, sharp, and dismal visages" had proved too much for their beleaguering enemies. Main force they vigorously repelled, but the assault in time became a blockade ;-supplies ran short, and "famine was sore" within the city walls. The Earl of Essex, with a few brigades of horse and a strong force of infantry composed mainly of London apprentices, and the city train-bands,-" volunteers which were as yet a cake not turned, a kind of soldiers not wholly drawn off from the plough and domestic employments,❞— (4) marched to the rescue; the royal troops, for some inexplicable reason shunned a battle, and the siege was raised, when the garrison was literally reduced to "one barrel of powder, and all other provisions answerable."

(4) "Historie of the Military Government of the Citie of Gloucester." Somers Tracts, Sir Walter Scott's Edition, 4to. 1811., Vol. 5, p. 304. The writer adds, p. 320,"no crosse showe or doubtful resolution did hinder the businesse, all suspended their private cares, and the women and children acted their parts in making up the defects of the fortifications." Somers ut supra, 320. A city thus defended is not often taken.

Thus foiled, King Charles and his advisers fancied that a dexterous counter-march, which should place their main body betwixt the Roundhead forces and London, would be a master stroke of strategy, more than sufficient to compensate for their defeat at Gloucester. It might even give them possession of the Metropolis, at that time not only ungarrisoned but undefended, save by the fierce enthusiasm of its citizens, and their hatred of the House of Stuart. (5)

The sparkling wit of Hudibras, and the grave narrative of May, the Parliamentary historian, were alike employed upon the tragi-comic scene which followed.

"The women left no stone unturned

In which the cause might be concerned,
Brought in their childrens' spoons and whistles,
To purchase swords, carbines and pistols.
What did they do, or what leave undone,
That might advance the cause in London?
Marched rank and file, with drum and ensign,
T'intrench the city for defencing,

Raised ramparts with their own soft hands,
To put the enemy to stands.

Fell to their pickaxes and tools,

And helped the men to dig, like moles;

From ladies down to oyster wenches,

Labouring like pioneers in trenches." &c., &c.

(5) At no period of their dynasty, save perhaps during the few months of delirium which immediately succeeded the Restoration, were the Stuarts popular in their Metropolis. James I., displeased with the city for refusing monies he had no right to demand of them, once threatened to remove the Court to Windsor. "Your Majesty," retorted a bold burgher, "may remove the Court, but you can't remove the Thames from London." Intense was the contempt which the Londoners,-long accustomed to "Bluff Harry' and "England's Elizabeth,"-entertained for the debauched, profligate, and cowardly pedant who succeeded them. A king, whose slabbering, and very often drunken, lips were perpetually vomiting forth great swelling words, which he feared to justify, and who would have been ferocious, but that cowardice restricted him to mean cruelty, was little fitted to rule over free Englishmen who knew their rights, and knowing dared maintain them. "I do not curse the foolish old man" said Jenkin Vincent ;-"but I would have them carry things a peg lower. If they were to see on a plain field, thirty thousand such pikes as I have seen in the Artillery Gardens, it would not be their long-haired courtiers would help them, I trow."-Fortunes of Nigel, and see Sir W. Scott's note on the passage.

We laugh. No doubt the poet's satire charmed those Cavaliers who lived to see the Royal restoration, but they at this time, had surely little cause to laugh, whose galling insolence and exasperating oppressions had roused the spirit of resistance at every fireside in their master's capital. Pym, at head quarters, knew how to inflame their party zeal. Orders were issued, not only to fortify the city walls and posterns, but to draw around them a deep trench, twelve miles in circumference. "And now" (says

May) "it became the practice for thousands to go out every day and dig, all professions, trades, and occupations, taking their turns. Not the inferior tradesmen, only, but gentlemen of the best quality, knights and ladies, for the encouragement of others, resorted to the work daily; not as spectators, but assisters, carrying themselves spades, mattocks, and other suitable instruments."(6) Of course, so long as this fit of enthusiasm lasted, train-bands, or no train-bands to aid them, the merchant princes and the shopkeepers of London, backed by those fair ones, whom, at our civic banquets we still delight to toast, as the "buxom widows, charming wives, and merry maidens," of our respective companies, —would have battled strenuously for Cornhill, Cheap and Ludgate. Nor would the London 'prentices have remained inactive. At all times turbulent, and very often dangerous, these youths were true

(6) The high hearted matronage and maidenhood of Gloucester had done the like a very few weeks earlier,

"Twas but the tender fierceness of the dove,

Pecking the hand that hovers o'er her mate."

"Thursday, August 10th [1643]-"Our women and maids wrought all this afternoone in the little meade out of our workes in the very faces of those [royal] horse in fetching in turfe for the repairing of our workes.- -Saturday September 2nd.-The Welshmen at the Vineyard had now at last gotten the heart to advance as far as the Town Ham, where, placing themselves in a ditch, they played [i.e. fired] upon our maides and work-men that were fetching turffes out of the little meade; but our great gunne at the pen, speaking some harsh language to them, frighted them away, &c., &c.Sept. 5.-It was admirable to observe the cheerful readinesse of yong and old of both sexes, as well as the better as inferior sort of people, by day and night to labour in the further fortification of our citie. Nay, our maides and others wrought daily without the works and in the little mead, in fetching in turfe in the very faces of our enemies." The very children caught the enthusiastic spirit of their elders. A little boy of Captain Nelme's company, "having shot away all his bullets, charged his musket with a pebble stone, and killed a commander therewith."-Diary of the Siege of Gloucester, by Dorney, Esq., Towne-clarke of the said City." Cited in Fosbrooke's Gloucester, 4to., 1819, pp. 68, 69, 77, and 79.

"John

successors of the "roaring lads," immortalized in the brave old ballad which Samuel Johnson loved to hum.

"Oh then bespoke the 'prentices all,
Living in London, both proper and tall,
In a kind letter, sent straight to the Queen,
For Essex sake they would fight all." (7)

That Earl of Essex, decapitated by Queen Elizabeth, though rash and headstrong, possessed all those gallant and endearing qualities which men venerate, and the softer sex adore; (8)—he was long the idol of the London 'prentices and craftsmen, and sire to him who led the city train-bands against Charles.

To us, accustomed to regard warfare as a scientific contest, in which rapidity of movement and dexterous strategy, rather than dash or bravery, decide the victory, the tardy marches and counter marches of our hard-headed and heavy-handed forefathers appear inexplicable. Both leaders, though unconscious probably that any higher species of military skill existed, than just sufficed to manœuvre awkwardly clumsy volunteers and raw recruits, or to lead resolutely at a headlong gallop, dashing Cavaliers against intrepid

(7) See "Queen Elizabeth's Champion," Evans' Old Ballads, Svo., 1810, Vol. 3 p. 155. The burden of this song is very quaint and comical, and when "toot, toot, tooted," in his "bow-wow way," by the Lichfield lexicographer, as he and Jamie Boswell perambulated the Canongate and High Street, Edinburgh, at midnight, during the autumn of 1773, must I think have more astonished than delighted his chance auditors.

"Raderer-two, taderer-te,

Raderer, tandorer, tan-do-re!"

(8) A somewhat later ballad, called " The Winning of Cales," [Cadiz] and written like its predecessor, when Essex was in high favour at Court, (about 1596), preserves a charming trait in his gallant, generous, and chivalrous character.

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"Now,' quoth the noble Earl, Courage my soldiers all!

Fight and be valiant ;-the spoil you shall have,

And be well rewarded all, from the great to the small,
But see the women and children you save.'

Dub-a-dub, dub-a-dub, thus strike the drums,
Tantara, tantara, thus the Englishman comes."

Percy Reliques, Vol. 2, p. 229, 8vo edit., 1810. Mr. Evans's very curious collection, contains also two short pieces written immediately, or at all events very shortly, after the execution of the gallant earl;-the one "A lamentable ballad," and the other an at least equally "Lamentable ditty," in honour of the beloved but fallen favourite.

C