On the subjugation of the west the English Parliament thought for the present only of securing its position within England itself. It has been seen how at the first outbreak of the war the Parliamentary leaders had taken the Scottish army into pay, and how even after the formation of the New Model they had tried to saddle it with the hardest of the work. In truth, the behaviour of the Parliament towards the Scots had been sufficiently shifty and ungracious; it had taken at any rate some care to pay its own troops, but it persistently neglected its allies, who had done excellent service in the north. Indeed, had Leven yielded to the English Parliament's wishes, had he not in fact been forced by the victory at Auldearn to retreat, the Scots instead of the English might have won the Naseby of the Civil War, an event which would have led to untold complications. Now however that the English army had done the work for itself, all parties in England became anxious to be rid of the Scots. Matters were somewhat confused by the fact that in 1646 Charles threw himself into the hands of Scotland; but by the close of the year it was agreed that the Scottish army should be paid off and withdrawn over the border, and that the King should be surrendered to the English, who had conquered him. The Parliament therefore gained its great object, a free hand for the management of its own affairs. It overlooked however in its calculations one important factor, the Army. [Sidenote: 1647.] At the opening of 1647 there was a general cry throughout England for peace. The country was exhausted; the finance of the Parliament was in hopeless disorder; and the people groaned under the enormous expense of the war. Obviously the most natural item for retrenchment was the Army; its work was done, and there was no further reason for its existence; it should therefore be disbanded or at any rate very greatly reduced. Moreover economy was not the only motive that prompted such a policy. The Parliament, united for the moment in the general desire to get quit of the Scots, fell back, almost immediately after this was accomplished, into faction. Presbyterians and Independents were the original names of the two rival parties, but for our purpose it is simpler to narrow them forthwith to Parliament and Army; for among many of the Presbyterian members who had held commands in the first years of the war, there existed a professional as well as a political and religious jealousy of the successful officers who had supplanted them. Parliament having created the Army by a vote thought that it could extinguish it by the same simple process; having used it as a ladder whereon to rise to undisputed supremacy it now proposed to kick it down. But such an Army was not disposed to make itself a plaything of Parliament.