The sums raised within the parliament's quarters from the beginning of the war to 1647 are reckoned in a pamphlet of that year, quoted in Sinclair's _Hist. of the Revenue_, i. 283, at £17,512,400. But, on reference to the tract itself, I find this written at random. The contributions, however, were really very great; and, if we add those to the king, and the loss by waste and plunder, we may form some judgment of the effects of the civil war. [291] The independents raised loud clamours against the Scots army; and the northern counties naturally complained of the burthen of supporting them as well as of their excesses. Many passages in Whitelock's journal during 1645 and 1646 relate to this. Hollis endeavours to deny or extenuate the charges; but he is too prejudiced a writer, and Baillie himself acknowledges a great deal. Vol. ii. pp. 138, 142, 146. [292] The chief imputation against Manchester was for not following up his victory in the second battle of Newbury, with which Cromwell openly taxed him; see Ludlow, i. 133. There certainly appears to have been a want of military energy on this occasion; but it is said by Baillie (ii. 76) that all the general officers, Cromwell not excepted, concurred in Manchester's determination. Essex had been suspected from the time of the affair at Brentford, or rather from the battle of Edgehill (Baillie and Ludlow); and his whole conduct, except in the celebrated march to relieve Gloucester, confirmed a reasonable distrust either of his military talents, or of his zeal in the cause. "He loved monarchy and nobility," says Whitelock, p. 108, "and dreaded those who had a design to destroy both." Yet Essex was too much a man of honour to enter on any private intrigues with the king. The other peers employed under the parliament, Stamford, Denbigh, Willoughby, were not successful enough to redeem the suspicions that fell upon their zeal. All our republican writers, such as Ludlow and Mrs. Hutchinson in that age, Mrs. Macauley and Mr. Brodie more of late, speak acrimoniously of Essex. "Most will be of opinion," says Mr. B. (_History of British Empire_, iii. 565), "that as ten thousand pounds a year out of the sequestered lands were settled upon him for his services, he was rewarded infinitely beyond his merits." The reward was doubtless magnificent; but the merit of Essex was this, that he made himself the most prominent object of vengeance in case of failure, by taking the command of an army to oppose the king in person at Edgehill: a command of which no other man in his rank was capable, and which could not, at that time, have been intrusted to any man of inferior rank without dissolving the whole confederacy of the parliament.