house was censuring Mr. Saltmarsh, a minister who had urged that if the king would not grant the parliamentary demands, he and the royal line should be ‘rooted out,’ Marten vindicated him, saying that ‘it were better one family should be destroyed than many.’ Upon this, we are told, there was a storm in the house, and many members ‘urged against the lewdness of Mr. Marten’s life, and the height and danger of his words.’ The indignation was such that he was committed to the tower for a time, and did not resume his seat for a year and a half. St. John was an erastian lawyer, who had pleaded for Hampden in the ship-money business, and was now about head of his profession. There was a darkness both in his skin and his character, which in contrast with his intellectual light won him the nickname of the ‘dark-lantern.’ He was strong for liberty of conscience, but had a lawyer’s belief in the necessity of monarchy, and would always take the shortest road to his end. With him Cromwell’s friendship was personal, and like all his personal friendships, lasting. He was the practical link between the enthusiasm of the military saint and the wisdom of the world. In concert with these men, Cromwell had anxiously watched and hastened the negotiations for the withdrawal of the Scotch. Their withdrawal, however, and the removal of the king in parliamentary custody to Holmby, though it simplified the dangers by which the cause was {317} threatened, by no means removed them. During the first half of 1647, the presbyterian managers were pressing forward their two projects of a reconciliation with the king and the disbanding of the army, necessary for the success of their cause. Their plan for dealing with the army was to send part of it to Ireland, under Massey and Skippon as generals, of whom one was a creature of their own, the other a strong presbyterian; to disband the rest, with the exception of a few regiments that could be managed; and to retain no one except Fairfax above the rank of colonel, a restriction aimed specially at Cromwell. Votes to this effect passed the house in the spring of 1647, not apparently without great pressure from the city, which was constantly presenting petitions against the army and lay preachers, roughly enforced by mobs of apprentices. But meanwhile the army had got a parliament of its own. The several troops in a regiment elected each a representative to form the regimental council, from which again one member was delegated to join the general council of the army. The president of this council seems generally to have been Berry, one of Cromwell’s special friends, whose character we have heard described by Baxter. The army had thus a regular organisation of opinion, and henceforward came to regard itself and to act as the true representative of the ‘godly interest’ in England, sanctioned by a higher than parliamentary authority. At first its demands were modest enough. They were all ready to go to Ireland, if only