The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part E.: From Charles I. to Cromwell — David Hume — John Shaqi
The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part E.: From Charles I. to Cromwell
David Hume · en
Newcastle, having carried on the attack of Hull for some time, was beat
off by a sally of the garrison, and suffered so much that he thought
proper to raise the siege. About the same time, Manchester, who advanced
from the eastern associated counties, having joined Cromwell and
young Fairfax, obtained a considerable victory over the royalists at
Horncastle; where the two officers last mentioned gained renown by their
conduct and gallantry. And though fortune had thus balanced her favors,
the king's party still remained much superior in those parts of England;
and had it not been for the garrison of Hull, which kept Yorkshire in
awe, a conjunction of the northern forces with the army in the south
might have been made, and had probably enabled the king, instead
of entering on the unfortunate, perhaps imprudent, enterprise of
Gloucester, to march directly to London, and put an end to the war.[**]
* Rush, vol. vi. p. 275.
** Warwick, p. 261. Walker, p. 278. laudable.
While the military enterprises were carried on with vigor in England,
and the event became every day more doubtful, both parties cast their
eye towards the neighboring kingdoms, and sought assistance for the
finishing of that enterprise in which their own forces experienced such
furious opposition. The parliament had recourse to Scotland; the king to
Ireland.
When the Scottish Covenanters obtained that end for which they so
earnestly contended, the establishment of Presbyterian discipline in
their own country, they were not satisfied, but indulged still in an
ardent passion for propagating, by all methods, that mode of religion in
the neighboring kingdoms. Having flattered themselves, in the fervor of
their zeal, that by supernatural assistances they should be enabled to
carry their triumphant covenant to the gates of Rome itself, it behoved
them first to render it prevalent in England, which already showed so
great a disposition to receive it. Even in the articles of pacification,
they expressed a desire of uniformity in worship with England; and the
king, employing general expressions, had approved of this inclination as
pious and no sooner was there an appearance of a rupture, than the English
parliament, in order to allure that nation into a close confederacy,
openly declared their wishes of ecclesiastical reformation, and of
imitating the example of their northern brethren.[*] When war was
actually commenced, the same artifices were used, and the Scots beheld,
with the utmost impatience, a scene of action of which they could not
deem themselves indifferent spectators. Should the king, they said, be
able by force of arms to prevail over the parliament of England, and
reestablish his authority in that powerful kingdom, he will undoubtedly
retract all those concessions which, with so many circumstances of
violence and indignity, the Scots have extorted from him. Besides a
sense of his own interest, and a regard to royal power, which has been