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Cromwell found himself in a very bad situation. He had no provisions but what he received by sea. He had not had the precaution to bring these in sufficient quantities; and his army was reduced to difficulties. He retired to Dunbar. Lesley followed him, and encamped on the heights of Lammermure, which overlook that town. There lay many difficult passes between Dunbar and Berwick, and of these Lesley had taken possession. The English general was reduced to extremities. He had even embraced a resolution of sending by sea all his foot and artillery to England, and of breaking through, at all hazards, with his cavalry. The madness of the Scottish ecclesiastics saved him from this loss and dishonor.

Night and day the ministers had been wrestling with the Lord in prayer, as they termed it; and they fancied that they had at last obtained the victory. Revelations, they said, were made them, that the sectarian and heretical army, together with Agag, meaning Cromwell, was delivered into their hands. Upon the faith of these visions, they forced their general, in spite of his remonstrances, to descend into the plain with a view of attacking the English in their retreat. Cromwell, looking through a glass, saw the enemy’s camp in motion; and foretold, without the help of revelations, that the Lord had delivered them into his hands. He gave orders immediately for an attack. In this battle it was easily observed, that nothing in military actions can supply the place of discipline and experience; and that, in the presence of real danger, where men are not accustomed to it, the fumes of enthusiasm presently dissipate, and lose their influence. The Scots, though double in number to the English, were soon put to flight, and pursued with great slaughter. The chief, if not only resistance, was made by one regiment of Highlanders, that part of the army which was the least infected with fanaticism. No victory could be more complete than this which was obtained by Cromwell. About three thousand of the enemy were slain, and nine thousand taken prisoners. Cromwell pursued his advantage, and took possession of Edinburgh and Leith. The remnant of the Scottish army fled to Stirling. The approach of the winter season, and an ague which seized Cromwell, kept him from pushing the victory any further.

The clergy made great lamentations, and told the Lord that to them it was little to sacrifice their lives and estates, but to him it was a great loss to suffer his elect to be destroyed.[*] They published a declaration containing the cause of their late misfortunes. These visitations they ascribed to the manifold provocations of the king’s house, of which, they feared, he had not yet thoroughly repented; the secret intrusion of malignants into the king’s family, and even into the camp; the leaving of a most malignant and profane guard of horse, who, being sent for to be purged, came two days before the defeat, and were allowed to fight with the army; the owning of the king’s quarrel by many without subordination to religion and liberty; and the carnal self-seeking of some, together with the neglect of family prayers by others.

Cromwell, having been so successful in the war of the sword, took up the pen against the Scottish ecclesiastics. He wrote them some polemical letters, in which he maintained the chief points of the Independent theology. He took care likewise, to retort on them their favorite argument of providence; and asked them, whether the Lord had not declared against them. But the ministers thought that the same events which to their enemies were judgments, to them were trials, and they replied, that the Lord had only hid his face for a time from Jacob. But Cromwell insisted that the appeal had been made to God in the most express and solemn manner; and that, in the fields of Dunbar, an irrevocable decision had been awarded in favor of the English army.[**]

* Sir Edward Walker.

* This is the best of Cromwell’s wretched compositions that
remains, and we shall here extract a passage out of it. “You
say you have not so learned Christ as to hang the equity of
your cause upon events. We could wish that blindness had not
been upon your eyes to all those marvellous dispensations
which God hath wrought lately in England. But did not you
solemnly appeal and pray? Did not we do so too? And ought
not we and you to think, with fear and trembling, of the
hand of the great God, in this mighty and strange appearance
of his, but can slightly call it an event? Were not both
your and our expectations renewed from time to time, while
we waited on God, to see which way he would manifest himself
upon our appeals? And shall we, after all these our prayers,
fastings, tears, expectations, and solemn appeals, call
these mere events? The Lord pity you. Surely we fear,
because it has been a merciful and a gracious deliverance to
us.

“I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, search after the
mind of the Lord in it towards you, and we shall help you by
our prayers, that you may find it. For yet, if we know our
heart at all, our bowels do in Christ yearn after the godly
in Scotland.” Thurloe, vol. i. p. 158.

1651.

The defeat of the Scots was regarded by the king as a fortunate event. The armies which fought on both sides, were almost equally his enemies; and the vanquished were now obliged to give him some more authority, and apply to him for support. The parliament was summoned to meet at St. Johnstone’s. Hamilton, Lauderdale, and all the engagers were admitted into court and camp, on condition of doing public penance, and expressing repentance for their late transgressions. Some malignants also crept in under various pretences. The intended humiliation or penance of the king was changed into the ceremony of his coronation, which was performed at Scone with great pomp and solemnity. But amidst all this appearance of respect, Charles remained in the hands of the most rigid Covenanters; and though treated with civility and courtesy by Argyle, a man of parts and address, he was little better than a prisoner, and was still exposed to all the rudeness and pedantry of the ecclesiastics.

This young prince was in a situation which very ill suited his temper and disposition. All those good qualities which he possessed, his affability, his wit, his gayety, his gentleman-like, disengaged behavior, were here so many vices; and his love of ease, liberty, and pleasure, was regarded as the highest enormity. Though artful in the practice of courtly dissimulation, the sanctified style was utterly unknown to him; and he never could mould his deportment into that starched grimace which the Covenanters required as an infallible mark of conversion. The duke of Buckingham was the only English courtier allowed to attend him; and by his ingenious talent for ridicule, he had rendered himself extremely agreeable to his master. While so many objects of derision surrounded them, it was difficult to be altogether insensible to the temptation, and wholly to suppress the laugh. Obliged to attend from morning to night at prayers and sermons, they betrayed evident symptoms of weariness or contempt. The clergy never could esteem the king sufficiently regenerated; and by continual exhortations, remonstrances, and reprimands, they still endeavored to bring him to a juster sense of his spiritual duty.

The king’s passion for the fair could not altogether be restrained. He had once been observed using some familiarities with a young woman; and a committee of ministers was appointed to reprove him for a behavior so unbecoming a covenanted monarch. The spokesman of the committee, one Douglas began with a severe aspect, informed the king, that great scandal had been given to the godly, enlarged on the heinous nature of sin, and concluded with exhorting his majesty, whenever he was disposed to amuse himself, to be more careful for the future in shutting the windows. This delicacy, so unusual to the place and to the character of the man, was remarked by the king; and he never forgot the obligation.