stand of arms, were taken, and amongst the carriages that of the king containing his private papers: a fatal loss, for it contained the most damning evidences of the king's double-dealing and mental reservations, which the parliament took dare to publish, to Charles's irreparable damage. Clarendon accuses the roundheads of killing above a hundred women, many of them of quality, but other evidence proves that this was false, the only women who were rudely treated were a number of wild Irish ones, who were armed with skeans, knives a foot long, and who used them like so many maniacs.
Cromwell, it seems, had been desired to inform the commons of what took place, and in his letter to Lenthal, the speaker, after relating the defeat and the particulars of the capture of prisoners and baggage, he adds characteristically, "Sir, this is none other but the hand of God, and to Him alone belongs the glory, wherein none are to share with Him. The general served you with all faithfulness and honour; and the best commendation I can give him is that I dare say he attributes all to God, and would rather perish than assume to himself. Which is an honest and a thriving way; and yet as much for bravery may be given to him in this action as to a man. Honest men served you faithfully in this action. Sir, they are all trusty, and I beseech you in the name of God not to discourage them. I wish this action may beget thankfulness and humility in all that are concerned in it. He that ventures his life for the liberty of his country, I wish he trust God for the liberty of his conscience, and you for the liberty he fights for."
The next day Fairfax sent colonel Fiennes and his regiment to London with the prisoners and the colours taken, above a hundred of them, and he prayed that a day of thanksgiving might be appointed for the victory. But the most essential fruit of the victory was the reading in public and the parliament of the king's letters. In these the affair of the duke of Lorraine came to light—the attempt to bring in the Lorraines, the French, the Danes, and the Irish, to put down the parliament, whilst he had been making the most sacred protestations to that body that he abhorred bringing in foreign soldiers. There appeared his promise to give the catholics full liberty of conscience, whilst he had been vowing constantly that he would never abrogate the laws against popery. His letter to his wife, showing that at the treaty of Uxbridge he was merely conceding the name of a parliament, with a full determination, on the first opportunity, to declare it no parliament at all. These exposures were so dreadful, and gave such an assurance that the king was restrained by no moral principle, that the royalists would not believe the documents genuine till they had examined them for themselves; and for this examination the parliament gave the amplest opportunity. There were copies of his letters to the queen, in which he complained of the quarrels and harassing jealousies of his own courtiers and supporters, and of his getting rid of as many as he could by sending them on one pretence or another to her. The sight of these things struck his own party dumb with a sense of his hollowness and ingratitude; and the battle of Naseby itself was declared far less fatal to his interests than the contents of his cabinet. From this moment his ruin was certain, and the remainder of the campaign was only the last feeble struggles of the expiring cause. His adherents stood out rather for their own chance of making terms than from any possible hope of success.
The defeated and dishonoured king did not stop to pass a single night at Leicester, but rode on to Ashby that evening, and after a few hours' rest pursued his course towards Hereford. At Hereford, Rupert, fearful of the parliamentary army attacking their only remaining strong quarter, the west, left the king and hastened to Bristol, to put it into a state of defence. Charles himself continued his march into Wales, and took up his head-quarters at Raglan Castle, the seat of the marquis of Worcester. There, pretty sure that Fairfax was intending to go westward, he spent the time as though nothing had been amiss, hunting like his father, when he should have been studying the retrieval of his affairs, and passing the evenings in entertainments and giving of audiences. The most probable cause of Charles thus spending his time there and at Cardiff, to which he next retired, is that he was urging a transmission of an Irish army, and expecting it there. At the same time he could there more easily communicate with Rupert regarding the defence of the west of England.
Fairfax, supported by the brilliant genius and indefatigable exertions of Cromwell, proceeded to attack that last remaining stronghold of royalty—for Scarborough, Carlisle, and Pontefract were reduced in July by the Scots and the parliamentarians. The first encounter which they had was with the clubmen, who were out in the neighbourhood of Blandford, Dorchester, Shaftesbury, and Sherborne, to the number of ten thousand, led by a Mr. Hollis, of Dorchester, a Mr. Newman, and Sir Lewis Dives, the brother-in-law of lord Digby. Some of them were taken at Shaftesbury, and Hollis and Newman waited on Fairfax, demanding a safe-conduct to go to the king and parliament with petitions, which he refused, but behaved civilly to them lest they should join colonel Goring at Taunton. Cromwell cams across another body of them between Sherborne and Shaftesbury, and rode up to two thousand of them posted in an old encampment on Hamblaton Hill. They told him that ten thousand were assembling to demand the restoration of their comrades taken at Shaftesbury. Cromwell ordered them to return home and take care of their property, but they fired on him, on which he fell upon them, dispersed them, and took three hundred prisoners, whom he described as very silly, ignorant creatures, who promised that if he would let them go, they would be hanged before they would turn out again. At Sherborne he attacked Sir Lewis Dives, and took him, finding upon him letters containing royal commissions for raising clubmen, which plainly showed the nature of the institution.
The parliament forces under Cromwell marched on Bristol, where Rupert lay, whilst Fairfax met and defeated Goring at Lamport, and then besieged and took Bridgewater on the 23rd of July. Matters now appeared so threatening, that Rupert proposed to Charles to sue for peace; but the king rejected the advice with warmth, declaring that, speaking either as a soldier or a statesman, he saw nothing but ruin before him, yet as a Christian, he was sure God would not
