tiation ended in the army, to the number of six thousand men, laying down their arms and surrendering their guns, of which there were forty-nine, all of brass. Deane, who seems to have been left, by the desertion of his seniors, in actual command of the artillery, was one of the twenty officers who formed this council and signed the ‘attestation’ or published report of its proceedings. Of these twenty, seven only held commissions in the ‘New Model,’ and all in higher grades; it would seem probable that these seven had supported Skippon's proposal. Deane was appointed comptroller of the ordnance, and commanded the artillery at Naseby (14 June 1645), where his steady fire broke the force of Rupert's headlong charge. At the reduction of Bristol (11 Sept.) his ‘dexterity, industry, and resolution’ were specially commended. He continued with Fairfax in his conquering march into the west country; a march of sieges and fortified positions, in which the work of the artillery was necessarily important. He was one of the commissioners to arrange the terms of Hopton's surrender at Truro (14 March 1645–6); and afterwards took part in the siege of Oxford, which surrendered, by the king's orders, on 20 June.
The royal party being crushed, mutual jealousy speedily arose between the army and the parliament; and on 28 May 1647 the parliament appointed Cromwell to be lord-general of the forces in Ireland, and Deane to be with him as lieutenant of the artillery. Their scarcely veiled object was to get Cromwell out of the way; and the associating Deane with him seems to show that Deane was by this time recognised as a prominent member of the Cromwellian party. Cromwell declined the appointment, choosing to remain in England; and Deane, throwing in his lot with his kinsman, decided in the same way. The quarrel was, in fact, rapidly coming to a head. On 4 June the control of the king's person was assumed by Joyce, who brought him to the army. At Newmarket he was waited on by many of the superior officers, Deane among them, who kissed the king's hand. It was apparently their wish to win the king over to their party as against the parliament, and though continuing to detain him, they affected to deplore the violence to which he had been subjected. Joyce asserted that what he had done was by Cromwell's order; but this Cromwell denied in the most positive and violent manner, and is said on one occasion to have been prevented from doing Joyce ‘some mischief’ only by the interposition of Deane and others (Harl. Misc. viii. 304).
Through all this period Deane appears to have been acting as Cromwell's trusted partisan; and when the royalist uprising in 1648 called the army again to the field, Deane, in command of a regiment, accompanied Cromwell, first into Wales, where he was actively engaged in the reduction of Pembroke Castle, and afterwards to the north, where in the battle of Preston (17 Aug.) the movement of the right wing under Deane's command had a determining influence on the fortune of the day. The contribution of Deane's regiment to the ‘Remonstrance of the Army’ (20 Nov. 1648) was presumably drawn up by Deane himself, or at any rate in strict accordance with his views; and its most important clauses are:—
‘That the parliament be desired to take a review of their late declaration and charge against the king, as also to consider his own act in taking the guilt of bloodshed upon himself; and accordingly to proceed against him as an enemy to the kingdom.’
‘That strict inquiry be made after the chief fomenters, actors, and abettors of the late war, especially those who were the chief encouragers and inviters of the Scotch army; and that exemplary justice may be accordingly executed, to the terror of evil-doers and the rejoicing of all honest men.’
In addition to which, among other matters of detail, was the very practical demand that ‘speedy supplies should be sent to the army,’ so as to put an end to ‘that which is so insufferable for us to take and so intolerable for the people to bear, namely, free quarters.’ This demand, in the first instance, was not attended to. The army marched on London, and while Colonel Pride was told off to ‘purge’ the House of Commons, Fairfax wrote (8 Dec.) to the lord mayor and corporation that as the arrears of the assessment due to the army had not been paid as demanded, he had ordered ‘Colonel Deane and some others to seize the treasuries of Goldsmiths' Hall and Weavers' Hall.’ ‘Two regiments of foot and several troops of horse accordingly took up their quarters in Blackfriars and some at Ludgate and Paul's Church. They likewise secured the treasuries … and took away from Weavers' Hall above 20,000l.’ (Rushworth, ii. 1356). The proceeding, as Fairfax pointed out to the lord mayor, was the same as ‘our forces have been ordered to do by the parliament in the several counties of the kingdom where assessments have not been paid.’ And in carrying out his orders Deane exercised a stern control over his men; two, newly listed, being found by court-martial guilty of extortion on their own account, were sentenced to ‘ride the wooden
