the “Bluecoats,” held out to the last, and was finally broken by a combined charge of Fairfax’s regiment of foot, led by Cromwell, and the general’s personal escort, led by Fairfax himself, who captured a colour with his own hand. The remnant of the king’s army, re-formed by Rupert, stood inactive and irresolute while its infantry was being destroyed and then fled. The spoils included 100 standards and colours and the king’s private papers. But more important than trophies was the practical annihilation of the last field army of which the king disposed. Half the Royalists were captured, and about 1000 fell, in the battle and the pursuit which followed it. In addition all the artillery and the muskets (to the number of 8000) and ammunition without which the king could scarcely create a new army, fell into the hands of the victors.
NASH, RICHARD (1674–1762), English dandy, better known
as “Beau Nash,” was born at Swansea on the 18th of October
1674. He was descended from an old family of good position,
but his father from straitened means had become partner in a
glass business. Young Nash was educated at Carmarthen
grammar school and at Jesus College, Oxford. He obtained a
commission in the army, which, however, he soon exchanged for
the study of law at the Temple. Here among “wits and men
of pleasure” he came to be accepted as an authority in regard
to dress, manners and style. When the members of the Inns of
Court entertained William III. after his accession, Nash was
chosen to conduct the pageant at the Middle Temple. This duty
he performed so much to the satisfaction of the king that he
was offered knighthood, but he declined the honour, unless
accompanied by a pension. As the king did not take the hint,
Nash found it necessary to turn gamester. The pursuit of his
calling led him in 1705 to Bath, where he had the good fortune
almost immediately to succeed Captain Webster as master of the
ceremonies. His qualifications for such a position were unique,
and under his authority reforms were introduced which rapidly
secured to Bath a leading position as a fashionable watering-place.
He drew up a new code of rules for the regulation of balls and
assemblies, abolished the habit of wearing swords in places
of public amusement and brought duelling into disrepute,
induced gentlemen to adopt shoes and stockings in parades and
assemblies instead of boots, reduced refractory chairmen to
submission and civility, and introduced a tariff for lodgings.
Through his exertions a handsome assembly-room was also
erected, and the streets and public buildings were greatly
improved. Nash adopted an outward state corresponding to his
nominal dignity. He wore an immense white hat as a sign of
office, and a dress adorned with rich embroidery, and drove in
a chariot with six greys, laced lackeys and French horns. When
the act of parliament against gambling was passed in 1745, he
was deprived of an easy though uncertain means of subsistence,
but the corporation afterwards granted him a pension of six score
guineas a year, which, with the sale of his snuff-boxes and other
trinkets, enabled him to support a certain faded splendour
till his death on the 3rd of February 1762. He was honoured
with a public funeral at the expense of the town. Notwithstanding
his vanity and impertinence, the tact, energy and
superficial cleverness of Nash won him the patronage and notice
of the great, while the success of his ceremonial rule, as shown
in the increasing prosperity of the town, secured him the gratitude
of the corporation and the people generally. He was a man of
strong personality, and considerably more able than Beau
Brummell, whose prototype he was.
See Lewis Melville, Bath under Beau Nash (1908), with full list of authorities; Oliver Goldsmith, Life of Richard Nash (1762). See also Gentleman’s Magazine (1762); London Magazine, vol. xxxi.; “The Monarch of Bath” in Blackwood’s Magazine, vol. xlviii.
NASHE (or Nash), THOMAS (1567–1601), English poet, playwright and pamphleteer, was born at Lowestoft in 1567. His father belonged to an old Herefordshire family, and is vaguely described as a “minister.” Nashe spent nearly seven years, 1582 to 1589, at St John’s College Cambridge taking his B.A. degree in 1585–1586. On leaving the university he tried,
like Greene and Marlowe, to make his living in London by
literature. It is probable that his first effort was The Anatomie of Absurditie (1589) which was perhaps written at Cambridge, although he refers to it as a forthcoming publication in his preface to Greene’s Menaphon (1589). In this preface, addressed to the gentlemen students of both universities, he makes boisterous ridicule of the bombast of Thomas Kyd and the English hexameters of Richard Stanihurst, but does not forget the praise of many good books. Nashe was really a journalist born out of due time; he boasts of writing “as fast as his hand could trot”; he had a brilliant and picturesque style which, he was careful to explain, was entirely original; and in addition to his keen sense of the ridiculous he had an abundance of miscellaneous learning. As there was no market for his gifts he fared no better than the other university wits who were trying to live by letters. But he found an opening for his ready wit and keen sarcasm in the Martin Marprelate controversy. His share in this war of pamphlets cannot now be accurately determined, but he has, with more or less probability, been credited with the following: A Countercuffe given to Martin Junior (1589), Martins Months Minde (1589), The Returne of the renowned Cavaliero Pasquill and his Meeting with Marforius (1589), The First Parte of Pasquils Apologie (1590), and An Almond for a Parrat (1590). He edited an unauthorized edition of Sidney’s poems with an enthusiastic preface in 1591, and A Wonderfull Astrologicall Prognostication, in ridicule of the almanac-makers, by “Adam Fouleweather,” which appeared in the same year, has been attributed to him. Pierce Penilesse, His Supplication to the Divell, published in 1592, shows us his power as a humorous critic of national manners, and tells incidentally how hard he found it to live by the pen. It seems to Pierce a monstrous thing that brainless drudges wax fat while “the seven liberal sciences and a good leg will scarce get a scholar bread and cheese.” In this pamphlet, too, Nashe began his attacks upon the Harveys by assailing Richard, who had written contemptuously of his preface to Greene’s Menaphon. Greene died in September 1592, and Richard’s brother, Gabriel Harvey, at once attacked his memory in his Foure Letters, at the same time adversely criticizing Pierce Penilesse. Nashe replied, both for Greene and for himself, in Strange Newes of the intercepting certaine Letters, better known, from the running title, as Foure Letters Confuted (1592), in which all the Harveys are violently attacked. The autumn of 1592 Nashe seems to have spent at or near Croydon, where he wrote his satirical masque of Summers Last Will and Testament at a safe distance from London and the plague. He afterwards lived for some months in the Isle of Wight under the patronage of Sir George Carey, the governor. In 1593 he wrote Christs Teares over Jerusalem, in the first edition of which he made friendly overtures to Gabriel Harvey. These were, however, in a second edition, published in the following year, replaced by a new attack, and two years later appeared the most violent of his tracts against Harvey, Have with you to Saffron-walden, or, Gabriell Harveys Hunt is up (1596). In 1599 the controversy was suppressed by the archbishop of Canterbury. After Marlowe’s death Nashe prepared his friend’s unfinished tragedy of Dido (1596) for the stage. In the next year he was in trouble for a play, now lost, called The Isle of Dogs, for only part of which, however, he seems to have been responsible. The “seditious and slanderous matter” Contained in this play induced the authorities to close for a time the theatre at which it had been performed, and the dramatist was put in the Fleet prison. Besides his pamphlets and his play-writing, Nashe turned his energies to novel-writing. He may be regarded as the pioneer in the English novel of adventure. He published in 1594 The Unfortunate Traveller, Or the Life of Jack Wilton, the history of an ingenious page who was present at the siege of Térouenne, and afterwards travelled in Italy with the earl of Surrey. It tells the story of the earl and Fair Geraldine, describes a tournament held by Surrey at Florence, and relates the adventures of Wilton and his mistress Diamante at Rome after the earl’s return to England. The detailed, realistic manner in which Nashe relates his improbable fiction resembles that of Defoe. His last work is entitled Lenten Stuffe (1599)
