Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/505

CROMWELL 501 a member of the parliament which met in 1628, sitting for Huntingdon. During the 11 years that followed the dissolution of that par- liament, and while Charles I. was endeavoring to establish a despotism over England, Crom- well lived either at Huntingdon, at St. Ives, or at Ely (where in 1636 he inherited an estate from his uncle Sir Thomas Steward, worth 500 a year), his devotional feeling increasing in depth and strength, while his attachment to the country party was deepened and confirmed. There used to be current a story, now aban- doned, that in 1638, despairing of his country's welfare, Cromwell embarked for New England, in company with Pym, Hazelrig, and Hamp- den, but was prevented from sailing by a royal order in council. The opposition which he made, not to the draining of the fens, but to the interference of government in the work, was successful, and won him great fame, and from the people the title of "lord of the fens," while it showed the country that he was a man of immovable resolution. In 1640 he was chosen to the short parliament ; and when the second parliament of that year was called, Cromwell contested Cambridge with the poet Cleaveland, a zealous royalist, and is said to have defeated him by one vote. Cleaveland is reported to have said that that single vote had ruined both church and kingdom ; but this was probably an invention of later tunes, as in 1640 Cromwell was not so high in general estima- tion as to be reckoned among the great leaders of his party, nor was it supposed that that party aimed at anything which implied hostility to the established order of things in church and state. From the time that he entered the long parliament Cromwell went with the root-and- branch men, but he was not so conspicuous as to be noted until after the commencement of the civil war. Yet he served on many com- mittees, and took part in debate. Sir Philip Warwick, who heard him speak in the first days of the session, felt his respect for the commons lessened because they hearkened much unto him. So little was he known to some noted men, that on the day he made the speech here mentioned Lord Digby asked Hampden who the sloven was ; and received for answer that, if ever there should come a breach with the king, that sloven would be the greatest man in England. Cromwell was not much given to talk, but he was an active party man, and labored with zeal in the common cause. It has been ascertained, says Mr. Sandford, "that within the first ten months of the long parliament, and before the recess, which began on Sept. 9, 1641, Cromwell was specially appointed to 18 committees, exclusive of various appointments among the knights and burgesses generally of the eastern coun- ties. The most important matters fell within the province of several of these committees." He supported the grand remonstrance and all the other measures of the parliament that were meant to bridle the faithless king. When the war commenced he became the most active of all men in the field, which he was the first to enter. Before the royal standard was set up he went down into Cambridgeshire, where he had previously sent arms, and formed the nu- cleus of his " Ironsides," at the same time seek- ing to give the forcible resistance that was to be made to the king a systematic character among the leading men of the district, to the end of rendering their military means solidly avail- able. He contributed liberally of his money to the cause. He seized the plate of Cambridge uni- versity, which was to have been sent to Charles L, and took the magazine that was in the town. His uncle, Sir Oliver, was a royalist, and the nephew, though he treated him personally with consideration, took from him everything with which he could assist the king. He was pres- ent at the battle of Edgehill, was made a colonel in January, 1643, acted under the earl of Es- sex, the parliamentary lord general, and showed himself to be a cavalry officer of remarkable capacity and resource. From the first he saw that the parliament could not contend against the king's forces unless it should have in its service men capable of meeting the loyalists on some ground of principle; and against the chivalrous honor that actuated the better por- tion of the latter, he purposed to direct the religious spirit of the Puritans. Hampden, to whom he unfolded his scheme, thought it " a good notion, but impracticable ;" but Cromwell found it no such difficult matter. He raised a cavalry regiment, 1,000 strong, which he drilled and exhorted until it became the finest body of troops in the world, and was the seed of that army which won the cause of the par- liament, and then overthrew the parliament itself. This regiment was composed mostly of freeholders or the sons of freeholders, and was recruited from among Cromwell's neigh- bors. Both friends and enemies bear the full- est evidence to the discipline, valor, skill in arms, freedom from military vices, and reli- gious zeal of these Cromwellian soldiers. Their commander told them that they were to fight the king, and said he would himself as soon shoot that personage as any other whom he should encounter in the hostile ranks. This was contrary to the idea and practice of the parliament, which fought the king in his own name, a fiction which had no hold on the Ironsides, who cheered their colonel's words, and ever acted in their spirit. The early mil- itary services of Cromwell were useful, and were soon followed by others of a brilliant character. He surprised a party of loyalists in Suffolk, kept the same party quiet in the eastern counties, and near Grantham totally routed a body of cavalry that was seeking to obtain control of Lincolnshire. His next ac- tion was the relief of Gainsborough, July 27, 1643. The royalists were advancing in force upon the town, when Cromwell threw himself in their front. Though the enemy was triple his own numbers, and was drawn up on the