moved this day a Self-denying Ordinance; which, in a few days more, was passed in the Commons. It was not so easily got through the Lords; but there too it had ultimately to pass. One of the most important clauses was this, introduced not without difficulty, That religious men might now serve without taking the Covenant as a first preliminary,—perhaps they might take it by and by. This was a great ease to tender consciences and indicates a deep split, which will grow wider and wider, in our religious affairs. ‘The Scots Commissioners have sent for Whitlocke and Maynard to the Lord General’s, to ask in judicious Scotch dialect, Whether there be not ground to prosecute Cromwell as an ‘incendiary’? ‘You ken varry weel!’—The two learned gentlemen shook their heads.[1]
This Self-denying Ordinance had to pass; it and the New Model wholly; by the steps indicated below.[2] Essex was gratified by a splendid Pension,—very little of it ever actually paid; for indeed he died some two years after: Manchester was put on the Committee of Both Kingdoms: the Parliament had its New-Model Army, and soon saw an entirely new epoch in its affairs.
Before the old Officers laid down their commissions, Waller with Cromwell and Massey were sent on an expedition into the West against Goring and Company; concerning which there is some echo in the old Books and Commons Journals, but no definite vestige of it, except the following
- ↑ Whitlocke, iii. p. 111 (December 1644).
- ↑ Rushworth, vi. 7, 8: Self-denying Ordinance passed in the Commons 19th December, and is sent to the Lords; Conference about it, 7th January; rejected by the Lords 15th January,—because ‘we do not know what shape the Army will now suddenly take.’ Whereupon, 21st January, ‘Fairfax is nominated General’; and on the 19th February, the New Model is completed and passed: ‘This is the shape the Army is to take.’ A second Self-denying Ordinance, now introduced, got itself finally passed 3d April 1645.
