The Second Civil War broke out in Wales. It began with a revolt of officers and soldiers who had fought zealously for the Parliament throughout the first war. In February, 1648, Colonel Poyer, the governor of Pembroke Castle, refused to hand his charge over to the officer whom Fairfax had appointed to succeed him. In March, he openly declared for the King, and the troops of Colonel Laugharne, followed soon afterwards by their leader, joined Poyer’s forces. In April, it became known in London that the Scots were raising an army to invade England, and at the end of the month parties of English Royalists, by Scottish help, seized Berwick and Carlisle. To meet these two dangers Fairfax sent Cromwell to suppress the Welsh insurgents and prepared to march north himself against the Scots.

At the beginning of May, Cromwell left London, taking with him two regiments of horse and three of foot. Poyer was full of confidence. He had won several small victories, and told his men that he would meet Cromwell in fair field, and that he would be 194himself the first man to charge “Ironsides,” adding that if Cromwell “had a back of steel and a breast of iron, he durst and would encounter with him.” But before Cromwell reached Wales, Colonel Horton defeated the boastful Poyer at St. Fagans, on May 8th, and when Cromwell arrived the war became a war of sieges. Chepstow was stormed by Colonel Ewer on May 25th, and Tenby surrendered to Colonel Horton at the end of May, but Pembroke Castle held out for over six weeks. Its walls were strong and its garrison desperate. Cromwell had no heavy artillery with him, and though he “scraped up,” as he said, a few little guns, and made a breach, his assaults were repulsed with loss. The hostility of the country people and want of provisions added to the difficulties of the besiegers. “It’s a mercy,” wrote Cromwell to Fairfax, “that we have been able to keep our men together in such necessity, the sustenance of the foot for the most part being bread and water.” The besieged, however, were in worse straits, and at last, on the 11th of July, starvation forced Poyer and Laugharne “to surrender themselves to the mercy of the Parliament” and give up town and castle.

Three days before Pembroke fell, Hamilton and the Scottish army crossed the border, and Fairfax was not there to face them. London was seething with discontent: there were riots in the city and in the eastern counties, and mass petitions from Essex, Kent, and Surrey urged Parliament to come to terms with the King and to disband the army. At the end of May a royalist rising broke out in Kent, and the fleet in the Downs declared for the King.

PEMBROKE CASTLE.

(From a photograph.)

195Fairfax collected eight or nine thousand men and set out for Kent. On June 1st, he forced his way into Maidstone, where the main body of the Kentish Royalists had posted themselves, and, after hard fighting in the barricaded streets, mastered the town, and broke up the insurgent army. A part of them, under old Lord Norwich, marched towards London, but found the city gates closed against them, and dispersed. Norwich himself, with five or six hundred horse, crossed the Thames, and called the Royalists of Essex to arms. Ere long four thousand men gathered round him, and Fairfax, leaving detachments to complete the subjugation of Kent, hurried to Essex to suppress this new rising. Norwich threw himself into Colchester, and a bloody battle took place in the suburbs, in which the raw levies of the Royalists repulsed Fairfax’s veterans with great loss. The parliamentary general, seeing that he could not carry the town by a coup de main, was obliged to sit down to a regular siege, which ultimately developed into a blockade. Forts were built round Colchester, and connected by lines of intrenchments, to cut off all supplies and prevent any escape. The militia of Suffolk and Essex swelled Fairfax’s small force of regulars and completed the investment. The besieged fought well and made vigorous sallies, but unless help came from without the end was inevitable. When the siege began, such relief seemed very probable. All over England little local risings were incessantly breaking out which threatened to become general unless they were at once suppressed. In June, there were risings in 196North Wales, Northamptonshire, and Nottinghamshire. At the beginning of July, Lord Holland and the young Duke of Buckingham gathered about six hundred Cavaliers at Kingston in the hope of relieving Colchester. But they were hunted from place to place by Fairfax’s cavalry, and could never stay long enough anywhere to collect their partisans. The few who kept together were captured at St. Neots, in Huntingdonshire, on July 10th. At the end of July, Prince Charles and the revolted ships blockaded the Thames, hoping to persuade London to declare for the King by threatening its trade. But a fleet alone could not relieve Colchester, for Fairfax had occupied Mersea Island and cut off the town from the sea. Moreover, London remained quiet, for, though strongly Presbyterian in feeling, it had no desire to see the King restored unconditionally. The only hope of the besieged lay in the advance of Hamilton and the Scottish army.

In the north of England the Parliament had no force afoot strong enough to stop the Scots from marching southwards. Major-General Lambert, the commander-in-chief in the northern counties, with three or four regiments of regular horse and the local levies of Yorkshire and Lancashire, more than held his own against the English Royalists under Langdale and Musgrave, defeating them in the field and reducing the garrison of Carlisle to extremities. But when Hamilton advanced to relieve his allies, Lambert could only fall back, stubbornly skirmishing, into north Yorkshire, leaving the Scots to overrun Cumberland and the north. He, too, was 197hampered by risings in his rear, for early in June Pontefract Castle had been surprised by the Royalists, and later in the month Scarborough had declared for the King. On the 8th of July, when Hamilton entered England, he brought with him no more than ten thousand or eleven thousand men, but additional forces followed later, and including the English Royalists under Langdale and Musgrave he had, by the next month, about twenty-four thousand men under his command. He marched slowly in order to give time for his reinforcements to come up, and spent some time in besieging Appleby and other northern castles. It was only about the middle of August that he resumed his advance and determined to push south through Lancashire.

Meanwhile, Cromwell was hurrying north to Lambert’s aid. Even before Pembroke fell he had sent a portion of his horse northwards. As soon as it surrendered, he set out at once with the rest of his horse and the infantry. His men had not been paid for months, but his iron discipline kept them from plundering. The most part of his foot were shoeless and in rags, but boots were provided to meet them at Leicester. Marching by way of Gloucester and through the midlands, Cromwell reached Leicester on August 1st, Nottingham on August 5th, and joined Lambert near Knaresborough in the West Riding on Saturday, August 12th. Some regiments had to be left to besiege Pontefract and Scarborough, so that their united forces came to no more than about eight thousand five hundred men, of whom about three thousand were horse. But three quarters 198of this army were old soldiers, and, as one of Cromwell’s officers wrote, it was “a fine, smart army, fit for action.”

Cromwell had hitherto been under the impression that the Scots intended to advance through Yorkshire, and, relieving Pontefract on their way, to march straight for London. He now learnt that Hamilton had chosen the Lancashire route, and was already on his way through that county. Accordingly, on Sunday, August 13th, he set out to cross the hills which separate Lancashire from Yorkshire, and to attack the invaders. On Monday night, he quartered at Skipton; on Tuesday night, at Gisburn. On Wednesday, he marched down the valley of the Ribble into Lancashire. Two courses were now open to him. He might cross by Hodder Bridge to the southern bank of the Ribble, and seek to bar Hamilton’s advance southwards by placing himself somewhere in his path; or he might keep along the northern bank of the river and engage Hamilton somewhere near Preston itself. Cromwell chose the second course, and he did so with a full consciousness of the importance of the choice. “It was thought,” he wrote, “that to engage the enemy to fight was our business,” and to march straight upon Preston was more likely to bring about a battle because it seemed probable that Hamilton would stand his ground there. There was also a second reason. If he put himself to the south of Hamilton, a defeat would throw Hamilton back upon his supports in Westmoreland and on the road to Scotland. If he defeated Hamilton at Preston, he might be able to drive him southwards, separating him from his supports, and cutting off his line of retreat. Under such circumstances, a defeat would lead to the annihilation of the Scottish army instead of merely forcing it to retire to Scotland. It was for these reasons, and not by any happy accident, that Cromwell adopted the second plan. As he explained a couple of years later, “Upon deliberate advice we chose rather to put ourselves between their army and Scotland.” All Wednesday, therefore, he continued his march down the northern bank of the Ribble, and camped his army for the night at Stonyhurst, about nine miles from Preston.

199Meanwhile, Hamilton’s army was marching through Lancashire as carelessly and loosely as if Cromwell were fifty miles away. Hamilton himself, with ten thousand foot and perhaps fifteen hundred horse, was at Preston. The Earl of Callendar and General Middleton, with the bulk of the Scottish horse, were at Wigan, fifteen miles ahead of the infantry, while thirty miles in the rear, at Kirby Lonsdale, in Westmoreland, lay Major-General Monro, with about three thousand veteran horse and foot drawn from the Scottish army in Ulster, and two or three thousand English Royalists under Sir Philip Musgrave. Between Cromwell and Preston, covering Hamilton’s flank, was Sir Marmaduke Langdale’s division of English Royalists, numbering three thousand foot and six hundred horse. Hamilton had been warned of the enemy’s approach by Langdale, but discredited his information, and believed he was t............