es soon distinguished their
adversaries by particular appellations. The royalists were denominated
Cavaliers; a word which, though applied to them at first in allusion to
their quality, soon lost its original acceptation, and was taken to be
synonymous with papist, atheist, and voluptuary; and they on their part
gave to their enemies the name of Roundheads, because they cropped their
hair short, dividing "it into so many little peaks as was something
ridiculous to behold."[2]

Each army in its composition resembled the other. Commissions were given,
not to persons the most fit to

[Footnote 1: Whitelock, 76.]

[Footnote 2: Life of Colonel Hutchinson, p. 100. "The godly of those days,
when the colonel embraced their party, would not allow him to be
religious, because his hair was not in their cut, nor his words in their
phrase."--Ibid. The names were first given a little before the king left
Whitehall.--Clarendon, i. 339.]

command, but to those who were most willing and able to raise men; and
the men themselves, who were generally ill paid, and who considered their
services as voluntary, often defeated the best-concerted plans, by their
refusal to march from their homes, or their repugnance to obey some
particular officer, or their disapproval of the projected expedition. To
enforce discipline was dangerous; and both the king and the parliament
found themselves compelled to entreat or connive, where they ought to
have employed authority and punishment. The command of the royal army was
intrusted to the earl of Lindsey, of the parliamentary forces to the earl
of Essex, each of whom owed the distinction to the experience which he was
supposed to have acquired in foreign service. But such experience
afforded little benefit. The passions of the combatants despised the cool
calculations of military prudence; a new system of warfare was necessarily
generated; and men of talents and ambition quickly acquired that knowledge
which was best adapted to the quality of the troops and to the nature of
the contest.

Charles, having left Nottingham, proceeded to Shrewsbury, collecting
reinforcements, and receiving voluntary contributions on his march.
Half-way between Stafford and Wellington he halted the army, and placing
himself in the centre, solemnly declared in the presence of Almighty God
that he had no other design, that he felt no other wish, than to maintain.
the Protestant faith, to govern according to law, and to observ