: The correspondence is in the Journals, ibid.]
greeted with continual cries of "Justice, justice, we demand justice."[1]
From this regiment they proceeded to each of the others. In every instance
the same ceremony was repeated, and always with the same result. No one now
could doubt that both officers and men were joined in one common league;
and that the link which bound them together was the "solemn engagement."[2]
Both looked upon that engagement as the charter of their rights and
liberties. No concession or intrigue, no partiality of friendship or
religion, could seduce them from the faith which they had sworn to it.
There were, indeed, a few seceders, particularly the captains, and several
of the lord general's life-guard; but after all, the men who yielded to
temptation amounted to a very inconsiderable number, in comparison with
the immense majority of those who with inviolable fidelity adhered to
the engagement, and, by their resolution and perseverance, enabled their
leaders to win for them a complete, and at the same time a bloodless
victory.
3. On the next day a deputation of freeholders from the county of Norfolk,
and soon afterwards similar deputations from the counties of Suffolk,
Essex, Herts, and Buckingham, waited with written addresses upon Fairfax.
They lamented that now, when the war with the king was concluded, peace had
not brought with it the blessings, the promise of which by the parliament
had induced them to submit to the evils and privations of war; a
disappointment that could be attributed only to the obstinacy with which
certain individuals clung to the emoluments of office
[Footnote 1: Rushworth, vi. 518. Whitelock, 251. Holles, 252.]
[Footnote 2: Nottingham's Letter in the Lords' Journals, ix. 253.]
and the monopoly of power. To Fairfax, therefore, under God, they appealed
to become the saviour of his country, to be the mediator between it and the
two houses. With this view, let him keep his army together, till he had
brought the incendiaries to condign punishment, and extorted full redress
of the grievances so severely felt both by the army and the people.[1]
The chiefs, however, who now ruled at Westminster, were not the men to
surrender without a struggle. They submitted, indeed, to pass a few
ordinances calculated to give satisfaction, but these were combined with
others which displayed a fixed determination not to succumb to the dictates
of a mutinous soldiery. A committe
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