battles were attended
with various successes. At one time, the King was victorious; at another
time, the Parliament. But almost all the great and busy towns were
against the King; and when it was considered necessary to fortify London,
all ranks of people, from labouring men and women, up to lords and
ladies, worked hard together with heartiness and good will. The most
distinguished leaders on the Parliamentary side were HAMPDEN, SIR THOMAS
FAIRFAX, and, above all, OLIVER CROMWELL, and his son-in-law IRETON.

During the whole of this war, the people, to whom it was very expensive
and irksome, and to whom it was made the more distressing by almost every
family being divided--some of its members attaching themselves to one
side and some to the other--were over and over again most anxious for
peace. So were some of the best men in each cause. Accordingly,
treaties of peace were discussed between commissioners from the
Parliament and the King; at York, at Oxford (where the King held a little
Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge. But they came to nothing. In
all these negotiations, and in all his difficulties, the King showed
himself at his best. He was courageous, cool, self-possessed, and
clever; but, the old taint of his character was always in him, and he was
never for one single moment to be trusted. Lord Clarendon, the
historian, one of his highest admirers, supposes that he had unhappily
promised the Queen never to make peace without her consent, and that this
must often be taken as his excuse. He never kept his word from night to
morning. He signed a cessation of hostilities with the blood-stained
Irish rebels for a sum of money, and invited the Irish regiments over, to
help him against the Parliament. In the battle of Naseby, his cabinet
was seized and was found to contain a correspondence with the Queen, in
which he expressly told her that he had deceived the Parliament--a
mongrel Parliament, he called it now, as an improvement on his old term
of vipers--in pretending to recognise it and to treat with it; and from
which it further appeared that he had long been in secret treaty with the
Duke of Lorraine for a foreign army of ten thousand men. Disappointed in
this, he sent a most devoted friend of his, the EARL OF GLAMORGAN, to
Ireland, to conclude a secret treaty with the Catholic powers, to send
him an Irish army of ten thousand men; in return for which he was to
bestow great favours on the Catholi