ain for
some days Lieutenant General Cromwell, whose advice, he said, would
be useful in supplying the place of those officers who had resigned.
Shortly after, he begged, with much earnestness, that they would allow
Cromwell to serve that campaign.[****] And thus the Independents, though
the minority, prevailed by art and cunning over the Presbyterians, and
bestowed the whole military authority in appearance, upon Fairfax; in
reality, upon Cromwell.

* Rush. vol. vii. p. 8, 15.

** Whitlocke, p. 118. Rush. vol. vii. p. 7.

*** Whitlocke, p. 133.

**** Clarendon, vol. v. p. 629, 630. Whitlocke, p. 141.

Fairfax was a person equally eminent for courage and for humanity; and
though strongly infected with prejudices, or principles derived from
religious and party zeal, he seems never, in the course of his public
conduct, to have been diverted by private interest or ambition from
adhering strictly to these principles. Sincere in his professions,
disinterested in his views, open in his conduct, he had formed one of
the most shining characters of the age, had not the extreme narrowness
of his genius in every thing but in war, and his embarrassed and
confused elocution on every occasion but when he gave orders, diminished
the lustre of his merit, and rendered the part which he acted, even when
vested with the supreme command, but secondary and subordinate.

Cromwell, by whose sagacity and insinuation Fairfax was entirely
governed, is one of the most eminent and most singular personages that
occurs in history: the strokes of his character are as open and strongly
marked, as the schemes of his conduct were, during the time, dark
and impenetrable. His extensive capacity enabled him to form the most
enlarged projects: his enterprising genius was not dismayed with
the boldest and most dangerous. Carried by his natural temper to
magnanimity, to grandeur, and to an imperious and domineering policy, he
yet knew, when necessary, to employ the most profound dissimulation,
the most oblique and refined artifice, the semblance of the greatest
moderation and simplicity. A friend to justice, though his public
conduct was one continued violation of it; devoted to religion, though
he perpetually employed it as the instrument of his ambition; he was
engaged in crimes from the prospect of sovereign power, a temptation
which is in general irresistible to human nature. And by using well that
authority which he had attaine